It takes me most of the second layer to gather a tenuous calm about myself. Even then, it's a ragged thing; tattered and breezy, letting in the chill breeze and the bite of fear.

  Crushing a stone bat’s skull against the tunnel wall helps. Verity’s smile, now returned, helps when it isn’t causing frustration to boil in my gut. Lena’s doing alright, too, running through strings of Wind-blades and tweaking them to work better against stone. Gods, we even stop long enough to have some rations while I help Lena apply enchantments to her clothes— ten minutes at most— and the conversation is normal. Lena asks a question about my Lightning; Verity tries to distract us with a pun so bad I try to forget it immediately.

  But we are not, I am not, truly calm. Of course not. Every moment we spend exploring the second layer, hoping for another Heart, is a moment wasted. Even if it’s the right thing to do, the safe thing to do, I loathe the wasted minutes. They drip together, pooling into a lost hour. All to the tune of the ever-howling wind, shrieking and wailing.

  It leaves me waiting, once more, for a knife in the dark.

  “That’s, um, the same smoke we saw on the first layer, isn’t it?” Lena’s voice is a little breathy, strained by the steep tunnel we’d just ascended. The portal isn’t far, now, and Gods, I’d take another Heart in the damned river on layer three.

  She points across to the opposite cliff, at the murky maw of a tunnel. And then her finger moves to a second tunnel, equally murky, this one spilling writhing black fog from its depths. If my memory is serving correctly, neither of those were there before.

  “Well, that's odd,” I say as dryly as possible. “Didn't see anything like it on the lower layers. Delves sometimes just have... thematic overlap, I think is the term?”

  “Thematic overlap,” Lena repeats quietly. While I'm not looking, I can still hear the rustle of parchment paper and the scratch of note-taking.

  Heh. Maybe Ruby and Lena would get along? It's a fun thought in an uncomfortable time.

  “I pointed that out too, H— Lena! Lena. Bleh.” Verity corrects herself, nose scrunching. “Definitely something off, but then again, Delves are weird.”

  “Is that, um, bad? I don't really understand Delves. The Crawford library doesn’t really have much about them...”

  Because my parents left notes in most of the books, and I won’t let anyone else follow their path into the grave.

  I don't say that, though. But now they're both looking at me, and I won’t make a liar of myself by staying quiet. Waving my tail in a vague imitation of a shrug, I conclude, “Not a damned clue.”

  “So we'll assume it's dangerous and keep our distance,” Verity concludes, lips quirking suddenly.

  “You don't know?” Lena says, nearly at the same time.

  I look between them, then back toward our destination. We've lost a minute to this chatter, but they both seem much more relaxed, for some reason. Hardly wasted time then.

  “Delves are weird,” I echo Verity with yet another shrug. “That’s normally half the fun, but we’re not sticking around long enough to figure out the nonsense, ideally. So, yes, avoid it.”

  “This is a different weird from that mural,” Lena grumbles, and I feel my lips twitching. “Ah, that was heretical, this is... scary. What if one’s closer to us?”

  “Mural?” Verity frowns. “What was on it?”

  Two minutes lost, now. I have to remember these girls aren’t Delvers, and thus don’t really feel the habitual, methodical urgency of our work. If it helps them keep calm, though, I can’t be too mad.

  “Maybe later,” I cut in, thumping my tail for extra emphasis. “We’ll rest on the next layer. Talk then.”

  “Oh! Um, sorry, right,” Lena shakes her head, blinking. Even though I’m already turning around, walking toward the portal location, I can imagine her fidgeting with her hair quite vividly. “It’s just...”

  She trails off.

  “Stressful,” Verity provides, matching the softness of Lena’s voice. “Scary, even. We’ll all have to deal with that, too; if talking helps you, talk as much as you’d like, okay?”

  “Oh! Um, alright. Can I ask questions?”

  “Just stay focused. I don’t mind,” I grunt. A little bubble of frustration rises at Verity's presumption, but she's right. I can ignore Lena's chatter if I need to.

  A few more marches up and we’ll curve right into the tunnel I’d placed the portal in. “Next layer is the clay monsters and the gravel terrain. Watch your step and stay close to the river.”

