Ususi called upon her borrowed percipience and gazed into the dark.
Pandorym was there. If not in body, at least in purpose. It saw her and saw that its dark hid no secrets from her. In unison, every servitor intoned, "I require the keystone. Relinquish it, and I may spare your home." Ususi's percipience pierced even to the center of Pandorym's darkness. There, a circular gateway yawned, suspended several feet in the air. Ususi gasped when she recognized the streets of Deep Imaskar visible through the opening. The wide avenues, the tenement pillars, library spires… burning. Silhouetted in the flames, dark creatures moved to and fro, limned with violet malevolence. The wizard of Deep Imaskar began uttering her most potent spells, suspecting they wouldn't be enough.
Kiril advanced into the milk white chamber. Angul burned in her grip. A gruesome multitude opposed her, each suffused with a trickle of power from the demi-entity Pandorym. To her left, the young man with the crystal arm matched her stride, his arm shining with its own light. The blade spoke in her mind. These creatures, and their master, are kin to the horrors we are pledged to destroy. The swordswoman ground her teeth and took a practice swipe with the Cerulean Blade.
Angul scattered radiant fire in his arc. The blade instructed her.
Whether they are abolethic horrors or evil unaligned, here lie abominations, and thus their existence is forfeit. The sword's anger burned brighter, and the certitude of his purpose steeled Kiril's posture. More powerful than any drunken dream or induced high, Angul engulfed her in absolute conviction. She didn't understand Pandorym's origin, but with Angul's influence pounding through her, she knew beyond certainty that it and its servitors deserved no mercy, nor quarter, nor even promise of redemption. Kiril smiled, advancing.
Running into the chamber, Warian quickly evaluated what opposed them. Each bore the element of the Datharathis' claim to fame-the damned crystal. Here was where Shaddon's quest for wealth had taken him, and despite every warning, here he'd allowed his desire for power to subvert his reason. This damned chamber was where Warian's grandfather had given up his soul. The Imaskari wizard, chanting and gesticulating, stood to Warian's left. Farther in and ahead of her, the vengeance taker jerked an ancient weapon from a container. Nearing Warian on his right, the elf with the burning blade advanced. A glance back showed him the earth elemental at the rear. He saw Zel peeking from around the bronze iris. Good. He didn't want to see any more of his family… fall. His eyes welled with moisture. Time to make Eined's death mean something! He summoned the full power of his arm and walked stride for stride with Kiril and her Cerulean Blade toward the room's center.
Iahn reached an open canister. He crouched behind the stumplike protrusion, hiding from his adversaries, as he studied several pearl-stocked crossbows that hung within. He yanked the nearest from its mount and marveled. As finely fashioned as his other crossbow had been, before he'd lost it during the sea passage, this one was superior. Even more thrilling, the lower section of the unjacketed container held hundreds of bolt clips, each bolt lightly runed with magical vigor. He snatched a clip and worked the crank to load the crossbow. Smooth as silk. If he… A four-armed, human-sized insectoid with a mantis head hopped into view from around the canister. With its amulet shining malevolently on its chest, it directed a ribbon of darkness at Iahn. The vengeance taker screamed a syllable of warding, too late, and the ribbon found him. Pain seared his right leg. Iahn sighted along the crossbow at the creature's amulet and pulled the trigger. When the bolt struck the crystal, bolt and amulet were vaporized. The insectoid squealed and dropped, its legs and too many arms flailing madly before losing animation forever.
The vengeance taker allowed himself a nod of self-congratulation as he loaded another bolt.
Prince Monolith charged into the fray. His great strides propelled him past his slowly advancing smaller allies, through the forestlike maze of storage cylinders. Two mantis-men launched themselves at his legs, but he bowled through them without stopping, despite their speed and crystal-given strength. The earth lord ran at the emerald-skinned giant. It was the creature most likely to match its strength against his own elemental power. The prince had always wanted to test his strength against a storm… The giant's eyes sparked, and lightning sprouted from every nearby surface, each bolt skewering Prince Monolith. The electricity seared through his mineral nerves, locking him in place. He strained, threatened with his booming voice, and tried to call upon his power to move through stone, but the electricity held him caged. The pain crept toward intolerable.
Ususi spoke the words of a protective spell, and her sense of touch dulled as her skin protectively hardened. Monolith obscured her vision of Pandorym for a moment as he charged, but then her view was clear again. As terrifying as the force assembled before them was, her percipience allowed her to see that Pandorym's true strength lay beyond the portal it maintained in Deep Imaskar. Destroying the creature would cut the puppet strings of all the servitors it had transferred there. She saw Iahn take up a position on top of an unjacketed canister and fire his newfound weapon, one bolt after another. The others also advanced, but she couldn't take time to watch their progress. The wizard spoke a spell of wind, hoping to disperse or at least disturb Pandorym's cloudlike form, and so disrupt the portal into Deep Imaskar, but the entity held its form. If she couldn't close the portal, could she block it? Ususi spoke the short, sharp syllables that beckoned a solid magical wall. Before she could finish, a hail of serpentine, night-dark rays emerged from the creatures at the room's hub. Her eyes narrowed with concern as the shafts fell against her hardened skin… then she sighed. Her protective magic was diminished, but it held. The wizard finished her utterance. She felt nothingness coalesce toward solidity. Though normally invisible, this time she saw her wall take shape in her star-bright gaze. She thrust it into the portal Pandorym hid at its core. The plane of force slapped into place. Pandorym's vaporous emanation writhed and bucked. The entity didn't like the obstruction.
Immediately, she sensed her blockade come under attack. Pandorym sought to eject it. The wizard gasped and tightened the clamps of her arcane will more securely about her magical construction. Her spell-craft was tested nearly beyond its limit as she struggled to hold the wall in place. The portal at Pandorym's heart hazed, warped, and wavered, but held. She had hit on a workable strategy! If she could maintain the blockade, Pandorym's portal into Deep Imaskar would fail. Then she saw crystal-faced Shaddon Datharathi, back on his feet, running at her with the speed of a zephyr.
The pathetic man, utterly encased in his own folly, was Pandorym's perfect avatar. Bleeding cracks fractured his human carapace, and the radiance emanating from his mineral skin was dimmer than before.
Prince Monolith's initial strike had seen to that. Unfortunately, the man was still very much in the fight. Shaddon loosed a barrage of pitch-black tendrils from one outspread hand. Ususi sidestepped a handful, but several chewed into her stony skin, nearly exhausting its protection. She dared not relinquish her wall… but Shaddon advanced on her! Ususi muttered a prayer of thanks when the elf swordswoman intersected Shaddon's path. Kiril slashed with her sentient blade with a power equal to Shaddon's malevolent vitality. Shaddon's left hand and forearm sailed through the air, leaving a spray of blood and darkness. The Datharathi elder screamed, his voice suddenly quite human. Ususi sidled to the left, trying to maintain her line of sight with Pandorym and the gap in its defense. She sensed the intradimensional portal weakening. All she had to do was maintain her plug of force, and Deep Imaskar… what remained of it… would be saved.