The Zolinka's boss gate waited just ahead. Scars ran through the floor where earlier fights had gouged it, melted it, and split it open. Moisture clung to the walls in a thin sheen drawn up from the deeper levels, and the air ahead of the gate felt dense enough to press against Roy's skin.
Lynder stopped a few paces short of the threshold and kept one hand near the opening of his cloak. "This is strange."
Roy glanced toward him. "How strange?"
"The jump in power between the 270s and 278 is absurd," Lynder said. His eyes stayed on the sealed stone. "The Bouyes had weight to it. That room held power you could measure. This feels steeper than that. Even in my prime, I would approach this monster carefully."
Eryndra turned toward Roy with bright eyes and the beginning of a grin already on her face. "How fast did Zehrina clear it?"
Roy had the AllPhone in hand before she finished asking. A few taps brought up the record. "Thirty-one seconds."
Her smile widened. "Pathetic," she said quietly, but the confidence in her voice still managed to ease Roy's nerves.
Roy kept his eyes on Eryndra for another moment. Lynder's caution still hung in the corridor, and the pressure beyond the gate had only thickened, yet none of it seemed to reach her. Something in her had settled harder instead. The certainty in her posture made the rest of them feel late.
She walked toward the gate with steady purpose, shoulders level, hands loose at her sides, and every step said the same thing. This was finished. The room simply had not learned it yet.
The gate opened and let heat roll into the corridor. A metallic taste followed it, sharp enough for Roy to feel along his tongue, and the chamber beyond stretched wider than the floor around it had any right to allow. Broken stone lay scattered across a broad ruin under a ceiling lost in black height while something inside the dark unfolded piece by piece, one wing scraping the wall in a long leathery rasp, one limb extending and then another, until the Zolinka lowered its head into the gate-light and opened its grin with it.
The Zolinka kept unfolding until its full shape entered the gate-light. One wing dragged along the wall with a long leathery rasp while another limb stretched free beneath it, followed by another, each movement adding more size to a body that already felt oversized for the room. Its head hung too large for the rest of it, all hard angles and tearing teeth, and the eyes caught the light in a way that made Roy's skin tighten.
Steam vented from Eryndra in pale ribbons as her stance narrowed and her weight shifted forward. The change barely showed, but the cost of it hit Roy all at once. Mana tore out of him in a hard pull that made his arms feel heavy for half a second, but the drop in mana was small enough for the AllPhone to buzz in his hand with a message from Tranquility.
"Impressive, only twelve percent taken on activation."
He ignored it and looked up just in time to see heat gather near the ceiling as the Zolinka reached upward and called the sky down on itself.
The first meteor dropped with a screaming trail behind it, and Eryndra drove a fist straight through the center, bursting it apart into a spray of burning fragments that hammered the floor around her. A second came at her left side, and she stepped into it, turned through the impact, and shattered that one too. The third descended behind her, and she jumped to meet it, punched through its heart in midair, and used the broken weight of it to carry herself forward.
Her feet touched stone already inside the Zolinka's reach, and the first punch tore deep into its side and came out wet. The second opened another hole beside it. The third landed higher and drove through hide, membrane, and muscle in one smooth motion, pulling out a burst of blood hot enough to steam where it hit the floor.
The Zolinka screeched and beat its wings hard enough to shove the smell of hot blood and torn flesh through the open gate. Roy couldn't help but gag at it.
Eryndra kept driving into it, step after step, blow after blow, never giving the creature the room to recover.
Roy's eyes kept losing the transition points. One moment Eryndra was on the wing joint, the next her arm was buried in the Zolinka's neck, and then she was lower, driving another blow into its ribs while blood sprayed across the stone. The speed only made sense through the damage it left behind.
Behind him, Andri let out a breathless sound of disbelief. "I can't track her."
Rava's voice came right after, tighter and more disgusted than awed. "I don't even want to track her. This is disgusting!"
With an equally excited Orden hanging from his shoulders, Orin leaned forward with open delight, cheering her on like this was the greatest thing he had ever seen. "Get that bat thing! It's nowhere near as tall as you!"
Eryndra laughed, bright and happy, as she slipped past another strike and buried a punch into the Zolinka's side. The creature answered at once, a sweeping claw cutting across the space where her body had just been, and the second attack came in right behind it with enough force to tear the chamber apart if it landed, but she slipped into apparition mode and let both strikes pass through her while the Zolinka's momentum carried onward. The creature overextended, and Eryndra vanished from everyone's eyeline for the space of a heartbeat.
Blood exploded from the Zolinka's neck.
She burst through the opening she had made from rising inside the Zolinka's spine and out through its neck in a violent upward launch that carried her above its head. Midair, she tucked, turned, and snapped into a bicycle kick that drove her heel down through the top of its skull.
Bone gave way under the impact. The head folded. The wings shuddered and collapsed, slamming into the floor hard enough to throw dust back toward the gate. The meteors cut out with it, and the chamber lost its motion all at once while the last echoes of the impact began to break apart against the walls.
Blood rained down through the settling dust as Eryndra dropped with it and landed in the mess with a soft splash. She wiped one bloody hand against the other, accomplished absolutely nothing with the gesture, and started toward the group.
Lynder stepped forward and lifted a hand toward her. "You are covered in blood," he said. "Stand still and let me get it off before it cakes."
Eryndra glanced down at herself, then back at him. "Oh. Really? Okay."
Water rose out of the damp stone and the air around them, gathered into a clear ribbon, and swept across her arms and chest. The moment it touched her, steam burst upward in a thick white rush as the heat gained from the fight washed away. The first pass stripped blood away and filled the chamber with a wet hiss. Lynder's eyes narrowed, and he sent a second, heavier sheet across her shoulders and down her legs, washing the rest off in red streams that ran over the floor.
Eryndra looked down through the steam, flexed one hand, and smiled. "That's nice."
The trio behind him made small, uncertain sounds that had more in common with fear than awe, their eyes caught between Eryndra's wide, satisfied smile and the ruin under her feet. She turned toward Roy with blood still running down her arms and dripping from her fingertips, then lifted her hands slightly as if she were presenting the whole room to him.
"How'd I do?" she asked. "What was my time?"
Roy looked down at the AllPhone and tapped the screen harder than he needed to. "Faster."
Her grin sharpened at once. "Good. Call Zehrina. Tell her."
"She's...she's one floor below us, Eryndra," Roy said. "You can tell her in person."
That earned a pleased, sharp laugh.