The day is a slow trek, ign splits ih and following the river onwards. They are attacked from behind by a few small groups lers, but the attacks are less frequent than the day before. They find a few more herbs, including a sizable harvest of wyrmroot tucked into an alcove along their path. They also find a sparse outcrop of light crystals, but otherwise the day passes without intrigue.

  The final day of their delve into the depths of The Waters brings a new bag of problems though. A few hours into the m, a chill passes down Emily’s spine.

  What’s following us this time?

  With a frown, Emily starts elliheion as she walks. She looks behind them and finds a group lers in pursuit, which doesn’t seem out of the ordinary at all. Ign them for now, she sends her perception into the side tunnels hem and finds a few mroups lers, walking in parallel with them, further into the depths.

  Strange! Why aren’t they ing to attack us? They’re definitely close enough to detect us.

  She runs her s over the tunnels a few more times, but only finds groglers lurkihem without approag. Even the group behind them, which keeps increasing in size as more monsters show up, doesn’t e closer.

  “We’re being surrounded by groglers,” Emily ents calmly.

  “Surrounded?” Oscar asks sceptically.

  “Yeah. There’s a rge group behind us and a lot of small groups iunnels nearby, but none are approag us.”

  “Hmm.” Oscar frowns, halting their mard turning to Ivor for firmation.

  Ivor and Enzo both run ss, ing to the same clusion as Emily.

  “Shit! Why are they ag so weird? I thought that monster was trolling them,” Oscar questions Emily, anger and desperation mixing in his gaze.

  “I don’t know. It looks like they’re trying to push us deeper, though, so we’ll probably find out soon. If not, we just kill our way out. Rex, it’s only groglers, I deal with them all myself if necessary.” Emily calms him down while pushing for them to tinue onwards, her curiosity growing.

  He’s starting to lose it. I guess losing nearly a third of his expedition in one night probably wasn’t great for his fidence.

  Oscar takes a deep breath then releases it, letting his tension flow out.

  “You’re right. Sorry, I should be keeping a calm head to lead properly. Let’s keep going. We turn around tomorrow m anyway.”

  They restart their march, with tension once again spreading through the group. Nothing happens till mid-afternoohey arrive at a three-path split in the river, with new banks rising from the water to lihe middle path up ahead. They try to walk towards the left-hand path, following the pattern they’ve ablished whehey’re faced with a choice, but as they get closer, Emily’s spots dozens of heat signatures lurking in the darkness at the edge of the path.

  “That’s a lot lers,” she mutters to herself before turning troupmates. “Enzo, Ivor, status check.”

  Hearing her and, both mages shut their eyes and send out ss. Everyone else starts preparing spells for their visitors.

  “Fug hell,” Enzo excims, the colour draining from his face. “There’s about fifty behind us.”

  “Roughly thirty ahead, twenty on the middle, and none on the right,” Ivns, gesturing to the three paths ahead.

  Nervous chatter breaks out in the group.

  “Should we run?” asks fearfully.

  “We ’t fight that many while surrounded,” Erin adds.

  “Maybe we should follow the path without any of them. Then we only have to deal with them on one side?” Enzo suggests.

  “Yes,” Osods while starting to break formation to head towards the empty path. “We should run.”

  Emily reaches out and grabs his shoulder, staring at him with a scowl.

  “What’s with you? It’s just a bunch lers. We beat this many easily.”

  Oscar pauses, looking into Emily’s eyes in fusion for a sed before shaking his head and regaining crity.

  “You’re right. Why are we so nervous?” He walks bato position, straightening his bad giving out ands. “Mia, Bel, help me set up a barrier to pletely block the back for now. Enzo, slow down any that e from the middle path. Ivor, make him a temporary bridge to reach it. Erin, Matteo, start pig off those behind us. Emily, Dante, wipe them out.”

  After a few murmured agreements, everyoarts their ts, waiting for the moo approach.

