Chapter 36: Hatchery
The entrance to the 26th floor wasn't a door or an arch. It was a transition. The crystalline tunnels gave way to warm, spongy organic matter that pulsed faintly underfoot. The air grew thick and humid, reeking of ammonia, wet earth, and the iron-tang of fresh blood. The walls were no longer stone, but a latticework of hardened mucus and woven plant fibers, studded with hundreds of softly glowing, leathery eggs the size of human skulls. The collective, low chirping from within them was a constant, unnerving chorus.
They were inside the hatchery.
"Stay tight," Azazel murmured, his voice barely carrying over the biological white noise. "No heroics. We clear a path, find the alpha, end it. Any eggs that get in the way are secondary objectives." His words were cold, but his eyes were constantly moving, mapping the vast, womb-like chamber. It was a nightmarish cathedral, with towering, pulsating support columns and deep, shadowy nesting pits.
They hadn't taken ten steps into the chamber when the first wave struck. Not from the front, but from above. Bloody Raptors, clinging to the fibrous ceiling like monstrous bats, dropped silently around them, their red scales dull in the bioluminescent gloom.
The fight was immediate and desperate. Kael roared, turning his shield upward to block a falling raptor, the impact driving him to one knee. Tarin's arrows thudded into soft tissue, dropping one creature mid-leap. Rin darted and weaved, her daggers flashing as she hamstrung a raptor aiming for Joren's back.
Azazel and Reginleif fell into their practiced, lethal rhythm. He used Black Ice not to kill, but to shape the battlefield—creating a low, slippery berm that funneled charging raptors into a kill zone where Reginleif's Piercing Feather wind needles could strike with surgical precision, puncturing eyes and eardrums. He used Darkbane tethers to yank raptors off their feet, presenting their vulnerable throats to her flashing daggers.
But the numbers were overwhelming. For every raptor they felled, two more seemed to detach from the shadows. The constant chirping from the eggs rose to a fever pitch, agitated by the violence.
"Joren! The nests! The large clusters!" Kael bellowed, shoving a raptor back with a grunt of effort.
The mage, his face pale with concentration, nodded. He began chanting, his hands weaving complex sigils in the air. The common, elemental energy of his Fire Mythic coalesced into a roaring, orange Fireball. It flew past the frontline, arcing perfectly into a deep nesting alcove packed with dozens of eggs.
The explosion was wet and horrific. A gout of flame, shattered eggshell, and steaming embryonic fluid erupted, followed by the pained shrieks of raptors guarding it. The attack thinned the immediate pressure, creating a brief respite.
"Push forward! Deeper!" Azazel commanded, his spear now in hand, flicking out to gore a wounded raptor.
They fought their way through the nightmarish nursery, leaving a trail of carnage amidst the pulsating eggs. The Hands of Scouting fought with grim determination, defending Joren as he launched another Fireball into a second major nest cluster. The stench of burning organic matter mixed with blood was suffocating.
Finally, they broke into a clearer central space, a round chamber free of eggs. For a moment, they thought they'd found a reprieve.
Reginleif's senses screamed. "Everyone, be ready! They're—"
It was too late.
From every shadowed tunnel and alcove surrounding the clearing, pairs of glowing yellow eyes ignited. Dozens of them. A soft, synchronized hiss filled the air as the remaining Bloody Raptors—the alpha's personal guard—slinked into the light, forming a perfect, encircling wall of claws and teeth. They had been herded into a killing floor.
Then, from a high ledge overlooking the chamber, it dropped.
The Bloody Raptor Alpha landed with a ground-shaking thud that silenced its pack. It was a full third larger than any other, its crimson scales edged in obsidian black, its crest a crown of brutal spikes and old scars. Its intelligence was palpable in its gaze, which swept over the encircled party with cold, calculating hatred before fixing squarely on Azazel, the one who had dismantled its first pack.
So that's the alpha, Azazel thought, his mind cold and clear despite the tightening noose of predators. It thinks it's smart. Standing above its pack, directing. It sees the battlefield from on high.
A plan, reckless and precise, formed in an instant. He needed to break its command. Shatter its aura of invincibility.
He focused on the deep shadow cast by the alpha's own massive body on the ledge behind it.
Voidfool.
There was no blur. One moment Azazel was in the defensive circle. The next, he was there, materializing directly above the alpha, his dwarven spear already in a devastating downward thrust aimed at the junction of its neck and skull.
It should have been a killing blow.
The Alpha's head twitched. Not a dodge, but a minute, anticipatory shift. Its crest, harder than steel, came up and around in a blindingly fast parry.
CLANG!
