“Which way do we go?” Dez screamed.

In Rory’s long years, he’d found there was a spectrum of questions and answers people could be categorized into. Some people were the type to ask questions in response to surprising stimuli, while others were the kind who sought the answer directly before responding to the stimulus.

Dez was normally one of the people who answered. When others looked for guidance or counsel, he was one of those who stepped up. Always a reliable, trusty guy, was Dez.

Except this time. It was a testament to the scale of what they were facing that he had been too panicked to find the answer for himself. For good reason, too. The ground before them was cracking and shattering, pieces of the road jutting and spiking out like daggers pointing up. Every chasm that opened up between the broken chunks could trap any of them easily, fire spitting out as though the street had turned into one ginormous grill. And the whole broken space was approaching them at the pace of a racehorse.

They were screwed.

Rory looked around. He had no idea if he could Weave any of that away, and he wasn’t foolish enough to think any barricades his blizzard could throw up would stop the very ground from collapsing.

“Support,” he said, the solution taking him by surprise. “Everyone, gather together. I can keep us safe with the Sigils of Support.”

It would have to do. He blessed himself for Weaving some extra from the tunnel walls.

“No,” Viv shouted. “We just need to head back.”

Another tremor threw them all off balance and prevented Rory from asking what in the world she had meant. Where were they supposed to head back to? How were they even supposed to move with the world—

Rory’s flailing mind landed on the answer at the same time as Viv acted. She had managed to summon her Thunderclaw arm and blast out a wide area of lightning around them. A second later, as the cracking and shattering ground was nearly upon them, they all disappeared in a red flash.

When they reappeared, Rory found he was several yards away from the original spot. The ground was still breaking apart though, and it was still coming straight for them.

Rory was about to yell out that they needed to move, when it stopped all of a sudden.

“What?” He frowned. “Why’s it—”

Without warning, the cracking changed direction. Instead of coming towards them, it veered to the right. Now, the street was fine, but the buildings surrounding it started to buckle and fall, with heavy, grinding crashes.

“Move!” Dez yelled. “Get up higher.”

There was no time to waste. Even if they weren’t in the line of fire of the approaching monster, the whole place was collapsing around them. Rory struggled upslope with everyone else as they reached relative safety, finding it difficult to breathe in the wave of dust that shot out from the collapsing buildings.

Meanwhile, the Corebeast was getting farther away. Rory supposed it had taken the side-tunnel they had dug, which alerted him as to what had caused the monster’s sudden diversion.

Rory grinned at his wife. “You’re brilliant, you know that?”

She looked bashful for just a second before grinning back at him. “I’m just glad I remembered the barrier in time.”

Rory was glad for it too. At least one of them had had the presence of mind to recall the very thing they had been erecting to save them all, and it had worked. The monster had decided the barrier wasn’t worth breaking through when there was an easier path to follow nearby. All the area around them was breaking as the street had, flashes of fire lighting up at the monster’s passage, leaving a trail of devastation.

Arelland had been right. The Corebeast really was mindlessly seeking the path of least resistance to the surface.

It didn’t travel far, though. Just as Rory began to worry about the fact that they hadn’t been able to dig that deep underground, another ear-splitting roar thrummed out of the ground as though the earth itself was crying out in agony. The monster must have seen the dead-end.

“Are they going to survive in there?” Trish asked.

She was talking about the elves. Rory wondered if Arelland was part of the group who had been scouting out the monster.

“Hopefully, they got out before that thing got here,” he said.

They didn’t get to talk much afterwards. The monster came to a halt with another tremendous roar and a quake that threw them all off their feet. This time, the ground broken and completely fell within, fires shooting out in small, fiery geysers. With another roar, the monster’s paws burst out of the ground.

Rory stared. Those limbs were impossibly huge. He could have used each of the five claws on each paw as a raft to carry him on troubled waters. The paw itself was scaly construction dyed deep magenta, flames licking out between the gaps in the scales. It was like watching an armoured tower emerge from the ground. They had all been right. If they had tried to fight that beast head-on, they’d have been annihilated in seconds.

