I pulled up a battle platform from the stone twenty feet past the Shoreward, forty feet across and deep, plenty of room for the two dozen combatants here.

  The bridge to the horde was only wide enough for one Eater at a time, and actually rose above and arched down to them so they couldn’t run over one another in a pile-up to get there. The sides were fenced until the bridge reached the Shoreward, at which point it widened out and let them spread out to fight us.

  A few went tumbling off the shallow cliff as the stone arches of the bridge to them extended towards them. They were pressing forward eagerly for the chance at new fresh meat, the kind they could smell all the time, and now was being delivered to them!

  The gnashing and chomping of their teeth was quite impressive, and when the bridge reached them, they poured down the middle of it with zealous speed.

  They died pretty quickly, all things considered.

  They were big and strong and tough, but they didn’t have much natural armor to speak of, only huge bony mouths and skulls that warded some of their vitals, vitals the fighters had been quickly briefed on how to reach, generally by stabbing deep into those gaping jaws. Slashing attacks could unhinge the jaw and expose the innards to a follow-up strike, or, if you had the power, you could just power an overhand blow and try to split their skulls.

  The elevated Archers focused on those coming off the bridge, One More Arrow Quivers granting unlimited arrows which plunged deep and sent them tumbling, Burning en vivus, and they were pushed out of the way and over the edge by the pressure of those coming in behind.

  The short wall we were fighting behind from actually ‘grew taller’ quickly, in actuality the bridge lowering down so the corpses of the dead Eaters could Burn, the new ones could trample on over them, and constant telekinetic pressure from Zeks pushed vivisizing balls of meat and teeth out the ends at a steady rate.

  The feeding frenzy that had developed at the other inlet didn’t really happen here, as the Eaters were already dead, and all the remorans and their tentacled masters had to do was grab a dead Eater of their own and haul it away. The Water Elemental I Summoned up kept the currents heading away from the beach, so the corpses of the Eaters bobbed and bounced and headed out into the open water, where they were soon set upon, or were tugged down and out of sight, with much less frothing madness than the other inlet had been home to.

  That was fine, because we were at it a long time.

  My time was spent making sure everything was vivisized and any Knights silly enough to leave a limb inside the snapping mouth of an Eater too long after impaling the sucker didn’t lose the arm when it bit the dummy. I could also close off the bridge if needed, raise our own position up and make the Eaters build a pile of corpses to get at us, their stumpy short legs making them dreadfully poor climbers.

  Gore sprayed, Blades cut and stabbed and slashed, and boar-sized balls of flesh fell constantly over the sides of the fighting area, pressed out of the way by Telekinesis and the constant pressure of new, starving Eaters.

  The Knights were actually surprised they could keep up with the Eaters. That was mostly because the suckers were so big and impeded one another, so they never had to fight more than one at a time. If the Archers didn’t plant an arrow in the jaws and impale something vital, they could always take out an eye or even punch a shaft into the nostrils and to the brain, so none of the Eaters were making it to the fighters unscathed.

  Gross and Kopf held the center of the line. The two Vanguards had actually fought against Eaters in the Dungeons here on the island in their youth, and so were enthusiastic about coming to grips with their deadly opponents from back then. Axes cracked and clove bone and brains, blew vivus through their corpulent bodies, and the lugians levered them aside to allow the next Eaters to come into range and be killed.

  “That be a new one,” the Mick mentioned to Master Oswald next to me. Adso was over with the Archers, putting precise shots into gaping jaws wagging his way. “A Tyrant Eater?”

  The creature he was pointing at was almost white, and its swollen girth was at least two feet higher than even the most bloated of the yellow Eaters that otherwise dominated the Engorged, Insatiable, and Ravenous Eaters around it.

  “I’m going to have to widen the bridge to let it through. Easier to just kill it,” I informed them. “Commander! Big one!” I pointed.

  He glanced at the massive Eater, and then suddenly Endure was behind him, just flicked into position like it was weightless. Electrum Light swirled around the edge of what looked like a broad spear around the weighty adamantine head of the Hammer, and then flick!

