A familiar elf, saved by Eshya’s intervention, now weeps in despair wasting away in our newly redecorated employment agency. While his presence does no favours for the local atmosphere, the other locals are far too eager in their step to be brought low by pity. Gremlins hop over and around him treating him like you’d treat some drunkard having a breakdown in a bar, avoid eye contact and pretend you don’t hear them if they try to talk to you.

“Together!” Shen shouts, completely ignoring that idea and walking on the weeping young man. Her shouts inspiring the locals gathered around.

Well, she inspires about half of them. The other half are indifferent, or even a little frustrated with the energetic little face-hugger.

I don’t think my intervention would improve things down there, I’ll trust that Shen has things well in hand while I focus on other problems.

“The crystal cavern first,” I say standing in the port. Bessy is playing in the water by my side, and Red has a team of soldiers along with us who will be guarding us on our adventure. They’re trembling in barely contained excitement, partly inspired by the countless threats that Red is levelling at them.

“If any of you snivelling little sprouts die on this quest, just know that you’ll be forgotten. Your wives and husbands will be getting screwed by their new lovers before your corpse is even cold, and your kids will remember you only as that idiot that got themselves killed.

“So, maybe try not to die.” Red’s words provide a peculiar flavour of inspiration as she towers over the warriors.

“Finally a chance for another adventure, another hunt,” Eshya says, stretching slow and careful, moving from one muscle to the next as if doing so will make everything better again. The scrambling of her mind damaged memories and movements, and while nothing much is totally lost, she is still healing.

“What do you think it’ll be like?” Vii asks, bouncing foot to foot. “What sort of things live there? Do you think we could make a holiday house there, or will it be super uncomfortable or outright unbearable? Can we meet any new friends? Enemies?”

“Sorry to disappoint, but we’ve already been hunting there well before all this political crap messed us around,” Red says, brushing Vii’s hair as she heads over to Bessy’s side. “I can tell you all about it if you want.”

“No, don’t spoil it!” Vii shouts, her wings constantly shifting about as she tries to contain her excitement. “I want to see it myself.”

“I’ve glanced in there a few times, but I get the feeling it’ll be different to see it for myself,” I say.

“I said, no spoilers!” Vii cries, bumping into my side with the sort of pout that you’d see from a kid first trying their hand at acting. She can’t even hold it for more than a moment before shuffling about again and letting out a light tittering laugh.

Red chuckles down at us, shaking her head at the sight.

“Well, we have plenty of places to be,” I say. “Let’s get this show moving. Bessy, are you ready?”

The fluffy ball of infinite limbs turns to us with a bounce in her central mass and a gleam in her eyes.

Thousands of limbs wrap us up giving us only enough time to take a deep breath before she drags us into the water with a terrible rush. It’s like a water ride if Lovecraft had taken up a side job in theme park construction.

Bessy is familiar with this place already, and she moves so fast that before I can even blink the light of our home cavern disappears. We race through a dark tunnel and my senses, even powerful as they are, can barely make out the walls around us. The stone, the underwater moss, and the occasional monstrous eel rushing away down a side tunnel.

Just as my lungs start to burn with a passionate desire for air, we break through into the bright light of a new world.

Shimmering crystals grow along the walls, the floors, and the ceiling. Blue, red, green, and every blend thereof, glowing with their own light, or reflection and refracting the lights that surround them.

I close my eyes, the maddening colours spreading out in patterns that twist my mind as I try to comprehend it all. After a few breaths, I push through a wave of nausea and find my feet on the bluish crystal floor.

The ground is sloped rather than flat, but the surface is coarse enough that I’m not about to slide back into the water like a contestant in a silly game show.

The light is scattered, bent, and twisted in every which way and trying to make sense of my surroundings is more than simply challenging. If Red told me that she pulled me through into the fourth dimension, I think I’d believe her.

Even my Eyes of an Empire Skill struggles to fit my surroundings into three dimensions and I temporarily give up on it.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Red asks with a cruel laugh. Her soldiers are doing better than Eshya, Vii and I, and even Adler is pushing through well enough to be looking for potential threats. “You don’t like it? I’m not sure you can get a refund on this purchase.”

“‘No returns’, it was in the contract I wrote up,” I reply, squinting at my surroundings and gradually getting used to it. “Besides, who’d want to give this place up? These crystals are going to make us a fortune.”

“You can say that, but your face is painted in disappointment,” Red shrugs, pulling us all along with her into the maze.

“It just doesn’t seem as nice of a date spot as I was hoping for,” I joke.

“Give me something to fight, and it’s a perfect date either way,” Eshya says, following up with slow and careful steps through the jagged and uneven ground.

