Bits of metal frame groaned and screeched, then fell to the ground.
The bright light of the fake sun cut off, plunging the cavern into darkness. The glow lamp was backlit by one final flash of Lief’s skill as he severed the last of the optical cables feeding the lamp energy.
And then the glow lamp fell. Several tons of glass and metal, no longer shining but still hot and radiating a dullish red glow, crashed into the upper body and head of the turtle-scorpion at a velocity close to two hundred kilometers per second. The crunch of shattering glass echoed through the cavern, followed by a terrible, wounded roar from the beast.
The hiss and smell of cooking turtle flesh assaulted Thorn’s senses. Jagged pieces of hot broken glass had pierced the soft neck of the giant beast, inflicting deep and deadly wounds. Arterial blood, tinged with golden flecks, spurted out in great gouts.
The beast dug its tail into the ground, lifting its back up, but its head was stuck. It was trapped, and its life blood was leaking into the earth. It roared again, but choked on the blood clogging its airways, its imposing challenge reduced to a wounded, gargling whimper.
They had won. They had trapped and beaten this beast straight out of a nightmare. Thorn’s heart hammered in his chest, high on the adrenaline from the fight.
Even if they had won, it still took a long time for the beast to die. It never ceased thrashing its enormous tail, attempting to push itself upright and away from the burning hot hunk of metal and glass pinning it to the ground. If it hadn’t had the weight of the lamp on top of it, it might have been able to flip itself back over.
Thorn didn’t move a centimeter from his hiding spot until the last rattling breath escaped from the turtle-scorpion. Even then, he didn’t get out of his foxhole until the crow, golden pill still clutched in one of its claws, landed on the ground next to him and pecked him on the head.
He scrambled out of his foxhole, brushing the dirt off.
“Want me to take that off your hands?” Thorn asked, holding his hand out to the crow.
It didn’t even bother with a reply, just giving him a moody eye.
Thorn walked over to examine the corpse of the massive beast. Heat radiated from the broken lamp, and shards of glass mixed with steaming blood crunched under his boots as he drew closer.
Up close, the scale of the thing was even more impossible. Just how did a beast like this get so large? It was trapped in here, Thorn realized, not just by the dead zone, but by its very size. Unless, of course, there was a way out through one of the caverns that Lief hadn’t been able to fully explore.
“Ho,” Lief’s voice called from the top of the cavern where he was still perched. “Enough sightseeing, we gotta get a move on.”
Lief dropped the rope back down so that Thorn could climb up and get him. It took a bit of a running start, but he could just barely jump high enough to catch the end and start hauling himself upwards.
Lief had carved off most of the apparatus holding the lamp up on the cavern ceiling but had left enough for himself to sit on. Thorn began to climb up so he could grab Lief and bring him down.
The scavengers that hadn’t been tempted by their bait were going to start showing up soon, so they needed to hurry.
The crow perched on Thorn’s shoulder as he pulled himself up the rope, clearly needing to take a break from its exhausting job carrying the bait around. Thorn was mildly annoyed, but he couldn’t blame the beast too much. It had done a better job than Lief had with his drone, and if the price to pay was that the crow got to keep the large pill, well, that might still be worth it. There were still two other pills, anyways.
There was a lot of loot, and definitely enough quints to go around. Thorn wondered how large of a core the turtle-scorpion had; it had to be massive. Maybe as much as a hundred thousand quints.
Maybe even more.
Perhaps it was because Thorn was distracted by thoughts of all the quints waiting to be picked up, or because the stress of the battle had driven the original plan far from his mind, or because the quiet of the cavern after the turtle-scorpion had finally died lulled him into complacence. But Thorn had forgotten one, very important thing.
Out of the corner of his eye, Thorn saw the cavern wall shift slightly. He paused and turned to look more closely. If he had chosen that moment to let go of the rope and drop to the floor, he might have saved himself.
The cavern wall shifted again, taking on the outline of a large predator. It was a beast, another enormous beast, this one in the shape of a fincroc, hiding in stealth until the opportune moment to strike.
The fincroc’s distinctive fins graced its back and as its mouth gaped open, the rows of glittering teeth coming into focus as it dropped its camouflage and launched itself off the wall.
Thorn had forgotten that their original plan had been to trap this very same fincroc. They hadn’t known about the turtle, and when it had showed up instead, all of their focus had shifted to the new, bigger beast.
Thorn hadn’t realized that this fincroc had a camouflage ability. The reason the fincroc had gotten the jump on Lief wasn’t because LIef had been careless. It was because the beast was also half-reptile, the thick gray skin of a normal fincroc replaced with a lizard’s scales. Scales that mimicked the environment around and behind it, allowing it to hide from Lief’s senses and his drone’s capabilities. The scales also shielded its quintessence signature, hiding it from the crow’s superior senses as well.
