29th of Season of Water, 57th year of the 32nd cycle

  The dark, oppressive mine shaft was no longer dark, nor oppressive. It was a mere hole in the ground, the air thick with earth energy, tinged with extinguished fire of the ancient volcano. The wounds and humiliation attached to the place no longer stung Newt. In a handful of moons, he had grown beyond what he once was. Beyond what fate had in store for him.

  Deep underground, the double core thrummed with power. No light, no heat, no sound escaped it, but the pulses of the invisible twin hearts pulled on Newt, like the moon pulling on the ocean.

  He walked without hesitation, free of doubt and fear. He knew he would enter the realm, help Magmin, if the serpent was open to discussion, or crush it if it turned hostile. Newt reached out.

  He touched the phantasmal amalgamation of earth and fire, and the world shifted.

  Behind Newt’s back inferno blazed, while the land before him stretched endlessly; deserted, without a spark of flame.

  Have you gone insane, Magmin? You haven’t cultivated your realm at all! What were you doing?

  A screech echoed, and Newt snapped his head up. A titanic bird of flame soared through sky, burning the clouds, feasting on them.

  Vaguely, extremely vaguely, its shape reminded Newt of a pterosaur, of a drawing a child might scribble with a stick in the dirt when depicting an oversized pterodactylus with a wingspan of over one hundred feet.

  Just as he noticed it, the behemoth noticed Newt, who stood in a striking red robe in an otherwise black landscape. The monster shrieked again, and dove towards him.

  “Preeeey!” it hissed.

  Magmin Scales and Granite Crust bloomed on Newt’s skin. He drew his glaive, ready for Magmin’s heart demon. The pterodactylus spewed fire, engulfing Newt in flames. Its talons shone white, poised to tear Newt into pieces. Glaive flashed, the heart demon shrieked, and two of its monstrous halves, cleaved by the glaive, crashed to either side of Newt. The young man ignored the fuss, and stepped forth, unharmed by the faltering flames.

  Magmin’s heart demon was gone, just like that. The only thing left to do was locate Magmin and talk to it, or at least attempt to talk to it.

  Newt set out to explore the desolate realm, wondering where Magmin was hiding.

  Magmin obviously gave up on protecting itself with fire, since the heart demon must have evolved last time to contest its control over flames.

  Newt thought back to his uncle-inspired heart demon. It wanted to entrench itself in Newt’s realm, to lurk and evolve. And based on how Magmin’s heart demon had become a hard counter to anything Magmin could do in two mere realms, Newt’s uncle would have become terrifying. Maybe even unbeatable.

  Newt walked for a handful of minutes, then started sprinting, searching for the giant serpent. An hour passed, and he saw no signs of life. Then, Newt almost fell into a hole. He leaped over it and stopped. The orifice was just over two feet in diameter, big enough for Newt to crawl down through. Too narrow to fight inside comfortably.

  What now? Newt knew Magmin was down there. Either that or a subterranean heart demon it had developed since entering the third realm.

  No, Magmin’s down there. I can already see it, the clever little serpent was trying to bait the pterodactylus underground, where it couldn’t fly, and crush it to death.

  Newt looked around. Magmin’s plan had obviously failed, the little guy did not know that the more insidious heart demons were perfectly happy to entrench themselves where they were and evolve with their host.

  With an exasperated sigh, Newt drew his sword and started crawling, glaive in one hand, short-sword in the other. The tunnel went down at an angle until it reached the depth of twenty feet, then it bent, and after the bend Magmin had made it match the mountain’s much softer incline.

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  The tunnel bent and forked, slowly becoming a complex maze of intersections and dead ends.

  “Heavens!” Newt shouted suddenly and dropped his spear to cover his mouth.

  I could make layered networks of runes like this! Everyone uses only the surface of their realm to cultivate, but I could dig, doubling or tripling the space, depending on the depth at which the magma starts gushing out.

  Heavens!

  The significance of what he had discovered was world-toppling. Newt was tempted to dive into his realm straight away, to test his theory, when a scraping sound echoed in the tunnel.

