CHAPTER 244: A DANCE IN THE DARK TUNNELS

The world was nothing but movement and fury. Maggie slashed through the air, a raging wasp circling a monstrous bull. Her halberd whistled, tracing silver arcs that tore holes in the darkness. She aimed at a knot of muscle behind the creature’s many-eyed knee.

The metal bit into flesh—a clean, precise strike. A hit that would have sent any ordinary beast crashing to the ground, screaming.

The many-eyed thing barely flinched. The red gash she had carved into its hairy hide sealed almost instantly, like a wave licking the sand. A dozen eyes swiveled toward her, blinking, indifferent. No cry of pain, just a glint of foul irritation. Maggie clenched her teeth, the bitter taste of blood in her mouth. She was hammering at a fortress with a maiden’s fists.

Scratch the paint, she thought bitterly. She was only scraping the surface.

On the other side of their improvised arena, the fight was of an entirely different magnitude. The stone colossus and the horned beast exchanged blows that shook the earth. The giant’s fist came down on the monster’s shoulder with the sound of rock exploding. Maggie felt the impact in her calves. A splinter of horn shattered, and the beast roared—for real this time—its bellow a foul blast that made the torches shudder.

That was a meaningful blow.

But the retaliation was just as devastating. The horned beast, lashed by pain, drove its remaining horns like stakes into the colossus’s chest. The sound was hideous: the screech of stone being violated, a deep crack that seemed to come from the bowels of the earth. Shards of granite and glittering dust burst from the wound. The colossus staggered, its left arm suddenly hanging limp, less mobile, as if the runes that animated it had been damaged.

They weren’t trading scratches. They were mutilating each other.

Maggie dodged a bone-club strike that pulverized the ground where she had stood a heartbeat earlier. The creature’s foul breath spun her head. She was nothing but a nuisance, an irritating fly. And already she could feel the infernal heat in her chest begin to fade. The minutes were slipping away.

"Zirel, if you’ve got a plan, it’s now!" she shouted, not knowing if her voice could cut through the din.

The reply didn’t come from him, but from Elisa. The young woman’s voice, taut with effort, reached them in a whisper carried by some unknown spell:

"The fault... fifty paces behind the many-eyed one... the ground is thin. Their weight..."

That was it. The plan. Always the plan.

Their mission had never been to beat them in direct combat. How could they? Their mission was to lure. To draw them to the right place. To drive them into such a frenzy that they forgot to look where they stepped.

The colossus, as if sensing Maggie’s thought more than Elisa’s words, wrapped its one good arm around the horned beast. It no longer tried to strike, but to carry, dragging it backward in heavy, deliberate steps toward the weakened ground. The beast bellowed, thrashed, clawed its flank with hooves, tearing off more chunks of stone. Every wound inflicted on the giant reverberated through Maggie, a dull and distant ache that echoed in their bond.

Maggie pivoted to face her own foe. The many-eyed creature advanced, drooling frustration, its bone raised for a horizontal swing that would have crushed her into pulp.

"Hey! You pile of misshapen meat!" Maggie yelled as she backed away, drawing its focus. "You missed me! Blind as you look?"

She didn’t need to hurt it. Just enrage it. Just guide it.

She feinted an attack, her halberd hissing close to its face, then sprang back, luring it step by step toward the trap.

Every backward step was torment. Every second stole more of her heightened strength. She was no longer a warrior—just bait. A loud, agile shadow steering the monster toward its fall.

The role clung to her skin as always. The decoy.

But this time, the bait was about to become the fisherman.

The ground trembled under their steps, a discordant rhythm where each shock rang like the announcement of impending doom. Maggie felt the heat in her chest bursting out in burning waves, as if her core were cracking from within. Each second devoured her energy. Ten minutes? She had already lost five.

She feinted again, her halberd slicing the air and tearing a blackish trickle from the many-eyed creature. But the wound sealed before she could even hope. Her body screamed, her muscles vibrating at superhuman speed, and still she achieved nothing concrete. She was a mosquito clawing at a cursed mountain of flesh.

A bone strike split the vault above her head, showering stone and dust. Maggie rolled aside, sprang back up—short of breath, ribs on fire. Her speed was still there, but she felt it slipping through her fingers like sand.

Move, keep moving, Maggie. The colossus holds. He holds for you.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her mineral companion. The stone giant staggered step by step, its one working arm clamped tight around the horned beast. Each step tolled like a funeral bell, every assault tearing away chunks, shattering runes. But it didn’t let go. It endured, grinding, cracking, its spectral light flickering inside its helm—and still, it held.

