Finn’s hands started moving, arcane words tumbling from his lips.
“What are you—?”
Kyyle was cut off as Finn finished his spell, barely suppressing the howl of pain that threatened to erupt from his throat as the flames encircled the piece of shrapnel and burned at the inside of his thigh. Moving quickly, he jerked his fingers, ripping the shrapnel free with a spray of blood. A moment later, he dropped the spell, slumping back against the egg and nearly falling off before Kyyle caught him. Through bleary eyes, Finn could see that the wound was already closing. He just needed a few more seconds.
“Shit, you could have warned me,” Kyyle muttered. “I can’t believe you set that on fire while it was still inside you.”
“Not enough time,” Finn grunted, shrugging off the earth mage’s help as his vision settled once again. “Where is Julia?”
“She’s inspecting the queen’s corpse and gathering supplies,” Kyyle said, glancing over at the ant queen’s enormous corpse.
Although Finn was more concerned with the lake of lava encircling the giant insect, and how the surface was already beginning to cool and harden now that the queen was dead. That wasn’t good. That wasn’t good at all. They needed the combination of heat and air to blast them out of this damned ant colony.
“Daniel,” he spoke aloud. The AI promptly raced toward him.
“What can I do for you, sir?” Daniel asked, spinning around Finn as he inspected his injuries.
“How much time until the big blast?”
“3 minutes and 36 seconds,” the AI replied.
Finn met Kyyle’s gaze, noting the apprehensive look on his face. “I’m assuming you have a plan for getting us out of here?” the earth mage offered hesitantly.
“Nope. I honestly didn’t expect us to get past the queen,” Finn replied with a shrug. As he saw the horror-stricken look on the young man’s face, he relented and raised his hands in a placating gesture. “Joking. Joking. Of course, I have a plan.”
“Really funny,” the earth mage drawled. “Because this hasn’t been stressful in the slightest.”
“Ahh, you need to lighten up,” Finn quipped with a grin. “Literally. It would help if you were lighter for this next part,” he offered, pointing at the hole carved in the room’s ceiling. The mixture of superheated air had carved an opening nearly thirty feet across. Kyyle just rolled his eyes in response.
“Joking aside, I need you to create a circular stone platform – maybe ten feet wide – in the center of the room and directly below that hole in the ceiling,” Finn explained, waving at the queen’s body. “You can build it above the corpse. Attach the supports to the queen’s body to help keep it level.”
Kyyle grimaced but gave a curt nod. “I can do that.”
They heard a series of dull thuds coming from two adjacent tunnels that Kyyle had caved in. The pair glanced at each other nervously. That sound could only mean one thing; the workers and soldiers had returned. Which meant they were trapped in this damn room now, injured and weakened and racing against the clock.
“Good,” Finn muttered. “Because it looks like our guests have arrived. And we only have…” He trailed off with a glance at Daniel.
“3 minutes and 18 seconds until you are all burned alive.”
The earth mage’s eyes widened, and he promptly jogged off toward the corpse without another word, his hand immediately beginning to conjure green energy. The earth mana speared into the ground, tendrils of rock drifting from between the cracks in the dense metal that coated the floor. It slithered across the queen’s body, and then stretched up into the air – creating a series of supports for the massive, circular stone platform that was beginning to take shape above them.
Finn arched an eyebrow at the AI. “That was actually pretty funny. I think you scared the crap out of him.”
“Like I said before, I’ve been practicing.”
Finn chuckled and then hauled himself to his feet, testing the weight on his thigh. It was still sore, but most of the damage had already been repaired. Not only that, but his mana had also fully regenerated – which was good. He was going to need it.
“What are you going to do, sir?” Daniel asked.
