Why did I not give my all when I fought, and the truth was both bitter and hard for me to properly articulate in my head.
I knew they would not survive, and yet I wanted them to, but then, there was the cold part of me that noted that if my friends died in the claws of the Khaaz, they would have a relatively quick death, and the last thing I wanted was for them to die to the corruption of a Narghul Sorcerer.
I could not protect them, and so I wanted them to die more easily... I hate myself for this decision.
The demons were endless, and if I fought with everything I had, then I would buy them time, but there were worse monsters ahead; the Khaazim were coming.
We had three Adepts here, Commander Rel had vanished, but the Khaazim, Adept-grade demons, were in the thousands.
Only a two-horned Narghul Sorcerer was dangerous enough, and if push came to shove, I may be able to draw the fire of the Narghul Sorcerer, but there were three-horned Narghul Sorcerers out there, which I feared would be at the Arcanist Grade, and those strange demons with see-through glowing skin... then there was that heaven-reaching tentacle.
So much madness and horror ahead, and I know I could not save them.
Power... I needed power, I don’t want to be forced to make this choice again... I can’t break my mind more than this.
And so, for eleven minutes, I let myself believe that a miracle might happen.
That is the cruelty of it, not that they died, but that for eleven minutes, with their Essence flooding back and their spells burning at full strength for the first time since they’d made camp, I let myself believe they might not.
They were magnificent. You have to understand that. These were not the weakened, stumbling mages who died in the camp every loop with fear and surprise in their faces, bled grey by a ring of stakes before the knife came.
These were Aldenmere Adepts at their full and proper power, and when the Khaaz came boiling up out of the fissure, they met them like the answer to a question the demons had been foolish to ask.
Fenara’s blizzard rolled out across the eastern crack and froze the first wave solid where it stood, a field of black-red statues that Varis’s force-waves shattered into gravel. Torvin stood at the centre of it all, calm as a man directing traffic, his gold light sweeping in long arcs that turned charging Khaaz to stone mid-stride.
"The eruption from Caelith mourn cannot be hidden from the Academy," Torvin shouted, perhaps to give himself hope and cheer the others.
I made no comments because in the last loop, I knew that there was a regiment of mages from the conclave that was blocking the Academy from reaching the pyramid. We were truly alone, but I was not going to be the one to break their hope.
The researchers and porters fell back in good order behind a line that held. Bari, the crazy brat, was laughing, actually laughing, the idiot, casting Surge in great clumsy concussive bursts that flung demons back into the pit, shouting something about how this was better than porridge.
Staying behind the Adepts, they could slowly recover their Anima and make any contribution that they could to the fight.
Dara’s threadwork, assisted by her blades of air, laced the gaps in the line, fine, pale-blue filament that tripped and tangled and bought half-seconds that turned into minutes. She was fighting with more talents than an Acolyte should have, and the understanding dawned on me that she must have been holding back her talent in the Academy.
I fought beside them, and I did not use a tenth of what I had, because a tenth was enough for the Khaaz and because, God help me, I wanted to share it... this moment with them.
Eleven minutes of standing shoulder to shoulder with people who knew my name, killing monsters together, the sound of battle in my ears instead of dying. Eleven minutes of not being alone.
Then the ground heaved a second time, and the Khaazim burst out of the center of the camp with no indication, and the arithmetic changed.
∞
You have not truly seen a Khaazim until you have seen one rise from the earth. A fortress of black-red chitin the size of a small house on eight roof-beam legs, a hateful upright torso, a segmented tail weeping fluid.
One of these things would be enough to fight against the three Adepts and place them on the back foot, but six of them had emerged from below us, bursting out from all corners of the camp. These bastards were as tricky as they were quiet.
I knew what they were. I had killed fifteen of them with my bare hands in another loop, on another field, but these mages had never seen an Adept-grade demon, and full strength is not the same as enough, and I watched the line I had let myself believe in begin to come apart.
I burned my hope for fuel, and I moved.
What I did next was foolish, but if I could buy them a little more time, then it was worth it.
Abyssal Toll erupted from my body, sending out visible waves of red that pushed back my friends beside me, as five hundred demonic essence was spent in an instant. A moment later, I activated Lightning Dominion but shrank it until it hovered just above my skin.
I could feel the hollow place yawning wider behind my soul as I spent it, and the pulse went out at the frequency of an opening Earth Gate, and every Khaaz in fifty metres dropped twitching to the dirt, and the nearest Khaazim staggered, its Abyssal shield guttering.
It bought a breath. At rank one, against six of them, a breath was all it bought.
It was not enough. I want to be clear about that, because everything after is going to look like failure, and it was, but it was the failure of a boy who was finally strong enough to choose who to reach first and not strong enough to reach them all.
I reached Adept Varis, as a Khaazim’s tail came down where he stood and I blinked him out from under it and put four stacked arcs through the joint of its leg, and it screamed and toppled, and for one heartbeat Varis looked at me in astonishment at being saved by a cohort boy... and then a second Khaazim’s burst-speed took him while I was turning, ten metres in a blink, and there was simply no Varis anymore.
I did not have time to grieve him. That is its own kind of horror, the not having time. I filed it where I file everything, in the place that I will have to feel later, in a tent, with the porridge warming.