Rex used the chance to use his sovereign necromancy to summon all of his minions, and he was lucky that no one was looking because they were fighting and taking cover.
It was also the perfect timing to ambush them all at once.
The ambush didn’t give any warning, and that was the point.
The group first knew sothing was wrong when Aisella said, "Sothing’s wrong," two seconds before the constructs ca through the passage openings. By then, the positioning was already set.
Twelve goblins ca through the south passage, six orc constructs ca through the east passage, and the wolves were spread out around the edges of the chamber in a way that put pressure on the back and sides of each formation at the sa ti.
The effect on a group that was already fully committed to fighting a huge apex creature was exactly what Rex had planned. Three different things that needed to be done right away, and none of them had been there a second ago.
"MORE MONSTERS INCOMINGGGGG!!!"
Theo’s voice cut through the noise with the authority of soone who had dealt with worse, but the accuracy of the last few minutes was gone, replaced by the reactive managent of a situation that had suddenly beco too complicated.
When Apollo turned, he let up on the creature’s forward pressure, which it quickly took advantage of. "What the...?! They don’t look like normal monsters!"
The chaos had weight and texture, and it was unpredictable in the way that Rex wanted it to be. Because it was impossible, no one was watching everything.
He first went to Talyra because he could see that the wolf construct was getting closer to her from the left at a speed she wasn’t aware of while she was changing her firing solution for a second orc.
His telekinesis caught the construct in midair and slamd it into the wall with enough force to break it apart. Then he was next to her, close enough that when she realized what had just happened and saw that the answer was him standing next to her with his full attention on the spaces between threats, she looked so relieved.
"Aww...! I almost had it!" She said.
Rex said, "You didn’t," but not in a an way.
"Well... Thank you, Rex. You’re always there to save as usual," she said right away.
Talyra was the kind of person who quickly ended argunts when she was losing them.
[TALYRA SKYDANCER: DESIRE LEVEL — 18/100 → 35/100]
The goblin construct that found the hole in the group’s rearguard had found Aisella, who was on the other side of the formation. She had a barrier up, and her ability to defend herself was not small, but the construct kept hitting it with the chanical persistence of sothing that didn’t get tired and didn’t feel the barrier’s pushback as a deterrent.
Rex got to her in two seconds and used concentrated telekinetic force to carefully take apart the construct, which basically unwound it from the outside, and then spent the next thirty seconds keeping a clear area around her while she kept running her field healing passes on the injured mbers of the group.
Rex said, "You can stop looking at like that."
"I’m not looking at you like anything," Aisella said, and her hands kept working even though she was talking.
"You’re running a diagnostic on while I’m standing here," Rex said.
"I run diagnostics on everyone," she said.
Then she paused and said, "Your energy output in combat is... not what I’d expect from soone with your stated ability level."
"Is that a problem?" Rex asked.
"No," Aisella said.
She looked him in the eye for exactly one second before turning back to the injured mbers of the formation. "Just interesting."
[AISELLA MOONBLOOM: 21/100 → 38/100]
The ambush was doing its job all over the room. Rex was monitoring everything without revealing his presence.
He was controlling the constructs’ behavior through the necrotic channel while also playing his part in the group’s defense. The best thing about the Sovereign Necromancy constructs, which are magical creations controlled by a necromancer, was that they didn’t need any more instruction than their standing orders.
This ant that he could focus on other things while the chanism he had set up ran itself.
In the southwest passage of the chamber, which led to a lower side chamber marked as a secondary access point on Elizabeth’s map, the exact event he had requested Lilith to set up was occurring.
The floor in that part of the main chamber had been ready for three hours before the group arrived, when Lilith’s people were still in the dungeon. The shadow constructs had done what they were supposed to do: they had used the stone’s natural cracks to widen a certain crack in the floor of the southwest passage to a width that looked stable but wasn’t.
They had done this at the exact point where soone moving quickly through the passage, under pressure, and paying more attention to threats in front of them than to the ground beneath them would not have noticed the problem.
The wolf construct that had been given the job of moving people in that direction was doing it well, cutting angles that made the southwest passage the best place for anyone who was under pressure to leave the main group.
Kaelira ran down the passage, and her fire magic cleared the way in front of her. The crack held her weight just as it was supposed to.
And then, the floor gave way.
The drop was six feet into the secondary chamber, with stone walls on three sides, the passage above visible but out of jump range, and the sound of the main chamber combat filtering down from above.
Lilith and three of Mordecai’s maids were waiting in the chamber below. As the situation got better, their shadowy forms faded away.
Rex, in the main chamber, heard Kaelira’s short scream as she fell. He paid close attention to it, which looked like a flicker of concern before he focused on the situation at hand again.
"Phase two," he thought, and sent the ssage to Lilith through their channel while blocking the path using telekinesis where Kaelira was.
[ACKNOWLEDGED, MASTER. TARGET SECURED. PHASE TWO INITIATED.]
Above, in the main chamber, the ambush was still running. The apex creature was still standing.
Apollo had turned back to it with a controlled urgency that showed he had registered Kaelira’s absence and was managing the division of his attention that produced in him.
"Kaelira...?! Where is she...?!"
The dungeon’s light shifted and settled, and the battle continued around the thing at the center of the room, and Rex stood in the middle of it all and thought about what ca next.
He was still thinking about it when the creature’s roar shook the chamber walls and the real fight resud in full.
...
Kaelira hit the stone floor of the lower chamber hard, her shoulder taking most of it, and for two full seconds she just lay there while her mind caught up with what her body already knew had happened.
Then the adrenaline hit.
She scrambled upright, fire already crawling up both forearms before she was fully standing, her eyes sweeping the space with the frantic efficiency of soone who had trained for ambushes and was furious that one had actually worked on her.
She breathed.
And then she saw them.
The shadows in the corners weren’t re shadows. They were resolving—pulling inward, taking shape, and becoming won.
Composed and unhurried, three figures flanked a fourth who stood slightly ahead of the others, embodying the stillness of soone who had been patiently waiting for this exact mont.
Lilith regarded Kaelira in the sa way a chess piece regards another chess piece—calm, deliberate, and fully aware of the unfolding strategy.
Kaelira’s fire flared white at the edges.
"Who sent you?"
It wasn’t a question. Her voice had dropped to a low, controlled tone that would have been recognized as more dangerous than shouting if anyone from her party had been there.
Lilith smiled and said nothing.
User Comments
0 comments from readers