Thorn belatedly let go of the rope, but he couldn’t dodge in mid-air. The crow squawked and attempted to fly off, pushing off Thorn’s shoulder, but it was too slow as well. The serrated teeth of the fincroc’s mouth flashed around them.
Thorn and the crow, golden pill in claw, were swallowed whole.
Thorn was crushed on all sides as the beast’s throat muscles struggled to push him down. His ribs creaked, and something in his left shoulder snapped. For a brief moment the fincroc choked, but then Thorn was past and through, sliding into the dark, hot belly of the beast.
Panic came and went in a breath as the inevitability of his death set in. Fierce recriminations against himself, against Lief, against the crow and the beast that had eaten them came and went just as quickly.
Digested inside the belly of a beast was a terrible way to die. He should have just found a quiet spot to wait for the end, slipping away into the inevitable arrival of the collapsing quintessence field. Why had he chosen to fight it?
No.
He knew why. He hadn’t been about to give up then, and he wasn’t going to give up now.
The smell was horrific, the small amount of air pressed in and around him both dense and foul. His exposed skin burned from the digestive juices and the slimy lumps of partially digested past meals. He couldn’t see, but he heard a squawk. Reaching out he felt a familiar feather, and gathered the crow into his lap.
He awkwardly pulled his sidearm out his holster and fired it point blank against the fincroc’s stomach wall, emptying the clip. Hot blood splashed against him, and he vaguely felt a roar of pain vibrate through the beast. There was a lurch and a flip, as he felt the beast angle itself downwards. Inertia shoved him into the back of the stomach, and then to the top, as it flipped again.
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He dropped the emptied gun. He was having trouble moving his left arm, but he pulled a knife from his boot with his right and started stabbing, trying to carve through the lining of the stomach. Blood, viscera, and acid flew. The beast flipped again, and then again, in what Thorn hoped was agonizing pain.
He was going to make this fincroc regret not chewing its food.
He stabbed and carved and stabbed again. Blood and chunks of flesh filled the stomach cavity, and Thorn kept stabbing.
The frenzy of blows eventually slowed. He hit something hard with the knife, something he couldn’t just cut through. The knife turned in his hand.
His muscles burned, his lungs burned; the pain on his skin, his face, and his eyes was maddening. A dull roar was growing in the back of his mind, clouding his thoughts with pain.
Thorn was stronger now, he was faster. His perceptions were enhanced; he had skills from his System that might as well have been the same as magic to people without a System. But he still needed to breathe.
His hand twitched and shook uncontrollably; he dropped the knife. Was he done? He was out of bullets. He was out of air. Did he have anything left?
Concentrate. He could try to blow up the beast from the inside. It might take him out too, but it was worth a try.
He activated the skill and attempted to paint a thread of quintessence on the wall of the beast’s stomach. But his hand barely obeyed him and he couldn’t maintain any sort of focus. The skill canceled itself out.
His thoughts were growing more and more sluggish; he could barely think over the dull roar in his mind. He was going to die and become food for this stupid beast. He was out of ideas. He sent a desperate thought to his System.
Even now he expected nothing. Even after his System was unlocked and he leveled it several times, giving him Skills and making him stronger through bound quintessence, he didn’t expect anything of his System. He’d gotten so little out of it, for so long.
Thorn immediately used Meditate, without even fully reading the message. His blinded, pain-filled senses dulled and an explosion of quintessence entered his mind.
It was all around him. There were no single threads to pull on; he was swimming in an ocean.
He pulled on the sea around him, and it responded. It poured into his body, and the dull roar threatening to drown out his consciousness receded slightly.
He had managed to stop dying, but it was only a temporary reprieve. In the midst of his Meditate Skill, however, those concerns and worries were distant and at arm’s length from the consciousness he retained.
He noticed, but did nothing to stop it, as his body and mind continued to gradually fail.
Another sensation entered his awareness.
There were now different threads, weaving through the ocean of quintessence. His sense of the quintessence field didn’t have colors, but if it did, then normal quintessence would be a silvery blue. These threads were gold, and they were emanating from a single location.
He pulled on the gold threads, and they entered his body.
The message from his System knocked him out of Meditate. His lungs heaved and burned, his skin was on fire, and his body screamed with pain. His mind was foggy but he pushed past the pain and opened his eyes. Surprisingly, he could see.
There was a golden light shining, almost burning in its intensity. Sitting in his lap, the crow still held the golden pill in its claw, but it had pierced the pill with its beak and was busy swallowing the piece it had pulled off of it.
In its own desperate gamble, the crow had broken up the pill and begun to absorb it.