  “River? What's the—”

  Thankfully for me, Verity launches into a better explanation of the layer— clay monsters with river plant interiors, the gravel, and so on. This portal is a bit too volatile to show the other side, just a vague, misty gold, so I can’t exactly point out the details of the next layer.

  It also gives me the time to focus on inspecting the portal itself. My claws run a circuit around the edge, feeling the bumps and dips of every metaphysical seam. No jagged bits, no tears. Good. If anything, the edge feels a bit stronger than the Delve around it.

  Unusual, to say the least. Rather than discard the thought— the black smoke hangs heavy in the back of my mind— I get down on one knee.

  “Portal work?” Verity guesses from somewhere behind me.

  I nod. Wait, she can't see that.

  “Portal work,” I agree. “Don’t want this closing on us.”

  “Would that cost, um, Heart magic? Or, ah, is it something else? Your own mana?”

  A flex of will draws a wisp of Delve magic from a Heart, spinning the tarlike sensation into sickly yellow glow on my hands. With my claws as false needles, I start stitching up the edges, anchoring the portal to a greater span of the Delve itself. Then, and only then, do I gather my thoughts to speak. Lena asked a good question, after all.

  “Just time and effort, if the portal’s already open,” I say, pausing to work a particularly wiggly edge. “Just needed to use a little bit to interact with the Delve properly. Better than having to actually burn Delve magic and reach into the abstract to open one on the ascent.”

  “Ah! Fascinating. So closing portals doesn't require... oh, um, I'll ask later.” Parchment rustles behind me, boots clack against stone. “Verity, is there anything I could prepare for the next layer?”

  “Well, first! You’re throwing around the ‘mana’ word, which isn’t something I usually hear on this side of the mountains. Where’d you...”

  With their focus shifted, I sink into the rhythm of my work, setting the rest of my mind adrift. The voices of my friends sink in, a trickle of comfort to steady my hand.

  “...and they collapse when the plants fall out? Ah, that's probably important...”

  “They do. I can also cause them to solidify and crack with Fire— they actually exploded once or twice! It’d be way more fun if they weren’t so, well, mushy.”

  Explode? My hand stills, then starts again. Bah. I'd missed that, probably while ripping another monster apart.

  “Hmm. Oh! Jordan, his service is pottery. He said that clay can explode if there's air in it when you try to fire it. Maybe that's what's happening?”

  “Maybe! You could try drying them out with circular Wind patterns, if it's anything like Fire-driven air currents...”

  They descend into the murky depths of academia— or perhaps they're ascending a tower, vanishing into the luminous fog. I'm inclined to stay right here fixing the portal while they do it, though; the finer details of segmented cyclical magic structures would be a bit distracting to think about.

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  Minutes pass. The words of my companions slip through my scales and ease the tension within. We will succeed. We're not giving ground to fear, and the longer we hold the line, the better.

  One last check. Banishing the thread of Delve magic, I rise up and run my claws along the newly reinforced edge. The bumps of the portal's seam are regular now, smooth ridges between loops of impossible thread. No weaknesses, no tears; the fabric of the Delve around it is weaker than I'd like, but I've spread strain of the portal across a broader swathe this time. No gaps for a monster to slip through, hopefully.

  Portal’s still foggy, though. It’ll take a bit to clear up on its own, and as I recall, it wasn’t exactly pointed in a useful direction.

  Verity trills, tugging my focus outward. “We can talk about Lorenna’s Theorem later, Lena— looks like Ivy’s done!”

  Lena speaks next, before I can find my voice. “Ah, it looks... um, different? I can't tell what changed.”

  “Unless you'd like to take an abstract look, you probably won't,” I answer finally, shrugging. My tail-tip lifts, gesturing toward the portal, and I copy that with a scale-covered arm. “Ready to get going?”

  Boots scrape against stone, leather rustles, metal clanks. A look back confirms Lena and Verity are standing up now— it's enough time to see Lena's uncomfortably wobbly smile and Verity's bright fixture of a grin.

  “Of course!” Verity chirps. “Though there's nothing wrong with waiting, if Lena needs it. Are you feeling alright?”

  More shuffling, this time with a note of parchment against parchment. “Ah. N-nervous, but fine. I modified a spell structure for the next layer, and, ah.”

  She makes a strained giggle, smiling awkwardly. “I guess I'm excited to try it? I-I'm taking this seriously, Ivy, I promise.”

