Cascading chaff borne from the fearsome impact above pelted the pool around Najwa, spurring her into action. Filling her lungs with air, she sent herself beneath the water’s surface with a powerful stroke of her arms. The throb of Najwa's pulse was steady in her ears, legs propelling her further into the lightless depths when a mighty force reverberated through the pool. 

The water around her churned furiously in the fallen pillar’s wake, and as it sunk it struggled in vain against her strength. With a resonant thud it hit the pool’s basin and she cast her obfuscated gaze upwards, the sunlit aperture undulating through the refraction. Even at her current depth, she could feel the warm tinge of sunlight from above where the mytholi no doubt was preparing its next attack.

Her outburst had put her at a disadvantage and Assad’s words bubbled up to her through the fog of memory. “Your strength will always be overwhelming, habibi. Do not let it be used against you.” 

Minutes passed. Najwa focused on the sensations bombarding her when she took notice of slight disparities in the water’s temperature and pressure. She swam over to the site of the pillar’s impact and pressed her palms against its breadth.

Through the stone she could feel the rush of water being pulled through fissures in the concavity’s foundation. There at the nadir of a sunken piscina did Najwa fasten herself to a protrusion on the pillar through the use of a carabiner attached to her war-belt. Using her boots to anchor herself as best she could against the pillar, Najwa began to smash her fists against the basin with concentrated strikes. 

The first few blows caused the fissures in the strata to deepen, fresh fractures appearing each time fist met earth. On the fifth strike the foundation of the pool exploded outwards in a frothing rush of stone and water that battered Najwa as she was pulled through. With a supine splash she fell into the shallows of an embankment along a languid hypogean river, hungrily taking in air rich with diversity.

Superficial lacerations tingled in the cave’s high humidity as she rose to her feet and took stock of her new environs. Najwa could make out the delineation of a deteriorating settlement further up the embankment as her eyes adjusted to the low light. Far off she could hear the familiar roar of rushing waters and chittering of troglofauna. Nostrils flared and Najwa was met with the heady perfume of loam and lotus.

Scattered about where she’d fallen were the majority of her war-belt’s contents, a casualty of being ripped away from the pillar. Recovering a flare from the detritus, Najwa lit it with a quick strike and threw it uphill. The sheathed blade remained steadfast against the small of her back as she climbed, the ground slick with guano.

Upon reaching the settlement’s edge, Najwa realized the architecture as reminiscent of the destroyed temple above. But while the temple above might have once had iconography depicting acts of self-reflection and worship, what details remained here told a different tale. In the shifting red haze of the flare did she approach a relief carved into the rockface that dwarfed her. 

Her fingers brushed along the relief's surface as she made sense of the tale that remained. A figure, armed with five weapons at the edge of a forest. The figure confronting a monstrous being that towered the trees. The last remnants of the relief depicted a great battle between the two. Unlike Marange, a place of life and warmth deep underground, this was a place of cold and death. A tomb meant for a monster. 

Najwa's fists crashed against one another with a splash of prismatic light, a telekill field radiating from the reinforced knuckles of her combat gloves. 

"Come, demon! Come so that I may return you to your tomb!"

Her voice echoed through the cavernous chamber, laden with the threat of violence. She was prepared to kill.