Chapter 54: Surrounded On All Sides
The world narrowed to the space around Freya. The cacophony of battle, the screams, the roars, the clash of steel, faded into a dull, distant roar, like a storm heard from deep within a cave. All that mattered was the power coiling around her.
She stood at the center of our grim little circle, her feet planted wide, her bloodied silver sword still standing where she'd driven it into the earth. Her eyes were closed, her brow furrowed in concentration. A low, resonant hum started not from her throat, but from the ground itself, a vibration that traveled up through the soles of my boots and into my bones. The air grew heavy, thick with the scent of ozone and freshly turned soil.
"Gather close!" Kaku's voice was a gravelly command, brooking no argument. "Touch the circle or be left behind!"
We shuffled inward, a tense, unwilling constellation of warriors. The Iron Fangs moved with practiced efficiency, forming a tight ring around Freya. I stood between a pale-faced soldier who couldn't have been older than twenty and Trent, who was calmly checking the mechanism of his crossbow one last time. Sheyla pointedly kept her back to me. Kail looked like he was attending his own funeral, his expression one of profound, fastidious disgust.
I risked a glance at Freya. Her lips were moving, forming words too low to hear, a chant that was less a song and more a conversation with the earth itself. Then, she slammed her open palms flat against the ground.
The effect was instantaneous.
A circle of light erupted around her feet, a deep, rich, earthen brown that pulsed with a life of its own. It wasn't a flat drawing on the ground; it was a three-dimensional lattice of energy, a foot deep, intricate beyond anything I'd ever seen. Runes I couldn't read twisted and writhed within its circumference, their shapes reminiscent of roots, mountain peaks, and tectonic plates. Geometric shapes, hexagons, pentagons, interlocking triangles, spun and locked into place with audible clicks that I felt in my teeth. The light didn't just glow; it flowed, like molten rock, pouring from Freya's hands and spreading through the intricate patterns.
The circle expanded, pushing past our feet until we were all standing within its glowing border. The energy felt solid, ancient, and immensely powerful. It was the opposite of the frantic, burning energy I felt from my Ki. This was slow, patient, and inexorable.
The ground beneath us began to tremble, not from an impact, but from something stirring deep below. Cracks spiderwebbed out from the edge of the magic circle, not breaking it, but reinforcing it, as if the earth itself was acknowledging its call.
"Brace yourselves!" Freya's voice was strained, a guttural roar that tore from her throat. The brown light flared blindingly bright, the runes burning with the intensity of a miniature sun. The geometric shapes locked into a final, perfect configuration.
Then, the world exploded upward.
It wasn't a gentle lift. It was a violent, gut-wrenching launch. The pillar of solid earth and stone shot from the ground like a fist from a god, carrying us with it. The force slammed me into my feet, my knees screaming in protest. The air was ripped from my lungs. For a terrifying second, we were just a chunk of the city being violently uprooted.
The world fell away beneath us. The battle on the wall became a diorama of tiny, clashing ants. The lights of Torak shrank, the sounds of its death throes becoming a faint, muffled roar swallowed by the wind screaming past my ears. We were flying, a projectile of flesh and stone hurled into the darkness beyond the wall.
My stomach lurched as the pillar, impossibly, tilted. It leaned forward, aiming us like a cannonball over the heads of the besieging horde. The ground below was a seething, black carpet of movement, thousands of beasts, their eyes glowing like malevolent stars in the dark. The massive, two-story lion and its cloaked rider were a dark silhouette in the distance, a still point in the chaotic ocean.
The flight was seconds long, an eternity of weightless terror. I clung to the sword in my hand, my only anchor in a world gone mad.
Then the magic holding the pillar together vanished.
The earth supporting us crumbled, dissolving back into dust and loose stone. We were no longer flying; we were falling.
The crash was everything I feared and worse.
We hit the ground not as a unit, but as a shower of bodies and debris. The impact was a bone-jarring concussive wave that slammed through me. I hit something hard and uneven, rolling violently, the world a spinning blur of dark sky and churned earth. My shoulder took the brunt of it, a white-hot spike of pain lancing through my body. I tasted dirt and blood.
For a moment, there was only stunned silence, broken by the sound of groaning men and shifting rock. The air was thick with dust.
Then, the silence was shattered.
A chorus of snarls, roars, and hungry shrieks erupted from all around us. The dust settled just enough to reveal the nightmare. We were in a small, crater-like depression, Freya's "landing zone." And surrounding the crater, perched on its edges and already slinking down its sides, were hundreds of them. The black-furred wolves, the hulking boars, the twisted, multi-limbed horrors. Their eyes, glowing with a faint red light, were all fixed on us. We were surrounded. Not just surrounded; we were in a bowl, and they were pouring in from the rim.
I pushed myself to my feet, my body screaming in protest. My left arm hung limp for a second before I forced feeling back into it with a surge of Ki. I looked around frantically.
The Iron Fangs were already moving, their professionalism a stark contrast to the disoriented soldiers. Kaku was a mountain of dark metal, his massive axe now in his hands, sweeping in a wide arc that cleaved the first wave of wolves into bloody halves. Kail was a blur of motion, his bow singing. Arrows of pure silver light shot forth, each one finding an eye or a throat with unerring accuracy. Sheyla was a whirlwind of steel, her curved sword and daggers a seamless extension of her body, darting between larger beasts to hamstring them with brutal efficiency. Trent had already found a slightly elevated rock and was methodically firing his crossbow, each thwump followed by the wet thud of a bolt finding its mark.
Freya was on one knee, breathing heavily, the glow around her hands faded. She looked drained, but her eyes were sharp, scanning the horde. The volunteer soldiers were forming a shaky defensive circle, their faces masks of terror and determination.
A wolf, bigger than the others, broke through the initial chaos and lunged straight for me. There was no time for fancy footwork. I met its charge head-on, dropping low and driving my sword upward into its chest. The impact jarred my arms, but the blade punched through fur and muscle. I twisted, yanked it free, and spun to meet the next threat.
We were in the belly of the beast. The plan had worked. We were behind their lines.
And now, we had to fight our way through hell itself to reach the king. The countdown in my vision pulsed, a relentless reminder.
55 hours, 48 minutes, 12 seconds.
The real mission started now.
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