Chapter 56: Chapter 56: The First Glimpse

The Coreless continued to jabber at one another as I hissed at the fire-water. It bubbled back at me, little bits of itself popping upwards from the depths, but I was no more able to understand what that meant than I could truly understand the noises of the Coreless. It could have meant many things; it could have been the warning of an enemy, it could have been the pleas of a terrified foe - or, more likely, it could have been nothing.

Either way, I couldn’t help but stare into its depths, trying to search for an answer.

I flicked my tongue out again, catching the heavy scent-taste of the lesser Core on my tongue. It didn’t drive me in the way that it had earlier; without the blood loss and soon-death of my earlier life, I was able to resist the compulsion to throw myself forward heedlessly, to ignore any potential danger in search for the Core.

That didn’t mean that I wasn’t desperate to find it, however.

I turned and hissed at the Coreless as their noises again and again. Despite that, only the-female-who-was-not-Needle looked my way. She bared her teeth. I hissed again. She wiggled her fingers at me before turning back towards the others and making more noises.

With nothing else for it, I slithered towards the gathered group of Coreless, hissing my displeasure at the situation. For a group of aspiring disciples - and even two that I had acted for the Great Core in ways that I had personally recognized - it was surprisingly difficult to get their attention when I wanted it.

That was the problem with gathering strong, idiot disciples.

I mourned for what had never been and what would never be - a group of Great Core disciples that had been created by the Great Core itself, able to properly hiss and slither. Instead, I was stuck with...this.

The Great Core must have had faith in my patience. It was both pleasing and very, very annoying.

Still, I knew that their strength more than made up for their other flaws. Or mostly, at least. For some of them.

I pulled myself up the female-who-was-not-Needle’s leg, winding around her torso before finding a perch on her shoulder. She looked at me again and voiced her garbled little hisses, and I valiantly ignored them.

“Hey, little cutie,” she said. “Am I your favorite now?” A moment later, she reached for my head-scales again. I ignored that too, focusing instead on the image that I was trying to create. I had already refilled my reservoirs of light. My heat stores, meanwhile, were as full as ever. Another gout of flame wicked away from my scale-flesh as if to emphasize that fact, the act almost unconscious at this point. I did make sure to direct it away from the Coreless, though, despite the brief urge to do otherwise in my frustrated state.

The way that her fingers dug tiny lines into my head-scales actually felt rather nice after the stress of the battles and my repeated deaths. I leaned into it, closing my eyes as I imagined the image that I wanted to create.

It was a little harder this time, despite also being simpler. I didn’t have to find a way to show the Coreless the series of actions that had led to our deaths, forcing me to make moving illusions that - however crude they may have been - correctly communicated what they couldn’t understand from my warning hisses.

Instead, I had to show them something that I had never seen. After all, I had no idea where the Core actually was, just that it was somewhere nearby. Somewhere extremely nearby.

But still, I hadn’t seen it.

In the end, I did something that pained me.

I formed the glorious image of the Great Core, glowing with all its might - and then I ruined it.

I shifted the colors that it gave off, turning the comforting blue to the orange-red of fire. To make it even clearer, I let some flames grow around it, using the heat that filled my scale-flesh to form the fires more accurately.

The sight pained me, but it was necessary. I reduced the glow slightly, causing the Core to appear weaker, making it flicker unsteadily. It wasn’t as strong as the Great Core, after all. It couldn’t be.

It was Lesser, and I made that obvious to the Coreless in the illusion that I created.

The Coreless perked up alertly at the sight of the Core, baring their teeth in challenge. I hissed in satisfaction, knowing that I had their attention at last.

Except now they were only staring at me, as if waiting for further information...and I had no way of telling them that I didn’t actually know where it was. My hiss of pleasure turned into one of displeasure at the realization.

Things would be so much easier if they learned how to properly communicate.

Instead, they just jabbered at one another again, and I was forced to just keep going regardless.

As my scale-flesh touched the stone, I slithered onwards. The Coreless followed me this time, which was an improvement. I supposed.

Having already looked high and low for any sign of the Core around us, I ventured out onto the ridge of stone that snaked its way across the fire-water. It was smoother than I expected, forcing me to bunch my scale-flesh and grip the lines and furrows that occasionally cut across its surface in order to avoid sliding downwards. The stone trembled slightly as the Coreless stepped down, their weight forcing the ridge to sway oddly on the surface of the fire-water.

They made some noises at that, unhappy with the precarious footing, but they continued on when I did.

Heat spilled off of the ridge, radiating upwards just as it did from the fire-water itself. Fortunately, the combination of [Illusion Spark] and the pink-red fluid that still coated much of my scale-flesh protected me from the worst of the heat.

