The Wall towered over them, the closest boulder the size of the Fiery Shoals itself, rising hundreds of yards into the sky, its face contoured but smooth, and Plassus led them toward its far corner where a dark gap led deeper into the Wall, other, smaller boulders tumbled down upon themselves to render the passage merely the size of a great hall.
Angraths were able to navigate the ice field to the south with the greatest dexterity; their cruel talons found purchase and their fantastic agility allowed them to avoid the defensive spikes, so that soon their flank was under attack from what looked like hundreds. Aezryna waved her hand and a barrage of shards rained down upon them, slicing and bludgeoning them to death.
Her power was awesome.
Then they were upon the gap, the Bone Plains falling behind, and with a great breath Scorio plunged into the darkness, activating his darkvision as he ran. The floor remained sandy, the walls bulged out smoothly, rising to a great height as the rocks pressed ever closer together. He’d hoped for a glimpse of the far side, a beckoning sliver of light, but the darkness seemed as deep as it was endless.
But they weren’t alone.
Tokalauths swarmed along the walls, reared up from ledges high above, came burrowing up from the sand beneath.
The darkness was alive with their hissing, their rippling legs, their clacking mandibles.
Scores slipped and fell from one wall where Taron worked his power, but hundreds more swam down the rock faces toward them. Himiko transformed into the Shadow Petal, both blades gleaming in the shadow, even her black blade which appeared a denser darkness than a mere absence of light, and she turned to Naomi, her skeletal visage alive with delight. “Come! Time to hunt!”
Then she was gone, and Naomi became the Nightmare Lady and bounded after, tail undulating as banks of shadow began to wreath their path.
Scorio pounded along, trying to take in everything at once. Plassus wasn’t using his protective sphere; leaning, no doubt, on the Blood Barons so that he could focus on keeping them moving. This meant that Tokalauths rained down from above, dropping like midnight horrors.
Enough was enough.
“Stay with the group!” Scorio shouted to Kelona, and leaped up into the air, spreading his wings, keeping them small and mobile, and went to war.
Fiends fell, twisting and snapping in the darkness, and he plunged into them, tackling them and shredding their hides. Tokalauth legs scrabbled at his scaled armor, seeking purchase, hot ichor gouted over him as he tore them apart, and huge pincers closed around his shoulders, his waist. Each time they squeezed painfully hard, but failed to penetrate. Grunting, Scorio would twist, down-slash to remove most of the head, then kick away the dead fiend to find another to lunge at.
Deprived of the scope of the Bone Plains, Aezryna launched targeted blasts at the walls, sprays of ice shattering and ricocheting into the darkness as she tore fiends apart. Taron swept his frictionless field about, causing scores to drop and crash to the ground, but there they rapidly untangled themselves and flooded forward to assault their group’s flanks.
Scorio dove down and threw himself into a knot of twisting centipedes that were hissing and clacking their jaws as they recovered themselves from a fall. He took his wings back in, hit the mass of fiends with a command to STOP! and then dove in a second later, spinning around so that his claws were everywhere, slashing and slicing.
He pounded into undulating chitin, fought to get his feet under him, and felt a Tokalauth wrap around him, its bladed legs flurrying in an attempt to shred his armor. But it couldn’t find purchase, so he shoved its head back with one hand then sheared it away altogether with another.
Only for Charoth to come bounding by, most of his robes torn away to reveal more of his vivid orange and black-striped fur. He plowed into the fiends, knocking them flying, and didn’t even break stride, passing Scorio by with a snarl.
But there wasn’t time to gape. Plassus’ main group was pulling away, compelled by his speed power, and so Scorio raced after. A Tokalauth lunged at him from a broad crack, only for the Nightmare Lady to drop upon it, tail severing its head as she fell from one bank of darkness into another.
Merideva’s burning staves were multiplying, and Fyrona’s blasts seared the air. But damn they were moving fast. Scorio cursed and broke into a sprint, but even so he found himself falling behind.
Plassus’ power was cumulative. The longer they ran, the faster they went. Scorio flung himself into the air, extruded his wings, and fought to catch up. He veered around falling fiends, banking and rolling as he gained altitude so that those coursing along the ground couldn’t snatch at him, and just caught up with the rear of the group when a Royal Tokalauth appeared before them.
It rippled into view as they reached the end of the first gargantuan block, an intersection where multiple boulders pressed together to form an interstitial crossroads, and the gargantuan fiend came crawling around the corner, as broad as a dunerunner, its true length hidden as more and more of it came into view. Dark purple with crimson hints, its pincers were as long as a man, serrated, and dripping with green fire. Eyes like bulbous, multi-faceted shields gleamed in the dark, and hundreds more Tokalauths came crawling down from above, frothing out from every crevasse and crack.
“Mine!” roared Charoth, and vaulted clear over the entire party as if flung by a catapult, arms spread wide, transforming mid-leap into a burning mana-version of himself, Ruby mana tinged with Bronze, his passage searing the air as he fell upon the royal fiend, passing through its pincers and slamming into its head.
But there was no time to watch the fight. The air came alive with fiends falling upon them, a hailstorm of pincers, legs, and segmented lengths. Scorio tried to maneuver but was battered out of the sky, several of the fiends locking on to him with their pincers, squeezing, trying to crack him open like a gourmand might shatter a bone to get at the marrow.
He reflexively summoned his flame form and the fiends fell through him, screeching as they burned. Scorio powered up and into the thickest part of the falling fiends, passing through them and incinerating them by the dozens.
Screams sounded from below, bellows of fury and panic. Scorio inhaled his flames till his chest felt as if it would burst, then dropped to the ground, turned, and blew his fury up into the darkness.
Tokalauths crisped and writhed and died.
Scorio crashed into the sand only for golden hands to seize his arm and haul him up. Kelona, eyes wide with terror, her Shroud fragmented above her.
Scorio stumbled, caught his balance, summoned his own Shroud above her own, and then staggered to a stop as he realized the group had ground to a halt. The royal Tokalauth was keening and whipping from side to side, smashing the spirit tiger latched to its head against the walls as Aezryna and Jova blasted it with ice and stone shards, but so thick were its plates that they weren’t able to dispatch it immediately. The fiend filled their way, and Scorio was about to press forward to help when the Shadow Petal blinked into existence beside its weaving head and spun, Mercy, her ebon blade, passing through its neck.
The effect was instantaneous. It shuddered and collapsed, coil after coil, legs clattering, body sloughing off the rocky passageway walls, piling higher and higher till it choked the passage near to the top.
“Climb!” shouted Plassus, leaping up onto the first coil. The others followed after, scrambling, leaping, helping each other up.