“I’ll take you to meet some of the locals,” Red says looking back at Eshya fondly. “They won’t give you much excitement, that’s assuming you don’t fall over your own feet again.”

“I’m over that now,” Eshya hisses through a tense smile. “I’m better than ever and ready for a good fight.”

“How intelligent are these creatures?” I ask, hopping over a particularly jagged spire of crystal tall as my knee. The crystal ground does little to inspire confidence, and sometimes it just feels like it’s out for blood with all the sharp points and jagged edges.

“Concerned with those pesky morals and ethics, are you?” Red asks.

Adler glares at her, the effect multiplied through a few colourful reflections. The Adler of the red crystal seems the most mean, but I’d choose the sickly baby shit green crystal reflection as the most intimidating.

“If we aren’t concerned about morals, then what is there to us that separates us from the beasts?” She asks, her tail worked up into a fury, through familiarity alone I see the touches of self-doubt sharpening the edges of her lips and the corners of her eyes. The slight aversion of her gaze as she realises I’m focused on her.

“Nothing, we are beasts too.” Red replies with an eager smile. “It’s up ahead. Can you see it?”

Following her pointing finger, I catch sight of the shifting crystals that move about as if in a whirling tornado in slow motion. If she hadn’t pointed it out, I’d have thought that it was just another strange natural phenomenon. Looking closely, my Chip gradually warms up, figuring out how to read this creature.

The slight tilt to its whirling form is an expression of curiosity, the faster movement comes from anxiety, and the glow from the gems making up its body indicates that it’s currently awake and aware.

“May I?” Eshya asks politely, drawing her sword and gazing at the creature.

“Please do,” Red waves her forward, tilting her head with a devilish smirk.

“A sword isn’t going to do much against that, is it?” I ask.

“Can we return to the question of sentience and sapience?” Adler asks before I get an answer, her frown deepening as our elf charges at the baby gemstone tornado.

“It’s as smart as your average beast,” Red replies, rolling her eyes and snorting in derision. “Feel free to catch one and potty train it, but it might take a few decades before it can say ‘mama’.”

Adler smartly decides not to respond, nodding agreeably now that she’s gotten her answer. It’s enough to soothe her worries, but myself? I feel no different.

Death has become something so ordinary now, that I don’t see much of a difference between the death of an intelligent being and a supposedly lesser being. Not because I can’t tell the difference, but rather because of my deepening apathy in the face of the uncaring universe.

Gemma, my therapist, did tell me that this isn’t something that she can just magic away for me. Just like the violent tendencies that have been more and more of a crutch for me when the world turns on me, it’s not going away. I need to face these feelings and thoughts, and I may not ever truly ‘heal’. The most important part, she says, is to control my actions.

I can’t stop myself from feeling apathetic or when I’m filled with rage, but I can regulate my actions.

Eshya has already rushed into a fight with the whirling mass of crystal, and it takes her but a few moments to execute a few powerful magics that rend the creature into shattered parts. A few follow up strikes keep it from reforming.

Red takes the chance to criticize her waste of mana, while I steady my stomach and try to take in the full view of this cavern. My senses stretch through the eyes of my followers, and gradually I take in the maze of partially transparent crystals.

It is beautiful when seen from a certain distance, the colours aren’t spread in a chaotic mess as I’d first thought, rather they seem to be gathered in clusters. Also, more of them are clear than I’d first thought, but the colourful glow of those behind lend their colours to those that are clear.

No matter how much we explore here, the maze seems never-ending, and there are no sudden changes in the environment, just more of the same. Before it can get boring, however, it’s time to move on.

“The volcanic cavern next?” I ask Red as we return to the tunnel that brought us here. “Is it habitable?”

“What’s your definition of habitable?” Red asks, chuckling in amusement as thoughts of a fiery hellscape rush through her demented mind. “You won’t die, but it won’t be comfortable. My scouts came back looking black as night from all the soot.”

“Good thing I have a cleansing stone on me.”

“How fancy. You don’t want to experience what your precious scouts had to go through?” Red asks.

“I’d rather just outfit them all with cleansing magic instead,” I reply. “I’m not suffering just because you failed to outfit them properly.”

“No fun,” Red says, hoisted up by a couple of Bessy’s limbs.

Bessy, our overeager steed, nabs us all from the shore, looking like a particularly efficient and effective Kraken before pulling us into the depths. The heavy water ends all conversation but for an outburst of bubbled cussing and the wild flapping of limbs, from those unprepared. I haven’t been manhandled like this since the first time Eshya threw me down, thank goodness she learns quickly.

The dark waters bubble and flow all around, as we travel deeper and deeper. My ears pop once then twice as we move faster and faster into the depths at the heart of this world, finally breaking out into open air thick with black smoke.

