Nathan and Keith looked over as they saw the swelling of magic in the direction Ichtvar was returning from. Before Nathan could contact his familiar, they both saw the phoenix, even from forty yards away. It had transformed into a bird of pure fire and magic with a thirty-foot wingspan, its light radiating out with an otherworldly brilliance, illuminating the walkways for more than a hundred yards.

The teens shielded their eyes and looked away as they heard something whinnying in pain, then the clomp of hooves, before the sound of a raging inferno filled their ears and dozens of wails were filled the air, a wave of fear washing over them. Ichtvar let out a war call, and the teens heard something impacting something else, before another roar of flames filled the air.

For several minutes, the phoenix and the horse-sounding creature fought, before the light faded. Keith's familiar dropped the boar's tusks as it shot off in the direction of the phoenix as the teens stared, left with just Nathan's lantern for light.

"What… was that?" Keith asked.

"I don't know," Nathan answered. "I didn't receive any Points, so it's not dead, whatever it is. Ichtvar seems… unconscious."

The link to his familiar had the same feel to it that it did whenever the phoenix slept, and Nathan's pokes didn't wake it. Concern for his familiar filled him, and he watched as the elemental returned, carrying the unconscious phoenix, which it gently set on Nathan's lap.

"That was a lot more magical power," Keith told Nathan. "That I thought your phoenix had. It was… terrifying."

"Splashy," Nathan looked at the heavenly storm elemental as he turned his tie to the side and unbuttoned his shirt. "Do you know what happened?"

The elemental thought for several moments, then formed a hand out of its water, wind, and light, giving a thumbs-up.

"Did Ichtvar intend to chase off the creature?" He asked as he pressed the phoenix to his chest, pulling the creature into himself.

With the phoenix unconscious for the pull, its red and gold pattern remained visible.

The elemental shifted its fist to a neutral state, then back to a thumbs-up.

"Did Ichtvar possess the ability to kill it?" Nathan asked as hie eyes began to droop against his will.

Thumbs-down.

"If you and Ichtvar combined power," he asked as he exposed his right side, where a white swirl was branded onto his skin. "Would you have been able to kill it?"

The hand returned to a fist, then back to a thumbs-down.

"Something powerful enough that a phoenix and a heavenly storm elemental couldn't take it on," Nathan muttered as Keith frowned at the mark on his side, which faded away. "What the hell was it?"

"Was that a wind elemental?" Keith asked.

"Yes," Nathan covered his mouth as he yawned. "I had Ichtvar locate him a few days ago. With Ichtvar being weak by phoenix standards, he requires approximately five-sixths of my magical power to contract. A simple, single-element elemental requires around a fifth of that, which means he takes up most of the rest of my remaining magical power for contracts. That means I have what is, essentially, a normal magician's allocation left. At least, according to Ichtvar."

"Why did you have Ichtvar give you a wind elemental?" Keith asked as he attempted to locate the creature without his magic sight.

Elementals embodied their element, were made solely of it. Wind elementals were almost impossible to see unless one was able to locate the disturbances in the wind and air where it went a different direction, flowed a different way. Keith couldn't fathom a reason why Nathan would want one.

"According to Ichtvar," Nathan answered. "Even though demigods are born like normal people, with their magic unawakened, their own children, should they manage to parent one, will be born awakened. I wanted something that could protect my son without being too obvious, for the rare occasions we'll be separated."

"And a wind elemental was your choice," Keith said.

"Yes," Nathan answered. "Nearly invisible unless there's something in the air, and it would take using magic sight to spot it, if you're able."

"I've seen your side several times," Keith said. "Swimming, the last set of runs in the game-"

"I released him almost immediately in the game," Nathan explained. "And I've been keeping him out. He's been, ah, assisting Samantha in her pregnancy."

"In what way?" Keith asked.

"She's not as balanced as she thinks she is," Nathan stated. "Has Splashy said what caused Ichtvar to burn up his magic like that?"

"No," Keith frowned. "He said it's gone for now, but he'll alert us if it draws near again."

"Why didn't he let us know it was here before?" Nathan asked.

"He said it was just watching," Keith answered. "And showed no hostile intent. Whatever it was, I wasn't able to see it, even with magic sight."

"Something that can conceal itself from that?" Nathan asked. "If Ichtvar had to use that much magical power, it had magic, too."

"Maybe," Keith answered. "Until he wakes, we won't know."

Neither of them commented that finding out was also dependent on if the phoenix deigned to inform them of what the creature was. They both knew it was hiding information from them, especially information regarding phoenixes that Master Torzin either didn't know or didn't want to share.

They resumed eating and resting, Nathan watching as Keith inspected the enchantment on the gun, before they discussed for a few minutes. Nathan felt tired, and suspected it had to do with Ichtvar's condition as the exhaustion had begun almost immediately after pulling the phoenix into him, so he asked Keith to take watch as he laid down, using his backpack as a pillow.

Keith could tell the moment Nathan fell asleep – there was a subtle shift in the warrior's magic, which his familiar had mentioned awhile back. If he didn't know about it, he wouldn't have thought anything of it or made a connection between the two things.

The enchanter inspected the gun a little more. Were they in the Survival Challenge, they'd probably only be a few days away from a prototype. Since they were in a Dungeon, they weren't likely to manage in succeeding until they left and entered the Survival Challenge to research more.

Progress was being made, though. They'd already figured out how to connect the magazines' enchantments to the gun's, the only stage left was creating the actual bullets themselves. Unfortunately, figuring out how to use enchantments to generate magical constructs meant they might need to adjust their connective runes.

