“Kels!” Det shouted—the only thing he could do from that range—as the hooked blade sped for the young girl’s throat. Then… stopped.

  A grunt from Sage, and the man dropping to one knee while he extended a hand, explained what had happened. He’d controlled the Rare Spawn. From the sweat pouring down his face, and the fact his whole body was shaking, it wasn’t an easy task. Or one that would last.

  Jaw still bouncing up and down like the Wordless was laughing, the head turned woodenly to look down at Sage, one eye red and the other blue. Even then, the blue eye flickered and stuttered, like whatever colored it was fighting a losing battle. It’d only be seconds, at most, before the blade would find its mark in the girl.

  “Gotcha,” Calisco said, her own hands pointing in the Wordless’ direction. A flick of her wrist, and an explosion ripped out at waist level between Kels and the Rare Spawn. Like a shaped charge, the blast went entirely in one direction, away from Kels and into the chest of the Wordless beside her.

  A better fireball…

  Vicious—like everything Calisco said or did—the blast ejected the Wordless from its position next to Kels, bending its body around the blast and firing it toward the side of the stage. It only got about three feet before a massive spear of black ink crashed into it. More specifically, as a giant ink-snake-thing caught the Wordless in its powerful jaws and continued driving it back to slam into the wall with a theatre-shaking impact.

  At the same time Det and the others struggled to stay standing from the quaking, hidden doors along the side of the theatre and the back of the stage sprung open. Red eyes and claws glowed ominously within for a heartbeat before Wordless poured out. Wordless Marionettes, E-Rank, from the red names flying across Det’s eyepatch.

  More importantly, the way they moved, these were the same things Det had fought in the pasture. The same things that’d killed the sheep, and damn-well tried to kill him.

  Each standing about six feet tall, these Wordless were made of the same black material as the mechants had been, with oddly wide heads, and their eyes sitting more on the sides, than in the front where a person’s would be. Like the Rare Spawn, they had nut-cracker jaws, clacking up and down in a cacophony of wooden laughter filling the theatre as more Wordless emerged. Ball-joints rotated their limbs in place of things like elbows, knees, or shoulders, and they didn’t have feet at all. The bottom of their legs ended in narrow stumps—kind of like short stilts—that should’ve made their movement jerky and clumsy.

  It was anything but that, the Wordless sprinting out of the hidden doors with all the same terrible speed Det remembered from his first encounter. Another thing that was unfortunately familiar was the claws. Six inches, glowing red, four on each hand—nothing on the thumbs—and stretching to end ReSouled lives. In the murky darkness of the theatre, the dim lights choosing this exact moment to start flickering, the eyes and claws moved like something out of a rave.

  One of these things had nearly killed Det—though he was tougher and stronger than he had been then—and killed a dozen sheep. If this many of them got out, if the dungeon burst, it would be the end of Radiant. It would be just like what Det had seen on Ironsalt. A town, gone. Lives, lost. Nothing left.

  Huck and Jezz would be killed, and even though they weren’t really his parents, they were good people. He couldn’t imagine them having to go through what the survivors from Ironsalt had. Might even be worse if only one of them survived.

  Det couldn’t—wouldn’t—let that happen to them. He would stop the Wordless here. He had to.

  Above the party, parts of the broken balcony railing fell from the ink-snake’s long body launching itself at the Wordless Rare Spawn on the stage, the tail just now clearing their heads. Growls rumbled out of the two ink-wolves chests. Sage’s hands went to the floor as he hauled in deep breaths from the exertion of slowing the Pupperina. Calisco smiled like a madwoman at getting to explode something. Tena—both of her—and Weiss stood frozen looking at the chaos erupting around them, and Eriba clutched her mace close to her chest.

  Det?

  Det acted.

  In his right hand, his sword swished out of the scabbard at his side, while his left hand tore a scroll from his chest holster. A flick of his thumb popped the wax seal, sending the scroll unfurling up and to his side with the motion of his swinging arm.

  “Fight!” he roared. “Destroy the Wordless!” He commanded the wolves, his intent and magic making sure they knew the words were for them.

  The sudden bellow from the middle of the party seemed to snap the others out of their funk, their heads swiveling as they really took in what was coming for them. There had to be dozens of Wordless Marionettes vaulting rows, running along the backs of seats, or leaping up to monkey swing across the bottom of the balcony like it was made of playground bars. The first Wordless would be on them in five seconds.

  Which was three seconds longer than Det needed for the scroll in his hand to burst to life. Embers of burning paper filled the air in a shower as a trio of birds of prey took to the air. Hooked beaks spread in a screech of challenge, while their razor-sharp talons practically glowed in the dim light of the theatre.

