"The Drafts" did not feel like a natural cave system. It felt like the bowels of a massive, sleeping beast.
The air was thick, suffocating, and smelled of sulfur and stale blood. Phosphorescent moss clung to the jagged, obsidian-like walls, casting a sickly pale-green light over the uneven ground. Kaelen walked near the rear of their three-person formation, his hand gripping the hilt of a standard Vanguard-issue shortsword. It felt heavy and clumsy in his grip.
Up ahead, Garrick practically glowed in the gloom. His Supreme Core radiated a faint, warm aura, and he walked with the relaxed confidence of a man taking a stroll through a garden. Elara walked between them, her staff humming softly with emerald healing magic, though her shoulders were tense.
"Keep your guard up, Garrick," she chided softly, her eyes darting to the shadows. "The scouts said the Ink here is highly volatile. The Heavens are writing new horrors in these depths."
"Relax, El," Garrick chuckled, casually swatting away a bat-like creature that swooped too close. "Let them write. I'll just erase them."
Kaelen rolled his eyes in the dark. Famous last words of every protagonist right before the author throws a curveball, he thought.
The curveball came exactly three seconds later.
It wasn't a roar. It was a sound like tearing parchment, followed by a violent tremor that shook the very foundations of the cavern. The ceiling directly above Garrick and Elara groaned, and a massive shower of jagged rock collapsed between them and Kaelen.
"Kaelen!" Elara screamed, her voice instantly muffled by the deafening crash of falling stone.
Dust choked the air. Kaelen coughed, waving his hand blindly. "I'm fine!" he shouted over the rumble. "Garrick, get her back!"
"Stand back, Kaelen! I'll blast through!" Garrick's muffled voice came from the other side of the rockfall, followed by the blinding flash and intense heat of his solar magic hammering against the stones.
It would take Garrick at least two minutes to melt through the debris.
Two minutes. In the grand scheme of an epic daastaan, two minutes was a footnote. But as Kaelen heard the low, guttural clicking sound echoing from the shadows behind him, he realized two minutes was a lifetime.
From the gloom emerged three Ink-Hounds. They were nightmares made of shadow and bone, the size of starved wolves, with elongated limbs and eyes that burned like dying coals. They didn't walk; they twitched, their movements erratic and terrifyingly fast, as if they were glitching between the frames of reality.
Kaelen's heart hammered against his ribs. His murky, grey core offered no warmth, no surge of power. He was physically just an eighteen-year-old boy with a cheap sword.
Alright, Kaelen thought, his breath turning to mist in the sudden cold. Let's read ahead.
He gripped the power of the Editor's Pen in his soul. "Glimpse."
A sharp, stabbing pain spiked directly behind Kaelen's eyes. The world flickered. The sickly green light of the moss shifted to a sterile blue.
Instantly, ghostly afterimages of the three hounds materialized in the air, tracing exactly where they would be in the next three seconds. The hound on the left would feint; the hound on the right would leap for his throat; the center hound would sweep his legs.
It was perfect tactical information. Kaelen saw the future written out in glowing blue lines.
Step back, pivot right, raise the sword, his analytical mind calculated flawlessly.
The three seconds passed in reality. The hounds moved in a blur of shadow.
Kaelen tried to step back. But his legs were heavy. His muscles were slow. His mind knew exactly what was going to happen, but his mortal, 'extra' body simply couldn't react fast enough.
Squelch.
The right hound's claws raked across Kaelen's shoulder, tearing through his leather armor and biting deep into his flesh. Kaelen screamed, stumbling backward and swinging his sword wildly. The blade hit nothing but empty air.
He hit the cavern wall hard, the breath knocked out of him. Warm blood rushed down his arm. The pain in his head from using "Glimpse" was compounding with the agonizing burn in his shoulder. His vision blurred.
Information is useless if the hardware can't process it, Kaelen realized grimly, spitting a mouthful of copper-tasting blood onto the stone. I can't out-speed them. I have to edit the board.
The hounds circled, smelling his blood, preparing for the lethal strike.
Kaelen dropped his sword. It clattered uselessly to the floor. The hounds lunged, a coordinated wave of teeth and shadow.
Kaelen didn't look at the hounds. He looked at the heavy, jagged stalactite hanging precariously from the ceiling directly above the center hound. He felt the heavy, draining weight of the Pen.
"Typo," Kaelen gasped.
He didn't try to manipulate the hounds themselves—living, complex ink was too heavy for his current level. Instead, he struck out a single syllable of structural integrity in the stone above.
A sharp ache erupted in Kaelen's nose, and a drop of warm blood fell from his nostril.
The stalactite snapped perfectly at the base. It plummeted like a guillotine, crushing the center hound into the stone floor with a sickening crunch.
The other two hounds flinched, their momentum broken by the sudden, inexplicable environmental hazard. That half-second of hesitation was all the opening Kaelen needed.
The rockfall blocking the tunnel exploded inward in a blinding shower of molten rock and golden light.
Garrick burst through the smoke, a miniature sun blazing in his palm. He took in the scene—the crushed hound, Kaelen bleeding against the wall, and the two remaining beasts. With a furious roar, Garrick hurled the sphere of solar fire. It engulfed the two hounds, turning them to ash in a fraction of a second.
Elara was there an instant later, falling to her knees beside Kaelen. Her hands glowed with frantic emerald light as she pressed them to his torn shoulder.
"I've got you," she sobbed softly, the bleeding slowing under her touch. "I'm so sorry, Kaelen. I've got you."
"Are you okay, brother?" Garrick asked, his chest heaving, his golden eyes filled with guilt as he looked at the dead hound under the stalactite. "By the Heavens, you got lucky with that cave-in."
Kaelen let his head fall back against the cold stone. His shoulder burned, his head throbbed with a migraine that made him want to vomit, and blood was still trickling from his nose from the sheer mental toll of editing reality.
He was weak. He was pathetic. And he had never felt more alive.
"Yeah," Kaelen rasped, forcing a weak, convincing smile for the protagonist. He wiped the blood from his nose, hiding the evidence of his power. "Just... lucky."