Pride descends and steps down on an emergence of riverbed rock. The water is pushing around and an internal riverbank rises to the surface to encompass an opening in the ground. The riverbed rocks rise and break through the water’s surface just outside of the opening and stones hang over the edge as if they were part of a coin pushing machine.

Pride sloshes forward in the shallow water as Greed and Lust land behind him. Pride peers over into the opening, kicking a few of the stones off the ledge where they tumble down within a cylinder of falling water, soon disappearing in the darkness. He looks back to see Greed and Lust observe him. He looks beyond them to see the rest of the group still on the outer bank. Greed turns back to follow his gaze, where they see Sloth start to wave frantically.

“What’s he doing,” Greed asks.

“I know about a lot of things,” Pride says, “but that guy is not one of them.”

Greed chuckles. “That’s almost humble. You think they are seeing something in the water?”

“There’s no telling but since Gluttony can’t fly, it may be best that they remain behind. We shouldn’t have a problem handling this ourselves.”

“Yeah but we’ve never seen anything like this before. We can’t be sure what’s down there.”

“We’ve taken care of business before when it was just us three so this really shouldn’t be any different from back then. As for what’s down there…well, we’re not going to figure that out as long as we’re up here. Let’s just keep moving for now. We’ll tackle strategy when we actually have useful information.”

Greed steps up to look down into the opening with Pride. “Should I drop a light to see how far down it goes?”

“Yeah. Let’s do it.”

Greed unsheathes the spear and it begins glowing with his bracers soon after. He looks in, holding the spear over the opening before releasing it like a javelin, hurling into the darkness. The light reflects off the surrounding waterfall as it sails away from them like a capsule in a pneumatic tube. They watch as the light continues away, becoming just a pin prick in the darkness. The light finally disappears and Greed intensifies the light but is unable to see it. “That’s a long way down,” he says. “Should I reshape it?”

“No,” Pride says immediately. “We might not be able to see it from here but we might be able to when we get closer to the bottom. If we can, that will help us judge the distance as we get closer.”

Pride draws his weapon and steps off the ledge. A sphere of light emerges from him and pushes the darkness back behind the curtain of water. He flares his wings, slowing his descent. He drifts over to one side of the cylinder and looks up, the other two closing the distance between them. As they descend to his level, they proceed together as if riding an elevator to the bottom. The sheet of water around them falls at a slower rate and gives an impression of moving upward. Pride extends the flat of his blade through the curtain and it splits, causing a widening tear as the water glances away. Through the tear, Pride can see something like electrical arcs on some distant surface. The arcs look like an undulating mass of electrical spiders crawling upward to some unseen location.

He withdraws the blade and the tearing appearance dissipates. The wind howls past them but the growing sound of a roar is becoming more predominant. A light starts to become visible below them and Pride extends an open palm to get everyone to slow down. They each begin to thrust their wings, descending one after another as they approach the glowing froth of falling water breaking against the water below them. Pride gestures at the curtain before twisting through, shedding water, and continuing to fly in place. Ahead of him is a tree, far larger than any he had seen before. He lowers onto a small island as the other two emerge and set down behind him. Greed looks up at the thing with his spear back in his grasp. He has an uneasy look on his face as he looks up at the monster before him. Their light only reaches the edge of the trunk and a small portion of the tree’s canopy. The visible green glistens from a combination of the water nestled in its leaves and the light being shed from their armaments. Any sense of allure is squashed as that small sliver of the visible quickly disappears into a looming shadow that is back-lit by crawling electrical arcs.

The waterfall crashing nearby makes it impossible to speak to one another. Greed looks around the area with a great sense of unease. The area is pitch black outside of their glowing weapons and the few surfaces that the light is reflecting from. The best they can tell is that they are on a small island with water stretching out into the darkness. Greed keeps glancing over to Pride for some sort of acknowledgment or signal but he knows they need to draw the attention of the guardian before they commit to the assault. Each moment is filled with an ever mounting tension and Greed is startled when Pride suddenly raises his sword to point at the tree. He looks back to the two of them and exaggerates his mouth movement as he communicates the words; CUT. IT. DOWN.