This damn thing’s drawing energy from the black stones, just like the Border Reservations.
Cheyenne reached toward the closest black spire and felt around for that resisting pressure in the air. There it was, right at the tips of her fingers.
The monster roared and lashed out at her with half a dozen whipping tentacles. She slipped into enhanced speed and fired round after round of her crackling black energy before the tentacles severed in a suspended spray of oozing black sludge. The torn pieces of monster drifted toward the ground, and Cheyenne dropped into a crouch.
She slammed both palms down into the dirt and pushed.
A wave of moving earth bucked beneath her and headed for the creature. The ground exploded between Corian and the nightmarish thing. It sent the Nightstalker tumbling back across the clearing as the monster heaved and recoiled against the wall of regular earth rising in front of it.
Cheyenne swayed where she crouched, and her drow speed fell away. The nebulous beast lunged toward her, its entire body drawing up to open in a giant mouth lined with dripping fangs. Another bellow erupted from that mouth and nearly knocked the halfling backward with a fierce gust of air and its nauseatingly reeking breath. Smells like fear and death. And something else.
She didn’t hesitate before reaching out with both hands toward the black pillars of stone. Her magic found that resistance again instantly, and Cheyenne put all her strength behind it when she tugged.
The closest pillar cracked and moved sideways, but nothing else happened.
“Come on!” She reached out again, but the monster sent two more tentacles wider than she was toward her. The halfling darted away from where she’d crouched as one tentacle smashed into the ground. Dirt and chunks of rock hurtled toward her. Cheyenne cried out at the sharp sting of something heavy hitting the base of her skull, and she stumbled toward the edge of the portal ridge.
“Cheyenne!” Corian darted toward her, but even with his enhanced speed, he wasn’t quick enough to reach her before another five-foot-wide tentacle smacked the ground and cut him off.
Gritting her teeth, the halfling reached for the feel of the black stone one more time. Only now, instead of trying to break it, she pushed up and forced the stone to rise higher.
The monster screeched and undulated, trying to turn toward her before she darted around the huge pillars. It was a tight squeeze between the first pillar and the closest tree, but she managed to get in there and slap her hands down on the rock jutting from the ground. It was so cold, her hands burned instantly, but she held on.
“Damnit, Cheyenne, get away from that—”
The monster spat a glob of gray ooze toward her and the pillar. Cheyenne darted aside and was vaguely aware of the ground hissing and sizzling behind her. She leaned into the pillar instead and reached out with her magic.
If I can manipulate earth while I’m Earthside, this better fucking work.
Her magic stretched along the entire length of the portal ridge, farther than she realized it could go. All she felt was cold and darkness and something like fear but not quite. An anxious waiting, just below the surface. Then her awareness returned to her, and she whipped her hands off the black spire and out to the sides.
The column of jagged stone burst into thousands of fragments and followed the direction of her hands. The shards of black rock hurtled into the monster trying to squeeze its way around the pillars toward her. Every piece of stone was absorbed in an instant, but Cheyenne still had a hold on each of them.
When the shards of stone had disappeared, the halfling hooked the fingers of her drow magic around the cold energy she felt inside the nightmare heading toward her and shoved it all to the side as if she were jerking open a sliding door.
The creature groaned and let out an earth-shattering bellow. Then it slid sideways, jiggling and writhing as the stone shards inside it pulled against the beast’s hulking mass.
Cheyenne pulled again, and the creature skidded across the ground toward the massive crevasse it had ripped in the earth to get into the clearing. Snaking tentacles whipped across the ground, writhing and sputtering into claws, barbs, and pincers as they tried to get a grip on anything to stop its descent.
Pushing with all her might, the halfling directed the shattered black stone and the beast around it into the open chasm. She might have screamed at the effort as the ground rocked again beneath her feet. A thin barbed tentacle struck at the ground and found its way around her ankle. Cheyenne hit the ground. Just send it back. Keep pushing.
The creature dragged her with it as it morphed and bellowed and squeezed into the rent earth. The halfling couldn’t release her hold on the black stone, and she didn’t have to.
The air in front of her burst with crackling silver light and Corian’s extended claws came down on the tendril around her ankle in a blur. Dark ooze spurted from the severed limb before the creature slid down, down, down into the darkness.
“Damnit! What the hell were you thinking?” Corian grabbed her under the arms and pulled her away from the edge of the crevasse. “This isn’t another training session, by the way.”
“I know.” When she got back to her feet, Cheyenne brushed him off and reached for the glistening black spires of the portal ridge again. “I got it.”
“You can’t just play around with this until something sticks,” he shouted. “We don’t even know—”
Black sludge sprayed from the open crevasse like a geyser, and Cheyenne threw up a shield around them both before it rained down from the sky. “You wanna wait
