"You do realize we probably won't survive this, right?" Grem whispered, swimming beside me.

"Less worrying, more teaching," I snapped, my eyes focused on his fingers, frozen mid gesture.

"It's not going to help. You don't have a high enough learning rate to learn this spell before we get down there," Grem said, the same thing he had said a dozen times.

I knew he was right, but I felt very vulnerable in the water, especially next to him and Libidi. The mere act of pretending to work on a plan somehow beat quietly swimming along as the weakest in the pack. I couldn't wait for us to reach the spot where Lark said we could rest for a short while. Thinking of the demon, I looked forward.

Lark was swimming ahead of us, straight down into the depths. His body wound through and down the narrow passages, some so tight he had to force through, squishing the clusters of demonic growths.

"Lark, how far till that spot you told us about?" I asked.

"A few hoursss."

Dammit, so much longer? I gnashed my teeth as I gazed at the jungly depths below. Dark, with only my dark vision to guide me, I felt like I was swimming ever deeper into hell. If we ever got back out of here, I was definitely steering clear of any big bodies of water for a while.

A long narrow strand of yellowish hair that grew on some of the purplish plants flung in my face, partially in my mouth, and I spat it out in disgust.

Scratch that. I'd make it my goal to never find anything deeper than I could stand after this.

I turned to Grem. "Keep going."

His gleaming green eyes narrowed, and he sighed wearily. "Do you know how much I'm normally paid for this? I haven't trained anybody that wasn't some prodigy or a king's child in decades!"

I forced a laugh and shrugged. "Then you're in luck because I'm neither!"

Grem tsked before repeating the first gesture of the spell that had transformed him into his hybridized form.

I tried to pay attention, but my fingers didn't even come close to copying his moves.

As we continued down, the plants changed, silvery lines appearing in them that became thicker and more the deeper we went. A thick stench began to permeate the air.

After a few hundred feet, I stared at the plants, highly curious. They almost resembled steel, green and shiny, and I felt a desire to try and use them to craft something. If only the thickest branches weren't a finger thin and no more than an arm's length and thus useless.

As the density of the plants became such that they seemed to clog the narrow corridors, I told Grem to stop, as I couldn't see his hands anymore. He seemed relieved, which I guess was fair. I pushed forward, glad Lark was plowing on ahead of us, bending the sharp plants out of his path.

What seemed like a day later, though it was probably closer to an hour, we exited the narrow snake-like caverns with a suddenness that left me jarring. Stunned, I looked around the room, glad to see a change from the dense, claustrophobically quiet corridors.

A jungle of steel and silvery-colored branches grew from cracks in the bottom, long red-stained leaves jotting from them haphazardly to form a hideout for a hidden biome of tiny beings. Like crustaceans, they walked on ten legs, their long whiplike claws slashing after any demon-fish that dared come close.

Lark swam down, and the multitude of demonic shapes blurred away, hiding in the jungle and inside cracks.

It's almost peaceful, I thought, instantly wanting to slap myself.

As if summoned by my errant thought, a large thing moved from the depths. I gaped at a crab the size of a truck that pushed itself from the jungle. Its shell gleamed like blue steel covered in tiny pocks, and long thin tendrils hung from its sides, tipped with what looked like blades. Where its eye-stalks should be was a single, massive eye, yellow with orange swirls like those of Lark. Unlike Lark, however, there was no intelligence in it, just an animalistic fear as the eye gazed at Lark.

"We ressst here. Create a body for Casssiron," Lark said as he eyed the kingsized demon crab hungrily. "Food hasss arrived."

"Right," I muttered, but Lark had already rushed down.

The battle lasted only half a minute, culminating with Lark wrapped around the Crab, drilling the tip of his tail into the eye of his hapless victim.

"Not really a fair battle," Grem muttered from next to me.

"Demons never fight fair," Libidi said coldly, the first thing she had said since they had found me.

