The dragon roared in pain and pulled free, but it had lost much of its maneuverability and almost a third of its health bar. An onslaught of messages scrolled across Luke's interface, but he ignored them all. It was just people working themselves into a panic. Useless.

  "You could have told us this wasn't the entire Deep Dweller a little earlier, Hannah," Liza complained. "This must be why..."

  "Why, what?" Mateo asked, his eyes fixed on the dragon, his hands clutching his spear.

  "Nymh said the human defenders mentioned something about dangers in the shadows. I just thought it was monsters or something, not the shadows themselves."

  Out of nowhere, a long, thin tendril of shadows reached across the battlefield, hurtling toward Luke's party.

  Zap 'em, stop 'em, freeze 'em tight!

  No more swinging, end this fight!

  Lightning, hit, and hit just right!

  The patterns of her spell revealed themselves to Luke's Weavesense, beautiful and deadly. Lightning fanned out, crackling toward the speeding shadow, connected, and had little to no effect. Shadows rose around Hannah, who intercepted the attack. Even over such a great distance, there was little she could do. Hannah's shadows, while dark as night, didn't have that pitch-black quality about them, nor did they have that streak of glowing white through them, and her strength failed to hold.

  She grunted and pushed, diverting the tendril to the side to prevent it from reaching anyone. It slammed into the stone, but rather than destroying the ground, it moved into the stone, leaving it untouched.

  "We need to run," Hannah grunted.

  Liza hesitated for a moment, then shook her head, pointing to the other parties. "We're not leaving them."

  Luke agreed. That attack on his party hadn't been the only one, and the others wouldn't have someone like Hannah with them. People would need healing. More Integrated were streaming into the huge cavern. Things would escalate into chaos soon enough.

  Circles with symbols in them, like old Nordic runes, sprang up around the dragon's shoulders, and fire erupted from within them, hurling toward the main body of the Deep Dweller. Rather than wither away at contact, like the previous attacks, the fire spread over the darkness, covering the monster's surface.

  An otherworldly hiss rose through the chamber, and its tentacles pulled back into the main body. Luke watched the tendril that had come for them withdraw and saw Hannah keeping a close watch on it as they set off, continuing toward the other parties.

  "What's wrong?" Luke asked Hannah. "You defended us against it."

  Her voice came out as a whisper, and Luke strained to hear her over the din of battle. "It spoke to me."

  "What did it want?" Luke asked as Penny readied another attack.

  Little jolt, a taste, a tease,

  Let me see what power feeds!

  Bounce it back if you’ve got bite!

  "It sang to me. A beautiful song."

  "Sang?" Luke asked.

  "I think it wants me to join it," Hannah said, her look unfocused, like she was somewhere far away in her thoughts.

  Luke grabbed her shoulder and shook. "But you're not going to, are you?"

  She blinked, the focus returning. "Of course not. But we can't kill it."

  "It's lost some health," Liza said, pointing. "Can we drive it away?"

  Hannah shook her head at first, then considered the question. "Maybe, for a time."

  The fire engulfing the Deep Dweller winked out, and rather than a few enormous tentacles of darkness, hundreds erupted from its blank, void-like surface. Some reached for the dragon, but most spread out, heading for the different parties of Integrated.

  "Incoming!" they shouted.

  A barrier ward sprang up around them, intercepting the tentacles. That lasted only a brief moment. The attacks burrowed through, shattering the bubble-like wall.

  Nate raised his shield into the air, and the edges of it seemed to pull out in all directions, expanding the metal until it was wide enough to cover the party in a protected half-circle. He groaned as the tentacles slammed into it, gritting his teeth. Still, their tank held off the attack with admirable grit.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Liza's voice cut through the tension. "We will move to connect with other Integrated groups, so Luke can heal them. Hannah, I'm thinking you'll probably be necessary in chasing that huge thing off."

  That made her widen her eyes and shake her head in disbelief. "Me?"

  “Yes. Shadows against shadows,” Nate noted.

  "I will deal with the dragon," Mateo declared.

  "How?" Liza asked, exasperated. "It's in the air."

  "Like this!" Mateo shouted, stepping forward and releasing his spear, throwing it with all his might.

  It disappeared in the gloom, and they held their collective breath until it materialized back into Mateo's hand. Blood covered almost the entire length of the spear. Still, the dragon hadn't even seemed to notice the attack.

  "Right," Liza said.

  "A thousand pinpricks!" Mateo said, his expression set in a fierce grin.

  Liza waved them forward. "Let's go!"

  With them running and most of the other groups stationary, it didn't take Luke long to reach the closest party. They were in a sorry state. Most faced the battle, casting spells or using skills directed at the dragon.

  One of their members, a tank judging by his armor, was on his back, eyes closed. Blood pooled around him. Dead. Allowing himself to take a moment, Luke took the scene in. The plate armor was covered in holes where shadow tentacles must’ve punched through, showing gore beneath. Two Integrated, a man and a woman, were on their knees, crying over the dead tank.

