Marcus’s eyes burned as he ran past the steaming ashes of the once roaring fire. The only light was provided by a mere dozen burning torches that failed to illuminate the vaulted ceiling. He examined the entrance hall to the thrall’s underground complex. It was exactly like Octavius had described, if filled with a good deal of smoke and entirely deserted.

The door at the far end of the cavern was filled with evenly spaced gaps, and dim light shone through it into the massive room. Quiet coughing came from behind him as one of the guards that streamed into the hall failed to control their reaction to the smoke. Before him, he heard shouting from within the complex. There was a good deal of running footsteps but no sounds of combat that he could hear.

His eyes flicked to the status of the members of his party at the side of his vision. His captain’s mana bar had already fallen to dangerously low numbers before shooting back to full not a minute ago.

He looked around and saw the grim-faced human warrior move quietly into the hall. They positioned themselves behind the pillars that led up to the door. In front of the door, a shadow slinked back toward him, or more accurately to the man that stood in a crouch to his left.

“I don’t see him,” the scout said, “If the captain’s still inside, he’s not right there.”

The guard captain Adom nodded to the man and turned to Finn. The younger member of Marcus’s party was looking around with wild eyes. As soon as the young man had delivered his message not two minutes before, Marcus had to restrain him from charging back into the Landing to find their group’s leader.

“You sure about this?” Adom asked, and Finn nodded.

“This is our best chance!” he whispered frantically, “Listen to them; they’re all running around like crazy looking for the captain. They’ll never see us coming, and by the time they rally, we’ll have cut them off into small groups away from their stone shapers.”

Marcus nodded and turned to Adom. With the revelation of Robert’s death, Adom what the de facto commander of their force. The man was smart and deadly but was not usually one to make such impulsive decisions. Still, a blind man could see that this would likely be their best shot. With every day that passed, the thralls grew more powerful.

At the side of his vision, Marcus saw the health bar under Octavius’s name drop sharply before steadying at about eighty percent.

“Shit,” he cursed, “If we’re gonna go, we better get goin’. The captain’s been hurt.”

The indecision in Adom’s eyes vanished, and he nodded sharply. He made some hand signal to a man with a torch that stood close to the wooden door. Marcus hurried behind a pillar himself before leaning out to watch.

The man with the torch gently set it on top of an open clay vessel before turning and sprinting behind a pillar. Marcus didn’t know how some of the scientists back at the Sanctuary managed to whip us explosives, and he doubted he’d understand if they told him. What he did know was that he was damn glad that they were here and had already been prepared for use in Robert’s distraction.

Placing his head back behind the pillar, Marcus listened as the entire hall seemed to be holding its breath. The explosives didn’t exactly have timed fuses, so they just waited. Marcus watched with dawning horror as the red bar under his captain’s name plummeted once more. It stopped at fifty percent, before dropping again.

He grit his teeth together with an audible grinding sound. They hadn’t even buried Toby yet, and it seemed as though it’d end up being a burial for two. At that moment, the explosives detonated.

The entire complex seemed to shake as the wooden door was pulverized. Specks of stone and wood filled the air, and he was thankful for the damp cloth that was tied around his face. He didn’t even wait for the dust to begin to settle as he charged into the compound with a deafening war cry.

As he entered the corridor beyond, he could barely see for more than ten feet in front of him. His eyes stung, but he ignored the pain. He immediately braced his spear against the shield he had grabbed at the camp above and faced the side of the corridor.

He felt dozens more men and women form up with him, each and every one of them wielding a spear and a shield. They formed a deadly phalanx that cut off any thralls in the corridor from reaching the massive circular room that Finn had briefly described.

Behind him, he heard footsteps pounding as hundreds of men and women stormed into the circular room. In an instant, the sounds of combat began. The marine ignored it and focused on what was in front of him.

The others’ job was to get the stone shapers and quickly kill them. Many of the slaves that he had just freed lined up behind each of the two phalanxes, crackling blue orbs of energy ready in their hands. The weaker members of the force had been assigned to making sure that the thrall bodies that filled the corridor from the explosion were actually dead.

Marcus doubted that any of the ones that did survive would be able to so much as stand within a few minutes. When the explosion went off, the humans had been braced for it, behind cover, and in a larger, open room. The thralls, however, were in a hallway that would only stand to amplify the shockwave.

As the grey dust began to settle to the ground, he caught sight of a thrall rogue stumbling before bracing itself against the wall. The sound of running footsteps filled the corridor from both directions as the thrall got over their shock and realized that they were under attack.

Marcus grinned as he saw that Octavius hadn’t lost any more health since the explosion. The captain was far too close to dead for his liking, but the man hadn’t had a health potion that day so far.

“Here they come,” he drawled, “Let's show these alien fucks why you don’t mess with humans.”

The shockwave hit Octavius like a slap. Numb from pain as he was, he could barely feel it as it rolled him over once. The thralls, however, definitely felt it. A moment later, the sound of the blast reached the small chamber with a deafening boom.

Octavius flinched from the loud noise, but the thralls had it much worse off. Forcing his eyes open, he saw a few of them collapse on the ground, holding their bleeding ears. Their screams of pain only added to the chaotic scene as Kzedr whirled to the door.

“What was -” the thrall managed to get out before the ground itself shook. Octavius grinned through bloody teeth as the standing thralls were forced to focus just to not be knocked over.