Finn limped toward Kyyle’s platform, sparing a reassuring wave at Julia when she looked over at him. Once she glanced away, he grimaced in pain and pressed a hand to his thigh. “The air mana that blasts out of those holes around the chamber is strong. But it’s the combination of heat and air that will give us the lift we need to get out of this room. The only reason the queen was able to stay rooted to the floor was because half her body was anchored in this lake of molten metal,” Finn explained, gesturing at the hardening surface of the lake. “Our platform needs to be pretty thick to withstand that heat, and it needs a protective coating of metal along the underside.
“So, I need to do two things. I need to reinforce Kyyle’s platform, and then I need to at least partially reheat the lake,” he added as he stepped up onto the queen’s torso and then climbed up the supports until he was able to grip the edge of the stone disc that was forming in the air. Kyyle continued to pump mana into the structure, switching back and forth between reinforcing the supporting columns and expanding the disc to ensure it didn’t collapse.
Finn slumped down onto the platform, sitting cross-legged in the center.
He began casting again, his fingers a blur as the words for Imbue Fire tumbled from his lips. He focused on a small patch of the lake at first, fire rippling in a circle around that spot. He swiftly ratcheted up the heat from there. As the icon in the corner of his vision hit heat rank 4 and the metal melted down into a glowing red sphere, he lifted it into the air – forming a globe about three feet in diameter.
He twitched his fingers, shifting the sphere under the platform that Kyyle had created and taking care to avoid the support columns. He needed to move quickly before his mana ran out, but not so quickly that he inadvertently destroyed their ride out of here. They didn’t really have time to build another one.
He gingerly pressed the molten sphere against the stone, simultaneously lowering the heat as the metal spread out across the bottom of the surface. Once it lowered to heat rank 1, the glowing red substance swiftly turned black as it conducted away the heat into the rock and air. Only a moment later, he was finished, the underside of the platform now coated in a thick layer of metal.
“2 minutes and 4 seconds,” Daniel reported.
Just enough time for my mana to regen, he thought.
“Alright, everyone get the hell on board!” Finn shouted.
A column of earth rocketed out of the ground, Kyyle standing on top. As it neared the platform’s height, the earth mage jumped across and sat beside Finn on the stone surface. Kyyle then paused his casting, letting his waning mana regenerate. Finn glanced at his UI and confirmed the young man was running on empty right now.
“This feels like another batshit plan,” Kyyle muttered, eyeing the entrances to the chamber. The ants were starting to cut their way inside, smashing through the rubble, and the occasional explosion rocked the chamber as exploders blasted at the pile of debris blocking each tunnel. Finn could only guess there were dozens more ants trying to smash their way inside but couldn’t spare the mana to check with his sight.
If this didn’t work, they were going to either get burned alive or smashed to death by an army of angry ants. Or possibly make it halfway up the chasm and then get smashed apart against the side of the shaft…
Either way, they were all in now.
“Well, of course,” Finn replied, eyeing Kyyle with a grin. With his fire mana surging through his body, there was no room for fear or doubt. Only a raw, unbridled excitement.
His attention shifted to an image projected beside him, looking at a snapshot he had taken of the flow of air and fire mana in the cavern during a major blast. With his sight active, he could see the way the energy condensed along the floor and then spiraled up the walls of the domed chamber.
“You should go ahead and raise us up with your supporting columns. We’re going to need to be higher to maximize our lift and keep this platform stable,” Finn instructed Kyyle. “Try to get us at least forty feet off the ground.”
Kyyle gave him a nod and began to cast once again. Only a moment later, the platform slowly started to rise, more and more spindly arms of stone reaching out of the cavern walls and floor to push and pull them into the air as Kyyle burned his mana. Finn anticipated that the heat from the blast would take care of those support beams quickly, melting them down within just a few seconds.
There was just one thing missing.
Finn’s eyes skimmed the queen’s corpse, picking out Julia, still standing beside the queen’s head. She seemed to be fiddling with something.
“Julia, we’ve got less than a minute! You coming or what?”
“Just give me a second!” she shouted back, not bothering to turn around. “I’ll make it on board. Go ahead and start heating the lake.”
