There were good and bad aspects of finding the location of the Akkadian Fire Beads (I used Seek Hidden to confirm we had the right pool just in case). The upside was now we knew where to look, not to mention the Tinderlings weren't lurking around here guarding this place so we had time to figure out how to retrieve the crystals. Unfortunately, that played into the downside of this issue, the fact that they weren't guarding the magma pool because we couldn't actually get into the damn thing to retrieve the beads in the first place.

I stared down into the magma. I decided to check on the danger level, so I spent some time looking for something specific before picking up a rock and tossing it in. There was a flash of fire as the magma literally consumed the rock I'd just thrown in and I turned to the others. "Ok, I don't know exactly what that stuff is other than molten rock, but I'm pretty sure it's hot enough to really mess us up." The rock I'd found had been some chunk of H rank stone mixed in with the gravel.

I wasn't sure how that worked, I could only assume it was a broken off piece of a larger chunk of material that had some renown behind it. There was a mix of a few different rank rocks around here, but the magma in that pool melted the rock I'd tossed in had gone up like a flash in the pan. However hot that was I was guessing it was enough to damage us even with our heightened Impact.

That was pretty much confirmed when Callie nodded. "It is. The fire energy in the beads is concentrated into the crystal, but the spillover is most likely responsible for this pool. It'll be hot enough to melt our flesh down to the bone, which does somewhat impede our ability to...you know...get them. We need some sort of plan to retrieve the crystals. Anyone have any ideas? Because I have literally nothing."

Benny leaned down to hold a hand out over the lava. We all stared at him. He seemed intent on something. I wondered if he had a device he hadn't mentioned that could get around this, or maybe some new Skill he'd been training? I was fascinated to see what he could do to fix this problem. He knelt close, moving his hand above the lava as if searching for something. He made a noise of understanding before standing back up and turning to the rest of us with a serious expression. "This stuff is super hot, I'm not touching it."

We all glared at him, no one saying a word. He crossed his arms over his chest and looked away. I very deliberately turned away and ignored his nonsense. "Ok, Cark, what about you? Fire is sort of your jam right? Do you think you could coat yourself in flames to hold back the lava long enough to reach in and grab the crystals?" I'd seen him use his flame armor to stop attacks before so that might be viable.

It was my turn to get the looks. Cark just shook his head. "Sorry man but that's...not how any of that works. I can't clothe myself in fire to prevent me from being melted in lava. What about your magma skin thing? Would that work long enough to reach into the pool and grab the beads? Not sure how it stacks up against actual lava. Or magma or whatever. Regardless that seems like our best bet to me. Assuming it's dense enough to make sure it doesn't like...melt and burn you to a crisp."

That was a decent idea, but honestly I wasn't anxious to test it. Sure, it might work, but if it didn't I wasn't sure even Jessie's power could fix what this shit might so to me. I didn't think a thin layer of stone or magma would protect me from that stuff. We were all kind of...stuck. No one had any idea for what to do and we all spent the next fifteen minutes talking over Skills and abilities that might let us get around the problem, but nobody had any plans that could help. The lava pool was hands down the most dangerous thing we'd come across on this hunt.

Jessie was staring hard at the pool along with the rest of us as we discussed what to do, and suddenly her eyes lit up and she let out a gasp. "I have an idea! What if we create another pit. A deeper pit, and then we can make a channel between them and let the lava drain out until the beads are exposed." She turned to me. "Solomon, can your Sucking Mud skill make the ground soft enough that Nightstrike could use a shadow scoop to shovel the mud out of it and create a hole in the ground?"

I blinked. "I...don't know. I've never considered using the skill to actually move earth, but it SHOULD work...theoretically. Hell, if we get the hole deep enough and at an angle I could use the skill to soften up the channel itself and then let the earth between the pits slop into the deeper one. That would prevent us from having to dig around or mess with the magma. Hell we could make the channel at the very bottom of the magma pit so it drains out completely. Agria that's brilliant!"

It was also going to be fucking exhausting. Sure making a big pit wouldn't be that tiring, but for it to be deep enough I'd need to repeat the process a bunch of times. Still, this was by far the safest and most reasonable plan anyone had come up with, and it was definitely doable. I looked at Callie to make sure, and she nodded, confirming that this was something her shadow constructs could handle, not that I'd had many doubts.