  Magmin!

  Newt turned his head left and right, trying to catch the origin of the scraping sound, but it seemed to be coming both from behind and from ahead. Newt’s heart started beating faster.

  He tried to shape the surrounding earth, to make a chamber large enough to fight in, but the element refused to obey him. Earth in Magmin’s realm was firmly under Magmin’s control.

  There was a dead end about two hundred yards ago.

  Newt shuffled around, trying to squeeze and turn around, but failed. The space was too narrow.

  Rush forward and hope for a dead end and gamble, or crawl in reverse for a minute, hoping for the best?

  Newt checked his danger sense; he was safe, no imminent threats.

  Back.

  Coated in Granite Crust and Magmin Scales, Newt crawled backwards as fast as he could without cutting himself and safely reached the fork with a dead end. The scraping was growing louder, Magmin was searching for him. Turning right, feet first, he was ready for an attack.

  The ground shook, and Newt wondered just how big Magmin had gotten. Suddenly, the cave wall to his left collapsed, and a pair of oar-sized limbs ending in wicked talons clawed at Newt.

  Firewall flashed, sending a torrent of flame into the hole, but the claws still dug into Newt’s side. He smashed into the bedrock as the claw crushed Granite Crust’s outer layer, but the middle one stopped the blow.

  Following the existing trace, Newt sprang another layer of Granite Crust just above his skin, and slashed at the claws with his sword.

  “Magmin! I’m here to help you handle the pterodactylus!”

  Is this a heart demon? When did Magmin sprout claws?

  “What devilry are you?” The creature hissed. “I defeated all my heart demons save for the blazing pterosaur. What are you?”

  “Magmin! Listen to me! We met back when you were a mere magmin serpent. You probably don’t recall, but I know you. You’re a genius. You came up with the volcano and the trees which draw spiritual energy for you to help you evolve faster. You were mere twelve years old when you first evolved.”

  The claws stopped, then withdrew.

  “All my heart demons would know that.” While the creature said that, it was uncertain.

  “Back when you were young, you dreamed of flight, of hunting by diving at your prey from the skies.”

  The claws moved, parting the infinitely hard bedrock like water, widening the opening enough for the head to appear. A massive, head with huge jaws and dreadful teeth manifested itself before Newt’s third eye.

  Below the head was a two-foot-long neck, below which a pair of massive, muscular arms free of shoulders grew. Each of the three-foot-long limbs had two elbows and ended in shovel-like, thumbless hands with three digits.

  “What are you, and why do you know that? How are you inside my realm? Are you a hallucination?” Magmin glared at Newt, its saucer-sized eyes glowing in the dark, their vertical slits portals to hell.

  Magmin’s gone mad. And he stayed that way until he got rid of that heart demon. But in my dream the dragon was majestic, calm, not the deranged creature standing before me.

  “I know you better than you would believe. You were so proud of yourself, so full of hope when you were at the first realm.”

  “I was a fool,” the spirit beast muttered. “Naive, young.”

  It looked towards Newt’s sword. “Your rock claw is sharp, but you do not attack. What kind of heart demon are you?”

  Newt did not like the label, but he could live with it if Magmin chose to end things peacefully and allow him to leave his realm. Slaying the lindworm-creature would have taken little effort, but killing Magmin in his realm felt wrong, unjust. Newt’s life and cultivation were thanks to Magmin.

  “Let’s say I’m a heart demon.” Magmin raised its claws. “Which I’m not, but let’s say you don’t believe in my good intentions, and still consider me a heart demon. Would you let me live, if I tell you I have already slain the pterodactylus?”

  Magmin’s pupils widened before narrowing back into slits.

  “If you can or have slain the blazing pterosaur, I would let you live, even if you are a new heart demon, but how do we prove your claims?”

  “That’s easy, we go back to the surface. You can find the truth there.” I just hope the heart demon stayed dead after I walked away from it, but even if it’s still alive, I can slay it with hardly any effort at all.