His eleventh year of life in the Dundan underworld had completely eradicated the last vestiges of humanity from Ezekiel. He had shot up in height, his movements gaining a frightening, wolf-like grace, and his pale skin appeared almost translucent in the sparse sparks of subterranean phosphorus. Ordinary people of Oakhaven, should they encounter him now, would mistake the teenager for a lurking undead or a perilous spirit of the caves.
Following his victory over the Blind Gnasher, Ezekiel confronted a harsh reality regarding the ethnography of magic: his first active skill, [Glint], was incredibly powerful but possessed a fatal flaw. It required light. In the absolute, crushing darkness of the lower drifts, where no sunbeams ever penetrated, the spell turned into a useless waste of Amalgam.
Ezekiel needed to become a thief. If the world would not give him light, he would have to take it himself.
The youth began to experiment with the laws of optics. He would sit for hours by underground streams where luminescent moss grew. Using two perfectly polished plates of specular slate, he set them opposite one another, trapping the dull, greenish glow. By the power of his Amalgam, Ezekiel forced the light waves to circulate between the stones, compressing and concentrating them until they formed a dense, vibrating sphere of energy. He learned to "preserve" light inside his stones, turning ordinary shards into light grenades.
Yet, a different discovery marked his true breakthrough.
Advancing through a narrow through-passage, Ezekiel stumbled upon a nest of Luminescent Anglers—hideous subterranean monstrosities resembling a cross between a spider and a deep-sea fish. They anchored themselves to the cave ceiling, dangling long, elastic barbels with droplets of organic phosphorus burning brightly at the tips. This light attracted small, foolish rats.
To Ezekiel, these droplets were pure treasure. However, approaching the nest directly was madness; dozens of long legs would tear him apart in a second.
The youth lay flat on his stomach behind a stone boulder thirty meters from the nest. A direct line of sight offered no way to chart a safe route. Ezekiel then drew one of his flat obsidian discs, which he had polished to a shine using sand and his own blood, and with a precise, silent throw, launched it in an arc. The disc embedded itself into a fissure on the wall directly opposite the Anglers' lair.
Ezekiel closed his eyes, tuned into the Amalgam circulating within the thrown stone, and opened his left eye, staring at another shard clutched in his own hand.
His consciousness tilted. For a second, a jarring nausea pierced the youth, as if his mind were being turned inside out, but then the image stabilized. He no longer saw the boulder he lay before. His vision had "shifted" to the point on the wall. Through the thrown disc, he could clearly see—at a perfect angle—the entire hierarchy of the nest, the positioning of the monsters' legs, and the blind spots that were invisible from below.
[Versum System: Attention!] You have unlocked hidden capabilities of Level 1. Active Skill obtained: [Reflected Sight] (Level 1). Description: Synchronizes vision with any reflective surface within the control radius. Amalgam Cost: 2 units per minute.
Ezekiel let out a cold smirk. The tips of his fingers trembled slightly with anticipation.
Utilizing [Reflected Sight], he saw that one of the Anglers had crawled too far from its kin, watching for prey by a distant ledge. The youth slid forward noiselessly, moving exclusively through the zones the monster could not monitor.
When barely five paces remained between him and the beast, Ezekiel activated his prepared shard of "preserved" light. A compressed green beam erupted from his palm. It struck precisely into the Angler's dangling light droplet. By the law of symmetry, Ezekiel's Amalgam instantly resonated with the beast's organic phosphorus, literally "drinking" and siphoning all of its light into the youth's obsidian knife.
The monster's glowing barbel blackened and withered instantly. The Angler thrashed in panic, having lost its primary sensory organ, but Ezekiel was already upon it. The obsidian dagger, charged with the stolen light, silently entered the soft joint between the beast's abdomen and head.
The monster did not even have time to utter a warning click. It went limp and slumped heavily onto the rocks.
Ezekiel quickly harvested the remaining light glands, stowing them in the canvas pouch he had recovered from the dead mage. Now, he possessed a portable, concentrated supply of foreign light, sufficient for a solid dozen deadly [Glints] even within the darkest depths of the Dungeon.
The youth looked at the remaining Angler nest through the mirror disc on the wall. Dozens of glowing points reflected in his coal-black eyes. To an ordinary human, this was a nest of nightmares. To Ezekiel, it was a resource depot that he intended to empty down to the very last quantum of light.
He had become an invisible spy, a thief stealing the very essence of subterranean life. And the Dundan Dungeon was slowly, but surely, bending its stone knees before him.