  A far cry from running ahead and nearly dying to a bear, eh?

  “Why wouldn’t you be?” I counter, tail flicking against the stone. “You know what’s on the line. I'll go first, then come back to confirm we're good to move on.”

  Before the conversation can make good on its threat to continue, I step through the portal. Boots hit gravel, my arms go up to block possible threats, and the air—

  My eyes sting, my nose burns; the taste of spoiled eggs and rancid fish floods my mouth. I hastily pull on the magic flowing through me, dulling my fangs and my senses long enough to wipe away the vile flavors. Even then, the stench of brine and sulfur is enough to force me back onto the second layer, cursing and snarling under my breath.

  Gods. Of course the layer's changed. The Delve seems determined to make me miserable today, and it's enough for me to wonder if I'd drawn a God's ire. The sensible part of me recalls that layer transformations are uncommon, not rare, and it's halfway through dredging up statistics before I strangle the thought. Proceed as normal, not that we have another choice.

  Wind scours my tongue, and I spit out the rot in a gob of bile and saliva.

  Lena and Verity are looking at me now, and the concern in Lena's eyes is writ more plainly than a street sign. With the taste gone, I let my fangs return and check their points with the side of my tongue.

  “Well,” I hiss, looking at my comrades. A bead of anger hangs at the edge of my mouth, a snarling rant that wouldn't even help me feel better.

  So I take another breath, hand raised to stall Verity's slow advance toward me. “Get ready. Smells different this time, I wasn't expecting it. I'll look again. Prepare an air cleaning spell.”

  “Are you alright?”

  “What happened?”

  Lena and Verity speak at nearly the same time, then look at each other.

  Clearing her throat, Verity rests a hand on Lena's shoulder. “The layer smells different, Ivy?”

  “Bit like low tide,” I say, wrinkling my nose. It’s hard to forget the scents and sounds of the ocean, nor do I wish to. Wind gathers around my claws, coiled tightly as I pull together a basic spell structure for purification. “Talk later. I'm going to get a better look, see what's changed. Only hazard is the distraction, I think.”

  “What’s chan—”

  I step back through the portal and snap my fingers. Wind leaps into the structure, flooding the air around me with flickering green light before fading away. Barely a hint of that sulfur remains when I draw my first breath; filtering out the rest would take more magic than it’s worth.

  ...and Gods, I’ll need every bit I can get. Now that my senses aren't being crowded, other changes begin to make themselves known. I cannot hear the rumble of the river, the lapping of water against stone; I cannot feel the gentle breeze such masses of water conduct.

  Taking a deep breath, I turn away from the endless expanse of gravel.

  The thing before me is the corpse of a river, a spine of stagnant water laid down upon sodden red clay. Sickly plants cling to what little remains, like bits of dying flesh on crumbling bone. Gathered around this winding carcass are veins of black smoke, rifts in gravel and clay that bleed yet more of that unsettling wrongness into a colorless sky. Wrong, but alive in a way it wasn’t before; alive because it is dying, now.

  It could even be beautiful, if not for the horror it stirs in me.

  I take another deep breath to center myself. In and out, swallowing that barely-there sulfur, exhaling more of the same. My tail curls around a large rock, clicking and clacking rhythmically. Time to lean back into my Delver habits.

  What else has changed? I can see a handful of clay monsters lurching along the riverbed in the distance, yes, but nothing new. Still, I’ll need to prepare; at some point I’d hoped to use this previously safe layer as a quick rest. Not quite as safe a plan now, is it?

  Plans form, plans die. It’s hard to stand here and plan for safety, to not give in to my smouldering anger, stoked by dread and threatening to burn into rage. Dongbaek is trying to murder me. Lena and Verity must be acceptable costs in his mind; never mind that the latter is a paladin of the Goddess of Justice.

  What little skin remains on my arms and neck tingles, shifting into scales as I think. Do we rest on layer two? Maybe, but the idea rankles— so high up, so little progress. Layer four might have changed, too, and I can’t rule out that the changes are what destabilized the portal between two and three. Any shift in concept would alter how two layers interact, so... mm.

  Anyways. I’d been hasty with my portal between three and four, so it might not even exist now. Feh. Not a mistake— the Guild always advises a swift exit if there’s a hint of things going wrong— but I’ll put it in the report anyways. Haste was the right choice, it got us to Lena sooner.

