Kin of Jörmungandr

Ceph stepped over the dead pair of rodents that had just jumped them, rubbing her tentacle where their teeth had almost punctured.

The creatures were weak. Something only a rookie mercenary would find difficult to face. Yet Ceph and her team struggled.

Small, saber-toothed rabbits of all things. They sprung through the spatial distortions in a way that made their limited speed a non-factor. Five on two, and it had still taken an embarrassing length of time to cut them down.

She glanced back at the creatures for only a moment, but motioned the others to follow. They weren't even worth the ritual.

"I'd always thought the blekkenge were bad," Hirsh said, pulling his antlers from another portal they got caught in. "But these creatures can move through space like nothing else."

Ceph could think of a certain something else.

They'd expected this area to be similar to the border between Lower and Middle Elevation of the Titan Alps, but what they'd found was so much more dangerous than that. Not only had their senses been made unreliable, but most creatures here seemed completely adapted to it.

Thankfully, those like the bunnies that attacked rather than fleeing were a rare occurrence, but it was only a matter of time until they came across something stronger. Something more deadly.

Still, it surprised her how perfect this environment was for the serpent. Without limbs that could get caught unwillingly, it could probably reach speeds down here that those rabbits could only dream of. Add its apparent ability to bend those very portals to its will… well, Ceph hoped there wasn't any others of its species.

It made much more sense now why it returned to its home. The surface was likely much more difficult to traverse than down here, especially considering its tendency to fly whenever it could.

Ceph had only seen its battle against the Inner Circle mage from a distance — where she still nearly died in the cross-fire — but she'd seen how the creature shot through the sky just as often as it was on the ground.

The creature was sapient. If it had simply come down here to return home, then there was a good chance it was nearby. They'd find the creature in this distorted space.

Well, unless its sapience only extended so far and it remained as territorial as so many other beasts.

But that was a risk they needed to take. Too much was riding on their success here to back out because the place they found themselves was dangerous.

They'd expected this to be dangerous.

Until she found the snake, Ceph wasn't prepared to leave. She had promised Remus to return if she couldn't achieve her goals by the deadline, but as things were, she doubted she'd uphold her honour unless it truly was impossible.

Hirsh continued to lay down a trail of hardened water hyle into the rock behind them. A path back to the surface. He was the only one who could actively sense it, but with some effort both Ceph and the other mercs could find traces. That would be the worst case of them being split up, but it was possible.

As the days trailed on, Ceph found her frustrations mounting. The tunnels seemed to continue endlessly. If not for Hirsh's trail, she would have thought they were moving in circles.

Their fire hyle torches only illuminated half of what lay ahead of them. The other were black patches they couldn't see within. They had to be careful with each step; not a few times now had one of them slipped through a portal beneath their feet, and nearly been separated from the group. Only Hirsh's chain of water that linked them together kept their search ongoing.

A search that had yet to bear fruit.

She was sure the serpent was the same one from back in the tunnels beneath the Titan's Alps, so the frustration only mounted that she hadn't been able to find another path carved into the stone as it had so long ago.

Hirsh's markings, along with the two pairs of startlingly good eyes that were the volans should have been plenty to see any trace the creature might have left behind. Yet there was nothing. Hirsh's markings could pick up the slightest trace of intention in hyle, but they'd found no intention in any of the intense spatial distortions around them.

"Is it not time to quit?" Tavi complained from where he rode on Hirsh's shoulder antlers "It's clear we're not going to find anything down here. The snake's probably mountains away at this point." He lowered his voice and spoke the last part to himself, but it didn't stop anyone from hearing. "And good riddance."

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"No." Ceph snapped, having enough of his constant whining while they'd been down here. She didn't like Fay either, but at least she hadn't been complaining every five minutes. "This is a matter of our nations' survival against the Henosis. If you do not care if our people fall into the hands of the Empire, then leave."

She raised a tentacle, gesturing to the path they'd come from. The small volan's eyes trailed into the darkness, but soon snapped back to Ceph and narrowed.

"Is it really?" The accusation was clear in his tone. "Or are we here just to satisfy your own desires. Just look at where we are! We've no leads, a single wrong step will have us lost forever, and for what? What makes you think that a monster will help us?!"

"It is intelligent. It spoke," Ceph ground out.

Tavi swung his small arms high. "You think it spoke. Remus should have sent you to a mental institute instead of give you permission to lead this mission. I came down here because I figured it would be best to make sure the serpent wasn't lingering around, and on the off chance that your claims were true — which I only gave the benefit of the doubt because it didn't go on a murder-spree on its way back to its home — I was willing to cooperate.

