Mason stood in the middle of the room, listening intently to the roars and scrabbling of the beasts assaulting the two entrances to the room. One of them would break through soon. He could see the rubble shuffling despite his efforts to wedge the entryways shut, and his only question was which would burst first.

One doorway was on the far end of the room, and the other was fairly close to where Leornal worked, pulling mana from the air and channeling it into the device, then making a strange series of gestures on the panels in order to accomplish whatever his goal was.

Mason was distracted watching Leornal when he heard the far pile of rubble shift loudly. Immediately at attention, he looked that way with his sword in hand. A round, white face peered through a gap at the top, and Mason quickly moved to stab his blade through it, aiming for the beast’s eyes.

The beast pulled back in time and roared, then gathering its strength, surged through the doorway. Mason did his best to get his arms up in time to protect himself from the flying rubble, but while he was blinded the beast continued its charge. “Get out of here!” Mason shouted against the pain in his arm, and slashed quickly at the beast’s head.

With the unerringly pale skin and bulging rounded muscles, the thing looked somewhat like a hairless yeti, and Mason struggled to guess what it could have been before this strange corruption. His thoughts were set aside though as his initial slash was blocked by the beast’s claws, and when it countered with a heavy handed strike at his torso, it was all Mason could do to jump back out of the way.

“Damn, you’re fast,” Mason said as he moved to the side and struck out at it. His blade nicked the beast’s shoulder even as it turned to charge bodily at Mason once more, and Mason carefully employed some of the footwork Shayjol had shown him to move to the side. He was already breathing heavily from the brief encounter.

Mason moved close to the beast to prompt another swipe from the beast, but rather than dodging he merely slashed hard at its wrist, landing a solid wound which sent the beast roaring. It turned its gaze from Mason toward the pool of mana forming in the machine at the end of the room, and Mason took advantage of the distraction to stab it in the side.

It swatted Mason away and the force of the strike left Mason struggling to get his breath, but even still he charged at the yeti’s back when it began to move toward Leornal again. He slashed a gash all down the beast’s back, but rather than feeling victorious, he was merely irritated to see that its grotesque skin seemed to absorb a fair amount of the damage as if it were nothing. Even this attack didn’t seem able to get the thing’s attention, so Mason buried his blade in the existing gash with a sharp thrust, then used the full force of his weight to drag the sword down its back.

The beast’s tough body prevented the wound from opening as far as Mason hoped, but it was enough. Abandoning the sword, Mason pulled out his staff and smacked the yeti right across the face when it turned to him angrily. Stunned, the beast reared back and roared, and Demon shoved the jewel of the staff into its gut, activating Life Drain.

He felt a warmth in the cuts on his arm, as well as the soreness of his chest, and was grateful for the pick me up. The beast, however, looked haggard now, breathing heavier than Mason had early on. If the attack itself hadn’t done anything to get the yeti’s attention, Demon’s mana expenditure had. The beast stared at him hungrily now, and began to approach.

Demon swatted at it with his staff, and the beast’s claws countered the strike. The two eyed each other momentarily, then the beast lunged again. Demon dove, grabbing the hilt of his sword even as it stuck in the yeti’s back, and pulled the blade this time up, then out. The beast turned quickly to block Demon’s next slash, but Mason followed it with another strike with his staff.

One handed, the staff strike wasn’t much in the way of force, but it stunned the beast long enough for Demon to jab his blade into its chest. Again, he hardly pierced the skin, but the repeated punishment seemed to be wearing the yeti down. It swatted at Demon sluggishly, and Demon would have moved to finish it before he heard the other pile of rubble explode.

Leornal cried out as he was struck by some rubble, and frantically drew his bow as he was pressed away from the machine by the new angry yeti that had burst in. With a split second decision, Leornal nocked an arrow and invoked his power shot, but rather than firing it at his new attacker, he turned and fired it at the skull of the yeti that Demon was struggling to finish off.

The arrow pierced its skull and it collapsed in a heap, but now the second yeti had the scent of mana. It charged toward Leornal and the archer was flung into a pile of rubble. He coughed and swayed as he stood back up after having the wind knocked out of him, but seemed otherwise okay.

The charge had pulled the yeti away from the machine though, and Demon intended to keep it that way. Invoking almost half of his mana, he flung a powerful mana blade at the yeti, watching it burn and sizzle against the beast’s skin. He didn’t mind how little damage the attack had done- he had the yeti’s attention now.