Of course, his daughter already knew what he was going to do. She was a smart girl. Although, at that particular moment, she seemed to have lost her damn mind. Not that Finn had time to dwell on that. Of the three of them, she was the most capable of getting onto the platform in a hurry – even if the distance between them and the floor of the cavern kept growing. He just had to hope she didn’t dawdle too long.
With that dark thought, Finn’s fingers started moving again – his mana once again full. This time he cast Imbue Fire on the entire metal lake. He’d never tried casting across something this large before, but he supposed he didn’t need to move the metal, only heat it up. As his spell completed, a layer of fire rippled across the now-blackened surface of the lake. Then he cast again, maintaining two channels, and the flames surged higher. Once the spells had stabilized, Finn started increasing the heat.
Within only seconds, bubbles emerged from the surface of the lake, and the last traces of black slid down into its glowing red-and-orange depths. He’d been lucky. The core of the lake had still been molten, only a thin film of cooled metal resting across the top. Now he just needed to maintain this for another…
“30 seconds,” Daniel called out.
Finn glanced meaningfully at Kyyle and then looked at his daughter, too busy channeling his spell to call out to her. Luckily, the earth mage had just burned the last of his mana to move them into position and was currently letting his energies regenerate.
“Julia, we really need to go!” Kyyle shouted, taking the hint.
“I’m coming,” she yelled back over her shoulder.
“20 seconds,” Daniel soon reported.
“Julia! Now!”
His daughter finally started turning at what Finn guessed was the 10-second mark, the ground already beginning to tremble. He knew that if he had the sight active, he’d be able to see a massive cloud of air mana beginning to well below them. Julia shoved something into her pack and sprinted up the ant queen’s corpse, her shield looped across her back. With a surge of her legs, she leaped from the queen’s head, grabbing hold of one of the rock supports and scurrying farther upwards – leaping from one column to another.
Blasts of air rocketed from the holes ringing the chamber floor, signaling the beginning of the major blast of ambient air mana. The wind howled as it ripped across the rock before colliding with the heat in the center of the room, the air ripping at Julia’s armor as she tried to scramble higher. As the wind whipped across the surface of the lake, it flared sharply, the air and fire mana merging and beginning to grow in strength below Finn and Kyyle. A dense mass of superheated air was already smashing through the room and starting to partially melt the metal floor of the chamber.
Time seemed to slow as Finn watched Julia, her dark form clawing at the stone support columns as she climbed. The platform was already trembling, and rock beams were beginning to crack as they struggled to hold it in place. Julia reached a horizontal column spearing out of the nearby wall. She pulled herself onto its surface, sprinting across the beam, and then leaped, the force of the kickoff causing the stone to fracture and sending her hurtling into the air toward them. At the same time, the superheated air sent the first wave of flame crashing upward into the bottom of the platform.
The flames consumed Julia. Her limbs abruptly transformed, and her entire body shifted as she used her natural absorption. Her limbs turned to crackling bands of fire that were lifted upward by the combination of heat and air toward the platform. Yet the stone disc hadn’t stayed put. It continued to drift upward as the support beams began to crumble and fall away, and the full force of the blast welled below them.
Damn it! Finn thought frantically.
He’d remember to yell at Julia later. Right now, he needed to save her damn life. Finn dropped one channel and started casting again, eyeing his mana worriedly. Only 15% left. It would have to be enough.
Julia’s absorption ended abruptly, her body rematerializing and her arms reaching for the platform – still just a yard short. He saw her eyes widen with the realization that she wasn’t going to make it. She was already beginning to fall backward toward the maelstrom of flame below them. Finn knew she’d be incinerated in an instant with the force of that superheated air. Her natural spell resistance was no match for the elemental fury that raged through the bottom of the chamber.
Finn’s spell completed, fire blooming across Julia’s shield. He pulled with everything he had, physically yanking her toward them with pure force of will. Julia rocketed upward the last few feet, and her hands gripped the edge of the platform. Then Kyyle was hauling her onboard, rolling her onto the makeshift elevator. Smoke curled away from her armor, and her skin was welted and red.
