“Worse,” he said as the shaking subsided into an ominous quiet. He grabbed the haft of his greataxe in a two-handed grip and turned to face the northeast. “It’s what’s controlling them.”
“What?” Sabira asked, looking in the direction he was facing, but not seeing what he was talking about.
And then the ground exploded, not a hundred feet from where they stood, showering them with rocks and dirt. A huge, vaguely humanoid creature formed out of the earth itself stood there, its cave-like maw open in a great roar like the sound of an avalanche bearing inexorably down on them.
“That.”
That was an earth elemental, one of the largest Sabira had ever seen, let alone fought. It left a gaping hole as it strode toward them on massive legs, and Sabira could just glimpse the flickering orange glow of molten rock behind it.
The elemental was the one channeling magma from the Fist of Onatar, no doubt at the command of Nightshard’s accomplice—whoever he was. Why else would the creature be carving out a conduit for molten rock hot enough to destroy it?
“Use your ring!” she said urgently to Aggar, knowing that even her adamantine urgrosh would be no match for the towering elemental. But it wouldn’t matter if Aggar could summon his whirlwind to bear the creature back and drop it into the fissure it had created.
“I can’t!” he replied, her own fear mirrored on his face. “The magic has to recharge. I’ve got nothing that would be of any help against this thing.”
As if that weren’t bad enough, the cavern floor over the fissure was collapsing in both directions with every lumbering step the creature took. And they were about to be on the wrong side of the forming chasm.
“We need to—” she began, but too late. The ground shuddered and started to sink, and she and Aggar had to backpedal furiously to keep clear of the fissure’s crumbling edge. When they finally regained relatively solid footing, they were on the far side of a deep gorge that spanned the width of the cavern.
They were trapped.
And the elemental was still advancing.
Chunks of ore shone throughout its body, along with hairy roots, bits of fossilized bone, and what looked like half of a giant centipede, torn asunder when the elemental was formed out of the side of some mountain—presumably, the Fist itself. As it neared, Sabira could see the two golden gems that served as its eyes blazing with inhuman fury.
And just above and between them, a pulsing, blue-black Khyber shard.
“We can’t beat it while it’s in contact with the ground, and we can’t use your ring to lift it, so how are we going to get it into the air?” she wondered aloud as she and Aggar slowly backed away from the approaching elemental. She hadn’t really been talking to the dwarf, so she was surprised when he ventured a response.
“Trip it?”
Sabira stopped and looked at him, agog. Trip an earth elemental? Was he serious?
But then she turned back to watch the elemental’s approach. Earth elementals could glide through the earth like a fish through water, but this one was walking, lifting up one ponderous leg at a time and taking slow, plodding steps. Why?
The answer lay in the channel it had been creating. If it traveled as it normally would, leaving no tunnel or hole and displacing no material as it moved beneath the ground, it would be unable to form the conduit the magma needed. So, just as it was being commanded to bore out a path for the molten rock, it was also being directed to suppress its innate abilities in order to carry out that task.
Which did, in fact, leave it vulnerable to something as simple as being tripped.
She saw no effective way of snagging the elemental’s foot as it passed, but she thought with the aid of her urgrosh’s enchantment, she might just be able to act as an effective stumbling block for the creature. But that was going to require getting the thing to move faster than a glacier, and she could think of only one way to do that.
“You want me to do what?” Aggar asked incredulously after she’d briefly sketched out her plan.
“Let it hit you. Then—”
“Let it hit me,” he repeated, interrupting her. “Has it, perhaps, escaped your notice that I’m not wearing any armor?”
“Well, it doesn’t have to hit you hard—just enough to whet its appetite for more, and get it moving. Then it will follow you, and you can lead it close to the edge, allowing me to sneak up and get in front of one of its feet without it noticing. Then with any luck, it will trip over me, topple over into the fissure, and we’ll be out of this mess, at least.”
“With any luck,” Aggar parroted the words back to her sarcastically. “Says the woman not being used as a training dummy by a gigantic walking boulder.”
“If you’ve got a better idea …?”
Aggar gave her a sour look.
“That’s what I thought. Besides, are you honestly going to tell me that one of those rings of yours doesn’t have some spell to harden your skin? That used to be a favorite trick of yours during sparring sessions back at the safehouse.”
“Of course I have one that does that, but it’s meant for use against opponents who are roughly my same size—not ones that are ten times bigger. What good is it going to do against that?” he asked as the elemental, who’d moved closer while they argued, slammed a massive fist down on the cavern floor mere feet from where they stood, shaking the ground and leaving a crater big enough to swallow both of them whole.
“It’s better than nothing,” Sabira answered as they scrambled backward yet again. “Now, are we going to do this or not? We’re running out of chasm, here.”
“Well, if I’d known I was going to die today, I would have at least worn a shirt,” the dwarf muttered, mostly to himself. Then to Sabira he said, more loudly, “Let’s do it.”
He didn’t wait for her to reply. Instead, he touched one of his rings and said, “Stone.” Then he hefted his greataxe and ran nimbly back toward the elemental. When he was almost in range of the creature’s fists, he stopped, waving the weapon over his head and yelling.
“Over here, you gutless brute! You want to smash something? Smash this!”
Aggar darted forward and sliced at one of the elemental’s legs, his enruned greataxe leaving a bloodless gash where an ankle would normally be. Then he jumped back again before the cumbersome creature could bring its fists to bear. The earth elemental let out another thunderous roar like the echoes of a subterranean cataract and slammed a massive forearm down, nearly catching Aggar across the back. As the dwarf tumbled away and leaped to his feet again, Sabira dashed around the elemental, giving it a wide berth as Aggar continued to taunt the dim-witted monstrosity.
When she was behind the elemental, she waved her own weapon high, her signal to Aggar to begin implementing his part of the plan.
“Khoot! Khoot!” he yelled, giving Sabira’s old Karrnathi battle cry to show he’d seen the motion. “Come on, you mass of mud! Impress me!”
As the elemental swung at him again, Aggar ducked and twisted out of the way, just enough to let the blow clip him on the shoulder. Even so, it sent him flying, almost to the edge of the precipice overlooking the river of magma.
The elemental closed in, intent on finishing its prey, and Sabira seized her chance. She darted in between its legs as it went after Aggar, waiting until its airborne foot had nearly descended and driving her shard axe in the ground in front of the foot that would be moving next. She hunched over, grasped the haft firmly with both hands, and braced herself for the impact.
The elemental’s other foot hit the ground and it raised the one she was planted in front of. But even with the urgrosh enhancing her stability, she just wasn’t big or heavy enough to stop it. Instead, the creature’s foot caught her mid-thigh and sent her and her shard axe arcing through the air to land several feet ahead of its advance.