  Why are they just watg us? Will they not attatil we try to go doath they don’t like? It’s quite obvious they’re trying to force us onto the right path, and Oscar almost did what they want.

  Emily frowns before shaking her head and pushing her s to the back of her mind.

  “If you’re not ing, I’ll just have to attack first,” she mutters, before exging grins with Dante as they both move towards the grogler filled path.

  Flying lightning forms, ing around Emily’s arm to form a silver sleeve of coiled metal. The moment her foot nds irao the path, the groglers burst into motion, rushing out of the shadows to attack her. A flurry of burnials flies past, bursting against the front runners of the group.

  Emily spins up flying lightning before whipping the dart forward through the chest of the grogler. She pulls the wire back quickly, spinning with the momentum of the metal projectile and sending it ba a sweeping arc. The wire s around one of their attackers, sshing several others as it tightens around the soft grey flesh, stunning them all with arcs of lightning.

  With a quick tug and a drop of extra mana, the wire rips the grogler to shreds, slig through flesh and boh ease. As the dart flies back towards her, a grets close and swipes a disproportionately long arm at her. She raises her right arm to block, catg the monster’s hand with the coiled wire of flying lighting. A spark of lightning stuns the creature, and Emily extends the her left hand, sshing its throat quickly.

  She steps to the side to dodge another monster’s swipe, direg the returnial dart into the unsuspeg creature’s back. She spins again to start the momentum of her on, delivering a heavy spinning kick to anrogler’s head as she does, splitting open its skull.

  All distras fall away as Emily performs an acrobatiagid metal, blitzing through groglers in a maelstrom of violence. With the help of Dante’s fmes, they quickly clear the tunnel. Emily wipes some dirty brown blood from her eyes as she turns back to che the group.

  C the cave behind them is a short wall of wind and water, with a rge horde lers pressed up against the other side. Spells fly through the barrier every few seds, slowly redug the enemy numbers. Emily turtention to the middle path, looking past Ivor holding up a bridge of stone, signs of exhaustion evident on his face. She sees just over twenty groglers struggling to move forward through soft, mud-like rock, and Enzo standiween them and the bridge, his hands pressed to the floor, surrounded by a glowing brown magic circle as sweat drips from his brow.

  Seeing the grouped up groglers uo move, an idea occurs to Emily.

  “Enzo, hold them for a few more seds and I’ll deal with them. Dante go help out the back.”

  “Got it!” Dante replies with glee, sprinting towards the group while starting another t.

  “Please be quick,” Enzo grunts through gritted teeth.

  Emily runs past Ivor and over the bridge, spinning up flying lightning while p ira mana and fog on sharpening the wire. She releases the full coil around her arm, passing Enzo to take position in front of the gathered monsters.

  “Duck!” she calls while spinning.

  Flying lightniends, fshing in an arc of crag silver. It sails over Enzo’s head, and sms into the groglers. In a single, swift motion, the wire tinues past without resistance. As Emily slows her rotation, she looks at the aftermath of her attack, seeing twenty groglers split in half and bleeding out on the floor.

  With a manic grin, she quickly whips the dart between the few remaining monsters before turning back to look at Enzo. His eyes are wide in shock, but as Emily runs past him he quickly shakes off his stupor and moves with her to join the rest of the group. Ivor dismisses the bridge the moment they cross and runs to join the fight too.

  Emily dismisses flying lightning as she approaches the wall of magic. She starts casting bolt, while lining up a shot, she releases the spell and watches the beam of psma tear through ten more monsters.

  It’s more mana effit to use bolt repeatedly. That little trick with flying lightning e almost five hundred mana. Totally worth it though.

  Her grin remains as she sends another bolt through the monsters. They’re too stupid to realise lining up is a bad idea, and after a few more spells, they are wiped out.

  The barrier mages drop the wall, and every batant other than Emily pants in exhaustion.

  “Right,” Oscar says after regaining his breath. “Let’s pause here for a bit tain our mana before we move on. , Callum, you two harvest any usable eyes please.”