“No,” Viv breathed.

Allen was shaking his head disbelievingly at the sight before him. Trish was cursing, and so were some of the others. Rory felt the same sort of dismay bubbling up from his guts too. They had managed to divert the monster away from the palace itself. But it was still emerging at a point that was far too close. They weren’t safe by a long shot.

But then, the monster didn’t emerge. Or at least, no more of it did just there. For some reason, all the Corebeast did was use those two gigantic paws to drag itself to its right and begin journeying in that direction.

“We didn’t make any tunnels that way, did we?” Rory asked.

Lucy shook her head. “I definitely don’t remember it. Could the elves have done something?”

That was the only possible answer. But even if that was true, why were they leading it in that direction? All that lay there was—

“The lake!” Rory said, sudden understanding blooming within him. “Maybe they want to drown it or douse out its fires.”

“Is the lake going to be enough, though?” Ned asked.

That was an excellent question, one they would only get an answer to when they observed what actually took place there.

“Let’s go find out,” he said.

“It’s not safe out there,” Viv reminded him.

“We need to know what happens to it.”

“Of course. That’s why I should go and check it out, and in case it turns back towards the palace, I can come back quickly and warn everyone.”

Rory nodded. A tremor shook the area, emphasizing that they were in deep trouble, which had every possibility of getting worse. Nevertheless, the shaking was starting to get old. “We can’t all go. A couple of us will head over to the lake and check things out there. The rest of you need to go back to Belcourt and prepare to head out at a moment’s notice. At Viv’s signal, you’ll all evacuate to… I don’t know, some place away from all this.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Dez said, ever the reliable one in charge. “What’s going to be the signal?”

Viv’s crimson lightning crackled to life around her Thunderclaw arm. She raised it above her, then blasted the lightning bolt high into the sky. “That’s going to be my signal.”

“Got it.” Then he rounded on the others, his look turning severe. “Alright, y’all. It’s time to get moving. Let’s go.”

By silent agreement, everyone left except for Rory and Viv.

“I knew you were going to stay behind,” she said to the accompaniment of another heavy tremor.

“You know I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

“Not trying to find some crazy reason as to why you need to be there, dear?”

Rory smiled at her. “Well, you’re going. What more reason do I need?”

Viv chuckled. “I’m always surprised when I can laugh at times like these. You’re horrible. But let’s go.”

They didn’t go to the lake by foot, of course. That would have been disastrous to Rory’s old body, and not to mention too slow as well.

Instead, Viv had more than enough Mana on her to travel pretty far with her lightning bolt teleportation. Rory got a little sick travelling that fast over the ground without being able to ground himself at any of the intermediate location Viv hopped to. Thankfully, he hadn’t had any food since lunch several hours ago, so there was nothing for his stomach to get sick on.

When they reached their destination, they staggered to a stop. Viv had found them a little spot on a smaller hill that overlooked the local lake. It was distant enough from the Corebeast’s so they wouldn’t have to worry about shattering earth and vents of fire.

“Look, it’s almost there.” Viv pointed to their left.

Rory grimaced as he watched tree after tree fall to the Corebeast’s rampaging approach. Several of the fallen trees had caught fire too, as had much of the undergrowth. They’d have to douse those flames before it turned into a raging wildfire.

“I hope the elves are alright,” Rory said.

Viv didn’t get a chance to reply. The monster chose that moment to burst through the ground and finally reach the lake.

An explosion of superheated steam and superheated water whooshed through the air, rising in an enormous cloud of burning mist. The water changed colour from a pond-green to a brownish sludge, a heavy, gigantic shape moving through its murky depths.

“I’m not sure that lake’s going to hold that thing,” Viv said.

“The real thing we need to see is where it goes from here,” Rory said.

He dragged in a quick breath. He frowned. The air was already getting muggy and sweltering like a hot summer’s day. Just a minute’s presence, and the Corebeast had made the humidity skyrocket. If this kept up, the whole of the area would turn into a muggy swamp with unbearable heat. Whatever the monster did, they’d have to drive it away farther.

