The truck hit the stone, and the stone didn’t break. For about half a second, that counted as good news.

Then the heat arrived, and Nyx changed her mind.

The path was dark volcanic rock running in a narrow channel between lava flows on both sides, and the lava was not sitting still the way it should have been.

It moved in slow currents, orange and bright, while smoke rose off its surface in thick rolling sheets that cut visibility down to roughly thirty meters and made everything beyond that orange-grey and hard to read.

The cab temperature went from the nothing-temperature of the water zone to genuinely hot in about four seconds. The crack in the right panel from the kraken mess noticed this immediately.

"Right," she said, gripping the wheel. "Earth, water, fire."

She pushed the accelerator because the stone behind the truck had already started sinking. Not fast, but in the kind of slow way that still manages to be rude.

One centimeter at a time, the rock platform she had landed on tilted as its edge softened, and then the whole thing dropped into the lava. By the time she fully caught up to it, the path behind her was half gone.

She kept driving.

I have detected an extreme heat environment.

Clippy materialized near the passenger seat with the energy of something that had spent multiple zones waiting for the exact kind of disaster it had been built to survive.

I have seventeen recommendations for operating in high-temperature conditions. Shall I begin with cab insulation or engine cooling protocols? I also have six additional recommendations specific to volcanic terrain navigation, four for smoke inhalation prevention, and two general-purpose fire.

A boulder came down thirty meters to her left, on fire, large enough that the impact torrent was visible before it landed.

She blinked once, then kept the truck straight.

It hit the lava and threw burning splatter outward in an arc that crossed the path. Pieces struck the hood. Two hit the windshield, which already had cracks from the kraken and accepted the new ones without complaint.

"Not a good time!" she said.

Understood. I will resume when convenient. This service remains complimentary.

Clippy retreated.

The path ahead was straight for thirty meters before the smoke closed over it. She drove in what she could see and steered to whatever came next before she reached the smokescreen, because slowing down to see was the same as stopping, and the stone was sinking faster than that.

She took the left curve she could not fully see by reading the way the rocky path bent, and the curve was where she expected it to be.

A lava eruption hit the left channel wall ten meters ahead.

She steered, faster and faster.

The stone at the left side of the path cracked from the heat and dropped into the flow. The path lost half a meter on the left. She moved right. Another eruption hit farther ahead while she was still dealing with the first, and she steered around the splatter.

The smoke thinned briefly, and she could see a second boulder coming down directly on the way ahead. It was far enough out that she saw the impact first and then the crater that replaced the road.

She took the detour left around the crater. The rock there was enough to support the truck for about one second.

She came out of a thick smoke pocket into a clearer part of the zone. Sixty meters of visibility instead of thirty. It did not feel generous, but it was better than nothing.

The path ahead was straight and unbroken. No eruptions on either side of it. No boulders incoming that she could see. The rocky path under the wheels was firm as she crossed it.

She checked behind her.

Smoke and orange glow extended back to the zone entry, and at the zone entry there was nothing.

She was the only truck in the lava zone.

Nyx leaned out the window.

She cupped a hand around her mouth and shouted into the smoke, into the zone, and at the general idea of everybody who was still behind her.

"Hello! Is anyone else in here yet? No? Just me? Fucking right! Everyone besides Proxy is absolute trash and that is why I am in first place and everyone else is still getting bitch-slapped by a motherfucking octopus!"

She stayed leaning out, smiling into the smoke as if it had personally lost the race.

"I’ll be at the finish line when you all finally drag yourselves out of that kiddie pool!"

The truck went straight.

The path went left. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝙚𝔀𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝒐𝒎

She felt the right wheels leave the rock before she fully understood that the road had turned. The right side of the truck dropped slightly, the stone under those wheels tilting as it started to soften without the weight spread across it. She pulled herself back through the window, grabbed the wheel, and steered left.

The path was farther left than what she could reach in the remaining distance.

The truck hit the base of the volcano.

The right panel took the impact, the same panel that had crumpled at the water zone and had kept doing damage ever since, and the sound of it meeting volcanic rock went through the entire cab. The truck stopped.

She had been braking from the moment the wheels left the stone, so the speed was already low. Low speed and a damaged panel against a volcano still gave the same result as faster speed and a better panel.

The engine roared for three more seconds.

Then it stopped.

It simply quit, and the display where the engine output should have been went flat, and the cab went silent except for the lava moving in the channels on both sides and something creaking in the right quarter panel.

Nyx looked at the flat line on the dashboard.

"Karma’s a bitch," she said.

She pushed the door open and got out, because sitting in a dead truck just below a volcano wasn’t quite a good idea.