We thunder from the cave, though the thunder of our tread is but a whisper compared to the multi-layered roar of screeches, thuds and crunches we are charging toward. My fear vanishes as battle-focus takes over my mind and my every sense becomes alert; I pick up on every detail of what’s in my field of view and hearing.

The white jelly has already had its fill of this part of the cavern, so we are sprinting across bare rock—it has even devoured the soil. I’m at the wrong side of the formation to be able to see our quarry, but I can see what it’s done. The broken forms of predators, strangled until their necks snapped or crushed around the body, litter the stone. Some have been flung against the wall to leave great splatters like the remains of gigantic squashed flies.

Not all have met failure; I see a cluster of bzathletics curled around each other in a semi-stupor, pincers extended for defense but otherwise dozing after having satiated themselves. Bright runic light illuminates a squadron of biting beetles far above that buzz almost lazily slowly, full bellies weighing them down.

Cathez shouts something; our charge slows. Contact with some less-satiated predator. I see the blur of bladed arms rising and cutting down, yet the dithyok must be losing for we’re still moving forward; we speed up again; it stood no chance against half a dozen second and third degree runeknights for whom retreat is no option.

A biting beetle the size of my head dive-bombs me; I skewer it and the dwarves behind me cheer. Half a dozen more come, one of which swerves through the waving spears to latch on to a dwarf’s head. Its mandibles close around his helmet; he shouts in panic as it begins to cleave through, then a mace-blow turns it into paste. The assaults are relentless—a chitin-bat with a twenty-foot wingspan swoops toward us. Heartseeker jabs for its chest but it’s too fast for me and I only manage to gash a taloned foot.

With its other foot it grabs hold of someone’s shield and rips them from the ground. I watch it carry him up into the darkness before repeated stabs to the chest finally persuade it to let go. He plummets out of my field of vision.

“Those don’t have hearts!” someone yells. “Stab for their heads!”

Another one, smaller but faster, swoops for us. I lash out and am again a fraction too late—Heartseeker pierces its neck. A few other spears rend bleeding holes in its chitin-plated belly and it retreats.

The column comes to an abrupt halt. I hear a scream, then yells of fury. We start moving again, crush the remains of another gigantic dithyok into paste beneath our boots, and part like a river around a stone so not to step on one of our fallen comrades. His mace of light is shining like the full moon reflected in a lake of blood.

The attacks continue. Not half a minute goes by without some predator trying its luck at us. Bzathletics skitter at us and try to wrench our weapons away with their pincers. Chitin-bats attempt to carry us away. Dithyoks lunge at us. It is a battle as vicious as any I’ve experienced.

Yet, shockingly, a less deadly one. Cathez’s plan is working far better than I was expecting—he’s not a commander for nothing. By the time the attacks begin to die off, the predators realizing we’re more trouble than we’re worth, we have suffered only five casualties. Many more injuries and wrecked pieces of armor too, as per the usual battlefield equations, but all the same, the sense of impending certain death that’s been hanging over me the whole journey is starting to fade.

We maneuver around the remains of a dead whipper beast that’s toppled onto its side, spilling the contents of its back-maw to make a great scar in the stone. It feels like a good omen.

“Nearly at the target!” Cathez bellows, only just audible over the screeching of the beasts tearing at the white jelly. “Stay vigilant!”

The formation turns. The white jelly is still completely obscured from my view, but I can make out a dim yellow glow ahead, almost the exact same color as the almergris I’ve seen in locked glass boxes in the storerooms.

The predators resume their assaults. Those already at the beast’s rear don’t want to give up their advantageous position. Two blood-crazed dithyoks charge our flank, slashing as they rush for me. A forest of spears stabs out to meet them. One goes down immediately, but the bigger of the pair pushes through, uncaring of the three spears penetrating right through its torso. It slashes down at Notok beside me, cleaving his shield near in two with a metallic bang that deafens my left ear.

I struggle to tear out Heartseeker. My gripping boots give me the leverage I need to wrench my weapon halfway out, and then the back of the blade catches on one of the monster’s front armor plates.

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It slashes at Notok again, knocking his broken shield out his grasp. With its other pair of limbs it cuts at Fjalar.

He rolls out of formation under the blow, stabs up through the monster’s groin in one smooth movement. Ichor sprays from the dithyok’s mouth and it falls backward, pulling me and the other dwarves whose spears are stuck in its torso with it.

