Yann felt the moment when Eliska released her grip on his glaive. He pulled it back toward himself while he fell through the Layer into a world of chaos and danger.

  Gargantuan Darklings towered over an empty landscape. From what Yann could tell, the Darklings were the only things in this Layer.

  These Darklings grew to a colossal size. They wouldn’t have fit in any other Layer without shattering it.

  They stood on some kind of plain, flat, featureless floor with no mountains, hills, rivers, or any other landscape features.

  They might have been in an enormous room with bare walls—except that Yann couldn’t see any walls at all. He couldn’t see anything confining these Darklings here.

  Light shone from all sides and cast everything in an orange tint. The Darklings bellowed in fury, gaped their massive jaws with huge teeth, and dozens of giant tentacles slashed from each Darkling.

  Magic rippled and sparked on their skin, shimmered down their tentacles, and the Darklings let off blasts of magic from the end of every tentacle.

  One man stood alone in the center of all that madness. Barsali looked tiny down there on the floor with the Darklings towering over him.

  Five of them surrounded him, lashed their tentacles at him, fired magical explosions at him, and smashed their enormous feet on the floor all around him. Only a miracle kept him alive this long.

  All the Darklings reared away bellowing in rage when the stone from the tower floor fell on their heads. The Watch fell through, too, and dropped right in front of all those Darklings’ faces.

  Yann twisted away to turn his glaive at the Darklings’ eyes. He stabbed into one of them and his glaive stuck.

  He used the shaft to propel himself up onto the Darkling’s head where the creature couldn’t bite him.

  He yanked his glaive free, but standing up here didn’t stop the Darkling from slashing its tentacles at him.

  Two of them whistled past his head and made him duck for cover. These tentacles must have been two feet thick. They could crush him in seconds, but the magic forking off them put him in more danger.

  The tentacles looped around, aimed their ends at him, and fired from a distance. He couldn’t defend himself against them.

  He dove and rolled away from the first assault, but that only took him farther away from the Darkling’s head. He wouldn’t be able to kill the thing from here.

  He wouldn’t be able to kill a monster this big anyway—not without magic. He looked around for Anríq and Eliska.

  Anríq fell past a different Darkling. His magic buoyed him in front of its face for a split second—just long enough for it to open its mouth and lunge in to chomp him in half.

  He wound back his club and dealt it a brutal smash across the face. An explosion went off from his club and the Darkling staggered.

  He hurtled at it and brought down his battle axe into the creature’s forehead. Another ear-splitting boom echoed from the strike and the Darkling buckled to the floor.

  Anríq vaulted on top of the creature’s head just as one of its tentacles whipped around to plaster him. He jumped free, grabbed the tentacle, and let it carry him back up to the breach in the ceiling.

  He let go at the highest point of his arc, somersaulted, dropped onto another Darkling’s head, brought his club down on the creature’s skull, and rode the body to the floor.

  Eliska stretched Anríq’s blade in front of her, narrowed her eyes to slits, and plunged for a different Darkling. She tucked her chin against her chest, braced her whole body, and used all her momentum to drive the blade into the Darkling’s neck.

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  That stab wound on its own wouldn’t have killed the creature, but at the point of impact, she drove the blade in to the hilt and fired her magic through the blade.

  A brilliant spray of light ejected from the blade and drove the two sides of the wound farther apart. Eliska’s weight fell against the handle and her magic followed the slice all the way down the creature’s neck.

  She landed on the floor where all the Watchmen surrounded Barsali. She charged over to them.

  Eliska called over her shoulder and then yelled up at Yann and Anríq. “Get ready to break through to another Layer! Come on! We got Barsali! We’re getting out of here!”

  Yann tried to see a way to get down from on top of this Darkling. He didn’t kill it with his last attack. Its body lay on the floor, but it kept sending its tentacles around to swipe at him and shoot magical blasts at him.

  Anríq’s club kept thumping in the distance. Yann didn’t have time to see what Anríq was doing over there, but it sounded serious.

