“Get behind me!” Eliska called over her shoulder.

The Watchmen all drew their weapons. Anríq didn’t move—not yet.

“What is it?” Yvan asked.

“The river….” Wesh husked. “The river broke.”

Yvan snapped around to glare at him. “Is it coming this way?”

“It’s coming every way.” Pure adrenaline made Eliska spring forward. “Here it comes!”

She leapt in front of the Watchmen and braced herself. She still didn’t see anything—not in the landscape.

The cold inside her built to the breaking point. It ate away at her guts and sapped her courage.

Anríq materialized at her side, pulled his axe off his back, gripped it in his left hand, and unhooked his club with his right hand.

He tossed both weapons into the air and switched them—the axe to his right hand and his club to his left hand.

He stepped his left foot back and flexed his knees to fight whatever was coming from that direction.

She didn’t know what to expect when it got here, but right at that moment, another image flashed into her mind.

Enormous black Darklings stormed the landscape. Her vision overlaid towns and even massive cities in the Darklings’ path.

The Darklings stomped them into the ground, snatched people off their feet, and devoured them in big, greedy mouthfuls.

“Oh, no!” she breathed.

Anríq glanced at her, but her vision evaporated just as fast.

Her mind cleared in time for her to see a dark shadow covering the distant horizon. It only started as a dim outline without shape or substance, but it didn’t stay that way.

The Dark rushed the party. As it got nearer, she saw that it was actually a vast network of rapidly forking spikes jerking, stabbing, and fracturing the landscape in front of the forward edge of the wave.

She barely had time to yell, “LOOK OUT!!” before the wave struck the party.

She thrust the long edge of her staff at the wave and ejected all her power into it, but nothing could hold back such a force.

It would overpower her easily and then it would sweep away the whole Watch.

She shifted her power instantly and created a barrier between the Watch and the river. It built to a colossal tide of black sweeping the landscape away under its forward edge.

The wave smashed into her barrier and curved it backward. The Dark river’s sheer power bombarding her field curved it backward into a dish surrounding the Watchmen.

She yelled out in fear and rage channeling all her magic into holding that field, but she couldn’t hold it forever. She already felt herself slipping.

She caught movement out of the corner of her eye and spotted Anríq standing next to her.

He held his axe in exactly the same position in front of him. The Darkness pounded his axe and a matching curved magical barrier radiated outward from the spot.

Wesh stood on Anríq’s other side. Yvan, Omer, Vidal, and Barsali took shelter behind Anríq, but not even all three wizards working together could hold back the flood.

Yann rushed up behind Eliska, slammed into her back from behind, and he, Rien, Neils, and Niyazi braced themselves behind her to hold her in place.

None of the Watchmen could help the three wizards. The Darkness penetrated their protective field and invaded the bubble of safety behind them.

The Darkness kept splitting, forking, and spreading through the air. It worked its way behind the three wizards and laced its many branching fingers toward the Watchmen.

The Watchmen turned outward to slash and hack their weapons at the Dark fibers creeping in on them. Eliska couldn’t slacken her posture for an instant—not without the river’s full power completely obliterating all of them.

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She bellowed again—in frustration this time. She already felt her arms beginning to weaken.

Anríq roared in fury next to her, and without warning, he raised his club and brought it down with a catastrophic blow on the ground at his feet—at the spot between himself and Eliska.

The ground fractured and caved in. All the Watchmen out as the earth crumbled and sent them all pitching through the breach into the Layer below.

Eliska floundered to right herself and see where she was. The instant the group broke through, they landed in another landscape—this one packed to the skies with massive Darklings.

They couldn’t have been waiting for the party. The Darklings couldn’t have known Anríq would shatter the Ancestral Empire or that the group would fall through to this Layer.

The Darklings must have been here already. All the Watchmen landed on top of the Darklings and then bounced off before hitting the ground.

The landscape itself didn’t appear to have any features Eliska could recognize. All the Darklings stood on a wide flat surface stretching away in all directions.

Some kind of red light shone from everywhere at once. It gave both the land and the Darklings a reddish glow.

They bellowed and gnashed their teeth when the Watch landed in their midst. Then all the Darklings turned on the Watch and moved in to attack.

