Three days became a week. Then two.
The source world did not make the journey easy. The route Aldren Voss had cut through the dark stone was direct, a straight line west into the oldest parts of the dimension, but the space between the shaft and the gate was not empty. It had never been empty. The creatures that had kept their distance during Cael's solo trek, deterred by the mask or the sword or the weight of his purpose, were less cautious with a group. A group was noise. A group was movement. A group was prey.
They fought through the first major engagement on the fourth day.
The creatures came from the deeper growths, a pack of predators built like the segmented apex Cael had killed in the southern cluster but smaller, faster, their interlocking plates shedding bioluminescent fluid t