  Yann took a page out of Eliska’s book. The next time one of those tentacles came after him, he launched himself into space, flew toward the tentacle about to shoot him, and nailed his glaive blade into it full force.

  He jammed the blade in, but he didn’t try to take it out or cut the tentacle. He just held on for dear life while the tentacle cracked away at high speed and took him with it.

  The tentacle pitched him into the air and across the Layer. He yanked his glaive loose and sailed free over the head of the first Darkling Anríq killed.

  Yann landed on top of the Darkling and ran down its back to the floor. Then he had to run around the body to rejoin the rest of the Watch.

  The Watchmen surrounded Barsali, but they all had to fight their hardest to hold all the tentacles at bay. More Darklings moved in to take the place of those the party neutralized in its first surprise attack.

  Yann dashed into the group and wheeled backward between Vidal and Rien. Yann aimed his glaive outward at the Darklings stalking closer.

  Tentacles snaked and crackled all around his head. He stabbed any of them that came too close, but the Darklings figured out all too soon that they didn’t have to come any closer.

  They fired their magical bursts from farther out of range where the Watchmen couldn’t hit them.

  Anríq kept vaulting from Darkling to Darkling pulverizing them with his club. He brought them to the ground, but not fast enough to save the Watchmen from more Darklings closing from all sides.

  Eliska skidded around a Darkling thirty yards across the floor. Yann was too busy keeping himself and his fellow Watchmen alive to see what she was doing until she got closer.

  She ran down the Darkling’s side and slashed her blade across its flank. Magic erupted from the weapon and carved a line down its skin.

  An explosion went off and she somersaulted away from that Darkling before she burst into a dead run for the Watchmen. Yann really hoped she planned to shatter this Layer as soon as she got here.

  Her eyes narrowed as she got nearer, but at that moment, an almighty explosion went off behind Yann’s back.

  One of the Darklings must have hit the Watch with its magic. The concussion hurled Yann off his feet and sent him flying away.

  He landed hard near a different Darkling’s foot. He scrambled to get out of the way before it stepped on him and then Anríq brought the creature to the ground with brutal force.

  The impact quaked the floor. Yann ran for it to get clear before the creature’s body crushed him. Anríq was already jumping to the next Darkling in line.

  Without warning, a tentacle zinged out of nowhere and nailed Yann across the back. It sent him sprawling across the floor and stars exploded in his eyes.

  He rolled onto his stomach and pushed himself up in time to see Omer, Barsali, Neils, and Niyazi still standing in the same place. They formed a circle with their weapons pointed outward.

  Rien and Vidal lay unconscious where they fell. Yann didn’t see his father anywhere.

  Darklings surrounded the party. The four Watchmen had to fight with everything they had, but more Darklings gathered from all over. One more blast would finish them all.

  Yann burst into a run only to get flattened by another tentacle. He landed hard on his stomach trying to catch his breath.

  In that moment, Eliska plummeted from somewhere high above. She landed right in the center of the group of Watchmen and raised her machete on high. Her whole body braced to drive it into the floor to break them through to another Layer.

  The next instant, a different tentacle whipped out of nowhere and slammed her hard from the side. The blow sent her cartwheeling through the air and she crashed full force into a completely different Darkling.

  She pitched across the floor, but not even that blow could knock her out. She started to pick herself up.

  Right then, another discharge erupted from one of the many tentacles slashing around. The shot forked across the Layer and hit Barsali in the head.

  Eliska launched herself to her feet, roaring, “NO!!” but it was too late.

  The shot sailed past Barsali and hit Omer in the back. It took him down instantly, and at the same moment, the Darkling nearest to Eliska bellowed, reared upright, and stomped down on top of her with all its might.

  Yann froze staring at the whole horrible scene. This couldn’t be happening right in front of him.

  Before he could think to move, before any of the Watch even fully realized what just happened, Anríq slammed down on the floor from way up there.

  His weight thumped through the floor and he smashed his club down with all his enormous strength. The Layer collapsed and everyone fell through.

  End of Chapter 23.

  ? 2024 by Theo Mann

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