“Rai, Gilo, the two of you are dealing with flankers. Gilo, I’ll support you against incorporeal creatures, Rai, you’ll have to deal with them on your own. Take a flank each.” I ordered, taking control of the situation. Just because the first attack had only been by a single spectre, didn’t mean there wouldn't be a lot more incoming, soon.

“Myra, Mibo, Jakyl, the three of you will form up with Sigmir. Love, you’ll take the lead.” I continued, getting nods from the three Daimons, though Jakyl looked somewhat conflicted.

“Adra, the two of us will be in the back, Olivia, Mal, on the sides, keeping Kirl, Eronui and Ulchia safe in the middle.” Another round of acknowledgement, just in time for me to turn another spectre into slowly dissipating Astral Power, the magic holding it together utterly destroyed.

“Move, we have no idea how long they’ll take.” I noticed a glance passing between the three clerics, but they, too, followed my orders, taking up position in the middle of our formation, while I was in the very back, only Adra next to me able to watch my back.

“You’ll cover our back, tell me if there’s trouble.” I quietly told her, before fully focusing forward. Another Spectre was darting out of the shadows, only to be cut down by Myra, her halberd shining with a fiery glow. The Spectre seemed to like that even less than my dispelling darkness, it’s form going up like dry tinder.

With Sigmir in the lead, we began to move forward, Rai and Gilo staying near the group, ready to intercept any ranged attacker. By now, there was little need to find threats, there were threats all around us and we never knew when one would emerge. Where before, we had seen only the occasional group of skeletons, they were now coming in an almost constant stream, only to be shattered by Sigmir or one of the Daimons.

Olivia was happily using her divine magic from the back, golden shields shining around Sigmir and the others in the lead, ready to intercept blows. Similarly, Jakyl was singing a soft yet driving melody and even I, vigilant against any effect that might influence my mind, was getting drawn into his pace, moving in sync with the others. From the back, I could see that it wasn’t just me who was affected, everyone of us seemed to move in a synchronised, smooth fashion that I had only seen between Sigmir and Ylva before. Even with the pack-bond between us, I hadn’t been able to integrate my fighting to the same degree.

Fully buffed up, we were able to slice through the undead like a knife through butter and I noticed that Sigmir carefully kept a slow pace, making sure that we never ran into too many to handle as we steadily advanced forward.

In the back, I was able to remain relaxed, there was simply no need for me to intervene. Similarly, Rai and Gilo were quite idle, the three in the front, encouraged by Jakyl’s singing, were drawing any approaching undead towards them. Nonetheless, letting our guards down would be foolish, so I carefully kept watch, just in case.

The further we advanced, the more undead appeared, in addition to the skeletons rising from the debris and the Spectres swooping in from the gloomy darkness that blanketed the area, there were a few revenants, still covered in decaying flesh. They were slower than the skeletons but a lot more sturdy, their ability to shrug off normally devastating damage quite impressive. Only true dismemberment, fire or high-powered magical disruption seemed to reliably deal with them. For Jakyl and his thin rapier, made for swift stabbing attacks, they were about the worst kind of opponent. No vital organs to stab, no mind to beguile, just a lump of flesh and ill intent.

A part of me was quite amused when he tried to actually take one of them on, darting out from behind Sigmir, apparently quite happy to finally have a fleshy opponent to stab. The skeletons were similarly lacking in vital organs, but also in flesh to stab in the first place but here, there was a lot of meat to pierce. Which he did, with a flourishing, almost theatrically beautiful stab to the chest. A normal humanoid would have been stabbed through the heart and gravely wounded, if not dying. The revenant on the other hand, simply ignored it completely, instead trying to grab the piercing rapier and the arm holding it, forcing Jakyl to hurriedly pull back, pursued by the undead.

Mibo had some pity on him, his shield bashing the revenant away, leaving it wide open to any follow-up attack Jakyl wanted to make. Only to have the follow-up attack, another well-aimed thrust, this one piercing the throat, maybe even damaging the spine and yet, the revenant didn’t show any additional discomfort. This time, Myra moved up, her Glaive hacking into the dead flesh, cutting half-way through the undead’s torso, the force of the blow enough to knock it down.

It still got back up, only to fall down again, revealing Rai who had stepped into its shadow, piercing the spine with magically enhanced blades and disrupting the magic that kept the thing moving, before stepping back to his assigned position.

