The volcano pulsed with inner breath. We descended in silence, winding down the jagged heart of the beast. At first, the path was molten and rough—lava-glassed ridges and broken fangs of black rock. Then came the columns. Massive. Worn by time, but unmistakably carved. Ionic fluting. It was Greto-Zoman architecture. Great rings of reliefs circled domes half-submerged in hardened magma.
Snake Man muttered something about lost empires, but his voice trailed off as the architecture shifted again. What lay below was not made by empires. It was something else. We stepped onto smooth obsidian—slick and seamless, a floor like mirrored void.
Ramps curved unnaturally from the edges.
Half-crescents. Full tubes.
Sloped blocks.
Rails ran up and down, left and right, in great waves through empty space like metallic veins embedded in frozen black glass.
Felicity blinked. Hammer head scratched his chin. "What the hell am I looking at?" I had no answer. Neither did Snake Man. Even Marla, still pale and leaning on a glaive for support, narrowed her eyes in confused wonder. Then it struck me—not what it was, but ''who,'' it was for.
A sound echoed from above. WHHHHHHR—click. WHHHHHHR—click. A blur of green and iron dropped from the rafters of the lava-hung grind park. He flew down one of the half-crescent ramps, his hulking form gliding, his long red cap trailing behind in the wind. Sparks screamed from beneath armored wheeled sabatons. His entire form was wrapped in brutal plate lacquered red, the metal dented from battle, not age.
A giant.
Nine foot tall.
Gliding Goblin-kin warped by cultivation, brutality, and madness.
Red Cap.
He didn't walk.
He rolled.
With a violent twist, he launched up a ramp, dragging a shriek of friction behind him! At the apex, he spun—twice—and came down into a hard grind on a rail that sliced across a vertical wall! His spinning scythe bladed out like a helicopter, catching drafts of chi, helping him hover in impossible arcs. Faeluxe gasped. "Is he... flying?"
"No," I said slowly. "He's falling in style." Red Cap kicked off again, flipping upside-down mid-air as the scythe spun like a lunar halo around him! Lava glowed behind his form like a rising god! He twisted through a looped pipe, hit the base of a dome-shaped ramp, and launched into a corkscrew that should've shattered his spine!
WHHHHRRRRR-CLANG!
He landed in a three-point crouch, sparks fanning behind him. Then he stood.
Tall.
Grinning with sharpened metal teeth.
His voice echoed across the obsidian skate hell.
"WELCOME... TO THE RAMPAGE ZONE!"