"What do you see?" I asked, kneeling beside Nessy.

"It's a multi-layered ward," the husky girl murmured, her voice distant. "Reinforced with… belief. Sacrifice. Every memory, every emotion fed to the Well strengthens this thing. It's not just a magical construct; it's a psychic fortress… containing something. Possibly a dungeon core." Her eyes snapped open. "Clever. Sadly, I can't unbind it from here. The power source of the outer shield layers isn't local."

"So, where is it and can we punch it?" Adelle asked.

"Two extra sources," Nessy confirmed after a minute of Astral gazing, pointing first toward the ceiling, then at the floor. "Two ward cores. One is upstairs, in the main library's restricted section. It's a crystal matrix, heavily guarded by at least a dozen monks and secured by magisteel doors. The second..." she paused, sniffing the air and looking at the floor, one silver eye shining bright. "The second is deep below us. In some kind of subterranean grotto, completely submerged deep in water."

"Old monk bathwater?" Addie blanched. "Gross. I hate getting my fur wet."

"Then it's a good thing you're not going," I said. "On the account that we have a hydromancer on hand."

"Arf," Marlena nodded. "I can handle that."

"The cores are shielding each other too," Nessy explained. "We'd have to weaken the entire ward and then get right up to them and punch hard. And to do that..."

"...we'd have to get past all of the monks inhabiting this place," I concluded.

"Exactly," Nessy said. "Which means we're going to need a distraction. A very, very big distraction."

"One that will draw the monks away from their posts and away from those cores," I agreed. "Time to call Fern."

"Time to call Fern," Nessy nodded. "Also, we gotta coordinate our two core-strikers."

"How can we stay in touch with you underwater?" I asked Marlena.

"Just call my cell," she said, tapping a dark earring and a thick bracelet on her left hand. "I've got a delver's Voicecast Nordglade waterproof communicator. It Astralcasts the view n' everything."

Nessy pulled out her Ipaws phone and tapped it on the TA's bracelet. "Connect." A small picture of Marlena came up on the husky girl's phone screen.

"Unbind Alec's phone from nullspace," she said. My phone appeared in her left paw and she handed it to me.

I dialed the professor. "Ignis," I said.

"I'm here, Mr. Foster," she said. "Report."

"It's time for Phase Two," I said. "I need you to initiate a full-scale assault on the temple. Every Elemental you have. Make it look like you're trying to tear the whole place down."

"Understood, Captain," Professor Fern replied. "Consider the Krishna temple under siege."

The connection ended. For a moment, there was only silence.

Then, a low rumble started, a vibration that seemed to come from every direction. It grew steadily, a deep, resonant tremor of distant explosions that shook the dust from the cavern ceiling.

Nessy quickly described the directions to the underwater cavern to the TA and the seal took off running. Water eddies detonated around her and she flopped onto her stomach sliding down a side tunnel leading downwards.

"Voicecast Kristi," I turned to the husky girl.

"On it," Nessy tapped the side of her head. "Bind Astralcast via Dagaz connection to Krissikins!"

Kristi's face appeared in front of me with silver sparks.

"Kristi, you're up," I said.

"Yes?"

"Fly out of the bag, head to the library!" Nessy said. "Follow my instructions… North-west corridor, third passage on the right. There's a reinforced celesteel door. The core is behind it, in the center of the library, looks like a floating ball behind a barrier shield. I've added an X rune to the rim of the bag so you can get out quickly. Smack it and go!"

The dimensional bag's rim ring expanded dramatically and Kristi erupted from it like a spring-loaded toy, Nemesis glider humming beneath her as she launched into the air inside the chamber.

The dangerous looking, black glider ripped through the temple corridors with a high-pitched whine. I watched her go, my heartbeat accelerating.

The entire cavern trembled with more distant deep booms. The glowing runes on the walls flickered erratically. It sounded like a giant was trying to play drums on the temple roof with sledgehammers.

"Fern's having fun," Adelle commented dryly. "I do wonder how a Pyromancer is controlling that many elementals."

"She is and she's not," Nessy said. "Well… not exactly. They're a network of… some kind. A collective unconsciousness that obeys her for some reason. It's weird. Maybe it's a dungeon artifact of some kind."

