No telling exactly how many wretchlings were flooding after that first wave. Double their number, I thought, before reappraising it at triple. After that I saw too many more to possibly quantify in multiples of the first ambush. There was a whole army of them. Literally, an army. In fact if it were armoured orcs I’d have been worried about them threatening Arvharest all over again.

  Except it wasn’t Arvharest they had their eyes on, it was us. And we had neither walls, nor a cannon. Just a single mad Thaumaturge who was now shrieking at us to run with so high pitched a voice that I feared my ears might bleed upon hearing it.

  Despite being a mile underground, I felt wind in my face as I sprinted through the stagnant air. My booted heels were scraping on stone as all the armour of my body rattled and squeaked, most of my allies were somewhat quieter. Il’vanja made no sound at all as she bounded along, seeming to glide an inch above the stone floor with a body completely devoid of weight.

  Gruin was the opposite. He was already bizarre in his weight, with the added steel plates bolted around him every fall of his running feet sounded like someone was taking a pickaxe to the stone. He was also the slowest of us at first, but soon that distinction belonged to Vara. I sensed Thaumaturgical forces at her back, gently shoving her along, but there were limits to how much she could help herself with magic and not just end up toppling over.

  Those limits were too strict for this flight, we couldn’t afford a single weak link as we ran. I resolved the issue by hauling her onto my back and accelerating along myself. Even with chainmail, she barely seemed to weigh a thing.

  Besides, having my own neck on the wretchlings’ chopping block was one hell of an incentive.

  We turned a corner and the halls ahead of us opened up into a vast chamber, so big I wondered if it was an entire mountain hollowed out. Pillars reached as high as its ceiling, each one wider than most buildings, all stone. The entire place was flooded with wretchlings, and they were swarming right for us.

  “This way!” Morlo barked, not explaining how he’d picked and not giving anyone time to ask. We wouldn’t have, anyway, all of us needed every scrap of air in our lungs to run.

  He led us down into another chamber, a smaller one fortunately. There was a great set of wooden doors which Morlo forced shut with a gesture, then pinned shut by collapsing a pair of statues lining them to act as a blockade. It was nicely done, I thought. Effective and conservative for his energy.

  It wouldn’t last long. Not against those numbers.

  “Arvharest idiots, look for a way out. Not you Cedwin, I want you on the door. Grynkori and Kyvaine, wait alongside it too. You’re our bottleneck once the enemy starts breaking through. But wait for my signal to engage. I’m going to hit them with Thaumaturgy first and I don’t want to paste you by mistake.”

  That’s about as strong an incentive as you can get to keep away from anywhere, so Gruin and I both did as we were instructed. We waited. Impacts sounded on the door, dozens, hundreds, all hitting in rapid succession. They were light things and I could easily picture the tiny limbs and bludgeons making them, but so many that it was hard to believe the door would hold long.

  Then the impacts changed, becoming heavier and slower. I didn’t know why at first and didn’t have chance to figure it out before a hole appeared in the door, a face peering out. Too big for a wretchling, surely. Much too big for an orc.

  Cedwin fired once and the face disappeared, blood spurting out to trail after it. It’d already done its damage though, and the hole left in our barricade widened as more impacts racked it. Soon enough there were enough gaps for wretchlings to start squirming through, a flood of bodies like someone had broken open an ant hill.

  Morlo, true to his word, lashed them with a wave of power that I’ve scarcely seen equalled. Flames, colder than his usual preference and diffused to cover every surface at once. The wretchlings screamed as their flesh blistered and blackened, while the thick door remained largely undamaged. But there were more enemies behind them. There’s always more when you’re fighting wretchlings.

  “I have a way out!” someone screamed from behind us, just as the door finally gave and the wretchlings continued shooting in. I threw out a jet of flame, more concentrated than Morlo’s and bright white, that pretty much cut one of them in half and sent another dozen falling back ablaze as it played over them in its wake.

  That bought us maybe two seconds, and we used them carefully. Turned and headed for the Arvharest trainees before quickly finding them at one end of the room, gesturing to a passage that’d gone unseen before firelight started washing about the room and illuminating every nook and cranny. Not one of us hesitated before rushing for it.

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  It took us out of the chamber and into a tunnel. The tunnel was long, maybe a quarter-mile. Those of us with the lowest fitness were panting and wheezing as we finally headed down it, red faces, red eyes, trembling, slouching under the weight of armour and travel-packs and whatever else. At the end we found the stone around us opening out into the biggest cavity yet.

  Surely the ceiling down here was higher than the mountain peaks aboveground. Surely the walls stretched out wider than the mountain range itself. Surely the people who built this could never die, and would live forever.

  Surely the world wasn’t so big that a sight like this one was insignificant.

  Lots of things don’t line up the way our instincts tell us they should, and I had no time to reconcile with that at the moment.

  “The bridge!” Morlo roared, setting an example by starting for it himself, “over the bridge!”

