“We need to clear them out!” Nathaniel yelled from beside the ranger, his sword flashing high and low.
“We need to clear a path first!” Kassian pointed out, not far from the stonework now.
On the lowest bridge in the pit, Asher turned to the Galfreys and Faylen, all three having followed him to stem the largest flow of Reavers yet. With the last of the creatures lying at their feet, the four companions held a brief, but silent, conversation with their eyes alone.
Asher whipped his head around to Kassian and Inara. “Keep pushing forward! We’ll secure the doorway!”
As they once did, decades earlier, the four companions leapt over the railing and dropped down to face their enemy together. Nathaniel and Asher had no choice but to hit the ground and drop into a roll lest they damage their feet and legs. Reyna and Faylen required no such measures, their landing secured with a simple crouch.
The Reavers guarding the stone steps broke away from the cells that had imprisoned the Drakes and challenged the most experienced warriors in the pit - a choice only the fearless could make.
The Galfreys especially worked well together, their fighting style unique to the pair and only achievable after decades of fighting side by side. Faylen was the demon Asher remembered, her focused fury not to be taken lightly. The ranger’s back pivoted in time with the High Guardian’s, allowing them to dispatch a Reaver each without fear of being flanked. One went high while the other went low, their strikes always timed perfectly to aid the other.
“Drop this?” Nathaniel called as he retrieved Asher’s broadsword, the tip plunged into the ground.
Asher side-stepped a Reaver’s blade and caught the two-handed sword. On reflex, he incorporated the weapon into his spinning attack. That same Reaver soon found an edge of steel biting through its neck, releasing the fiend from its master’s strings. Its head rolling across the ground signalled the last of Alijah’s puppets on this side of the doorway, though Kassian and Inara were still beating back the few who attacked from elsewhere.
“Keep going!” Inara shouted down at them. “We can take care of this!”
Reyna gave her daughter a nod and nocked another arrow on her bow. “Shall we?” The elven queen was the first to pass through the doorway and enter the realm of magic.
Asher paused for the briefest of moments and looked up to catch Adan’s eye. There was so much he wanted to say to the Drake and no time for a word of it. He poured as much as he could into his expression, hoping Adan could see everything he wished to convey, be it his hope for their success or his agony that his friend would soon sacrifice himself for the greater good.
Setting foot into the realm of magic, it would have been easy to have given in to the sheer majesty of it all and simply stood in awe of such an alien world.
To Asher, there was only the enemy in front of him.
Having sheathed his silvyr blade on his back, the ranger added his broadsword to the battle. They were fighting between two enormous roots, their ankles submerged in warm water, while smoke and ash from the fire swept over them all, lending the Reavers a wraith-like quality.
Catching one of the smaller roots, beneath the water, Asher lost his footing and took a swift backhand across the face. Staggering away, he was then clipped across the shoulder by a stray blade from one of the fiends fighting Nathaniel. Tightening his grip around the hilt of his broadsword, the ranger returned with a vengeance. His shoulder cried out in pain, protesting the might behind his swing, but it didn’t stop him from adding another body to the tally.
Soon after, the first of the Drakes poured in through the doorway, guided by Kassian and Adan’Karth around the small battle. Inara was quick to join the skirmish, her Vi’tari blade never one to be left out of a good fight. In the presence of the Drakes, however, the Reavers became twice as hard to pin down and slay as they repeatedly attempted to slip through the gaps and target them. Asher even resorted to grabbing one by the cloak and yanking it back to face him.
Continuing in this vein, the ranger moved through his stances and put steel to steel. The Drakes flowed through one after the other, scaling the roots between the doorway and the trunk of the tree.
Asher had no idea how much time had passed before he realised there were no more Drakes coming through the doorway. Looking back at it now, he could see elven soldiers daring to enter while the dwarves remained firmly on Illian soil.
Confident that the few remaining Reavers could be dealt with, Asher bashed the nearest Reaver around the head with his spiked pommel, kicked it back, and made for the shorter of the two surrounding roots. His broadsword slotted back into its scabbard a second before his hands found purchase on top of the root. Exhaustion threatened to claim the last of his strength but the ranger pushed on, his training having more than equipped him to do such a thing.
Elevated now, he could see the hundreds of Drakes not far away, gathering at the base of the tree which, in itself, almost floored Asher with its scale. Now he really had seen everything. He could also see enormous stalactites falling from the star-like ceiling. A few seconds after they impacted the ground, a shudder rippled across the extraordinary realm. Careful to keep his footing, Asher broke into the fastest run he could manage and made for the Drakes.
He didn’t cross the distance with nearly as much grace as the Drakes had, but the ranger finally made it to the
