Isoko hovered high in the sky, between the Dreadnought and the edge of the layer. From up here she could see past the crater that the ship hovered within. She could see down the sides of the layer and to the dreamlands beyond, where smouldering black rock and exposed lava touched water and grass and sky and then everything shifted to something else, but the land remained, and it burned.

  It was freaking hot out here. The only reason Isoko wasn’t burned to a crisp was her high Body PL and her ability to go Full Platinum and dump her heat out into the world beyond with that Homeostasis/Agitation Union that Lola had told Mark about.

  The Dreadnought lay below, in a kilometer-wide divot that Eliot and Isoko had carved out of the edge of the layer. The bottom of the divot was constantly filled with more and more lava, but Eliot had expanded the Castellan shield of the Dreadnought to mostly fill the hole, to stop the constant ‘healing’ of the layer; to prevent the lava from filling up the space. If layers had feelings, then Isoko was pretty sure this one did not like being invaded at all. But Eliot had secured them into the layer—

  A warning flickered in Isoko’s headsup display in her glasses. Some of Eliot’s Castellan fixes on the edge of the crater were failing due to heat. There and there, as Isoko turned her gaze upon the problems, she saw holes open up in the rock beyond the golden shield. Lava poured out like liquid fire, hit the shield, and then curved downward.

  Isoko spun the edge of the sky with Homeostasis and Agitation, a hot wind blowing up into the sky, and cool, dreamy air, snow, and grasses flowing down into the crater. Rivulets and creeks spilled into the crater and steam billowed hard into the air, in response. Isoko tossed the steam out into the dreamlands once again, causing the dreamlands to billow with storm fronts and thunderheads. Lightning flashed in the churn of dreams.

  The dreamlands were pretty amazing.

  Isoko had nothing to do but wait for Mark.

  She didn’t even have to help keep the ship stable by removing the heat from the walls of the crater; Eliot had told her that a few times. But Isoko wanted to actually do something instead of nothing, and since all she could do right now was maintain the temperature of the ship, she did that, and she stared out into the dreamlands.

  Clouds gathered out there, wispy and streaming, but also thick and tumbling with storm and thunder.

  Isoko was 90% sure she heard the stampede of Sleipnir among that thunder, but she saw no sign of that mythological horse. She just heard it occasionally… Maybe. Might have been a figment of her imagination.

  None of the sensors picked up the noise she was hearing… or may not be hearing.

  But it was a legendary monster, born of dreams and turned into a kaiju somehow, which made no sense to anyone but Tartu. Lola, who had been the first to recognize the monster for that 8-legged horse of myth, had no explanations. Tartu had told Isoko to keep an eye on the sky, and if she should hear it coming back then she should notify everyone. He had also told her to not pay attention to the sounds of the dreamlands at all. Isoko had asked about the dangers of looking out into the dreams, like, if there were actual dangers. Tartu had said that wasn’t the issue with looking at dreams. The issue was that dreams showed you what you wanted to see, which was pretty useless most of the time.

  And yet, Isoko stared into the churn of the dreamlands, watching the clouds, hearing the thunder of a herd of horses… or maybe just one horse. So Isoko tapped on her comms and said, “Sound check for Sleipnir again.”

  After a moment—

  “Checking,” Tartu said.

  “On it,” Eliot added.

  “When did it start?” Tartu asked.

  Isoko couldn’t really feel individual vectors anymore, which was kind of a blessing and a curse at the same time. It was detrimental because she couldn’t pinpoint anyone’s exact location anymore. Eliot was somewhere in the general vicinity of a 10 meter location somewhere about 340 meters down below, probably in the main control room working on something and being generally anxious… maybe. Tartu had been pleasantly growing stuff in the gardens about 400-ish meters down and over in that other direction. Now, Tartu was kinda miffed. Isoko had interrupted him… maybe.

  Those vectors down there could be any number of Dereks, too, throwing off Isoko’s ability to sense at all. Derek was everywhere and doing a whole lot of stuff at the same time, after all.

  Andria and Lola were asleep… probably. David was awake. He was right over there at the top of the castle, sitting in the driver’s seat and watching a movie to the side, doing the whole low-power-mode-‘hurry up and wait’-thing that all of them were doing right now.

