Chapter 420: Blazing Desperation

The behemoth towered above the snow covered terrain, growling and snapping like crumbling bone. The earth trembled with each heavy footfall while misting breath—like a fog cloud—froze in the air. Wide eyes sought a single target in the courtyard and suddenly blazed with recognition, lighting up when they fell upon Alex. The monster reacted. Long bone spikes sprang from its armoured form, shuddered in the air for a breath, then shot toward their target with all the force of a storm of arrows.

"Oh shit!" Alex whirled away, dodging through a barrage of spikes heading straight at him.

Claygon soared in front of him, solid bone splintered to shards on his clay body, but the behemoth wasn’t done. It launched volley after volley of bony projectiles toward him as a fresh swarm of spear-flies poured from the hole beneath the behemoth and swarmed the wizard. His trio of summoned protectors, zapped, and blew as many Ravener-spawn away as they could. Alex twisted and turned in mid-air like a snake, but shards still struck, glancing off his forceshield and raking the surface of his force armour. He grunted from the force of each impact and howled with pain when a shard passed through a gap in the force armour, slicing his right leg.

"Bastard! He cursed at the spawn, tucking in his limbs and spinning through the bone slivers like a top. "I'm going to—"

A surge of mana blazed in his mana senses.

He paused for a moment, focusing on the behemoth: on its shoulder sat something bearing no resemblance to bone-spikes.

A Hive-as-one—built from a vast colony of spear-flies—turned its jagged hands toward him. Dark magic blazed over its limbs.

Desperate to escape, he barrel-rolled through the air.

A beam of utter blackness ripped from its hands.

The pitch-black ray arced toward him, zig-zagging through the swarm and homing in on Alex. He jerked to the side.

But not fast enough.

It slid across his force armour—passing through it—glancing off his flesh. Agony hit him in a wave. His left side went cold as though bathed in ice water and a weariness spread over the spot where the beam had clipped him.

...his flesh began to wither.

A cry of agony escaped his lips.

And the world went black.

The bone-charger bucked and thrashed beneath Theresa’s feet as her swords chopped at the back of its neck again and again.

"Die!" She screamed. "Die, damn you, just die!"

Snarling, she raised an arm above her head, drove the point of a sword into the thick hide sheathing its neck, then hammered the pommel with the hilt of her other blade. The monster went wild, squealing, running into walls, trying to throw her to the cave floor, but the huntress grabbed its dorsal spikes with a death grip. Its arms flew up, grabbing at her, but she knocked them aside with every bit of life-enforced strength she could call on.

Her blade rose again, she slammed it into its twin's hilt; once, twice, three times, and on the third, something gave, the bone-charger went stiff.

With a loud exhalation of breath, the great beast finally toppled toward the tunnel floor as Theresa dragged her sword from the back of its neck then whirled around, ready for more monsters. Throughout the passage, the air filled with a cacophony of sound; monstrous voices, shouted spells, panicked screams from injured and dying— both mortal and beast. The chamber felt overwhelming, like it was pressing down on her.

Two figures were struggling nearby on the tunnel floor, surrounded by clouds of rock dust. The sight snapped her mind back into sharp focus.

"Brutus!" She cried, charging to her cerberus and a bone-charger wrestling on the ground. The Ravener-spawn was bigger, not much stronger, inexperienced, untrained, and less agile. Brutus was beneath it with all three mouths filled with bone-crushing teeth latched onto its neck.

Theresa raced in, slashing at the beast, its tough hide was already punctured with deep bite marks. The bone-charger fought to get free, squealing and pawing at the dirt as the cerberus' bites cracked bone, reached the flesh below, and tore chunks away. Theresa put it out of their misery, crossing her swords and slashing both sides of its throbbing throat. Her dog bounded to its feet beside her, barking and snapping a spear-fly from the air, crushing it between his jaws while his other heads panted with excitement.

The insect-like creatures’ numbers had dwindled along with the bone-chargers’, but there were still more to defeat.

Grrimloch growled, swung his magical maul into a bone charger’s head, its bone helmet shattered and its pulped head flopped to the side. Thundar battled another one, his mace crushed bone with every swing. The beast yelped, clawing at illusionary duplicates flanking him and striking empty air and frustrated, it turned and ran. Thundar whipped his mace at the fleeing creature, stopping it dead in its tracks. Svenia and Hogarth were back in the fight: healed by blood magic, though not a hundred percent, the hard-bitten warriors still gave it their all, stabbing bone-chargers, batting spear-flies from the air like they were clearing cluster flies.

