Crimsonflame looked around the large, circular room. All around her were machines and shelves of books, all of them running at full capacity. She understood the purpose of most of them, at least differently, but not of the experiments being conducted below.

Moving amongst them were Draconian scientists, identified by their white robes and black hoods, working feverishly at the machines and arguing almost silently over results of their inquiries. Before the war, this laboratory would have been used by Draconians largely for theoretical experiments, and, at times, for research into cures for various ailments and remediation and agricultural techniques.

Now, it differed in two main features: firstly, it had been devoted entirely to research into the nature of Choggoths. Despite the fact that they had consumed much of Panbios and leveled several cities, resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands and the displacements of millions more, precious little was known about them.

The other difference was that the Draconians were no longer alone. The population of true-born Draconians had always been low, and many had been lost in the war; as such, the research population had had been reinforced with trihorn scientists and sorcerers, who introduced their own brand of magic and perspective into the process. Although she tended to hold great disdain for trihorns as a rule, Crimsonflame recognized that their work was invaluable in determining new ways to defeat the enemy.

Still, she would have preferred to be on the battlefield. Even then, as she toured that facility, she knew that her people were dying in far off lands. Her heart ached for them, and she desired nothing more than to stand before them, charging against the Choggoth menace herself, defending the mages who fought alongside her.

The Draconian Council, however, believed otherwise. They had become increasingly paranoid after the death of the previous Grand Magus, and had strongly suggested that Crimsonflame stay a safe distance away from the front. Crimsonflame had attempted to argue, but eventually acquiesced; with the death of her father, she had become the functional ruler of all Draconia. That had its own responsibilities on the homefront, and in terms of tactical coordination. In addition, she was fully aware that if she were to be killed in battle as her father had, she had not yet produced and trained an heir to take her place.

The situation in the war had not improved since she had last met with the delegates from the other nations. The invasion of the southern swamps had, to her initial great relief, never occurred. Cerorian soldiers had been dispatched, but no Choggoth activity had been reported- -although the soldiers noted that they had seen strange lights toward the horizon, and beneath the water.

The initial intelligence must have been a ruse, however; shortly after the battle was supposed to occur, Choggoths were detected in a largely unpopulated region on the trihorn frontier. Due to various delays, the trihorn defense forces had been unable to reach the rural area in time; Draconians had been dispatched in their place, and the battle had been bloody and futile. That area was now fully infected, and twenty three mages had been lost, some of them barely adult.

Crimsonflame felt her anger rising inside her, but suddenly felt something soft against her claw. She looked down, to see her monohorn assistant nuzzling her hand, as if somehow knowing the turmoil of her thoughts.

“Thank you, Single Horn,” said Crimsonflame, patting the creature on the head. “You always know exactly what to say.”

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” hissed a voice from behind. Crimsonflame felt Single Horn stiffen, and her face twisted into a frown at the sound of the voice of a trihorn.

The trihorn in question approached them from behind. His pale-yellow scales and deep maroon scales glistened in the harsh enchanted light of the laboratory. As he passed, other trihorns rapidly moved from his path, and even some Draconians avoided approaching him. Crimsonflame could sense the aura emanating from him as well, but did not react. Still, it was almost oppressive, and she thought she could a whiff of an actual smell of blood and rot that clung to his person and white coat.

“Doctor Deeper Cutting,” said Crimsonflame. She did not even bother to feign enthusiasm, but Cutting took this as a compliment. He was fully aware that Crimsonflame knew his history. Deeper Cutting was one of the greatest scientific and magical minds of the Trihorn empire, with a grasp of both physics and the arcane that was foremost among his people, and greater even than that of most Draconians. He was also a convicted war criminal, known for the perverse experiments he had performed on trihorn political prisoners and Cerorriran prisoners of war. He was a brutal, unfeeling monster, and Crimsonflame hated him- -but recognized that he was necessary for the defeat of their mutual enemy.

“And what is this?” he said, looking down at Single Horn, who looked up at him stoically. Cutting smiled, his reptilian eyes alight with something that was equally hunger and vindictive joy that the great and righteous Crimsonflame was not above owning slaves- -slaves that he might very well have been instrumental in creating.

“This is my assistant, Single Horn,” said Crimsonflame flatly.

“You…named it?”

“She is not a slave to me, Cutting. She deserves a name.”

