Olivia summoned a ball of fire and tossed it high into the air, using her will to hold it, hovering there, shedding light over a large area. She was at the base of the stone chasm wall, and an uneven rocky floor spread out before her, littered with rocks and boulders from tiny to cottage-sized. She didn’t see the source of the roar at first, but then the ground shook, and a bear-shaped boulder bounded into view. It was as bulky as a mid-sized sedan and covered with jagged, flint-like stone spikes. It turned to Olivia and roared, its huge, stony maw opening to reveal rows of uneven, razor-sharp stone teeth.

“Shit!” Olivia screamed, turning and trying to put some distance between herself and the red-eyed rock bear. It was fast, though, and as she darted behind a large boulder, it rushed past, swiping its claws along behind her, ripping chunks of stone out and showering her with rock dust. Olivia backpedaled and fired a Magma Ray into the rear haunch of the bear. The beam of super-hot magma splashed into its stony hide, spraying over it in a shower, but the bear only roared and turned to face her, obviously unharmed.

“Shit, shit!” Olivia tried her other meta-element spell, Arcfrost Cascade, pouring a buzzing, crackling torrent of freezing, electrified air out of her outstretched palm directly into the bear’s face. It roared and shuddered but continued to advance on her, albeit in slow-motion. Each of its steps was ponderous, and Olivia could see it strain with the effort of moving toward her. She didn’t know how long the effect would last, so she began preparing her next spell. She gathered a thread of water-attuned Energy and a thread of fire-attuned Energy, and she performed the weave for pyrosteam, pushing it into the form of her Fiery Burst spell.

A jet of superheated steam tore out of her palm, straight into the chest of the heaving rock bear. It blasted through its rocky flesh like a firehose hitting mud, and as the blistering torrent penetrated the cold rock of the bear’s body, a series of thunderous cracks echoed through the cavern. The bear didn’t even have a chance to roar as its stony form crumbled to wet, steaming rubble. A tremendous torrent of Energy motes flooded into Olivia as System messages appeared in her vision:

***Congratulations! You’ve achieved level 14 Elemental Archon. You have gained 10 Intelligence, 10 Will, and have 16 points to distribute.***

***Congratulations! You’ve learned the spell: Pyrosteam Drill - Basic***

***Pyrosteam Drill - Basic: Prerequisite: Affinity - Fire, Affinity - Water. You conjure forth a piercing ray of pure pyrosteam. Energy cost: 200, Cooldown: Minimal.***

“Thank you, Mr. Bear,” Olivia said, hurrying to move across the rocky chasm floor. She still had to find the next door and wanted to maintain her lead on her competitors. She moved quickly but cautiously, unsure if more rocky monsters waited to attack her or if they might come along, given enough time. She kept her fire orb floating in the air above her, shedding light in a wide circle. It was in this flickering orange light that she spotted the iron door after crossing another hundred feet or so of rocky floor.

The door was mounted in another rocky wall, and Olivia wondered if there were more doors along the length of this vast, deep chasm. She wondered just how many starting rooms there were, and if there were paths through doors she hadn’t seen. Deciding she couldn’t waste time wondering about the unknown, she melted the padlock off the door and walked into a short tunnel, surprised to see a little, square, silver chest waiting for her. She closed the door and did her best to weld it shut with a ball of magma, then knelt before the chest. There wasn’t any sort of lock on the clasp, and, glancing over the chest, she couldn’t see any dangerous-looking runes, so she lifted open the lid.

The chest was only about as big as a lunchbox, and even then, the interior was almost empty. A lovely silver ring sat nestled in the folds of gray, silken lining. Olivia picked up the ring, admiring how the silver band was carved to look like intertwining vines of ivy with tiny blossoms here and there. When she bonded with the ring, she found it was a spacious and sturdy dimensional container, though nothing was hidden within it. She wore the ring on her left hand, reserving the right hand for her Copper cohort ring when she got it back. “All these storage rings—my little blue satchel is going to grow jealous.”

She advanced on the next iron door, noting that it was built exactly like the other ones she’d opened. For the second time, though, it wasn’t locked, and she pulled the bolt sideways and pulled on the door. The room she revealed was about five paces by five, with a low stone ceiling and solid stone walls. She couldn’t see any doors or objects in the small space.

Olivia wondered if she’d taken a dead-end path or if there was some sort of puzzle she needed to solve to progress. She walked around the small perimeter, tapping at the walls, wishing she had her belongings so she could tap with her staff instead of her knuckles. “I’m wasting time here.” Olivia walked back to the door, closed it, and sealed it with magma; then, she turned and faced the far wall. She held out her hand and cast Pyrosteam Drill straight into the center of the wall.

The narrow cone of superheated steam shot forth from her palm and penetrated the stone with a thunderous crack. Olivia moved the focus around in a small circle, blasting rock away in a cloud of hissing steam, dust, and rubble. When the spell faded and the air cleared, she could see the remnants of the wall and a partially deformed iron door. The metal had heated to the melting point in parts, and where it had drooped away from the frame, she could see darkness beyond.