Thorn didn’t understand the significance of his System’s warnings, and in his oxygen-deprived, brain-addled state, he didn’t try to. He only had the presence of mind to recognize that if the crow was doing something, then he probably should too.
Thorn reengaged Meditate.
He opened himself to both the golden essence and the normal quintessence. The sea of silver and gold threads surrounded him, and as he gradually absorbed more and more of the golden threads, the pain in his body and mind began to ease.
The effect of the Meditation skill removed most of his waking consciousness, allowing only the smallest glimpse of his self. The golden threads had eased the burden on his physical body and even begun repairing some of the damage.
Once the damage to his body, the fractured shoulder, the burns and the cell death from near-asphyxiation, had been repaired, a new pain began to replace the old. This pain was familiar; it was a liquid fire, coursing through his muscles and blood vessels, and very similar to the feeling of leveling up.
His detached mind noticed these details, but his Meditate Skill kept him from focusing on those sensations, until it couldn’t any more.
Thorn was forcefully thrown from his Meditate with a scream. He screamed again and again, until finally, the pain began to slowly subside.
Thorn ignored the System message, his focus drawn to the sensations of his body.
The smell inside of the fincroc’s stomach was even worse. His lungs still burned, but he felt as if he could hold his breath for minutes. Whatever was in that golden pill was gradually healing him, maybe even binding quintessence to him, albeit in a painful way.
He realized with a shudder that if he was going to survive, he would need to continue binding more.
He thought through his impressions of his Meditation state. He recalled that the golden threads were being drawn in three different directions. The first was the closest; obviously the crow. The second was Thorn, but he was pulling in the fewest. The largest number was flowing upwards, sucked in like dead stars circling a black hole.
He looked upwards, at the top of the stomach, glistening wetly in the golden light.
The beast. It was the fincroc, sucking down the quints and the energy from the pill that he had greedily swallowed, incidentally swallowing Thorn and the crow at the same time.
Thorn was still certain he was going to die. The only uncertainty was how long it would take. But was he going to let that greedy beast just suck up all those quints?
Thorn wasn’t sure of the how, but he decided to redouble his efforts and reentered Meditate for a second time.
The small part of him that was still consciously aware focused on the golden threads, pulling them towards himself. He strained and pushed and pulled, sucking in quints and whatever that golden stuff was as fast as possible.
He pulled in the gold and silver threads surrounding him, and struggled to ignore the screaming pain as the energy remade his body from the inside out.
It wasn’t enough, his detached mind noted. The fincroc was pulling more, and the strength of its pull seemed to be increasing as well.
When he exited Meditate again, screaming his throat hoarse at the agony, he decided to go all in. What was a little pain and suffering, when he could have more? He grabbed at the pill in the crow’s claw. It broke in half, and he shoved half of it into his mouth, choking it down.
Thorn ignored another message from his System warning him of unknown dangers. He ignored the blazing surge of fire igniting in his stomach and resumed Meditate. This time it was a struggle, as if his body and mind were having difficulty actually disengaging enough to let the Skill take over, but eventually, it took hold.
Thorn focused on the golden threads of energy, on keeping them inside of himself.
An all-consuming flame surged through his body. He hung on to the edge, keeping the Skill going through sheer force of will. A dense core of golden energy was radiating from his body. He could see the gold threads, leaking out of him, too many to contain. The fincroc’s core sucked them up greedily.
He Meditated for as long as he could, and the crow absorbed its own portion of the pill while the fincroc did the same. He had no idea how much time had passed, but the glow of the pill he had swallowed had decreased by perhaps half.
Unfortunately, the draw from the fincroc had only increased. Thorn was having more and more trouble just keeping the golden threads and the silvery ball of quintessence inside of himself. The insatiable maw above them was sucking in all of the energy around them. The crow seemed to be having the same difficulty as Thorn; neither of them were on the same level as this beast. They were fighting it, but in the realm of absorbing quintessence, it was just too far ahead.
As Thorn was pulled from his Meditation skill for the third time, he didn’t feel fire this time. He felt cold, a bone-chilling cold that cracked his bones and ligaments. He was a frozen rictus of pain. His mind blanked to white.
His senses returned a second later, along with the familiar burning sensation. His body felt heavy, his limbs sluggish and difficult to control, but his mind was clear, if deeply exhausted.
He wouldn’t be able to enter Meditate again. Whatever part of his mind that could operate the skill was beyond exhaustion. That didn’t matter either; in a race to absorb quintessence, he was losing. Eventually, all of the free quintessence and whatever that golden energy was, some sort of higher order quintessence, would be gone, and the pull of the fincroc’s core would begin sucking the quints out of him.
But that was okay. He had another Skill to use now.
He pulled a finger up and began tracing a pattern with Concentrate.