Scorio flew down beside number “7”. The beetle was dead, its belly torn open so that huge gouts of milky gel had flowed out over the sand, its remaining legs still spasming. Okozs were milling around it, and Scorio passed through them in his flame form, causing them to shriek and bound away.
Landing, he staggered, became corporeal, and tilted his head back to fill the sky with black flame. Tentacled fiends screamed and darted aside, but one flew full into the plume and emerged the other side a crisped black arrow that dropped to the bloody muddy sand and snapped apart.
“Wesyd?” Scorio rushed around number “7” to where the palanquin was little more than shattered spars. He saw several dead Great Souls amongst the wreckage, limbs broken, heads crushed, vermillion blood splashed around them. Tomb Sparks and Flame Vaults, he’d caught their names in passing, but -
There. Wesyd’s legs extended out from under the bulk of the broken palanquin. He was dead. Just like that.
Scorio stared, jaw working, then screamed and tore himself away, denying the urge to dig out the dead Tomb Spark, only to get his Shroud up in time as an Okoz dropped upon him, both fists impacting the shield’s curvature with such force that Scorio slammed to his knees beneath it.
But the Shroud, beastly thick and reinforced from years of practice in the Crucible, held. Scorio dove under its lower edge to slash open the fiend’s ankles, his bright-burning talons splitting bone and hide with equal ease, and when the fiend dropped he left it to bound forward.
A red-headed Tomb Spark was retreating before a Tokalauth as Angraths came speeding up around it. Scorio placed his Shroud before the giant centipede as it lunged forward, yelled out a warning, but the Angraths leaped upon the Tomb Spark, jaws clamping tight around her arm, neck, ankle, and lifted her from the ground, tore her apart, the sails that ran down the Angraths’ backs rippling with pleasure as they set to gorging.
Something hit Scorio from behind with enough power to bend his body back over the blow. The plates of armor that ran down his back warped but prevented his spine from snapping, and for a moment the world went soundless and white from the pain.
Then he was sent flying, slamming through the crowds of fiends, knocking an Angrath out of the air mid-leap, Tokalauths recoiling instinctively, out of the trough, up over the dune’s stamped-down peak, over the heads of charging fiends, to come down, slamming through their ranks, hitting bodies, shells, legs, then bounce and roll across the sand and fetch up, dazed and blinking, his whole body a snarl of pain, to stare up at an Okoz who glared back down in equal surprise.
The fiend raised its fists. It took all Scorio’s wits to summon his Shroud just before it brought them both down and slammed them into the shield. Again and again it hammered, and now it was joined by others, Angraths nipping in around the sides, a Tokalauth lunging down to bring its pincers to bear.
Scorio brought his Shroud down and curled up beneath it, the hemisphere of force weathering the constant assaults but flaring ever brighter. Scorio couldn’t draw enough Bronze from the air, was forced to tap his reservoir to keep the Shroud fed, but his mind was dazed, his wits scrambled, and for a moment it was all he could do to lie still, knees against his chest, the world alive with potent attacks that were trying to end his life.
More fiends crowded in around, tried to get at him. His Shroud was shining nearly pure Gold, and just as he was about to let loose a cry of unadulterated rage and throw himself at them, a dark form flashed in, spinning so that its segmented tail whipped around, great triangular blade cleaving through exoskeleton, muscle, and hide.
The Nightmare Lady landed atop his Shroud and got to work.
The sight of her filled Scorio with boundless gratitude and relief. He caught his breath, rose to all fours, and set to reinforcing her attacks with his own commands, causing fiend after fiend to freeze and stumble as she cut them down.
But she bought him only a second’s reprieve. It was like trying to empty out an ocean with a cup. She leaped down, he dropped his Shroud, and flew up, extending his wings as hundreds more fiends closed in on them. Without a moment’s hesitation the Nightmare Lady leaped after, clasped her arms around his neck, and they flew high just as the fiends closed in on the space.
Scorio stared out over the desert.
Thousands more fiends were coming.
Here and there other beetles lay dead, each an island of resistance as their Great Souls fought off the onslaught. Bolts of lightning cut the sky, domes of living light flickered into existence and incinerated fiends, cones of petrifying power or whirling scythes danced amongst their foes.
But it was too little.
To the east, perhaps ten miles away, lay the cyclopean wall of the Triangle, the massive gray boulders tumbled atop each other. Between them lay a badland of ravines, gulches, and slot canyons, the dunes finally petering out and giving way to stone and flint.
And over these badlands streamed the fiends.
“They knew!” The Nightmare Lady’s cry was filled with bitter fury. “They knew we were coming!”
Scorio couldn’t refute it.
He dove down as more tentacled fiends streamed toward them. Taron had turned an entire quadrant into frictionless hell for the fiends, causing them to slip and collapse even as their own mirror-images appeared before them to do battle. A great matted carpet of the mutated dead were testament to the hundreds Penaela had killed, but her sun was gone and fresh fiends rushed into the open space.
Merideva’s burning staves were the only thing keeping the twenty or so Great Souls left alive. Eighty or ninety of them danced and bludgeoned fiends in a circle about their collected company, forming a wall that Merideva only added to with each fiend she killed. But as Scorio swooped down to help he saw that she was badly hurt; dark blood had soaked down her side, and she fought against a limp.
The Nightmare Lady leaped from his back to fall into a knot of fiends, and Scorio dropped, retracting his wings and slashing with his talons as he slammed into an Okoz. He cut its hip apart, rolled, came up and punched an Angrath out of the air mid-leap, slammed his Shroud into a diving Tokalauth, blasted a second away with a command, then fought his way past another pair of Okozs to reach Merideva’s side.
“We need to move!” cried out the woman, turning and spinning her staff dexterously about her. “Where’s Taron?!”
Scorio caught an Angrath by the neck just as it went to fall on him. The huge fiend scrabbled its hind feet against Scorio’s chest and abdomen, the claws failing to pierce his scaled armor, then went limp as Scorio snapped its neck.
The Bronze mana was nearly completely gone from the air.
“I don’t know!” He spun about, looking for the next attack. “South! Toward Plassus!”
“Done!” Merideva began striding down the dune, leaping over corpses, and the dancing staves moved with her like a burning swarm, beating back fiends and forcing a perimeter.
Galvon was there, hurling weakened blasts into the wall of fiends that pressed the staves, while Fyrona held the other flank. Ursan was limping badly, his side torn open, and another dozen lower-ranked Great Souls did their best, hurling blasts or simply staying close as they fought their way south.
Taron appeared atop the dune to the left, surrounded by a crowd of two-dimensional fiends. They moved protectively around him, Okozs and Angraths, dozens of Tokalauths, all rippling and surging and alive albeit completely artificial; each time they turned they disappeared into an undulating line only to flare out as they completed the move, each as thin as a paper but fighting endlessly to tear real fiends apart.