Leo’s weight on Trenton’s shoulder was negligible, but the lack of an arm was intimidating. One handing his great hammer wasn’t easy, its size and weight burdensome. And the creatures on the wall, whatever they were, were only growing more audacious. He was running out of time. Willing his magic into his hammer, he flayed the excess stone from the center mass, turning it into a dense, but still mobile warhammer. “Kiva, Karfice, watch the sides! Garrote we take the roof!”
Without waiting for a reply, Trenton leapt onto the railing of the elevator, boosting himself onto the roof where several large mole creatures were already sitting, gnashing their oversized teeth and claws against the roof of the cart. They were creatures unlike anything Trenton had ever seen before, sizable stout monsters with hefty shoulders and arms, their lower body’s stunted, almost malnourished looking, their claws easily a foot long or longer and curved to a point. They dragged themselves forward with astonishing speed, their skimpy legs scraping against the ground in their haste. Even though they didn’t have eyes, or any other form of visual stimuli, they were shockingly accurate, some other organ making up for the darkness of the deep mines.
The elevator swayed violently from side to side, Trenton barely managing to keep his balance as the moles continued to shred through the thick metal exterior of their only ride down into the mine. Trenton hoisted himself forward, working uphill towards the moles, bashing their heads in with his hammer and feet, and using their corpses as makeshift weapons to launch at fresh waves of moles jumping onto the cart from every side.
“Where are they coming from!?” Garrote cried, scrambling onto the roof next to Trenton, fortifying next to the thick steel cord attached to the center of the roof.
If they cut that cord then the entire elevator would go down, the one guarantee to end all of their lives, and they knew that. Even as many of the moles dug through the roof, escaping into the lower floor of the cart, many surged over each other towards the wire, brandishing their claws as they scrambled towards it.
“The walls. They have to be coming from the walls,” Trenton whipped around, ducking a slash from a mole at his side, bashing the front of its face with his hammer, which also succeeded in taking a couple other moles down as it tumbled off the side of the cart. “I’ve got an idea, two actually. But I don’t think you’re going to like them.”
“I’m all ears,” Garrote said, lifting the unsecured moles into the air, even dragging several out of their little holes, their little stubby bodies only partially through. They screeched as he rose them into the air, flaying desperately against the invisible restraints, the torn steel of the cart ripping through some of them as they were dredged from their holes, pulling out their innards like a spray of confetti. Then, when 30 or so moles hung loose in the air, Garrote dropped them down again, breaking their fat brown bodies against those of their brethren. “But you’re going to have to make it quick,” Garrote sidestepped a gaggle of particularly rowdy moles charging the center, using his gravity to press them against the ground, turning their group into a mushy pile of paste which he scattered outwards in every direction, coating the top of the elevator in their foul, black and red viscera. Several more of the moles, now drenched in their brothers, slipped trying to trudge up the ever changing slope of the roof, toppling off.
However, using the new bloody cover to their advantage, a handful of moles managed to slip past Trenton, slashing through his side to get to the thread holding them up. Trenton took a step back, shaping the hammer into a little dagger to deal some more precise damage, driving it dozens of times into the little moles bodies as fast as he could, prying them away from the now damaged, life saving thread the moment they were dead. But just as he retook his position, collecting his thoughts and formulating a plan, several moles jumped on Trenton’s legs, dragging him back down the slippery slope of the roof, their claws sunk deep into his legs. Trenton kicked wildly at them, dropping his weapon and desperately reaching out for the chain, using it to hold himself to the center. He bashed against their skulls again and again in his panic, blowing right past whatever meek defense they were able to offer. Slowly the moles’ grasps loosened, their corpses slipping back, replaced immediately by new ones. Trenton staggered back to his feet, readying himself.
“If we can destabilize the walls, they won’t be able to approach so fast. Can you pull some of the stone out of the wall below us?” Trenton asked.
“I’m not nearly precise enough to pull a trick like that off. It wouldn’t work,” Garrote said, eyeing the blackness all around them. They couldn’t see the walls of the tunnel they were descending, their lights nowhere near bright enough to illuminate the space. From their perspective, moles were just materializing from the darkness, leaping onto the cart from empty nothingness.
“Okay, nix the precision. Just give me a boulder to use, twice the elevator’s size.”
“You want me to rip a boulder out of the wall and launch it at us!?”
“Yes. Can you do it?”
“Of course I can do it. Cover me, this is going to be heavy.”
Trenton spun around Garrote’s side, slamming his foot into the ground to destabilize the elevator even further, buying just enough time for Garrote to crouch to the ground, arm raised high into the air, his whole body straining against some invisible force. Trenton couldn’t hear very well with the air bubble, but he sure as hell could hear this. The shredding of stone against stone as the stone rended itself from the wall somewhere above them, and the screeching whistle of air as the boulder fell straight down towards them, breaching the darkness like a warship would the fog. It was absolutely massive, far larger than Trenton had asked for without question. It seems in his haste, Garrote had forgone careful measurement, instead just pulling out as much stone as he possibly could.
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To Trenton, it looked like the sky collapsing in on them, an endless brown mountain stretching forever in every direction, but he knew that wasn’t true. It was just his mind playing tricks on him. The darkness covered the corners of the boulder. It was big, and that was all.