I had everyone step back (the last thing we needed was someone slipping into the muck or accidentally tripping and falling into a pool of G ranked magma) before starting my work. I considered how best to do this. I was at about twenty charges, so I had some room to play with it a bit. I considered doing the same thing I'd done earlier, concentrating the skill into a smaller area and forcing it down, but I realized I was making this more complex than it needed to be. I could do this much simpler by just using the skill as intended multiple times.

So that was what I did. I activated Sucking Mud in a ten foot radius as usual, though it only went down a few feet and nodded to Callie. At the gesture, my girlfriend created a huge shovel from her shadow abilities and started scooping out the muck, dumping it in a random crack a few feet away from us. Once she got most of it I let the skill fade and did it again, rinse and repeat until we'd managed to hollow out a massive depression in the rock by scooping away all the liquefied stone.

The hole was huge, ten feet around and about twenty down, and it took about four uses of Sucking Mud to reach the point where it was deep enough to drain the magma in the way we needed. At least we hoped it was deep enough. We couldn't actually see how deep the magma pool was, but even if we hadn't gone to the bottom yet the hole was deep enough that we could drain out some of the magma and use that to estimate exactly how deep the pool was to start with.

With the pool finished I had everyone stand back and readied myself to cast Sucking Mud again, this time with a bit of a twist. I activated the skill, but when I used it I altered the shape and size. There was a one or two foot gap between the two pools, just so the magma didn't melt through the side before we were ready and with a flex of my mind I created a cylindrical shaft between the two of them with Sucking Mud at an angle, making damn sure there was plenty of room for the magma to come through.

Because of the angle I'd made the cylinder at, the mud inside it slowly flowed out and dropped into the pit, leaving a big open cylindrical hole in the wall of the pit, directly connecting to the pool. Slowly, much slower than I'd expected, the magma began to flow through the channel and spill into the pit. Watching the glowing stone roll through the hole in the stone and drizzle into the pit was...an interesting experience. It was a beautiful sight, and made taking it seriously a bit harder, though I was smart enough to know that was a stupid reaction.

The weird dichotomy of how easy this had been relative to the difficulty of the task made it tempting to do...something. Since we were just sitting here and waiting for the thing to drain surely there was some way to speed it up right? But we were all smart enough to know that despite how peaceful and boring this little light show was, it was also absurdly deadly and potentially fatal, and there was no way for us to make it go by any faster that didn't include far too many risks.

Despite how annoying the hurry up and wait aspect of the process was however, it WAS working. Keeping an eye on the pool, I could see the level of the magma slowly dropping. It was easy to see the marks on the sides of the rim as the level of the pool dropped a bit at a time, and we all watched with baited breath as more and more of the pool was exposed by the dropping magma level. I looked around as we waited, anxious that someone might sneak up on us, but I didn't see any sign of enemies.

I returned my gaze to the magma pool and watched in awe as the level of the molten stone finally dropped low enough to expose what we had come here for. As the glowing liquid receded a bubble of translucent red energy was exposed. Within the bubble floated three crystals, rotating in a circle around a single point of light. The crystals were linked by a series of energy tethers, seemingly part of a harmonious system, and each time they rotated the crystals themselves pulsed, the fiery nova of energy barely visible in the depths of the stones flaring as the central point of light dimmed.

Akkadian Fire Beads. They were absolutely mesmerizing to behold, and all of us stared, our breaths caught in our throats as we finally saw what we came here for. Carefully, with bated breath, Callie conjured a net of shadows, lowering it down to scoop up the floating crystals. As the shadow touched it, the translucent sphere of red popped like a soap bubble and the light in the center winked out. The three crystals dropped into the net, and Callie retracted the thing slowly, careful not to touch the still hot beads. I grinned at her. "Got them. I have to say, that was easier than I expected."

She levered them up and I opened the bag and flipped up the lid of the box so she could drop them in, and we all heaved a sigh of relief. A sigh that was cut short as an amused voice split the air behind us. "That's funny, I was just thinking the same thing." We all turned slowly to find a trio of yellow and blue clad Ascendants. I recognized their features from the report a few days ago. The Wavestriders. Now it was my turn to sigh. Nothing could ever be easy. Oh well, hopefully the fight would at least be fun.