The beast's left leg buckled.Just slightly,not a fall, not even close to a fall, but the specific buckling of a structure that has received a real input and is registering it. The knee moving inward by three inches. The weight above it is redistributed.Yuki came in on the same side a half second after.Her technique was different, not the direct contact of Roderick's approach, the ranged application of her clan's flame, the blue-white of it coming off her hands in a sustained stream that she wrapped around the outside of the knee joint, the cold-flame technique of her lineage applied to the specific task of constricting rather than cutting. The blue-white against the red of Roderick's contact point produced a visual that was specific to two very different flame expressions working the same target, the colors not mixing, operating side by side, each doing its own work.The beast's left leg had a problem now.On the right, Asta and Mira hit simultaneously.Mira's technique came first

The beast's chest expanded.Roderick watched it happen, the specific visible expansion of something filling itself with whatever it was pulling from the clearing, the ambient energy of the space feeding into it the way air feeds into a fire that has found a new source of oxygen. The wounds were gone. All of them, completely, no residual evidence of the combined output that four people had put into it across the last several minutes."It's growing stronger." Roderick said.He said it flatly. The specific flat of someone who has confirmed something they already suspected and is delivering the confirmation without any editorial on top of it.Yuki was looking at it. At the expansion. At the specific quality of the beast's presence that was different from when it had first come through the portal,not different in size, different in density. The specific density of something that has added to itself."Then what?." She said.She looked at Roderick."What are we supposed to do right now?"

The sky, if it was a sky, if the thing above them qualified as a sky, was the specific dark of something that was not a night sky. Not the darkness of the absence of sunlight but the darkness of a place where sunlight had never been and where the concept of sunlight had never been relevant. It had colors in it, deep, shifting, the specific colors of something that was not lit but was itself luminous in a low, pervasive way.The ground under their feet was hard.Not stone, something that was in the territory of stone but had the specific quality of something that had been stone and had been changed by a long time of being in a place that changed things. The way it sounded under their boots. The way it gives slightly, not the way earth gives but the way something gives when it has been compressed so long that the compression is part of its structure.The smell.Cold and specific and unlike anything that existed on the other side of the portal, the smell of a place that had its own che

The dark realm had its own ecosystem.That was the thing that hit first, not the cold, not the low light, not the specific quality of the ground under their boots. The ecosystem. The specific, functioning, completely self-sufficient set of things that lived here and ate here and died here and had been doing all three for longer than anyone had been keeping records of it.The spiders came into visibility first.Not one or two,the dense population of them, covering the twisted undergrowth that ran along the base of the dark realm's warped tree equivalents. The trees here were not trees in any form that matched the word, they were the dark realm's version, the things that grew when the growing was shaped by the realm's specific properties. They grew wrong. Not dramatically wrong, wrong in the specific way of something that has been developing according to a set of rules that does not include sunlight or clean water or soil that hasn't been saturated with dark flame aura for generations

She looked at the ground."Below the Drakveth, the Kethara. The books described them as the realm's equivalent of a wolf pack but built on a centipede frame. Fast. They navigate by vibration entirely, no visual capacity, full vibration mapping. You can stand in front of one in complete silence and it will not find you. You can knock on a tree from two hundred feet away and it will be on you in eight seconds." She looked at her hands. "Below that…""Okay." Mira said.Flora looked at her."I've heard enough.” Mira said. "I have a complete picture. The picture is: everything in here wants to eat everything including us, the things at the top of the list are built like nightmares, and sound is functionally a dinner bell." She looked at the undergrowth. "Perfect. Wonderful. Great place to visit."She looked forward.At the path.At Roderick and Yuki walking ahead, cutting through the twisted undergrowth with the specific practiced movement of two people who were reading the ground b