Every other time that I’d gone into one of these human-era ruins, it had been a slow and careful exploration with my girls to uncover secrets or mysteries. We had tread carefully to avoid traps and preserve history, doing the minimum amount of damage that we could in order to preserve everything we left behind.

  This mission was something entirely different and I couldn’t help but feel odd about that. Though I didn’t hesitate or regret what we had to do. It was to keep my girls safe, after all.

  Pushing into the long, downward sloping hallway, I did my best to ignore the smoking, lightning-scarred bodies of our enemies. More than a dozen tribal warriors lay sprawled on the ground, with only one near the back still twitching faintly.

  I killed him as I passed without hesitation.

  “Keep up,” I growled, my voice pitching down even deeper as I charged forward.

  The skin on my arms and torso thickened, transforming into natural armor plates while my brow extended and hardened to shield my eyes from potential attacks.

  I knew from the outside I looked like some kind of bizarre amalgamation of a gorilla, a crab, and a boar, but the opinions of others didn’t matter in the moment. I had a mission to complete and delicacy was not any part of the description of the day.

  The hallways were lit with torches crudely affixed to the walls, most of which had been blown out but a few still clung to life. There was enough light that my Shape-Shifting could compensate with some minor changes and let me see what lay in front of us.

  Like with Shadow Mountain, the hallway just dove down at an angle before coming up against a set of simple iron doors that had crudely painted pictographs in a half-dozen earthy colors.

  I hit the doors like they had threatened my girls, and both doors tore free of the wall with a tortured scream of bending metal and shattering stone.

  A sweeping glance of the room on the other side was all I needed to spot my opponents even as the torn doors rocketed forward to crush two of them and tear a third in half when the door tumbled and hit him side-on.

  “Kill the demon!” screeched a skinny man at the back of the group who was wearing an elaborate feather-lined cloak and a headdress with a lion’s skull.

  Small fires burned in scattered positions about the room, and from the leather cushions scattered around them, it looked like they had turned the open and empty anteroom into a meeting hall of sorts.

  My quick glance as the enemy was caught between obeying the shaman and the terror of my entrance also gave me hope. In the Shadow Mountain facility, there had been a large tram station that was blocked off by a ceiling collapse. That had connected to a far-deeper facility buried in the mountains.

  This room had three doorways leading off of it, and the one I was certain led where I needed to go was directly behind the shaman.

  Since they wanted to call me a demon, I decided to play into the role they had already cast for me. So when the first warrior stepped forward to menace me with his sword, I lunged and let my body flow and change.

  Midair, my body shrunk and returned to a human body, though I retained the armored skin. My back split however and twin bladed tails erupted from where my shoulderblades had been, the heavy, armor-piercing spikes on the end glimmering in the dim light of the fires as they launched forward.

  The tails were moving so fast that the air shrieked as they ripped through it, and two of the tribal warriors died as those blades buried themselves in the men’s throats.

  My loss of mass from the shift meant that the lashing motion of the tails altered my trajectory, pushing me to the ground where I scrabbled for purchase, the dense claws that replaced my fingers making the stone shriek in protest as I dug furrows in its smooth surface.

  Shaking the two dead men off my tails, I bounded forward into their formation. My pounce carried me onto the chest of one screaming man and I took him to the ground as my blade-tails lashed out and reaped two more lives.

  “Support him! For Ironclaw!” Valda’s voice echoed above the screaming in the room as she and her three warriors drove into the enemy on either side of me as well.

  The distraction my initial monstrous assault provided proved to be fatal to the enemy, as they couldn’t decide quickly enough which was the larger threat.

  Those that tried to fall on me from either side were either fended off by my blade-tails or flashing claws as Shape-Shifting allowed my form to be fluid, moving from something akin to a bear, to a great cat, to a wolf. If they ignored the threat of the Ironclaw warriors, they were rapidly reminded with flashing steel and sharp claws of the threats posed by the lizard-folk.

