“YOU ARE SURE you are all right?” Doom asked, hovering close to Tiwaz as she checked the security of all her weapons once more prior to their heading into the darkness beyond the doors. She merely smiled at him, touching his jaw in a tender gesture. He sighed and nodded, letting her walk towards Simpkins.

Mya swept into the chamber and even her bright glow did not reach the ceiling or walls. Tracker knelt as they walked in, touching the smooth stone floor. “Many feet walked here. Many years of many feet. Stone strong, but still worn.” Tiwaz knelt beside him as he pointed out the very faint marks.

“I recognize this pattern of wear. This is a training area,” she observed. Looking into the darkness, she asked Simpkins, “Who did this book you seek belong to? Someone who trained an army under a mountain?”

Simpkins shrugged, holding up his hands in a helpless gesture. “I was not told to whom it belonged. Just that it belonged to a long line of priests that had disappeared a long time ago. That’s about as much as I know. And the general location of it.” He looked around with a frown. “Nothing I was told hinted at anything like this, though.”

A low, ominous sound echoed in the darkness and the five all drew weapons, though unsure which direction the sound was coming from. “Mya, circle us, show is what is out there.” The wind sprite obeyed and began circling in an ever widening circle. During the third pass, a gigantic form became visible. It was grotesque in its simplicity. A giant mound of flesh with three legs like thick tree trunks supporting a body consisting of a beak-like mouth on its underside and a single, colossal eye.

Simpkins swore. “That’s a magget. It’s one of the worst sorts of demon. It isn’t intelligent, but nothing is effective against it, neither physical nor magical.” He looked towards the door they had entered. “And we’ve freed it. It’ll ravage the north if it gets out of here.”

Tiwaz stated grimly as she put her long sword away and reached for Ghalnecha. “Then it shall not leave.” The ogre was about to say something when the blade began to glow. He could see a ghostly shape of a dragon fan its wings as it haloed the woman. She ran towards the monstrosity, then stopped, swinging her sword to strike the ground. The ringing sound was unnaturally loud, painful to their ears.

However, the magget howled a shriek of fury and pain, then fixated its attention on the brazen woman, stalking after her. Doom tried firing arrows, but they bounced off its thick hide. Even its eye seemed impervious. The males’ hearts nearly stopped when she ran closer to the monstrosity, a blur of metal and motion. Its flesh parted as the blade sliced it as easily as a knife through warmed butter.

“Ghalnecha hurts demons!” Tracker exclaimed in surprise. He and the others fanned out, trying to distract the thing to give Tiwaz time to recover from the attacks that seemed to be wearing on her stamina more swiftly than normal. His howl imitated the tonality of the sword’s ringing. The wolflen scrabbled to stop his forward momentum, struggling to avoid the monster when its attention turned onto him.

Gareth pulled out a flute that had survived the earthquake; he also imitated the dissonant sound, allowing Tracker to get well out of the demon’s reach. Doom fired arrows into the open wounds left by the sword, while Simpkins conjured more wind sprites to harass it with movement and light.

Panting, Tiwaz watched the demon as it struggled to pick a target between the four males. “Can you banish it? The others can do little more than distract it.” She closed her eyes, clearing her mind of distractions. “I do not know where its weak point is to end this myself.”

Maggets are very strong, the dragon priestess whispered in the woman’s mind. I have faced this sort of demon many times, but it drains me considerably and the strike to destroy it was usually fatal to my wielder.

“Do not worry about me. I have always been ready to die fighting.” She looked at the males, her gaze lingering on the ogre longest, the contradiction to what she had always believed about wielders of magic. “They are the important ones. Those we left back home are the important ones. We are sword and shield to them.” She straightened up, squaring her shoulders. “Guide me, Ghalnecha! Let our might ring through all the hells.”

Simpkins caught sight of Tiwaz’s run towards the demon and instinctively levitated her when she leapt, allowing her to easily land atop the gigantic lump of twisted flesh. She reversed her hold on Ghalnecha and drove it deep into the magget.

The world seemed to hold its breath as the demon abruptly froze. Flesh turned to stone, spreading through the monster from the sword outwards. The squeal of stone under stress grew. “Down!” Tiwaz yelled, the other four dropped flat a fraction of a second before the demon exploded, plunging the dark cavern into a thick, dust-filled blackness and utter silence.