Page 156 of Of Serpents and Ruins
Still delight filled her voice. "You, who are almost too wondrous for me to look upon, our vengeance is at hand."
His low rumbling laugh followed.
My blood chilled, pounding in my ears. We had to hurry!
I turned back to Arjax. The wounds were still spreading over his form and tearing at his skin, though he healed as fast as he could.
Arjax lunged forward, striking a skeletal fiend before it reached me. "Just go. I’m fine," he said with a pained hiss. He gestured toward Tile, face twisted in agony.
Buttercup flung her head back and bellowed, her long ululating call shaking the cavern. She stomped on another fiend.
Good girl!
I staggered to my feet and ran to her, climbing up her side. There were still more fiends. Still more creatures. So little time!
The cavern tremored and pulsed and hissed as the lava monsters continued their assault.
Candy and Hord struggled to stay in their serpent forms, their shapes flickering, scales buckling and shining in unnatural ways. They seized stones and flung them over the edge. Cahji had abandoned his silver serpent form and simply rained down arrows. One of the fallen spears resting beside him, ready for him if needed.
Lorna had resumed her ice wyrm form, blasting ice in all directions. But her ice was not as potent. The blasts were farther apart, almost as if she choked.
"There’s too many of them!" Candy shouted. "We’ll be overrun in minutes."
"Don’t let them up the side," Brandt commanded, his voice guttural and hoarse. Dropping back into his human form, he picked up a fallen bow. He struck one of the fiends in the skull with a black-tipped arrow and then shot it down into the chasm.
"Hold them back as long as you can. Give them time!" Brandt swung back, his gaze falling to me. His ruby-red eyes blazed, asking me if we could do this. Was there hope?
I nodded, my body tight.
We needed all the time he could give, and I didn’t dare scream out what had happened with Tile. Not when it would take seconds for the Gola Resh to rip Tile off the edge of the cliff and to his death. Just because the Babadon was coming back didn’t mean this was over.
We could do this.
We had to.
The Great Spear had only sunk a third of the way into the lava, its metal and surrounding enchantment more resistant to melting. The Goblet glowed bright red, its shape sagging. The Great Axe had nearly dissolved. Only the frame of the stone table remained.
Buttercup carried me forward, her footsteps thundering across the dark, cracked cavern floor. The few remaining arcanists continued with their chants, pouring all their wavering energy into the frost and ice magic to defend against the fiends and lava monsters.
Kine had already reached Tile and was collecting the reagents in between fighting. Buttercup and I skidded in alongside him just in time to take out a newly emerging fiend from the floor and another swinging dual swords from the left.
There was no way to know if we had gathered everything together. Pieces could be missing. I started sweeping them up in my hands as fast as I could, grabbing up feathers, roots, and herbs. The containers Tile had kept them in had shattered. Bits of glass sliced my forearms and the sides of my hands, stinging.
Another two fiends came for Tile. He rushed forward, returning once more to his water serpent form and striking both. One of the blows cut him across the scales. He coiled loosely around Tile.
Buttercup blocked on the other side. Her breaths were coming harder. Several scrapes had loosened the scales on her left, but her dark eyes burned with rage. She headbutteda towering skeletal warrior with two heads. Her front horn impaled it before she flung it off the edge.
Elias sprang forward to Kine’s back. He brought the knobbed end of his staff down on another fiend’s skull, cracking it and sending it over the edge. "How much of each reagent do you need?"
"Just get it all in. We’ll need weight. We need to tie it to something heavy, or it won’t strike the heart," I said sharply.
Tile still bled, but his fingers twitched.
"Tile," Kine said. "Tile, can you wake up?"
Some of it could have been destroyed. Some had been lost.
Please let whatever we had be enough!
