But hearing Benin ask her recently had stirred my curiosity awake again, as had the sprite’s uncharacteristically odd behavior the closer we’d gotten to our destination. I couldn’t shake the image of her staring up at the mountain, fixated upon what we now knew to be the exact location of what we’d been seeking this whole time.
“I don’t recall.” This was the answer she gave every time. Now, though, her voice contained not the tone of finality that said the topic was closed. Now, though, it sounded almost like a question rather than a statement. Through our bond I sensed a storm of emotions: confusion, sadness, nostalgia, regret. There was also something that felt very familiar to me: denial.
“It’s coming back to you, isn’t it?” I whispered. I thought again about the barrage of memories I’d received. Though many of the details had faded, already pushed away by whatever magic had made me lose them in the first place, I still recalled far more about my former life as a dark elf than I had in all the months since my reincarnation as a Core.
I definitely wasn’t ready to share them with anyone just yet. Reluctantly accepting that Ket felt the same way, I ceased my questions and focused on our journey.
The crystal tunnels slowed us considerably. Their razor-sharp edges forced caution when edging past the larger ones. It was nothing short of maddening; it felt like we ought to be sprinting for the summit, not carefully creeping through a shiny obstacle course. I found myself glancing again and again at the Exodus timer.
Time remaining for Exodus: 3 hours, 2 minutes, 33 seconds
Our progress sped up enormously once we left the crystals behind. The tunnels began to change as well; I spotted pipes embedded in the dark rock, running along the ceiling and burrowing into the rock itself, though what function they served was anyone’s guess.
It was definitely getting hotter the deeper we journeyed into the mountain. There was also a faint whiff of something that made Ris’kin wrinkle her nose. It took me a while to recognize it, and then only because Swift and Cheer had begun to drool.
“Do I smell eggs?”
“Sulfur,” Ket informed me. She breathed in deeply, as though inhaling the scents of spring and not something that smelled like a troll’s underpants. I was going to ask why this place smelled of sulfur; then I spotted an orange glow at the far end of the passage and thought I could hazard a guess, though I hoped I was wrong.
We emerged into an enormous cavern. Just like the Heart in my former domain, the center of this cave was a deep, deep hole. My suspicions were proved correct when I looked carefully over the edge and was greeted by the sight of simmering magma far below.
“I suspected as much when you described the city,” said Ket. “You said it was inside a crater at the top of the mountain. It fits the description of a caldera, which are formed after an eruption has made the volcano mouth collapse.”
I couldn’t take my eyes off the bubbling magma. It wasn’t as bright as I’d expected, nor as runny. It was more of a thick mush, dark red layered with patches of black. “You couldn’t have mentioned this sooner?”
“It’s fine. It’s dormant.” She laid a tiny hand against the rock, as though listening to the volcano. “Probably.”
Her attention wasn’t focused on the lake of magma.I hadn’t noticed at first, but there were more pipes like the ones in the tunnels. They ran vertically along the walls, some of them seemingly emerging from the magma itself, with many disappearing into the rock as though the mountain had absorbed them. What they carried or where they led was still a mystery.
One pipe in particular was larger than the rest. Thick enough for Swift and Cheer to climb up inside it side by side, the pipe rose higher and straighter than those around it, and I followed it with my gaze until it was lost in the darkness above. I noticed something else too—stairs, carved into the rock in a spiraling ascent, presumably all the way to the summit.
Ris’kin’s ears twitched at a scraping sound behind us. Danger sense tingling, hackles rising, we turned to see a creature climbing from the magma pit and onto the ledge.
It looked to be some kind of salamander. Unlike those I’d encountered in my previous Sphere, however, this one’s hide was the magnificent color of a fire opal. They shimmered in shifting tones of red and orange; deep crimson on its back and brow, where the scales were heavy and thick as armor. Each scale glistened like a precious gem, as though the flesh were encrusted with rubies and carnelian.
Pyromander
Reptile
These volcano-dwelling creatures thrive in the world’s deepest, hottest places. Able to subsist entirely on the very magma that births and sustains it, the pyromander has no need to hunt for food, but will aggressively defend its territory from rare incursions by those foolish enough to go wandering around inside volcanoes.
A thrice-forked tongue flicked in and out of the creature’s mouth, glowing like a fiery whip as it scented the air.
Its head jerked in our direction. Orange flames spewed from its mouth as it bared its needle-like teeth. Then it leapt at Longshank.
The hunter, quick off the mark as ever, twisted to avoid it. The creature sailed past him, and Longshank lashed out reflexively with his fist, which glanced off the armored hide harmlessly. As they made contact with the pyromander’s scales, the brambles around his knuckles immediately lit aflame.
I winced, expecting him to yell in pain. But the burning brambles never touched his skin. The wraps he wore to protect his own fingers from the sharp thorns were made of mole-rat leather; the flames licked at
