“Probably one of those weird-ass creatures. You guys hear that?”
Lumil stuck her hand in the air and flashed a thumbs-up without turning around. L’zar’s response was to slow down enough for them to group tighter together.
“Keep your eyes open,” Corian said, more for Ember’s sake than anyone else’s. “We shouldn’t have too much trouble making a statement if these things show themselves and hit first.”
The slithering sucking sound came again, then a dark, undulating shadow passed behind the drifting layers of black smoke moving across their path.
“Ha.” Lumil jerked her fists down by her sides and summoned the spinning circles of sparking red light and magical runes around her fists. “Bring it. I’m gonna whup your monster ass.”
“Keep walking,” Maleshi repeated, her voice tense with annoyance.
One after another, dark shapes drifted behind the screen of black smoke, almost as if the shapeshifting creatures of the in-between were lining up to form an aisle for the party of magicals.
Ember swallowed and tried not to look at the wavering shadows. “So, we just keep going and wait for them to attack us?”
“Pretty much.” Byrd leaned away from a particularly thick shadow on his right as they passed. “Sometimes they won’t.”
“Most of the time they do,” Lumil added.
Corian hummed in thought. “We’re not assuming anything about this crossing. Remember that. Everything’s changing now.”
L’zar led them farther across the nothingness of this partially existing realm between worlds. A creaking groan rose around them, making the invisible ground beneath their feet shudder. Then a gust of wind raced across the changing landscape and blew the thick black smoke away until only thin wisps remained.
Ember’s eyes widened as she stared at the creatures all around them. “Oh, crap.”
“Huh.” Lumil gestured toward black tendrils as thick as tree trunks sprouting from the ground. The light of her magic-enhanced fists cast flickering red shadows on the tentacles’ glistening surfaces. “We walked into a monster forest or a giant nest of black octopuses out of water.”
“Will you quit waving those around?” Byrd tried to bat down the goblin woman’s fists. “Genius idea to catch their attention with attack spells for gloves.”
“What? I’m prepared. These things obviously know we’re here, and they haven’t done anything about it by now, so my guess is they’re not gonna.” The creaking groan rose again beside the goblin woman, and she turned to see a massive tentacle five times larger than the others rearing back before it swung down toward her. “Dammit. You jinxed it.”
She leaped aside as the tentacle crashed to the ground where she’d stood. Lumil drew back one fist and smashed it into the tentacle. Another monster shrieked somewhere, and Maleshi spun with a hiss.
“What are you doing?”
Lumil’s other fist delivered a powerful uppercut to the underside of the tentacle as it peeled itself off the ground. Red light sparked across the thing’s glistening flesh, and the ground trembled again. The goblin woman shot a quick glance at the general. “That thing attacked me.”
Cheyenne and Ember raced forward. “I think we should pick up the pace.”
The urgency in the halfling’s voice made Corian turn around. “Why’s that?”
“Incoming flying things.” Cheyenne stuck her thumb over her shoulder. “Fair warning.”
An ear-splitting screech ripped through the air before a thick black shadow sailed over the group.
“See?”
“Damn.” Byrd gazed into the lightless gray sky streaked with black smoke. “I didn’t know they could fly.”
“They can do pretty much anything.”
“Keep moving.” Corian waved them forward. “Whatever comes at us, however it comes, keep moving.”
The tentacles lining their apparent path shuddered, undulating faster as the group picked up the pace. Another monster wheeled overhead, hidden by the black smoke but casting a shadow through it.
“What are they waiting for?” Maleshi muttered with raised eyebrows.
“No point in trying to answer that question.” Corian stepped away from a quivering tentacle. “The only thing we need to worry about is—”
A massive crack echoed through the in-between, and all the waving, trembling tentacles shot up into straight, rigid spikes lining both sides of the travelers’ path. “Shit,” Lumil whispered. “That’s never good.”
“It doesn’t mean anything yet.”
All at once, the rigid tentacles splintered, cracked, and shattered into thousands of tiny black shards. Like broken glass launched from an explosion, the fragments pelted the travelers.
“What the hell?” Cheyenne covered her head and kept moving forward at a crouch. Even as she walked across the broken pieces, she felt them moving along the invisible ground beneath her feet and around her ankles.
“They’re shifting,” Corian said. “Weird way to do it, but that’s what’s happening. Keep—”
“Moving.” Lumil waved him off. “Yeah, yeah. We heard you the first thousand times, man.”
Another shadow swooped toward them, and the flying beast decided to land. It crashed into the ground between L’zar and the nightstalkers behind him. The creature opened a beaklike mouth to reveal razor-sharp teeth and red sludge coating the inside and shrieked at the nightstalkers, making them reel backward. Glowing heat rose in the back of its throat.
“Lumil, this is being attacked first.” Corian extended his claws on both hands and slashed the faceless creature’s throat. The light and heat died, but the thing let out a deafening screech anyway.
Two more flying creatures landed where the tentacles had once stood, and the tiny scattered fragments of those tentacles clicked and clacked into place, assembling themselves like robotic pieces into new and larger shapes.
Like the war machines. Cheyenne summoned two churning orbs of black energy in her hands and waited for the monster-thing that looked like a bat with dozens of two-foot spikes on its back instead of wings to come a little closer. The bat hissed at her, and she sent one black orb straight into its mouth. It burst into thousands of shards again, and she kept moving.
Lumil smashed her fists into one of the flying creatures over and over, sending red sparks along the thing’s flesh. It snapped at her with razor-lined jaws, and she brought her fist down on
