The air by the deep sinkhole was a physical presence—a miasma of decay, wet rot, and a sweet, cloying foulness that made the back of the throat itch. It was a circular pit, thirty yards across, its black water choked with slime and the skeletal remains of what might have been trees or large animals. At its center, the water bubbled slowly, as if from a submerged, septic breath. This was the heart of the corruption, a tributary-fed sump for the Glutton's seepage.
Arrion did not wait for nightfall. He did not retreat to the village to rest. Lo's ultimatum and the haunting dream-training had forged a new resolve. If he couldn't rest, then neither would the source of the terror. He would besiege it with his presence, his will, and his stumbling, dangerous power.
He chose a spot on the relatively firm ground twenty yards from the water's edge, a place where the reeds were dead and brittle. With Kestrel's help, they built not a shelter, but a simple, open camp—a fire pit, a bedroll on raised ground, and a clear line of sight to the bubbling center.
As dusk settled, a deeper darkness seemed to rise from the sinkhole. Arrion stood at the water's edge, Nightshade in hand. He closed his eyes, reaching for the lessons. He visualized the river. He felt for the banks within himself. He sought not to unleash the storm, but to direct a single, focused current through the sword, using its planar-aligned nature as a focusing rod, aiming his intent at the corrupted water.
He took a deep breath, his movements sure, deliberate, straining with immense concentration. He thrust Nightshade forward, not in a stab, but in a slow, pushing gesture.
A beam of concentrated, lightning-blue energy, thinner and more coherent than anything he'd managed before, lanced from the sword's tip. It struck the black water not with an explosion, but with a searing hiss. A patch of slime boiled away, and the foul bubbles ceased for a full minute before slowly starting again. The water where the beam struck glowed with an angry blue residue for a few seconds before being swallowed by the dominant black-green.
It was progress. Controlled. Directed.
A dry voice spoke from behind him. "A child's first step. But you are leaning on a crutch."
Arrion turned, lowering Nightshade. Master Lo stood there, his expression unreadable in the fading light.
"The sword is not you," Lo said, tapping his own staff on the ground. "It is a tool, a magnificent one, aligned to cut things that should not be. It wants to cut. It facilitates your power's destructive expression. You are not channeling through yourself; you are using the sword as a lightning rod, letting it do half the work of focusing and aiming. You are cooperating with it, not commanding your own energy."
He pointed to a stunted, half-dead willow leaning precariously over the pit, its bark weeping a dark sap. "Break off a branch. A straight one."
Puzzled, Arrion did so, snapping off a limb about four feet long and as thick as his wrist. It was damp, lifeless wood.
"Now," Lo instructed. "Do the same. Channel the energy. Not to cut or boil. Simply to make the branch glow from within. A gentle, sustained light. Without burning it to ash."
Arrion stared at the dead wood, then at the old sage. He grasped the branch in both hands, repeating the process. He found his center, visualized the flow, and attempted to guide a tiny, gentle stream of power into the wood.
The result was instantaneous and violent. The branch didn't glow. It exploded in his hands with a sharp CRACK, shattering into a dozen charred, smoking splinters. The backlash was a minor version of the scarification—a painful jolt up his arms that left his fingers tingling and numb.
Lo didn't smile. He sighed, the sound carrying the weight of eons. "The sword is a masterwork scalpel in the hands of a man who has only ever swung an axe. You can make a cut with it, but you do not understand the pressure, the angle, the fragility of the medium. Until you can channel power through something inert, fragile, and unaligned—like this dead wood—without destroying it, you do not understand channeling. You understand facilitated discharge. You are not ready."
He looked at the bubbling sinkhole, then back at Arrion's soot-stained, frustrated face. "The crutch must go. Train with the branch. When you can make it warm, then glow, then perhaps resonate with a pure tone, without so much as scorching the bark… then you will have begun to understand the stream among the rocks. Until then, you are just a man shouting into a megaphone, thinking his voice has grown powerful."
Lo turned and melted back into the gathering gloom, leaving Arrion with the fragments of the branch, the mocking hiss of the sinkhole, and the crushing knowledge that his one moment of success was an illusion.
---
Deep below the stagnant, poisoned surface, in a submerged cavern of slick, weeping stone, the true master of the sinkhole stirred.
It was a horror of scaled flesh and corruption. Twenty-five feet from snout to tail-tip, it had the general, primal shape of a crocodile, but that was where any natural comparison ended. Its hide was not armored plate, but a crust of weeping, bulbous pustules that ranged in size from a fist to a barrel. They pulsed with a sickly internal light, and from them continually seeped a viscous, black-green pus that clouded the water around it with a toxic haze. This was the Blight-Drake, a creature not born, but cultivated by the Glutton's seepage, a living engine of corruption.
Beside it, coiled submissively on the cavern floor, was the many-limbed Watcher, its body bearing the fresh wound from Kestrel's bone javelin. It was not the master, but the envoy, the hunter sent to gather sustenance and terrorize the surface.
The Blight-Drake's massive head, larger than a wagon bed, rested on the silt. Then, two slitted eyes, burning with a sick, intelligent yellow like corrupted topaz, flicked open. They glowed in the murk, casting jaundiced light on the cavern walls.
A thought, not a sound, passed between the two creatures—a psychic command that reeked of putrefaction and endless hunger.
The command was simple, a base imperative that underpinned all its existence: FLESH. WARM, LIVING FLESH. TO FEAST UPON. TO CONVERT.
The Watcher uncoiled, its movements fluid and silent in the water. It understood. The large, powerful creature on the bank, the one who had burned the water with strange light, was flesh. Struggling, untrained flesh, but rich with vital energy. And the smaller, sharp one nearby. They had been a nuisance. Now, they would be a banquet.
The Blight-Drake's jaws, lined with teeth like broken, stained tombstones, parted slightly in what might have been anticipation. A stream of thick, polluted bubbles rose from its maw toward the surface, adding to the perpetual, foul simmer of the sinkhole. It had slept, digesting, consolidating its power. Now, it was awake. And it was hungry. The envoy had its orders. The siege would be met with a counter-attack from the deep. The test for the untrained Warden was no longer an abstract deadline; it was a waking nightmare, stirring in the black water, demanding to be fed.