The Institute of Magi had gone dark. Not a single maid or manservant left, no professors or underprofessors entered. The vast and solemn facade was blind, lightless. Only the guards remained. Empty suits of armor stood to either of side the grand doors, ready to come to life if the Institute should be threatened.

Trivelin whistled. He had no fucking clue how to get inside.

The damn rat hiding under his cloak bit him in the neck. Cursing, Trivelin stumbled forward, promising himself that if one of those fucking golems moved he was turning and running.

As he put his foot onto the first step, they moved. They lowered their halberds to point directly at his gut. Trivelin froze.

The rat leapt down from his shoulders and skittered across the ground towards them. There was a flash of silvery light, and the damn rodent was somehow inside the first guard’s helmet. There was a scrambling of claws against metal and the hollow armor suddenly keeled over. It crashed to the ground, falling apart as it did.

The rat scrambled free of the wreck with a gem held in her teeth. A flash, a brief struggle as the guard clumsily reached up to try and grab her within its own belly, and the second golem toppled over.

Apparently their creator hadn’t thought of what they’d do if they ran into a teleporting rat. Argent emerged with her cheeks bulging like a chipmunk, holding two golem cores in her mouth.

Trivelin let out a disbelieving laugh and hurried for the door, producing his favorite lockpick.

Adamant fought the tide of arms swarming over him. His fist flashed down, armored in threads of lightning that burst outwards in a blaze of flaring blue as his blow struck home. The entire swarm of limbs that was the Eyeblight convulsed in agony under the electrified punch.

Adamant lifted his fist again. Dozens of hands seized him, digging their clawed fingernails into the soft earth he was made from. Before he could strike again he was torn apart.

Only it wasn’t so easy to kill Adamant anymore. This Adamant had the Blessing of the Earthshaper, and even as his body of dirt and stone was pulled to pieces it swirled and reformed. A rebuilt Adamant clambered atop the jellyfish-flower of grasping limbs and drove his fist down into the cluster of eyes at its heart.

Above us, an illusionary tree loomed. At its edges it faded into half-translucent shadows but the core of it, the trunk ringed with runic characters and the blazing branches, were clear as day. All the Mana in the room swirled around the tree, pulsing with a steady rhythm like the beat of a vast heart.

Adamant fought on. His determination was as unyielding as stone and no amount of ripping his flesh away would stop him. With each hammering strike, lightning coursed through the Eyeblight’s body and made its countless limbs spasm. Its claws raked weakly against him as he drove punch after punch into its many eyes.

But he couldn’t kill it. He was too small, too weak, to inflict damage anywhere but the eyes- and the Eyeblight had too many of those to ever be blinded. As the skygrist shard in his fist burned low the abomination was less and less hindred by his relentless assault.

Until the Eyeblight gathered its strength and rallied, seizing Adamant with dozens of hands to throw him aside.

He was hurled across the lab, striking the wall and collapsing into a shapeless pile of dirt. He began to reform immediately but for a fatal moment there was nothing to stand in the Eyeblight’s way.

Nothing impeded it as it lunged for Olin. But as it touched the sea of golden runes swarming around the mage, its fingers began to blaze. Its hands burned like comets - they cut trails of blue and red flame as they stretched through the mage’s golden aura.

Even as its limbs were reduced to cinders it reached out with more, overwhelming the fiery characters of runic script and the protective wards beneath.

I had wanted to kill him myself. To devour his corpse before the Eyeblight could and bind it by contract not to eat me. But...

The Eyeblight seized Olin by the neck and shoulders and hauled him back as he screamed. His head was lifted towards the beast’s waiting mouth. Towards endless teeth. Hands crawled over every inch of his body until he couldn’t be seen beneath the clutching masses of fingers.

There was a scream that ended in a crunch…

And another.

And another.

And Olin Frampt was gone. The hands spread outwards like a gore-drenched flower unfolding. The laboratory was abandoned. Everyone still alive had fled.

I was next on the menu. I couldn’t even fight back. I tried to reach for the dying lightning that still leapt in occasional sparks from the last of the skygrist, I tried to shape into a weapon against the Eyeblight, but I felt myself restricted, bound by the Contract to submit to my fate.

Above us the tree was fading. The fires on its branches faded from roaring green flames to guttering orange sparks, like summer fading to autumn, and soon frost overtook barren branches as the fires went out entirely. It was more and more translucent, fading into nothingness…

It felt so familiar. Like a mother’s smile. Something I remembered from a time before memories.

