The first Khaaz emerged, and I saw the shock and panic sweep past everyone in the camp.
When I had spoken about the arrival of the demon, none of them had believed me, and I did not blame them. If this were me at the first loop, I would not believe me.
I was used to the presence of the Khaaz, its twitching tendrils that seemed to be tasting the air, and its eyeless face was a thing of horror, but that horror was just the beginning, and its full weight would only land when the full scale of this eruption was taken into focus.
My outburst had drawn the entire members of the camp into one place, and when the single demon saw us, it charged with no hesitation.
Adept Fenara cursed in surprise, and her staff came up, releasing a lance of frost that struck the demon mid charge. The Khaaz froze solid and shattered on the ground.
But the a a there were more. The crack was widening. A dozen Khaaz poured out, then two dozen, then more. The red light from the fissure painted the camp in shades of blood and shadow.
"To arms!" Torvin shouted. "Defensive positions! Protect the researchers!"
The Adepts moved forward. Varis and Fenara formed a line at the eastern edge, their spells flashing. Torvin coordinated, calling out targets and adjusting formations. The researchers and porters fell back toward the centre of the camp, their faces white.
I was happy that they were able to quickly react, but I did not join them. I knew that in a moment like this, everyone’s attention was focused on the demons, and it was up to me to take the obvious actions, the damned surveyor’s stake.
I ran toward the nearest surveyor’s stake, the one I had pointed out to Torvin.
Behind me, I heard the Adepts beginning to cast, and the screams of the demons, and I began to smile at this sound. The sound of battle was what I wanted to hear, not dying screams.
Before I reached the stakes, I cast Threadwork, a discipline I had not used seriously in loops, since I did not see its combat ability.
To me, this spell was the discipline of my parents, the magic of fine fingers and steady hands, the thing I had been good at before the loop turned me into a weapon of lightning; however, my Anima had changed, and every expression of magic I could create had changed as well.
My right hand came up, and the thread that emerged from my palm was not the pale blue of the old Threadwork. It was white-silver, dense, almost solid. Cor Telluris had changed my channels, and the changed channels were conducting my spells almost better than my pre-evolved staff.
I sent the thread toward the stake, and it wrapped around the metal, once, twice, three times. Satisfied with the grip, I pulled, but the stake did not move.
The Essence Dampener array was anchored firmly, and it appeared that they had been designed to resist physical removal. Before now, these stakes were not fused to the ground in this manner, but Orath and Rel had made sure that if any Adept found out that these stakes were the cause of their reduced capabilities, then they would not be able to break the array in time.
I placed my back to it and pulled; the thread tightened, as the silver-white filament sang under tension. The stake groaned and began to bend.
Adept Torvin saw what I was doing. "Voss! What are you..."
"The stakes!" I shouted. "They’re powering the dampener! If I can pull them, you’ll have your full strength back!"
Torvin’s eyes widened. He turned to Fenara. "Cover him!"
Fenara’s blizzard expanded, forming a wall of ice between me and the eastern crack. Varis’s force waves kept the Khaaz from flanking, and Torvin released what resembled gold light that swept across the demons and froze them into statues.
I exerted more force, and the stake budged. A centimetre. Then another. The metal screeched, and red light flared from the base where the configuration was fighting back.
The thread in my hand vibrated, and I felt the configuration inside the stake begin to unravel.
Threadwork was never meant to be about brute force, but with my thread’s tensile strength, force was an option I now had, which didn’t mean I stopped looking for the smarter way.
The thread that was wrapped around the stake gave me a sort of window into its materials, and as I was pulling, I was simultaneously moving the head of the thread around the bending stakes to find its weak points, and I found one almost in the same instant that the stake came free from the ground.
Red light erupted from the hole where it had been, and for a moment, I felt the Essence in the camp shift. Not much, one stake was not enough, but it was a start.
I looked behind me and found that, except for the Adept butchering the Khaaz heading towards us, almost everyone else was frozen in place. I looked towards my friends, "Bari!" I shouted, breaking him from his shock, and I nudged my head towards the stake closer to him. "That stake! Pull it! Dara, join him."
Bari’s face was pale, and Dara’s was blank with shock. They had not fully acknowledged my words, and I shouted,
"Now!"
Bari shook, his eyes filled with complexity as he ran to the nearest stake... and grabbed it with both hands. The metal glowed red, and he shouted in pain and dropped it.
"Threadwork!" I called. "Use Threadwork! Seven inches below the head, there is an opening in the array that can be easily sliced."
Dara nodded and began casting. Her Threadwork was precise, and the thread she sent to the stake was pale blue, not silver, but it wrapped around the metal and found the weakness I pointed out, and she cut through it. Bari grabbed the stake again, and it came free with little effort.
"Elric!" Bari shouted, shaking his burned hand. "What is happening?!"
"I’ll explain later! Just keep pulling!"
I moved to the next stake. The third. The fourth. Each one fought harder than the last, almost as if the array was learning, adapting, trying to hold itself together, but my thread just grew sharper and denser the more familiar I became with manipulating it.
The fifth stake came free, then the sixth and the seventh. Behind me, the Adepts were fighting, but they would not be able to last for long against the endless horde of demons if these stakes did not come free in time.
But the Essence in the camp was changing. I could feel it rising,
"Almost there!" I shouted.
The eighth stake. The ninth.
Bari and Dara were pulling too, their Threadwork thin but determined. The other Acolytes, the ones who had been watching, uncertain, began to help. The researchers, the porters, and anyone who could cast Threadwork joined in.
Most of the stakes they were pulling out were the wrong ones, but it was the effort that counted, as their actions pulled them away from the shock of the eruption.
The tenth stake came free, and the air cracked. The Essence Dampener was a network, and the network had just lost too many nodes. The remaining stakes glowed red, then white, then shattered, and Essence rushed back into the camp like a wave.