  Those that ignored me to try and fend off Valda and her warriors found the stone underfoot shifting and upsetting their balance, preventing them from weathering attacks or supporting blocks properly to prevent injury.

  Within a minute, only the shaman and a small handful of his warriors remained alive and that was because the shaman had fled down the hallway deeper into the complex with those closest to him in tow.

  Rather than chase him through that door immediately, I spun to check on my companions while driving a pulse of energy from Manipulate Element into the ground and using it to map the area around me.

  The two doors that opened off to my left led to what felt like a storeroom and some kind of office. I felt the resonance of clay and stone in those rooms, but no metal, so dismissed them.

  A visual inspection of the Ironclaw warriors showed me minor scratches from the fight and a small gash on one of the men’s arms that he was rapidly bandaging while the other two stood guard.

  Valda was already moving to the two side doors, and she wrenched the first open to reveal what was clearly a storeroom, then the other that looked to have been claimed as a private room by the shaman.

  “Clear,” Valda called a moment later, returning to our side with the sword in her hand dripping small tongues of flame as she channeled the fire of her salamander summon into the weapon still.

  “Deeper we go, then,” I growled, having shifted my head enough to speak properly. “Keep watch for traps and side passages. The last thing we want is for them to get around behind us.”

  Valda gave me a stern nod, while the other three were all doing their utmost to not let their disquiet show on their faces. They were failing at it, but at least they were trying.

  The doorway the shaman had gone through opened into another long hallway, this one almost a hundred feet long with the occasional stone plinth set along its length. Those plinths only held piles of broken rubble now, but I imagined the rubble had once been the stone golems that I’d encountered in previous delves into human-era ruins. Like before, the walls were mostly plain with the occasional carved relief in between the plinths, but I ignored those decorative touches for now.

  The shaman and his group were nearing the end of the tunnel, and one of their number looked back to see us. He let out a startled cry a moment later and his inattention cost him.

  A flare of elemental energy consumed the man as a wolf made of raw flames coalesced in midair. The elemental beast tore hunks of meat off the unfortunate man with a crackle of scorched flesh and burning fat.

  “Fool!” snarled the shaman, before gesturing for the others to keep moving. “Let the ancestor’s guardian slow our enemies down. Our brother’s idiocy might serve a purpose then!”

  I could see the other tribal warriors hesitate for a bare moment before obeying the shaman’s orders, even as their former ally screamed in pain and fear while the creature of pure flame devoured him.

  “Liam,” Valda said warningly as we started down the hallway.

  “I have it. Don’t touch the wall and watch for the floor tiles that I mark,” I replied, pushing my Shape-Shifting once more and adjusting my size until I had assumed the shape of a lynx for my lower half and took on a smaller human body for the upper half.

  With the extra balance gained from the feline lower body, I trotted down the hall quickly, sending a pulse of earth mana ahead of me via Manipulate Element.

  Any of the floor tiles that felt different or off in any fashion, I used Manipulate Element to reshape their surface. The raised X’s that appeared on the stone slabs made it very obvious which of the floor tiles I believed to be booby-trapped. It wasn’t overly hard, as many had already been marked by the people we were fighting, but I checked each of them as we went to be safe.

  We made it almost a third of the way down the hall before the flame wolf finished shredding the dead man and turned its attention to us with a crackling snarl that brought to mind bacon burning in a pan.

  “Fuck off, cinder-breath,” I snarled back and gave the ground underneath it a wrench.

  The booby-trapped tile that had summoned the wolf shot upwards like a massive clay pigeon fired from a launcher, and the flaming animal gave a muffled yelp as the large slab of stone crushed its head against the ceiling.

  By the time we’d made it halfway across, the elemental animal was already fading away into flickering shards of mana.

  “Does he even need us with him?” murmured one of the male lizard-folk at my back.

