System Report:

  Arrival

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  Lionel was aware of the timer ticking down. In fact, he was aware of most things happening in the trembling chamber. The cold water seeping in around his boots; the pounding, scraping, snarling commotion on the other side of the door; and the Delver woman still on her knees, clutching her head as if trying to keep several arguing migraines from stealing her skull.

  But as of that moment, his attention was fully held by the girl juggling glass baubles with the dangerous confidence of a jester who’d never once attended practice. Then again, she didn’t so much juggle as rapidly launch fragile objects skyward.

  Catching anything? Overrated.

  When the first glass spheres had shattered against the floor, Lionel had been wincing, bracing for the inevitable moment when the Dungeon decided it’d had enough.

  Yet, confoundingly, the only tangible consequence of Annabel’s glass-based mayhem was causing the Delver woman to inch farther away from the glittering carpet of broken baubles spreading across the floor. Each exploded with a sharp fizz and a sort of sorrowful moan, as though even the glass wasn’t sure this was the right way to end things.

  “Is this… alright?” the woman asked, having finally retreated to the narrow alcove by the door Lionel still braced—a place that wasn’t strictly safer, but less prone to airborne catastrophe. Her voice was, notably, less possessed-by-ancient-cosmic-horrors than it had before.

  “They’re cursing her quite profusely,” she continued, hunched over, one arm clutching tight against her side, yet eyes never leaving the spectacle before them. “They’re shrieking about rules, unfairness, and… they’re begging her to stop?”

  She blinked and turned her dazed gaze on Lionel. Even half-collapsed against the wall, she managed to be tall enough to look him squarely in the eyes.

  “You two can’t hear them?”

  Between the continued barrage of heavy thuds against the doors, and the persistent water rising around his ankles, there wasn’t really any time for idle chatter. Then again, having yet to see a better way to spend his last struggling moments, Lionel braced harder as another impact shuddered through the door and into his spine, and replied:

  “She”—he nodded toward Annabel, who was still launching baubles with the sort of unhinged cackle usually reserved for sorcerers who have finally figured out how to microwave eggs without them exploding—“is not really prone to listening to anyone. Or anything, for that matter. To scramble her mind is a bit like trying to drown a fish. And, as for me, I—”

  A sudden, creeping premonition halted his words.

  It didn’t have anything to do with the heavy impacts or persistent hissing on the other side of the door. Nor did it have anything to do with Annabell’s rampage—the makings of a hundred years of misfortune rapidly being seeded across the chamber. No, this was karmic foresight.

  ‘I am not the type to be affected by these kinds of low-grade constructs,’ he’d nearly said, which would have been the equivalent of raising both middle fingers in the face of the universe and screaming, ‘Here I am. Come get me!’

  Especially considering he’d already experienced something that had brushed past his mental defences with ease. A voice that had reached him. And if that particular being was keeping quiet now, it was either because it was giving them a chance to work things out for themselves, or—

  A deep thrum rolled through the chamber, not so much a noise as a statement. It passed through the stone walls like a physical presence, flattening thought and rattling bone. Even Lionel felt it behind his eyes, touching whatever administrative sub-department handled existential dread.

  In the edge of his vision, he caught the timer just as it reached its final conclusion:

  00:00:00

  “Ah, fuck,” he muttered, because sometimes eloquence simply isn’t on the menu. His second suspicion was now confirmed:

  —or everything was already proceeding exactly the way it wanted.

  A ripple passed across the pooling water in the chamber, and then a swirl. A second later, the entire floor at the center of the chamber, the one Annabell Smith had chosen as her personal juggling arena, crumbled.

  ***

  The taste of blood, gall, and soot mingled on Yenna’s tongue, making her spit and retch. In her ears rang a buzzing, high-pitched whine, constant and insistent.

  Even so, she staggered to her feet, the world lagging behind in blurry streaks.

  The once roaring engine in her chest had been reduced to a faint, apologetic hum somewhere under her ribs. Barely enough to keep her upright, but technically enough to qualify as being alive. Which, for the moment, wasn’t worth a whole lot.

