“There’s a bigger one!” shouted Jade. She saw it with her eyes, a glimpse of a dark robe. She hadn’t felt it. Perhaps it had been there all along, perhaps it was just created. She couldn’t tell. The swarm was messing up her senses.
Morn stopped shoving handfuls of insects into their mouth, swallowed and said:
“There! It is burrowed.”
Jade’s toes bumped into something hard and solid. She found her balance and realized that she stood on a floor. The bugs were disappearing into it, or through it. She wasn’t sure. The floor felt solid enough, though the many vibrations of the countless bugs were making it difficult for her to figure out what was going on outside her vision.
What was evidently clear, regardless, was that the six black-robes were here to fight. She took her blade from her scabbard, ready to fight them off. She thought that by now the Sun would have realized that throwing more bugs at them was not going to work. But she was wrong. Next to her, she heard Morn let out a fierce and intimidating battle-cry. Both them and Iratus were ready to fight as well.
One of the black-robes came for her and she looked it into its dark, beady eyes. It stared back at her blankly, it looked mindless to her, alien perhaps. But Jade knew better, this was a person, just like her. Unfortunately for it, she had not come all this way just to let herself be defeated by some ant-man. She ducked when he threw a large scythe her way. He stumbled and she stepped around him before giving him a gentle push towards Morn. The orc was more than ready and was already swinging their axe from one side to the other, cleaving through the air and smacking into the insects armor.
Jade smacked her flat hand at something tickling in the nape of her neck. When she looked at her hand, there was a dark green goo hanging from her fingers. Probably one of the many smaller bugs that still swarmed on the ceiling. She wiped her hand on her leather armor and turned when she heard a strange voice that sounded like a wooden mug was filled with pebbles.
“Attack the beastman,” it said.
Jade located Kevins, whose face was screwed up in pain. He sat on his knees without his staff. Something had pinned him down. The ground started vibrating, some part of it was turning like a dial around another part that turned the other way. The floor carried Jade away from the fighting orcs and further from Kevins.
“Morn!” Jade shouted, but the orc had already noticed and threw themselves towards Kevins. Acantha slammed her vines like whips onto the creature that held Kevins by his legs. Jade kicked at one of the black-robes in an attempt to stop it from ganging up on her friend. She tried to count how many enemies there were, but she only now noticed that for every creature that Morn, Iratus, Lumira, Acantha and she knocked down, another stepped through the walls as if they were stepping through an invisible door.
Jade swallowed. The Sun had welcomed them here. Of course it knew that they could handle a few black-robes. The Sun was just testing them. Trying them out. Playing with them. Jade shook her head. First she would have to make sue no one was actually getting hurt. Then she could worry about whether the Sun had been planning any of this. Even if this had all been a trap, there was nothing she could do about it now.
Jade grabbed one of the black-robes by its shoulder and pushed her blade into its neck. She felt the body go limp in her hands and she let it fall to the ground. Kevins was again standing. His face was still contorted in pain, but he was surrounded by his friends who were each fighting to keep the black-robes at bay.
Morn hacked their axe through the robe and again, the floor started vibrating. This time Jade sidestepped to stand on the same dial as Kevins. But the ground swept away below her feet, jerking her to the left instead of the anticipated backwards. The group of friends was separated again. The two black-robes that had been standing, stepped backwards through the wall, leaving the six friends in an empty room.
But Jade barely had time to wipe the sweat off her wrinkled face before three creatures emerged, rising up out of the floor as if the room had just decided to glide down around them. Each of them wore different colors, one white, one black, one gold. And each of them had something written on their forehead. Jade was pretty sure it was not written in Lingua, but somehow she was able to read it. As if the shape of the word was resonating with a forgotten part of her soul.
If it hadn’t been for all the times Jade had spent slaying bugs over the past few months, she might have categorized their insect-like features simply as plain daemon. A chill ran down Jades spine as she realized why. The retriever daemon that she had fought to rescue Crystal Embers had the same face as the creature dressed in black. On the forehead of the creature stood in resounding characters “The Hand”. The golden creature had stapled on its forehead the words “The Heart”. The white-clad creature rose both its arms and with a familiar booming voice it spoke to them:
“Attack me!”
Jade felt her body move on sudden impulse and she readied her blade to strike.
“NO!” she thought and restrained herself. There was no chance she would let him win now. Not after she had made it this far. Every muscle in her body ached as she chose not to attack on his command.
She looked up at her friends, who were scowling at the Voice. Acantha had let herself fall down on her knees and Lumira was halfway throwing her spear before directing it instead to the ground.
“Keep it up,” Jade sang to them while trying to ignore the burning sensation that she knew simply obeying would take away. “Don’t listen to him.”
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