Scorio shunted out his wings. “Get on my back!”
Kelona shook her head. “I can jump!”
And did so. She crouched deep then flung herself up, soaring through the air toward the top of the dead fiend—only for a Tokalauth to spear out from the wall and intercept her, pincers closing about her golden neck and shearing her head clean from her body.
“No!” Scorio flew after, a wave of horror washing through him like an ice-cold waterfall, but he was too late. Kelona’s body turned human, tumbled down into the darkness and fell amidst the royal fiend’s coils to disappear.
Arms wrapped around his neck, and Scorio twisted, nearly bucked his rider off, only to see Alain’s terrified visage, the man pale as bone, his hair drenched in sweat. “You?”
“Don’t drop me!”
Cursing, stomach twisting in revulsion at what had happened to Kelona, Scorio powered up to the top, but before he could say anything Alain dropped to the top of the pile of coils and was gone.
Great Souls were squeezing through the narrow gap at the apex and leaping down even as fiends continued to assault them. Scorio was about to fly down when a particularly large Tokalauth—no royal but a brute all the same—slammed into him, its pincers sinking through his abused plating to dig deep into his gut.
He screamed, fell, bounced off the curvature of a coil, the Tokalauth wrapping around him, only for it to stiffen then loosen and fall away.
Blinking, dazed, Scorio looked up and saw that its head had been crushed between two man-sized boulders. Jova swooped down upon a plinth, riding it with ease, and reached down to pluck at his upflung arm and haul him up behind her as she slid by.
No words. They swooped down the far side of the dead royal into what proved to be an even narrower passage. Plassus was roaring commands, but the meaning was lost in the shouting and endless hissing shrieks of the fiends. Jova slammed the plinth into the sand, causing a wave to burst out before them, angling it so that it ground to a stop, and Scorio leaped off just as she gestured and caused a great shelf of stone to tear free from one side of the passage and slam into the other, crushing dozens of fiends before returning to the deep socket from whence it had come.
Charoth landed heavily in the sand beside them, unhurt, no longer made of burning mana but unloading such a malevolent aura that Scorio felt his stomach invert itself. The tiger-man leaped ahead, bounding on all fours to fling himself past Plassus with a roar into an oncoming wave of fiends.
A hasty glance up the dead royal showed Great Souls leaping, dropping, screaming, dying.
Panic seized Scorio by the throat. The Wall was supposed to be a mile thick. How were they going to get out alive?
A Nyrix bolt hit the ground, opened into a portal, and then the Dread Blaze stepped through with Merideva and Fyrona. They stared at Scorio for a blank, relieved second, then all of them charged forward, down the passageway.
But its length twisted, split into several channels. The darkness swarmed. Scorio peered ahead, trying to spot Plassus, but Merideva pointed her burning staff down one passage. “This way!”
And took off running.
“No!” This from Nyrix, coming up behind. “The other passage!”
Merideva didn’t hear. Staff spinning and banishing the dark with its streaming flames, she waded into battle, slamming fiends aside and birthing more staffs by the second.
“Damnit!” Scorio grabbed Nyrix’s shoulder, careful not to tear his face off with his talons. “Get us ahead of her! We’ll bring her back!”
The Dread Blaze nodded, summoned his burning crossbow, and loosed a bolt down the passage. It shot past Merideva, hit the wall where the passageway turned, and then blossomed into a portal when Nyrix shot the ground at their feet.
Scorio plunged through, Fyrona and Nyrix a step behind.
Only to appear just ahead of Merideva, whose eyes widened with manic delight as Scorio tore a Tokalauth’s back open then hurled it aside.
“We need to go back!” He pointed over her shoulder. “Plassus is that way -”
The juncture behind Merideva shifted, came alive, and a fiend emerged from the wall. It was almost as massive as an Okoz, but built of black rock, its frame shot through with living streaks of Bronze mana, its head wedge-shaped, its eyes blazing. Flames that surged and burned as if venting some inner furnace within the beast, leaving afterimages of light in its wake as it moved.
Scorio had seen its kind before, back in Bastion, it had killed Hestia and Havert as they’d tried to pass the Brass Door. Had featured in one of the Gauntlets as a formidable opponent.
And this one blazed Bronze. It was sleeker, somehow, denser, its movements more fluid.
Fyrona stepped forward, eyes crackling with fell power, and blasted it with a sheet of black fire that washed across its chest.
The rock there slurried and spilt, but the attack only sank about an inch into its form.
“Not good,” shouted Nyrix, loosing a crossbow bolt that bounced off its shoulder.
Movement. Scorio twisted about just as a Tokalauth slammed into him, lifting him off the ground and pounding him into the wall. He cut it apart as Merideva smacked it away with her staff, and as he shoved the dead fiend off she stared at him, amazed.
But there wasn’t time to talk. The rock fiend was pounding toward them on all fours. Scorio pushed Fyrona back and charged forward to meet it. The confines were tight, a narrow corridor in the rock, and when it swung its huge arm in a hook Scorio simply dropped to his knees, slid under the blow, then lunged up to slam his own talons deep into the fiend’s chest.
The white-burning claws sank in and the fiend’s blazing mana streaks raged as it roared, staggered back, and even as Scorio ripped his talons out it went to backhand him, only to impact his Shroud.
The blow bounced off. Scorio rose and cut its arm off at the elbow. It fell like a severed branch, ichor spraying, and roared again as it hunched over, the flarings around its head growing sunlight-bright. Instinct bid Scorio raise his Shroud, and then a blast of mana poured forth from its markings to splatter across his shield, causing its dense curvature to flare gold.
Scorio grimaced, felt himself pushed back, his boots carving furrows in the sand as he fought to keep his Shroud up. STOP! he commanded, and the fiend’s assault faltered long enough for him to drop his Shroud. Before he could swing, however, Fyrona blasted it again, and this time the top of its head evaporated, causing it to collapse to the ground.
And reveal another four emerging from the rocks behind it.
Scorio gaped.
Nyrix loosed a bolt, trying to shoot past them and into the intersection, but one of them smacked the bolt from the air, causing it to dissipate in a splash of golden light.
“Run!” Merideva grabbed Scorio’s shoulder and hauled on him. “We’ll find another way through!”
“What?” Fyrona’s cry was incredulous.
“No choice,” shouted Scorio, skipping backward to keep some distance from the incoming fiends. “Unless…”
He shifted to his flame form, inhaled it all into his chest, then spewed forth a plume of fire that engulfed the lead fiend. It slowed, stopped, crossed its arms before its head, then fell apart as Scorio cut the flames, rocky form blackened, flarings dead.
But three more pressed in behind it.
“Damn it!” Scorio gasped, needing a moment before he could summon the flame form again. STOP!
The lead rock fiend hesitated.
“We’ll work our way around this rock,” called Fyrona, voice furious. “Meet up with the others on the far side. Go!”
They turned and scrambled down the ever-narrowing passage. Soon they were racing single file, shoulders brushing the walls. But though the passage was narrow, it rose to a heady height, its darkness alive with Tokalauths who came scuttling down toward them only to be destroyed by Fyrona’s blasts.
The rock wall didn’t seem to end.