Judging by the door’s deformity and how it was still partially blocked by stone, Olivia didn’t think she’d be able to open it normally. Instead, she concentrated on her Core, pulling forth a thread of air-attuned Energy and a thread of fire-attuned Energy, weaving them into the shape of plasma, and then casting Fiery Burst but pushing the plasma Energy into the spell pattern.

***Congratulations! You’ve learned the spell: Plasma Wave - Basic***

***Plasma Wave - Basic: Prerequisite: Affinity - Fire, Affinity - Air. You conjure forth a surging wave of pure plasma. Energy cost: 200, Cooldown: Minimal.***

When the wave of crackling blue superheated gas and electricity hit the iron door, a tremendous surging burst of white light flared forth. When the afterimage finally cleared from Olivia’s vision, she saw that the iron door had been reduced to a pile of molten slag. With a running hop, she jumped the threshold and the still glowing pile of molten metal and found herself in yet another short hallway facing another iron door. She didn’t even think about it; she just tossed a ball of plasma at the padlock, averting her eyes as it flared and melted away. Then, Olivia slammed the bolt open and pulled the door.

An enormous octagonal room lit with glowing red crystals high up on the walls confronted her as the door opened. Standing in the center of the room, unmoving for the moment, was an iron man-shaped construct with an axe blade for a right hand and a long smooth barrel where the left should be. As Olivia took in the sight, the dark eye sockets on the construct started to glow with red light and, with a creaking, groaning grind, it bent to stare at her.

Olivia had time to take a breath and wonder if she should step into the room, but before she could do anything else, the huge iron man thrust its left nozzle forward, and a torrent of liquid flame surged toward her. Olivia screamed and dove back into the hallway, trying to slam the door shut as she passed. The flame surged against the door and the wall, splashing through into the hallway and licking at her heels while she hopped toward the door she had previously melted.

She seemed to be out of the range of the blast where she hunkered before the molten, destroyed door, but she knew that wouldn’t last if the automaton moved closer to the door and pointed the nozzle into the hallway. “It’s just fire. You don’t have to be worried about fire,” she said, concentrating on her Elemental Form spell and casting the fire version. Soon, her vision took on the bright sepia tones that told her it was working, and she walked forward, directly into the surging flames pouring forth from the construct’s arm. She didn’t even feel them. When she passed through the doorway and into the large octagonal room, she stepped out of the flamethrower’s arc of fire and faced the huge metal being.

It seemed to take the construct a moment to realize she had passed through its flamethrower, but as Olivia continued to circle toward the far side of the room, it took note of her, and its gout of fire sputtered out. It straightened up and lifted its axe hand, taking one step toward her. Olivia had been expecting a new kind of violence, and she was ready with her new Plasma Wave spell.

She unleashed the flood of crackling, hissing, blue plasma toward the construct, and it tried to dodge, but it was huge, ponderous, and slow. The wave of plasma splashed against its lower torso, left hip, and thigh with a tremendous flash of white light and sizzling pops. The construct seemed to groan as it twisted sideways, half its support base suddenly turned to molten slag.

With all the grace of a collapsing building, it fell, metal ripping and rivets popping as its one good leg tried to fight gravity. When it thundered down against the metal floor, Olivia had another wave of plasma primed, and she unleashed it directly into the construct's chest. Another flash of white light, popping sizzling arcs of electricity, and then all was still, save the dripping and pooling of molten slag. A torrential wave of Energy surged into Olivia.

***Congratulations! You’ve achieved level 15 Elemental Archon. You have gained 10 Intelligence, 10 Will, and have 24 points to distribute.***

Olivia glanced around the chamber for any other threats and, finding none, decided to spend her accumulation of attribute points. Looking at her status sheet, she reasoned she should improve her base physical stats to something an average human wouldn’t call deficient. She’d spoken with plenty of colonists, enough to know that a “good” stat for a baseline human was around eight or nine, so she increased her strength, dexterity, and agility to nine.

Olivia put the remaining extra points into vitality, bringing it to thirty-seven. She felt a surge of Energy rush through her body, leaving her feeling giddy and lightheaded for a moment. It made her feel strong, vibrant even, and she purposefully strode across the room to the locked iron door on the far side. A crackling ball of plasma materialized over her left hand, and she tossed it at the lock. When she opened the door, she found herself in a square room with a stairway leading down into darkness and a shoebox-sized silver chest sitting on the floor at the top of the stairs. “Well, that’s level one done.”

As she knelt to open the chest, Olivia ran through what she’d done so far in the dungeon, estimating how long it had taken her to clear the first level. It didn’t seem like very much time had passed at all, maybe an hour. She felt absolutely fresh, too, thanks to the Energy she absorbed after killing the monsters that had been in her path. She carefully opened the lid of the chest and found a potion bottle and a black hunk of very heavy ore about the size of her fist.

When Olivia lifted the ore, hefting its solid, satisfying mass, she felt the depths of its potential pulling at her, and she knew it was valuable. She put it into her new storage ring and picked up the bottle. “Tyra’s Tears of Renewal,” she read. “Hmm.” She didn’t feel like she needed renewing at the moment, so she slipped the potion into her ring and then stood. “Time to descend,” she said, smiling at how she’d taken to talking to herself in this dungeon, then she began the descent to the next level.