I'd tried to ask her how she was and how she had found me, but all she had done was point at Grem and ignore me. I wasn't sure if she was angry or upset or had reverted to her quiet mode.

"Why did you come down to get me?" I asked as I swam closer.

She frowned as she turned to stare at the bottom. "As I waited there, and you didn't come back," she whispered, her frown deepening. "I began realizing I'd made a mistake. I had promised to take care of you, and I had failed."

"Bollocks," I whispered before I could stop myself. Libidi's eyes sparked with anger as she turned to me, and I quickly continued. "You said you said to stay behind because you couldn't risk failing your mission... which you still haven't explained to me."

The spark of anger died out again, and Libidi's blue eyes cooly gazed into mine, so long it was starting to make me feel highly uncomfortable. Still, I didn't look away. At least she was talking again, and I did want to know why she was here.

Libidi's eyes flashed to Grem so fast I almost missed it, and then they returned to mine.

Grem? What does he have to do with this? I thought. Or couldn't she speak because he was here? I frowned, and Libidi shrugged, then turned away, eyes closed as she drifted in the water.

Great, I thought. I tried to come up with a reason for her joining me against her own wishes, something related to Grem, but all I could think was that it had something to do with the Dracoserp in his mind.

"Do you want ssssome of itsss flesh?" Lark said, his loud voice carrying throughout the silent cave.

I almost said no, then held my tongue and sighed. As seemed normal since arriving here, my body was dangerously malnourished, and each time I'd planned to do something about it almost seemed like the universe conspired against me. The small strides I'd made back in Lark's initial compound had long since melted away, and a quick look showed I was back to one percent.

"Yes," I said with a sigh as I swam down.

Lark was ripping the slab of metal like chitin from the crab's back, and a cloud of dull silvery blood grew outward. When I reached it, my stomach suddenly growled loudly. It was something it hadn't done in a very long time, not since shortly after I'd found Rathica and become a Prime. Odd, now that I thought about it. Although I was almost constantly close to starvation, I never felt like that. Another perk of being a Prime?

"I guess you are hungry?" Grem said, gazing at me in confusion.

"Looks like it," I said as I felt my mouth water at the sight of the pearl-colored meat Lark effortlessly ripped from the shell.

"You do realize this is demon meat, right?" Grem muttered, which I ignored as I swam towards the shell and inspected it. It felt smooth and slightly cold to the touch, and as I knocked it, I realized it didn't just look like metal. It was metal. Probably some alien, unknown one, but as I tried to bend it and scratch it with my fingernails, I whistled. It was hard!

"Don't bother. It's way too hard to refine to be of any use," Grem said as he looked at the meat and his lips curled down in distaste. He kept away from the cloud of blood. "I'll go look around a bit," he said.

I nodded absently as my gaze was pulled to a leg-sized chunk of flesh-covered rib that Lark shoved my way. I grabbed it, feeling the grainy, slimy meat. A growing desire made me want to comp down there and then, but I held it at bay and swam towards a crevice in the rock. With some effort, I stuffed the meat inside and cast Controlled Conflagration. I hovered back, leaving the fire as far away as I could, watching as the pearlescent meat turned a dull white, then pink, and eventually red. A sweet, thick fragrance wafted towards me, and I heard a surprised hiss as Libidi swam up to me.

"Looks done to me," I said, my drool mixing with the water.

Libidi's eyes were wide as she looked at the meat, then at me. The unspoken plea was so strong I couldn't hold back a wide smile and a node. As soon as the green fire dissipated, I shot forward, ignoring the scalding water or the gleaming red flesh. I pulled it out, noticing it had actually expanded, becoming puffy. Unable to resist, I unceremoniously ripped a portion off and stuffed it in my mouth.

An explosion of flavor came, sweet, thick, like a mix between honey and poultry. When I finally swallowed the mush, it was as if my stomach remembered that it was empty and had been ignored long enough. A ravenous appetite took hold of me. I barely noticed that Libidi joined me, gorging herself, or that at some point, Lark brought more raw meat.

