Instead, Harn had addressed them all and broken down their plan. They were going to enter the tunnel and make their way to the Domain Core. From that point on, the plan was to destroy the Domain Core and stop all the creatures it spawned. A seemingly simple plan, were they to ignore the level disparity between their group and the monsters.
No one had a better idea. Well, running would have been a good idea, but they'd committed.
So on they went. The first few miles beneath the earth were relatively unremarkable. The smell of loam and damp earth pervaded their senses. Felix's Manasight was filled with dusty-brown Mana swirled with the grey-black of shadow and the green-gold of life Mana, all of it mingling somehow chaotically. Unpredictably.
Evie signed to him, and Felix nodded. They'd chosen to use handsign to communicate once in the tunnel, since they couldn't be sure how far sound would carry. Felix caught Harn's attention at the front of the group and repeated the signs.
Harn slipped ahead.
Evie asked, but Felix just shook his head. He wasn't having that conversation in handsign. He might have gotten better at it by memorizing the forms, but he lacked the nuance needed for an explanation as heavy as the Maw. And frankly, he really didn't want to, not after Harn's reaction.
Pit nudged his leg, their bond warming in comfort. Felix smiled back at the tenku, but his eyes drifted once more to where Harn had disappeared beyond a bend in the tunnel. A full twenty minutes later, Harn crept back into sight.
Harn signed.
Vess signed. She motioned for Atar and Alister to come closer.
Both nodded.
Ten minutes later, Felix found himself down the tunnel and hiding behind a rock larger than his first apartment. Alister was next to him, fiddling with the hilt of his rapier. Vess had laid out quite the comprehensive attack plan, and the two of them were to start things off.
In the near distance, a gaggle of Spawn swarmed over each other, like desperate scavengers. Felix couldn't make out what they were so excited about, and he was certain he didn't want to know. Instead he could feel them pulse against his sense of Affinity, their endless hunger so much more clearer than Harn's own mixed feelings to Felix.
From across the tunnel, he saw the signal.
A deluge of fire arced from Atar, hidden across the tunnel, spraying like a firehose upon the gathered Spawn. Beside Felix, Alister tensed and jabbed his elegant rapier into the air. A series of five foot columns descended from the sky, each hitting the group with the force of a speeding dumptruck. The Spawn were filled with a sudden rage and fear that oriented in their general direction. Felix felt his connection to them thrum as they communed in some sort of...hive mind. As one, they charged.
Stone Shaping!
Flaring the Skill, Felix grabbed at the rocky floor across the entire breadth of the tunnel. It was a tactic that would not have worked only a few hours ago; but now, with his Mana over three thousand, he had power to spare. The ground turned to sludge before dropping away completely as the first of the Spawn hit the trench, sending them toppling down below. The sudden thirty foot drop was not nearly as brutal as the six-foot long sharpened spikes at the bottom.
You Have Killed A Spawn of Hunger (x17)!
XP Earned!
Stone Shaping is level 31!
Stone Shaping is level 32!
The Spawn didn't halt at all, the trench forming too quickly to avoid and their hive-mind/herd mentality too dim to make on the fly decisions. For all their advanced levels, the Spawn were exceptionally stupid beasts.
Not true for the ones that followed. The Knights of Hunger.
Huge and hulking, they were easily fifteen feet tall and about ten feet wide. An avalanche of muscle and fat, they were vaguely humanoid, covered in a similar patchwork of rust-red scales and sickly yellow flesh, and like all Primordial-Spawn their faces were devoid of anything save wide, drooling maws.
The Knights leaped over the trench, treading atop a number of lesser Spawn in their run ups, and landed hard enough to depress the stony soil. They were met immediately with potent orbs of flame and pinpoint strikes of needling kinetic force. The two Knights put up their hands defensively, only for both of them to be lashed by smoking white chains from the ground beneath. Purple-white Mana steamed around them as the Knights bellowed their fury, tearing their limbs free with a minor effort.
But not in time for either of them to avoid three spears a piece striking them directly in the teeth.
The explosion of air Mana rocked the Knights back, throwing one of them prone, and tore gaping, bloody holes in their faces and throats. If they were Human, the fight would have been over. But they had all fought them before, and Felix knew their kind better than most.
Unfettered Volition!
Felix raced out of cover, Harn following a split second after. Of the two of them, Felix was far faster and reached his Knight before Harn had crossed half the distance. Flaring a number of Skills at once, he unleashed hard.
Influence of the Wisp!
Shadow Whip!
Reign of Vellus!
A Knight of Hunger (x2) is Enthralled for 10 Seconds!
Hurling his hands forward, Felix enveloped both of the Knights in wisplight, and the hungry fire began eating them alive. Unable to let that be all, Felix summoned a blackened whip of darkness and brought it smashing down from above, shattering the Knight's arm as it tried to manifest spikes of bone along its length. The arm was forced into the creature's gut by the whip first and then by the wave of kinetic energy that slammed into it like a hydraulic hammer. Blood spurted sideways, gallons of it, and lightning crawled across the immobile monstrosity.
You Have Killed A Knight of Hunger!
XP Earned!
Influence of the Wisp is level 32!
Influence of the Wisp is level 33!
Shadow Whip is level 30!
Felix started toward the second Knight when an axe blazing with silver Mana tore into its chest. He took a step back and looked as Harn jogged the rest of the way, and retreived his weapon.
"Damn, kid. You're a lot faster than before. Is all that from levelin' up?" Harn said, wicking the blood from his axe.
"That and my new Body. I'm a lot more...dense now, I guess." Felix shook his head. "This shouldn't have felt so easy."
"Be glad it did. We could use a little easy. It's only gonna get harder from here." Harn fixed Felix with a contemplative gaze. "I get why you didn't tell us before. About the Maw. Bein' as you are what you are, not knowin' how we'd react...I get it. But from now on, I'm gonna need you ta trust me. Battlin' without knowin' yer allies' capabilities is like fightin' blind and deaf. Easy way ta die."
Felix clenched his jaw, fighting down his first instinct to mention his Blind Fighting Skill, before nodding. "I think I can do that. I trust you, Evie, and Vess."
"Not Atar or the noble welp, huh?" Harn asked, a smile in his voice. "Don't fully blame ya there."
"Atar's alright, but I'd rather Oathbind him than take chances." Felix shook his head. "They're--"
"What is that?"
Felix turned to look at Atar who was jogging up to them. The man pointed beyond the trench Felix had made, to where the Primordial-Spawn had been congregating. Feeding. Glimmers of light shone through the gloom of the tunnel, as if something had been etched along the wall of it. A spike of pain wormed across his brain as Felix looked, and he noticed for the first time a slight pulsing in the ambient Mana all around them. It was very faint, like music heard from rooms away, but there it was.
"It-it's the same as your pages! The same as the Butcher!" Atar crowed and sped toward the lights. Quickly, Felix reversed a portion of his trench, the earth reforming breaths before the fire mage rushed across it. "Sigils, Alister! Felix! Sigils!"