The three snails slumped together, badly winded and thoroughly defeated. Ooze dripped from their spine-filled mouths. Nic hunkered down beside them, cautious but not too worried about them launching a second wave of attacks.

They knew they’d been beat.

“So…” He smiled. With his long, long teeth, it came off as half-threatening. “You’ve been surviving pretty well on your own. I’d guess you found a node nearby, and traded ownership so all three of you could evolve, right?”

“But…”

“Your equipment isn’t holding up. Two of you came at me with clubs. And you’re not going to nab anything better, not lurking in the swamp ambushing whatever comes by…”

“You played a good game, but your strategy has limits.”

The leader of the brothers made a gurgling, sloppy sound. Inkspur leapt onto Nic’s shoulders. “The FEEBLE-MINDED CREATURE wants to know what you’re proposing…”

“Glad you asked. I want you to join my Settlement. You’re better warriors than most, and what you need most is people backing you up. People who can make you weapons. People who can watch your back.”

“Anyway…” Nic stood up. “I’m not going to force you. You don’t really have anything worth taking, so I’ll let you go. But if you think it’s a good deal…”

Nic pointed. “Winterhome is that way.”

In truth, ripping out their shards would be a pretty good profit. Especially since he’d managed to catch them alive and had some chance of gaining Primaries. But the profit of potentially having three E-Class warriors join Winterhome? That was far greater.

If he was honest, it was gambling a sure profit against an unknown one, but it was a good bet.

In their situation, his offer had to be tempting.

One by one, the brothers scrambled to their feet and bowed their heads to him, thanking Nic for his mercy. Then they ran into the woods, giving him no chance to rethink it.

The last of them paused for a moment. It said something, gurgling, before rushing to follow the others.

“What was that?” Nic asked Inkspur.

“It said to be careful. As if you need its WEAK-HEARTED WARNINGS, hah.” Inkspur rustled his wings. “It said there was a ‘hidden poison’ that forced them from their home.”

Hidden poison…

It had to be related to the dungeon, didn’t it?

To whatever had killed the elf.

To the Aleph.

Nic shook his head. It seemed things were worse than he realized. “Sofia? What is he talking about?”

“I… I don’t know, Nic. I only know that not all our crows have been coming back.” She sounded worryingly uncertain. “If there was a poison I’d think none of our messengers would return.”

“Hold on. I think I have someone we can ask…”

Pulling out the gourd-bottle he’d shoved the Heretical ghost into, Nic gave it a vengeful rattle. “Can you hear me in there?”

“Yes.” Came the hissing reply. “You’ve made your point, you’ve won…”

“Glad to hear it.” Nic replied. “I need to know why people would think there’s a ‘hidden poison’ in the air, and what killed the messenger.”

“And will I be released, when I tell you?” The ghost countered.

“How about this.” Nic gave the bottle another shake. “I don’t trust you. I don’t know if I’ll ever trust you. But if you answer my questions, I’ll try to find you a way to prove yourself.”

“Fine…” The Heretical might not have been happy, but it knew what the alternative was. “The poison you speak of is the Aleph’s energy. It radiates and permeates throughout the desert, killing almost all of what it touches. The survivors are… changed…”

“Changed?”

“Half-glass, half-flesh. An extra mouth that speaks with its own will…” The Heretic chuckled. “All sorts of beautiful and terrible things. The Aleph shapes flesh like a child; all creativity and no concept of morality.”

“Wonderful sounds like a party.” Nic shook his head. His decision not to let the Heretic go felt more and more like the right call. There was something in that voice that was cold and amused by the suffering it had seen. “One more thing. You said that ‘she’ let you go. Who is ‘she’?”

“I cannot say.”

“Oh yeah?” Nic lifted the gourd, preparing to crush the bottle and the soul within. “If you think that not talking is an option here, think again.”

“No no! Listen. She bound me with an oath before I left. I cannot speak of her.” The ghost’s voice was desperation itself. After so long clinging to life, all for the hope of freedom…

The thought of dying for nothing was a terrible thing.

“Oh yeah? Then what can you say?”

“Only that none escape the desert without her permission. She allowed the messenger to leave, seeking you. Perhaps she will show favor to you as well… But I cannot say for sure…”

Nic frowned. Something hostile really had taken root in the desert Dungeon. Not just the energies of the Aleph, seeping out into the greater world and poisoning all living things, but some manner of despot trying to take control over the Dungeon proper.

“Alright, you go back in the bag now.”

“Wait-”

But he’d already stuffed the complaining Heretic down into the depths of his mystic bag.

There was one more matter before he left...