"But we've yet to find any sign of the creature. With how large and unwelcoming this environment is, I doubt we'll find anything more. It is time to quit."

Ceph curled her tentacle in frustration. Neither of the others standing around her chimed in; they didn't agree with Tavi, but they also didn't deny what he said. She glared, but if they weren't already defending her position, then they didn't know why it was so important.

"We are a single team of Beiths. No, not even that. We are a Luis team with an inflated rank. Whether we are back with the pact nations or not, it won't matter. We are up against an opponent that we were barely able to hold off two decades ago, and has been honing their claws ever since, while the pact nations are barely surviving as is." Ceph paused as a chilly breeze washed over her. "The only way we don't lose is to throw in every card we have. The only way we win is to take stupid risks."

Tavi still looked like he wanted to argue, but the sudden jerk of his eye is the only thing that saved Ceph.

Her instincts reacted and she leapt to the side, barely dodging the fist and the gale of ice that followed. Hirsh's tendril of water froze and shattered in an instant as Ceph dodged some sort of large ape.

As she landed, Ceph pulled her pair of swords and slashed out. She missed, but the frozen ape was no longer in her face.

The creature darted through the distortions, leaving only brief glimpses as it kept out of Ceph's sight.

"Ceph!" Hirsh yelled, and stepped towards her, only for his shape to disperse into a thousand fractals.

"Fuck," she swore. "Don't move; we can't risk getting separated. Guard up."

Taking her own advice, she unsheathed a pair of knives with two more of her tentacles. As worrying as it was that she couldn't see the beast that attacked her, she couldn't move to chase it. A single step might take her further than she would be able to regroup with her team.

The only benefit of this situation was that she had a pretty good idea what would happen next. She was separate from the others, after all.

She shifted both blades forward slightly as ice started to build across the rocky ground. The beast was strong, but it wasn't speaking serpent strong. She would already be dead if that was the case.

Ceph waited, unmoving, for a few moments until her instinct honed from thousands of battles screamed. It wasn't conscious. She simply twisted and slashed.

Rewarded with a shriek, she swung again, barely scraping the ape's arm before it fled back into the confusing space. Blood trickled down her blades, freezing along the metal. With a sweep, she tried to dislodge the blood, but it had already frozen solid. A second later, Ceph heard a horrible crack from the metal.

Brittle from cold, the steel had fractured. Now, the metal shards only held together in the form of a blade by the snakeskin core within.

She had missed a fatal strike, but it was a clean hit. Either the creature would run off to lick its wounds, or it would become far more wary in its approach.

Albin appeared in her peripheral. Taking small, slow steps, she approached. Any time he disappeared, she backed away and tried to divert around the portal that carried her away. Or find the portal that showed his image.

Now that she'd landed a strike, it would either retaliate, or attack those that might be less of a threat. Either way, she wanted to be closer to the others. With how quick the ice spreads, it would only need to come close to freeze the wingsuits of both volans. And with a bleeding arm, any flung droplets could be deadly.

Just as Ceph came into sight of her full team again, the ape struck.

Hirsh had already constructed a water barrier, but water against ice was just the worst possible match-up. The ape barrelled through. Both barrier and the razor sharp spinning blades of water that rose from it, froze and shattered in an instant.

Hirsh, being as large as he was, already had water flowing in the gaps between his antlers to enhance their strength and preparing him to grapple the large ape. The moment the creature impacted the khirig, his body turned to ice, and yet he pushed through the freezing of his limbs to hold the ape still. Enough for Albin to come in from the side and decapitate the creature with his glaive.

Letting out a sigh of relief, Ceph glanced regretfully to the two blades in her tentacles, before deciding to just hold onto them. They weren't going to fit in their scabbards fractured like that. At least they would still work. A gift from the serpent.

Albin's own blade had not fared better.

While Hirsh broke himself out of the encasing ice, Ceph kept an eye out in case their were more of the apes.

"We really shouldn't have come," Fay said after things had settled.

The volan's words immediately gained her a glare from Ceph, and she hurried to clarify.

"I mean me and Tavi. We are useless down here. We knew we were losing a lot of our benefit by operating underground; there's no room to fly. We could have still flown through caverns and tunnels looking out for ambushes." She pauses to glance around the distorted landscape. "But here… we can't even do that for fear of forever becoming lost."

"Uh, everyone?" Hirsh interrupted before Ceph could process Fay's rather problematic admission. "The attack wasn't a random encounter. I know how it found us, but that's not the problem." He met the others' eyes, his worry clear. "My trail was destroyed."