I wrench Heartseeker out just in time to defend against a screeching chitin-bat, hurry back into formation before our onward-charging column leaves me behind.

“Quarry in range!” bellows Cathez. “Squads, to your positions!”

“Four, with me!” Barock shouts, and we make to form up.

A beast that looks like a cross between a frog and a spider lands half dead in our midst and is quickly dispatched by stomping boots.

“Forward to the left side!”

We hurry through pools of ichor and stumps of stalagmites. Two dozen biting beetles buzz over our heads. I track them with my eyes; they land on the white jelly and start to tear into its already tattered flesh.

My eyes widen as I realize the scale of the beast we’ve come to hunt. Before us is a wall of glistening milk-pale flesh, covered in tendrils that flail and grasp at the frenzied beasts biting chunks out of it. Three press together and congeal into a kind of club to batter at a dithyok.

I turn back to face the front. I’m dreadfully glad I'm not in one of the slaying squads.

“Halt!” orders Barock, and we halt.

The two rearguard and two flank squads are arranged in a semicircle around the two slaying squads. This creates a shield protecting Cathez and the other elites while they pierce and pulverize their way into the white jelly’s flesh. It’s not a perfect defense—the flanking squads are leaving a twenty foot gap between us and the jelly—but no defense ever is.

“Spears out! Don’t let anything break through!”

Heartseeker is already angled out, trained on a massive dithyok observing us eyelessly. It scrapes its blade-arms against each other. I brace, expecting it to charge, but it remains motionless.

“Squad one, this is it!” I hear Cathez bellow, and his squad roars in assent.

I hear wet thuds and shouts of battle-frenzy, yet I dare not take my eyes off the dithyok in front. It’s a truly massive specimen, or, as I think I hear Fjalar mutter:

“Big fucker, isn’t she?”

There’s a frenzy of motion from the rearguard squad beside us, then stillness and shouts of triumph.

“Threat eliminated!”

A chitin-bat hovering some way over us decides to flap away. There is a lull in the attacks. I take a deep breath and remind myself that this is the climax, the end, and we will be marching back to safety soon.

“Squad two!” Barock shouts. “How are they progressing?”

“It’s coming apart!” comes the happy reply. “This is going in our favor: it’s badly weakened. Tired.”

“Just as planned, huh?” someone laughs.

I glance back at squad one to make sure the happy news isn’t some kind of auditory hallucination. It’s not. With two-handed strikes of terrible force, Cathez and the other mace-wielders of squad one are turning the white jelly’s flesh into sticky pulp, while those with spears jab holes in lashing tentacles with speed I’m unsure I can equal. One tentacle wraps around the shaft of a spear; a draw-cut by his comrade beside him severs it and it slaps down onto the stone, twitching slightly.

I turn back to the dithyok. It’s still watching us, twitching its limbs, waiting for the crucial opportunity.

A shockwave of sound from the other side of the cavern shakes us.

“Did you just see that!” someone cries from the other side of the formation.

“What was it?” shouts the leader of squad two.

“Just raised a... quarter, fifth, of its damn body up,” answers a different voice. “Slammed it down.”

“It did that before!” someone in my squad shouts. “Shit, what if it goes for us?”

“Trust in your armor!” Barock orders.

My sense of dread and overwhelming bitterness returns. Trust in our armor? Against how many tons crashing down on us? Maybe he thinks the softness of the jelly’s flesh will reduce the impact of the blow somewhat.

Another shockwave batters us, louder and closer this time. We wince. Surely it won’t be long before the jelly decides to take decisive action against us.

"They're into its flesh!" shouts the leader of squad two. "Nearly at the almergris!"

Out the corner of my eye, I see part of the white wall, maybe two hundred yards away, rise up and crash down like a wave. We don’t hear any sound this time, just feel the shockwave. Half of us are thrown from our feet.

For a few moments I can hear nothing. The dithyok shifts backward—is this what it’s waiting for? For the jelly to turn us into paste that it can scrape up and cram into its maw?

“Defensive squads, away from it!” orders the leader of squad two. “I think it’s coming up for another blow!”

I glance back and see the wall of flesh rippling, flowing back, pulling up.

“Shit!” someone screams.

“Run forward!” Barock screams. “Charge away from it!”

The stone buckles underneath me. I fall to my knees, get up just in time to see cracks shooting up the cavern wall opposite us.