The descent was a journey into the planet's guts.
Jinx led the way down the narrow, dripping fissure, her movements sure-footed and economical.
Michael followed, the air growing thick and humid with every step, pressing in on him like a wet blanket.
The sound of dripping water was a constant, maddening metronome, counting down to some unseen horror.
DRIP. PLOP. DRIP.
After what felt like an hour of claustrophobic descent, the tunnel opened up.
They stepped out onto a wide ledge overlooking a cavern so vast it seemed impossible.
It was a lost world, hidden beneath the city's skin.
The ceiling was a hundred feet up, lost in shadow.
Strange, sickly-looking fungi clung to the rock walls in massive, pulsating clusters, casting a pale, green-and-purple bioluminescent glow over everything.
The air smelled of wet earth, decay, and a sweet, cloying scent like rotting fruit.
This was the Breeding Pits.
"Stay close and stay quiet," Jinx whispered, her voice a low growl. "Everything in here hunts by sound or vibration."
She pointed to the ground. The cavern floor was a tangled mess of thick, black cables and rusted pipes, half-buried in the mud like the fossilized skeletons of ancient serpents.
They moved forward, stepping carefully from one exposed pipe to another, avoiding the soft, damp earth.
Michael felt a low hum through the soles of his shoes, a faint, residual energy still bleeding from the dead cables.
He checked his status.
[VE: 45/125]
The raw mana he had absorbed from the Crawler had given him a small boost, but he was still weak.
He needed to conserve every drop of power.
They had been walking for ten minutes when Jinx suddenly froze.
She held up a hand, signaling for him to stop.
"Listen," she breathed.
Michael strained his ears.
At first, he heard nothing but the dripping water.
Then he caught it.
A faint, rhythmic scraping sound.
CLICK-SCRAPE. CLICK-SCRAPE.
It was the sound of metal claws on concrete, and it was getting closer.
"Get ready," Jinx hissed, pulling her sidearm, a heavy-looking energy pistol.
From the shadows ahead, a pair of glowing red eyes appeared.
Then another pair.
And another.
Three figures emerged from the gloom, their forms illuminated by the sickly fungal light.
The outline called them Cable Hounds.
The name was terrifyingly accurate.
They were wolf-like beasts, the size of large dogs, but their bodies were unholy amalgams of technology and bone.
Their skeletons were made of fused rebar and rusted metal plates.
Their muscles were thick bundles of frayed electrical wiring that sparked with a faint, blue energy.
Their heads were the bleached skulls of some long-dead animal, their eye sockets burning with malevolent red light.
[LV. 8 CABLE HOUND IDENTIFIED]
One of them opened its jaw and let out a sound that wasn't a bark or a growl.
It was a burst of high-frequency static that made the fillings in Michael's teeth ache.
SKREEEEE-FIZZ!
"They hunt using the electrical pulses in the ground!" Jinx yelled, already moving. "Stay off the dirt!"
She tossed a small, metal disk onto the cavern floor between them and the advancing hounds.
"EMP trap! Get back!"
The lead hound charged, its metal feet pounding on the concrete.
As it crossed over the disk, Jinx clicked a button on a remote in her hand.
BZZZZZZT!
A wave of blue energy erupted from the disk.
The Cable Hound seized up, its body convulsing as the EMP blast short-circuited its entire system. The red lights in its eyes flickered and died. It collapsed in a heap of twitching wires and dead metal.
"One down!" Jinx shouted.
But the other two were smart.
They split up, flanking them, using the maze of pipes and debris as cover.
One leaped onto a high pipe, gathering itself to pounce on Jinx.
The other stayed low, circling around to get behind Michael.
"Kid, left flank!" Jinx screamed, firing her energy pistol at the one above her.
PEW! PEW!
The shots sparked harmlessly off its reinforced metal hide.
Michael didn't have time to think.
He reacted.
The Reaper's Fang was in his hand, a sliver of perfect darkness.
The hound on the ground charged him, its jaws of jagged metal snapping.
CLICK-CLACK!
Michael didn't have the energy for a full Shadow Step.
He used a flicker of it, a micro-step that shifted him just two feet to the side.