When Thundar went to retrieve his mace, Najyah tore apart the last of the spear-flies with her beak and talons, and the Watchers brought down the final bone-charger with lances of force.

Dread hung in the air, rasping breaths and soft pained moans broke the silence as the Generasians tensed, not knowing what to expect next.

Then, the uneasy silence shattered.

A thud.

Followed by another.

And another.

The team whirled toward the pair of breaches in the tunnel wall: both had been sealed by Watchers using force magic, but bone-chargers had quietly amassed in the passages behind them. Now, they were ready for their next attack and powerful monsters rammed force walls over and over, shaking the tunnel with every blow. Above them, spear-flies gathered, pressed together as one, poised to spill into the tunnel the instant the magical walls fell.

A pair of Watchers came forward at speed, lifting their staffs, levelling them at the force walls. Both magical fortifications flared, drinking in the new power. "We'll hold the creatures back as best we're able, but these walls can’t take this battering forever!"

The tunnel rumbled around them, clouds of stone dust and soil rained down from the ceiling.

Tension spiked, but the earth mages pushed their power into the stone, holding back the enemies’ mana.

"We're sitting ducks down here," Thundar grunted, panting and holding his knees while recovering his breath.

"I agree,” the highest-ranking Watcher said. "We should get moving and fight our way back to the castle."

"That's impossible," the eldest of the earth mages growled as he struggled against the dungeon cores. "It's taking all of our strength to keep these monsters from crushing us to paste right now. If we move and lose concentration, they'll flatten us. We should stay right here and wait for help to come. The castle will send rescuers.”

"And if they're under attack, what do you think’ll happen? It’ll take time for anyone to get here since they’ll have to stabilise things up there first," the Watcher said sternly. "And by then, we could all be spawn food."

"We fought them off once," the earth mage fired back. "But no one's fighting a collapsing ceiling."

The Watcher's eyes narrowed. "In combat situations, I hold rank."

The earth mage's chest puffed out. "And in cases of the safety of this structure and how it affects the excavation, I—and the dwarf engineers—hold rank," he turned to the dwarves who were silently praying over their fallen comrades.

"What are the chances of us surviving if this passage is compromised?"

A dwarf looked up, his face heavy with grief. "Next to none. Even if some of us get into an air pocket, we'll all still die from suffocation or being crushed."

"We'll cast Orbs of Air around everyone's heads," the Watcher said.

"And then we might not smell gas if any's released from a cavity down here," the dwarf engineer warned.

"Wouldn't that be a good thing?" A wizard cut in, leaning against the wall as a blood mage bound his arm. "If we’re smelling gas we're getting poisoned, and if we've got Orbs of Air up, who cares if there's poisonous gas?"

"You need to study the earth's secrets more thoroughly, my friend," Prince Khalik said, his voice smooth yet strained. "Some gases can burn the skin as well as the lungs and others have little smell, but when met by fire..."

He let the words hang.

"That's right," the dwarf engineer said. "We dislodge some natural gas and don't detect it, then one of your little fire spells sends us all to the afterworld. Besides, Air Orbs or whatever won't help much if we get crushed by a thousand tons of rock."

Another crash reverberated through the force wall.

The lead Watcher grunted. "If we stay here, they'll break through. It’s either go and live, or stay here and get slaughtered."

"And you don't understand," the earth mage fired back. "If we move too fast, it'll be easier for that mana to overwhelm ours. And then—"

Tension mounted as the Watcher, earth mage and the engineers argued. Theresa swallowed.

'They don't understand each other's training,' she thought. 'Each of them sound like they've got good points, but they know nothing about what each other’s training is telling them.’

‘It'd be like me and a wizard arguing about how to hunt a magical beast: the mage would come at it from the perspective of a wizard, looking at how to counter its magical abilities. I’d be coming at it from the perspective of a hunter, placing the most weight on its physical abilities and the terrain.’

In stressful situations—if a team didn't consider each other's perspectives—all sides would miss the full story.

"You okay?" Thundar asked, wiping blood and stone-dust from his fur. "Those spear-flies drain you?"

"No," Theresa said, pulling her attention away from the argument. "I'm fine. How about you? Are you okay?"

Their little group had come together in the middle of the tunnel: Grimloch, Svenia and Hogarth had wandered over to Theresa, Brutus and Thundar.

"Yeah, the force armour protected me," Thundar nodded toward Khalik and lead them to where the prince stood with his hands pressed to a wall. "And those things kept trying to gut my duplicates instead of me, thank the ancestors."

