Inhuman screams echoed through the pipeline from both ends, overlapping and feeding into each other. Harrowing, heart-wrenching cries. Bloody images flooded my mind through Lili’s eyes.

  What could be happening on the other end for Luke and Annie to scream like that?

  Ilse was being eaten alive, her bones crushed only to be reformed and healed by Lili’s magic. A maddening cycle of suffering. She did not even seem to realize that she was being healed. All she did was thrash around and try to crawl back into the hole she had exited, while the beasts dragged her back by her hands and legs.

  Wolves or felines go for the jugular and thus for the kill. Skavags act in herds, immobilizing their victims and simply chewing them alive. Their thick necks made them hard to kill, and their tears were practically venom. The venom dripping from their glands was what gave them that dark red taint around the neck and head, as if perpetually smeared with fresh blood. It also gave them their venomous bite.

  It had led to that old orc saying: crying skavags tears.

  It was not a very strong paralytic venom, but even so it was enough to slow down or incapacitate their victims.

  Apes and humanoids were high on their diet list, and the damn beasts were intelligent enough to understand what a weapon was.

  And the bloody orcs were just prodding with their spears, like spectators pushing bait into a piranha feeding frenzy.

  I reacted instantly. My shadows surged into motion like a dark tide, and at the same time I expanded my domain towards her.

  I wanted them gone.

  *

  Gruntar was a happy beast-master. He was proud of his skavags and of his mastery over them. He felt a genuine soul-binding between himself and his beasts.

  His only issue so far was that his skavags had not seen enough action. Somebody high enough in the hierarchy did not want to put his beasts at the front. They were always held back and used only to clean up the mess.

  Would these damn humans not be more cooperative if they faced the skavags from the beginning? Why only send them in when there was resistance?

  Surely it was some idiot sergeant—or the like—who had been promoted into a lieutenant’s position and did not want his skavags to outshine his grunts.

  When that hapless human exited the pipeline, he had to restrain his beasts and let the grunts capture her. But luckily, Devag had been tasked to lead this group, and Devag was a real orc—an orc who could appreciate a bloody show.

  As soon as Devag gave him free rein, he pointed at the human and ordered his skavags, “Food.”

  That was enough to unleash them.

  *

  Gar didn’t like what he was doing. He didn’t like what they were doing.

  Conscripted against his will and sent by his tribe to fight for Mephisto, he was alone among this alien group of orcs. He knew the chieftain had to do it, afraid of opposing the Great Lord, but why him? Why had he not chosen any other warrior from his village?

  Now he was here, far away from his family, from his tribe, moving with these orcs and doing what he was ordered instead of participating in the summer festivities. Now would be the time to celebrate, to prove your worth, and to be able to find a bride. Instead, he was here with a bunch of thugs.

  They had no honor. They did not understand killing as a struggle of honor, but as an act in itself, as if cruelty were justification enough.

  He pitied that human woman. But at least—he told himself—she was lucky. She would be killed instead of being first abused and violated, then killed.

  He sighed and leaned on his spear.

  Then his eyes went wide in shock. She was a healer. And a strong one. Her wounds knitted themselves almost instantly as she thrashed and struggled to run. It was such instinctive healing as one seldom saw.

  His heart went cold. This was bad. They would use her. They would abuse her even worse now. Because you could do untold things to a healer.

  He stepped forward. He decided to kill her, to spare her the terror.

  He raised his spear to strike her heart. This was how you killed a healer: a hit to the heart with a cursed weapon blocked the flow of magic. A bit like killing vampires. The strike had to be precise, exactly where the magic flows converged, else it would only be more pain to endure.

  He blinked. He could not see the magic flows. Were her skills that good? Did she have such a high level? But then why—

  He froze.

  Something was terribly wrong. So wrong that he could not even quantify it. There was such a heavy presence descending on them that his knees began to buckle.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  And then the skavags suddenly started to cease to exist. Like shadows disappearing under light. Like vapor thinning into air.

  It was almost a beautiful sight. A skavag leapt—and began disintegrating midair. But whatever entity was doing this was not satisfied with simply killing it. The many pieces shattered into even smaller pieces until nothing remained, and before the remnants could even hit the ground, there was nothing left.

  Then he realized his front leg was gone.

  His balance vanished, but before he fell, he saw that his spear—and the hand holding it—were gone as well.

  He closed his eyes and sent a plea to Kargath. Would the War God open the doors to his heaven? Because he knew he was going to die.

  Before he hit the ground, darkness descended over him.

  *

  I felt Lili’s desperation and fear and saw what was happening.