ZIP!
The hound's lunge met empty air.
As it shot past him, Michael spun, channeling a tiny amount of power into his blade.
[VOID SLASH (LV. 1) ACTIVATED]
The dagger glowed with a faint, purple light.
He didn't aim for its armored body. He aimed for the exposed bundle of wires that served as its neck.
SLASH!
The blade cut through the wires with a sickening, grinding sound.
Sparks erupted.
The hound's head lolled to the side, connected only by a few strands of metal, and its red eyes went dark. It crashed to the ground with a loud CLANG.
Michael turned just in time to see the third hound leap from its perch, claws extended, descending on Jinx.
She wouldn't be able to dodge in time.
He acted on pure instinct.
He held out his free hand, focusing his will, and a new skill, one he hadn't even known he had, flared to life.
[VOID TETHER (LV. 1) ACTIVATED]
A thin, purple-black tendril of pure void energy shot from his palm.
It wasn't a weapon. It was a rope.
It wrapped around the Cable Hound's leg in mid-air.
He yanked his arm back with all his strength.
The hound's trajectory was thrown off. It let out a screech of static-filled rage as it slammed hard into the side of a massive concrete pipe instead of Jinx. WHUMP!
It lay on the ground, stunned.
Jinx recovered instantly.
She aimed her pistol at the dazed creature's head and fired.
PEW!
The energy bolt struck one of its glowing red eyes, shattering it.
The hound let out one last, dying fizzle of static and went still.
The cavern fell silent again.
Michael was panting, his energy reserves dangerously low.
[VE: 15/125]
"Nice trick with the magic rope, kid," Jinx said, reloading her pistol with a trembling hand. "You're full of surprises."
She looked at the three dead hounds, then back at him, a new, grudging respect in her eyes.
They pushed on, moving deeper into the fungal forest.
They soon entered a smaller cavern where the air was thick with glowing spores, drifting lazily like snow.
"Don't breathe it in," Jinx warned, pulling a respirator mask over her face. "Fungus is hallucinogenic."
Michael held his breath, but it was too late. He had already inhaled some of the sweet-smelling dust.
The world began to shimmer at the edges.
The pale, glowing patterns on the cavern walls started to swirl and shift.
For a moment, in a large patch of glowing purple moss, the patterns coalesced.
They formed a face.
A woman's face.
It was blurry, indistinct, a trick of the light and his own oxygen-starved brain.
But he knew it.
It was his mother.
Elara.
The face in the moss smiled, a sad, loving smile that ached in his heart.
Michael…
He thought he heard her whisper his name, a faint echo on the edge of his hearing.
Then Jinx grabbed his arm, her grip hard.
"Kid, snap out of it!" she hissed, her voice muffled by her mask. "You're staring at a wall."
He blinked, and the face was gone.
It was just moss again.
But the vision, real or not, had left him shaken.
It was a reminder of why he was down here. What he was fighting for.
What he was fighting to get back.
They cleared the spore cavern and found a small, defensible alcove to rest for a moment.
Jinx immediately started setting up small, proximity-based sonic alarms at the entrances.
Michael sat down, his body aching, his mind reeling.
He stared at the corpse of a Cable Hound they had dragged out of the way.
He felt the hunger.
It was a gnawing emptiness in the pit of his soul, a cold, dark craving that had been whispering to him since he'd first used Soul Devour.
The Warden's warning echoed in his mind.
Drinking pure poison.
Accelerating the corruption of his soul.
But he was so weak.
His energy was almost gone.
What if more monsters came? What if the Ghosts found another way down?
He couldn't be weak.
He couldn't afford it.
The hunger grew louder, becoming a roar in his mind.
Just a taste.
Just enough to be strong again.
He saw Jinx watching him, her eyes narrowed with suspicion from across the small alcove. She saw where his gaze was fixed. She saw the predatory stillness that had come over him.
He ignored her.
He stared at the dead machine-beast, at the dying echo of its corrupted energy.
His hand trembled as he raised it.
The vortex was already starting to form in his palm.
A small, swirling eddy of pure, soul-eating darkness.