"Wish I had duplicates," Grimloch growled, stomping forward with giant footsteps. His iron grey hide was covered in swelling spear-fly bites. The huntress shuddered at the sight of them: if she'd taken half the bites Grimloch had, she’d be a bloodless corpse right now.

"Yeah, they found you right tasty," Hogarth chuckled as he limped beside Svenia. His pupils glistened, and one eye looked larger than the other. "They liked Svenia too."

His laugh grew shrill, drawing glances from the other members of the excavation team.

"Shhhh," Svenia shushed him. "Last thing we need is mad talk spreading more panic." Her voice dropped low. "Courage is hanging by a thread."

Around them, the team had broken into little groups, talking to each other in whispers. Nervous glances shifted between the force walls and their arguing leadership. Some were watching the tunnel, looking tempted to bolt for the castle and take their chances.

"Yeah," Theresa said quietly, reminded of those dark hours in the Cave of the Traveller, remembering the dread and fear that had lurked in the corners of her mind. "We don't want to set anyone off."

"If they're gonna panic that easily, we don't want them with us anyway," Grimloch rumbled, kicking a bone-charger's corpse as they passed. "Can't afford cowards. These Ravener-spawn were made of harder stuff than those chittering ones."

"Yeah," Theresa said, looking down at the carpet of dead spear-flies. "And that swarm's hard to deal with." She looked up at Khalik when they got closer. The prince's beard was a mess of grit and bits of gore, and Najyah was looming over his shoulder, nuzzling him with worry.

'Never seen her give him that much affection,' Theresa thought. 'We really must be doomed.'

"How're you holding up, Khalik?" she asked. "Are you okay?"

"Only my pride is bitten," the prince chuckled weakly. "And I did get clipped by a bone-charger. It felt like my ribs were going to tear through my chest and armour. I would've been dead if I'd received more than a glancing blow."

"Well, at least you'd already be buried," Thundar chuckled darkly. "We'd all already be."

The prince shared his dark laugh, though he looked a little wild around the eyes. "Well, we still might be if we do not do something—"

There was another rumble and the tunnel shook.

Khalik grunted.

"You okay?" Thundar asked.

"I am," the prince said. "But, it really takes a good deal of effort and control when the enemy throws its full weight at us and—".

The Watchers, earth mages and engineers raised their voices.

"See? If we stay here—" the Watcher said.

"We'll be dead anyway if we move without—" an engineer fired back.

Their voices were drowned out by each other’s as the argument intensified. The rest of the team muttered to each other.

"You know..." Theresa said, looking thoughtfully at Ravener-spawn corpses piled in heaps atop each other. "I remember something about bone-chargers being slower to make than chitterers and other monsters, right?"

"I do remember that entry from the bestiaries, yes," Khalik said. "Ah...I see where you are going. There are a great many of them down here. Far too many for a new dungeon to have crafted, so for there to be this many..."

"They'd need to have been below us for awhile, making monsters the whole time," Theresa said quietly. "Unless the rules have changed."

"Yeah," Thundar agreed. "I know what you mean. And they have…who knows what the hell else to throw at us. He spit on a nearby bone-charger corpse. Shit, I can't die down here. I've got shit to do."

"Me too," Theresa said.

“I swore an oath to die for the von Anmut family," Hogarth said, lifting his helm to massage his temples. "But I don't want my death to be down here in some tunnel."

"Separated from our lady while she fights for her life," Svenia said.

"It would not be a good death," Khalik said. "And—"

There was an immense crash from somewhere distant, and the tunnel shook again.

Everyone looked at Khalik, but the prince was just as wide-eyed as they were. "That wasn't the mana trying to bring the tunnel down," he said. "It was something else."

He cleared his throat and let his deep voice boom through the passage. "Leader! Team leader!"

The argument had gone silent as the Watchers, mages and engineers eyed the walls; the earth mages’ leader turned to the prince with a dumbfounded look.

"We must move," the prince said.

A cracking noise split the air. Stone crumbled.

"Another breach!" An earth mage cried.

Theresa darted toward the crack, but two Watchers reacted before her, levelling their staffs, shouting a single word. A powerful wall of force sprang up, sealing the breach before it could expand.

The tunnel rumbled as though the very earth was rejecting it.

Then it slowly calmed.

Earth mages and engineers looked at each other.

The earth mage leader eyed the force wall. "You're right. We can't stay here. How much mana does everyone have left?"