  “Get Kels,” Det commanded the birds at the same time he brought two fingers of this left hand to the blade of his sword. “Cut her down. Keep her safe.” The words took just as long as the requisite two seconds Det needed to run his fingers up the length of the blade, igniting ink flames as he went.

  In those four seconds—the instant before the Wordless arrived with murderous intent—the rest of the party also, finally moved. One Tena each went to the sides, shields and spears lifted to stem the tides of Wordless getting vomited from the hidden doors on the side walls. As for the stage, with the huge body of the ink-snake thrashing around Kels and across the stage, that angle of attack was blocked for the moment.

  Magic practically sparking from Calisco’s fingertips, she looked to the party’s left, then thrust her hands forward, explosions ripping through the air in front of the racing Wordless. These weren’t small explosions, either, filling the space between seating and the balcony above like a wall of fire and concussive force.

  Most impressively, while the blast of course did terrible damage to the line of Wordless in the front, the attack wasn’t just about blowing things up. For once, Calisco had used her head, positioning the blasts to slow the coming wave of enemies. The extra seconds the explosion bought gave Tena time to get into position, shield up to block a set of red claws streaking through the flames. Hands leading, the Wordless was horizontal in the air, like it had dived through the blast to reduce exposure to the fallout. Still, scorch marks lined its body, while other chunks of it were cracked or outright missing.

  A high-pitched sching filled the air as claws met shield, crystal shards bursting out from the contact. That was all the damage the claws did, though, while Tena—or her double?—braced her powerful legs behind the barrier, and put her shoulder into it.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  The Wordless, all forward momentum and angry claws, suddenly found itself diving face-first into the equivalent of a crystal wall. Arms bent at awkward angles before the Wordless’ face slammed into the shield. Then it was a tangle of limbs pressed against the shield, more stress-fractures spreading from the force of the collision.

  Behind the shield, Tena barely grunted, flexing her upper body and half-swinging the shield out and to her left to toss the broken Wordless like so much garbage.

  Garbage Eriba pounced on a like a hungry mountain lion. One with a mace. What happened next wasn’t pretty or skilled—somewhere along the lines of a blind-folded five-year-old on a massive sugar-high going at a pinata—but it was effective. Wordless shell cracked as Eriba’s flailing found its target, finally crushing the head and spilling the insides out.

  Then the true horror started, with the woman grabbing the body and dragging it back into the protective circle of the party, where she began tearing it apart with her bare hands.

  At her back, opposite Tena and Calisco, the other Tena didn’t have the delaying tactic of explosions in Wordless faces to buy her time. That Tena hadn’t managed to get her shield up before a trio of Wordless vaulted the chairs and were almost on her, claws reaching to see if they could find a way through her armor.

  To her credit, the Bulwark didn’t hesitate or flinch at the threat, instead throwing herself between the attackers and her party. Where her shield wasn’t lined up to block the blows, she used her body instead.

  The first Wordless drove one set of claws into her shoulder, while the other skidded off the side of her armored abdomen, tearing shards of crystal with it was it went. That stopped it from getting any further, even as blood splashed from the wounds. The second Wordless, that one Tena caught with a thrusting spear, the crystal tip stabbed into its gut like she was spear-fishing. Her arm like iron, the Bulwark stopped the thing one handed, arms and legs flailing forward uncontrollably, but not able to reach any of the more vulnerable cadets behind.

  It was the third one that was the real problem, though, coming up just behind the other two. With the way Tena stretched and used herself as a shield for the first two, she’d left herself wide open for the follow up. Something the Wordless made note of. Originally angled to follow the direction of the Wordless Tena had stabbed, this one got a leg down to find one of the many seatbacks, then used it as a springboard to come back at an angle. Right over the Wordless that’d gotten stuck in Tena’s shoulder, and straight for her face.

  Claws came around in a vicious arc, lines of red trailing them through the flickering light. One second, they were out wide, and the next, they’d closed like pincers to stab into the sides of a head.

  Not Tena’s head, though. No, in that last second of movement, the claws had turned from red to blue, then buried themselves in the skull of the Wordless that’d injured Tena. Just to make sure the deed was done, Sage had his pet Wordless twist the claws before ripping them free, then executed a vicious double slash that gouged out huge swaths of the thing’s torso, before leaping back to intercept the horde.

  “This has got to be a wave-type dungeon,” Sage said at the same time Det stepped forward to bring his katana across in a horizontal arc to behead the Wordless suspended on the end of Tena’s spear.

  “What’s that even mean?” Calisco said. With her question came another explosion, this one a massive burst at the wall of the room near where the Wordless were pouring out of. Even that far from the group, Det felt the concussive whump of it against his back. Thankfully, it was far worse for the monsters trying to swarm them.

  “It means we don’t move,” Sage explained, his pet leaping to cut off two more Wordless leap-frogging across the seats. “And the enemy keeps coming to us.”

