291 Cos

In the skies above the central zone, Mal'thor-dras brawled with a shell-like Tier 8 Spectre spouting a dozen tower tentacles.

To one flank, Tim and Khar'al-dras skirmished and tried to evade two Tier 8's all by themselves.

To the other flank, Mindy and the Flame Emperor had already fallen and the Red Fang had gone off to rescue them.

The advancing party had Kor'ag-dras and roughly ten surviving Pale Dragons tangled up in a dozen Tier 7 flyers, Three-Arms and about one third of the ground Spectres' adding their long-range attacks. While at that altitude the lower Tier Spectres simply couldn't reach them, anything above Tier 5 still posed a deadly threat.

Meanwhile the on the ground, the Iron Legion drove deep into the Spectres' ranks and were engulfed. To George, it was almost as if the massed ranks of Spectres were a single huge beast that had opened up its maw and swallowed the sortie forces whole.

He almost called them back at once, but thinking of the mission, he gritted his teeth and stood his ground. [This is bad. Max is surrounded. We're going to pay a really high price for this if we can't send him backup and break through their lines! Tim! Do you have any forces you haven't sent out yet?]

[All I have left are the lynxmice on digging duty, but they're not going to be much help in this situation. Spectres don't wear pants.]

[What do pants have anything to do with lynxmice?]

Who else could he call on? There were the forces of other nations, but they were already engaged and fighting to hold their lines. Nobody was pushing forward like Max and nobody seemed intent on trying to reach the Iron Legion. The airships of Kara-Goth and Three Pines were providing bombardment support, but they couldn't stop the Spectres from surrounding the Legion completely.

Frankly speaking, George had nothing left. He didn't have enough military strength to help Max, and the forces he had just didn't have enough firepower, didn't have enough equipment, there weren't enough Frames to outfit everyone, or… or…

"If we survive this, I'm going to build up a huge military." George swore. "And we'll be sure to equip every last man with Frames and high tier weaponry!"

Meanwhile, the battle raged on and the Iron Legion was completely engulfed and overrun with Spectres.

"Max, come back! MAX!" George yelled into the comms.

But the Iron Legion did not turn back. Max knew the need as much as anyone.

"Max, stop, it's too dangerous! We'll find another way…" George tried, but even then he faltered.

Was there any other way? They were already committed, already halfway through. To pull back now would render all their sacrifices worthless.

But… but at this rate…!

"Don't die, Max." George half-chanted. "Don't die. Don't die. Whatever you do, don't die…"

The Iron Legion vanished completely from his sight, cut off from all friendlies by a deluge of Spectres.

***

"Almost through!" Darian gritted his teeth, literally pulling a Spectres tail in an aerial tug-of-war. He was outsized by easily ten thousand to one, outmatched in just about every way, but hanging on to the Spectre like this, he managed to distract it and occupy its attention while Loh's airship slipped away.

By this point, nine Elder Dragons had joined the fray, along with a host of smaller dragons all trying to draw the Tier 8 Spectres' attention. Practically half their number had been slaughtered in the ensuing fight, and almost all the pale dragons that set out with the airship earlier had been wiped out. The four survivors were literally tugging the airship along with Har'es-dras and a handful of his friends, trying to hurry the process along as much as they could.

This was a costly battle for Dragon Lake. Darian winced as he thought about what Mal'thor and Kor'ag would have to say about losing so many of their kin. But to be fair, it wasn't Darian's call. These dragons had lunged into the fray without anyone asking them to.

A sudden drop made Darian grimace. The Spectre he was holding on to was reluctant to attack for fear of hurting itself, but finally, it had an idea of how to throw this little human off.

In simple terms; the Spectre was going to slam its tail, and Darian, into the ground.

"Blast it, I can't hold on much longer." Darian finally let go before he was smashed into the dust. He struck out with psionic power surrounding his fist, but the Tier 8 Spectre retaliated, and then Darian went flying, spinning through the air as he tumbled higher, and higher, and higher.

Dizzily, Darian fought to regain some semblance of control to his flight, but the world still kept spinning round and round. At this point, he wasn't sure if he was flying straight any more...

BAM! He didn't know what hit him, or why. All he knew was there was a terrible impact, and he blacked out for a second, and then the next thing he knew, he was crashing through the trees, and then ramming straight into a tough tree trunk.

Darian's flight and fight came to a sudden, abrupt end just like that.

"We're through! Descending on the black grounds now!" Gary's voice came through the comms.

"Start the scans!" Tang Yin put his instruments to work.

"How long will it take?" George's voice asked.

"Ten minutes, at least! An hour, to be safe!" Tang Yin replied.

There was a long, grim silence.

"Whatever it takes." George said finally, sounding like death itself. "We need to seal that rift. We've already come this far. No matter the cost… get it done."

"Do we really have that much time?" Gary gulped.

"You'll have your time." Darian coughed, wheezed, and got back on his feet. "We'll hold them."

Half-wishing he'd never gotten out of bed this morning, Darian leapt back into the skies and into the fray.

***

One hour later, the dragons returned bearing the scanning team on their backs.

"We made it! We're coming back!" Gary announced.

"Where's the airship?" George asked.

"We had to abandon it. Sorry, Mindy."

"Do you have a solution?" Darian panted, dodging whip-like Spectral tentacles.

"We have two, but you're not going to like them." Gary warned.

"What?" George, Tim and Darian all asked at the same time.

"First, we cover the whole thing in concrete. A few large airships and about a thousand tons of concrete should do it. Just drop the loads on the site, and we're done."

"Whats the second option?" Tim asked.

"We set up a complicated formation that shapes the Rift into a tight loop. Anything coming in would end up getting turned around and going back where it came from. Tang Yin says it's going to be costly, but with enough high level magi helping out, we can reshape the Rift that way, and it would be permanent."

"Can it be undone? Is there a way to seal it so that it's possible to open it back up when we want to?" Tim asked.

"A temporary block? It's not likely. The Rift is constantly in flux. We could try to patch the hole in space at great cost, but it'll stretch and bob and the patch would tear in minutes. Even the Dragon Empire's Thunder Dragon Seal likely wouldn't hold more than half an hour, and that's a seal that costs three Red Mana Crystals." Gary paused. "Tang Yin said this was an unstable planar wormhole, and I'm not sure what that means, but the point is, short of burying it, we can't think of a way to block it in a controllable manner. Redirecting it is our only other option. I'm sorry, but I don't think we'll be able to rescue that Remian guy."