You know what no one tells you about being caught in the middle of a magical bombardnt inside a living mountain, surrounded by pulsing eggs, invisible snakes, and a wingless flying serpent that shoots homing lasers?
That there's no ti to think.
No ti to be afraid.
No ti to crap your pants with dignity.
Every thought is replaced by reflex.
Every attempt to reason is cut off by a purple explosion flashing across your vision. Every two seconds, a new serpent appears out of nowhere and for so damned reason, they always pop up behind my neck, like they studied advanced military tactics.
While I protect the ice do with Dália inside, all I can do is dodge, cast, and shout insults I didn't even know I knew. Not because it helps. But because screaming keeps from going insane.
The mountain vibrates, roars, bleeds beneath us.
Seraphine kills like she's dancing.
Dórian has turned into a punching bag for homing lightning.
Aeloria is in "nuclear winter" mode.
And ... I'm starting to suspect the universe has so kind of personal grudge against . Because between one serpent bursting with electricity and another trying to kiss my face with venomous fangs, the only constant here is surviving one more second and hoping that, in the next, death might be just a little less humiliating.
Dórian hasn't been lucky since the first bite.
From the mont that damned serpent sank its teeth into his hand, he beca a beacon for the colossal creature hunting us in the mountain. Every ti he was thrown, stripped of his dignity, smaller serpents seized the mont to attack him mid-air. Like each impact was a cue. An invitation. And even when he crashed against the wall or the ground, the damned things were already waiting silent, loyal, always ready for another bite.
His body was covered in circular marks. Open wounds like grotesque little smiles, filled with a dark liquid that wasn't exactly poison.
If it were just poison, we'd be fine.
No, it was a living curse. So trackable essence that turned Dórian into a beacon, a target, a magnet for destruction. Because since then, the mountain's guardian hadn't missed a single shot.
His armor—patched together with the artifact he'd been given, the symbol of the wall he once was—now looked more like twisted, scorched tal glued to his body. In less than a minute of combat, Dórian was already on the ground, almost on his knees, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth, his chest heaving like a furnace about to go out.
I finally reached him.
Two orbs of darkness were forming again in the guardian's mouth, high above us, slithering between the warped tunnels. I didn't think. There was no ti for plans or calculations. Only action.
My eyes lit up like living thunder.
Two colossal bolts surged from them with savage fury, colliding with the enemy's purple beams mid-air.
The impact was absurd. The collision made the air itself tremble.
The mountain's pulsing floor exploded as if its heart had been torn out. Dozens of eggs were launched like projectiles, bursting in the air like black balloons full of pus and sli, spraying that foul, viscous liquid all over the battlefield.
Dórian, still alive, looked at . His face was bleeding. But his eyes... his eyes carried guilt.
"Stay with , big guy," I said, twirling my fingers and summoning another bolt behind my back. "We've still got a lot of snakes to fry."
In the middle of the chaos, Seraphine landed like a dancing bolt of lightning.
She joined and Dórian, spinning her spear with a lightness that seed out of place in this hell. Blood stread down our shield-bearer's face, his chest rising with effort... but her? She seed to be on another plane entirely.
Her spear drew destruction in the air.
She was the only one in the group with the luxury of ease.
Her armor, as we knew, was a bound artifact, almost symbiotic, and none of the lesser serpents could bite her. The ones that tried had their fangs shattered before even touching her skin, repelled by a defense that reacted on instinct.
And that... that gave her freedom.
Freedom to advance. To crush eggs the size of children. To explode serpents mid-leap. To collapse parts of the upper tunnels with a brutal thrust in just the right spot.
One of those collapses nearly buried us alive—and even then, Seraphine laughed.
"If we keep just defending," she said, mid-pirouette, decapitating three serpents at once, "we'll die exhausted. We need to cut off the head of the snake. Literally."
The shout ca right after.
"GLENN!" It was Aeloria, surrounded by colliding ice and shadow. "PUSH THAT THING THIS WAY! BRING IT DOWN INTO OUR ZONE!"
The plan was insane. But there was no better one.
I understood instantly.