  “Where they keep trying to dog-pile us?” Tena asked with a grunt as she finally got her shield under the Wordless corpse that had impaled her, and used it to pry it free. “If this keeps up, we’re going to…”

  “Be fine,” Weiss said, behind the tank and pushing healing magics into her already. “Be ready for the shock of the cold.”

  By the way her head snapped in his direction, it wasn’t the cold that surprised her. The healer wasn’t standing frozen and letting her bleed out. Even though his hand was shaking like a leaf in the wind, he was healing her.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “Thanks later, tanking now,” Det said, stepping forward to cover for Tena.

  Black-flaming blade slashing, he managed to deflect one, two, three claw strikes from the Wordless in front of him, but couldn’t score a hit of his own. Just like last time, the thing was too damn fast when it came to a focused exchange of strikes. The two claws parried everything he threw at its top half, while its strange legs kept it perfectly balanced on the seats…

  Det nearly rolled his eyes as he ducked low under a pair of slashes looking to behead him, then slashed out wildly straight in front of him. Not at the Wordless, this time, but instead at the chairs it was standing on.

  Clearly not expecting the maneuver, the thing toppled as the chair backs suddenly didn’t support its weight, and each leg went in a different direction. As it did the splits, and its claws went above its head from the momentum of the rest of it falling straight down, Det turned his wrist, flipping the angle of the blade. Up and across, Det’s sword trailed ink-flames as it cut through the bottom of one thigh, exited the top, then sliced into where the bottom of the thing’s ribs would be, if it had any. The Wordless’ torso didn’t hold up any better than the leg did, and his sword punched out through its shoulder.

  If the wound didn’t kill it, the black flames beginning to consume it sure would.

  To add to the chaos, Det stepped in and punted the falling—and flaming—pieces of Wordless toward the far wall where more of the things came for his group. At his side, Tena was back in position, her should patched up, while Weiss had moved to the center of the group with Eriba and Sage. Still sitting on the ground, hands a blur, Eriba worked on living up to her codename, tinkering with the broken Wordless over her knees. Like something out of a gory B-movie, the thing had its guts splayed out over most of Eriba and the floor around her.

  Next to her, Sage focused on his Wordless pet trying its best to mimic the seat-leaping agility of the red-eyes creatures in the theatre. Really, he wasn’t having much lucky, and his pet barely lashed out at one enemy before another tackled it from behind. Brutal claw slashes tore up the back of Sage’s pet’s head, then ripped that head clean off.

  No sooner had one Wordless claimed victory over another, than the red-eyed winner twitched, its whole body stiffening before its eyes turned blue. Then it was leaping for another Wordless, claws stretched out. Not that that went well for it, with three others turning their attention on it immediately.

  Sage’s pet got torn apart within heartbeats.

  “They’re catching on to which one my pet is,” Sage said, though the others couldn’t do anything to reply. Both Tena’s were far too busy dealing with the Wordless that’d swarmed over the seats. The crystal-covered tanks did everything the could to keep the wave from crashing past them, but there were just too many. Some would get back.

  Even with Calisco and Det doing everything they could to stem the tide.

  Explosions rocked one side of the theatre, tearing apart any Wordless who lingered halfway between the wall and the group. Closer, though, Calisco couldn’t risk letting her more powerful blasts rip, with the potential fallout of catching Tena in a blast far too risky. Something the Wordless were catching on to, sprinting and leaping to get past that deadly halfway point.

  On Det’s side, while his flaming blade would cut through any Wordless body it reached, reaching was the problem. Bladed claws were too well positioned nine times out of ten, and without support to distract Det’s targets, he just didn’t have the skill to get through. It wasn’t even slowly, and the party was surely getting overwhelmed.

  The armor on Det’s chest deflected one claw meant to slash his ribs open—leaving nasty gouges along the rigid polymer—while another caught the same shoulder he’d been speared through before. Thanks to the training he’d endured, he hardly noticed the pain, and traded the hit for one of his own. His sword speared through the side of his attacker’s gut, tearing a chunk of ceramic-like material off with a twist, and leaving hungry black flames in its wake.

  Is taking hits to open them up the only way I’m going to be able to bring these Wordless down?

  Not that he’d brought down the one right in front of him. Disregarding the section of missing stomach—and the flames crawling both up and down its body—the Wordless came on heedless of its injuries. Red claws flashed through the murky, flickering lights of the theatre, leaving streaks of light with every attempt at reaping Det’s life.

  Through the flashes of desperate parries, he also managed to get an idea of how the others were doing. They’d started out well, Tena moving to get into position, while Calisco leveled theatre-shaking explosions at their enemies. Now? After the Wordless had a chance to bring the numbers to bear?

  The short answer, not well.