Despite Kaldalis’s fears, the fight went shockingly well at the start. Each group of adventurers had emerged from a narrow tunnel, which meant when the Xorn below surged and charged, everyone had a bottleneck to fall back on to avoid being overwhelmed.

Kaldalis wanted to concern himself chiefly with the Xorn immediately in front of him, but with all the backup he had at his side, he was easily able to spare the attention to keep an eye on the larger fight as it unfolded. His smaller mistakes were easily erased with healing, and every time he missed a dodge, it meant that the Xorn they were fighting was stationary for just a moment longer, letting the damage dealers work at peak efficiency.

And he got a grasp of what was going on.

The regular Xorn were at the forefront of the fights. Unlike at Panbu’s walls, the Captains seemed to accept hanging back and letting the underlings do the start of the work.

It supported Kaldalis’s initial expectations.

They were here to wear the adventurers down.

The other parties seemed to sense that they were here for the long haul, too. He could see them largely focused on pacing themselves. No one was engaged in unnecessary heroics, pushing into the horde. Everyone was focusing on splitting the enemies and chipping away at them.

It seemed like individual groups had their own strategies. For the nearest group to his left, he could see that after all the parties had disbanded and re-formed, Courbois got stuck with the bulk of the archers from the camp defense. She was using her cooldowns to hold on to a wider area and she danced wildly back and forth to hold enough open ground for the archers behind her to stand shoulder-to shoulder in the tunnel mouth and fill the air with arrows. They were unable or unwilling to focus on any single target at the moment, but with so many of the Xorn already wounded, turning the immediate area into a shitstorm of arrows had value.

Even as Kaldalis watched, more than one of the Xorn broke and ran, or pitched over dead beneath the hail of damage.

The group that had emerged from the passage on the right was Voker’s group. It was the smallest party, since everyone was likely still super pissed at him for what he’d done, so they were more focused on holding their ground than outputting damage.

But they had a trump card beyond what Kaldalis expected.

Voker raised his shield, and a shimmer of flickering shadows ran over the surface of it. When the Xorn approached him, their blows rained down on it for much longer than Kaldalis expected. More than that, while Voker held his shield steady and still, haymaker blows that should have struck around the sides of it instead hit an unseen barrier, stopping dead as surely as if they’d hit the shield.

Kaldalis could only guess that it was some application of the power waiting at the end of the dungeon.

He wondered what it was and how it worked. Was it specifically a barrier that could be used in combat, or was it modifying and empowering the blocking ability imparted by the shield?

The dungeon was already at the top of his priority list.

This only made it seem all the more vital.

For Kaldalis’s part, he made generous use of his abilities to mitigate as much damage as he could. While he took a few hits he probably didn’t need to, what he wanted to maintain was their less replaceable resources. The shorter cooldowns of Endure, Jump, and Kaia’s Flicker were a small price to pay when compared to physical and mental fatigue, let alone their consumable potions.

As the fight went on, Kaldalis felt more and more confident in their victory. The den’s supply of regular Xorn was nearly exhausted. To his left, Courbois was already engaged with one of the Xorn Captains as her DPS behind her dumped arrows into its back as she kept it - and its sleep cone special attack - pointed away from her team. One of the other groups was fighting one of the previously-wounded Captains as well, though it appeared to be going a little rough, with the fight still surrounded by regular Xorn jockeying for position to take advantage of an opening to strike as well.

Luckily, or unluckily, Kaldalis’s group was far enough from the center of the chamber that the Captains all appeared to be spoken for. He was glad to not have to deal with the larger and more intimidating foe, but it meant that there was a much larger group of regular Xorn gathered around his group. With everything falling into a familiar rhythm, he was starting to wish for something to change to bring in a little excitement.

Of course, as soon as that thought crossed his mind, he wished that it hadn’t.

A part of the ragged stone ceiling towards the middle of the room started to shed a rain of rock fragments. It took Kaldalis a moment to realize that there was an opening in the ceiling there. Twenty-five feet off the floor, and obscured by the rough stone, he hadn’t even realized it until a continuous stream of gravel started to clink loudly off the stone floor below.

A huge hand emerged from the hole, gripping the opening.

And then another.

And another.

And yet another.

The Xorn Major lowered itself down to the chamber floor slowly.

It was a little over twenty feet tall, and so as it lowered itself, its feet met the floor before its arms were fully extended from their grip on the ceiling.

The other Xorn were powerfully muscled, but they had at least looked like natural humanoids, the creases between the muscles looking dense and fleshy. But the major’s form was a cruel parody of that, looking like a dehydrated bodybuilder taken to an even more unnatural extreme. Each muscle almost looked like a separate piece of stony muscle wrapped in a tight layer of silvery-metallic skin.