“You are still here?”

Viv and Rory both turned in frightened alarm at the harsh voice. Rory’s runaway heart slowed when he saw it was only Arelland. The elf looked bedraggled and haggard, his whole mech suit drooping with exhaustion.

“You didn’t… swim out of that lake, did you?” he asked.

“The ones in that lake didn’t make it out.”

Rory’s heard skipped a beat. “The ones in the lake… do you mean Esrahir?” He swallowed. “Is he dead?”

“He has passed on.” Arelland muttered something in a tongue Rory didn’t know, but it sounded sad and solemn. “He was one of the bravest soldiers I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. A good ethanadi. A great athalem. He will be missed.”

Rory was too shocked at hearing about the elf’s death to question about the foreign terms. “Was he the one who led that thing into the lake?”

“Correct. Esrahir had a Sigil that allowed him to carve a passage underground, and he used it to excellent effect. Unfortunately, our mech suits aren’t the best when it comes to swimming rapidly enough to get away from fire and stream.”

Oh, Rory could bet that was the case. Those giant, hulking constructs would be impossible to move around fast enough to evade the heated water, if it could even move without sinking in the first place. But now wasn’t the time to ask about the mech suits’ nautical properties.

“What’s going on?” Rory asked. “Are the rest of you all right?”

Arelland grunted. He provided them with a quick report that most of the Otherworlders had evacuated the tunnels once the Corebeast really started moving. Apparently, its passage left the entire dungeon unstable, and it had begun collapsing in on itself as soon as it had passed through. They couldn’t even begin to follow it into that mess of burning, falling rocks and rivers of lava and smoke.

Rory was glad he hadn’t gone within the dungeon, then. He had enough of a hell to deal on the surface.

Fortunately, that meant most of the Otherworlders were fine. Some had been able to take a roundabout route through a different entrance to dungeons, and thus get ahead of the monster in the giant tunnel. Esrahir was one of those. Their purpose had been to make sure the creature really did follow the predicted path, except for the point where it diverged from the palace.

“It hasn’t truly diverged, however,” Arelland said. “It still seeks you.”

Rory shook his head. “We blocked the path to Belcourt palace. It can’t make its way there, unless you’re saying it’s going to stomp across open ground and tackle the Safe Zone head-on.”

That was a rather frightening possibility that Rory really hoped wouldn’t materialize into being. Arelland set his heart at ease for a moment by denying it. But only for a moment.

“You mistake me,” the elf said. He hesitated, the look in his eyes turning reluctant, almost worried. “The Corebeast does not wish to enter your home. It seeks you, Rory.”

“That’s crazy,” Viv said immediately. Unlike Rory, it sounded like she had already picked up on the elf’s meaning from when he had said it earlier. She just refused to believe it.

Rory himself could hardly comprehend what he was hearing. He himself was the Corebeast’s target. That was both incredibly scary and a tremendous blessing.

“It is difficult to fathom,” Arelland agreed. “But it isn’t an impossibility.”

“How do you even know something like that?” Rory asked. “There’s been no indication so far that I’m supposed to be the monster’s target, and not the palace itself.”

“You will soon see.”

They all turned to watch the monster start climbing out of the watery depths. With more steam and bursting water, the gigantic Corebeast reared one head, then the next, then yet another. Rory’s jaw would have fallen to the ground if it physically could.

The creature turnout to be too large for the lake to. Its edges started crumbling inwards as more of the creature popped out. When it had finally emerged, its enormous form stretching out and covering the whole expanse of the area as far as Rory could see, he was at a loss for words.

Mostly because all three of its heads were pointed straight at him.

“You’re right,” he said, his voice far, far too weak and squeaky. “I think it really is looking just for me.”

Arelland was staring up at the creature alongside Rory. “In which case, there is only one thing we can do from this point on.”

“What’s that?”

“Run.”

They ran.