Escaping.
That was the only coherent thought left in Tristan’s mind.
His lungs burned, his throat tasted like copper, and his injured calf felt as though someone had driven a hot iron spike straight through the muscle. He couldn’t outrun them. He was a starved, awakened tier prisoner with half an empty essence core, and the two Fallen-class horrors behind him were absolute apex predators.
He was rapidly losing his lead.
He sped past the massive dripstones, his boots splashing violently through freezing puddles of stagnant water. Behind him, the Mutant let out a furious, gurgling growl, its disproportionate limbs pounding against the stone in a terrifyingly erratic rhythm. But even louder than the Mutant was the deafening, seismic grinding of the Vein Eater.
’Damnnnn they’re catching up to me’
The entire cavern shook rapidly, dust and loose rocks raining down on Tristan’s head as the massive serpentine beast simply plowed through the environment, crushing stalagmites into powder as if they were made of chalk.
’Just a little further’, Tristan pleaded inwardly.
The sickly blue glow of the luminescent ores began to thin out. The biting, sulfur-tainted air was slowly replaced by the familiar stench of unwashed bodies and burning pitch. Faint, sputtering orange light flickered into view ahead.
The torches. He had made it back up the descent tunnel.
But his body had nothing left to give.
As he crossed the threshold from smooth, melted rock back onto the jagged, uneven floor of the upper cavern, his mangled calf finally gave out. The muscle simply refused to contract. Tristan’s boot caught on a raised lip of stone, and he tripped, tumbling hard onto the rocky floor and skidding several feet.
’This is the worst timing ever’
He scrambled to turn over, gasping for air.
He didn’t even have time to stand.
Bursting from the darkness of the tunnel like a runaway freight train made of jagged crystal was the Vein Eater. It bypassed the Mutant entirely, its massive, unhinged jaws snapping open as it lunged directly for the downed human.
’Now!’
Tristan reached into his mind, grabbing the dense, stubborn weight of the concept he had violently punched out of the cave wall.
[Reave: Hardness unleashed.]
He didn’t project it outward. He pulled it inward, wrapping the absolute, unyielding essence of solid stone directly around his own frail body.
A fraction of a second later, the Vein Eater’s crystalline jaws clamped down directly over Tristan’s torso.
The world went dark.
He didn’t instantly rupture into a bloody paste, but the kinetic force was catastrophic. The conceptual armor held his flesh and bones together, turning his skin as unyielding as granite, but it couldn’t negate the sheer crushing pressure. A sickening impact radiated through his stomach and chest, forcefully expelling every ounce of air from his lungs causing Tristan to let out a pathetic "bleghh".
His ribs groaned under the strain, on the absolute verge of snapping despite the spell.
The beast didn’t stop moving. Its momentum carried it forward, its jaws still locked around Tristan as it violently dove headfirst into the solid wall of the cavern.
The impact was deafening. Solid rock shattered around them as the Vein Eater burrowed into the stone, dragging Tristan through the crushing debris. The Hardness concept was flickering, his meager essence pool draining away like water through a sieve just to keep him from being bitten in half.
Trapped in the suffocating darkness of the monster’s maw, his arms pinned awkwardly against his chest, Tristan tightened his grip on the Prowler’s Claw. The beast was made of dense, jagged crystal, but it was still a living creature. It had to have joints. It had to have a root structure for those massive teeth.
Using the bone dagger like an ice pick, Tristan blindly drove the eight-inch blade deep into the fleshy, mineral-crusted gum line at the base of the Vein Eater’s massive fang.
He twisted the hilt violently.
The artifact’s passive effect triggered instantly. The wound widened unnaturally, a massive torrent of thick, glowing blue blood erupting from the laceration as the blade forced the beast to bleed ten percent faster.
The Vein Eater let out a muffled, agonizing shriek that vibrated directly through Tristan’s skull.
Its jaws violently snapped open.
Tristan tumbled out of the beast’s mouth in a shower of crushed rock and blue blood, hitting the floor of the Level One cavern hard. The spell broke the moment he lost contact, his body immediately returning to its fragile, mortal state. He curled into a ball, coughing violently as he tried to force oxygen back into his paralyzed lungs.
"I.... need... to... breathe..."
The Vein Eater thrashed wildly, ripping its head out of the cratered wall, completely enraged.
But as the dust began to settle, and the wet, heavy footsteps of the pursuing Mutant echoed into the cavern to join the fray, a new sound cut through the chaos.
"What in the name of the Goddess—!"
Tristan cracked an eye open, spitting a glob of blood onto the stone.
Standing about fifty feet away, illuminated by the torches near the entrance of the Level Two cell blocks, was a squad of five heavily armed Verneuil patrol guards. They had drawn their steel broadswords, their faces pale and completely frozen in absolute horror as they stared at the two massive, Fallen-class nightmares currently tearing up the tutorial zone.
Tristan let his head fall back against the cold stone, a bloody, exhausted smirk spreading across his face.
His ride was here.