Levitate saved the koi from dying; it did not save him from the swarm.
The thin refusal of gravity held only by twitching fins and clenched jaw gave seconds. Seconds were enough for the bees to learn. Lightning Bees don't think like men; they think like weather. Weather adapts. The first arcs stitched moss below him. The next wrote a blue curtain across his altitude, waiting for fatigue to lower him into it.
[Levitate — drain: high → moderate]
[Stability: fragile]
[Counter-adaptation: discharge plane aligned with Host elevation]
Not enough. Levitate was breathing room, not survival.
He skimmed along the creek's elbow, ducking under roots as sparks hissed overhead. The mist thinned a fraction; the roar of wings thickened. Brandon's pulse came through the bond—clipped, iron: On way. Keep moving. Frostwing's thought cut colder: Close.
Every plate screamed. Blood Scales dulled to cracked crimson, Harden groaned beneath them like strained rebar. Hybrid doors stayed shut—Frostwing's distance locked them. He needed change, not endurance.
The koi pressed against the trunk of an ancient tree whose roots clenched the bank. Static bled harmlessly into bark; the swarm circled, cautious. Levitate bought him a pause. He threw Sense down.
[Skill: Sense — Activated]
Noise hit first—electric chatter, insect malice, the tree's slow heartbeat. He ignored distance and pushed for depth. Layers peeled: moss; sand; stone; clay; root-pockets—
There. A hollow. Not neat. A buried river-cavity, its ceiling riddled with hairline lies. Close. Weak.
[Subsurface anomaly: large cavity]
[Integrity: poor]
[Depth: 3–5 m]
Desperation found a lever. If the mountain insists on circles, choose down.
He left the trunk, dropped Levitate, and hit earth head-first. Bounce coiled, Harden braced. Loam cracked. Clay resisted. He hit again—skull, body, will—and the seam broke.
The ground collapsed. The bees struck too late; their arcs licked the rim and recoiled, unwilling to crowd their own thunder. The koi and half the bank fell.
Roots whipped past. Stones chose to tumble at their own speed. The shaft funneled him into dark. Bees dove, arrogant, and short-circuited on each other in the narrowing throat. Sparks popped fat blue against stone.
Levitate flared enough to turn death into bruises. Still, knives found him—two along his side, one in his gills. His world blurred.
[Host vitality: 7% → 6%]
[Velocity: reduced]
The shaft spat him into a chamber, vast and silent. Air smelled old—then wet. A sound too big to be anything but water waited below.
He hit with a slap that folded him and let him go in bubbles. Brine clawed into his gills. Salt—burning, raw, wrong. Harden shifted in panic, weaving a shield film under his plates, thin law against a cruel medium. Pain rasped into ache. He floated.
[Medium: brine]
[Compatibility: poor]
[Harden: osmo-shield active]
[Regeneration: constrained]
Not healing. A bargain: pain traded for minerals, irritation for strength trickling one tick at a time.
Above, the shaft was a coin of black. A few bees followed and drowned to their chemistry. Sparks snuffed. The chamber breathed old silence again.
The koi tested his body: gills burning less; scales ragged but knitting slow; Levitate sulking useless in water. Sense worked better here—currents carried truth. He read the bowl of the cavern: ridges, stalactites, three seams that teased escape but pinched to nothing. No doors. Only the shaft he had torn.
Inventory kept him sane.
[Vitality: 6% → 8% → 10% (slow ↑)]
[Blood Scales: partial]
[Harden: stable shield]
[Bounce: viable]
[Levitate: available, weak in water]
Not good. Not nothing. Enough to plan.
Memories bled in—sparks answering sparks. May's hand over her belly. Brandon's vow of alive. Frostwing's cold precision. Rakkel's roar, Ian's red cord, Mari's laugh. None mocked him; they re-stitched him. Refusal felt less lonely.
He cruised slow circles, nosing seams, Bounce-tapping tiny faults. Nothing yielded. Above: the shaft, the only door.
[Recommendation: recover; reassess ascent]
He drifted beneath a stone lip where currents idled and let the brine sting, help, sting again. Harden thickened along delicate gill filaments, easing knife into rasp. Healing climbed like pilgrims on bad stairs.
No other path. Only up. Past bees. Back to the bond.
"I move," he told the salt, not loud, not soft.
Not yet. Soon.
The mountain groaned, annoyed. Stalactites whispered glass. The koi floated red and stubborn under the black throat, gathering refusal for the climb.