A spark of dark energy and shattered scale erupted. The impact numbed Azazel's arms. The alpha hadn't just blocked; it had redirected. With a powerful jerk of its head, it sent Azazel and his spear hurtling off the ledge, deflected back towards the center of the chamber and the waiting jaws of the pack below.
Azazel twisted in mid-air, using a burst of Black Ice from his free hand against the chamber wall to alter his trajectory. He landed in a rolling crouch at the edge of the party's circle, his spear scoring a line in the soft floor. The raptors nearby shrieked and flinched back from the sudden cold.
"Damn," Azazel grunted, rising. "I thought I could sneak attack it. It's on its guard. More than on guard—it anticipated me."
Reginleif's eyes were wide. She'd never seen him miss so catastrophically. "We can't fight it and the pack at once! We should clear the room for us!"
Azazel's gaze swept the tightening circle of raptors, then up to the alpha, which now paced its ledge with a predator's smug satisfaction. "Yeah," he said, a new, darker resolve settling in his voice. "I got it."
The alpha shrieked its command.
The entire pack attacked as one.
It was a tidal wave of red scales and claws. Kael bellowed, his shield forming the only bulwark against the onslaught, but he was being pushed back, his boots digging furrows in the floor. Tarin fired until his quiver was empty. Rin was a whirlwind of desperate parries, a long gash opening on her arm. Joren tried to summon a Gale Wall, but a raptor lunged at his face, forcing him to abort the spell for a desperate, sparking Shock Grasp that only stunned it for a second. Lira's healing song was a thin, desperate thread against the torrent of violence.
They were being overwhelmed. Eaten alive piece by piece.
In the heart of the storm, Reginleif and Azazel shared a look. The time for holding back was over. The cover story was a luxury they could no longer afford.
"Now!" Reginleif screamed, not in fear, but in command.
She planted her feet in the center of the crumbling formation, threw her head back, and inhaled. It wasn't just air she drew in, but the very kinetic energy of the chamber—the movement of the raptors, the displaced air, the panic. Her scarf whipped around her as spectral, jagged wings of vibrant green energy—the Corruption Sign—flickered into existence behind her for a terrifying instant.
"Sky's Loom: BREATH OF THE BASTION!"
She didn't cut. She exhaled.
A dome of solidified, screaming wind erupted from her, expanding in a perfect sphere. It wasn't an attack, but an absolute Wind Barrier. Raptors slammed into it and were thrown back as if hitting a mountainside. Claws skittered uselessly against the howling, compressed air. For a few, precious seconds, the party was encased in an eye of impossible calm, the roar of the barrier drowning out all other sound. The strain was immense; Reginleif's veins stood out on her neck, and a trickle of blood seeped from her nose. She couldn't hold it for long.
She didn't need to.
This was Azazel's window.
He stepped forward to the very edge of the wind dome, looking out at the dozens of raptors scrabbling and shrieking against Reginleif's barrier. He saw the Alpha on its ledge, shrieking in fury at this unforeseen defense.
Azazel let the careful chains on his power fall away. He raised both hands, not in a dramatic gesture, but like a conductor readying an orchestra. The inverted tree in his mind's eye blazed with dark light.
"Abyssal Vortex: Cataract."
He didn't create one sphere. He focused on the concept of the water already in the humid air, the latent moisture in the spongy floor, the blood on the scales of the raptors. And he pulled.
Above the packed mass of reptiles, the air itself seemed to tear. Not one, but a cascading series of inky, swirling vortexes—a Cataract of miniature, gravitational abysses—manifested. They hung for a moment, then began to spin faster, howling with a sound like a drowning giant.
Then, they fell.
It wasn't a rain of water. It was a downpour of localized, crushing oblivion. Each small vortex, where it touched, exerted a terrible, compressive pull. Raptors were not drowned; they were imploded. Scales, bone, and flesh were wrenched inward with sickening, wet crunches. The vortexes danced and skipped through the pack, a grim reaper's waltz, each "step" leaving behind only a damp, pulped stain on the floor and a fading, gulping sound.
In less than ten seconds, the clearing was silent. The encircling wall of raptors was gone. Erased. Only the Alpha remained on its ledge, its cunning eyes now wide with something beyond fury—primal, instinctual terror at a power that unmade rather than killed.
Reginleif's wind barrier collapsed with a final sigh. She stumbled, caught by Kael, her breathing ragged, the spectral wings gone but a deep exhaustion in their place. The rest of the Hands of Scouting stared, slack-jawed, at the suddenly empty, grotesquely dampened battlefield, then at Azazel, who lowered his hands, his expression once again an unreadable mask.
The Alpha, isolated, its pack annihilated by a nightmare it couldn't comprehend, let out a roar that was equal parts defiance and despair. It leapt from its ledge, landing in the center of the clearing between Azazel and the party, its body coiled for a final, desperate fight.
