When Erin finally returned to the first floor, he discovered Smoky’s Boss Room empty save for an onyx orb smack-dab in the center.

  The lanterns and acorns had resumed their glow; and the unsettling feeling of despair had long since retreated. With the encroaching sensation gone, the mana in the air once again moved undisturbed and Erin felt his control slowly return to him.

  The static that had blocked him was gone; gone with the woman whose age defied her along with the adventurer’s she took along with her.

  For when Erin returned to the first floor, as aforementioned — the Boss Room was empty. The adventurers were gone. Even the blood pools that had once seeped into the cracks along the floor were gone, having mysteriously vanished without a trace.

  The more concerning piece to note, however, beside the missing human bodies, was the complete and utter absence of Smoky’s physical form. His core remained, yes — but only his core.

  His fur, nails, skin, teeth, and flesh — Smoky himself — departed entirely; sucked into the woman, perhaps?

  Used as fuel for her power? From blood to despair?

  Erin hovered beside Smoky’s core as it was all that was left of him. He outstretched his mana and carefully guided it into the Boss’s other heart.

  The black abyss within swirled; and the miniature stars — golden and precise — flickered underneath the strain of the incoming energy.

  The core glowed then dimmed.

  Underneath the iridescent glow, blood seeped from the core. It oozed out, thick and viscous; then spilled across the tiled floor.

  The blood dripped, then pooled; until a pond of crimson mirrored the glow of the sconces’ light. From the pond of blood, spires of coagulated liquid rose into the air.

  The spires separated into threads. Then, from the threads came venules, capillaries, veins, and arteries. Tendons further bloomed into being all while muscles sprouted between flesh until, at the end of it all, Smoky was reborn again.

  However, the behemoth of a beast — that once stood twice the size of man and weighed more than a rich man’s carriage — now stood to Erin’s would-be waist.

  In other words, Smoky had shrunk.

  He had shrunk so much so, in fact, that he now stood barely a quarter of where he stood before. His once thick, bristled tails now appeared soft and fluffy.

  His nails — talons — that once dripped with blood and severed heads from shoulders now looked manicured and powerless.

  Short-Stop Smoky wrinkled his nose. His three tails unfurled behind him as he purred in delight — his eyes filled with light — his coat warm and welcoming.

  Erin nuzzled the little creature’s head. Oddly enough, Smoky was now much the same size as the Bat-Apes. He was cute — that much couldn’t be denied — but underneath his transformation laid a concern that far outweighed his newfound cuteness.

  Just what exactly happened to him? Erin thought.

  He had revived the shadow-touched squirrel before — many times, in fact — and yet Smoky’s appearance had never changed so drastically.

  Erin recalled the woman; or rather, the cretin.

  She did something to Smoky. Drained him of his spark, of his light — and now he was left weaker than ever before.

  Erin’s mana coursed through the squirrel which allowed him to meticulously inspect Smoky’s well-being. From his regrown flesh to the inner-mechanisms of his core, Erin wanted to make sure his first was properly taken care of.

  So Erin ‘entered’ Smoky’s core. Through his mana sense, Erin studied the shadows and the sparks that danced within them.

  Although shadows lacked depth — the ones within Smoky’s core seemed shallower; lighter; weaker.

  No longer were the shadows hectic and destructive. No longer were they wide and obtuse, like a kraken’s tentacle; instead, the shadows felt brittle and on the cusp of collapse.

  Like the split-ends of hair, Smoky’s shadowy tendrils split and whittled away; and with each new branch, Smoky’s connection to the corporeal dark weakened. His pull on the wisps beyond the light lessened alongside his stature.

  By all accounts, Smoky had been drained — both physically and magically. A new phenomena, needless to say, and one to be wary of in the future, but when Erin spread his senses unto the surface — he felt no aura as corrosive as hers.

  She was gone; and whatever piece of Smoky she took was gone with her. In retaliation, Erin attempted to reform the black-lit squirrel.

  Like he did before, back a few months ago, Erin manipulated his mana and, with the precision of a fine-tooth comb, coursed it into Smoky’s being.

  The mana slithered through his veins and blood. It encompassed Smoky fully and left not a single cell of his unturned. Then, Erin integrated his will.

  Grow! He commanded.

  Bigger! Stronger! He quickly relapsed to his old ways.