"I see," the cheetah said, fluffy, round, orange ears swivelling to the sound of explosions.

The husky girl's hand found mine and she squeezed my fingers, trembling ever so slightly.

. . .

The Nemesis glider screamed to a halt in front of a massive, reinforced magisteel door twice the height of a normal prad. Glowing sigils pulsed across its surface. Two massive bear prads covered in celesteeel armor glinting beneath their orange robes flanked the gate.

Kristi leveled the Decimator Railgun at the door and squeezed the trigger. Brilliant bolts railed across the door detonating upon impact and punching holes in the metal.

The glider roared as Kristi accelerated again. She flashed through the demolished door before the bears could do much. Barrier shields on the sides of the bike flashed, the oversized guards flying backwards as they tried to grab at her.

Kristi flew into a circular chamber lined with a multitude of bookshelves. In the center of the room, floating above a stone pedestal, was a spherical crystal matrix humming with power, shielded by a smaller, personal ward.

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Guarding it were there more Grizzly Bear monks, each easily nine feet tall.

"Interloper! The sacred texts are not for the eyes of the unenlightened!" one of them boomed, rushing towards her. "How dare you bring a glider to our temple!"

Kristi snarled under her breath, careening the glider up and to the side away from the bear, her finger tightening on the Decimator's trigger. She fired again, aiming for the crystal core.

One of the grizzlies interposed his body between the railgun and the core. The bolts struck him square in the chest. He roared in pain as his orange robes disintegrated, his fur smoldering, but he remained standing, his eyes burning with righteous fury, celesteel armor flashing with defensive shield runes.

"You shall not defile this holy place!" he bellowed. "Iceball!"

Kristi swerved the glider, dodging a ball of ice that flew from the monk with a supersonic boom, the ice smashing against the gothic ceiling, leaving a deep indentation as it exploded into smaller ice shards.

The raptor girl zipped between the bookshelves, using them as cover as the monks fired more spells.

. . .

Marlena torpedoed through the now flooded tunnel. The water around her was dark and cold, the pressure increasing. She followed the scent of the ward core, a faint, ozone-like trail in the water, her hydrokinetic prad delver senses mapping the underwater cavern ahead.

The tunnel opened into a vast, submerged grotto. Bioluminescent kelp swayed in the gentle currents, casting an eerie blue-green light on the scene. At the center of the grotto, resting at the bottom of a deep trench, was a massive, glowing pearl—the second ward core. Swirling around it, patrolling with silent, deadly grace, were three Orca monks.

They saw her instantly.

One of them opened its mouth, and a concussive blast slammed into Marlena, disorienting her for a moment. She spun in the water, creating a powerful whirlpool that sent one of the Orcas spiraling away.

The other two converged on her, their movements synchronized. They were a pack, and this was their territory. Marlena met them with a joyful smile. The fight was a silent, deadly ballet of hydrokinesis.

Marlena, a creature of the sea herself, was in her element, but so were the Orcas. She sent a high-pressure jet of water at one, only to be slammed from the side by another's powerful tail fluke.

She ended up wrapping her arms around the Orca that had struck her and using her immense weight to drag it down toward the trench floor.

A blast of water into the mud below made things difficult to see, but Marlena didn't need eyes to see in the deep. She spun in the darkness and opened her extradimensional bag, unleashing a torrent of water elementals at the monks.

. . .

"Kristi's in position," Nessy-Candace announced from beside me, eyes closed in concentration, the laurel on her head pulsing as she drew power from it. "The grizzlies are tough, but she's holding them off. She's at the core."

She glanced at her phone. "Marlena's engaged. Three Orcas."

The cavern trembled again, more violently this time, rocks falling from the ceiling. The ward barrier runes around us flickered again.

"The shield is weakening," Nessy commented. "It should redirect itself soon…"

She took a deep breath.

"On my mark," Nessy barked. "Three... Two... One... NOW! Attack those cores!"

. . .

The moment the command reached her ears, Kristi wrenched the Nemesis glider into a sharp turn, the anti-grav engines screaming. The five grizzly monks, who had been lumbering towards her, roared as she zipped between the towering bookshelves.

"Come and get me, you oversized teddy bears!" she taunted.