It was nauseating to look at, with its four separate chunks of pectoral muscle looking like a cloven cell after meiosis.

The worst part was its head.

Kaldalis logically knew that there was a perforated vase under there somewhere, but it was completely obscured. Instead of a flowing stream of grayish sand, it was an entirely opaque tempest of it above its shoulders, filling the space with a funnel of whirling grains of sand. The sense of its ire filled the space strongly enough that he could almost believe the sandy tornado around its head was fixing him with a glare of hatred.

It roared.

Or, at least, Kaldalis assumed that the deep screaming sound filling the air was coming from it.

It sounded like a tractor being ripped in half - the noise of tortured metal and grinding machine parts.

As it bellowed, the remaining Xorn started to break away from Kaldalis’s group. The ones he had struck already stuck to him by the aggro rules, but the untouched monsters beyond that initial group turned and fled, making way for the Major.

“Shit,” Kaldalis said, as Myrin, Reno, and Ess sent one of the Xorn that had stuck around running off after its fellows. “I thought we’d have more time than this.”

“What’s the play, boss man?” Reno asked, stepping back from the row of remaining Xorn.

“We eat what’s on our plate first,” Kaldalis said. He ducked aside from a storm of Xorn fists before coming back with a sweeping strike to tag a little more damage into the group. He raised his voice to be heard by the rest of the groups. “We can’t let these things run wild when we get to the real fight! Take care of what you’ve got!”

The Xorn Major flexed its four huge hands into fists as it swept its nonexistent gaze over the room.

As it considered its course, Kaldalis focused on the Xorn in front of him. He was glad to see the DPS players around him taking this opportunity to pull out and quaff ire potions.

The abrupt increase in damage meant the already-wounded Xorn before Kaldalis were sent running in the span of a few breaths. With them gone, all that remained were those who had come to them uninjured, who had only been dealt a paltry few hundred damage by Kaldalis’s Sweeping Strikes when he first grabbed their attention.

Myrin grunted with effort with every swing of her enormous sword. The potion had increased her damage output, but hadn’t replaced her flagging stamina. Not in the game sense, of course, but in what a person could be expected to put up with for an extended amount of time.

The same was true of Reno and Ess, who looked similarly worn-down. Ess was visibly trying to minimize the amount of effort she put into each thrust of her spear, and grimacing when the lighter thrusts failed to penetrate the thick silvery skin of the Xorn.

“We’re almost to the final push,” Kaldalis called. “Let’s get it done!”

The Xorn Major in the middle of the room reached up to the ceiling again, this time breaking off a chunk of rough stone. Its freakish muscles flexed as it flung the improvised missile at Kaldalis, as if in response to his apparent leadership.

The stone traversed the intervening space in a flash. It went from the monster’s hand to Kaldalis’s face faster than he could even think the word “flicker” let alone activate the ability. Seven hundred and eight physical damage slapped him at a stroke. The impact itself sent him hurtling backwards, tumbling end-over-end down the passage past Balrim.

Two clawed Talsar hands grabbed Kaldalis bodily, dragging him back to his feet.

“Holy shit,” Balrim said, his eyes still locked up and to the left, where Kaldalis’s healthbar was likely floating in his UI, suddenly short by over a quarter of his max.

“Someone doesn’t like being ignored,” Kaldalis grunted. The Xorn he was fighting were pushing their way up the tunnel towards him, though with all the DPS working on them, there were only two left.

One, actually, as Reno’s daggers hacked into the back of one and forced it to stumble, break, and run.

Balrim grimaced. “We know what we have to do, then. As long as you know I don’t like it.”

Kaldalis activated a charge of his Jump cooldown, launching himself over the final regular Xorn. Huge hands clapped shut on air right beneath his ankle, barely short of grabbing him.

“Finish it here,” Kaldalis barked to the DPS as he hurtled over them. “I need to assert some control over this situation.”

When Kaldalis flew out of the end of the passage and into the chamber again, the Xorn Major was already breaking off another fragment of rock, this time taking aim at Courbois. As soon as his feet hit the ground, he kicked off again, covering the distance while it was still winding up its throw.

The head of his glaive lanced into its leg, sinking a solid two inches into the metallic flesh.

Silvery fluid squirted from the wound and spattered Kaldalis’s weapon and arms, as if the fluid had been under high pressure. The attack only dealt thirty-six physical damage and four earth damage, but it was all he needed to get its attention.

“Hey,” Kaldalis snapped as the monster turned to face him now. “Don’t throw rocks if you’re not ready to catch what comes back at you!”