Xiphos activated All For One, buffing our damage, health, and health regeneration rates. “We didn’t come this far to run. Stand your ground and they will break upon our defenses!”

I could feel my wounds from the strigoi knitting themselves back together faster. Naginata fell into formation with me, fighting back to back.

“Are you ready to withstand this storm?” she asked.

Maybe it was the knowledge that there was an entire mountain weighing down on us from above and that we might not make it out of this clusterfuck alive, but I was feeling bold. “With you at my back and Kaiser at my side, there’s not much I couldn’t stand against.”

A flash of warmth passed between us. Our connection. Whatever I’d said, Naginata reciprocated, and that filled me with grim determination.

We were not going to die here. We were going to live, and one day I might even work up the courage to ask Naginata out for coffee.

Why was the thought of asking Naginata out more terrifying than the seething mass of monsters boiling out of the hole in the roof?

The strigoi fell on us from above in a swarm. I still had still another couple of minutes before I could activate my class skill again, so I made do with my room sweeping shotgun.

Each blast from Gravedigger pelted two or three strigoi with buckshot and drove them back. If they got too close, then one shot to the chest would be enough to put them down for good. It was all fun and games until Gravedigger ran dry. I had to quickly decide whether I wanted to reload and keep blasting, or switch to another weapon.

The strigoi kept coming from above. Stopping for a few seconds to reload would be suicide, so I holstered Gravedigger and pulled my Crafted SMG out. I kept my bursts short and focused, knowing that whichever enemy I shot, everyone else would get a damage boost against it.

“Alternating targets to focus fire!” I called out.

Naginata and I moved together, keeping our backs together, as I tagged as many strigoi with Focused Fire as I could.

Stiletto’s daggers materialised in the back of a nearby strigoi as he appeared from stealth. Xiphos cleaved one in two, then kicked another strigoi square in the chest. There was no time to drain the anima from any of these monsters while they were swarming. There was just too many, and it would leave me vulnerable.

One swooped down from above and landed on Kaiser’s back. My buddy yelped as it grasped at him with its claws. My class ability was ready to use again by this point, so I activated it at a strigoi near Xiphos. Kaiser fell through down through the portal, then out the other side horizontally, dislodging the strigoi on his back. Kaiser bit down on the leg of the other strigoi as Xiphos removed its head from its shoulders with a decisive strike.

The ground was littered with the rotten milk-coloured bodies of dead strigoi. The dark crimson blood that oozed out of them tainted the air with a sickly tang that made me want to throw up.

Despite the tide of fangs and flesh, we were the ones who were winning this fight.

While I had a couple of seconds to spare, I reloaded Gravedigger and wondered how these things could see us. Bats used ultrasound and echolocation to find their way through dark caves, but did strigoi use the same method? Or was there some kind of anima power at work here?

I wanted to find out.

As the torrent of strigoi slowed I stopped aiming to kill them outright, and instead aimed to disable. I then drew their anima out, converting it to experience points which boosted me up to the next level once again.

The flood of strigoi slowed to a trickle just as it was getting difficult to navigate the battlefield. Their bodies and slick blood made finding good footing a challenge. Somehow the strigoi knew they were losing, and they clung to the top of the chamber instead of coming down to fight us.

Sounds passed between the waiting strigoi. Clicks and whistles mostly, which could have been how they communicated with each other.

Eventually they gave up and scurried back into the opening above us, into whatever dark tunnels they’d crawled out of.

The other members of my team looked like they were victims of a horror movie slasher. They were covered in thick black globules of almost coagulating blood, like they’d been the ones who got a bucket of pig’s blood dumped on them at prom. None of us has telekinetic powers though, which was a pity.

“I think we scared them off,” Stiletto said. His grin showed bone white teeth between blood-covered lips.

Anywhere else, his smile would have been terrifying. Here it was a sign of victory.

“Let’s loot these things and be done with this place,” Xiphos said.

There wasn’t much on their loot tables except for some old coins, more of those strange carved wooden figurines, tattered scraps of cloth, and something just labelled as mystery meat.

I had no intention of taking any of that mystery meat, so I left it exactly where it was.

Stiletto had other ideas. “Hey, we could totally use this meat as lures. It smells vile, but these assholes don’t have eyes. Their vagina noses would be super sensitive, I bet.” He sniffed for vulgar effect.