Cutting chuckled. “Such sentimental creatures, you dragons. What you do and believe is your own prerogative, Grand Magus.” He bowed in a way that was almost mocking.

“So why have you called me here?”

“To give you the results of my experiments, of course, and to show you what I have accomplished.”

He led Crimsonflame forward, to one particular area where the room had been cleared. Trihorns and Draconians stood around the brightly lit circle, which contained a large vial constructed of enchanted glass.

When Crimsonflame saw what was inside the glass, she gasped. There, swirling around within, was a hand-sized chunk of material. It had a putrid, pink color, and seemed to be writhing animalistically; even as it did, its form was unstable. As it moved, it developed new appendages: tentacles, primitive eyes, sharp-toothed mouths, and even tiny arms, which all faded back into its mucoid structure almost as rapidly as they formed.

“Cutting,” hissed Crimsonflame, and the Draconians in the room suddenly backed away from her. “I thought my orders were clear! Choggoth fragments must be kept frozen at all times!”

“And you would have me study its behavior frozen, I suppose?” retorted Cutting. “I have made significant discoveries on its nature since resurrecting it, and I assure you that it cannot escape. The enchantments on this glass are of my own creation. Were the Cerorians to detonate one of their beloved warheads on here, the glass would still not break!”

Several of the Cerorian guards at the edge of the room looked highly displeased, but maintained their focus primarily on the tiny Choggoth in the center of the room.

“And what have you found that warrants a direct violation of my orders?”

“Recall that I do not report to you, Grand Magus, but to the Trihorn Oligarchy, directly. Nevertheless, we have found that the plasmic structure of the item varies depending on its situation. It literally adapts to anything we throw at it- -toxins, electricity, elemental magic, radiation, bullets- -it invariably changes its structure on a cellular level to compensate.” His horns glowed as he generated a shimmering, magical projection that he handed to Crimsonflame. She took its massless form in her claw and looked over the results.

“Impressive,” she said, “but I already knew this. I have seen it myself in battle. Do you know if this is a conscious response, or if it is instinctive?”

“This creature has absolutely no brain activity,” said Cutting, turning to stare at it. “And yet it had no need for it; it changes to survive, to suit any environment. It is rather…almost godlike.”

“They are not gods. They are parasites,” said Crimsonflame, disgusted at the wistful expression on his face. Despite his reputation, Deeper Cutting had never once set foot on the battlefield, and had never seen the destruction a Choggoth could cause. He had never seen his friends, or entire cities of his people, taken over with evolving amoeboid slime, the flesh stripped away from their bones and their bones ground to dust even as they struggled to escape.

“But imagine what we could do if we could incorporate their features into a soldier, something that does have conscious thought…”

Crimsonflame pretended to ignore the idea, and scrolled down on the projection she had been given. She stopped at one point.

“What is this?” she said, pointing.

“That is the best discovery yet!” cried Cutting, losing himself in the excitement at his own work. Crimsonflame could not help but wonder if he had had such giddy and behavior as he had removed the organs from his victims and replaced them with magical constructs while they were still conscious. “We have been providing it with mass.”

“Mass?” said Crimsonflame. “You mean feeding it?”

“Yes, if you want to simplify it for simpletons,” he said, eyeing Single-Horn, who glared back but shook against Crimsonflame’s leg. “We have been injecting it with various materials, and found that it has an unparalleled capacity to absorb organic material. What is most interesting, though, is that it appears not to gain any mass. We have already injected several tons of industrial waste into it, but its overall weight has not changed remotely.”

“Several tons?” said Crimsonflame, her blood running cold. In his excitement, Cutting had been a fool- -he had overlooked the basic nature of magical mass-shifts. In his arrogance, he had assumed that this creature must lack magic whatsoever, and not seen what Crimsonflame so handily realized.

The Choggoth shifted in its container, and the surface of it converted into a single, consistent eye, one demarcated by a geometric pattern of three circles and a single square. It was at that moment that Crimmsonflame realized that Cutting had been wrong: that thing was fully aware, and even more than that, it had just understood that she was aware of what it had been doing.

Small, violet sparks of magical energy began moving around it within the glass.

“Get back!” Crimsonflame cried. She herself knelt down, extending her red-and-black wings around herself and Single Horn, just in time to protect herself from the massive magical discharge and shattering of equipment. The force impacted her wings, tearing at them, but she reinforced them with her magic, defending herself and the trembling monohorn in her arms.