"Redjaw. Sunfire. Come out." One by one his companions joined him alongside Inskpur. "I'm sorry, but you can't come with me where I'm going. Head back to Winterhome, and train while you wait."

In truth, his beasts were falling behind. Nic needed a way to increase their strength if he wanted them to accompany him for much longer.

---

It was as bad as the snails had suggested.

The closer he got to the Dungeon, the more things rotted and died. There were trees that were like hollow skeletons, their bark turned to ash and the insides to pulp. Frogs and fish floated dead in the water, with masses of tiny bodies surrounding them where flies and other scavenging insects had come to eat the dead flesh, only to succumb to the same poison.

Animals seemed sickly and weak.

And every now and then, Nic would catch sight of something truly strange.

A frog made of stone, numerous small, stunted heads growing from its flesh and snapping out at the air with their sticky tongues…

A beast growing antlers from its skin in long, piercing needles of bone, cutting through hide and fur as they burst out from below.

They were warped and changing. Swamp-ghouls moved among the reeds, watching him with hollow eyes as they chewed the bones of the dead.

Nic could feel it in the air. The energy of the Aleph was here, pressing down on his skin, filling up the runes that marked him from head to toe.

It was the same poisonous aura that Nic had learned to restrain, a deadly and invisible fire in the air.

It grew and grew until he reached the source.

The opening to the dungeon was a portal anchored in the core of a broad oak tree. When Nic first visited, orange-gold leaves covered the branches and flowering vines grew across the trunk.

Now, all that was gone. The tree was withered and huge, lumpy tumors of knotted wood bulged from its surface. The portal itself seemed warped- the light emerging from the doorway of rippling liquid had a dark and eerie nature.

At the gateway, Nic hesitated. His body was attuned to this energy, able to absorb it freely, but…

Humans were adapted to drink water. They could still drown.

He needed protection.

Settling down, he drew ingredients from his bag.

He took out the silk of the demon spider he’d killed, back when he met Norman and Kline. It was a strong, durable material, and he’d used it for a bowstring before- now he wanted the other property.

It’s capacity to hold demonic energies.

While it wasn’t one-for-one, the energy of the Aleph seemed close to Demonic Essence. Close enough that his body had confused the two, leading to the System’s warped description of his Demonic energy as a string of error messages.

He unbottled the last of his sovereign solution- an alchemical mixture meant for combining the properties of material. This time, he mixed together one of the immature city-beast teeth he’d received from Sula with the demonic silk. As the two turned into mist and melded together, a pale, almost moon-white fang was born.

Pricking his finger, Nic spilled a tiny amount of his blood into the alkahest at the bottom of the bottle. As it dissolved into red vapor he added it to the ghostly bone.

A single line of red threaded its way across the tooth.

A few moments of carving later and he’d drilled a hole into the tooth, making it into a talisman. The next step was adding runes, simple forms meant to turn the bone into a battery. Since one of the contributing materials was D-Class…

It could hold a lot.

But rather than focus on capacity, Nic turned his efforts to the part of the runes that drew in energy, expanding on them. His goal was for the tooth to drink in Demonic energies like a sponge, protecting the wearer…

He measured the time in how many pauses he had to take in order to wipe the sweat from his brow.

When Nic finally lifted his quill the tooth was covered in a web complex circular characters. He slipped it onto his neck, and felt his cultivation suddenly run dry, all the energy he’d been absorbing from the air sucked in by the tooth-amulet instead.

Talisman of the Wasteland’s Hunger (D-Class)

Glyph of The Reservoir

(0% Charged)

Fine Glyph of the Syphon

(120% Charged)

Fine Glyph of the Syphon

(117% Charged)

Glyph of the Syphon

(98% Charged)

This simple charm devours energy from the air around it in relentless fashion. It has a particular attunement to Demonic energies, swallowing it up with great hunger. Useful for those who wish to escape the taint of the Red Wastes.

Since the material wasn’t made directly from any one creature, much less one that had died recently enough to leave a soul fragment behind, there was no living spirit to the talisman. It was a dead, thoughtless tool.

But it would be enough to safeguard Nic for a trip into the desert.

He smiled as he held the tooth-amulet up to the fading sun, letting the light spill through the grooves and channels he’d carved. It was a miracle, not because of its craftsmanship or any particular strength, but because he’d made it.

And he’d made it by taking simple, fundamental runes and completely changing their use, almost reversing them. Creating a protective tool out of what was meant to be a battery.

To be able to create a rune was the most basic level of skill.

To be able to create a rune every time, with grace, was a step above.

But to to be able to use the same rune for a dozen different purposes? That was mastery.

Lifting the amulet over his neck, Nic stepped into the portal.