  “I don’t think he does,” replied the female, while the other male smothered a snicker.

  “Even the best warrior needs someone to watch their back,” Valda barked as she kept close at my back. “This environment has simply suited the Traveler thus far.”

  I wonder about that, I thought as we bounded forward. Valda used my name before, but I’ve been ‘the Traveler’ when she discussed the mission with her troops or referred to me. Is there a reason she’s being so standoffish now? Naw, she’s used my name to get my attention… maybe it’s a title or respect thing? She’s militaristic enough I could see that.

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  Even with the distraction of my thoughts, I continued to tag and avoid the trapped tiles and we bypassed the dead man without issue. It wasn’t until we reached the end of the tunnel that something else went wrong.

  Given what the girls and I had discovered in previous facilities that had these long ‘kill tunnels’ as I thought of them, I didn’t want to spend any more time inside this one than I absolutely needed to.

  So when the doors ahead of us swung open and a pair of the tribal warriors stepped into view, each one wielding the familiar double-barreled baton of the flamecaster, I reacted instinctively.

  The two weapons coughed and blew fire out like a pair of dragons, the thick flames promising pain and death for myself and my allies. Something about these two weapons told me not to try and tank the flames, so I ripped at the ground once more and flicked two of the stone tiles upwards to block the oncoming flames.

  Moments later, that end of the hallway was nothing but fire and smoke as these flames clung to the surfaces they washed over.

  Looks like they either found or made more dangerous fuel for them, I thought with a grimace as our tile shields began to heat up.

  “Stay in cover,” Valda ordered from right behind me before the scaled woman lunged around the barrier with her flaming sword held high.

  I swore, though if you asked me what I said I couldn’t tell you. I was that distracted between trying to come up with a way we could get past the enemy without getting cooked alive, and extending the thick stone tiles to prevent our opponent from arching the stream of liquid fire over the top.

  A scream of surprise came a moment later and I felt my heart clench, thinking that the two must have seen Valda coming in her blind charge, but the roaring of the twin flamecasters cut off a moment later.

  Flipping the red-hot tiles over to snuff out the clinging flames, I spotted Valda yanking her sword out of the chest of one man while shaking blood off her claws with the other as the second opponent had already dropped his flamecaster to clutch at his missing throat. Fire clung to her weapon and her left sleeve was a scorched ruin, but the fire hadn’t damaged her armor or her skin and I was reminded finally that she’d already told me her salamander bonded shielded her from flames.

  I didn’t hesitate, bounding over the pools of still burning liquid flame to land on the other side. A yank with my Elemental Manipulation increased the height of a section of flooring to allow the other three to follow after me, but I wasn’t slowing down until I got to Valda.

  “Everyone okay?” Valda asked as I skidded to a stop in the doorway next to her. A glance inside revealed another room that looked like it had once been a defensive emplacement. Half walls of the same ornate stone as the rest of the facility blocked off part of the room, while an iron door sealed the exit on the far side. The fuel reservoirs of the flamecasters sat several feet inside the doors, the metallic hoses running to the firing wands over the floor like a pair of bronze snakes.

  “Not unless your folk slip and fall,” I answered quickly, scooping the strange weapons up and stuffing them into the dimensional sack I still wore on my belt, which was more of a bandoleer in this smaller form.

  “Good,” Valda said with a sharp nod. “Let’s keep moving. I don’t want to give them a chance to set up another ambush here.”

  With the weapons secured, I hurried across the room. My mana reserves were already starting to dip low from the rapid and repeated use of Manipulate Element, but I knew we couldn’t waste time right now.

  The girls need me to be quick here, I thought wildly as I bounded between the barricades, checking for anyone hiding before urging the others to follow me. I can’t slow down, can’t hesitate. Getting hurt is better than wasting time and losing one of them.

  Valda followed with grim determination, her trio of soldiers in tow. The lizard-folk woman vaulted the barriers just as I had, and we reached the large, solid door that stood at the back of the room within moments.