Without hesitation and in a single motion, she jumped backward, out of the Choggoth’s reach. As she did, she looked up at the beast before her. It had almost instantly grown massive in size, utilizing the mass that Deeper Cutting had so blindly fed it to extend its body. It now stood in the center of the room, an assymetrical, tripedial behemoth, the symbolic eye centered in its armor-plated pink torso.

It reached out with one hand and shattered the tubing and experimental equipment above it. The Draconians near it raised their wings and flew out of its reach as quickly as possible, while the trihorns deployed shield bubbles to protect themselves.

Their efforts were to no avail, though. The Choggoth developed a second arm, one equipped with long barbed claws that rippled with magical energy. The claws extended suddenly, becoming tentacles, and pierced the shields of the two nearest trihorns. They were harpooned instantly, and screamed as it drew them inward, absorbing them into itself.

Then, as their bodies disappeared and the pink slime hardened into a rock-like shell, Crimsonflame watched in horror as six horns appeared at the top of the Choggoth’s body. They illuminated, and a bolt of magical energy crashed through the laboratory, instantly destroying rows of equipment and injuring a Draconian, who cried out as one of his wings was torn from his body.

Crimsonflame regained her composure, and focused her mind. She reacted automatically, taking a deep breath, and focusing her mind on the ancient words that she needed to cast the spell. Then, with a tremendous roar, she unleashed a plume of scarlet fire that engulfed the room.

The fire spread throughout the air, covering everything in the room, but Crimsonflame merged her words and her spell with the nature of the flame, controlling and restricting it, changing its nature. She saw the trihorns, Draconians, and Cerorian guards look down at themselves; though they were covered in fire, they did not burn.

Instead, Crimsonfire directed the full heat and arcane power of the mystic flames into the Choggoth. It responded by thickening its outer shell, hardening like clay and becoming fireproof. The spell was far too strong for it, though, and its rock-like exterior began to glow and then collapse under thermal decomposition. It struggled to step forward, reaching out for her, but then suddenly burst into separate pieces, each of which squirmed as they oxidized and were turned to ash.

The spell collapsed, and the ash fell to the floor. No one moved for a moment.

“By the Madgod!” shouted Crimsonfire, pointing. “Containment! Get this!”

“Yes, Grand Magus!” said several Draconians, rusing in, summoning the necessary spells and equiptment necessary to contain any living fragments of the Choggoth, although Crimsonflame was already sure that there were none.

She turned to Deeper Cutting, prepared to scream at him for his incompetence, but found him collapsed on the floor, weeping and shaking. That gave her pause, but did not stop her. All around her, priceless artifacts and equipment that simply could not be replaced during wartime had been rendered useless, putting behind their efforts by years, if not stopping them permentantly. A Draconian had been injured, and though others were helping him stand, the magical injury to his wing would surely never regenerate. Likewise, two trihorns had been lost, all because of a simple oversight.

Crimsonfire felt a claw on her shoulder, though, and stopped. She turned to see a pink and silver trihorn with a softer expression than most.

“Please, Grand Magus,” she said, “please, leave him be, at least for now. One of those lost was his daughter.”

“His daughter…” said Crimsonfire. She was filled with a strange sensation. She did not know whether to feel pity for a man who had witnessed a death so close to him, or hatred for a hypocrite who surely never shed a single tear for those he had killed so gleefully in the past. “Fine,” she said. “But I will hold you personally responsible for the report of this…this incompetence. Get this place running again by tomorrow!” she shouted to her own subjects. They responded heartily and got to work, dealing with the recent accident and death with far more ease than Crimsonfire was actually comfortable with.

Something was not quite right, though. Crimsonfire turned and walked toward the edge of the room, a place where there had been virtually no damage. That was not strange in itself; most of the damage was located in the center of the room where the Choggoth had been stored, or in the straight line of destruction it had projected.

Single Horn followed her, as if sensing it too. The spell that Crimsonfire had used had only been intended to affect one target, the Choggoth, and she knew that the targeting had been correct. Such a spell was simple for her, and she knew that it had been correct. Only Choggoth-material was damaged.

She searched her memory, and recalled from Deeper Cutting’s report that only one fragment of Choggoth had been in use at the time, the others remaining mystically frozen in time deep beneath the laboratory under guard.

As she inspected the corner of a high bookcase, though, she confirmed her suspicions, and her fears. There, between two heavy reference books, was a small pile of black ash.