Scorio nodded and took to the air again. The Seraphix hung as before, perhaps five or six miles away, distant and ethereal, still facing south. Scorio studied it for a short while longer, then saw that the dust cloud had drawn closer.
He squinted and thought that he could now make out tiny shapes at the forefront. They were the size of fleas and raced along the swales between the dunes, rushing forward and covering a space some six or seven dunes wide.
At the rate they were approaching they’d reach the company in some ten or fifteen minutes. Scorio winged down again, landed beside Taron. “Contact in ten minutes, give or take. Their front is some seven dunes wide. They’re not running along the crests, but they’re coming fast. We’re perhaps ten dunes to the left of theirs.”
Taron nodded and raised his fist. The company stopped.
He turned, gestured, and people gathered around, groups sliding down the faces to cluster in close.
“Ten minutes till our friendly fiends fall upon us,” he said. “Let’s set up as arranged. I’m designating the thirteenth dune over that way as Dune Prime. Get in place and wait for Rharvyn’s signal. Clear?”
The fifty Great Souls nodded, and a few murmured their agreement. Taron glanced around the group, smiled grimly, then nodded. “Let’s move.”
* * *
Scorio crouched just below the dune’s peak and watched the skies. Arrayed beside him were his three charges, Naomi and Shadow Petal’s crew, along with Merideva, Ursan, Fyrona, and a dozen other lower ranked Great Souls.
Nobody spoke.
The minutes crawled by, slow as glaciers making their way down to the sea.
His reservoir was topped up with Bronze, and he could feel it straining against his Heart, yearning to burn on his private altar.
Nobody had ignited.
The sand was cool under Scorio’s palm. He could just barely feel a faint vibration building, could hear a pounding thrum growing louder.
Five hundred massive fiends were charging in their direction, were almost upon them. The urge to peek over the dune was overwhelming.
Juna’s breath was fast and shallow. Wesyd kept filling his fist with sand and letting it trickle out. Kelona stared straight up the side of the dune at the sky, fixated on spotting Rharvyn’s signal.
“Easy now,” whispered Merideva, sounding calm and excited both. “Almost there.”
Scorio inhaled deeply. He felt tremulous, eager, nervous. He trusted Taron’s judgment, but this was to be a real fight. His job was to keep his charges alive. It was discomfiting to have to think of others, to keep an eye on weaker comrades instead of just trusting that they’d hold their own.
“There,” whispered Kelona.
A meteor climbed into the sky, a huge chunk of obsidian trailing ragged black flames. It arched overhead, descended rapidly, then the ground shuddered as an echoing explosion rocked across the dunes.
Distant bellows came right after.
“Slow walk,” called Scorio, rising to his feet and climbing to the peak. The desert opened around them, and there, a few hundred yards to the south, came the fiends. He couldn’t make them out clearly; they yet ran along the bottoms of the dunes, so that from his vantage point he could only make out their broad, muscled backs, sandstone red patterned with splotches of black edged in white, with thick, wiry yellow hair running down their spines.
Another of Rharvyn’s assaults dropped on the far flank of the oncoming swarm, and this time Scorio saw a dune explode, huge chunks of body parts erupting into the air with the spray of sand.
The fiends on the far flank bellowed and roared again, and now dozens leaped high and into view, bounding across the dunes to flee the explosion and drop amidst their fellows, packing themselves in tighter.
“By the hells,” whispered Wesyd, moving up alongside Scorio.
The Okoz were almost absurdly big. They were huge apes, all shoulders and chests, their hindquarters diminutive in comparison, their arms as big as columns. As they leaped, they spread their arms out wide, their ugly blue faces contorting into howls. Marbled in crimson, black, slender stripes of white, chromatic bronze and virulent yellow, they looked like the Telurian Band’s landscape outside the Bone Plains come to hugely muscled life.
And hundreds of them were pounding along, raising a dust cloud that stretched behind them to the lurid heavens.
“Start moving in,” called Merideva, and set down the dune’s far face at a jog. They were positioned sufficiently far away that no Okozs would charge them, but now was the time to close.
Scorio ignited but glanced back at his charges as he did so. “Don’t ignite yet. Hold on to your reserves.”
Kelona went to protest, hazel green eyes widening in some combination of eagerness, outrage, and fear, but she nodded and jogged after.
Another of Rharvyn’s explosions rocked the dunes, and now other long-range assaults were hitting the far flank. Galvon would be pounding the Okozs, and Wesanin’s vortex of sand rose into sight to strike a glancing run along the far Okozs, driving more of them into the central stream. Just ahead of the far flank burned Penaela’s baleful black sun, and some primitive instinct on the fiends’ part drove them to avoid it, leaping and pouring in even more of their numbers into the central channels, scores of them romping along the dune peaks and demolishing their beautiful undulating lines as they pounded along.
Bunching up just as Taron had wanted.
More and more long-ranged attacks pummeled the giant fiends, flashes of crimson light, showers of metal shards, great detonating booms that sent bursts of sand flying. The Okozs howled and screeched in fury, but momentum carried them forward - right into Taron.
The Pyre Lord stood prominent right in their path, his arms crossed, chin raised, smirking. When the Okozs were but fifty yards from him, pouring and pounding toward him like an avalanche, he snapped his fingers, and the dunes and the troughs between them turned as frictionless as greased glass.
Hundreds of Okozs crashed to the ground, limbs splaying out wide, barrel chests slamming into the sand as they spun and scrambled and flailed upon the slick surface. Others just leaped over their fallen fellows, only to hit frictionless sand dozens of yards on and slam down with punishing force, sliding forward like stones pushed out across ice.
Those behind howled and hooted in frustration, piling up behind each other, jamming up tight as they faltered. Others leaped, coming down hard on their fallen fellows, but that was the signal they’d been waiting for.
“Charge!” shouted Merideva, burning staff held high, and she flashed forward two dunes in a blur, racing toward the roiling flank.
“Stay with the team,” barked Scorio as Kelona’s golden form went to leap. She relented at the last second and simply hopped over to the next dune.
Juna spilled forth like a mass of snakes, stretching across the troughs without needing to dip down, while Wesyd did his best to keep up, plowing through the soft sand. Scorio extruded his wings so he could glide over to the next dune peak, and everywhere dark banks of fog began to rise as the Nightmare Lady activated her power.
Ursan roared, a sound fit to match the Okozs’ bellows, and leaped massively in his ogre form overhead. Fyrona appeared right in position, Nyrix stepping through a portal with her, only to turn, shoot his blazing crossbow back amidst their ranks, opening a new portal, and disappear.
Scorio fought the urge to leave his charges behind, and watched as Fyrona unleashed her eyebeams on the closest Okoz.
A blazing sheet of black flame swept through five huge fiends, splitting open their flanks, severing legs, and sending them crashing off the top of the next dune.
The battlefield became pandemonium. Rharvyn’s huge blasts continued to drop from the heavens even as Penaela’s sun drifted into the central mass of the churning Okozs. Scorio’s eyes widened as he saw the fiends lit by its dismal glare warp and liquefy, fall apart and reconfigure their bodies, sprouting useless limbs, features sloughing off their heads, bones rising out of their colorful hides, their howls becoming screams of pain.