  Isoko spoke in the comms, “It started a while ago… I’m just nervous about Mark and Sally.”

  Eliot said, “They’re both still alive. I can sense them in my Castle… but outside. Stuff is happening, but I know they’re still alive.”

  Isoko hummed, disbelieving. “They could be trapped. Andria couldn’t get to them at all.”

  Tartu said, “I’m still not sure why she couldn’t get to them but Sally’s kaiju’s signature is gone, so we know they were successful. The only issue we have… hmm… The only issue that is keeping them is that Sally probably got too big to move. And she’s sleeping.”

  “Why the pause?” Isoko asked.

  “… Eh… I’m not sure if this is a horse sound,” Tartu said.

  Eliot said, “I’m seeing kaiju Calls and none of them are horse sounds. Running them through the diagnostic again.”

  “I’m running them through, too,” Tartu said.

  Isoko pulled the earbuds out of her ears and listened to the sky beyond the steaming crater.

  … Fucking hell. Now she heard nothing at all out there but the weather. No clopping or neighing or anything. Fucking make her look like a fool, is what it was doing. Isoko was kinda pissed now.

  Isoko put her earbuds back in, asking, “Tell me about mythological kaiju again, Tartu?”

  “There’s not much to tell that I didn’t already, but... If Sleipnir was back, we’d know about it; it would be really obvious, too. Mythological kaiju almost always come back but they don’t always come back right away, and they don’t come back the same. Mythological kaiju are born of the dreams of the masses… somehow. We don’t know how, exactly. But we do know they have no continuity unless they have continuity. Sleipnir comes from dreams of Earth, and everything Lola knew about it was that it was just a horse of some mythological god. The son of a god and the horse of the god’s father— you guys have some strange myths on Earth, by the way.”

  Isoko sarcastically asked, “You don’t have gods that transform into other sexes and monsters to give birth to other monsters?”

  “Daihoon gods are bulwarks against the monsters; not monster creators themselves,” Tartu said. “Horror stories always get shared around, though, especially when the monster stories we have are news, and not stories. Those sorts of news events are heavily redacted to specifically keep those dangerous kinds of monster stories out of the public view because of what it does when dreams come into the picture. I know the names of some monsters that come back again and again to kill everyone who ever sees them, and I will not be sharing those names at all. Sleipnir, however, is just a mythological horse, and when it is born again from the myths of Earth, it will probably just go on being a horse.”

  Eliot spoke when Tartu finished, saying, “I’m not hearing any horse sounds. You still hearing it, Isoko?”

  Isoko listened to the stormy sky, but now the rain was over and the clouds were gone from the intrusion of the dreamlands, and the sky overhead was clear and empty. A lake lay far overhead, twisting into a river, into an ocean, and then into a delta. The dreamlands kept twisting. The space around the Dreadnought was cool and clear of lava, once again. Isoko heard nothing that bore mentioning.

  Isoko said, “No. Not there anymore.”

  “I’m not hearing it either,” Eliot said, and his vector might have been calming down. Hard to say. His voice, however, was easy-breezy as he said, “The Dreadnought can handle the lava intake… You ready to take a break, Isoko?”

  “… yeah,” Isoko softly said, pulling away from the edge of the dreamlands, headed down into the castle, into her room. “Wake me if we hear from them?”

  Eliot said. “By the time Andria wakes up I should have a little ship for her to pilot through the lava. It’ll make it to Mark, this time.”

  Isoko was hopeful, but realistic. “It won’t break like the last one?”

  “We made it with Mark’s adamantium so it should work this time…” Eliot began. And then he admitted, “Drilling will still be difficult. Should work!”

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  Tartu said, “With as small of a size as it is, the enchantments should last a lot longer than the first version.”

  “You should have made it with adamantium to begin with,” Isoko said.

  Tartu came back a bit embarrassed, saying, “… Yeah. We probably should have. Still feels weird to throw a literal half-billion worth of goldleaf into a tiny drill that will probably be lost to the depths, and not to mention spending adamantium on relays… And it’s only PL 79! … Should still work well enough with Andria moving it along.”

  - -

  Andria sat on a pillow on the deck of the Dreadnought and focused on the drill that Eliot and Tartu had made. It was black and twisty and about 4 meters long, and 1 meter wide, and sitting on a holder. It had a full adamantium shell, simple working parts, and a bunch of small adamantium balls that Andria could pop out of the machine and leave behind it, each of them with radio relays, like a trail of candy connecting Mark to the Dreadnought. Theoretically, it would work.