When I finally felt filled, I was hovering in the water in the middle of slivers of flesh, Libidi nearby, her eyes closed as she slowly chewed the last of the meat. Her stomach was so bloated that she looked ready to give birth, and as I looked down, I realized I wasn't in a much better state. Touching the taut skin across my belly, I realized how much my stomach and ribs hurt, but at the same time, I felt euphoria as my intestines seemed to melt the meat, adding energy to me in a steady flow.

"Man… I feel stuffed," I muttered, my voice dull and hollow.

"Yeah…" came a worried voice, and it took me a few seconds to locate Grem. He was hiding below a large silvery leaf, staring at me in distaste.

"Are you sure you're not a demon?" he asked.

"One hundred percent," I said, noticing how my stomach was visibly deflating, almost like a leaky balloon. Lark lay in the hollowed-out crab shell, humming contently.

I waited until I could move without feeling like a ripe fruit ready to pop, noticing that although Libidi's stomach was also shrinking, if not nearly at the same speed as mine.

"You must have been at below ten percent," Grem said.

"One," I answered mechanically as I swam towards the thickest of the branches growing out of a crack the size of my body.

Grem gasped, and I looked over.

"How can you even move if you are below five?" he asked. "No... wait, why does your face have any flesh left? Are you sure... no never mind, of course you are," Grem rumbled, a finger on his chin as he gazed off in the distance.

"So, why is this so different from the rest," I asked as I knocked against the branch.

The sound and feel of the material were way closer to metal than to wood, though it wasn't as good as close as the crab shell.

"Itsss because of the Despotin blood that seeps up," Lark said. "It mutates everything, changesss it."

A demon telling me plants are getting mutated by some silvery blood? Now I've heard everything, I thought.

I scratched the branch with my nail and barely managed to make a mark on it. Now I just needed one more thing. I looked up, noticing that Libidi was still hovering in the water with a thin smile and closed eyes.

"Libidi, I need to borrow your knife."

--

"I wonder why he made it smaller?"

"Probably to fit through the caverns."

"I liked the wings…"

I ignored Grem and Libidi's chatting as I finished up the final details on Casiron's new body. It had a similar outline as the previous one but without the wings. Instead, it had fins on the longer legs and a wide, tapered tail. As I removed a little bit of unevenness from the jawline, I waved away the metallic curls drifting into my vision. Unlike the shell Lark used as a bed, this was still wood. It only looked and felt a bit like metal, but it had been as easy to handle as any other metal after I'd cast Soften Wood.

That should be fine, I thought as I swam back a bit.

I hesitated. Should I go into my Mindscape first? That meant staying here, barely conscious. Although I trusted Libidi, I didn't think she could guard me if the others turned on her. Not that I could defend myself against those two either, I knew, ignoring that in favor of putting both hands on the dark silvery gray statue.

> Tell Casiron I've got a new body for him.

I messaged Par, almost getting an instant response.

> Finally! Do you know how annoying this lizard brain has been?

Par's message pinged at the same time the carving moved. I backed up, watching and waiting as the now-familiar process of Casiron's spirit moving into the statue remolded it to fit his needs.

When it finished, the material had turned a dull, coppery green, and scales gleamed across it. It had elongated somewhat and was, by my estimate, as long as Lark was.

"Thank you for the body, Est. I'd almost thought you forgot about me." Casiron's deep voice sounded hollower than before.

"Glad you are back," I said. "We were a bit busy here." His mere presence did wonders for my sense of self-preservation.

"Where did you find them," Casiron asked as he slowly swam beside me, his body moving like molten metal while his eyes gleamed at Grem.

"It's the other way around," Grem said as he swam forward. "I came to find him… or well, you really."

What? I thought as I swirled to him.

"Why?" Casiron asked as confusion and worry wafted from him.

