“We can’t hurt him without destroying the army, first!” I shouted, switching targets to the nearest troops. “Take them out as fast as you can.”

“Already on it!” Richard said from behind me, having come to the same conclusion at the same time. It was great having someone so quick on the uptake.

Surprising me, Aerion actually halted her attack, saw that I was now engaging the army instead of the head honcho, and instantly switched targets, joining the fray by my side. Her recent rank up, while not giving her total control over her [Reave] state, did at least allow her to retain more of her awareness than before.

Eskil, on the other hand, ignored me and continued to attack Cyrus, but maybe that was for the best. Now that the jig was up, Cyrus would do everything in his vast power to stop us. Eskil would keep him occupied for now. Once again, I had a sneaking feeling he was aware of that, and was working to cooperate with us without actually admitting to it.

Considering how Eskil was only one of two who did enough damage to get Cyrus to transfer damage to his minions, whaling on the guy was actually a good strategy for him. For the rest of us, we had to prioritize the army if we wanted any shot at winning.

Even so, keeping Cyrus busy was good and all, but then what?

Aerion’s Essence was running dangerously low, and even if it wasn’t, there were still over 4,000 ice soldiers to kill, and most of the ones who'd been dispatched were thanks to Eskil and his sweeping strikes that took out a dozen ice soldiers at once.

How many hours would it take Richard and me, assuming we didn’t gas out or suffer any injuries? Both horrible assumptions, if I was honest.

I lost track of time as I struck, ducked, and blocked strikes, one after another. Richard’s Blessing was truly a blessing here, as he concentrated his powers on the enemies immediately in front of us.

Compromising the enemy’s combat effectiveness both lessened the danger of Aerion and I sustained injuries, while also allowing us to cut through their ranks like butter. Even that wouldn’t last, I knew. Richard had a limit just like anyone else, and while his endurance was good, it wouldn’t last the hours we needed.

I looked up at that dungeon core, hanging ten stories above our heads. If only we could get up there… We could end this at once.

The dungeon, however, seemed hellbent on getting us to defeat Cyrus first.

There was another factor complicating matters, too. One that affected both Richard and me.

These people were real. Actual souls, who’d lived normal lives, and who were condemned to this awful fate against their will.

With every heart crushed, every soldier broken, my hesitation grew. Was this right? Wasn’t I essentially subjecting innocents to torture?

My internal debate was cut short when Aerion’s eyes rolled up and she fell. This time, though, I was there to catch her. I’d been monitoring her falling Essence, and I’d warned Richard well in advance. He expanded [Heart Breaker]’s radius, creating a temporary barrier that allowed me to scoop Aerion up and throw her over my shoulder.

Having done this before, I knew I couldn’t fight and keep Aerion safe at the same time, and I wasn’t nearly arrogant enough to jeopardize her safety for the sake of my inflated ego. As much as I hated to admit it, there was only one among us who could fight effectively while carrying her.

And so, with every instinct in my body warring against me… I called for Eskil.

“Aerion’s down!” I roared, fighting to be heard above the din of combat. “I need you to carry her.”

For the first time ever, Eskil obeyed, seemingly teleporting to my side with how fast he moved.

“Worry not, bus boy,” he said with a smug grin, looking down on me both literally and figuratively as he gently plucked Aerion from my shoulder and hoisted her upon his. “I keep my family safe.”

“She’s not your fucking family, asshole” I muttered, but Eskil was gone before I’d even finished, off to hack at Cyrus. Incidentally, Cyrus hadn’t even budged from his original spot, even when Eskil came over to pick up Aerion. He just… Watched. Unperturbed.

Maybe he thought we had no chance against his army. He was probably right.

Richard’s heart-crushing boundary broke right as I entered the fight. With only two of us, the going was slower. Richard took several nicks from strikes I couldn’t fully block, and I myself took a hit to my shin. Nothing major, but I was reminded of that saying, ‘Death by a thousand cuts’. They didn’t have to score a life-threatening blow. They just had to whittle us down, bit by tiny bit. And once our stamina broke, they’d be all over us.

We continued on like that for a good while, and after two hundred, I lost track of how many soldiers we’d killed. Two hundred was an incredible number, but it was also just a drop in the bucket.