  Unfortunately, the effects were minimal. Even with all the mana that Erin had poured into him, Smoky grew just shy of an inch. His nails thinned instead of sharpened and his coat thickened, but did not harden.

  Erin immediately frowned. He felt his mana shift through Smoky. He felt it move and contract in a cyclical flow, but for some reason — Smoky’s body rejected further assimilation.

  At first, Smoky’s form relented and he grew an inch, but then, as if his capacity for energy had hit a wall, the mana absorption instantaneously ceased; no matter how much Erin urged for it to continue.

  It was then when Erin noticed an oddity in Smoky’s form. To be sure of his suspicions, however, Erin coursed more mana into the beast. He looked at his muscles, glands, tendons, and bones; and as he had suspected, Smoky suddenly carried more bones than before.

  Twenty-two bones, in fact. Twenty-two bones that Erin was sure Smoky did not have when he first encountered the critter a few months ago.

  Where were the bones located? What type of bones were they?

  Erin narrowed his attention unto Smoky’s jaw. There, beneath his initial row of teeth, twenty-two others were embedded beneath his gums.

  And like a lightbulb in the dark, Erin suddenly found himself enlightened. An epiphany struck him; one that he should have realized a long time ago.

  It wasn’t mana that the cretin had absorbed from Smoky, nor was it shadow or lifeforce, or any other mumbo-jumbo Erin could think of; it was time.

  She had stolen Smoky’s time.

  Reverted him to an age long before Erin had stumbled upon him. There was only one caveat; how exactly did time interact with Erin’s external influence?

  Presumably — and perhaps even logically — if Smoky was truly returned to a time before he had met Erin, then Smoky should have returned to a form that coincided with that, i.e. a small, standard, shadow attuned squirrel.

  Instead, however, Smoky reverted to a younger version of his post-evolved form. The giant beast that once dominated the Acorn Halls still lived and, in fact, still retained all of the buffs and changes that Erin had granted him — he was merely too young for those evolutions to bloom.

  Moreover, time itself was a finicky thing; and it was something Erin had tried to manipulate before, but had instead utterly failed at. If he could, Erin wouldn’t hesitate to manipulate the growth times of the Bat-Apes and the Batarangs. On the contrary, Erin was forced to intervene biologically; he adjusted their hormones and chemical balances in an effort to expedite their natural adolescence.

  As a result, all of the species that Erin had created had some sort of side effect. For example, they were all insatiably hungry. All the time.

  This was, thankfully, one of the easier side effects to rationalize. In other words, Erin had manipulated their hormones to grow faster; and from that, it didn’t take a genius to realize that the Bat-Apes and Batarangs were simply compensating for their accelerated growth.

  Accelerated growth meant accelerated consumption. It really was that simple.

  And the reason Erin couldn’t further pump Smoky full of mana? As aforementioned, biology had its own limits; muscles, bones, and tendons, they each carried their own limiter that was nearly impossible to supersede.

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  Meaning, Smoky’s biology was already maxed out. Without the aid of specific spells, Smoky couldn’t get any bigger, stronger, or better.

  He was already the biggest, strongest, and best version of himself. There simply wasn’t more to be done, at least evolutionarily speaking.

  Likewise, in the event where Erin wished to make Short-Stop Smoky stronger, he’d first need to either figure out how to use time magic or he’d need to grant Smoky a slew of new spells….

  This would, not only, contend with Erin’s earlier belief that he shouldn’t further strengthen the previous floors, but it also presented a new inquiry on the topic of magic.

  If, in order to bestow magic unto another, Erin must first copy a spell from an adventurer, and the adventurer’s categorized their spells into affinities… then did Erin need a shadow-aspected spell to bestow unto Smoky?

  Or would any old spell circuit cut it?

  Unfortunately, Erin did not have much faith in the latter.

  Rather than theory craft any longer, Erin tested the first spell that came to his mind.

  Shaped Wind: Cluster Bomb!

  Erin willed the spell into his mana and then slipped it through Smoky’s chest cavity and into his core, but as already expected, the mana merely dissipated and the spell circuit did not form.

  The most likely explanation was that Smoky lacked a connection to the wind; but that even further begged the question: what were Smoky’s affinities and how could Erin discover them?

  Must he really test each element one at a time? Worse even yet, for every new species that eventually settled into his dungeon?

