I looked down at my feet, feeling the vibrations of something down below just barely shaking me. The stingprey was normally so strangely still that whatever slyk was down there completely changed the feeling of it, like a thousand little pieces of fluff tickling the bottom of my feet. Or the itchyness of knowing that a bug had landed on you at some point, but not knowing if it was still there. Or if it was even a bug in the first place, and not just a thread or something.

“How far down was this one again?” I asked, pulling the petal-scale slashes in close to me in preparation. “Fifty-something feet, right?”

“That is correct.” Mortician confirmed. “Why did you ask if you remembered?”

“Just making sure.”

I slashed my spear down at the rock between my feet. All of the floating slashes hit the exact same spot in immediate succession, spraying blackened sparks as they helplessly battered against monstrously strong stone. I shielded my eyes for a moment until the sparks died down, then lowered my arm to reveal that I’d done some damage to the stone. Not a whole lot at all, but for a slashing weapon against rock, I couldn’t really hope for more.

“Alright, time to put away the spear for now.” I said to myself, shifting it into a hammer as I spoke. The petal-slashes instantly lost their shape the second the spear changed, drifting away in the harsh current as they dissolved into nothing. “Okay, the function stops working if the weapon changes. Good to know.”

Mortician sidled up next to me and looked down at the slashes I’d managed to make. “That is not quite the result we’d hoped.”

“It wasn’t the one I hoped for either.” I chuckled. “Well, rock is still rock. I’d need a much stronger function or weapon if I wanted to cut through it with an edge alone. If I can’t break through this with my hammer, we’ll have to find a way to repurpose the carvurch mandibles to get ourselves down there. Now stand back. I don’t want to risk hitting you.”

“Of course.” Mortician said with an eager nod and a step back. “We will keep defending you until you say otherwise.”

Hopefully I wouldn’t have to say otherwise, but I was too experienced to kid myself. I took a deep breath as my weapon was overtaken by my function once more, winding up for a blow that would most definitely shatter stone. Hopefully.

Maybe.

I grunted and brought my hammer down on the exact center of the four slash marks, imagining the petals forming something like they’d done with the spear’s slash. Metal met stone in a clash of pebbles and sparks, sending a cloud of rocky dust up into the oil around me that made it difficult to see how much damage I’d wrought.

A wave of my hand helped about as much as spitting into a fireplace, but the current took the dust away anyway. And where I’d hoped to see a crater, I saw an impact of petal-scales. They had completely filled whatever damage I’d managed to do, and as I tried to move them with my function, I had to put some serious mental effort behind it. The single impact mark felt just as heavy as my hammer itself. I held it aloft until it felt like my brain was straining like a used muscle, staring at the relatively large crater it had left behind.

“That was cool.” Mortician whispered to themselves.

I whipped my head around to see what they were doing instead of watching my back. Instead, I found them watching my back. Literally. While also fighting off all the slyk that came near them without much effort at all. Like they had eyes on the back of their head.

“Keep fighting. I’ve got this.” I said with slightly bolstered confidence, leaving Mortican to protect us as I mentally dropped the impact down once more.

A shockwave ripped through the ground below me. Dust and pebbles rose in the oil before they were carried away. I stared at the now larger crater with a blank expression that morphed into a smile with the knowledge that the hammer’s impact petal-scales somehow still carried the devastation that had created them. Which also explained why the slashes from the spear had stayed sharp and quick.

I checked my battery levels before I made my next move, just in case the hammer-made petal-scales were draining more from me than I realized. I still had a good amount of battery left thanks to my chestpiece giving me a buff to battery regeneration, which opened me up to a repeat performance of the slashes. I mentally commanded the impact to move out of the way and hover off to my side, already getting used to the strain it put on my mind, and swung my hammer down twice more.

It felt like my brain was doing deadlifts as I pulled the two additional impacts out of the growing crater. But the crater was growing. Even if it strained like hell, I knew I could handle it, and I had to work as if every second wasted could mean Mortician didn’t get everything they needed. I hefted my hammer over my shoulder, my body in much better shape than my mind, and commanded the impacts to ravage the crater. Each impact slammed down on those under it just moments after its predecessor landed, and as the third and final one crashed into the pile, I smashed down on the tiny tower with the hammer proper.