I spit up water just to give my lungs a proper chance to embrace the warm ash and smoke. It burns down my throat, but not quite like the superheated toxic gasses that they are, rather it’s more akin to reflux. The deep black smoke covers everything, and I can’t even blink it away while we’re still in the thick of it.

Bessy floats us through the skies and into clean air, but even after I clean out my eyes I can’t see much. The wide tunnel of clean air flows like a river through the open sky above the cavern floor flooded with lava. It’s all in different states of cooling, colouring the floor in vibrant reds and oranges where it’s liquid, and turning black and brown where it’s hardened.

“What the hell are we supposed to do with this?” I ask as Bessy flies us into another cloud of hot smoke. I cover my mouth but it’s already far too late for that.

“It’s not *Cough* not *Cough**Cough* that bad!” Eshya shouts when we’re back in clean air. She’s forcefully shaping her frown into a smile as she looks for something to hunt. I’m sure there are more than a few monsters here, including a few things that fly in the smoke and a few others that swim in the liquid stone

I just don’t think we’re prepared to face them in this environment.

“Bessy!” I shout at her as we dive into more smoke, using messages instead. “Take us to the water cavern!”

Her twitching tendrils tighten around me as she turns her overbearing gaze my way and bobs in place of a smile. With an energetic wave of her many, many limbs she pulls us through the air up towards a deep resounding roar.

The steam hits me a moment before the water washes its burning presence away. This time, our passage is relatively short, and in a few seconds, we escape the oppressive smoke and heat and instead float in a massive expanse of water.

It’s dark, but not so dark that I cannot see.

Vast bubbles of air float freely about, not rising to the surface as physics ought to dictate, but wandering about as if of their own free will. Chip suggests that they aren’t living beings, so I can breathe easy the moment Bessy guides us into the bubble.

This place is different again from the underwater worlds I’ve visited before. It’s much too vibrant, and not from coral or ordinary plant life, but more from the flowering fruits that grow from the walls, and the succulent grasses that float in free clumps through the water.

Long, bright streamers, drift about in the gentle currents, some as long as a bus or a truck. A carnivorous breed of grass if I were to hazard a guess. They wrap around a few fish, which twitch violently as if they’re being shocked by electricity. Others, presumedly further along in the digestive process, are already bound into tight little balls

Fluffy spheres of pink and yellow gather about on the seafloor, and the fish and crustaceans throw them about playfully, looking around for something hidden within.

“This place isn’t so bad,” I say. “So, what am I missing? What monster is going to show itself and make this place seem like a deep-sea hell?”

“There is a rather large slime living here that’s been harassing our scouts,” Red says.

“Huh, why does that sound familiar…” I grumble, looking around and seeing no such monster. Then again, I’m not sure how visible it would be when its body looks no different from the water around us.

“What about that slime that we freed?” Vii asks. “The one that bounced into the lake in our home cavern, and then we never saw it again?”

“Oh yeah, I do remember something like that happening…”

“Take more care of your followers!” Adler shouts, halfway amused and halfway concerned.

“Well, he was never good at following directions, so it’s not my fault I can hardly remember him,” I say crossing my arms. The waters seem just a little bit brighter as our bubble rises us towards the ceiling.

“We’ll need to adapt ourselves before we can take on these environments safely,” I say, looking toward our future.

Eshya nods firmly, though her overeager smile doesn’t illicit much faith, and Vii is floating off in her own thoughts, mumbling something under her breath.

“We’ll need to observe the locals,” Adler says. “I’d like to categorise them, and separate the more intelligent beings, capable of becoming citizens of our empire, and those who would sadly take too long to mature.”

“Then, I’ll thank you for your efforts,” I say, distracted by sudden happenings half a world away.

Murder, violence, blood.

Gripping tighter to Bessy’s limbs, I direct all my attention to Gale and his cavern, where the silent screams originate.

“You’re all worthless beasts underserving of my efforts!” The madman shouts over the dying body of a large insect. It struggles to move, but the damage done to it with the pulling of its mercurial support device is clearly too severe. Death comes quick, as boot heel crunches its head into the stone.

Others witness the horror, but the strings that pull their bodies along offer no reprieve.

They can’t look away.

They can’t run away.

The next comes forward, kneeling before Gale as he lowers his hand to the head of the smaller beast. A lizard, unable to comprehend this scene in its totality.

“You waste food with your incessant hunger, you waste the air with every breath, and your filth only spreads ill odours throughout the world.” He growls, his eyes shallow as a puddle, but dark as midnight. He pulls another into their grave. “At least now your corpse will make for a fine garden bed, where beautiful, tame flowers might grow.”