Then the full blast finally struck.
It felt like they had strapped a rocket to the bottom of the platform.
The remainder of the stone support columns melted away in an instant, and the group was sent racing upward, the stone disc swaying and tilting erratically for a moment before stabilizing. Flames raced past on all sides, creating a funnel of orange fire. Like the eye in the center of a flaming hurricane, there was only a single circle of clear air just above them. They were accelerating so rapidly that the force pushed them all flat against the surface of the disc. Finn was guessing they were experiencing at least 2 Gs as they barreled up through the shaft.
He struggled against the force, lifting his arm, and tapping his UI to bring up his map. He could see that they were rising rapidly, three green dots racing up through a column adjacent to the central shaft of the Abyss. His eyes centered on the yellow dot midway up the chasm. Their target was roughly a thousand feet above their former position, and they’d already traveled a few hundred feet.
Yet he could feel them slowing, the pressure lessening, and the flames around the platform receding slightly, although the heat was still intense.
Now came the hard part. They were going to have to find a way to get off this thing.
The pressure was less forceful now, and the group sat back up.
“Okay, Kyyle, you’re going to need to—”
Finn was cut off as something slammed into the platform, blasting apart the rock beside him. A shard of stone cut a line across his cheek. He glanced to the side and saw some glassy-shaped object embedded in the stone of the platform. Maybe shrapnel that fell from the walls of the shaft? Finn wondered. Except, then he saw it move…
His gaze shifted upward, and his eyes widened.
“What the fuck?” he murmured.
Dozens of winged creatures were diving downward through the shaft, their bodies comprised of semi-translucent glass that made them difficult to pick out from the flames and heat that lit the shaft and pushed them ever upward. Even as Finn watched, another creature sped past, the heat of the air rushing beside the disc swiftly, warming its body to a red glow and burning away its crystalline wings.
“Kyyle, build us a stone canopy, and then keep reinforcing it! I’ll try to take them out
before they hit the platform,” Finn shouted over the howling wind.
The earth mage nodded, and streamers of stone began to drift out of the platform, swiftly forming into a makeshift barrier above them. As the glassy creatures slammed into the surface, their bodies exploded, cracking the stone and forcing Kyyle to keep patching the canopy. Finn knew that wouldn’t be enough, not with the dozens of forms he had seen barreling down the chasm above them.
They needed some real anti-air defenses.
Finn yanked two dense black metal balls from his pack. Then his hands began moving rapidly. Within moments, the orbs were awash in flame, fire roiling across their surface before the spheres rocketed upward.
“Daniel,” Finn grunted, focusing on his metal orbs and urging them up toward the glowing orange circle. The AI raced over to his shoulder. “Paint my targets for me.” Suddenly dozens of targets were illuminated in bright blue, making them visible despite the barrier of stone that now hovered above him.
Finn lay down on the platform and went to work.
The black metal balls sped through the air so quickly that the flames blurred and twisted, creating orange streamers of energy. A sphere struck one of the glassy creatures, and the beast exploded like it had just been hit by a cannon shot. Yet Finn had already picked out another target, the orb smashing through the creature’s body before rotating into another. He kept going, the spheres twisting and spinning rapidly through the air.
The creatures exploded above the platform, creating a series of blasts that boomed through the chasm. Glass rained down upon them but bounced harmlessly off the stone canopy that Kyyle was maintaining. The earth mage had managed to thicken the barrier with the momentary respite.
“We’re nearing 800 feet,” Kyyle shouted above the explosions and the harsh whistle of wind. “We’re also slowing. I’m guessing we only have a few more seconds until we start falling.”
Indeed, the pressure had completely relented, indicating that they were no longer accelerating. Finn spared a glance at his mana. He was at about 50%. Damn it, he hoped that was going to be enough.
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