Hekate swung her shrouded weapon, Dark Debt, in its Aspect form, the scythe blade formed from pure necrotic Mana blasting out another arc of devastating, infectious energy. It was liberating to let loose like this, without worrying about the swirling upswell of domain power that followed her like an incoming tide. Everywhere she stepped, destructive and corroding force warped the metal around her.

“This would have been pretty bad to use on Baserock.” She admitted, begrudgingly. Looking at the devastation left in her wake, it was easy to superimpose the image of all the survivors she’d rescued into that bleak, rusted hellscape. They wouldn’t have survived any more than the Ethermen did. And the worst part was, this was the contained version.

When Hekate and Lily had discovered their Necromancy and Ice Embodiments were Aspects, they’d trained for a long time in the Forge to contain the raw potency that flowed off of them. Initially, the impact of her Aspect form would have been a dozen times larger than it was now, spreading waves of Necrotic power farther and faster than the current, comparatively tame, corrosion.

No matter how hard they tried or how long they trained, they couldn’t completely suppress the aura that surrounded them when they used their Embodiments. It was an inherent part of these forms that they spread the power of the connected domain.

“It would also be much harder if Caeden hadn’t created that shrouded weapon for you.” Dave smiled lightly as he bisected a crazed and dissolving Etherman that wandered in their direction. He’d initially followed behind her in case there were any ambushes, but that proved entirely unnecessary when Hekate’s passage left the corridor behind them barely passable and deeply scarred with necrotic energies.

“It’s pretty great, I’ll admit.” Hekate smiled at the scythe in her hands. It had been surprising, how much a boost Dark Debt provided. No wonder Caeden used Forged Infinity so much. It was too bad that gaining Blade Forge had messed it up somehow. Hekate didn’t exactly understand the underlying problem, but apparently the way they made shrouded weapons was incompatible with Blade Forge because it was so different from a normal shroud. Every attempt Caeden made to make a new one exploded.

But that wasn’t Hekate’s problem. For all that she had a rare magic shroud, it was still basically the same as every other shroud. Caeden had no problem making her a shrouded weapon. And it was a good one. Part of that was the inherent power of her shroud and splinter. Both Necromancy and Soul were powerful in their own right. But part of it was also Caeden’s personal skills. Either way, she was happy with the outcome.

“What’s going on here?” Dave’s words drew her from her contemplation. Guiltily, Hekate realized she’d stopped paying attention to her surroundings. Their progress so far had been admittedly easy, but that didn’t mean they were safe. This founder guy had a habit of revealing increasingly powerful ethertech at the most annoying times.

Looking forward, Hekate saw that the long series of hallways they’d been walking was coming to an end. Not far ahead, a closed and heavily reinforced door separated them from whatever lay beyond.

“Interesting. We haven’t encountered one of these before.” Dave flicked a blade forward, taking an Etherman in the ethertech-coated excuse for a head. It stumbled for a moment before collapsing. “Where were all the Ethermen coming from if this was in the way the whole time? No, it must have been closed ahead of our approach. We’re being watched.”

“I kinda figured that. CV surveillance isn’t exactly common, even within the military, but if ever they’ve got it, it would be weird if the nutcase running this place hadn’t set it up so he could watch every inch of this place.” Hekate shrugged.

“True. But we had no real way of actually proving that before now. Neither of us is proficient enough in ethertech to spot the equipment among the mess of ethertech running through every surface. Now, we can say with confidence that these Ethermen weren’t just blindly dispersed throughout the whole facility. But still…” Dave frowned, gazing at the door.

“What?”

“...These attacks feel far too light. We’re ostensibly attacking this man’s home. Considering the size of this place, the amount of resources present here would be simply staggering. Yet we’ve only encountered Ethermen that we’d seen before. One’s that he was willing to place on the battlefield in an unknown level of danger. That is to say, pieces he was willing to lose.” Dave explained his misgivings.

“So? Those would be the combat-capable Ethermen he had, right?” Hekate didn’t see his concern. It made sense that they would be facing the most powerful Ethermen they’d seen before, just in greater numbers. They might not be effective, but the founder couldn’t be expected to predict the power of Hekate’s Embodiment.

“The tools one uses in an offensive battle are not the same ones used in the defense of one’s home.” Dave shook his head. “And the fact that he sent waves of these Ethermen at us showed that he does not fear their loss. Nothing we’ve done so far has truly hurt him, in his own mind. Otherwise, these meaningless attacks would have ceased. We’re being lured into a false sense of security by a monotonous barrage of fodder.”

“You sure about that?” Hekate cocked her head to the side.

“For as much as he is an apparent sociopath, this founder character seems cautious. Almost to a fault. He’s never once been physically present at any attack he staged, acting only through intermediaries. More than that, every attack has involved an almost comical amount of overwhelming force. It is only because your friends and yourself have exceeded expectations by such a massive margin that he’s been stymied. Those are not the actions of a reckless man.”

“So you think…” Hekate flicked her eyes toward the end of the blocked off corridor.

“I’m assuming that this is meant to be the culmination of the facade. Bored and confident, you burst through the defenses that block your perception with undue confidence and are punished for your hubris.” Dave snorted. “It’s actually a little amateur, honestly. Then again, the tactical acumen most shrouded have shown is far below even this, so I’m sure his expectations were limited, and his opportunities to test his wits in a strategic battle were slim to nonexistent.”

The look on Dave’s face shifted to something akin to pity. “It’s too bad that he won’t gain the opportunity to grow into a proper opponent. Raise your guard, this is most definitely a trap.”

