The serpent's enormous body slammed into the lake floor, detonating a vast cloud of ancient silt. They had reached the sunless depths at last-where no ray of light had ever penetrated. The floor down here was a nauseating compound of fine sand, clinging mud, and hills of old white bones belonging to adventurers and creatures that these waters had swallowed across the centuries.
The moment it struck bottom, the serpent changed its tactics. It began rolling with savage violence, attempting to shake Dex from its back by grinding its body against the jagged rocks and massive skeletal remains on the lakebed.
CRACK.
Dex's left shoulder struck a protruding rock smothered in slippery algae. A white, vision-obliterating pain hit him instantly-his shoulder had been partially wrenched from its socket. A small bubble of air escaped from between his clenched lips: a lethal mistake beneath the water. But despite the searing pain of the dislocation, despite the vision that had begun to blur red at the edges, the fingers of his right hand-coiled around the dagger handle buried in her scales-did not loosen. He did not let go.
His mental status screen flickered in a faint red warning at the corner of his consciousness: Mana Remaining: 55%. Oxygen Level: Critical.
"If she keeps rolling she will grind me into paste on these rocks," Dex screamed inside the silence of his mind. "Time to change the terrain."
He let his dislocated left arm hang limp and extended his right hand-still gripping the dagger-to channel dense magical energy toward the sand and mud they were passing over directly.
"Earth Element: Dark Bed Disturbance."
It was not an offensive spell. It was a tactic for manufacturing chaos. He drove Earth Mana into the water-saturated sediment-and because water was present as a facilitating medium, the sand responded with devastating effect. The still lakebed transformed instantly into a raging tempest of billowing silt, dense churning mud, and scattering gravel. Visibility collapsed entirely in a thirty-metre radius, as though thick black ink had been poured into the water.
The serpent-which hunted by its keen sight in the dark and by detecting the clean vibrations of undisturbed water-was struck with immediate confusion and blindness. Grains of sand began invading its sensitive gill slits, forcing it into writhing discomfort and expelling great bursting clouds of bubbles.
For Dex, who had spent long stretches in the absolute blackness of solitary confinement where he could not see his own hand before his face, blindness was not an obstacle. It was his preferred arena. He had long since trained himself to discard his eyes entirely and rely on his magical senses and on vibration alone.
In the heart of this mud-and-water storm, Dex decided to end the battle. He used the Water element first-directing the Mana to seize control of the dense mud swirling around the serpent's thrashing head, reshaping it into a viscous, concentrated vortex aimed precisely at the creature's mouth and lateral gill slits. The serpent shook its head with savage force to push the clinging mass away, but the mud followed it like a relentless shadow under Dex's magical control.
Then came the lethal chemical finishing touch.
He activated the Earth element and pumped Mana to alter the molecular composition of the sand and clay particles trapped inside that aquatic vortex. He forced the particles to bond to one another with extreme cohesion, expelling every water molecule from between them in an instant. The clinging mud enveloping the serpent's head-clogging its gill slits and forcing into its mouth-solidified into something resembling fast-setting cement. The layer hardened around its jaw like a suffocating concrete mask, and sealed the openings of its gill slits shut against any passage of water-borne oxygen.
The terrifying serpent began to lose the capacity to breathe. It was suffocating-dying slowly-inside its own domain, in the kingdom it had ruled without challenge.
In that precise moment-as the serpent began to convulse in the first spasms of death-Dex's bloodshot eyes caught something through the settling silt cloud. Approximately twenty metres away, between two massive rock formations on the lakebed, a faint pulsing blue glow emanated from a dark opening. The entrance to the secret cavern. A magical barrier keeping the water at bay. He had found it.
But victory carried its price. Oxygen had been entirely exhausted from Dex's lungs. Lactic acid was searing his muscles, and his vision had begun to tunnel-darkening from the outer edges toward the centre. A maddening drone like the whistle of a pressure boiler had started filling his ears.
The serpent, in its final dreadful death throes, made one last desperate attempt to break free of the concrete smothering it-lashing its massive body and tail wildly and hysterically in every direction at once.
One of those blind, thrashing blows landed squarely on Dex.
BOOM.
The water had slowed the impact, but the creature's muscle mass was immense. The tail struck him across the middle of his torso with the force of a freight train. Dex was ripped from the serpent's back and hurled through the murky water, slamming into the rocks of the lakebed with savage force. He felt something tear inside him. His mouth fell open against his will and a silent scream emerged-a large bubble laced with red blood that began to dissolve into the water of the lake.
"Not... here... not... now..." Dex clenched his shattered teeth, driving spikes of pure will into his dissolving consciousness to keep it from surrendering.
Mana Remaining: 15%.
He knew he could not swim to the cavern. His muscles were paralysed, his shoulder dislocated, and the currents produced by the serpent's thrashing would drag him backward. If he did not kill this creature now to stop the currents, he would die here.
With the last reserves of his strength and concentration, Dex used what remained of his Earth Mana. He did not build a shield. He built a platform-a solid, angled stone slab directly behind his feet. He planted both uninjured feet against it.
Then he detonated every last percent of his remaining Mana in a single aquatic explosion behind the platform. The platform acted as a launching pad. The explosion acted as a propellant.
Dex's body shot forward like a living torpedo, propelled at terrifying speed toward the immobilised serpent's thrashing head. As he streaked past at the level of its skull, he raised his uninjured right arm. He poured the very last drop of life energy he possessed into his dagger, surrounding the black blade with a sheath of razor-sharp Water Mana vibrating like an electric saw.
He drove the dagger with every ounce of his forward momentum directly into the serpent's enormous, exposed yellow eye-pushing the blade to the hilt until it pierced through to the brain. The colossal beast shuddered violently for a single second-then went utterly still. The dark king of the lake was dead, and its armoured body began to list slowly toward the sandy floor.
Riding the last of the propulsive force that had not yet spent itself, Dex tore the dagger from the eye socket and drove forward like a broken arrow toward the faintly glowing blue opening. He reached the entrance as his consciousness was extinguishing entirely and darkness was consuming his mind. He pushed his body into the narrow water-filled tunnel.
In the instant he crossed the threshold of the cavern, he passed through a translucent magical barrier. The water, the pressure, and the cold were cut off as abruptly as though someone had slammed shut an enormous valve. Dex's broken, exhausted body fell hard onto a solid stone floor-cold, unyielding, and completely dry.
He lay there in a cavern lit by a faint blue glow, gasping with savage ferocity, coughing blood and the murky water of the lake from his lungs with immense difficulty. But he was breathing. He had reached the heart of the hell he had sought-and he was still alive.