Corpses pile on corpses, and as I watch my apathy slowly turns into a familiar cold rage.

He took them from their homes and made them dependent, then he stripped them of every freedom and blames them when he fails to lead them properly. He is why I still dream of an empire under my rule, he is proof that cruelty still wins out over kindness, and power rules over all else.

My every failure is nothing in comparison to this heartless slaughter.

I’m ruling better than this man, even as I am now.

Tomorrow I will do better than today.

A hundred years from now I still won’t be perfect, but a thousand or ten thousand might forge me into a ruler that I, myself, would bow to.

Hissing in frustration, I refocus on my current goals. It’s already too late for those poor creatures put to the slaughter, and I’m thankful that I have Adler to try and keep me from straying down that same path.

“Does anyone want a dance?” I ask, levelling out my buoyancy and escaping from Bessy’s grasp to slip into the waters at the bottom of the bubble.

“Not a bad idea,” Eshya says. “Make sure to pull me out if I start drowning.”

“I was just planning on sitting back and watching,” I reply, rolling my eyes. “Come on down here, I’ll even let you take the lead.”

She falls on me from above, tackling me into the deeper waters and swinging me out before pulling me back in. Her touch deft, and her movements refined.

Our guards above watch with strange expressions, but their thoughts are generally kind.

I return my focus to my lovers, as Vii and Adler join us.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Even under the ground where the sun cannot reach, there is a cycle that we live by. Day and night may be an abstract concept, but everyone needs to sleep sometime. As I’m preparing to rest for the night, my mind wanders to those whose senses I’ve intruded upon.

somewhere on the surface Sedena is going about her work. She’s acting proper, as with any time I’ve observed her in action, but there’s a certain disquiet running throughout the room she shares with the others of her profession.

Gale is sitting at his desk, going through his business as per usual as if the entire slaughter was nothing but a daydream, but it’s clear to everyone else in the room that he hasn’t taken a shower today, or even used a cleansing stone.

The man is covered, head to toe, in blood. Red blood, green blood, a touch of blue and purple. Not a single part of him isn’t painted over to some degree, but the man doesn’t seem to notice.

“Gale, have you encountered any trouble today?” One of the officers asks, braving to approach the madman.

“Nothing worth mentioning,” Gale smiles up at the man, speaking with the relaxed and casual tone of a person unaffected by their situation.

“Happy day to you, then.” The boss says, hesitant in every word.

“Yes, happy day to you, as well,” Gale replies, sorting through the things on his desk and putting them all into order.

“I have an announcement to make.” The boss turns from Gale to address the whole room. “I have just now requested assistance from the higher graded welfare officers. An inspection will soon take place in the coming months, so please be aware and make them welcome upon their arrival. That is all.”

Sedena breaks out into a cold sweat, even though she hasn’t a single sweat-producing gland in her body.

Isn’t this what Arduelle was most worried about?

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Stats and Skills

~Mana Form:

Current mana density: 38,977 / 60,892 units

Current mana volume: 19,376 / 30,271 shards

Mana volume at crystallisation density (Max. mana volume):

Kyra: 30,271 shards

Kyra’s armour: 20,777 shards

Kyra’s throne: 1,109,298 shards

~Forms

Mana Canon

-Annihilation Heart (Adapted)

-Blood Fuel (Adapted)

-Bone Magic Storage (40,000 mana shards)

-Nail Shifters (50,000 mana shards)

Dancer

-Flash Nerves (Adapted)

-Quick Perception Mind (Adapted)

-Burst Reflex Muscles (35,000 mana shards)

-Layered space Muscles (80,000 mana shards)

Turtle

-Rebinding Tissue (Adapted)

-Catalyst Sweat Glands (140,000 mana shards)

-Repulsive Skin (80,000 mana shards)

-Prehensile hair (10,000 mana shards)

-Fatty Tissue Blood Storage (100,000 mana shards)

Investigator

-Wide eyes (Adapted)

-Wide ears (Adapted)

-Sharp nose (Adapted)

Misc.

-Clean bowels (Adapted)

~Favourited Skills:

Magic:

-Annihilation Magic (Customised)

-Fire Magic (Functional)

-Space magic (Broken)

-Force magic (Functional)

-Ice magic (Broken)

-Wind magic (Broken)

Movement:

-Hand-to-hand casting (Functional)

-Mana surge movement (Functional)

-Stealth (Functional)

Senses:

-Eyes of an Empire (Customised)

-Combat Awareness (Functional)

-Watchmen (Functional)

-Hidden bug (Mastered)

-De-tagging (Mastered)

-Anti-stealth sight (Mastered)

Special:

-Spirit Transformation (Broken)

-Conformity (Broken)

-Training mana form (Functional)