They were both playing the same role: to endure, to draw.

"Come on... come on, you bastard!" Maggie spat, slamming her halberd with all her strength into the many-eyed thing’s flank. She knew it would do nothing, but it had to respond, had to follow. The creature growled, its eyes blinking in grotesque disarray, and its bone scythed toward her again.

Maggie dodged by a hair, her boots sliding in the dust. Behind her, she felt the air shift, the ground thinning. They were nearly there. Just a few more steps, and the trap would open.

But time was pressing. Her core burned so fiercely she thought her organs were melting. Her vision flickered, flashing white.

She tightened her grip on the halberd’s shaft, inhaled, and roared:

"Zirel! Now!"

A strange vibration ran through the walls. An order she didn’t fully understand, a signal that awakened the runes of her colossus. It unleashed a mineral roar, an echoing shockwave that shook the tunnel, and dragged the horned beast with brutal force onto the section where the floor already cracked beneath their weight.

And Maggie, halberd ready, stepped back once more, guiding the many-eyed monster, her heart pounding like a bomb about to explode.

They only needed one more step. Just one step too far.

One last retreat. Maggie’s heel struck a loose stone, and she felt the ground splinter beneath her weight.

The many-eyed creature lifted its bone weapon, triumphant, thinking it had her cornered. Its gaping mouth exhaled a stench of carrion.

Maggie smiled, an exhausted rictus of defiance.

"Welcome to hell, bastard."

She hurled herself sideways, rolling just as the bone came crashing down where she had stood. The blow, monstrously powerful, struck not her, but the ground already weakened.

The crack was deafening. Stone gave way with a thunderous roar, collapsing into the abyss below. The many-eyed creature screamed, betrayed, as it lost its footing, dragged down by the weight of its weapon and the collapsing floor beneath it. It vanished in a cloud of dust and rubble, its cry fading into the depths.

A relative silence fell, broken only by the grunts and impacts of the other fight. Maggie rose, trembling, her body shaking from exhaustion and the aftershock of her technique. She had done it. She had lured her prey into the trap.

But they were far from safe. The partial collapse had opened a gulf, cutting them off from the rest of the tunnel, trapping them in a rocky pocket with the horned beast. They were hemmed in, not by monsters now, but by the very geography.

That was when Zirel’s strategy took hold.

"Switch targets!" his voice rang out, sharp and commanding, from the far side of the chasm.

Elisa, who until then had held up a fragile shield of informative energy, dropped her arms. Her eyes closed for an instant, and when they reopened, a sickly green glow blazed in her hands. She no longer locked the enemy—she blinded it. A beam of distorting waves struck the horned beast’s face, making it shake its head in confusion, disrupting its sight and balance.

The stone colossus, briefly relieved of pressure, seized the chance to land a fist that cracked one of the monster’s ribs.

But before the beast could retaliate, Zirel was already moving. He had slipped through a narrow intact passage, his slender sword carving an arc. He didn’t aim for vital spots—impossible on such a brute—but at the tendons behind its leg.

"Maggie, with me!" he barked.

Without thinking, Maggie obeyed. She leapt to his side, halberd raised to parry a half-hearted kick from the wounded beast. The impact rattled her bones, but she held firm.

The horned beast, enraged, turned on Zirel, who promptly fell back, drawing it toward the cavern’s center.

"Elisa, now!" Zirel cried.

Elisa shifted again. The green of information turned into a solid blue of protection. A kinetic wall sprang up between the beast and Zirel, long enough for him to dodge a charge that would have crushed him.

Then came the colossus’s turn. While the beast was distracted by the wall and Zirel, the stone giant lunged, seized it by a broken horn, and hauled it back, dragging it away from its commander.

They were all moving as one. A deadly ballet, perfectly choreographed. No fixed pattern. No set target. They constantly switched roles, from defense to offense, from lure to diversion. The horned beast, though physically superior, was lost. Its predator’s instinct couldn’t process the tactic. It roared in frustration, lashing out blindly, wasting its strength against empty space where, a heartbeat earlier, an enemy had already yielded to another.

Maggie, Zirel, Elisa, and the colossus were no longer four separate fighters—they were a single organism with four minds, guided by Zirel’s cold will. They weren’t seeking a killing blow. They sought to exhaust, to disorient, to drive the beast to its own downfall.

They had torn it from its nest, its territory. And now, in this confined space they had chosen, they stripped it of its bearings, its logic of combat. They weren’t warriors; they were a trap closing, slowly, inexorably.