It wanted to make another impact, but my brain wouldn’t appreciate any more mental weight. And I really didn’t want to find out what the mental equivalent of blowing out my back was, so I denied the creation and lifted my hammer along with the three impacts. I glanced over my shoulder to check on Mortician, but from the multitudes of dead slyk around them, I knew I didn’t have to worry. What I did have to do was hurry.

The strain on my brain grew to near exhaustion levels as I crushed stone after stone, smashing down through so much of the stingprey’s body that it felt like I would never reach the end. I’d barely gotten twice my height in depth when one impact fell further than I ordered it to, falling into empty space for a moment before it landed on something with a combination of a squelch and a crushing thud.

“I broke through to a cavern or someth–.” I called out and was cut off by Mortician’s appearance at my side. “Oh, you’re here. Well, looks like whatever slyk we’re fighting here made a nice nest for itself. Are you still in fighting shape?”

Mortician jumped lightly from one foot to another, excitement buzzing off them like an electrical current. “Of course we are!”

“Good.” I said with a nod that transitioned into a jump. I fell for a few seconds before my boots slammed into yet more rock, but this stuff felt slightly different. Pliable and worked, as if there was a reason whatever was in here chose here to… be… in. I shook my head and switched my hammer into a dagger that split down the middle to make a pair, letting my instincts take over as the darkness bled away in a cacophony of crackling electric light.

The first to appear were the carvurch. Insensate things that walked dumbly around me, their mandibles barely as dangerous as long fluorescent tubes. Mortician came next, their body crackling slightly gold as they took up a position with their back against mine. Nothing came for a few still moments after that, but there was something strange about this place. Little bits of electricity jumped through the air without being attached to any slyk, like sparks near a campfire, but that couldn’t be it. Mortician had felt a slyk here.

“Did we get the wrong place?” I whispered.

I felt Mortican shake their head. “It is here with us, but it is… everywhere. Spilled through this entire cavern, yet concentrated in a mass… right over…” Mortician looked around, turning until they found what they were looking for and pointed it out with a finger. “There. In that corner.”

I followed their finger to a lump of dim pulsing electricity that was so heavily overshadowed by all the carvurch that I completely overlooked it the first time. It shimmered from one end to the other as if it was sending out commands to something, the little specks of electricity in the air mimicking the pile’s colouration. I opened my interface and gestured a dagger at the electric lump, initiating an analysis of whatever the hell it was.

//CORE BEARING SPECIMEN: SLYK CHIPSPECK MASS

//A collection of much smaller slyk chipspeck, the chipspeck mass is a core-bearing specimen that controls a multitude of chipspeck to do its bidding. See description of ‘chipspeck’ below.

//While under control of a mass, the chipspeck will obey its every command and gain the ability to latch onto lesser slyk, transferring the control aspect of the mass to that lesser slyk. Those slyk gain increased stats and intelligence, in addition to increasing their hazard rating by 10.

Core Mastery: 48

Hazard: 15

Core: Bituminous Core, Mass variation.

Core Function: Energy Allocation

Battery: 140 Speed: 1 Power: 1 Resilience: 1 Recovery: 3

//SPECIMEN: SLYK CHIPSPECK

//The smallest of the slyk, a chipspeck is a single droplet of oil gathered around a pebble-sized piece of rock or smaller. A chipspeck is completely mindless, unable to do anything unless commanded by a greater slyk.

Battery: 1 Speed: 22 Power: 1 Resilience: 1 Recovery: 1

As if to confirm what I’d just read, one of the little motes of electricity that I now knew were actually minuscule slyk nosedived towards a carvurch. It smacked directly into the middle of its head with the smallest wet splat, triggering a ripple within the carvurch’s oil that seemed to stimulate all the electricity within the ant-like slyk. It shrieked as its mandibles took on the much more dangerous electrical version we’d been fighting, and then more chipspeck slammed into it.

“This might be a problem.” Mortician said quietly, tapping me on the shoulder to get my attention.

I turned to see that there were a half dozen more carvurch behind me undergoing the same treatment as the one I’d watched.

“Yes it might.” I agreed. “Yes, it might.”