  As for the scents? Not much I can do about them, unless I want to waste some Delve magic to try and meddle with the mechanisms of the layer.

  Finally, I drag myself free of the mire of worry. Just in time for an awful thought to emerge, a joke I’d rather choke on than admit to...

  But nobody’s here, really. Might as well say it.

  “At least we won’t have to dive for Hearts,” I confide in the layer, taking another filtered breath. My chuckle is strained, but even that is enough to ease some of the tension in my shoulders. “No more wet bird Magebloods or getting set on fire.”

  Time to get on with it, then, and prepare for layer three. Again.

  It takes ten minutes to explain the situation, then set up proper air filtering spells for Lena and Verity. Lena needs a quick explanation of how to split air flows, and Verity’s preferred Fire barrier doesn’t work for gases. The academic side of things is at least interesting, and Lena didn’t take us too off-path with her questions.

  The right thing to do, if we weren’t on a clock, would be to spend another twenty minutes resting. That’s what I should have done more of when I took Lena down the first time, and it’s something I know I should do now. No more mistakes.

  But, Gods, we can’t. I can’t waste the Restoration’s protection, nor would I willingly throw away what time Lena has... but haste in excess is risk, and risk will kill us all down here. So we take a few minutes to top up Lena’s enchantments and stretch, instead. Even that feels like twisting a knife in a deep wound.

  “Ready, Ivy?” Verity calls, leaning into my vision. She’s smiling again, bright enough to blind and sharp enough to peel flesh from bone. “I added some of my own tricks to Lena’s enchantments.”

  Bah. I’m losing myself in my thoughts again, aren’t I? My tail sweeps the floor, scattering stony monster bits everywhere. “I—”

  “She did! They’re, um, really interesting. Sun magic has this incredible capacity for... oh, yes, I’m ready to go!” Lena scurries in, bowling over my words. The moment she stops talking, though, her face flushes red. “I interrupted, didn’t I? Um.”

  Verity turns to face Lena, and whatever she does, Lena’s cheeks make a decent imitation of a tomato. I can't really stop the snort that escapes me, but I can raise an eyebrow when Verity spins back around with a lopsided smirk. The other eyebrow goes up when she winks, leaning forward and patting me on the shoulder. I can just barely feel it through my armor, but the warmth lingers.

  “You are doing an excellent job, as far as I can tell, and we’ll be out of here with time to spare,” Verity trills, turning her shoulder-pat into a grand gesture toward the portal. “Adamantine will guide our path. So, are you ready, Ivy?”

  “I...” I blink, working my jaw. I’m doing my best, of course I am, but it’s another thing for a paladin to tell me that.

  “Yes,” I say, nodding. “Verity, put yourself between the riverbed and Lena. Ranged magic where you can, let me do the killing. Lena, wind blades might not work well, conserve your magic...”

  Lena’s expression brightens, oddly, and I trail off. I gesture at her, first with my tail, then with a hand. She smiles, turquoise eyes gleaming brighter than ever. “Ah, I have something that might work? It needs more time, though. Better than worrying about... everything.”

  “...You know what? Sure. Just warn us when you’re trying it,” I decide with a shrug. No point in stifling her growing excitement, but I need to be careful. “And be specific about what you’re doing. Stick close to Verity, and if your filtration spell starts to fail—”

  “—I can refresh it,” Verity cuts in cheerfully, sidling up to Lena. “Sun magic or a bit of Adamantine’s own, if it comes to it.”

  “And I’ll call it out! Um, if my spell stops working, I mean, but I can probably fix it myself,” Lena nods vigorously, looking up at Verity— Goddess, Lena looks so small next to Verity— before facing me again. “I’ve been studying those books at the estate, Ivy. All the banned volumes of Classical Magecraft, even! I know exactly what to look for, how to take apart a structure... ah. Um. I’m rambling. Sorry.”

  She descends into mumbling, toying with a lock of curly hair.

  My lips twitch. The start of a Lena rant, here? And after all that good cheer on the first layer? Gods, she actually believes we’ll get out of here, doesn’t she. A member of the Restoration Church, coming along while I do what my parents couldn’t.

  “Let’s get on with it, then,” I say aloud, and step through the portal once more.

  2F470

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