Up ahead, Davelos came to an abrupt stop. A line of trees extended before them perhaps a hundred yards further on, the meadowland covered in knee-high grass.
Evelyn stopped a moment later and pointed hard right. Davelos nodded, and they both began to run parallel to the golden circuit.
Scorio veered after them, not seeing what had worried the Dread Blazes. Jova had thrown a feebly resisting Naomi over one shoulder and was a score of paces behind, but was slowing as Juniper began to stumble.
“Evelyn!” roared Scorio, and this time the Dread Blaze looked back. Looked to the tree line, then grimaced and stopped.
Davelos ran a handful more yards before also slowing. He cursed, dropped Zala to the ground, and then the Dread Blazes ran, not back, but at an oblique line to interpose themselves between Scorio and the tree line.
Scorio was panting now. Lianshi was growing heavy and Leonis was staggering as if he’d drunk twenty glasses of flaywine.
Then the trees shook, parted, and fresh hell emerged.
Scorio ceased running, let Lianshi slip to the ground, and released Leonis, who sank to his knees.
What had emerged was an ivory crustacean surrounded by a cloud of tendrils. It was spindly and elegant and moved with great delicacy upon four legs that terminated in wicked needle points, its head a triangular wedge in which a singular black eye like an onyx was embedded, unblinking, faceted, brilliant.
“What is that?” whispered Scorio.
Six thick ropes emerged from the back of its head, and these undulated in the air forming that shifting cloud, each ending in a metallic point a yard long.
“Not good,” said Jova, moving up alongside him. She’d left Naomi with Juniper. “Even the Dread Blazes are worried.”
Scorio wiped ichor from his cheek. “You up for helping?”
Jova gave him a mirthless grin. “You know I love having fun.”
They jogged forward. Scorio carefully, slowly inhaled Copper mana into his Heart. As always it took twice as much work the second time around, but the ivory fiend was still moving with discriminating wariness, tilting its head from side to side as if tasting the air.
“You two should stay clear of this,” said Davelos as they moved up. “Way beyond your pay grade.”
“I can hold my own,” said Jova calmly.
“Davelos and I can take it,” said Evelyn firmly. “Between the two of us, we should be fine. Stay here.”
“Sure,” said Scorio. The fiend was unnerving. It was the size of a large horse, but its sinuous tendrils made it look twice as big.
Then a second one emerged from the forest.
“Lovely,” said Davelos with a grimace.
Evelyn licked her lips. “This just got interesting. We concentrate on the first, take it down fast, hope the second doesn’t get its licks in before we turn on it?”
“Where’s Dameon when you need him?” muttered Davelos. “We might have to run.”
“We can’t keep up,” said Scorio. “The others are too sick.”
“I know.” Davelos glanced back at the Emberlings. “Welcome to the bleeding edge of the Rascor Plains.”
“I’ll tie up the second one,” said Evelyn. “You three take down the first.”
Davelos sighed. “Ridiculous. You’re sure?”
“You know I am. And it’s just two Ixithilions.”
“Just two, she says.” Davelos rubbed his head briskly then shook out his arms. “All right, Jova, Scorio, you lead the charge. When it comes at you, Shroud up, race apart, and try to live. While it’s deciding which of you to follow, I’ll hit it.”
Both ivory fiends became still, their single eyes oriented on where Scorio and the others stood.
“Here they come,” whispered Evelyn. “I’m going out wide. Luck!”
She took off at a run.
“Damn it. Let’s go.” Davelos broke into a jog. “You two better be worth this.”
Scorio bit back a retort and chased after him. Could he use his chalk to keep one of them at bay…? No. The ground was too grassy for him to scrawl a line.
They ran through the meadow grass and were halfway there when the third Ixithilion emerged from the woods.
Davelos staggered to a halt. The fiends burst forward, faster than Scorio could have imagined, their tendrils suddenly boiling about their heads, metallic tips rising to aim in their direction.
“Too late now!” shouted Davelos. “Go!”
Scorio and Jova broke into a sprint. The Ixithilions approached them like frenzied balls of lightning, only for caramel hair to emerge from the grass and enmesh the farthest one, tripping it up and bringing it down.
The other two raced on only to split apart at the last moment. They were impossibly nimble. Scorio and Jova split in turn, and ran right at their foes who veered back into them, their needle ropes bursting forward to come spearing down.
Scorio saved his Ignition to the very last moment, then lit up his Heart, burst up into his scaled form, and summoned his Shroud, raising it before him.
Three-foot-long steel tips crashed into the Shroud, shattered it, and slid through at a greatly diminished speed, but the other three simply flowed around the Shroud to stab into his side, his thigh, and his stomach.
His burning Heart kept most of the pain at bay. The needle that had aimed for his thigh only sank in an inch, hampered by his scales, but the other two found his unprotected flesh and punched all the way through.
With a scream, Scorio felt himself hauled off the grass and up, the tentacles impossibly strong. The Ixithilion hurled him aside, but at the last moment, he reached down and grabbed hold of a tentacle just before he slid off its needle tips.
He crashed to the ground, hauling on the tentacle, wrenching the fiend’s head around so that it overbalanced and crashed to the ground where it thrashed and whipped its tentacles about. It turned upon Scorio in a frenzy and impaled him a dozen times over. While most of its stabs were deflected by his scales, the damage was still terrible.
Screaming, his whole body alive with pain and shock, Scorio held on to the tentacle and then somehow pulled himself forward to slash with burning talons at the other white ropes.
His searing hot claws tore through the mass of them, causing the fiend to keen as it got its scissor legs beneath it and lurched upright. Scorio lunged drunkenly forward, slashed his claws through its front leg, then fell to the grass, weakness stealing over him.
The Ixithilion reared back, raised its stump, and flailed as black blood poured into the air. Half its tentacles had been severed, but the others slammed down to punch into Scorio’s body again, hammering through his chest and stomach into the ground below.
Scorio grunted and felt blood well up his throat.
The Ixithilion turned away, still keening, and Scorio saw that beyond it Davelos was tearing apart its friend; he flickered in and out of existence as it stabbed its tentacles at him, misting in and out of existence, and then leaped up to bury his fist deep inside its pale head.
Its carapace crumpled, its eye burst, and it staggered backward, suddenly clumsy on its spindly legs.
“Davelos!” Scorio tried to shout, but he only managed a whisper. The wounded Ixithilion that had mauled Scorio came up behind the Dread Blaze and slammed a needle into the Dread Blaze’s Copper back.
Davelos immediately misted and pulled away, but when he materialized Scorio could tell he was wounded.
Jova rose to her feet, a bloody hole punched through her chest, blood pouring from another in her stomach. But her power allowed her to stand and she hurled herself at Scorio’s Ixithilion, Shroud flickering into existence.
The fiend knocked her aside and then tripped, its stump of a foreleg causing it to overbalance.
Davelos fell upon it, his Copper fist rising and falling as he clobbered its head apart.
Evelyn let out a cry of panic. Davelos stood, turned, and Scorio saw Evelyn wrestling with the third fiend. Each of its six tendrils was grappled by a rope of hair, but it was forcing its way toward Evelyn, overpowering and driving her back.