  Erin found the notion preposterous.

  So instead, Erin was determined to discover a worthwhile method here and now. In order to begin this process, Erin first thought of the Airhorses.

  He had granted them a lightning-aspected spell. Why? Because within their core, Erin saw minuscule sparks amidst a storm of fog.

  Similarly, with Smoky, the black-lit squirrel’s core was packed to the brim with what appeared to be liquid shadow raging underneath a sea of golden stars.

  Between the two examples at hand, there were parallels to be drawn. For one, both Smoky and the Airhorse’s possessed a core that exuded two noticeable pieces.

  For Smoky, it was the swirling shadow and the glints of gold.

  For the Airhorses, it was the revolving mist and the occasional streak of brilliant lightning.

  As there were parallels, though, there were also differences.

  For example, Smoky’s core was filled with mostly shadow and, as a result, Smoky’s primary form of magic was shadow.

  The Airhorses, on the other hand, their core’s were mostly filled with mist, but even then, they were still able to use lightning-aspected spells.

  From this, Erin could deduce two things; one, an individual’s affinity appeared to be directly linked to the visuals expressed through their cores. Following that logic, then, Erin surmised that Bram’s core was filled with wind whilst Martha’s core was filled with frost.

  Naturally, Erin recognized that both Smoky and the Airhorse’s possessed more than one affinity. The main issue persisted, however, in that Erin could not deduce what each visual meant.

  Was mist truly an affinity? Or was it a combination between wind and water? Likewise, was storm an affinity itself — or a triage between water, wind, and lightning?

  More importantly, what the hell were the golden stars within Smoky’s core supposed to represent?

  Was gold itself an affinity? And if it was, why wasn’t it simply a sub-branch of earth? Or perhaps even a sub-branch of metal?

  Would Kuzo’s ability to manipulate metal apply to gold or, within Kuzo’s core, was it specifically steel or silver?

  Moreover, if the golden glints within Smoky’s core were something other than gold… then what the hell was it?

  What else is gold that isn’t gold?

  For once, Erin wanted to bang his head against a wall. Even after everything he had learned, he still had nothing to teach Smoky. No shadow-aspected spells and definitely no gold-aspected spells.

  Some of Kuzo’s spells were worth experimenting with, but in all honesty, Erin knew he had to experiment with everything.

  He needed to know how affinities worked and in order to do that, he first needed to be able to identify what all the affinities were and how they functioned.

  But alas, that problem could wait. As there was another, more pressing issue at hand; the first floor Boss of Erin’s dungeon was now suddenly a toddler.

  And that certainly could not be a good thing.

  ***

  Ryn’s head pounded as consciousness slowly returned; and once it did, each throb of pain felt like a hammer against his skull.

  His vision blurred alongside the pain. He tried to lift his eyelids, but they were ridiculously heavy. Heavier than ever before, but Ryn couldn’t afford to succumb to the pain.

  He grit his teeth and as he further bit down his eyelids slowly rose. Then, he peered through what he could make of the darkness, but his vision was sloppy.

  He saw a maze of shadows and a faint, flickering light.

  Then, he tried to move, but his arms were wrenched back and bound by cold, heavy chains that bit into his wrists like rats. His back was pressed firmly against a sharp, damp wall, but the dampness was his own blood.

  He blinked in an effort to adjust to the dim light, and felt a warm trickle of blood seep down his forehead. The blood ran down past his eyes and dripped from the tip of his nose onto his lap.

  Chained in a tomb of darkness, the air was thick with rancid mold and decay. Thankfully, Ryn’s vision was coming to.

  In the distance, the faint flicker of flames caught his attention once more. Their glow cast long, streaking shadows across the chamber’s walls that made them seem almost alive.

  Ryn squinted, his vision sharpening as he narrowed on the source of light. There, stood amongst the gloom, was her.

  The woman who had put an end to everything.

  She stood with her back to him. She stood over the fire whilst the flames danced around her silhouette.

  Ryn’s memory of her was hazy, fragmented by the chaos of their last encounter. He remembered her as old and hunched with her face twisted by malice, but now, when he looked at her again, he saw something entirely different.

  Underneath the soft brush of light from the fireplace, her skin appeared smooth and soft. Her cheeks were flushed with a rosy vitality and her lips looked supple and gentle.