  But Andria couldn’t see what she was working inside of the machine. Oh sure, it had a video screen on the inside and cameras and Andria could watch herself working the mechanisms at a far distance with the pair of goggles Eliot had made, but chances were the system would fail like the mithril one did, and Andria would be working it blind most of the trip.

  Lava was not kind on sensitive electronics.

  But the radio would work a lot longer than any video sensors, and Andria’s ability to reach very, very far was not something that rock would interrupt.

  Andria pushed a pair of immaterial mithril hands into the machine, to a big open space in the center of the drill, and then she materialized them. One hand to hold a stabilizing bar, the other to turn the drill itself. She found the interior easily enough, thanks to some mithril markers that Eliot had installed on the two handles.

  She wasn’t using the goggles yet. Right now she could make mistakes and fumble around, and she and the guys could repair the machine. Later, when the systems started to fail, Andria would have to just go with what she had, and it probably wouldn’t be the video sensors inside of the machine.

  So Andria felt out the interior of the machine, like she was feeling around in a dark bathroom for the lights. She found the handles. Using the interior handles, Andria fumbled in the dark, turning the bottom handle and holding to the stabilizing one. The drill turned easily, the enchantments operating well.

  Better than the last version, too.

  It was a magnificent expenditure of wealth and Andria still felt absolutely horrible using this much adamantium to make a drill, but she had exhausted herself trying to navigate the layer through the slimes, and a normal drill made of mithril and mechanical parts was not up for the task of going through the stone and lava down below.

  Andria played around with it for 30 minutes, pulling inner latches and popping out singular relay probes one at a time, getting a feel for it all. Isoko watched from the side, glaring, and Andria tried not to feel bad about how she had fucked up previously and lost the other probe. Eliot and Tartu were looking over the plans for the drill, making last minute adjustments. There were no more adjustments to be made, though.

  Andria spoke up, “I’m ready.” She asked, “Everyone else ready?”

  Tartu said, “I can’t figure out connected disembodied domains, so yeah. Let’s go with what you got.”

  The drill wasn’t the only solution for getting back to Mark and Sally, but it was the only one that was going to work right now. And so, Andria lifted the machine off of its perch with some mithril hands and then tossed it over the edge, guiding it into the lava—

  “Helm?” Eliot said, handing over the video helm to Andria. “This one won’t break as easily.”

  Andria was embarrassed all over again, but she put the helm on, saying, “Yeah… sure.”

  Isoko eyed Andria, her glare softening now that they were actually moving. She said nothing.

  The drill touched the stone and it slid down into the stone like a sharp knife into cold lettuce. There was a lot of crunching. There would be a lot of crunching for a while. But soon the sound vanished from direct observation, and Andria began to ignore the crunching, vibrating in her mithril hands. The adamantium shell protected the interior from almost all the vibrations of the drill, but Andria had sensitive mithril hands.

  It was fine.

  Hopefully this would only take a few hours.

  It was all weird, though. It was like pushing at something very, very far away. Andria was used to that, being a Shaper. But there was a difference between tactile feedback from 20 meters away, and feedback that was from 2 kilometers away. It was disorienting, and it was getting hot down there.

  Poking into the bodies of the slimes out there was so much easier, and nicer. The slimes lived down there. To them, 1500 degree lava was normal. Andria was no stranger to picking up hot things with her mithril, but there was a difference between putting oneself into a lava bath for 10 seconds versus 3 hours.

  It was very, very uncomfortable to let her mithril drift anywhere outside of the container.

  Mithril’s melting point around 1000 degrees, after all. Mark was fine because adamantium didn’t have a melting point; you had to work it with Shaper magic or other kinds of magic. Adamantium was technically a resistor, in that it resisted all outside forces to change it, unless you made it specifically to accept certain forces. Andria was not Mark; not at all—

  “Readout good,” Eliot said, looking at readouts on a screen.

  “Enchantments holding,” Tartu said. “Release the first ball, Andria.”

  Andria tapped a button in the machine, releasing ball #1 of 100 at 2 kilometers in, causing a mechanism to turn over at the back end of the drill and leave behind a half-fist-sized black orb inside the semi-solid stone.

