Chương 107: Chapter 106 – Time Runs Out

The gap wasn't fifteen feet. It just felt like it, the ground still rippling underfoot in slow, sick waves that hadn't decided whether to hold weight or not.

"Go," Ant said. Mahkir went low, three strides and a leap that carried him clear of the worst of the ripple, claws catching stone on the far side hard enough to gouge it. The construct was already moving to meet him — matter sloughing off its shoulder and knitting back in mid-stride, closing the distance it shouldn't have been able to close that fast. Ant didn't think about it.

His hand found Mahkir's presence through the bond the way it always did, no ceremony to it anymore, three years of practice compressed into something closer to breathing than casting. [Attribute Sharing — Activate? No mana cost. Duration: 3: 00.]"Do it." The pull hit like stepping off a ledge he hadn't seen — not pain, not quite, but his own edges going soft at the same moment Mahkir's sharpened, the two of them folding into something that wasn't either of them alone.

[Combined — Strength 89, Agility 112, Magic 95, Endurance 91. Shared HP: 182/182. Shared Mana: 310/310.] Mahkir hit the ground running before the notification finished clearing, and the difference showed in the first stride — not faster the way a sprint is faster, but faster the way a thrown knife is faster than a dropped one, like the effort of moving had simply stopped costing anything. Ant. I can feel you in my legs.

"Use them." Mahkir opened his jaw and Flame Breath came out in a solid column instead of a stream, wide enough to fill the passage mouth, and the construct staggered backward under it with matter blackening and curling away from the fire in a way the earlier wounds hadn't managed — not sloughing off clean to reknit, but burning, actually burning, thin threads of it going to ash and drifting instead of pulling back in.

"Fire," Kalsar shouted, already moving, "it doesn't like fire — Natalia, Cindermaw on it, anyone who can burn or scorch, now—" Hexa was already there anyway, six heads finding six separate points at once, jaws closing down together with a crushing weight no single strike could match, and where claws alone had only scored the thing, six mouths locking on at once actually cost it something — matter caving inward under sheer force instead of sloughing off to reknit, patches of it simply refusing to come back together.

For one clean stretch of maybe ninety seconds, it looked like enough. Mahkir kept pace with the three Epics like he belonged among them, a fourth in all but name, in low under a backhand that would have taken his head off a minute earlier, claws raking a line that Flame Breath had already softened, and the thing screamed — the same tearing-cloth sound, but higher now, thinner, something in it starting to come apart faster than it could hold together.

Xylock's forearms glowed steady, drinking every return strike before it landed. Ashclaw and Cindermaw worked it from either flank, forcing it to choose which fire to turn from, and it couldn't choose fast enough.

"It's failing," Natalia called, voice pitched to carry over the noise.

"Keep the fire on it — don't let it—" It went into the wall. Not thrown — it went, folding itself sideways into a crack in the stone that shouldn't have been wide enough to hold a hand, let alone a body twice Mahkir's mass, and the violet light along the walls guttered and thinned the way a lamp does right before it goes out. Nobody moved for a second. The chamber held whatever quiet a chamber full of heavy breathing could hold.

"Where'd it—" Nadia started.

"Don't relax." Kalsar hadn't lowered his weapon. His eyes were on the wall, on the residue, on the way it had stopped pulsing and gone flat and still instead.

"It's not gone. It's stalling."

"Stalling for what?" Garrick, low, Ashclaw pacing a tight, unhappy circle at his side.

"I don't know. But something that's losing doesn't hide unless hiding buys it something it doesn't have yet." Kalsar's jaw was tight, his voice flatter than Ant had heard it in months.

"Everyone hold position. Don't chase it into that wall." I can feel it, Mahkir said, ears swiveling, hackles up along his spine. Not where. Just — there. Watching.

"How close?" Close enough that it could've come out already and hasn't. That's the part I don't like. The seconds stretched. Ant caught himself watching the residue along the walls instead of the crack it had vanished into, the way it sat dull and unmoving, waiting the same way the rest of them were. [Attribute Sharing — 1: 47 remaining.] He'd forgotten the clock was running. Three minutes had felt like a lot when he'd spent it hitting something.

It felt like considerably less when he was spending it standing still, watching a crack in a wall that refused to give anything back. [Attribute Sharing — 0: 52 remaining.] A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

"Kalsar—""I see it." Kalsar's eyes flicked to Mahkir, then back to the wall.

"How long's your sharing got left?"

"Under a minute."

"Then hope it stays shy that long." He didn't sound hopeful. It didn't stay shy. [Attribute Sharing — 0: 00. Reverting.] The pull came back the other way, gentler than it going on but still enough that Ant felt his own limbs settle back to their normal weight, and across the chamber Mahkir's stride broke — not stumbled, just slowed, the borrowed speed leaving him mid-motion the way a held breath leaves when you finally let it go. He caught himself, planted, shook it off in a single hard shudder of his whole body.

That's — smaller than I remembered it being.

"Stay sharp anyway." The crack in the wall widened without sound, no scream this time, no announcement — the stone simply gave, and what came out of it wasn't the half-built thing from before. It had a shape now. A real one.

Two arms, two legs, a head set on shoulders too broad and too even to be an accident, violet light running under skin the color of old bruising instead of leaking out through open seams, and for the first time since the chamber, it didn't look like something assembling itself out of borrowed matter. It looked like it had decided, finally, what it wanted to be.

"That's not a construct anymore," Natalia said, quiet.

"That's a shape it chose." It looked at Mahkir the way a person looks at the one thing in a room worth looking at.

