Dragging Jess along, Beth sprinted towards the nearest tunnel, not even looking back to see if the horrific creature was still following them. Thankfully, she felt that Jess began sprinting on their own, staying right beside Beth. As she looked over to them, she could see just how pale their face was. She wanted to ask what they knew about this thing, but at the moment, the highest priority was getting themselves out of the sight and attack range of it.

Thankfully, Beth could hear and vaguely feel that it was still behind them in the chamber. It seemed to still be focused on the second of the stone lions. Beth’s mind was racing as she tried to figure out not only what that creature was, but also what it was doing with the stone lion.

Beth was granted very little time to think because after only a few minutes of running, the duo heard the screech of the creature once more, the sound echoing down the tunnel, closely followed by the sound of the creature scuttling along the walls and closing in on them. The sounds coming from the creature were terrifying. Not only was it screeching like some ghastly monster, but even its body seemed to be emitting a sound like the churning screams of hundreds of dead souls. Beth tried to block out the sound, but as it got closer, that became increasingly difficult to do.

Beth looked to Jess once more. She was met with a face filled with fear and Beth found herself instinctively reaching out to hold their hand, clenching it tightly. Finally, Beth looked back to the monster that was chasing them and she came to a realization about it. The creature did not seem to have any eyes. While they could have been hidden somewhere in the swirling mass of darkness and stone, Beth was fairly certain that this creature was not operating based on sight. She wasn’t surprised, knowing that most creatures of ser were often guided by a simple and innate sense of destruction.

Beth scowled, trying to focus on something that she noticed on the creature, but as soon as it appeared, it was gone again. Just as soon as she turned back around, Beth was met with a fork in the path. On instinct, she bolted to the right, once again practically dragging Jess along with her. Glancing back, she watched as the creature slammed in to the divide, burrowing through the wall partially before begin to pick itself out.

Thinking fast, Beth formed a seal and opened up a large hole in the side of the tunnel, darting inside and sealing over the tunnel.

“What are you doing…?” Jess asked in a hushed and very strained voice.

“This thing can’t see and right now, I’m not totally sure what it was tracking. It seemed like us, but if that was the case, why did it go so out of its way to destroy the lions? I figure, if we hide in the wall, it might have a harder time finding us… Plus…” Beth motioned behind her to a large tunnel that she had just carved out, leading back the way that they had come. “I want to go back to the chamber to see what’s going on. I think that if I can get a look at those lions, I might be able to figure out what this creature is after and, if that’s the case, maybe we can get rid of it.”

Jess thought for a moment, shaking slightly from the nerves that had overtaken them. Beth smiled softly and squeezed their hand. “We’ve got this, okay? I’ll protect you…”

Jess nodded and followed as Beth led them back towards the chamber, continuing to carve out the tunnel as they went. The sounds of the creature seemed to have subsided for the time, so Beth increased her pace, eventually breaking through a wall in to a room filled with light. Beth raced towards the platform where the fragments of cracked stone still sat. Jess followed closely behind, keeping on guard.

“Is that thing what I think it is…?” Beth asked, examining the pieces of stone, trying to find anything odd or out of the ordinary that would cause the creature to attack it.

Jess sighed and shook their head. “Yeah… That’s the thing I’ve been feeling… Seeing it so close… feeling it like this… I have absolutely no doubt in my mind… But even still… Its presence is so… overwhelming…”

Beth paused for a moment, about to say something before stopping and resuming examining the fragments. They seemed perfectly normal, at least to her eyes, but as she pressed her hand to the stones and allowed her earth vision to propagate through the material, she felt something strange. She tried to focus in on it to identify what it might be, but she still wasn’t very adept with sensing.

“Hey, Jess, can you come check this out?” Beth called.

Jess turned around, giving a slightly confused look before heading over to the stone and placing their hand on it, closing their eyes and searching through the contents of the stone for anything out of the ordinary. Their eyes shot open and they turned to Beth.

“These things were using origin shard pieces to power them… Just like the ones that were all in the walls of the first chamber,” Jess explained, their hand moving to their chest, feeling their accelerated heartbeat.

“We need to go back to the first chamber. I need to test a theory,” Beth said, standing up and gazing around the room at the various tunnels. “Can you tell which, if any of these, lead back to the first chamber?”

Jess nodded and closed their eyes once again, using what strength they had to get a map of the various tunnels all around them, scanning their paths and trying to find which ones led back to the first chamber. Eventually, finding one, they sighed and opened their eyes, feeling their legs getting a little weak. Beth rushed to them and caught them before they fell as they pointed up to a tunnel above the place they had come in. Beth nodded and once again took Jess over her shoulder, creating a stone walkway leading up to the tunnel. As they ascended the stairs, Beth looked at Jess with concern, seeing just how much they had been pushing themself and growing increasingly worried.

“I’m sorry for asking you to do that… I know it was… probably… exhausting…” Beth offered.

Jess shook their head. “It’s alright… If you have a theory about what’s going on, I think that there is a very good chance that that theory is, in fact, correct…”

Beth nodded, not wanting to say any more as they made their way in to the tunnel and back towards the first chamber. The entire walk back, Beth had to carry Jess and thanks to this, she could feel them shaking rather often and their heartbeat was going much faster than it did usually. She could tell that the sounds of the creature were certainly not helping. Every time Jess heard it, their heart would speed up for a moment before Beth worked to calm them down.

Thankfully, the trip to the first chamber only took a few minutes. Unfortunately, when they arrived, they were met with a very odd sight. Upon exiting the tunnel, they were met with a sharp drop that almost sent them both plummeting downwards. Thankfully, Beth caught it and stopped the two of them before forming a walkway down to the nearest bit of stable rock.

As they looked around the chamber, they were both shocked by the kind of destruction that had taken place in such a short time since they had been here. There were massive sections of the walls carved out all around them, leaving only small bits of glistening rock showing. Most of the pieces of crystal were missing and the vantalorum had been reduced to a few scattered strands along the walls. Thanks to the absence of so much, the room was now fully visible what could be seen could be best described as ruins. The spiral walkway had been shattered in many places and much like the walls, the crystals were almost entirely missing from it with only a few tiny pieces left over.

Beth examined the surface closely, confirming that the damage to the surface was identical to the damage they had seen in the tunnels and in the third chamber. “It’s completely identical… It took the crystals from here… These crystals in the walls and ground were origin shards too… That makes two places…” Beth’s mind flashed with what she had seen within the creature’s body. “It couldn’t be…” Beth mused quietly.

Jess gave her a confused look. “What is it?”

Beth jumped a little, having been lost in her thoughts. “Oh… Right… I… think that this thing might have come from the fracture that exists underneath of the forest. It’s pretty deep, but it would be underneath of the trial grounds… What if the fracture grew or… the roots of the three reached the fracture? It could have created something exactly like that… A monster obsessed with destruction and… if it was interfaced with an origin shard… it would become fixated on that especially, much like how ser wolves can be made with a specific kind of essence to make them fixate on destroying that kind of essence…”

Jess listened along, their eyes widening at the thought, but understanding that everything that Beth was saying was likely correct.

“All of the chambers have origin shards within them in some capacity, so it’s been going after them… But it seems… confused… almost… It didn’t even attack the rest of the chambers until…” Beth’s eyes widened as her eyes went to Jess and then down to their chest, “until we entered… Jess… It’s… following you… Oh Masters… we have to get you out of here…”