On and on, we went, the initial trickle of undead slowly turning into a stream that Sigmir and the others cut through, only now, Rai and Gilo were forced to fully engage. Not due to the numbers, but because some of the skeletons were spell-casters, their hands alight with unnatural flames in shades of purple and grey. The first time we saw one of those, it managed to throw a fiery projectile at Sigmir, shattering against the Shield Olivia had set around her. Immediately afterwards, Olivia gave order to stop further attacks of that nature, leaving it up to Rai and Gilo to deal with them.

Gilo was a lot less effective, while her ability to remain undetected was en-par with Rai’s and her ability to scout and track was ahead of his, when it came to mobility, especially on a gloomy, shadowed battlefield, Rai’s shadow-step left her miles in the dust. To keep the magic-skeletons from throwing their purple-grey fire at Sigmir, I decided to intervene, keeping track of Gilo and striking if she wasn’t able to stop one of the skeletons. Luckily, the focus on magic meant that they were even more susceptible to my devouring attacks.

Finally, after a hard-fought five-hundred metres of land, we managed to get to the cleft. It was a weirdly unnatural scar in the land, maybe a kilometre in length and two-hundred metres wide at the top, almost entirely straight, as if someone had taken a sword and sliced through a hillside, letting the wound gape open. The steep sides turned gentle at the end, the bottom of the cleft rising up and meeting the down-slope of the hill, allowing entry and exit on either side. Either end was almost as wide as the top, though I was reasonably certain that it was a lot narrower at the bottom.

From ground-level, it was even more depressing than it had been from above. From above, the clouds simply shrouded the land, akin to smog, difficult to see through but simply beneath the flyer. From the ground, we could watch the roiling, dark shadows seep out of the cleft, some rising into the air before drifting to the sides, others simply dispersing on ground level, covering the land. It was almost like looking at a chimney, with black smoke rising from it, defiling the land. Here, the stench of death was as worse as it had ever gotten within the Dorrian Mountains, strong enough to make me want to block my nose.

When looking through the dark shadows, I could see movement below, the cleft was filled with moving undead, streaming towards the two exits in an effort to get to us. With Lenore’s planning, we had managed to come out roughly at the middle of the cleft, above the deepest point, making the way to us as long as possible, giving us the maximum amount of time.

“If you have any more of those bombs, maybe now would be a good time.” I told Mal, before focusing on one side of the cleft. Closing my eyes for a moment, I decided on a course of action. I needed to get Astral Power into the cleft, quickly and under my control. One way would be to simply conjure Icicles and lob them down, but that lacked a bit of flair. Instead, I pulled out the seedlings I had created to create Walls of Ice at a distance, controlling a pair of them with my Ice-Magic and let one float above the opening, the other towards the middle before activating Overflow.

My eyes glowing with silvery light, I channelled as much Astral Power into the floating seedlings, letting them instantly germinate into full.fledged Walls of Ice and without continuous support from my Ice-Magic, they followed the Law, in this case, the Law of Gravity.

The impact was strong enough to cause soft vibrations in the ground, the sound loud enough to be a little painful to my sensitive ears but the effect, helped along with a focus on the Shatter-Rune was quite impactful. I couldn’t be sure how much the walls had weighed at the end, but a couple hundred kilograms of Ice, falling some sixty metres before exploding on Impact, had destroyed quite a few undead.

And, more importantly, filling the cleft with the freezing energy of my Astral Power, still connected to my mind, ready to be used. With an effort of will and concentration, I used the freezing cold Astral Power down in the cleft, let it mingle and mesh with the Darkness down there. And enforced my will on it, forming a freezing cold mist to devour all magic.

If not for Sigmir catching me, I might have stumbled, the effort to wrest the power inherent to the cleft itself under my control, if only a small part of it, was immense. And so was the effect, I had seen videos of bombs exploding, and that was what it reminded me of. The mist I had created, cold and white as snow, suddenly exploded outwards and upwards, winds buffeting us as air rushed in to fill the void left by the freezing temperatures, dispersing some of the unnatural darkness that had oozed from the cleft, revealing a winter wonderland below. A quarter of the cleft was covered in Ice and snow, with not a single undead in sight.

A wide smile appeared on my face, as I leaned against Sigmir, observing the expressions of my companions. Shock and awe, indeed.