Two days of travelling through the burned land proved, beyond any doubt, that the escort we provided to the group destined to head into the dungeon at this land’s centre was utterly necessary. During the day, we travelled after them, my magical bags allowing us to carry a lot more luggage than otherwise possible, and at night, we made sure to treat their wounds and guard their rest. It was exhausting, especially as we got closer to the burned land’s centre and the ground started to get hotter, and the Bitumen and Artillery Beasts turned even more dangerous than before. But, by working together, we managed to prevail, eventually getting close enough to the centre that a ray of incandescent heat lit up the evening sky, scorching one of my scrying constructs.

“A motherfuckin’ death ray?!” one of the locals who had joined us on escort duty cursed, a bit of anger in his voice.

“Heat, not death,” I couldn’t help but correct, even if I realised just after words left my mouth that the element used for the destruction wasn’t the problem here. Luckily, another of the locals started to chuckle at my words, even if her laughter sounded a little incredulous.

“Really, that’s the thing you’ve got a problem with? That it’s a motherfuckin' heat ray, not a death ray?” the laughing woman asked, staring at me with utter disbelief once she managed to control her laughter.

“You know, accuracy is important, as is accurate information,” Luna threw in, laughing as well, though her laughter was filled with mirth instead of incredulity.

“Indeed,” I nodded, taking refuge in audacity, “It will be interesting to observe how exactly that heat ray works and what countermeasures we can bring to beat so it doesn’t roast us all.”

Just as I spoke, another of these rays cut through the sky. I couldn’t help but flinch when yet another scrying construct was annihilated. Curiously, I was fairly confident that the second scrying construct was further back than the group ahead of us, meaning that the delving group was already in range of these heat rays. And yet, they hadn’t been attacked so far.

They had essentially no cover, nothing stopped the heat rays from targeting them, and yet, they were just fine. Sure, they had stopped and were keeping a close eye on the towers ahead, ready to dodge at a moment’s notice, but that shouldn’t stop the heat rays from trying. Unless there was some prohibitively high cost involved in using the heat rays, but that idea flew in the face of the behaviour we had observed from these things, namely, that they scorched any aerial unit that came into their range.

But maybe that was the relevant factor here, the aerial part. These heat rays might only attack opponents above a certain height, or maybe they only struck if their angle allowed the beam to dissipate into the air before striking the ground.

“The others stopped,” I told the group around me, “We’ll meet up with them and I’ll run a few tests regarding these rays.”

“Just don’t get us fried,” somebody snarked, annoying me just a little. Of course, I’d be careful not to get hit by these rays; they looked extraordinarily painful.

“So, these are the heat rays you told us about,” one of the advanced group greeted us when we caught up.

“Indeed,” I nodded, “Luna and I will get some distance between us and the group before testing a few things. I hope that way, we can make the advance without having to worry too much about these things.”

“You should be careful,” another of them told me, “I’ve got a feeling that there’s going to be goopers coming up soon. Don’t want you to get gooped in the back.”

A few chuckles rose at the idea, and I made sure to keep vigilant. Given the amount of experience these five had with the Bitumen, I wasn’t about to discard their warning.

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Together, Luna and I moved some distance away, and I considered the best way to do my tests. Given that I still had a few scrying constructs up in the air, these were used for the first few tests. Namely, trying out at what heights they were struck and if that height varied as they got closer to the structures in the centre of the burned land. Depending on that, we might have to be prepared to defend ourselves against the heat rays as we got closer, or we might learn that flying above a certain height was prohibited.

Soon, the first scrying construct started to make its approach, flying deliberately lower than the others, at roughly half the previous height. Sadly, it was struck and burned to a crisp in short order, though I noticed that it got a little closer, though the difference wasn’t significant enough to draw any conclusions from it.

Thus, another construct started its approach, again flying at half the previous height and, again, suffering a scorching defeat, making me sigh in the process. Again, no significant differences in the distance the construct was destroyed to draw meaningful conclusions, but I thought there was a pattern that they got closer as they were lower. Sadly, there wasn’t all that much room left to go lower. If I kept halving the distance, the next would fly at a height I could reach with a standing jump, and the one after that would fly at roughly the height of my head.

Still, tests needed to be done, and so another scrying construct started its journey towards the tower. Just as it was about to die a fiery death, I noticed some very faint tremors below me and instantly alerted Luna, remembering the earlier warning we were given.

Moments later, the ground began to shift and heat up. Watching it was incredibly weird, especially as we both took our distance from the phenomenon, while the rest of the group was quickly coming over, ready to help.

Then, the shifting soil started to form into tendrils and swing blindly in our general direction. There was no precision in those strikes, but when a tendril the size of a reasonably big tree is swung around fast, you move out of the way and you do so quickly, no questions asked. And so, there were no questions asked; we just moved back and out of their range, until we could watch them flailing without endangering ourselves.

“It’ll come up in a moment,” one of the guys called out and, just as he had said, moments later, the ground started moving some more, and an artillery beast pushed itself up from the ground, the flailing tendrils from earlier turning into its legs.

Sadly, its slow emergence had given us all ample time to get into position; however, I quickly decided to test something entirely different, while everyone else was preparing to cut it down.

With a flex of my will, I conjured a scrying construct right above the emerging beast, placing it between the central towers and the beast itself, curious what would happen. Moments later, I got my answer when the construct started to flap its wings, flying towards the tower, only to get burned from the sky by another heat ray.

Curiously, this one was incredibly weak, needing almost three whole seconds to destroy the constructs instead of scorching it in less than a second, though given that it also hit the artillery beast, doing negligible damage in the process, I was fairly certain that was the reason for their restraint. Either way, it gave me quite an interesting data point, or rather, multiple data points, especially regarding the durability of my own constructs against this type of attack.

While I did my test, the others cut off the beast’s limbs, sending it to the ground with a painful-sounding thump. Then, just like earlier, one of them jumped onto its back, briefly glancing at the lightly smouldering part where the heat ray had struck the beast and dispatched the downed beast with practised ease.

“Thanks for the assist,” I told the converged group, “There are still more tests to be done, but I believe I can do the rest without endangering those around me.”

While my announcement wasn’t met with any sort of enthusiasm, the group remained gathered around me, watching as I performed test after test, using the scrying constructs I had conjured earlier, before starting to carefully conjure new ones at a distance. The more I worked, the more data I could gather on these structures before us, allowing us to be confident in our approach. Amusingly, the data I gathered showed me fairly conclusively that the structures only attacked flying targets, while being quite restrained when it came to targets on the ground, as if they didn’t want to do damage to the earth. Quite the curious circumstances, and I made certain to conjure some simple shields for our approach, but it proved to be unnecessary, and soon, we reached the towers.

And the stairs going down, into an ominous pit, looking, and smelling, far too close to what the doors to hell might look and smell like to make me comfortable. It was a good thing that we wouldn’t go into that mess.