"Cindermaw, Ashclaw, flank it—" Natalia was already moving, but the thing was faster now than anything they'd fought yet, a single stride covering ground that should have taken three, and it went past Cindermaw's opening breath like the fire wasn't even a decision worth making. Xylock caught the first strike meant for Mahkir's back — six arms crossing to take the blow instead of letting it land, rune-lines flaring white-hot along his forearms, and he held. Barely.

Bastian's Coil got underneath the follow-up, tail lashing to knock the thing's balance sideways half a step, buying Mahkir room to get clear.

"Good — that's good, keep him boxed—" Kalsar's voice had gone tight, tracking too many things at once. Anvil came at it from behind. Petra hadn't said anything, hadn't called it, just sent her Kithren in low and silent the way Petra herself did everything, four squat legs driving hard across the chamber floor toward an opening that looked clean, looked like exactly the kind of gap a fight like this needed someone to fill. The thing didn't turn around.

It reached back without looking, closed one hand around Anvil mid-charge, and folded him in half. There was a sound. Ant would spend a long time afterward not thinking about the sound. Petra didn't scream right away. For one full second she just stood there with her weapon still half-raised, like the information hadn't finished arriving yet.

Then it arrived, and the scream that came out of her wasn't a word, wasn't anything shaped like a word, just raw and constant and getting worse, and she went down onto both knees like something had cut the tendons behind them, both hands pressed flat against her own chest as if she could hold whatever had just torn loose in there.

"Petra—" Natalia's voice cracked clean in half.

"Someone get her back—" Nadia was already moving, hauling Petra bodily by the arm toward the passage mouth while Petra fought her without seeming to know she was fighting, still making that sound, and nobody had time to do anything about it because the thing that had killed Anvil was already turning on the rest of them.

It caught Bastian's Coil next — a backhand that sent the serpent-bodied Kithren skidding into the chamber wall hard enough that Bastian shouted his name and didn't get an answer for a full two seconds that felt considerably longer. Xylock took the next strike squarely on both raised forearms and staggered, rune-lines guttering instead of glowing, the drain finally costing him something instead of buying something back.

"They're tiring." Kalsar's voice had gone flat and fast, the voice he used when there was no room left for anything but the assessment.

"Epics are tiring and it knows it." It turned on Mahkir a second time. Mahkir got most of it. Claws caught his shoulder first, a glancing thing that would've been nothing an hour ago, and then the follow-up landed clean and full across his ribs before he could pull back far enough — a hit that folded him sideways and put him down hard against the stone, skidding, a smear of blood following him across the floor. Ant— Small. Winded. Nothing like his voice usually sounded.

"HP—" Twenty. Low twenty. I'm — I'm still here. HP: 20/95. The thing raised its hand for the finish, and there wasn't time for the careful math Ant would have run on a calmer day — no time to weigh mana against distance, no time to decide anything at all. He drew Soul Render, the rune along its fuller lighting gold before the blade had cleared its sheath, and the rest came with it — reflex now, not decision, four years of drilling collapsed into a single motion he didn't have to think through.

[Overload — Magic halved (38→19), +19 Strength (50→69). Duration: 1: 00.] [Speed Enhance — Agility +50% (59→89). Cost: 30 mana. Duration: 1: 00.] [666 Roulette — Outcome: -5% to all attributes. Cost: 30 mana. Duration: 3: 00.]"Of course it does." It came out flat, more curse than sentence, teeth together. No time to be picky about the dice — the numbers settled anyway, Strength 66, Agility 85, Magic 18, Endurance 54, worse than he'd hoped and still more than he'd started with.

He reached for the bond on reflex, the way he had at the mouth of the passage. [Attribute Sharing — Unavailable. Still cooling down.] Right. Already spent. He didn't have Mahkir's strength to lean on this time, only his own, buffed and short-fused as it was. [Flame Fist.] Fire ran the length of the blade and Ant swung, and the arc that came off it caught the thing square in the chest and threw it half a step back from Mahkir, flame biting a line through skin the color of old bruising that didn't close the way the earlier wounds had closed. He swung again before it could recover, and again, and again, each arc costing him a scrape of mana he wasn't counting anymore, each one landing somewhere that made the thing's shape waver at the edges like heat off a road in summer.

"Keep going—" Kalsar, somewhere behind him, hoarse. He kept going. The thing gave ground — actual ground, stumbling back toward the crack it had come out of, smoking in four separate places, and for three, four, five shots it looked like it might simply come apart the way the smaller ones had. Then his mana hit zero and the rune along Soul Render's fuller went dark mid-swing. The thing straightened.

Whatever it had lost, it had lost enough to matter — a leg dragging, one arm hanging wrong at the shoulder — but it was still standing, and it turned toward the remaining Rares and toward Mahkir, still down on the stone behind him, and Ant had nothing left to put between it and either. Six strikes hit it from the side before it finished turning. Not four. Not five.

Six, in the same half-second, from six different angles, and the thing went sideways into the chamber wall hard enough that the impact cracked stone that hadn't cracked for anything else all day.

"Miss us?" Rebekah's voice, bright and entirely too pleased with itself for the room it was walking into, bow already drawn, Lem a shifting smear of color at her heel.

"Of course they did," Ray said, grinning like the last thirty seconds hadn't happened at all, already moving past Ant toward the fight with Striata loping ahead of him.

"Our timing's downright providential." Behind them, eight more came pouring through the passage mouth, and eight more Kithren with them.