The hatchery was cleared. Now, it was just them and the king of the ruins.
The Bloody Raptor Alpha stood alone in the clearing, its defiant roar echoing in the sudden, ghastly silence left by the Cataract. Its intelligent eyes burned with a feral calculus, sizing up the exhausted party, deciding which throat to tear out first. It coiled its powerful legs, ready to launch its final, desperate assault.
The killing blow never came.
From a massive, previously unseen tunnel at the rear of the chamber, a sound emerged. Not a shriek or a roar, but a deep, resonant THUMP that vibrated through the spongy floor and into their bones. It was the sound of a footfall heavier than a wagon.
THUMP.
Another.
The Alpha's head snapped around, its aggression instantly replaced by pure, instinctual terror. It forgot the party entirely, backpedaling with a low whine.
THUMP.
A shadow fell across the hatchery, blocking the feeble bioluminescent light. Then, it stepped into view.
The Hands of Scouting froze, their blood turning to ice.
"By all the fallen gods…" Kael whispered, his shield arm dropping an inch in sheer disbelief.
It was a monster from a primordial nightmare. It stood nearly twenty feet tall, a monstrous fusion of tyrannosaur and dragon. Its body was a mountain of corded muscle sheathed in jagged, crimson scales that gleamed like wet blood. A massive, tooth-filled head, crowned with cruel, backward-curving horns, swung low on a powerful neck. Eyes the color of molten magma fixed on the cowering Alpha Raptor with disdainful hunger. Though its wings, vast and leathery, were too large for true flight in the cavern, they flexed with palpable power.
"A Drake…" Rin breathed, her voice trembling. "A Crimson Drake… why is a Drake here?! We don't stand a chance against this! This is a Gold-rank threat!"
Panic seized the group. Tarin fumbled for an arrow he didn't have. Joren's lips moved soundlessly, his academic mind short-circuiting at the appearance of a creature he'd only read about in bestiaries marked 'Catastrophic.' Lira's hopeful song died in her throat.
Only Reginleif reacted with combat readiness. Wiping the blood from her nose, she shoved her exhaustion down, falling into a low stance, her daggers held ready. The wind around her trembled, gathering once more.
But Azazel…
Azazel just stared.
His analytical mind, usually a fortress of cold logic, experienced a bizarre, momentary fracture. The terror of the others, the draconic features—it all registered, but it was secondary. A single, incongruous thought screamed in his head, drowning out the survival alarms.
That's a Tyrannosaurus Rex.
Why is there a T-Rex in this world?
In a dungeon. Of all things.
He saw the powerful hind legs, the uselessly small forearms, the massive skull. It was textbook. But then his eyes tracked up to the horns, the intelligent, burning gaze, the scales that were too sharp, too crimson. The wings.
Everyone is calling it a Drake, he thought, the absurdity cutting through the shock. It clearly looks like a T-Rex to me. A… dragon-hybrid T-Rex.
His broker's instinct kicked in, shoving aside existential confusion for tactical assessment. Crimson Drake. Hybrid. Fire breath likely. Extreme physical power. Intelligent. They're right. We cannot fight this. Not here. Not now.
The Crimson Drake ignored the humans entirely. To it, they were insects. Its prey was the alpha, the trespasser in its deeper domain. With a speed that belied its colossal size, its head darted forward, snake-fast.
The Bloody Raptor Alpha, the cunning pack leader, the terror of the 26th floor, had time for one last, pitiful squeal before jaws that could crush a siege engine closed around its midsection.
CRUNCH.
The sound was final, wet, and horrifyingly casual. The Alpha was lifted, its limbs twitching feebly, then swallowed in two great, gulping motions.
The Drake turned its molten gaze. It looked past Kael's raised shield, past Reginleif's defiant stance, and its eyes settled on Azazel. Or more precisely, on the lingering, cold, abyssal scent of the Cataract that still hung in the damp air around him. A new, different kind of interest flickered in those ancient eyes. Not hunger, but recognition of a foreign power. A rival corruption.
It took a single, earth-shaking step towards them.
The chamber trembled. A low, rumbling growl built in its chest, a sound that promised not just death, but total annihilation.
Reginleif's wind shrieked to life around her blades. "AZAZEL!"
Her scream broke his reverie. He looked from the advancing god-monster to his terrified, outmatched party, to Reginleif ready to sell her life in a futile storm.
The plan wasn't just ruined; it was incinerated. There was no fighting. There was only one option left.
"RUN!" Azazel roared, his voice cutting through the paralyzing fear. "BACK THE WAY WE CAME! NOW!"
The Drake' chest glowed, a hellish light illuminating the veins in its throat. The air rippled with intense heat.
It was going to breathe fire.
End of Chapter 36