  “Locked,” I growled and jiggled the handle. The door didn’t move, didn’t even shift actually.

  “Can you get through it?” Valda asked tersely and I nodded, spreading both hands over the iron face and focusing my mana into my hands.

  The long days working with precious metals for my business had tuned my awareness of metal to a very high degree. My repeated uses of the Manipulate Element ability to detect things out of sight had taught me what I was looking for, so it only took a minute to find the locking mechanism, and I grinned when I realized how simple it was.

  “Just a dead-bolt inside the door. Stand back,” I growled and shifted my right hand into a wide, flat blade of bone while reaching deep into my Mana Reservoir to get the power for what I would be doing next.

  “What—” started one of the others, I think the woman, but she went silent as entropic energy enveloped my hand-blade and I drove the blade into the door like I was stabbing a steak-knife into a potato.

  The door hissed quietly and I yanked downwards with the blade before pulling it out once more and releasing the ability. I didn’t like revealing that I had access to the entropic school of magic, given how oddly people acted around it. I also liked having it as a trump card, but I needed to be quick here.

  The four-inch-long and half-inch-wide slot that I’d burned through the solid iron door continued to smoke faintly for a moment as I tugged on the door handle once more. This time, the door swung open with a grating whine.

  As soon as the door began to open, we could hear the sound of chanting voices and the shouts of fear from inside the next room.

  Got 'em, I thought with a savage grin, flinging the door open, hoping to catch our opponents unexpectedly.

  The next section was a long hallway that had four doors in it. The closest two, one to each side, had tarnished plaques hanging above doors that hung slightly ajar. The one on the right read ‘Dormitories’ while the one on the left read ‘Administration.’ I could see plaques above the further two doors, but I was more concerned with what lay between us and them.

  The shaman was standing before the left door in the far back, a smoking bundle of herbs clutched in one hand as he chanted and waved it in front of the door while he shook a bone rattle with the other. Between us and them, the last eight warriors were trying to arrange themselves in a defensive line while wrestling with another of the flamecasters.

  I didn’t hesitate, bounding forward on my four pawed feet while I pushed the last of my mana into Manipulate Element. The energy flowed outwards and as the man with the flamecaster got the weapon turned around and aimed at us to trigger the weapon, a slab of stone shot up right in front of the barrel.

  The jet of liquid flame emerged a moment later and splashed in all directions. The shouted orders turned into screams of fear and pain as the flaming liquid cascaded back into the group, a spray that only got worse when my blocking surface gained a concave bow to it.

  A grin crossed my lips as I remembered an old joke about spoons and too much soup, but shoved it away for now.

  The spray of liquid fire cut off a few moments later, but the damage was already done.

  My lower body shifted into regular bipedal legs once more, but sheathed in the heat-resistant iron scales of the volcano snail. Both arms shifted and reversed joints to become the heavy dactyl clubs of a massive mantis shrimp as I came around the blocker to find fire-coated chaos of the last defensive group.

  Several were rolling on the ground, trying frantically to put the fire out but only making it worse as they rolled through small puddles of the pooling accelerant. The man who had been wielding the flamecaster was a merrily burning pyre, while the shaman was glancing our way frantically as he ‘beseeched the honored ghosts to save him from the demon’ as his rattle continued to chime.

  I tore through the panicking group without hesitation. My dactyl clubs fired with lightning speed, cracking skulls and breaking necks as I went. I only paused long enough to bump the flamecaster with my foot and banish it into my Dimensional Pocket in hopes that the act wouldn’t take the burning accelerant with it.

  The shaman gave up on his demands for whatever ghosts he believed lived in this place to help him. He whirled, dropping his incense in the process, and drew a bone-bladed dagger from his belt, a wild look in his eyes as I continued forward.

  He lashed out with the blade, but I smashed his hand with my left dactyl club, pulverizing the limb into splinters and hamburger. The dagger snapped into several pieces and clattered against the wall.