Preliminary tests allowed them to create the bullets, the problem was keeping them sustained after formation. They couldn't even test to see if a gun worked until after they solved that problem, as well as its stabilization on firing. Both of them knew the bullet would explode with the current firing method and creation.

Nathan's trick with the Lego cannons would work if the bullets were normal objects rather than crafted of pure magic. One solution they would look into once they found a way to stabilize the bullets would be to modify that enchantment to work on magical constructs.

Keith looked at Nathan, who'd fallen asleep with his shirt still unbuttoned, the marks for Ichtvar still visible on his chest. Nathan expressed displeasure at being forged for a reason, but the enchanter felt that Nathan had other feelings towards it as well. Towards the Well of Souls.

As for himself, he was still attempting to figure out how he felt about it. It made him a prodigy, able to understand things on an advanced level with ease. Enchantments came to him easily, and the only part of that which bothered him was Nathan's clear affinity for it being stronger.

Master Torzin had said that Keith was designed to be a magician with an affinity for enchantments, but there was no implication that Keith was designed solely to be an enchanter. Nathan, on the other hand, was designed to be a warrior and an enchanter.

Pushing those thoughts down, Keith looked at Ichtvar's brand. The phoenix burned up an amount of magic Keith had never seen before, and his magical sight was still spotty from the event. Doing that could have killed the phoenix, and death was something it expressed no desire to experience anytime soon.

That worried the enchanter, whose gaze turned to the darkness. He didn't want to pull out his scrying orb to find out what it was because they had a limited number of storage cards, and the ones with multiple uses were limited in number. Working on improving them was one of their goals for the Survival Challenges, though for after they finished with Nathan's scrying orb.

Two hours passed as Keith worked on the gun and kept an eye and ear open to the darkness, his violet eyes glowing briefly as he became aware of danger. Nathan still slept, exhausted as his magic drained to restore his familiar's power and health.

Standing, Keith turned to the direction he sensed the threat, his psychic sight alerting him that it was a single creature. Based his magic sight, he knew it wasn't channeling any power at the time, so it was either a boar or something they hadn't encountered yet.

The moment he heard snuffling and slight clopping on the stone ground, Keith summoned several air slices and shot them in the direction he sensed the creature. It was another boar, and four damage notifications let him know that all but one struck.

"Protect Nathan," Keith ordered his familiar. "I'll handle the monster."

The boar charged forward, straight at Keith, and the magician leaped straight into the air, utilizing the Spatial Mobility that helped make Nathan so dangerous. From above, he fired several more air slices into the path of the boar, timing it so that each struck the beast.

As Keith landed, he generated a thin whip of swift-moving wind, the current running from his hand down to the tip of the whip and back, creating an almost chainsaw-like effect. Without hesitation, he flicked the whip, which extended in length.

This boar was slower than the one which enhanced itself with magic, but it would still need space to stop the charge. The slower speed and space needed to stop charging and turn around allowed Keith enough time to grab one of its hind legs with the whip, causing the beast to squeal as the magician pulled on the whip, shortening the length.

Most who discovered such a trick believed it required raw strength to work, but Keith knew better. It was a spell, much like force magic. Instead of pushing, the spell pulled instead. Anchored to a spot, the beast needed to be stronger than the force of the spell rather than the physical might of the caster.

Repeated Health notifications informed Keith that the whip's slicing effect worked as well, even if the damage was minor while the boar was dragged towards him as it did its best to pull away. The strength of the boar was enough to resist some of the pull, but the magician managed to bring it back into the area illuminated by his familiar and the lantern.

The moment the boar was within his visual range again, Keith shot several air slices at it, moving immediately to an air hammer he formed above the beast, which he dropped just as the slices made contact. Based on the red gauge, his attacks had dropped the beast down to two-thirds of its Health.

If he didn't do something strong, and soon, the boar would potentially break out of Keith's whip. The magician rarely used the spell as it risked damage to allies who didn't notice the rapid wind, which meant it took a lot of effort for him to sustain. Using the hammer had pushed his limits.

But Keith wasn't just a magician. He'd already branched into a new spell by modifying the slice spell into a light-based one. Mastering spells took him less time than normal, and learning them was just as much easier for him than for others.

Focusing with what he had left as he sent several more air slices at the boar, Keith reflected on his familiar's tingles as it passed into him, the powerful shocks he felt if he touched the lightning hidden by the elemental's holy light. On the raw power of one of nature's most powerful elementals.

Channeling that feeling and visualization, Keith felt an immense amount of mana drain as lightning charged through his whip, jolting him slightly through his contact with it in his palm.

The flash passed quickly, striking the boar's leg with enough force to blast it off, completely piercing through its remaining Health.

Screeching, the boar began to scramble away on its three remaining legs, but Keith held his hands up, willing a bolt of lightning to blast out from the space between them and connect with the boar's body, even more of his mana draining as he did.

The bolt struck the boar in the side with all the force and power of someone with half the magical power of a freshly-awakened demigod. Without a sound, the boar fell to the ground, the scent of burnt flesh filling the air.

+1 Level

Keith collapsed to the ground, exhausted. There was a reason nature's most powerful elements were rarely used by any magician, and that was one of them. Controlling them wasn't an easy thing, and without decades of training, only a prodigy such as Keith could manage to use them.

"Perhaps being forged by the Well of Souls wasn't such a bad thing, after all," he murmured as he stood to see what meat he could salvage from the boar. "There are two more tusks for you."

He spared his familiar a glance, which had formed a dome of water, wind, and light over Nathan, using the tusks of the first boar as horns.

"You're ridiculous."