Garrote slumped down onto the ground beneath Trenton, his face pale and his eyes listless, muscles spasming randomly. He wasn’t quite down for the count, but he was close, the exertion far beyond any magic he’d cast before. Now or never. Do or die. That’s what he needed to remember. They were counting on him. This wasn’t the time to back down.
Trenton launched himself into the air, slamming into the bottom of the boulder with all the force he could possibly muster before it reached the cart, demanding it yield to him–demanding it obey his will. It was absurd, he knew it was. The way his body crumpled and buckled the moment he made contact with the boulder told him just how in over his head he was, just how pointless his resistance was. The world did not care for the effort he put in. It cared for results, and that was all. No matter how many late nights he spent ripping himself to pieces, straining every last muscle until he couldn’t even move, it didn’t matter if he couldn’t succeed when it mattered most. And now was that time. He couldn’t just give it everything he had. Push beyond, reach into every dark recess of his soul for whatever scraps of power he had left. And for some reason, somewhere deep within himself, Trenton felt it–a response to his desperation. Trenton’s magic bloomed out from his core, piercing the great mass of cold, dead earth down its very deepest depths.
My domain
At once, the boulder reformed, channeling its downward momentum and mass into dozens of thick spires shooting out in every direction, crashing into the walls and exposed surfaces all around them. As Trenton flew back down towards the ground, the crushing weight of the boulder far overwhelming his own strength, he could see just how effective his spell was. The boulder above him had slowed, sliding down the walls on its new pillared supports, tearing out massive chunks of stone as it fell. Below him, the pillars decimated what moles remained, bearing down on them mercilessly as they tried in vain to escape, bashing through mole and steel alike, nearly ripping the cart in two. But after it had settled, albeit peppered with holes and barely holding together, the cart remained, naught left but their group and the smeared bodies of a hundred moles. And because of the shearing force of the boulder against the walls, no new moles were approaching, a handful visibly falling out into the darkness below them.
Trenton shakily rose to his feet, inspecting the damage that had been done over the course of the battle, doing his best to ignore the great mass still looming above them, which stopped and faded away into the darkness above them after another minute or so. It would be a problem when they had to get back out, but for the time being, it had done its job, and it looked like no more moles were willing to challenge them after such a bold feat of strength.
The elevator cart was badly damaged, the steel chord gnawed down to its last threads, only just holding on, the body riddled with holes, and most of the protective layers of steel peeled back to reveal the juicy interior–handfuls of wounded dwarves cowering close to each other. It seemed that while Trenton and Garrote had guarded the top, Kiva, Karfice, and Andree had succeeded in forming a protective shell around the dwarves. When he looked down, Karfice was already dismantling an ice sphere surrounding the dwarves, its sides badly chipped and cracked. Similarly, the outside of the cart had been completely closed off, the only entrance through the top of the cart. That must have been why so many moles were digging through the roof. It was easier than going through Karfice’s ice, and with how quickly he was able to plug holes, they had been fighting an uphill battle to even get close to the dwarves. Not to mention what little damage they had managed to do was meaneal, quickly tended to by Kiva and a handful of other healers. Good, looks like they didn’t lose anyone.
“Take Leo and head down to the bottom. I need to make sure there aren't any stragglers lurking anywhere,” Trenton said to Garrote, carefully Laying Leo onto a clear section of the roof.
Whatever spell Walibeld had cast, it was even able to repel the physical slashes of the moles, defending Leo against all external harm. It was incredible…but also worrying. There was no telling when the spell would break, or what it would do when it broke. And that was assuming that a strong enough attack couldn’t just break through Walibeld’s magic. It was unlikely, but possible. Trenton really wished he could safely keep Leo from harm's way, but setting him down or leaving him behind was even riskier than just lugging him through combat. He had no choice but to soldier onwards and hope for the best, a less than ideal situation.
“Sure,” Garrote said, struggling to his feet to take Leo, dropping through one of the holes in the roof. He looked dazed and weak. He’d need a little bit to rest before they could move anywhere.
“How’s it look up there?” Karfice asked, peering up at Trenton once he was finished kicking his leftover ice off the side of the elevator.
“Bad. The chord is barely attached. I don’t expect we’ll make it much further if we don’t fix it. Could you reinforce it with your ice?” Trenton replied, eying the worryingly thin weave of threads.
“Sure, just give-”
In that instant, Trenton felt something he never had before, not quite the rumble of his geoesthesia, but something deeper, more primal. He didn’t know why he felt it, or what it was, but he could feel the gentle hum of the earth all around himself, like…it was an extension of his very body, his core. He hadn’t noticed at first, but now it was obvious, the beautiful weave of connection within the living stone spreading through the entirety of his being to the very tips of his fingers. It was warm, almost pleasant. He felt alive. But it was also short lived. For while he could now feel the earth, he also was the earth, its pain the same as his.
It felt like something was ripping him apart from the inside out just behind him, tearing through his stone without remorse. His intuition had been right, the fight wasn’t over. But something still felt off. An enemy was approaching–fast–and he had absolutely no way of telling who or what it was, but something just wasn’t sitting right in his mind, a strange sense of foreboding, heavy in his chest.
It was confusing, messy, another unanswered question in the pile, but he was without the time to understand. So, not daring to waste even the tiniest fraction of a second to weigh the consequences, Trenton simply made a decision. He broke the chord.