  The Hammer was out and moving at the speed of an arrow. The streak of multi-colored Lights and pale blue Aberrant Banefire that was also gracing all the other Weapons of Lost Light here slammed into the massive bulk of the Eater, went right into its gaping, calling jaws, and tore it right back off its feet with the impact. Something exploded inside those jaws and out its backside as it was sent rolling and tumbling backwards and over the other Eaters of its horde.

  The light of its tentacle was out before it ever came to a halt, and Endure tore free of its jaws to come spinning back to Briggs’ hand with a slap of leather on metal.

  “Tough bastard, didn’t even punch through it,” he commented absently, lowering his Hammer down. Vivic fires were spurting out the gaping mouth of the dead Eater, but the other Eaters around it were already leaping onto it to devour it. “Fendro! Raise that Sword or admit you’re tired and get off the line!” The Aluvian knight hastily lifted his Blade, just in time to thrust it between the jaw of a reddish Engorged Eater pressing into the opening as his previous victim rolled away. “Good! Follow the Banefire, it will guide you to the nasty parts! One with your Weapon, people!” he called out in Warlord’s Voice, perfectly heard despite all the hacking and jaw-slobbering going on as Eaters came and died.

  “Three more o’ those big ones out there,” Mick went on without batting an eye.

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  “Queen Elysa! Fan! Kris! White ones!” I pointed out the massive Eaters slowly making their way towards us as the press in front of them died. My own contributions were basically going into the Eaters pushed off the cliff from the pressure of the others behind them, applying Kickers and letting them slowly Burn to death in the water as others of their ilk crashed down on top of them.

  An Autobow and the most famous Bows in Dereth rose up promptly, and the Tyrant Eaters weren’t long for the world.

  ------

  3,416 Eaters were not a small number of them. Actually, it was a freaking huge hill of them, enough meat to satisfy five times their number of Aquatics come to enjoy the repast. The seas behind us were full of Remorans and their masters, some of whom stole right up to the shore to grab the freshest Eaters, blasted the vivic fires out of them, and dragged them off to sea in a steady stream of fresh meat.

  Nobody had ever had so many manta-sharks around them, flapping their wings just below the level of the battle platform, and were ignored by us as they ignored us in return, intent on their own meals.

  The heaped Eaters should have piled up way, way higher than our platform or the bridge to get to us, but the combination of Aquatics hauling them away and vivus Burning them down to dust in white flames that kept the waters directly around the bridge remarkably clear also kept the stacks down completely, and they never reached above floor level before falling back into unwhite ash underwater.

  It was still a lot of killing.

  “And that is how ye get the Eat an’ Slay Achievement Feat, is it not?” the Mick grinned at everyone. He, Kris, and Briggs had moved in to take over for some knights who were too exhausted to continue. The Mick had triggered the Feat after his very first kill, much like the two lugian Vanguards, all of them having thousands of lifetime kills of the things already.

  Intent on getting their own Slayer counts up, Kris and Briggs had then charged right up the middle of the bridge and into the Eater horde in an eruption of spherical bodies and gore flying in every direction. Everyone had finished up what they were doing and sat back in relief, watching the two of them hold the head of the bridge and absolutely slaughter everything around them.

  Briggs just stood there, taking all the Eaters who could charge him without moving. He just sent ripped and cloven corpses flying this way and that with implacable swings of his arm. Just outside his reach, Kris flitted and passed through and over the Eaters there, and they were sliced apart without even really knowing she was there before they died.

  In any kind of reasonable fight, they would have mounded up the dead and been fighting on a hill of corpses before too long. Alas for the Eaters, Briggs was clearing that hill away with every swing of Endure, and they had no chance to mound up around the two of them.

  Also not good for the Eaters, their racial bias away from eating their own kind meant that even with the slaughtered right there, having living Isparians in reach was too much to resist, and so they ignored the dead.

  Not that it mattered. The last two hundred, including the last Tyrant Eater whom Briggs clove the skull of in twain, died with as much speed as if they’d come pouring over the bridge at the line of twelve shields there that had held off their predecessors.