  She asked, “Got it?”

  Eliot said, “Got it.”

  Isoko watched, eyes platinum, focus narrowed.

  Goddess dammit, why does she have to watch me like that.

  Of course Andria knew why. Isoko liked Mark, and Andria liked Mark, too. Everyone with two eyes and any amount of brains at all would like Mark. Andria could not hope to compete with Isoko right now… But maybe in a year? Assuming everything didn’t turn to shit—

  “Why aren’t you focusing,” Isoko softly demanded of Andria, from 10 meters away.

  Andria refocused, saying, “I’m focused. I’m right there—”

  “You’re not,” Isoko said, eyes narrowed.

  Eliot and Tartu said nothing.

  Andria kept her eyes on the prize in many more ways than one. The last time she had drilled with drill-version-1, she had lost control. She had shredded the machine’s insides. But this drill was made of adamantium. There was no way to break this drill at all. Not unless she was really, really trying.

  So Andria focused, knowing that Prosperity would either be a year away or more. It wasn’t happening right now. But the path was there.

  So Andria drilled.

  After 20 minutes Isoko couldn’t take it anymore.

  “I gotta… gotta do something,” Isoko said, and then she took off into the sky.

  Andria sighed in relief.

  - -

  Eliot sat in the command center and glanced at the readouts from the driller, noticing a few problems. Nothing that compromised the integrity of the mission. Just small problems. Andria had gotten past the turbulent reverse-gravity lava fields and gotten turned around twice, leaving a bunch of scattered relays in the lava as she went, but that was an hour ago and she was on the other side now, pushing through, dropping off relays as she went. She was now halfway to Mark and Sally. In 2 more hours, she should reach the center of the layer.

  Theoretically.

  She was down to 72 of 100 relays, and half of them were failing.

  But the others worked, and Andria’s visuals were clear.

  Eliot watched his own screen, showing the driller’s POV, which was mostly sensed through sensors and not through any actual visuals at all. The rock around the driller was solid again with a few scattered tunnels full of open air and some moving monsters in those tunnels. And then the driller was past all that, pushing forward into stone and trailing rock and a bit of lava behind.

  Drilling through stone without anyway to discard the stone was difficult as fuck, because not only was Andria directly contesting the hardness of the stone, but she was also fighting against the pressure and the heat. Mark seemed to have no trouble at all drilling with a much, much bigger drill… well. ‘Small amounts of normal trouble’. That’s all Mark had had getting through the rock.

  Eliot supposed the tunnels dug through the stone helped to alleviate some of the pressure of drilling straight through, too. Andria went slower until she found one of those, and then she sped up again through open space, the refuse of the dig scattered behind her along with yet another relay.

  Andria was no Mark.

  She did what she could, and she did it well.

  Eliot pushed the talk-button and spoke to Andria through the comms, “Hey, Andria?”

  “Ah!” Andria startled a little, the driller pausing. “Ah? What?”

  “Drop some more relays. The last two were duds.”

  “Ah? Yeah. Okay.” Andria twisted some gears far, far away, and another relay popped out, as she said, “The signal is coming in well? I can still see everything with the helmet you made.”

  Eliot nodded to himself. “Is the helmet really easier?”

  “Yes! Thanks for making it. Proprioception is all gunked up right now; the helmet helps a lot.”

  “Let me know if you need anything… Ah. Pop another relay out. That one was a dud, too.”

  “… Oh shit? Are they broken? The signal is a bit staticky… But it’s only 10% degradation?” Andria said, “Another one released… And the signal is still a bit staticky. Fuck. No way to fix that.”

  “Yup; No way to fix that. The signal will only ever degrade in this sort of operation. You’re over half way there and you still have 65 relays left. I’m adjusting the schedule for relay distribution…” Eliot tapped away at a keyboard and then hit send. “There. You have a new schedule. You’ll be down to 10 extra by the end, instead of 20 extra. You should be able to make it with that much, and then you can hook into Quark’s visuals when you actually connect to him.”

  The Dreadnought could not get through the stone. But Andria could. And if she could get there, she could get a signal, and with that signal she should be able to visually see what was happening down there.

  Andria softly, strongly, said, “And if they need help, I can help.”