  Muriel. Sharpshooter. Level 7.

  Arthur. Mesmer. Level 8.

  Since neither was injured, Luke ignored them in favor of one who was.

  Gertrude. Provocateur. Level 6.

  "Gertrude?" he asked, getting to his knees beside her while his party spread out around him. Penny's muffled chants were followed by ice-based spells hurtling toward the Deep Dweller. Nate protected the casters, while Mateo's spear flew off into the distance again. Liza was shouting at the top of her lungs, trying to get everyone to focus on the less obvious target, the tentacle monster on the far wall. They were still rather far from the massive battle and the resulting blocks of stone crumbling and falling down.

  The woman in her sixties looked up, her eyes full of pain. "Yes?"

  "I'm Luke. I'll fix you up."

  "That's nice, dear," she said, like he'd just told her he'd bring her some tea. What was such an old lady doing in a dungeon, anyway?

  It didn't matter. Luke would heal her just the same. Like with the tank, tentacles must have punched through her, which resulted in her shoulder missing a chunk of flesh. The whole thing was a mess. Working the wound out with Threads of Mana would be far too time-consuming, and he wasn't even sure he could manage it. That left just one way forward, Weaver's Renewal. It was a mana-intensive skill with a long cooldown. Using it so soon was a waste, but the other option was allowing Gertrude to pass. He gave her another once-over. If he did nothing, it wouldn't take long before she was gone. Others cried out in pain in the distance. Integrated who needed help, needed him.

  Luke gritted his teeth and surrounded the wound with Threads of Mana, triggering Weaver's Renewal when he was ready. It restored Gertrude, and her health bar regenerated at a good pace. She'd be fine. The skill consumed a good third of his mana. Before he rose to his feet, Luke reached into his patient's mana channels, drew in a deep breath, glanced around, and then stole some of her mana, adding it to his own pool. The woman didn't have much left herself, a little more than half. When he was done, about a third remained, while his own regenerated to somewhere around eighty percent.

  "You owe me that much," he muttered.

  "What was that?" Liza asked.

  Luke straightened and checked their surroundings. "Nothing."

  "There's another one over there," she said, pointing. "And over there. And there."

  "I'll have to run to get to all of them," Luke said, seeing even more injured all over the place.

  "We'll move as a group," Liza said. Her face was pale, and her eyes looked haunted.

  He shook his head. "Not fast enough."

  "I don't care," she said. "You're not going out there alone!"

  As if to lend strength to her words, tentacles slammed into the ground all around them at that moment. This time, fewer Integrated were struck, but the already wounded weren't able to protect themselves. Several died.

  "I know you're right," he said with an exasperated grunt. "But you're seeing this, aren't you? With this many people around, dragging everyone around will take ages."

  "That's what being a party is all about," she argued. "Unless you want us to go?"

  "What do you mean?" he asked.

  "If it's too much, there's nothing stopping us from disentangling ourselves from all these Integrated and keep to ourselves."

  She meant it, too. He saw it in the set of her jaw and the way her forehead creased. Liza was really asking him. Luke looked out across the gathered Integrated. There had to be at least a hundred of them at this point. Other healers were doing the rounds as well, but it wasn't enough.

  "No," he said. "No. We'll go together."

  "Good," she said, swallowing hard and giving her head a quick shake as she stood back to gesture to everyone. Liza frowned. "Where's Mateo?"

  Nate pointed toward the dragon with his sword. "He ran off."

  "Goddammit!" Liza clenched her small fists so hard her arms shook. "That man is in so much trouble if he makes it back!"

  "When," Luke corrected her. The blaze in her eyes as she looked up at him made him take a half-step back, holding up his palms as if that would do anything to calm her.

  The mass of people clumped up and attacking made the going difficult. Several frustrating seconds later, Luke found himself standing over another corpse. Another old person. Hannah elbowed her way past a small group of mages who'd kept backing up without looking, which put them on a collision course with Luke's party.

  "Dead!" Luke shouted.

  Liza waved for them to continue. A little farther down the line, a warm glow surrounded a wounded archer, and the woman's health bar filled up in large chunks, her wounds closing. He craned his neck and peered around, trying and failing to spot whoever had healed her.

  The multitude of glowing threads coalescing into patterns to make up spells made his head spin. All around him, people were casting spells, firing arrows. Someone was even firing a machine gun nearby, judging by the sound. Most of Integrated still kept the dragon in their sights. A small percentage of attacks were directed at the Deep Dweller, and the monster shrugged most of those off.

  Luke's party elbowed their way forward to another couple of injured Integrated. Even as he reached down with a thread of mana to heal the remaining stump of someone's sheared-off forearm, he saw the dragon come to a sudden shuddering stop in the air, a large amount of its health disappearing. It fell.

  As it hurtled through the air, the winged monster's head turned to face the large group of Integrated. Those eyes were still full of life. That beast was not done fighting. Not by a long shot.