Not only was I injured and tiring out—my strikes had become weak, my footwork sloppy—but Richard wasn’t screening as effectively as he used to, either.

At some point, Eskil had joined the fray some distance away, perhaps growing tired of wailing on an enemy who wouldn’t go down. Or maybe he just saw Richard and me and wanted in on the action. Good. At least our pace would increase.

It took me another minute after that realization to understand that something was horribly wrong. If Eskil was fighting the army… Who was fighting Cyrus?

With a horrible, sinking feeling, I looked back at where Cyrus had been. Where he still was. Watching. Observing. And if I wasn’t wrong… smiling.

With just Richard and me, it made sense why he’d feel that way. But Eskil had already killed in just a few moments more than Richard and I had managed in all this time we’d been fighting. Eskil could conceivably destroy this entire army, and it wouldn’t even take him that much time.

Why would Cyrus just watch that happen? Weren’t these his people? Didn’t he care what happened to them? Why wasn't he attacking?

Unless… Unless we have this all wrong.

“Attacking you deflects the damage to your soldiers. But attacking your soldiers… It helps you somehow. Doesn’t it?”

I said that mostly to myself, but Cyrus’ grin grew wider until he was cackling.

“I must admit,” he said. “Only a handful of delvers have ever guessed the true nature of my ability. Most times, I destroy them before they can find out. But sometimes, when I allow this farce to run its course, they come close. No one has come as close as you, though. Well done. Well done, indeed.”

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Panic crept up my spine. We hadn’t been chipping away at Cyrus’ power at all! We’d just made a bad situation even worse. Dug our grave even deeper. “Eskil! Stop attacking them!” I roared. “Each soldier we kill just makes him stronger!”

Cyrus' maniacal laughter redoubled, until his sounds drowned out all others.

“What do you mean, Greg?” Richard asked, pulling up beside me. “If we can’t attack him, and killing his army makes him stronger, how in god’s name are we supposed to kill him?”

“I wish I knew,” I said, frowning. “I think he’ll be vulnerable if we take out his entire army, but…”

“I reckon he’ll not just stand around watching as we destroy his army, yeah?”

“Right,” I said with pursed lips. “He’ll probably wait until we’ve killed off enough of his army to guarantee his victory, then attack us. This guy is honestly far too overpowered. What kind of enemy was literally invincible?

“Pretty cruel of you, isn’t it?” I said, mostly to buy time to think this through. It didn’t help that both Richard and I had to keep fighting as we worked all this out. “You just said they were real.”

“What does one death matter?” Cyrus replied, the grin slipping from his face. “They will return to fight again. My people are happy to sacrifice themselves for the opportunity to gain respite in a later cycle.”

“Note to self,” I muttered. “Immortal undead ice soldiers do not think on the same lines as normal people.”

It didn’t take a genius to know we needed a new strat, pronto. But what the hell could we do? In a game, the boss would have some weakness we could exploit. But, as these dungeons proved so often, this was no game. There were no easy wins here. It wasn’t designed to be beatable.

Worse—Cyrus had been through this countless times. He’d fought this very same battle against thousands of delvers. He’d seen every tactic in the book, and no doubt had contingencies for each and every one. He was like a player who’d died against the last boss over and over, constantly refining his strategy until it was honed to perfection.

And we were first-timers. Stumbling around in the dark.

If we wanted to win, we’d need something different. Something so harebrained and outside the box that no delver in the past would have even thought to try anything like it.

I looked up at the rapidly rotating core, floating ten stories above us, and an idea came to mind. A harebrained idea. Desperate, and likely to get us all killed.

In other words, exactly what we needed.

I fought my way to Eskil and got his attention.

“I have a plan. Maybe the only plan that’ll get us out of here alive. So please, for Aerion’s sake, just listen to what I have to say.”

“A plan?” Eskil spat. “The thrall has a plan?”

I didn’t know what that word meant, but I had a few guesses. I ground my teeth, wracking my brain to come up with some way of convincing this brute. Should I lean on Richard? Eskil would at least listen to him. But Richard didn’t yet know the plan, and I didn’t have the time to explain it twice. Not when an army was trying to kill us.

“Unless you mean to say you are not merely a porter?” he asked, a sly smirk plastered on his face.