Damn, the bloodied operator thought blearily, They must’ve used every bit of the explosives we got.

He was only peripherally aware of the noise around him as the attention of the thralls were grabbed by the sound of running feet and shouting.

“The humans!” came the distant shout, “The humans are attacking! Stop them! They’ve cut us off from the shapers!”

Kzedr snarled in rage and whirled to the nearest thrall. “Go!” the massive thrall boomed, “Make them bleed!”

Octavius watched from his position on the unyielding ground as the thralls that lined the room filed out in a rush. He heard Kzedr ask the messenger that had delivered the message of the something but wasn’t able to catch what was said. Instead, his focus was taken up by his Soulsilver spear.

The gleaming silver weapon laid innocuously only three feet from him. It was a single foot closer to him than the gently glowing Realm Anchor in the middle of the room. The blue shield around the magical device had appeared when dust and bits of rock had begun to fall from the ceiling during the explosion.

His eyes slowly tracked from the transparent shield of mana to his spear on the ground and back up again. The process was repeated half a dozen times before his concussed mind was able to figure out what his subconscious was trying to tell him.

The gentle smile that remained on his face suddenly gained a deadly edge. He glanced at the backs of the only two thralls still in the room. The thrall messenger was gesturing wildly in front of Kzedr as it explained some. The thrall leader’s four-fingered clenched and unclenched around the hilt of the blade on the right of its belt.

Octavius forced his less injured arm forward slowly. There was barely any pain from the movement, only the spreading numbness. With his forearm pressed into the ground, he dragged his unresponsive legs behind him. Shocks of agony traveled up them and into his spine with every minuscule bump and divot on the stone floor.

He was sure that he was leaving a bloody trail behind him as he dragged himself the single yard to his spear. With every movement, he would glance at the backs of the two thralls. If one of them so much as caught his movement out of the corner of their large black eyes, he didn’t doubt that he would be as good as dead.

After what seemed like an eternity but was likely closer to fifteen seconds, his fingers brushed the cold metal shaft of his spear. Stretching his arm at the shoulder, his bloody fingers closed around it, staining its pristine surface a crimson red.

Clutching the spear to his chest, he rolled over. The pain of the movement was excruciating, and he felt a sharp, pinching pain in his lower back. Still, that didn’t stop him from eyeing the black and purple portal hovering less than a single yard from him.

Setting his jaw, he took a deep breath before allowing mana to once again flow into his spear. He forced more and more mana into the weapon over the course of a single second. A milky white glow began to emanate from the magical weapon.

The gentle glow painted the walls of the dimly lit chamber with an ethereal light, instantly drawing the attention of the two thralls. Octavius saw the look of surprise, which was quickly followed by realization, then horror, on Kzedr’s alien face.

The alien screamed something as it broke into a run toward him, but Octavius wasn’t able to hear a word that it said through the blood roaring in his ears. The large thrall seemed to flicker and appeared five feet closer to Octavius. Even with all of the alien’s levels and skills, it couldn’t cross the ten feet between them before Octavius was able to thrust the spear forward a single foot into the Realm Anchor.

Octavius activated instant thrust to make up for the strength leaving his arms as the spear’s glowing tip raced toward the transparent shield that protected the magical device. He barely felt any resistance as the mana imbued blade sliced cleanly through the shield. It struck the inky blackness of the portal and cut it.

At that moment, the very air around them seemed to grow silent and heavy. Time slowed to a crawl as the purple fractals that lined the edges of the portal seemed to fall away. Octavius watched as the portal seemed to phase in and out of existence multiple times per second. Turning his head, he saw Kzedr had whirled away and begun to flee from the damaged device.

He let his arm that was holding the spear go limp, but it didn’t fall. Instead, it was held in the air by some unseen force. Suddenly, sound returned with a deafening roar of wind. He felt a tugging force on his arm and tried to pull it away from the portal. It seemed as though his weakening body was unable to overcome the pull as more of his body was dragged into the portal.

His hand was the first thing to be pulled through. On the other side, he simply felt a dry coldness that seeped into the bones of his fingers. The moment that his bare skin made contact with the portal, the incredible awareness of the object returned. This time, however, the mana construct was frayed and damaged. He could sense more mana being pulled to that single point than was being released. He idly noticed that the tiny filaments of mana were also being pulled into the portal.

The suction force quickly grabbed the rest of him, and soon his entire body below the neck was within the cold space on the other side. The final thing he saw before he was pulled through was a thin filament of mana pulling a crazed Kzedr toward the portal. The thrall was on its stomach, clawing at the ground in front of it.

Octavius glanced one last time at the healthy statuses of his party members at the edge of his vision and was engulfed by the icy emptiness on the other side of the portal. In an instant, all light faded, and he lost consciousness.

Octavius opened his eyes to a warm, tingling sensation. He grimaced and flexed his fingers around his spear and was surprised by the lack of pain. He grimaced and looked around, finding nothing but an endless darkness.

He couldn’t feel anything below his feet as he floated in the emptiness. Distant swirls of purple fractals were the only thing that told him that he was moving but gave him no idea of how quickly. Either he was inching along or was traveling with incredible velocity, and the fractals were extremely distant.

What seemed like dozens of blinking blue messages demanded his attention at the edge of his vision. Before he could open the first one to read it, he suddenly felt warmth on his feet. He blinked and found himself looking at a blue sky. In an instant, the feeling of weightlessness vanished as he began to drop like a stone.