“This is nice,” Mercy whispered to Yerin.
“Quiet!” Eithan shouted. “They’re having a moment!”
Orthos ignored them, and Lindon felt his fondness in his spirit. “There’s no need. I’m content just being along for the adventure.”
Lindon’s feelings firmed. “I’m not.”
Without further discussion, Orthos’ power began flowing into Lindon. His Blackflame core was already full, so this burning power filled his channels directly. Even wisps of soulfire entered Lindon, though what Orthos contained as an Underlord was much less potent than what Lindon himself had access to.
With the power flowing through his veins, Lindon had no choice but to vent it somewhere. He directed his fury downward, and he guided Orthos’ power with the focus of a Sage and the authority of the Void Icon.
“You should move,” Lindon said to nobody in particular. There was a shuffling of feet and a groan from Eithan, but then Lindon had a bare stretch of floor to work with.
He sent a liquid bar of Blackflame down into the stone.
It still wasn’t easy, even with the support of his authority. The Void Icon was great at removing things, and when the Path of Black Flame melted through stone, there was very little left to melt or burn away into the air. So the small room wasn’t filled with the sorts of toxic smoke that would have asphyxiated everyone.
But the resistance on the stone was powerful. Lindon had blazed through all the power Orthos could spare before the turtle released their bond, panting hard.
“I’m sorry,” Orthos rumbled from on top of Lindon’s head. The hole in the floor was three feet deep now, and wide enough that the others had been forced to back up again.
“No need,” Lindon responded. He used his own power this time, and a flame of his own soulfire. “Just a little more.”
Sure enough, the next room was only a few more inches down.
They broke through into a hallway that could have belonged anywhere in the labyrinth. Lindon extended his perception through the hole and felt everyone else doing the same…except Ziel, who dropped down without any fanfare.
He called back up: “Good work, Orthos. We’ll see you back on the surface.”
“Don’t throw your life away, boy,” Orthos called back. Then he leaped off Lindon’s head, landing on the ledge by the transfer circle.
Eithan tapped his forehead. “Good-bye, Orthos. I’ll punch the Monarch an extra time in your name.”
“And someone bite Dross,” Orthos added. Yerin pushed forward to rap her knuckles on his shell.
“Luck,” she said.
Little Blue gave a determined whistle, and Lindon realized she had been listening quietly the entire time. She hopped over to Orthos and stood by him with hands on her hips.
She chimed out her resolve to protect Orthos, and looked at Lindon as though expecting to see him object. He only felt relief. Together, they could protect one another.
“Be safe,” Lindon said. Then he powered the circle, and the two vanished.
“That’s for the best,” Mercy said quietly, and Lindon agreed. But he wasn’t satisfied.
The rest followed Ziel down the hole after a moment, and Lindon noticed that something was wrong.
He hadn’t felt any fury from Subject One when they’d broken through the wall. If it had tried to trap them and failed, it should have sensed as much and been furious. But he didn’t feel anyone’s frustration transmitted through the stone.
That meant they were still in the trap.
Sure enough, he sent his perception down the hallway one direction and detected another of those rooms that was absolutely filled with deadly launcher constructs.
And down the other direction? The same.
Lindon tapped into Blackflame again and looked beneath them. “Does anyone else have any better suggestions?”
“Yes,” Eithan said. “Use the hand. We can still follow the labyrinth when it makes sense.”
Lindon wanted to argue, but he could see the sense, and they didn’t have much time to argue. He withdrew the twisted white hand from its case and exposed it to the aura in the air. It immediately clawed to their right.
Then Lindon felt the eye of the Slumbering Wraith on him, and he thought he felt a distant smile.
Hunger madra erupted around them, and Lindon realized that Subject One was finished playing with them.
Ghouls clambered out from every inch of stone. When they were slashed with madra, they didn’t even dissipate, and Lindon’s Empty Palm blew one ghoul in half…at which point its upper half landed on him.
Its white madra burned on contact with his skin, and he shouted as he hurled it away.
In the grand scheme of things, it hadn’t taken much, but it had taken a bite out of everything. He was noticeably more tired than he had been before, both physically and spiritually.
He erupted in the Hollow Domain, but as the blue-white light filled the hall, he could tell that it wouldn’t be enough. The ghouls weakened, but they didn’t die, and more clawed at his ankles. He saw Ziel shaking several off, Eithan flipping through a crowd, and Mercy covering her limbs with armor.
Yerin was the best off of all of them, with her six blade-arms and her sword all glowing slightly with her Flowing Sword. Enforcer techniques weren’t disrupted by the Hollow Domain, so she was a blurring cage of blades that shredded any ghoul that got close.
These ghouls were tough, as though they had been invested with soulfire. Lindon thought the actual explanation was probably much simpler; Subject One meant this attack. It had his full attention behind it.
And his theory was strengthened a moment later when Dross shouted a warning and webs shot from the walls.
He blew through the strands, which were weaker thanks to his Hollow Domain, but as long as he kept the Domain up, his friends wouldn’t be able to use most of their techniques. And there were more ghouls coming every second, in an endless tide.
Lindon followed the scratching, clawing hand and dashed down the hallway, the others following. He tucked the hand back into its case.
They emerged into a trap room, but Lindon didn’t intend to wait this time. He ran through, keeping the Hollow Domain active.
The traps triggered, but the fogs of venom madra and balls of fire madra melted as they encountered the edge of his protective field of pure madra.
His pure core was leaking madra by the second, but he had plenty to spare and a supply of scales. It was better for him to spend madra than anyone else.
As such, he was confident that they would be able to blast through these traps instantly.
Then the walls blurred, and the exits vanished again.
Dross roared in all their minds as they came up against a stretch of blank stone. [Coward! Come face me instead of leaning on these cheap tricks!]
“It can’t keep doing this,” Mercy protested. “It’s going to run out of energy soon enough.”
Eithan nodded even as he evaded a lunging ghoul. “Yes, it is paying quite a cost for this. Even the labyrinth itself may not be able to keep up. But will we?”
Now that the hand was locked away, Lindon wanted to release the Hollow Domain, but he couldn’t. It was the only thing holding back the traps. The remaining ghouls were dispatched, but he was dismayed when he swept his perception through the group.
They had been weakened by that attack. Too much.
Dross, how many more attacks like that can we handle?
[Four,] Dross said confidently. [After that, you’ll have to start spending resources you can’t afford to replace.]
Yerin paced restlessly inside the blue-white dome of the Hollow Domain, clearly frustrated. “How many more rats do we have to clear out?”
Lindon wondered if that was the question that Subject One had been waiting for, because he felt a cruel amusement drift through the walls of the labyrinth.
The traps ran out of fuel soon after—these hadn’t lasted long, with the Hollow Domain disrupting their structure—but an entrance still didn’t appear.