Eliska reacted on pure instinct and fired a lightning bolt from the end of her staff. She had to get rid of as many of these Darklings as possible.

She swiped the lightning sideways and carved a swath of destruction through the Darklings surrounding her. The Watchmen moved into position around her and grasped their weapons to fight for their lives.

Anríq raised his club again and brought it down with another bone-crushing smash on the ground at his feet, but he didn’t shatter the Layer this time.

His club set off a magical shockwave through the soil and it started to rumble. It quaked so badly that the Darklings lost their balance—and then the soil erupted out of position.

It jutted upward and started to grow into a hill. Spikes of granite erupted out of the landscape, joined together, and kept rising into a mountain.

The Watchmen got caught on its rapidly growing sides. Vidal almost pitched off into a Darkling’s mouth. Neils grabbed him and held him on as the mountain lifted the Watchmen out of the Darkling’s reach.

Eliska scrambled to find a stable position on the sharp granite clefts. She couldn’t see the other Watchmen as the mountain kept booming out of the landscape until it towered high over the Darklings.

They roared and jumped trying to catch the Watchmen, but Anríq’s spire kept growing…and growing….. Would it ever stop?

Eliska tried to see what he was doing or where the mountaintop would take the Watch.

Her throat went dry when she saw Anríq standing on a ledge above her. He had hung his axe over his shoulder again and raised his club with both hands.

“NO!!” she yelled, but he didn’t listen.

He pounded it down on the mountain with unbelievable power. His magic discharged with the force of his own strength and the mountain exploded in a cloud of rock shards.

All the Watchmen screamed and so did Eliska. Wesh, the Watchmen, Eliska, and Anríq spun off into space along with massive granite blocks and slabs flying in all directions.

The landscape exploded along with the mountain and the Darklings got thrown, too.

The Darklings tried to snatch anyone who came near them. Eliska revolved in space with no idea of which way was up. She had to keep twisting one way and then the other to fight off Darklings.

They kept falling away and getting replaced by others falling close to her. She couldn’t tell which direction was up or if there even was any up in this place.

She had to stay guard at all times for Darklings while she studied her surroundings for some sign of where she could take the Watch to safety.

They appeared to be falling through another vapor Layer—but they didn’t fall down. They all just floated in no particular direction.

The Darklings floated in no particular direction, too. They acted as confused about this as the Watchmen. The Darklings only sometimes remembered to attack someone when they got near enough.

“Where are we?!” Yvan yelled from a dozen yards away.

“Hold on!” Eliska called. “I’ll try to find us another Island. Just…..”

A deafening smash interrupted her. Everyone turned around to see Anríq fighting a Darkling with his axe.

The Darkling floated close enough to wrap its tentacles around Anríq’s arms and legs. It tried to yank his limbs aside so it could attack his body.

He swung his axe with almighty force and hacked one of the dual blades into the creature’s body right next to its neck.

The Darkling bellowed in a voice of thunder and attracted all the other Darklings’ attention.

They spun around to face Anríq. Then they tried to swim in his direction to help subdue him.

He took one hand off his axe and tried to grab the blade from his belt, but right then, the Darkling in front of him lashed another tentacle around his neck.

“Hold on, Anríq!” Eliska yelled and fired her staff across the expanse.

She severed the tentacle from his neck, but the two attacks only infuriated the remaining Darklings.

Some of them were close enough to put her in danger and they came after her instead.

Yann yelled out, “Eliska!” but he was too far away to help her. They all were.

She saw the situation disintegrating before her eyes. Without thinking about it first, she spun her staff in a complete circle and stabbed the end of it into her own palm.

She set off an ear-splitting explosion that shattered the Layer. Gravity caught everyone and yanked them down, including the Darklings.

She plummeted through space and broke into another Layer full of razor shards flying through punishing wind. She couldn’t stay here, so she shattered that Layer, too.

The group plummeted down, down, down through three more Layers, each one more dangerous than the last.

She got completely disoriented and forgot all about checking to see if she could find an Island for the group to take refuge.

End of Chapter 27.

The party fell through a burning sheet of fire and landed on the steep, grassy slope of some mountain.