"Well, Thiwick won't stop whining, and- No! You are winning, and no, I won't let you out!" Grem snapped before turning to Casiron. "Apparently, she says there is something down here that is drawing her, something she says could supply her with a body and a means out of mine."

Even though he looked like a human reptile hybrid, I could still see the desire to be rid of Thiwick on Grem's face.

"She is a fool," Casiron snapped. "There is no way a Despotin body can give her anything useful. Even if she somehow managed to create a new body, none of the Deities of this planet would let her live for longer than a day."

I frowned. What was wrong with the Despotin for the Deities to hate them so?

Grem was quiet as he frowned, shook his head, and seemed to communicate with something we couldn't see. Then his eyes widened, and he nodded. "Thiwick says she isn't here for the Despotin body."

"What then?" Casiron asked.

"She says there is a Dracoserp roost," Grem said slowly, carefully.

"Impossible!"

Casiron exploded forward, and Grem rushed back, fear on his face.

"Not a single roost, not even a single egg survived the butchery inflicted upon us!" Casiron roared, following Grem until he thudded with his back in the wall, panic on his face.

"She says it's there, and she can feel them! Seven eggs remain, five female and two male," he jabbered.

Casiron hovered before him; his body coiled so tense I thought he would spring, while an emotional storm exploded through our connection. His mouth opened and closed a few times, and I could feel him struggle with himself.

"How come nobody found it before?" I asked, swimming forward.

Calm down! I send Casiron. Let's find out if either of those two is lying.

My words seemed to be lost in a storm, as were my messages, but at least Casiron didn't move.

"Thiwick says that whatever was blocking the presence of the Despotin body also hid them from view," Grem said as he slowly swam towards me, a wide-eyed stare never leaving Casiron.

"That means they were there for what? Hundreds? Thousands of years?" I asked, wondering if I should even be surprised that something living lasted that long. Deities did, but were they technically living?

"They are still alive and don't ask me how. Thiwick doesn't know either," Grem said as he hung beside me, then swam slightly behind me.

"The Despotin blood," Casiron said, and with his words, he locked his emotions away behind a barrier thicker than any he had created before. His body slowly turned, and he took one look at Grem before looking at me.

"We need to find those eggs," he said.

That was a fast one-eighty, I thought as I tried to sense what was going on with him. It was like staring at a sheet of ice with dull shadowy figures swirling behind it. Not very useful at all.

"You believe them?" I asked, not bothered that Grem might be insulted by my question.

"No, not entirely, but if there is any chance, no matter how remote?" Casiron said as he glared at Grem. "If I can help my people to be revived, I will do it."

His words didn't suprise me in the least, and I took a quick look around, not sure what to say. Libidi was quietly observing everything, not to far, and behind her was Lark hovering near the shell, looking at Casiron with eyes like orange tornadoes. He didn't seem to notice anything else, as his mouth hung partially open, revealing long curved teeth.

Lark got a second essence, I message to Casiron. And he is looking at you like he wants to eat you.

A ripple ran through the emotion-dampening barrier, and I almost felt sorry for the ancient Dracoserp mind. I was pretty sure most humans would have snapped from all the shell-shocking things that had happened to it.

Lark's gaze shifted, and I sensed Casiron's body swim through the water, passing me and heading straight towards Lark.

"How much do you know?" Casiron rumbled as he positioned himself between Lark and me.

"Bitsss, parts… like faded memoriesss, and dreams," Lark hissed, his eyes never leaving Casiron. "I am like you."

"You are nothing like me," Casiron snapped, and I sensed the anger bubbling behind the barrier. "You are a remnant of an offshoot of my people. Mutants that were trying desperately to cling to existence at the cost of everything else."

Lark blinked, his gaze slowly turning normal as he smiled evilly. "Yesss, like you," he said. "You are no more pure and alive than I am."

Casiron growled. "I am a shadow of my people, yes. But you? You are a mockery!"