It charged Demon but the length of the room gave him enough time to react. He moved out of the way and channeled stamina drain at the beast as it ran by. The intake of stamina energy felt good, but it was hardly enough to allow for a prolonged fight, especially with the possibility of more yetis on the way. Focusing on Mana Vampirism this time, Demon struck again at the yeti, and he only realized his mistake when electric pain shot through his body.

Whatever was within these yetis that he had drawn on was not mana, and he screamed as it hit him. Where learning to endure mana had been a slow agony, this pain was brief but violent and ripped through him like lightning. Of course, Mason realized late- Mana Vampirism wouldn’t work on a beast that formed from mana starvation.

The yeti had moved in on him while he dealt with the pain, but Leornal had regained his feet and his bow. He launched an arrow which stuck in the beast’s skin, but without the power of a spell behind it, hardly caused it to turn its head. That distraction was enough. Demon grit his teeth, putting away the staff so he could better handle his sword, and forced a two-handed thrust into the beast’s side.

Thick, black blood dripped from the wound, but the beast still swung at Demon, who mitigated the strike with his sword, but still staggered back from the force. The beast swung again, and Demon crashed back against the wall. Leornal fired another arrow at the beast’s unharmed side, and then another, and the beast simply roared, torn in indecision between these two pests and the machine.

Finally, it settled on its mana-hunger, and charged back at the machine as Demon regained his feet. He drew a dagger and threw it as hard as he could at the beast’s back, but it hit with the hilt, rather than the blade, and clattered ineffectively to the ground. Leornal let his bow fall to the ground as he drew his rapier and launched himself at the beast’s back, burying the length of the steel into its kidneys. The beast swatted the man off with another roar, but fell to the ground even as Leornal did.

Demon, breathing heavily, walked over to Leornal and offered him a hand, and as the two looked each other over, they both thanked whatever luck they had that they only had to deal with two of those things at once.

They walked around the room retrieving their weapons, and Leornal hesitated to walk back to the machine and risk triggering another attack. He turned to Mason and said quietly, “I think I know what happened to these creatures.”

“Seems to me like they became anger incarnate. I didn’t expect them to hit nearly that hard,” Mason said, brushing off dirt and inspecting his quickly bruising body.

“I gathered a few details from the storage device, though not much yet. But I think something happened, a poison or curse, that made this city unlivable. They used a spell, or… more than a spell, really, which is capable of sealing them in a sort of stasis. It’s very taxing on a body and a soul, but as long as there’s ample mana, they could lie dormant for hundreds of years until they were woken up.”

“But you said there wasn’t enough ambient mana here,” Mason pointed out as he dropped his sword and sat back heavily on the ground, panting.

“Not nearly, especially not for a large population to seal themselves all at once. So eventually those seals corrupted them, drawing out the very dredges of their mana until the spell broke, and they were no longer whole.” His dark skin looked pale as he stared and nudged one of the beasts with his foot.

The change in the archer’s expression wasn’t lost on Mason, “What do you know about this more-than-a-spell, Leornal? You look haunted.”

“The council would not approve of me telling you. Torysen might kill me herself.”

“Oh come on, don’t be dramatic. Why would they care about you telling me a little about a spell?”

Leornal looked at his feet and took a deep breath before looking back at Mason, “Because the spell was Soul Magic. That’s how they seal their body, by drawing the soul around it and sort of, freezing it. The ritual is fairly complex, but it relies on some of the fairly fundamental elements of soul manipulation.”

He looked at the machine as if torn and then sighed, “Soul Arts are forbidden by my people, and they will already have a hard enough time accepting you for what you’ve already done. It will not be good if they hear that I’ve told you any more about it.”

“Fuck what I’ve done. I’ve survived, and plan to continue doing that. Your council has to realize that the Trials are kind of ‘do-whatever-it-takes’ at this point,” Demon reasoned, feeling attacked by the reminder.

“The council doesn’t understand the Trials, they just wish they were back on Marra and will do anything to pretend they still are. That’s why they have the Roving Bands- so they can continue to sit on their fat asses and make laws and decisions for the people who are strong enough to do something about anything,” Leornal said bitterly.

“Do you hate me for using soul magic?” Mason asked, prepared for the worst, but uncertain why he cared.

“No, Demon. I hate you for getting me trapped in this place. But you’ve pulled your weight since then, and I expect you to continue. This machine still needs more power.”