“Shit.” Byrd’s hands erupted with green fire. “Not again.”
“Not here is more like it.” Corian didn’t move. “We wait.”
“For what?” Lumil shot the Nightstalker a wide-eyed glance. “Those fucking things aren’t supposed to—”
The beetle screeched again and leaped through the jagged black stone toward them. It scrambled across the clearing toward the goblin woman, flipping sideways and upside-down as a hundred more legs appeared along every surface of its glistening carapace.
Lumil waited until the thing was almost upon her, and sent a crippling uppercut into the not-beetle’s underbelly. The red light encircling her fist ripped through the creature, shattering it into hundreds of pieces and raining down thick chunks of black goo on all of them.
“The first attack,” Corian said with a nod.
“What?” Persh’al scowled at the Nightstalker. “You don’t call the fucking tentacle that tried to hang me the first attack?”
“More like a first taste, Persh’al, and you know it.”
“Damnit, Corian. We’re not equipped to handle the in-between spilling out where it doesn’t belong.”
“Hold your fucking position, troll.” Corian still didn’t turn around to face the blue-skinned Persh’al, but Cheyenne could hear the venom in the Nightstalker’s command.
Like he’s ordered plenty of people around on a battlefield. Is he—
The ground bucked beneath them, sending the five magicals stumbling. The rift in the center of the black ridge opened even wider with a shiver, ripping from some unseen place below them. The skittering of huge, hard legs across stone echoed everywhere, then the newest Border portal unleashed a swarm.
Glistening black carapaces surged up from beneath the ground and from behind the wall of dark shimmering light at the same time. The air filled with screeching cries as the beetle-like creatures rushed into the clearing. One of them launched itself over the top of a shorter black spire, its red mouth stretching wide in its underbelly as it headed for the halfling.
Cheyenne launched her black crackling orb straight at that mouth, choking off the shriek on impact. The beetle exploded in mid-air and rained down hard shell and guts everywhere.
Corian darted through the rushing swarm in a blazing trail of silver light. Huge black bodies the size of ponies flew through the air wherever that silver light erupted. Lumil and Byrd shouted battle cries as the goblin man set green fire to the rushing monstrosities and his partner blasted their mindless attackers to smithereens with the spells swirling around her turquoise fists. Persh’al raised his hand, and when he brought it down, a whip of sizzling green light emerged.
Cheyenne scanned the oncoming rush of creatures and hurled black orbs of energy into them one after another. The black bodies erupted on impact, sending bug parts flying back toward the ridge.
The horrid creatures just kept coming, spilling from the wall of shimmering light. Persh’al’s green whip of magic split through the hard shells like a sword, and the other magicals didn’t have any trouble fighting back.
Three of the beetles skittered toward the mohawked troll at an abnormal speed. One of them stopped to rear up again and unleashed a vile spray of black goo toward Persh’al. Cheyenne threw up a shield in front of the troll and his whip, then blasted the closest beetle to pieces before reaching out with the black tendrils of her magic. They wrapped around the spitting beetle and squeezed. The creature screeched again before bursting like an overripe berry two seconds later.
This is too easy.
The halfling quickly checked the other magicals, but they were busy handling the surge of the creatures jumping, spitting, hissing, and scrambling across the ground. Then she looked at the massive tentacle waving above the tallest black spires like a banner in the wind.
That’s the one to take down.
Without thinking about it, she clapped and summoned black crackling energy in both hands. Her spells converged into a roiling sphere twice the size of her head, casting black and purple light on her face.
“Cheyenne, wait!” Corian’s warning came too late.
The halfling’s extra-large dose of black energy hurtled toward the tentacle. Her attack rocked it into the wall of shimmering black light, and a quaking bellow rattled through her head.
The rush of disgusting beetle-things stopped, the last few skittering between the rocky spires with undiminished urgency until they were demolished by Lumil’s fist and Byrd’s green fire.
The ground trembled again, and the huge tentacle pulled itself out of the shimmering wall of light and rose dozens of yards higher into the air. It stopped undulating like a pennant and froze, perfectly straight, above the Border portal.
“Quick thinking, kid.” Corian turned toward the halfling and shook his head in a warning jerk. “But wrong.”
“That thing’s in control, isn’t it?” Cheyenne pointed at the stock-still tentacle.
“Probably. But we’re not—”
The ground bucked again, and the crevasse that had opened inside the portal ridge shuddered open even wider. The earth groaned, the forest around them creaking with falling trees as the black stone split apart. A dozen more spires shot from the ground, rising taller than the ones that were already there. Then the wall of shimmering black light darkened until it blocked almost all of the sunlight and cast the entire clearing into darkness.
“Yeah, that’s what I’d hoped to avoid.”
Cheyenne glared at the Nightstalker. “And what’s that, exactly?”
“We’re standing on the verge of a new portal, kid. And I mean on the verge.”
“Like we’re about to cross through it?” The halfling glanced around the darkened clearing.
“Not if we can help it.”
A grating growl rose from the center of the portal, a lot louder and closer than any of the other cries. The ridge split wider as a massive black shape clawed its way out of the earth and rose to its full height. The tendril reaching into the sky slammed onto the ground between the split group of fighting magicals, morphing into a gnarled claw digging trenches into the dirt as its owner pulled itself out of the crevasse.
Corian snarled at the claw dragging back toward the portal ridge. “Not if we can keep that
