Immediately it began to sink.
Desperate, he wrapped his wounded arm about it, his hand useless but the arm itself still functioning, and sought to lurch up, stab his claws in deeper, climb higher.
Overhead the baby monsters screeched, flapped their wings, and dove again and again at his friends. They clearly wished to come to his aid, but ignoring the fiends for even a moment would be lethal.
Then, from the side, he saw the Nightmare Lady come leaping toward him, looking like some demented, monstrous squirrel as she navigated the poles with ease. Scorio was already some twenty feet down, and with a grunt he surged up again, reaching with his claws before slamming them home and pulling himself up.
Not enough. He’d never climb faster than he was dropping at his rate, but then the Nightmare Lady was there, her hand closing about his upper arm, hauling him off the pillar and scrambling up the next pole as it began to descend.
They reached the pillar’s top, which was still below its original level. The Nightmare Lady leaped to the next, set to scaling it again, her strength seeming indefatigable. A roar of pain from Leonis. Up they climbed, then she reached the pillar’s top again and from it leaped, twisting her body to hurl Scorio so that he flew and crashed against the far wall to drop with a thud to the ledge.
The pain in his wounded wrist throbbed and his good arm and side stung badly from the acid burns, but he ignored it all to rise to his knees and stare back out over the poles.
Leonis had slipped, now lying across the top of a pole, Nezzar gone, Lianshi helping him rise as she ignored talons scraping across her back uselessly.
Then the Nightmare Lady was there, bursting up from below to beat the baby fiends away with the flat of her blade, its reach such that the resultant acid explosion failed to fall upon them.
Together they hauled Leonis up, and Scorio watched, breath stilled, as they navigated the rest of the way over and finally made the ledge.
Upon doing so, the remaining bat babies screeched petulant disgust and winged away. The last of the poles returned to their original height, and all was still.
“You’re a lifesaver, Naomi,” gasped Leonis, sinking against the wall.
The Nightmare Lady made no answer. She, too, sank into a crouch, and Scorio saw with alarm that her thigh gleamed with black blood. Her hip wound had torn open even wider.
“Damn,” he said. “Leonis, your robe.”
Without questioning the big man pulled it off. Scorio and Lianshi set to tearing it and tightly binding the Nightmare Lady’s waist, but the wound was placed in too awkward an angle to be effectively staunched.
“We’d best hurry,” said the Nightmare Lady, voice subdued. “I’m losing strength.”
“Damn it,” said Scorio, frustration and anger coursing through him. “Fine. One moment as I gather my strength.”
Never had he felt such rage at his own limitations. Every second he took sweeping more Coal into his Heart cost the Nightmare Lady more blood. Finally, he nodded. “Let’s go.”
Leonis rose, summoned Nezzar, but Lianshi touched his shoulder. “Let me. I can withstand any immediate accidents on the other side, remember?”
The big man nodded grudging acceptance and stepped aside.
A deep breath, then Lianshi passed through the dark doorway and was gone.
“I’m next,” growled Leonis, and followed a moment after.
Scorio felt a pang of despair at the sight of the ridiculous robe bandage wrapped around the Nightmare Lady’s angular hips. “Hang in there.” Before she could protest, he stepped through.
Darkness, nothingness, and then he emerged from a central column of crude iron into the well-lit crossroads between four hallways. The column was the center of the hub; each hallway was narrow, dark, still.
No—a flickering green light was approaching, bobbing, eerie and murky. He sharpened his darkvision and saw a figure approaching them down the hallway’s length; a large man, easily the size of Leonis, bare-chested but for a leather strap that crossed over his pectorals to hold a baldric in place over his shoulder. Armored plates ran down each arm, and he held a dagger in one blocky fist and a spear in the other.
But it was his head that held Scorio’s attention: a green crystal had been slammed through his skull, punching through the upper half of his face, destroying it utterly, and emerging from the back. Leather straps cruelly bound twin tusks to either side of his head, an aspect that appeared almost ceremonial, and his thin lips were pulled wide into a distended sneer.
“One in each hallway,” said Leonis, tone terse. “All approaching.”
Glances to each side proved him right; identical men were closing in on the hub and its column, unhurried, their leers provocative, the green crystals rammed through their skulls glowing with eerie light.
The Nightmare Lady emerged, and immediately Scorio felt reassured by her presence.
“Foes coming down each hallway,” he said quickly. “Don’t know what the crystals do.”
“I’m on it!” said Lianshi and darted down the hallway before her.
“Damnit, Lianshi!” cursed Leonis, rushing after her, Nezzar appearing in his hand.
The Nightmare Lady grabbed Scorio by the shoulder and thrust him into the same hall, then turned to guard its entrance as she slowly retreated backward.
Green light flared, illuminating the crude hallway luridly. Lianshi let out a cry that was more surprise than pain, and Scorio saw her standing, arms crossed before her face, her form iridescent, as the beam of light that had burst from the fiend’s cranial crystal died away.
Leonis let out a guttural roar, shoved past her, and stabbed Nezzar forward like a blade, hammering its blunt end at the man’s visage.
But then the three others appeared at the mouth of the tunnel, and each of their three crystals began to burn brightly.
“Watch out!” shouted Scorio, summoning his scaled form and knocking the Nightmare Lady aside.
She was surprisingly light; caught off-balance, she stumbled aside, and then he pressed his forearms together before his face, hunched behind his arms, and closed his eyes as the world burst into viridian light.
The pain was astonishing. It felt as if molten metal had been poured over his bare skin. He cried out, staggered back, but then the light faded away, leaving motes of afterimages dancing in his eyes as he gasped.
Movement. The Nightmare Lady flung herself forward, claws raking, tail stabbing. The three men weren’t defenseless, however; they quickly gave ground, stabbed at her with their spears, tried to retreat to the central hub.
The sound of fighting came from behind Scorio, but he ignored it, shoved aside the stunning, all-consuming pain that suffused his arms, and let out a desperate cry as he ran forward to help the Nightmare Lady.
She’d used her tail to behead two of the spears, clasped the third just behind the blade, and yanked its wielder forward to punch his crystal right out the back of his head. The other two fiends pressed in, discarding their spears to bring their curved knives to bear. In the confines of the tunnel, a knife fight would be disastrous. Scorio barreled past the Nightmare Lady as she turned to deal with the threat, and ignoring the outrageous pain in his good arm—if it even qualified as such any longer—he swept his claws across the blades, knocking them aside, then barreled the two large men back into the iron hub.
What followed must have taken place in only a couple of seconds. They formed a triangle, tightly pressed together, claws and knifes flickering and stabbing, Scorio using his bad arm as a wretched shield, simply waving it before each knife thrust to deflect the wicked points as he raked and slashed with his talons, each hit causing the flesh to bubble and cauterize.
Heavy gasping, his weight on his heels, then back on the balls of his feet, a side shift as he dodged a thrust, a wild parry with his arm, though somehow the blade cut through his scales. A grunt as he ducked, then a surge as he pushed forward, under the man’s arm to slam his talons into his armpit, through ribs, and into something soft and spongy.