She wasn't just showboating; she was baiting them, drawing them deeper into the maze of literature. The monks, driven by their single-minded purpose to protect the core, crashed through the shelves in their pursuit, sending priceless-looking tomes and scrolls scattering like confetti.

Kristi led them on a frantic chase around the perimeter of the circular room. Then, with a predator's cunning, she found her opening. As the grizzlies converged in the center of the room, momentarily blocking each other's paths, she pulled the Nemesis into a steep vertical climb, soaring towards the vaulted ceiling.

She leveled the Decimator railgun, but she didn't aim for the monks or the crystal core. She aimed higher.

"Checkmate, you furry bastards," she snarled, and fired.

A volley of brilliant energy bolts slammed not into flesh, but into the heavy, magisteel support brackets holding the massive, circular central shelving unit in place. Metal screamed and buckled under the assault. With a deep, groaning crack, the entire structure gave way. Tons of books, scrolls, and reinforced shelving crashed down in a devastating avalanche of knowledge and destruction, burying the monks under a mountain of their own sacred texts.

The library was suddenly silent, save for the hum of Kristi's glider, dust billowing around her. She hovered for a moment, amber eyes blazing with triumph, before turning her attention to her real target. The crystal core, now completely undefended, pulsed innocently on its pedestal.

Kristi pointed the gun at it and pressed the trigger. The Decimator didn't fire, seemingly out of bullets or magical charge.

Kristi grinned, a sharp, predatory expression. She pulled the Nemesis back, pointing its reinforced nose directly at the core. She slammed the accelerator.

The glider shot forward like a missile, its own defensive barrier flaring to life. It struck the core's smaller personal ward with the force of a battering ram. There was a moment of intense, screeching resistance as magic met magitek, then a blinding flash of light as the shield shattered. The Nemesis, barely slowing, plowed directly through the crystal matrix itself. The core exploded into a million glittering shards, the magical backlash sending a visible shockwave through the entire library.

. . .

Deep beneath the temple, Marlena was having the time of her life.

While two of the Orcas were occupied fending off the watery minions, Marlena focused on the third. She torpedoed forward, her body a streamlined missile, and wrapped her powerful arms around the struggling monk. "Gotcha!" she barked, voice more distorted "arf" than word.

She spun with him in a disorienting vortex, then unleashed a point-blank blast of pure hydrokinetic force from her palms. The Orca went limp, stunned and spiraling slowly toward the grotto floor.

She shot upward, putting distance between herself and the remaining two Orcas, who were just now shaking off the last of her elementals. She drew the water of the grotto towards her, the bioluminescent kelp bending as a massive volume of liquid coiled around her like a living serpent, like a spiral of destruction.

It wasn't a blast or a jet; it was a focused, spinning drill of water, a hydro-lance moving so fast it created a cavity in the water behind it. It struck the glowing pearl core at the bottom of the trench with a silent, devastating impact.

The barrier shield shattered and the pearl, which had seemed so solid and powerful, simply ceased to exist, vaporized by the focused pressure. The shockwave that followed was a concussive implosion that sent silt and debris churning through the entire grotto.

. . .

Back in the Well cavern, the effect was quite spectacular.

The shimmering barrier around the Well flickered violently, its surface warping like a disturbed reflection. The hum of power escalated into a piercing shriek. Cracks of pure, white light spiderwebbed across the priorly invisible shield.

With a final, deafening crack that sounded like a universe of glass breaking at once, the ward shattered.

The psychic feedback was blinding.

I felt a wave of pure, raw emotion wash over us—a million stolen heartbreaks, a billion severed attachments, centuries of sacrificed love and pain all released in a single, silent howl.

The swirling vortex of silver and black energy within the well pulsed, as if a great and terrible heart had just started beating again.

We stood at the precipice, the way forward clear.

"Ah, yeah! The shield's down!" Adelle flexed her claws, a low growl rumbling in her chest.

"Time to get your dreams back," I said, turning to Nessy.

A wave of psychic pressure, a tangible pulse of grief, loss, and despair, suddenly blasted out from the now-unprotected Well, and I felt a horrid, bone-gnawing chill take hold of me.

Nessy staggered, one hand flying to her head. "Sheet. That's... a lot of bad vibes." Her mismatched eyes widened as she stared into the vortex. "Something really bad is in there… it's coming!"

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