The creature clapped two of its four hands together. "Excellent! I do so appreciate cooperation. Now then, Nero already knows what needs to be done. But there’s a proper order to these things. First, the array must be drawn. Then the mixture prepared. And finally, the words spoken. In that sequence and no other."
It moved across the chamber floor with surprising grace despite its grotesque appearance, stopping at a point perhaps thirty feet from where Arthur and Jacob lay.
"The center of the array goes here," it said, tapping one clawed foot against the fungus-covered stone. "Nero, if you would? I’ll give you the pattern now."
Nero straightened, grimacing as his broken ribs shifted. "The sa way as before?"
"Indeed."
Nero walked over to where the creature stood, his dagger still clutched in his good hand. The creature raised one finger and pressed it to his forehead again.
This ti, Nero was more prepared for the flood of information. But that didn’t make it any less overwhelming.
The pattern exploded into his mind—not as an image but as pure spatial understanding. He saw how the lines should curve, where they should intersect, what angles they needed to maintain. Circles within circles, runes of a dozen different families all woven together in a tapestry of geotric precision.
It was beautiful and terrifying in equal asure.
When the creature removed its finger, Nero staggered back, breathing hard.
"You alright?" Arthur called out from where he lay.
"Fine," Nero managed. "Just... a lot of information at once."
He looked down at the fungus-covered floor, then at the pattern now burned into his mory. The array would be massive—at least twenty feet in diater. And every line needed to be perfect.
"I’ll need light," he said.
The creature gestured at the walls. "You have it. The fungi provide more than enough illumination for what you need to do."
Nero knelt at the designated center point, his dagger held in his good hand. The blade glead in the blue light as he positioned it against the thick carpet of fungus.
Then he began to scrape.
The fungi ca away easily under the knife’s edge, revealing the black stone beneath. Nero worked slowly, following the pattern in his mind with painstaking care. A circle first, large and encompassing. His arm ached. His broken ribs sent jolts of pain with each movent. But he kept going.
The circle complete, he moved to the inner patterns. Runes from the Keresh family—symbols of binding and limitation. Interspersed with Malthic glyphs that spoke of transformation and change. And woven through it all, sothing older. Sothing that predated both families, symbols he recognized from his vision but had never seen in practice.
Minutes stretched into hours.
Nero’s hand began to cramp. His vision blurred from the strain of maintaining such precision while injured. But every ti he thought about stopping, he rembered Arthur and Jacob. Rembered the rubble blocking their exit. Rembered the thing slumbering in the pool behind him.
"You’re doing well," the creature said at one point. It had been watching the entire ti, circling the growing array like a predator observing its prey. "Very precise work. I’m impressed."
Nero didn’t respond, his focus entirely on the task.
He scraped away another line of fungus, creating a sweeping curve that connected two of the outer runes. The pattern was beginning to take shape now, visible as dark lines against the blue-glowing carpet. From Arthur’s position, it probably looked like nothing—just random scratches in the growth.
But from above, from the right angle, it would form sothing coherent. Sothing powerful.
Another hour passed.
Nero’s hand was shaking now from exhaustion and pain. Sweat dripped from his face onto the stone, mixing with the blue residue from the scraped fungi. His broken arm hung useless at his side, the bone grinding against itself every ti he shifted position.
"Almost there," the creature said encouragingly. "Just the final connecting lines and you’ll be done with this portion."
Nero traced the last few runes with trembling fingers. These were the most complex—symbols that seed to fold in on themselves, creating impossible angles that hurt to look at directly. He had to work from mory and feel rather than sight, letting his hand follow the pattern burned into his mind.
The final line connected.
The array was complete.
The mont Nero’s blade lifted from the stone, sothing changed in the chamber. The air grew heavier, denser, as if pressure was building from so invisible source. The blue glow of the fungi dimd slightly, then brightened, pulsing in a rhythm that matched the beating of Nero’s heart.
"Beautiful," the creature breathed, walking around the array’s periter. "Absolutely beautiful. You have a talent for this, young man. Perhaps in another life, you would have made an excellent ritualist."
Nero pushed himself to his feet, swaying slightly. His hand was covered in blue residue from the fungi, his fingers cramped and aching.
"What now?" he asked.
The creature pointed toward the pool with two of its four arms. "Now you gather the ingredients. Take that vessel there—" it gestured to a stone cup that Nero hadn’t noticed before, sitting at the edge of the chamber, "—and fill it halfway with water from the pool."
Nero walked over to the cup, picked it up. The stone was smooth and cold, carved from the sa black material as the floor. He carried it to the pool’s edge, kneeling carefully.
The water was perfectly still, perfectly clear. In its depths, he could see the vast shape of the thing that slumbered there. Larger than comprehension. Older than thought.
He tried not to look at it directly as he dipped the cup into the water.
The liquid was ice-cold, so cold it burned his fingers where it touched them. He pulled the cup back when it was half full, being careful not to spill.
"Good," the creature said from behind him. "Now gather the fungi. Pull up handfuls of it, as much as you can carry. Bring it to the center of the array."
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