  The two brothers start moving through the corpses while everyone else finds a spot to sit down aate in, their recovery aided by the dense mana surrounding them. Emily sits down on a rock at the edge of the cave, sending out eartheion to check for any roglers nearby, still feeling unfortably on edge.

  I thought the groglers following us was what was b me, but they’re all dead and I still feel something’s wrong.

  “I’m starting to think you’re the scariest monster in here,” Enzo says as he walks over, distrag Emily from the empty tunnels around them.

  “How’d you realise?!” Emily asks in mock surprise befiggling as Enzo rolls his eyes and sits down.

  “I’m serious though. You’ve been usiion spells all day, then you used a jured on to fight. I know jured objects doly drain a lot of mana normally, but there’s no way you weren’t dumpira into it to be able to sliany groglers in half in one go. You then threw out plenty more spells after, and now you’re running more dete spells without a single sign of exhaustion! How do you have so much mana?” Enzo rants, a mix of curiosity and fusion bleeding into his tone.

  “Ah.” Emily is taken aback by his questioning, unsure how to answer.

  She pauses to sider.

  I tell him anything? It doesn’t seem like he’ll buy the effit spell excuse. Well, there’s no ce he’ll tell the Mandrago family: he’s too close to Oscar and Oscar showed obvious disdain for them. Also, I like him. I don’t think I’m likely to o fight him any time soon and he’s already suspicious, so I may as well tell him a little.

  Emily lets out a sigh befng around and making sure no one’s within earshot.

  “It’s down to a few things, but the main one I just show you. Focus on the mana around me right now.”

  Enzo obediently shuts his eyes and focuses on the mana around Emily who sits, with Teancer’s Breath active on her sed core, waiting for him to notice the oddity in the surrounding mana flow. After a few seds, he opens his eyes in surprise.

  “You’re drawing in mana without meditating?” he asks incredulously.

  “Yeah. My meditation teique is unique, I’m able to keep part of it active while moving around as long as I split some of my focus for it.”

  “I see.” He nods thoughtfully. “So, you just have to make sure you’re only casting one spell at a time while you do it.”

  It’s Emily’s turn to be surprised as she listens to him muttering to himself.

  “Wait, you know about my double casting?”

  “You doly try to hide it,” Enzo says, surprised at Emily’s surprise. “We were all watg when you fought that monster, and you were definitely casting bolt while using another spell to coat your ons in lightning. It’s pretty obvious that you double cast.”

  Of course! They don’t know about maa so it will look like another spell to them. Whoops! I never even sidered that.

  “Ah, yeah. I guess I havely been hiding it on this expedition.”

  “Anyway, thanks for answering my question,” he says as he stands to go aate.

  Emily waves him goodbye aurns to her surveilnce of the surrounding tunnels. They are all empty, all of the nearby groglers seeming to have died in the priht. She spends the rest of the break sitting at the edge of the group, periodically sing for any approag enemies just in case.

  Soon, everyone finishes gathering mana and they get bato formation.

  “Which path are we taking?” Dante asks before they set off.

  “I say we find out where they were trying to lead us,” Emily suggests fidently, her haing on The Clock’s pouch at her hip.

  There’s no way I’m leaving without w out what was trolling them. I wonder if it’s reted to the curse.

  Frowns spread through the group, but as Emily opens her mouth to persuade them they disappear.

  “Sure, for the pursuit of knowledge, right?” Oscar says with a smile.

  “Yeah, for the pursuit of knowledge.”

  Emily turns around and leads the group forward.

  Well that was weird. They ged their minds too fast and too easily. Is something affeg their minds? Maybe that’s the curse too.

  They cross the water, this time swimming to avoid draining all of Ivor’s mana. They then tinue downstream oher side. The path remains the same as the other until, an hour in, they step into an unnerving cave, which halts them in their steps.

  Emily looks from the rge, open ke of water in the tre of the cavernous space to the scattered magic crystals to the piled up bodies, and the blood smeared walls surrounding them.

  “Holy shit!”