Xiphos and Naginata gave Stiletto a look that could melt steel.

Stiletto raised his arms in his defence. “Look at those folds and tell me you don’t see what I see. It’s like the damn predator in that old movie the first time it takes off its mask. These things are ugly motherfuckers!”

“Keep digging,” Naginata said.

“Quit while you’re ahead,” I said with a chuckle. “Kidding. You’re not ahead.”

Stiletto made an exasperated noise. “All I’m saying is that we might be able to bait these things into doing stuff for us. If there’s an actual army between us and the obelisk we need to purify, we’re going to need all the help we can get. That’s all I’m saying.”

“I agree. You carry the festering meat, Stiletto.” Xiphos grinned.

Stiletto sighed. “You got it, captain.”

“I levelled up again. Level 22 now. I’m sinking this next point straight into another portal ability,” I said.

I quickly opened my skill tree and sunk the point without waiting for approval. I felt like we were beyond that now.

“I can open a stabilised portal anywhere now. I don’t need to aim at an enemy to activate it, which is going to make getting around a whole lot easier.”

“I levelled up too,” Xiphos said. “A good choice, Hatchet. One we’ll need likely sooner rather than later.”

Before we left, we used the tattered cloth to patch up our gear that had been damaged by the strigoi. Our gear didn’t have any kind of durability meter or anything, but when enemies tore holes in it our armour ratings went down. Patching them up restored our armour ratings to wear they should be.

Once we were finished, Xiphos stood and dripped her assault rifle in a way that said we need to get moving. “Those strigoi will be going back to their nest or their master and news of our location will spread. We should make haste.”

And so we did. We crossed the chamber by claw light. Green lit up the bodies beneath us and reflected off the surface of the congealing blood. I was a little disappointed I didn’t get the strigoi’s anima powers, whatever they may be, but Xiphos was right.

Word would spread of our location. I had been left with no doubt that the strigoi could communicate. Not in the crude use of language like the upyr, but in their own possibly sophisticated language of clicks and whistles.

The other side of the chamber led to more tunnels, and this time Kaiser growled the whole time we crept along.

“More bad guys?” I asked.

Kaiser barked an affirmative.

“Close?”

He whined, which meant he wasn’t sure. There were enemies, sure, but he couldn’t tell where they were.

More carved runes dotted the hallways, and we followed the ones that said school or Adormitzeu, because they seemed to lead roughly in the same direction. Whether they were the same place, or the school was located centrally in the city I couldn’t be sure.

Kaiser remained uneasy during our march. His hackles were raised, and he stayed close by me.

“Hey do you feel that?” Stiletto asked. He held his hands in front of his face, then placed his palm gently on his cheek.

I could feel it. A light flutter on my cheek stubble. Coolness. Air flowed on a breeze down here.

“There must be an opening to the outside somewhere nearby,” Xiphos said.

I almost groaned. That was the opposite of what we wanted. We needed to go deeper under the mountain to find the corrupted obelisk, not get closer to the surface!

We turned a corner and my jaw dropped.

The vision before us was impossible.

It could not exist.

And yet here we were, standing before it.

We stood on an elevated platform that led down a long, wide staircase. Below us was a wide flat platform covered in a series of small mud and stone buildings which stood before an enormous stone bridge. The surface of a gargantuan underground lake rippled about a hundred metres beneath the bridge, and at the other side, in the centre of the lake, was a city.

Adormitzeu.

The entire area was illuminated by a deep red glow from vines or tendrils that appeared to grow up the walls from the surface of the lake. The light burned with the dragonslayer’s anima. The source of his power was in this very cavern, somewhere deep beneath the surface of the underground lake.

The Scholomance – the school that existed to teach the Solomonari how to use dark magic - must be somewhere in those stone walls. A bright red beacon stood in the centre of the city, which burned with bright intensity.

That was the obelisk.

That’s where we needed to be.

I went to say as much when a screech arose in the cavern which stopped us in our tracks.

Something massive took flight from inside Adormitzeu. The beast looked vaguely human in shape except for the two enormous leathery wings that sprouted from its back. The lower legs had an extra joint in them too, almost like a dog’s leg. The beast carried a massive spear weapon in its clawed hands with a wicked point at one end.

“Oh no,” Xiphos said.

“What is it?” I asked.

“I think we found Pike.”