  Somewhere between the start of the priest’s chant and Yenna’s return to consciousness, the air within the church had changed. Flames still clung to everything not made of stone, leaving the heat and smoke’s suffocating presence the same, but every townsfolk—those who hadn’t dropped like lifeless marionettes earlier—had fallen into deep prayer, foreheads pressed to the stone as the entire church trembled around them.

  A small, treacherous part of Yenna felt like joining them.

  For she knew, instinctively, that whatever was coming, it wasn’t something she could handle. Even if she’d been at full strength—even if her entire party had still been alive—it wouldn’t have made a difference.

  She could tell from the pressure settling on her chest, like the air itself was trying to get out of the way. Her lungs refused to fill properly, her skin broke out in a cold sweat, and her soul… well, her soul was shivering in a corner, asking if anyone else had noticed the temperature drop.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  At the centre of the church, before the priest who still held his arms aloft with zealous conviction, the floor began to crumble. Stone after stone fell away, disappearing into whatever hollow, patient void waited beneath.

  Another rumble, and something from below began rising into the church—something horrible, something daunting, something that…

  Yenna’s racing heart missed a beat.

  …had ragged bunny ears?

  Pink ones?

  And was wearing aviator goggles?

  Yenna blinked. Then shook her head, which didn’t help much because the image remained stubbornly in place, the way truly ridiculous things often do. But yes: through the splitting floor, at the glacial, soul-crushing pace reserved for monumental and ill-advised events, two fuzzy bunny ears gradually emerged—like two garishly pink flags declaring sovereignty over the realm of the absurd. Following the ears came a head, wearing an expression suggesting it, too, felt this was all a bit much.

  Then came the rest of the girl, seated flat on her backside atop an invisible barrier discernible only by the way it ploughed through the smoke, shedding a constant trickle of deep-green seawater.

  It was like a large chunk of the air—roughly the size of a four-horse carriage—had turned solid, enshrouding a creation unmistakable in its shape. A creation that should’ve stayed forever buried within the depths of this world.

  Rusted gyros and barnacle-crusted gears twitched and spun at its core, suspended in a grimy pool of raw magic. Runes wrote themselves into existence only to fade and vanish just as quickly, like soldiers of sand washed away by the morning tide. It was ancient. It was powerful. It was like nothing she’d ever seen before, yet it could only possibly be one thing:

  It was the Core of this world.

  Every sense Yenna still possessed confirmed it: the taste of salt and stagnation clung to the back of her tongue; the deep, briny essence at the heart of Ashenmoor anchored down on her shoulders; power radiated from the sphere like a stiff sea breeze; and, of course, the endless ebb and flow of a thousand whispers crashed into her mind like psychic waves determined to rearrange her sanity forever.

  She was in the presence of something god-like. Something that demanded reverence, awe, solemnity, and possibly a small choir. Something that—

  plink.

  The sound of a glass sphere slipping from overly full arms, bouncing once, twice off the invisible forcefield around the ancient Core, and then hitting the church floor with a shrill shatter cut through the moment like a voice crack in the opera of the end-times.

  The silence that followed was the thick, appalled kind that demanded capital letters.

  And then, from the very epicentre of cosmic gravitas, came a small, sheepish,

  “Oops.”

  With the entire church leaning in, watching in quiet condemnation, the girl in the violently pink, bunny-eared sweater shuffled a bit to the side, then slid—yes, slid—after the fallen bauble, using the monumental, world-anchoring Core behind her as though it were nothing more than the world’s least appropriate playground accessory.

  Unfortunately, gravity remained unimpressed by her sense of whimsy. The girl hit the ground, wobbled, and in an act of almost admirable consistency, managed to drop the two remaining baubles she cradled in her arms.

  plink—

  Crash!

  They shattered in perfect harmony with the first, their demise accompanied by the sound of two bodies collapsing with matching, weary sighs somewhere behind Yenna.

  “Ah, shoot,” the girl said, in the tone of someone whose life was a long series of “ah, shoot” moments. She looked down at the glittering ruin of her efforts, then up—way up—at the priest standing right before her.

