Chrysalis

Holy mother of all that is good and gracious in this world, puh-lease let me make it alive! I’m burning up! The light is fading! My soul is running before the light! Is that you mum? What is that you say? You wish I’d never been born? Get the hell out of my death vision, human mum! Bring out my real mother, the Queen!

Gawd, I’m delirious. Which is interesting since I’ve actually not quite run out of mana in my core yet. I’m down to vapour, make no mistake, but not quite out of gas just yet.

No, wait. Check that, just ran out.

Oh my word, it hurts! I feel like my soul is suffocating!

[How much further Crinis?!]

[I don’t know master, I can’t see!]

DAMMIT.

[Tiny! Do you know how much further we need to go?!]

[Hurts]

[I KNOW that! More than anything in this world I know it! Do you have any idea how much further we have to run?!]

[... No]

I swear by all that is sacred and loved in this world Tiny, if I survive this, I’m going to shrink your muscles until your arms are limp noodles and you have the brain power of two young Einstein’s. You won’t be able to fight and will have to sit around sipping tea, discussing the latest in particle physics. Only then will my wrath be sated!

It can’t be that far away. I feel as if we’ve been running for ten hours but that can be attributed to my panic and anxiety. If I were to try and guess now it would have to have been closer to two hours.

Argh! Holy smokes! That tickled me right in the pain zone. How do describe the pain of having an empty core? It’s as if my magic lungs are empty and I’m in a vacuum. No matter how hard my core tries to pull mana in it just isn’t getting anything like enough from the air above ground. My monster body consumes far more mana to operate than can be replaced outside of the Dungeon.

need to get down

my little legs until they were on the edge of

at the point where this is going to be an

feet tall, the stone column stood to one side of the cobbled road, words and arrows carved onto its surface. Fantastic! We’re close! I circled around the edifice and found an arrow that

I sprinted away. Trees and branches flew past my face as I motored with all of my might. I’m not willing to dash in case the drain

Already down 10%?! This

GOGOGOGOGOGO.

Up ahead a stone structure rose before us. A small fort in the middle of a forest. A ludicrous thing in normal

glorious sight of my life. Inside the walls, cut straight through the earth is a wonderful crack, dim blue light leaking out of

this place as a ’fort’, more of a guard post, maintained to keep an eye on this particular crack in the ground. Not wide enough to be considered

But I will!

I grit my

only a foot wide, not enough for me to slither into and certainly not enough for Tiny to back his

DIG!

of ant living

face hands pummelled the soil at a relentless pace, dirt and stone was flung into the sky as I whipped my body back and forth, a rhythm of soil

the sweet, sweet touch of mana flowed more smoothly out of the Dungeon and into my parched core. It still

Dig! Dig! DIG!

out a bowl shaped basin deep enough that both Tiny and I had our heads below ground level but it still wasn’t enough, so we concentrated on digging a narrow tunnel straight down, following the crack into the

went the more mana seeped into our cores

that point we collapsed in a

before Morrelia found us. I awoke to the sight of her head poked down the impromptu

Ugh.

feels like. I feel gritty and sore across my entire body. After a few hours of torpor at the very least I’d managed to recharge my core back up to capacity, my

six of my legs twitched as I stretched them until the joints cracked. There is still some residual pain in my body from the damage I sustained when my core was empty. I wonder what exactly causes that damage? Does

Interesting questions.

how are