I reached for the Mana that flowed from the tree and gathered it, forced it down into the brass bell. I was being hauled towards the Eyeblight’s mouth. Drool rained over me.

This was the last and the best I could do for Aurum. To hold the ritual for a few seconds in Olin’s stead. To hope it worked.

What I felt inside that tank was not a snake anymore. It was not anything I understood. The Mana that surrounded it was dense, complex with runes.

Adamant charged the Eyeblight holding a staff of gold. Sparks exploded from the makeshift lance as it pierced the abomination through its core. It let out a pitiful squeal-scream and struck the weapon aside, reaching out to crush the golem’s head into shapeless dirt.

The tree had withered down to a single green sprout, and that sprout was aging in reverse, drawing back down into a seed. A seed of purest crystalline luminescence. It dropped slowly, passing through the surface of the bell and settling within.

The door creaked open. Chymical fluids rushed out, filling the air with sour acrid smells.

It was too late. The Eyeblight swallowed me whole. I won’t speak of the unspeakable slime and horror of that moment.

But I heard the roar. The sheer, burning fury in that scream, a sound that wasn’t one animal but many all crying out from the same throat.

And I felt the world tilt as Aurum charged the Eyeblight.

From Adamant’s single eye I saw him. A macabre chimera made with too many parts. A serpentine mass of half-formed limbs, of wings without feathers, of bones and flesh without skin. A giant snake trailing the cast-off remnants of a dozen other creatures.

The claws of a praying mantis scythed into the Eyeblight’s flesh. The pincers of a scorpion tore and grabbed until, his serpentine bulk overpowering the burnt and battered abomination, Aurum threw it down. His new arms seized the mouth hidden behind all those limbs, his brilliant golden scales deflected its claws as they raked uselessly over his new form.

He pried the monster’s throat open and I saw light bloom above me.

Fire.

The whole of him heaved, and a blazing orange glow rushed up his throat as Aurum’s lower jaw split open into two segments. With a furious roar Aurum spat a brilliant, raging torrent of flame down the Eyeblight’s gullet. I was bathed in fire.

And when it faded…

When the Eyeblight was nothing but burnt scraps scattered across the floor…

Aurum lowered his golden head down to me, a tiny sparkle of green lying on the floor. He nuzzled against me, in pain, dying. Full of too many organs for one body. Full of pockets of hair and teeth.

I did my best to heal him. I seized the Mana flowing through the room, the fading characters of Olin’s spell, and channeled it all into him. I turned the half-formed and cancerous parts of him into mere flesh. I cut away wings that would never fly. Limbs that would never walk.

Flesh rained from his body, withering to nothing.

In the end I could be confident he would live, but I couldn’t make him beautiful again. The mantis-limbs and scorpion-claws remained. Two ridges of white feathers ran down his back. His jaw was bifurcated, his underbelly covered in tiny, crawling legs. He resembled nothing the gods had ever created.

And he knew it.

He nuzzled against me, wanting consolation. To know he was still wanted.

I reached out to his mind with all the warmth and comfort I could. My gratitude for him saving me. My memories of him curled around me, my guardian.

Trivelin came huffing around the corner, Argent and Izzis riding his shoulders. It was time to go. Aurum tried to awkwardly lift me, his claws scraping the floor. Trivelin stepped forward and carefully picked me up, cupping me in his hands. “Alright boss, let’s scarper before the authorities arrive. Good grief.” He looked around the ruined lab with disbelieving eyes and shook his head.

I could understand that notion.

Altogether we left. A strange crew of strange creatures. Only Adamant paused, turning back. A tiny speck of the Eyeblight was inching its way across the floor. A single eyeball, slithering its way about with its red roots. Adamant crushed it under his foot with a splat.

A drunk stirred from the gutter to see a parade of horrors come slithering and stomping towards him. An enormous serpent thing crawled forward on insect limbs, followed by a man of mud, with a fat-bellied old sailor in tattered clothes bringing up the rear. A rat and bat-faced gremlin clung to his shoulders.

The drunk inched back deeper into the gutter, frightened nearly to death as the serpent swung its head his way. Vast yellow eyes regarded him.

And then the horrors marched on.

The man crawled forward on all fours, shaking too badly to stand. He watched the monsters slither down a storm drain, the giant snake bending like its body was made of putty to slide down the tiny entrance.

Tomorrow, the city would be full of rumors. Sober eyes had seen the same. The Institute of Magi had been destroyed. Olin Frampt was missing.

But I was past caring about the world above.