The Coreless walked behind me in a line that was two wide, trying to stay as close to the peak of the ridge as they could just as I was, one Coreless to each side of the slope. As I slithered along, I flicked my tongue out into the air again and again, searching for signs that the Core’s scent-taste was increasing.

It...felt like it might have been, but it was hard to tell. The lesser Core tasted of smoke and flame, of hate and heat - and a few of those were already surrounding us from all sides, drifting off of the fire-water with every passing moment. On the other side of the fire-water, the winding ridge touched down, a new tunnel just behind it.

I quickened my slithers, and the Coreless did too. Just as I had, they had noticed the tunnel beyond, and were hopeful. With any luck, the Core would lay just beyond it.

My tongue flicked out again, and the ground shook below us.

The stone trembled.

The ridge lifted.

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I slid down its side, on a path to meet the fire-water below. Just before I fell off the edge, my fangs sunk into one of the cracks that crisscrossed the other-wise smooth surface of the ridge.

My teeth buried into its flesh - because it was not a ridge, I realized, and it was not stone.

It was scale-flesh.

Scale-flesh the color of stone, sunken into the fire-water. Scale-flesh attached to a bad-thing - like me, only not.

It was much larger.

A giant head pulled itself from the fire-water, rising from the depths. As it moved, the fire-water seemed to bend around it, as if moving away from the bad-thing rather than being moved.

It turned towards us, bending its head around. A forked tongue flicked from its open mouth. I heard a scream.

A moment later, it plunged back down into the fire-water - and pulled us along with it.

It dove into the depths, slipping through the thick fire-water in the same way that my own form had silently cut through mana-water.

Then, I was pulled in too - and I realized that it was nothing like the way I had swam through mana-water. Back then, I had cut through the depths with speed that the Aridae couldn’t match, but the mana-water had still pushed back against me.

The fire-water did not.

Instead, the fire-water peeled itself away from the bad-thing’s surface, repelled away somehow as it moved along. Rather than swimming, it simply slithered - traveling down tunnels that it created within the fire-water to ease its passage. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the tunnel’s opening collapse as its tail finally followed the rest of the bad-thing’s form into the depths.

It closed itself, and the way out disappeared.

Around me, the Coreless hung on as well, having buried their own fangs of ore-flesh into the creature’s thick scale-flesh.

Some of them, anyway. I could see Needle’s legs dangling from the other side, most of her body hidden where I couldn’t see. The unrepentant male had managed to bury his ore-flesh into the center of the ridge itself, sinking it deep enough that he hardly even moved as the bad-thing slithered and swayed in its downward descent. The-female-who-was-not-Needle was just beside me, having buried both of her fangs before she managed to fall. Slowly, she climbed the ridge of scale-flesh, alternately sinking her fangs in order to scale its surface.

Will, I realized, carried no fangs. He had probably fallen the moment that the bad-thing revealed itself.

The source of the scream, I guessed.

I hissed in frustration, the sound coming out garbled through my overfull mouth. I would have to try again.

Just as I thought that, the bad-thing whipped itself to the side. The edge opposite my own buried itself in the fire-water for a moment before it retreated. When it straightened again, Needle had disappeared.

I heard another scream. I caught the scent-taste of burning flesh.

The-female-who-was-not-Needle turned to look at me, and I almost thought I saw the anguish of betrayal reflected in her eyes.

The bad-thing whipped itself again, in the other direction this time - and while the Coreless might have been able to hold on, I had only the slightest grip remaining.

As soon as it began to move, I lost it.

I fell, dropping down the tunnel of fire-water that marked the giant bad-thing’s descent.

The fire-water around me blurred as I plunged downwards, leaving me only able to wait for the moment that I would hit the fire-water and be consumed in flames. My tongue lolled out as the fall forced my mouth open.

I caught the scent-taste of the Core again. It had grown stronger.

And then I saw it, peeking out from where the fire-water pulled itself back from the bad-thing’s scale-flesh. Only the edge of it, just a small curve that barely managed to break the surface.

But it glowed, in the same way that the Great Core did - it gave off a different color, a different feeling, but it was unmistakable. It was a Core.

At that moment, I realized why I hadn’t been able to find it: the Core had hidden itself in the depths of the fire-water that it created, just as the Great Core had protected itself with fields of slow-spots and fast-spots.

A moment later, I dropped helplessly past it, slamming into the fire-water that waited below. My scale-flesh burned at its touch. I melted under the heat - and then I pulled free from my scale-flesh once more.

I hissed, burning with both phantom fire-pain and pure frustration.

Still, I had found it at last.

Now, I just had to reach it - somehow.

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