Why the hell are you antagonizing him, I snapped at Casiron.

Lark moved forward, a low growl in his throat, similar to that of Casiron, who didn't respond to me.

"Enough," I snapped, unable to hold back my growing anger. "We are not too far from where a Primal Demon and some crazy Deity are fighting over some ancient body! This is not the place to fight!"

Casiron was the first to calm down, the tenseness leaving him as he turned to me. "You are right. It is just difficult to get to grips with all this. We need to go and get the eggs."

It was a test, he messaged me. To see if he could keep his base instincts under control.

I gazed at the message and knew it wasn't the whole truth. I could still feel the insane rage bubbling below the surface.

"I will help you with the eggs if I can, but we also need to go down to help Rathica. She was vague at best, but apparently, there is something a mortal like me can do," I said.

"Then I think we might need to prepare a plan," Grem said as he swam beside me. "Can you create another army?"

I moaned, looking at the mass of metallic plants. "I guess I don't have another choice."

"Okay, well, can I advise you to create bodies similar to Casiron's?" he said.

I shook my head. "That will take way too long. If I just go for speed, I can create a dozen or so Armedsharks in a few hours. We don't have much longer."

"While I don't want to dismiss the use of those," Grem said as he shook his head. "If you create more bodies for Casiron, he can return to the battle if this body gets destroyed."

I gazed at him in stunned silence as I realized the truth of his words. Why hadn't I thought of that? Even if I didn't make a dozen, even one or two would give Casiron a backup, and he was way more powerful than a dozen Armedsharks. I was about to say he was right when Grem continued.

"And… while I will probably never trick anyone in believing I'm a woodcarver, I can be of use. If you weaken the wood, I can create a rough outline of what you need. Libidi too. That way, you can focus on the details?"

A grin began forming around my lips as I realized how right he was. I'd been so bogged down in doing everything myself that I'd forget about something as simple as this. Teamwork.

"Alright," I said as I looked around. "I'll create some more carving knives first, and then we can get to work."

If I could create sentient Vengeful Spirits, they could make me more bodies, I thought as my creativity seemed to wake up from hibernation. Suddenly I had the incredible urge to experiment.

--

Rathica hovered beside Ulderion, a few feet from the other Deities, barely believing what she saw. They were near the gorge that led deep below the Demon Blooded sea, all staring down with their Divine vision. A body, the size of a mountain, was outlined before her, partially fused in the seabed. The crevice below them led to a jagged hole in its chest, while dozens of minor fractures gave way to other parts of its body. A dull, silvery gleaming orb hung in the center, power radiating from it that dwarfed anything the five of them could bring to the table. Just looking at it made Rathica itch as she recalled battles from long ago, battles even she wasn't qualified to join in fully.

"Its essence has merged and drawn into the center," Ulderion said, turning to The Stone. "Is this how you left it?"

"No. It was thin and spread out before. I had no idea there was this much left…"

"It's Nimron's doing," Rathica said as she gazed at a single, bright golden dot, easily recognizable beside a larger red. Both hovered beside the silver one, like a red planet, a golden moon, and a giant silver sun.

"If he has absorbed even a fraction of that, we will have little to no chance," Ulderion said.

"There is also something wrong with the demons," Wyerg spoke in his low growl. "Their battle… it makes no sense! They are simply fighting and killing for no reason. Look, there is no ground won or lost; they are just in a frenzy. And the blood concentration is so thick it would kill most mortals within seconds. It's almost as if-"

The deities were quiet as all of them seemed to realize the same thing at the same time. Flowheart gazed at The Stone, a message passing between them.

"We must hurry," The Stone said as he whisked forward, followed by the others.

As she moved, Rathica focused on the vague little dot that was Est. He was closer to the heart of the trouble than she had imagined he would reach, and she wasn't sure she was happy about that. She tried to reach out, but the Demon Blood and the Despotin essence interfered with her senses.

I need to get closer, she thought.