“See, even when you do some soul-searching, you’re still an asshole,” I panted. “This is bigger than you or me, damn it.”
“You feel it, don’t you?” the Broodmother’s voices cackled. “The despair. The hopelessness. Join us, Swordslinger. Embrace true immortality. True power.”
“Master,” Nydarth said quietly. “Perhaps the little lord is right.”
“Oh fuck, not you too,” I muttered.
The minotaurs charged toward us. I dived into a baseballer’s slide, narrowly missed a stampeding hoof, and pulled to a skidding halt at the other side of the chamber. Hamon dodged an enormous punch, and the minotaur’s fist crashed into the wall. Blood dripped from the growths on the ceiling and fell beside my foot.
Something glistened out of the corner of my eye, and another tentacle burst from the flesh-covered wall. A barb clipped my shoulder and slid me across the floor. I smashed into the spiked bars outside of Cinder’s cell, and pain tore through my back as the bladed edges of the bars sliced apart my armor and punctured my flesh.
Cinder scurried forward on her hands and knees. A dark tendril of hair fell across her gorgeous face, and she quickly brushed it away before she spoke. Her voice had a deeper, almost jazz-singer quality to it.
“Leave us, Swordslinger,” she begged. “Bring the guild to fight this threat.”
I grimaced as I sat up, slipped the Demure Rebirth onto my back, and pulled the Depthless Dream free. “Do you want rescuing or not?” I asked.
“I thought there’d be more of you,” Cinder muttered. “I thought you’d be able to manage it.”
“Oh, there’s plenty of me to go around,” I said. “Don’t worry about that.”
“You’re bleeding,” Cinder said.
I stood up. “I don’t have time to bleed.”
She stared at me in absolute astonishment. “What?”
I waved her away from the bars and sprang toward the nearest minotaur. It swung a wide backhanded punch at me, but a jet of water Vigor through my Physical pathways gave me the speed I needed to avoid it. The Depthless Dream struck the monster in its massive thigh, but the prongs didn’t bite through its fur. I rolled away from a crushing counterattack and heard a cry from the entrance to the dungeon.
“What the fuck is this?” Mahrai shouted.
“More demons,” I said as I dodged a minotaur’s swing. “Stronger ones this time.”
Her golem appeared out of the floor a moment later, in its new white marble form. I empowered it with a burst of Untamed Torch and then unleashed a high-pressure jet of Crashing Wave from the tip of the Depthless Dream. The stream of water vaporized into steam as it hit a minotaur, and the creature wheeled around to focus on me. A fiery bolt of Untamed Torch struck it between the eyes and slid off its matted fur.
“Augmentation-resistant demons?” Vesma said, horrified.
I joined Mahrai and Vesma near the entrance and nodded. “I can’t seem to get anything working on them. We’re going to have to figure out something new—”
A barbed whip appeared out of the ceiling, and I tackled Mahrai to the ground before it could slice her. We rolled across the slick floor, and she muttered a curse as I propelled her to her feet with a push of my legs. I sprang back to my own feet a second later and grimaced at another bolt of pain from my back.
“Keep them busy!” I shouted.
“On it!” Mahrai replied.
I reached over my shoulder and activated a skill I barely ever used anymore. Sunlight Ichor. The element of sap sparked through my channels, caught the raw Vigor in the air, and slid over the shallow punctures in my flesh. Normally, it needed sunlight, but my mastery of Environmental Augmentation meant I could draw from almost anything. It wasn’t as powerful as when I used sunlight, but it was enough. A soothing sensation filled my body as the technique closed over the shallow wounds.
A garbled sound drifted from the wall beside me. I frowned, and a memory washed through my mind of my earlier fight against the demons. Kumi’s Song of the Sea had burned the demons, despite its usual healing properties. The Broodmother was a creature of the demonic realm and thrived on death rather than life. Could healing magic break through the elemental defenses of this creature?
I had to try.
I pushed away from the wall. Another tendril of rotting flesh swept from a growth above me and raced toward my chest. I spun to offer it my back, and the tentacle recoiled from the sheen of my Sunlight Ichor. Triumph raced through my body as I rejoined the fight.
Mahrai’s golem strained as it wrestled with a minotaur. The demon’s savage grin widened as it swept the golem off its feet and hurled it at the nearby wall. Black flames washed over the golem and threatened to extinguish its fire.
I drew upon the power of sap again and coated the prongs of the Depthless Dream in crystallized healing magic. The hulking demon threw a punch at my face, but I sidestepped the attack. I rammed the trident into its exposed armpit, and the minotaur howled in pain as my weapon’s sap coating burned through its armored fur and punctured its flesh.
I wrenched the trident free, dived clear of a counterattack, and sent a stream of Sunlight Ichor-infused water toward Mahrai’s golem. The greenish liquid splattered over the ulcers around the construct, and the black fire vanished. Smoke curled away from the blackened flesh, and the Broodmother snarled in a blood-curdling combination of voices.
“I don’t know what you’re doing, but keep doing it!” Vesma shouted.
I couldn’t flood the entire room with water without running the risk of drowning my friends, though.
Another tentacle of flesh burst free of the floor, caught me in the chest, and tossed me across the slick floor. I rolled to my feet, slid to a halt, and thought fast.
I needed to combine my powers in such a way as to drown the entire room in sap,