  She muttered to herself, her lips moved rapidly, but no sound graced Ryn’s ears. Her voice was a low, rhythmic hum that echoed alongside the crackle of wood from the fire.

  Her hood covered the rest of her features, but Ryn was determined to see the entirety of his kidnapper.

  Ryn’s breath hitched as he tried to speak, but his throat was dry, and his voice came out a raspy whisper.

  “What… what did you do to me?” He croaked, the words barely audible.

  The woman didn’t respond. Instead, her attention remained fixed on whatever she was muttering.

  Ryn’s head throbbed again, and he winced, closing his eyes to fight against the pain. When he opened them again, his gaze fell unto his body.

  What he saw made his blood run cold.

  His legs… weren’t his own. They couldn’t be his own. Ryn’s feet were wrinkled and pruned, the skin was pale and sickly, and tinged with an unsettling purple hue.

  The wrinkles continued up his legs where the skin was so thin and translucent that he could see the intricate network of veins underneath — the blue strands of veins and capillaries painted a grotesque roadmap of his own frailty.

  Ryn’s legs looked ancient, as though they belonged to a man who had been bedridden for decades. He tried to lift them, but they felt impossibly weak, as if the muscles had atrophied long ago.

  A wave of panic surged through Ryn and his heart pounded in his chest.

  “What… what is this?!!” He trembled.

  He tugged at the chains that bound him, and the metal bit deeper into his wrists, but he barely felt the pain. His mind raced as he tried to make sense of this nightmare, and against his better judgment, he raised his voice.

  “WHAT DID YOU DO TO ME?!!” His voice broke like a wounded animal.

  Finally, the woman turned to face him, but her movements were slow; deliberate.

  Her once irradiant eyes that glowed with malevolent power now seemed almost… soft; and yet, there was something unnerving about her gaze, something that shot pins and needles across Ryn’s skin.

  She stepped closer and Ryn could finally make out her full visage; and evil be damned, she was gorgeous. Long, straight white hair that drooped over her shoulders and cascaded around her breasts.

  She had pale grey skin that meshed with the wall’s of the dungeon, and she still wore the same decrepit, ripped cloak as before.

  Her eyelashes were white and her nose was small and buttoned. Her lips were supple, with her bottom lip plumper than the other, and she wore a silver nose ring that hooked around her right nostril.

  “You —” she interrupted Ryn’s gawking and everything rushed back to him.

  His eyes widened. The woman before him was no longer the withered crone he remembered. She was young and radiant. Ryn found her beauty otherworldly, but underneath it all, Ryn could still sense the darkness that clung to her; a darkness that had only grown stronger.

  “You were useful.” Her voice was smooth and melodic, yet laced with an undercurrent of malice.

  She tilted her head and studied Ryn with a curious expression.

  “Your fire… it was exactly what I needed.” She gestured to his legs and a faint smile played across her indigo lips.

  “I took only what I needed. Consider it a gift, that I left you alive at all.”

  Ryn’s stomach churned. He felt bile slowly rise towards his throat.

  “You… you stole my life.” He choked out.

  “You took my strength… my youth…”

  The woman’s smile widened and her eyes gleamed with cruel satisfaction. Then, she turned away and cast her attention back to the flames.

  “Don’t worry, little ember. You’ll serve me again. In time.” Her voice sounded playful, but to Ryn, she sounded like the Devil.

  His mind reeled at her words, the full weight of them crashed down at once. He was a shell of himself; his body was broken, his strength stolen, and as he stared at her, a spark of defiance ignited within him.

  Ryn clenched his fists and the chains rattled behind him.

  “I’ll kill you.” He growled.

  His voice was low and venomous.

  “I’ll find a way…” He spoke as both a warning to her and a promise to himself.

  “And when I do, I swear it… I will fucking kill you!!” He screamed.

  In response, the woman laughed and the sound echoed all throughout the dungeon like a haunting melody.

  “Rest now.” She finally said. “You’ll need your strength… for what’s to come.”

  As she turned back to the flames, Ryn’s vision blurred again and darkness re-enshrouded his world. Before he succumbed, however, one thought burned brightly in his mind.

  The thought of his hands wrapped tightly around her delicate, grey throat. For the first time since he awoke, Ryn smiled, but then, he quickly returned to slumber.