The wave of raw destructive power I unleashed flowed down the hall and ripped apart the two dwarven guards where they stood. It wasn’t quiet.
I quickly looked back to check on the others. Rook was helping a large titan woman — Wensuria — out of her cell, she looked weak. But what caught my attention was that Rook and Lhorine looked like themselves. Olinara’s illusion had failed, probably when she’d cast the other spell. Olinara herself still looked like a guard, since that was her nymph ability.
Booted footfalls came from seemingly all directions.
“Come on, let’s get out of here,” Olinara said as the others reached me.
We’d known going in that if things turned bad, our escape wouldn’t be easy. In any normal underground complex, Lhorine could have moved earth and stone to create a diagonal tunnel for us to climb out, blocking anyone behind us. But this place had special enchantments on all the surfaces, walls and floors, reinforcing them. That meant earth magic was no help in here. It hindered Lhorine, but it also meant the dwarven guards could only use their physical enhancement and mundane weapons against us. We, however, had three non-earth-magic users, and Lhorine had smuggled in a few small stones, which she’ reworked into long thin spikes, throwing them with precision. I used destruction liberally. Rook threw fire and Olinara summoned water, encompassing guards’ heads in swirling pools, drowning on dry land.
In that manner we managed to fight our way back up sixfloors, but we found ourselves trapped in the stairwell below the ground-level. The guards there were ready for us.
Olinara froze the stairwell below us in solid ice, stopping anyone from coming up behind us, but we were trapped. The dozens of guards on the main level didn’t rush in, which might have served us better, fighting them in a bottleneck at the door. Instead, they waited for us to come out.
They had all the time in the world.
We didn’t.
“Can you send a flood over them?” Rook asked Olinara.
She answered with strain in her voice. “I’m not sure if you’ve noticed the twenty-foot-thick block of ice below us? That’s not easy to maintain. I’m a bit busy keeping us from being flanked.”
Rook swore. “My fire won’t do much against a bunch of enhanced dwarves and elves.”
“I could probably get most of them with my destruction,” I said. The trouble was, I’d been using that power a lot and was starting to feel the strain. And we still had to get back to campus and potentially fight again once we arrived.
I looked at Lhorine. This little lull in the fighting had given her time to break the binding on Wensuria’s collar.
“There, you’re free.”
The titan woman massaged her neck. “Can we not… oh…” She grimaced. I guessed she’d tried her earth magic on the walls. “I’m afraid I’ll be of little help. This stone resists my magic.”
“Any ideas?” I asked Lhorine.
The elf shrugged. “Like Wensuria, there is little I can do. But I’ll fight.” She hefted the sword which had come with her guard’s gear.
“Can you use a sword?” I asked Wensuria.
“Not well.”
“Good enough.” I tossed her mine. “I’ll lead, destroying what I can, you four clean up the rest.” I wouldn’t call it a plan, but it was all we had.
I burst from the stairwell and blasted my destruction even as weapons were hurled my way, arrows and axes flying. They were blown away, as were most of the men before me. But that large blast left me staggered.
Luckily, it seemed to have dealt with the majority of the guards. We bolted for the door as a few guards filed in from other locations. But it was too late. As soon as I was outside, I transformed, with no care for my clothes.
Yet… I’d forgotten something. All those earth-wielders inside couldn’t shape the structure they were in… but the stone outside…
Spikes of earth shot up from the ground. My hide was tough, but the sheer number of spears still hurt like hell, and that wasn’t the worst thing. Most of the others managed to avoid the shards of stone, but Lhorine was skewered on one just as she exited the building.
Fuck!
Wensuria dispelled the spike — catching Lhorine as she fell, lifeless — and put a massive block of stone up in front of the doorway to stop any others from getting through.
Then everyone quickly mounted on my back and I launched myself into the sky.
Lhorine’s earth-walk would have gotten us back to campus quicker than my flight, mostly because I had passengers to worry about and couldn’t go as fast for fear of losing one of them. Still, I went as fast as I could.
We’d traversed perhaps half the distance back to campus when Rook shouted from my back.