  The shaman’s other hand came around with the bone rattle and I saw a sickly green glow starting to form around the implement. So I slammed my right dactyl club into his chest with all the considerable force I had available.

  Pound for pound, the mantis shrimp has one of the most devastating punches in existence. Factor in my own immense natural strength from my stats, and it wasn’t a surprise that the shaman’s chest exploded like a watermelon struck by a sledgehammer.

  The glow died from the rattle immediately as his torn body was launched down the hall to slam into the wall at the very end before sliding down in a crumpled heap, lifeless eyes staring in surprise.

  “Ancestors…” breathed the female guard behind me, the single word reminding me that I wasn’t alone.

  “Make sure the others are down. Then secure the other two rooms, the doors were open so they already got inside.”

  I heard Valda confirming my orders a moment later as I slid to a stop at the end of the hallway, then the clack of her boots as she followed me.

  The two doors were both imposing in their size. The left-hand door had piles of candle wax, small bowls of incense, and offerings on little stone altars. The right-hand door had been ignored for the most part.

  Reading the plaques, I smothered a laugh as Valda came to a stop behind me.

  “What is it?” Valda asked breathlessly, and I glanced her way while letting my body melt back into something resembling its normal configuration.

  I pointed to the right hand door, the one that the shaman had been ignoring entirely.

  “That’s the armory,” I said with a wry grin. “They hadn’t even started trying to get into it.”

  “And this one?” Valda asked curiously, turning to look up at the plaque on the wall.

  “Power station,” I answered, my grin not fading in the slightest.

  “So they were working on the wrong set of doors this whole time?” Valda asked incredulously.

  “I can’t fault them,” I answered with a shrug, glancing down at the assorted detritus and blood that was scattered on the floor. “It’s not like they can read the human language. Hell, the only reason I can make heads or tails of it is my nature as a Traveler. Jane told me that scholars have been trying to translate it for centuries without luck, what legends you all do have of humans are mostly from murals.”

  “Intriguing, but not something we can take time to consider,” Valda urged and I nodded in agreement.

  “Give me a minute to catch my breath and I can see about getting through these doors,” I said, giving myself a full-body shake.

  Valda nodded and hurried over to examine the dead shaman.

  Going to need to be careful here, I thought as I studied first the door to the power station and then the door to the armory. We are here to eliminate weapons and the like, so armory first. But I need to check the power station too.

  Considering the experiments that we’d seen in other facilities and that strange machine set up to release and use mana, I had an itching sensation on the back of my neck about the power station, but I pushed it aside for now to start working on the armory door.

  Manipulate Element told me that the door’s locking mechanism was much more complex than the other blast door I’d just punched through. And after getting my ass electrocuted by that one door, I didn’t want to be too rough with this one.

  “Liam,” Valda asked, breaking my concentration as I was working on isolating the different mechanisms in the door holding it closed.

  “Hm?” I asked, turning to look her way to see Valda walking towards me with a confused look on her face and a rectangular square of metal in her hand.

  “Any idea what this is?” Valda asked, holding it up in front of her face. “It’s got runes on it, but I don’t recognize them. It was mounted as part of the shaman’s cloak-pin but was knocked loose when you… well when you broke him.”

  I blinked at the odd, card-shaped wafer of metal for a moment before I let out a long breath of exasperation.

  “Seriously? I guess we are lucky they were dumb… may I?” I asked, reaching for the hunk of metal.

  Valda let me take it without protest, and I turned to the door to study it again.

  “What is it?” Valda asked curiously, watching as I located a flat panel in the middle of the armory door and tapped the metal card to it.

  The clunk of the locks releasing made Valda jump, and I slipped the card into my Dimensional Pocket.

  “The key to the door,” I answered wryly, as the door gave three more clunks. “And the idiot was using it as jewelry…”

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