  “One day I am gonna be that damned strong,” Knight Colmus swore, as Warlord Kris kicked the corpse of the Tyrant Eater out of the way like it was a chicken’s corpse, climbed up her equally gory mate and give him a big sinister kiss of glee, while vivic flames stole up them and began to Burn the gore off of them.

  “Hallelujah an’ Gloria!” the Mick agreed flatly. “Lass, anything for us t’ worry about below?”

  I shook my head. “Any who went over the side are dead. At the end there I was racing the Remorans to get to the fresh meat.”

  “Then we’re moving! On the Disks, no time for running!” The unexpected roar of his voice sent everyone scrambling for the Disks floating at the back of the platform. “There’s another horde in the area, an’ they be smellin’ the blood soon enough! We be reaching the Keep afore that happens!”

  Thirty seconds later, we were all in motion towards the Keep on the hill two miles away.

  ---

  The normal way to get into the Keep of Karlun was to climb up a rope or lowered rope ladder, then climb or be drawn fifty feet up to the cliffside opening that could admit only one person at a time.

  Fifty feet also happened to be just higher than any mound thousands of Eaters could heap up to reach them, as the back end of the mound would instead fall off the sides of the cliff behind them before it could reach high enough.

  That was naturally not the slightest problem for us, as Kris and the Mick simply went straight up the side of the outer wall, running two hundred feet up sideways while ignoring gravity. To the utter astonishment of the guards in rusty old armor, they cleared the sides of the walls and came up over and onto the battlements. All the Disks followed smoothly, and suddenly there was a very dangerous armed force of warriors, only one of whom was Viamontian, on the walls of Karlun’s Keep!

  “At Ease,” Briggs’ Warlord’s Voice boomed out, and the panicking guards there flinched at the command in his baritone. “We just slaughtered over three thousand Eaters just to reach this place, and have no intention of fighting you over it.

  “Is the Grand Mother and Knight-Captain still about? I am Commander Briggs of Stonehold, this is Warlord Kristie Rantha of Freehold, I am sure you know Master Oswald and his First Blade Adso, and we are accompanied by the Queen Mother Elysa Strathelar and her granddaughter, the Royal Princess Fan.”

  There wasn’t any need to pass word, as his Voice could be heard throughout the Keep with great ease.

  The old soldier standing managed to quit his gaping, and at least tried to recover some of his Viamontian arrogance. “Sir! Your arrival and means was… unexpected!” he managed to say. “I am sure the Grand Mother and Knight-Captain will be happy to see you!”

  “I’ve heard the crowding is great down below.” Briggs looked around at the many hanging gardens of vegetables and miniature trees planted about them. Only Kris and the Mick were actually standing on the narrow battlements, everyone else was on Disks floating over empty space to the sides. “It would perhaps be easier to meet us up here. Magos, a conference area.”

  I inclined my head obediently, and a whole section of the aged battlements flowed down and away as smoothly as soft clay, extending out over into space and forming into a round circular platform out there, braced and fenced and quite able to hold a diplomatic party who needed to confer with one another.

  The Mick promptly strolled out onto the platform before anyone else, leaning on the rail. “We brought more friends!” he announced to everyone, who craned over to look at what he was seeing.

  Another horde of Eaters in their squirming mass of bodies was sweeping around the side of the Keep and starting to writhe about the walls of the cliff below.

  Briggs stepped down from his Disk, still towering over the very impressed soldier there, and walked out to join the Mick, looking down with an unperturbed face.

  “Magos,” he said levelly, “I hate to impose, but burn them all.”

  “Yes, Commander,” I replied calmly, moving my Disk over to the edge of the battlement for an unimpeded view below. Three Darts cycled up around my wrist, flaring with Lost Lights and multiple fires, and I began to bombard them.

  Chained Darts, seventy-eight Eaters at a time. Five rounds of Burn was just enough damage to kill them all after the initial hit.

  Slicing blades of force dropped from the sky, and the Eaters began to Burn in Chained spiderwebs of magic blasting through them, uncaring and oblivious, only stirred to more excitement by the light and motion of the magic coming down, the cries of their own at the pain, which meant fighting, which meant more food.

  Powered kill armies, and that included hordes.

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