  The baubles had, quite literally, shattered at his feet.

  The priest stared at her with a level of intensity that could have curdled milk and, if weaponized, would’ve made swords obsolete. If looks could kill, this pink absurdity would’ve already been turned into a neat little pile of ashes.

  Even so, the girl did not seem particularly aware of the murder in his gaze.

  With the tip of her one remaining boot, she nudged a few glittering shards toward the same hole the Core had risen from, brushing them over the edge as though that would somehow render the scene less incriminating.

  “Erm… you wouldn’t happen to have a broom lying around?”

  The priest, who had seemingly only now rediscovered his voice and sense of urgency, snapped toward the Core.

  “Oh, Supreme One!” he cried, throwing his arms wide. “Return the powers of this lowly servant, I beg of you, and I shall banish these infidels from your realm! I shall feed their life’s force to you, so that you may rise to your rightful glory once more!”

  It was the kind of speech that demanded thunder.

  And, obligingly, the heavens provided it.

  As the rainy skies over Ashenmoor split in a flash of lightning, what followed had the unmistakable atmosphere of a scene that should not, under any circumstances, be interrupted.

  Storm-like energies rippled outward from the Core, gathering around the priest with menacing grace. Divine wrath crackled, sending his robes and white hair whipping on sharp winds. The air thickened with the scent of rain and thunder as his arms stretched even wider, face contorted in devout ecstasy as he slowly ascended from the ground in a cloud of churning energy.

  Another crack of lightning rattled the church, as if the building itself was starting to fear what was going on.

  Some piece of Yenna could sense what was coming, yet there was nothing she could do about it. Even if she had been able to move, even if she wasn’t frozen in place, every Delver who ventured into the Underfold learned, sooner rather than later, that some things should not be tampered with—that some things existed to be respected.

  By following the System’s rules—by allowing the priest to finish transforming into whatever horrific final form Ashenmoor had been saving for the endgame—Yenna could cling to the faint, desperate hope that if they defeated him properly, they might be granted safe passage out of this nightmare.

  Or at least, that was how things were supposed to go.

  But as Yenna stood frozen; jacket flapping like a sail trying to abandon ship, breath held tight, heart pounding loud enough to overpower the crackling air, and stomach filled with dread; as one gnarled limb after the other sprouted from beneath the priest’s robes like the birth of fresh abominations…

  …someone who absolutely, definitively, unquestionably was not supposed to move, moved.

  Entirely unconcerned with the apocalyptic transformation happening directly behind her, the girl in the pink hoodie pulled something from beneath her tattered sweater, crouched down, and began brushing more shattered glass toward the gaping void the Core had risen from, using what appeared to be… a well-loved plushie?

  She wasn’t even doing it properly. Three half-hearted swipes. Barely enough to clear the worst of it. And then she gave herself a satisfied nod, the sort of nod that said, There, I’ve done something, and that’s good enough.

  Then—utterly disregarding the thunder cracking overhead and the storm tearing its way through the church—she leaned further over the hole and yelled into the void:

  “HEY! DO YOU THINK WE HAVE TO SMASH THIS ONE TOO TO GET OUT OF HERE?!”

  She had to scream to be heard over the howling wind, but worse than that was her finger—small, dirty, and entirely devoid of reverence—pointing directly at the heart of the world. The Core. The God of Ashenmoor.

  If Yenna had been allowed to move, her jaw would have hit the floor hard enough to chip a tooth. But she wasn’t. The System had her frozen in place, because something far more official was happening.

  Behind the pink idiot, the last of the priest’s humanity burned away in the light of the Core.

  High Priest Amadeus North (Level ??)

  Aspect of the Drowned Revelation

  He Who Heard the Depths and Took Terrible Notes

  Boss Battle Initiated

  The High Priest has embraced the full, briny madness of Ashenmoor’s god.

  Survive his tidal miracles, twisted limbs, and unsolicited sermons.

  Objective: Find a way to defeat High Priest Amadeus North… or become kindling for his mad faith.

  And with an enraged scream, he lashed out.