Hekate grumbled, certain that Dave was right but resenting the fact that she hadn’t noticed the mind games until he’d brought it up. A hint of hindsight revealed how weird it was that they’d encountered wave after wave of the same enemies with no variance. She felt a little embarrassed. Still, she listened to her Familiar and sharpened her attention.

A swing of Dark Debt cleaved through the reinforced door like butter. A few more had it falling apart in chunks of rapidly rusting metal. Stepping through carefully, Dave and Hekate entered into an entirely different space.

{}

Damon watched the founder’s shaking head as he groaned in annoyance. “That armored one is clever, clever, clever. Too clever. The tactics of the Starry Sea are childs-play to him, it would seem. And the scythe-wielder…A magic shroud? I’ve been paying too little attention, of course. She must have pulled that one in from beyond. Interesting.”

The final word was spoken with such raw hunger and intensity that Damon could practically hear the drool pooling in the man’s mouth. Hearing that tone pointed in Hekate’s directions made him clench his hands until his knuckles popped. But there was nothing he could do right now. Not in his current state. But Damon had noticed something on one of the CVs tucked off to the side that had him quivering in anticipation. A view focused outside the fake island’s maze-like interior.

“No matter. They’ll surely have to work going forward. And healing seems unlikely considering the apparent focus of their Aspects. Yes, they’ll be stumped here.” The founder nodded rapidly, as if reassuring himself.

And Damon recognized why. Caution was the main tenant of the founder. He seemed to be a supremely arrogant man, but one who drew that arrogance from preparation and distance. Being attacked in his own home had him falling back on the first of his two defenses as the distance he so relied on vanished.

Damon had known more than enough arrogant men in his life to recognize that it was a personality trait based firmly in self-delusion. After all, arrogance with enough power to back it was just confidence. When that delusion was assaulted at its core, people tended to fold or double down. So far, the founder has been doubling down. A typical response for an arrogant man that had never been challenged before.

Now, all that remained was to see whether or not this superior attitude was arrogance, or confidence.

{}

Lily stepped through the brittle fragments of blisteringly cold metal and into the room beyond. It was a much larger space than the previous hallways, and those had been overly large in their own right. It was nearly three stories tall and the far end was hundreds of feet away. Looking across the space, Lily quickly confirmed that it was exactly as she’d assumed. This place was a trap.

Unlike the smooth metal and ethertech fittings that characterized the hallways she’d traveled, this room had a rocky terrain. The rough and jagged appearance was accompanied by air as hot as an oven, flickering flames, and molten flows. Lava crisscrossed the ground.

Lily wondered briefly how the founder had managed to set something like this up during her walk. Had it always been here, and she’d somehow been led to it? Had it been built specifically for her, in the brief time she’d traveled through this false island? Or had the room itself been moved to cross her path, the whole island capable of adjusting its internal aspects on the fly?

Lily also recognized that the ‘how’ of the situation wasn’t important at the moment. She was more caught up in dealing with the ball of lava flung in her direction. She raised her shrouded weapon, Variable Flow, to point toward the offending projectile. A thrust of its see-through, Aspect-enhanced edge was accompanied by a viscous burst of cold and ice. An icicle as long as her arm shot forward fast enough to break the sound barrier and punch into the lava ball.

The two objects at different temperature extremes met and exploded in a wave of superheated steam. Without her aura, Lily’s senses weren’t nearly as fine as she was used to, but even so, she could tell that her icicle hadn’t come out on top in the exchange. It was only its superior momentum that stopped the lava ball from hitting her, while the molten rock was still hot enough to remain partially liquid.

Clicking her tongue, Lily focused on the source of the blast. An Etherman stood in the middle of the room, at the apex of a very short volcano. The room’s height didn’t allow for a typical mountain, but a moderate hill sat in the center, spewing out more lava.

Arching an eyebrow, Lily wondered what else this opponent could throw at her, perhaps literally. If the founder thought a disadvantageous environment was enough to confine her…A smile crossed her lips as she let her domain’s chilling aura surge outward beyond the tight control she’d kept on it this whole time.

Frost covered the ground, which hissed at the contact. Lava flows stilled and were covered in a layer of white after only a moment. Lily could readily admit that her Aspect and shrouded weapon didn’t pack the singular punch that Cat could with her waves of consuming and corrupting power. But her Ice Aspect more than made up for it by dominating an amount of space that Cat’s Necromancy couldn’t compete with. In an almost amusing way, a hostile environment was the last thing she needed to worry about. This situation was far more in her favor than the founder could have known.

So Lily frowned when the freezing lava flows suddenly surged back to life. The burned even hotter than before, directly contesting her Aspect aura. Steam began to rapidly plume from the edges of the interaction. How…

Looking sharply toward the stubby volcano, Lily thrust three times in rapid succession to counter the lava spheres heading her way. Bursts of steam followed, blocking her view. Scowling, Lily made a wide sweep with Variable Flow, a halestorm clearing her view immediately.

When she saw the Etherman again, Lily was struck with a stunning revelation. One that explained how this room came to be in her path. And how it was resisting her Aspect aura. And even why there was only one Etherman here, after she’d carved a path through dozens of them.

The room hadn’t been placed here, rather it had been built this way in response to her. Something that would have been difficult to do with ethertech in a short time frame. And it wasn’t made with Ethertech. Rather, it was transformed using a much simpler tool, one that Lily was extremely familiar with.

Because there was fresh lava forming in the air out of nothing, right next to the Etherman. Lily hadn’t noticed it immediately because her aura senses were gone in her Embodiment form. Otherwise, she might have been much more wary of this Etherman.

It had a shroud.