  I was still inside the damn tube, with no line of sight and no way of casting the spells I knew. But I wanted them gone. My mana wanted them gone. And as soon as my domain covered them, they started to dissolve.

  I had always thought my mana possessed some corroding property. I had used it back then to free Helen from those worms, and later I used it to free my boys from parasites.

  But it was not the mana itself that was corroding anything.

  Only now did I understand that this was a function my mana could perform. It was just another spell.

  Just as a healing spell creates matter, this spell was its reverse. It destroyed it.

  And I had overcharged and intoxicated that poor Helen with my mana in a futile exercise of zealotry, when I should have focused solely on erasing the worms as gently as possible for the host.

  The second an orc tried to stab her, he followed the beasts into nirvana. Even their orc boss was erased. His body resisted a fraction of a second longer—being level eight, he already had a bit of magic in his veins—but what was that compared to me?

  It was so easy to erase them. With their low levels, their own mana could not offer any real opposition, and they died like the worms and parasites had back then.

  For a moment, I stood there alone with the still-writhing girl, a little shocked and afraid of my own thoughts.

  But I had no time to lose. The echoes of Luke’s and Annie’s cries were growing weaker, and I instantly turned back.

  What to do with Ilse? I could leave her there, curled up and crying, but there were more orcs around. So it was better to take her with me… and in the next second, she disappeared.

  I lost almost a full second just standing there, not understanding what had happened. Only when I materialized back into my human form and saw her materializing as well did I understand that I had simply taken her with me in my shadow form.

  That’s possible?

  I shadowmelded again, and she instantly disappeared as soon as I thought of lifting her.

  Oh, fuck me. I had been an idiot again. I did not need to imagine runes around their bodies like I had tried back then with the cat girl. That would be like forcing my spell around somebody else. No—I simply needed to lift them while in my shadowmelded form. As simple as that.

  Hey. I had still had my clothes on when I materialized!

  There was obviously a better connection between what I wanted to achieve—my intent—and my mana. It worked better.

  Somehow, I had improved my shadowmeld spell. I could carry things with me.

  But panic gripped my heart. I had lost too much time. Was I too late? I could not hear Luke anymore. Maybe he was simply no longer so loud. Maybe it was just the distance, I tried to tell myself.

  Could I even cast my speed spell in this form?

  As my shadows moved through the pipeline, something happened. It was like those old movies where the starship suddenly hits lightspeed.

  I was so shocked by how fast I was that I almost overshot them.

  But I reached them. And I understood their cries.

  When I first heard the drumming, I thought it was rain. Now, in hindsight, I realized I had not seen any rain when I took Ilse—but I had not made the connection.

  Now it made sense. That drumming was something else. It was the sound of myriad little legs scurrying in and out of the pipeline.

  Ants.

  The pipeline was full of ants. Crawling everywhere. Some as small as five centimeters, some as big as twenty, they were all over the place throughout the pipeline. In some places they even completely filled it. All agitated, all moving at high speed, like when you disturb an anthill.

  Oh. And there were the holes in the pipeline that Luke had been looking for. It was severed in several places, and the ants had used part of it for their nest.

  Annie was still sobbing, covered in Luke’s arms. Both were covered with hundreds, if not thousands, of ants. Luke must have lost consciousness—no sound came from him—but his heart was still beating, and he was still trying to cover Annie with his body.

  I didn’t even stop. I erased the ants as I passed, lifting the two with me. It seemed I could carry three people, but somehow I felt I was already at my limit. I felt like I had Ilse hanging from one hand, Luke in the other, and was holding Annie with my teeth. Maybe I was doing exactly that in my shadowmeld form.

  There were even more ants further down the pipeline, but there was no need to erase them all. After another ten seconds—and maybe miles—I blew a hole through the pipeline and, surprisingly, through a layer of earth. It seemed the pipeline had been buried in this part. I exited, materialized, and released the three.

  It was a bit brutal. I really have to learn to do it more kindly.

  Ilse yelled, then covered her head with her hands and curled into a fetal position. She was covered only in scraps, blood, and oil.

  Annie raised her head weakly. Her clothes had also suffered, but were in better shape than Ilse’s. However, her skin was covered with bite wounds, some deep and bloody.

  There were still a few ants that I must have involuntarily picked up. I annihilated them instantly. I checked them again. They were clean now.

  “Luke, Luke,” she mumbled.

  Luke let out a pained moan. He seemed worse off, but alive.

  I looked around for Lili to heal them... I could not feel her.

  I sighed. She had probably not been able to keep pace with my mad dash…