“Isn’t that obvious? I’m her bodyguard. I’m Boonworthy. A warrior just like you!”

Eskil’s smirk only grew wider. “So, just a porter, then.”

A sudden urge to punch this guy in the face overcame me. Then Eskil went and said something none of us could have predicted.

----------------------------------------

“Fuck you, Eskil!” I gored another ice soldier. “Who do you think you are? You can’t just fucking claim her like she’s some trophy. I don’t give a shit if you’re a Champion. I won’t let you get away with this.”

“As I said, porter,” Eskil spat back from his position several yards away. “If you want her, you are welcome to come take her. Once you have killed me in single combat!”

“Fine! Bring it the fuck on!”

“Now, let’s all just cool our heads a moment, shall we?” Richard said, trying—and failing—to diffuse the situation.

That was the thing about time bombs. Tough to stop once they got going. And this one wasn’t going out.

“Is this really the time to be having a spat?” he pleaded. “There’ll be plenty of time for you two to duke it out, later, yeah? Why don’t we all just get along and—”

“For Odin!” Eskil charged me with his ax raised to the sky.

“For Aerion!” I shouted back, rushing him.

And all the while Cyrus watched. Watched, laughed, and clapped, his blue eyes twinkling bright, content to watch us rip ourselves apart. “Very good! Yes! Very good! When I thought I had seen it all… This? This is new!”

I couldn’t care less what he thought. My eyes were dead set on Eskil. Eskil, and his oversized ax.

Eskil soared high into the sky, ax overhead… and I suddenly wondered if this was how I got myself killed. I was trusting Eskil. Trusting him, of all people. With my life and Richard’s. Trusting that he was smarter than he looked. If he fucked this up…

What’s done is done. I had to commit. I braced myself for the shockwave as best I could, and waited.

Time seemed to slow as Eskil hung at the top of his jump. Slowly, he fell, picking up speed until he was plummeting to the ground.

Focusing on his ax blade and nothing else, I side-stepped a split-second before impact, avoiding the blade.

Was the fucker really trying to kill me?

The ax buried itself in the ice, shattering it and causing a spiderweb of cracks to erupt under our feet.

I raised Light of the Fearless high… and jumped on his ax, and so did Richard.

With a guttural roar, Eskil jumped, bringing his ax—and therefore, us—with him. The sensation was not unlike a race car taking off at full throttle. Pinned to the blade, I couldn’t move an inch, so fierce was the acceleration. Just how much Dominion did this guy really have?

Doubt crept into my head. How was he this strong? It made no sense at all.

And then we were off, flying through the air… Right at the core above our heads.

I looked down to find the ground rapidly receding. If we missed… If this insane plan didn’t work, then I was probably going to die from the impact of the fall, and Richard? We’d be lucky if his corpse stayed in one piece.

As I said. Desperate. Harebrained. Exactly what we needed.

Richard and I flew at breakneck speed to the core. Thanks to Eskil’s double boost—the first from his jump, and the second from his ax swing—we were going to make it.

I impacted first. Or rather, Light of the Fearless did, penetrating the soft, pulsating flesh of the core. With my other hand, I caught Richard just as he reached the top of his arc, and thanks to my points in Dominion, I swung him up above me with ease.

He grabbed one of the millions of… pustules? They anchored him in place—barely. He wasn’t going to hang on for long, that was for sure.

Then again, that wasn’t going to be a concern.

Mr. White Walker had finally caught onto our ruse, and he was none too happy.

“Is he… Is he flying up to us?”

I looked down. The ice army looked like ants from here. I tried to shove my fear of heights to the back of my mind, and instead tried to focus on finding Cyrus.

It wasn’t hard. “Fuck! He’s fast!”

“Reckon we’ve only got a few seconds!”

Panicking, I grabbed onto a pustule and yanked out my blade to strike again. When I did, fresh blood geysered out of the hole I’d just made, pulsing out as if pumped by some heart.

Wait. A heart?

I looked at Richard, whose eyes widened in realization.

“Should I—”

“Do it!” I screamed.

“But what if we—”

“DO IT!”

Richard did, and the result was far beyond what either of us could have expected. The heart didn’t simply burst. It didn’t collapse.

It exploded, drowning us in an ocean of blood.