The Mountain Guardian—the serpent moving through dinsional portals as if it were everywhere at once—needed to be brought to us. Into this hell where we were already on our knees.
If it fell here, maybe... just maybe... we'd have a chance.
"Hold on tight, Dórian," I muttered, releasing a wave of electricity around us as I positioned myself next to Seraphine.
She smiled. "Ti to bring this monster down from its pedestal."
Dórian, still on his knees, spat blood and nodded weakly. His eyes still burned.
But none of us knew what was coming.
Gravity flipped in my body and, for a mont, the world seed to stop.
I tore a rift in the fabric of space, ripping reality until I erged near the mountain's black vaulted ceiling. My feet stuck to the surface with concentrated gravitational force as the first sparks of lightning slithered across my body.
Static and fury.
I covered my arms in chains of lightning, shaping each pulse of energy into two brutal spears.
At first, they were nearly the size of trees—long and bright like bolts on the verge of striking. But as I condensed them, they shrank, gaining mass, density, savagery. Now, just over a ter each, every inch vibrated as if reality itself was about to collapse.
The serpents tried to reach —stupid, fast, and useless.
Electric spasms flared like fireworks. They were vaporized before touching my skin.
And then he appeared.
The Mountain Guardian—translucently colossal—leaping from tunnel to tunnel with terrifying fluidity. His body dissolved and reappeared, as if swimming between dinsions. In one of those jumps, he stopped, right beneath , and his gaping maw opened with the sound of a cornfield being torn apart.
The purple glow lit up. A new laser—straight at Dórian.
My instinct acted before my mind.
I kicked the ceiling with all my strength, releasing gravity. A rift opened before , and I dove through it.
I reappeared ten ters above the monster, descending like a cot, two thunder spears in hand. The air cracked around with a sharp blast. Ti seed to slow once again.
"DOWN!!" I shouted, but my voice was swallowed by the electric surge.
The two spears flew from my hands as if they had a will of their own.
The inside of the mountain lit up as if the sun had risen there. Everything went white, vibrant, blinding. The roar of thunder echoed through the cave walls like a storm trapped in a giant bell.
The Guardian reacted.
Before the spears could strike, a rift opened in its back. The projectiles passed through the void and exploded in a side cavern, destroying everything—rock, egg, serpents—everything turned to rubble and smoke.
The colossal serpent didn't hesitate—leapt into another portal, disappearing from view.
But I felt it.
I felt the flow, the distortion, the trace left by its magic.
I took a deep breath, even as my lungs burned, and opened another rift in front of , diving in without a second thought.
"Let's play cat and mouse, you bastard!"
**
As I plunged through spatial tears chasing the Guardian, the chaos below gave no respite.
Down in the belly of the mountain, the real massacre had begun.
The smaller serpents—silent, imperceptible, cruel—kept erging from holes like a living infestation, black as death and so nurous the ground seed to crawl.
But they were no longer alone. Now, the larger ones began to surface, slithering from the tunnels like grotesque roots. Snakes as thick as tree trunks, gliding with agility and fury—massive black anacondas with glowing purple eyes—charging like machines of destruction.
Dórian, Seraphine, and Aeloria fought like demons.
Dórian, even with ruined armor and a cracked shield, swung his sword hard enough to break the ground. Aeloria, wrapped in ice down to his hair, summoned spikes and storms, freezing the enemy's advance. Seraphine danced with her spear—fast, lethal, almost untouchable. But it wasn't enough.
They were being overwheld.
A sea of black scales and soulless eyes surrounded them. Bodies tired, magic began to wane, and each missed strike ant another bite.
And without anyone noticing, the worst began.
Dórian blinked. Just once.
His eyes started to itch.
They burned for a second.
Nothing serious—maybe dust from the explosions.
But... deep inside his pupils, a dark gleam, almost imperceptible, stirred like a drop of black ink dissolving in water. Tiny, silent. A nearly invisible trace of whatever the serpents had injected. It didn't hurt. It didn't throb. It just itched.
And in the middle of that carnage, with the world collapsing around him, who would care about an itchy eye?
Maybe...
Maybe that was our biggest mistake since entering this cursed dungeon.
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