  There was a bridge, a bigger bridge than I’d known was possible and one that ran right across a great pit. One glance over and I wished I’d kept my eyes front. It must’ve been a mile-long drop down below. Or at least a mile until the hum of Grynkori lighting became too weak for me to see any farther down.

  We were a good half-mile from it still, and slowing down more with every step as the less athletic among us stumbled and staggered, struggling to even breathe let alone keep moving at a pace. There’s only so much the fear of death can do to propel a person along.

  Behind us, wretchlings were bursting from the chambers Morlo had left in our wake. More were gathering on the rocks at our sides, and up ahead. An army of them. Ten armies. All swarming, all chattering. I had no idea how such numbers could sustain themselves underground, and less idea how we were going to escape them.

  Then the noise started.

  It was a low, rhythmic pulsing. Not a pounding of impacts on stone, nothing like that. It sounded more like a heartbeat. Like my ear was against the world’s chest, hearing its pulse. Like any minute now I’d be drowning in its blood. And then I felt something wash over me, wash through me. Something I can barely describe even now. A wrongness like reality itself was making a mistake.

  I think the wretchlings must’ve felt it, too, because they began scrambling back in a single, great panic.

  “What is that!?” Vara screamed, still panting, yet so scared so suddenly that her fatigue was barely noticeable.

  Morlo was scared, too. And that was the biggest fright of all.

  “A Demon,” he croaked, staring at the chamber’s exit behind us. “Run. RUN!”

  We fucking ran. Morlo roared and conjured a strong wind at our backs which helped all of us along, then he started spitting more power out to collapse boulders onto the path behind us, some effort at delaying it. Wretchlings rained arrows down from above, though Cedwin managed to persuade a few of them away after he removed one of their heads with one of the most accurate guns I’ve ever seen.

  A rifle, it was called. They’re not so very common even now. Mark my words, they’ll be the default in a few more centuries.

  “I can plug it,” Cedwin growled as we headed for the bridge.

  “No you can’t,” Morlo spat, “this is a thing of—”

  —”of magic, yes, and I’ve plugged plenty of those too.” The gunner whirled and fired a shot from one of his long pistols. I don’t know if it hit home or not, but I do know that the entity pursuing us didn’t so much as scream.

  We came out onto the bridge, and by then the Demon was in full view. Big. And small. It was odd. The thing’s body seemed to have height, width, depth, but I didn’t sense any mass to it, didn’t hear any footfalls or disturbance of air as it moved what ought to have been a great weight on giant legs.

  I can’t really describe how it looked except in vague terms. Two legs, two arms. Maybe. Made of smoke, made of death. The air around it reeked of old blood and decay, and its eyes seemed to be staring at you from whichever bodypart you happened to look at. It wore the darkness like a cloak, shadows dragging in its wake like blankets caught on a hook, and in one fist it clutched a sword longer than a cannon’s barrel and screaming like a man with a gut wound.

  We weren’t fast enough, it was gaining on us. We’d be dead before crossing the bridge.

  “Get over it,” Morlo hissed, “all of you go!”

  “But—” Vara began, then clamped up when someone, who shall go unidentified but whose name rhymes with Myvaine, held a hand over her mouth, dragged her over his shoulder and hauled her away from the Thaumaturge before she could say anything stupid, like ‘don’t sacrifice yourself to save us’. With that distraction taken care of, Morlo turned back to the Demon.

  He strided over to it, robes flowing and beard whipping about as a sudden wind surged through the air and dragged at him. I feared the Thaumaturge might be thrown right off the bridge by that alone, but he wasn’t. Just kept marching for the Demon until they were only ten paces apart, then five.

  “HALT!” Morlo screamed. “STOP!” The Demon, bizarrely, did. “Who do you think I am…” Morlo snarled. “Who do you think you are FUCKING WITH!? I AM MORLO! MORLO THE GREAT! THE TERRIBLE! I am the greatest thaumaturge to ever live, the holder of secrets as ancient as you, of knowledge that would twist this world apart. I am more than the wrinkled flesh you see now, and I am giving you one warning to FUCK OFF!”

  The Demon didn’t change in any way that might have been registered as a smile, or a snarl. But I heard it laugh. I heard it laugh as a wind blowing in from the shores, a wind that I felt somehow even miles underground. It took a step forward. Morlo screamed again.

  “YOU. SHALL. NOT P—” he was cut off as it swung for him, its blade coming down like a star falling atop him. Morlo raised his hands and I felt a wall of pure force condense between them as air compressed to iron density. The bridge shook, the damned cavern seemed to shake, and I even saw the shockwave roll out around them. Morlo stumbled back.

  So did the Demon.

  “YOU. SHALL—” Morlo was interrupted again, a spear this time, thrust for his belly and barely sidestepped.

  “YOU—” the Demon swung a hammer that smashed a chunk from the stone beneath Morlo’s feet. That, it seemed, was it.

  “FUCK IT!” Morlo roared, “GO BACK TO HELL YOU LITTLE RAT CUNT BASTARD!”

  The whole world was engulfed by light.

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