The seats on the first level of the theatre literally crawled with Wordless scampering over them, red claws leaving trails of blood-like light behind them where they moved as if in stop motion from the flickering illumination. Each Tena was physically holding back three or four marionettes, Sage’s pet got pounced on as soon as he took a new one over. At least he was usually able to take down one or two Wordless with each hop, and he bought the others some time.

  Calisco had torn apart the seating on her entire side of the theatre, the floor and bottom of the balcony little more than shredded terrain where her power had passed. Unfortunately, that just meant less obstacles for the Wordless to sprint through. They still had to deal with the explosions, of course, but that hardly mattered in their single-minded determination to reach the ReSouled. Once they made it past that no-man’s-land middle ground, it was a lot more dangerous for Calisco to use her big explosions. Sure, she could focus smaller blasts on individual marionettes. That just left another dozen or so coming from all sides.

  Weiss dashed back and forth from Tena to Tena, his healing magic working overtime to keep both the original and her crystal double on their feet. Eriba, now crouched on one knee, had somehow scavenged a few extra Wordless corpses, and was busy working on whatever idea she had in her head.

  Det didn’t have time to really look at what she was building. Only to hope it would be finished soon. He took another glancing blow off the armor covering his chest in exchange for delivering a stab through the marionette’s face. That stole the life from the thing, and Det hauled to the side, tossing the burning Wordless into a group of three others trying to circle around from the side. Black licks of flame leapt from one to the next, promising death to the Wordless. Eventually. It would take too long for the ink-fire to bring down the marionettes.

  On the stage, Det’s giant snake continued its battle with the Rare Spawn, the white Pupperina dancing out of the way of the powerful jaws looking to crush it. Blades slashed long gouges on the sides of the snake, but—thankfully—none of the injuries were enough to dispel the rendition. If the party had to deal with a Boss-level Wordless at the same time as the horde, that would be the end of things.

  Near Kels, the three birds of prey viciously attacked any normal Wordless that got close. With their empowered talons, the trio worked in concert to make sure the girl—who still hadn’t moved—stayed safe. Since not many of the marionettes were heading in that direction, so far, the tactic was working.

  Against the walls, Det’s ink-wolves did what they could to slow the Wordless advance, attacking with hit-and-run attacks from the back. They each had a bit of added durability, but not enough to tank blows from the dangerous claws, so the wolves were playing it safe, focusing more on slowing and delaying than outright killing. At least they were nimble enough to keep themselves summoned unless they got cornered.

  Which was exactly what happened as Det watched the one on his side. Nipping at the back of one of the Wordless’ legs, the wolf was a second too slow in retreating, and three more Wordless took the opportunity to come at it from all sides. Like the cornered animal it was, the wolf fought with a new level of unrestrained ferocity, even managing to take down two Wordless—and rip an arm off a third—before the final Wordless brought the rendition down.

  Without it there at the back causing havoc, that would mean all the Wordless there would just come on harder.

  Another slashing pain catching the unarmored inside of Det’s forearm snapped his attention back to the immediate threat. The two marionettes filling the air in front of him with slashing fury. It was everything he could do to keep them at bay without falling back, but he was managing it. Somehow. Maybe it was his body learning how to fight with a sword against claws, or maybe it was his improvements from the week at the academy. Whatever the reason, he appreciated it.

  This really isn’t how I expected my academy arc to go…

  “Det!” Eriba shouted. Yes, shouted. “Get down!”

  Shocking as it was to hear the woman’s voice at any volume above a whisper, the fact she was yelling triggered a kind of lizard-brain understanding it was very important he obeyed. Barely finishing a downward-cross-parry to keep a set of stabbing claws from tearing his hip out, Det leapt to the side.

  Just in time, too, with a thumping rat-tat-tat-tat-tat to sound from the center of the party. Namely from the damn tripod-mounted-double-barreled-minigun Eriba had built. The one she absolutely opened up with on the side of Wordless.

  “GEEEEEET SOOOOOOME!” she yelled at the Wordless as the weapon spit foot-long bolts of hard energy through the air. The whole weapon shook in her hands, vibrating through her own body as she held on for dear life with both hands, even with the tripod anchored to the floor.

  For the Wordless, it was even worse. Some tried to parry. That didn’t work, with the spikes of energy tearing through their clawed hands, and then the bodies right behind. Others tried to dodge. That worked a bit better, though Eriba’s sweeping fire across the side of the theatre riddled everything with holes. Sure, they might survive an extra second or two while Eriba repositioned her aim, but there was just no getting away if she picked one Wordless as her target.

  The ones that tried hiding below the level of the limited seating that remained, well, they did the worst. The seats did nothing to slow the bolts that tore through them like a woodchipper would. Within seconds, the flickering light was filled with fountaining chips from broken chairs and Wordless alike.

  Seconds that gave Det a chance to scramble away and do what he should’ve done from the beginning. He could fight at the front line, but that wasn’t his role. He wasn’t a Duelist. He was an Arsenal, and it was time he started fighting like that. The number of Wordless were a problem. One he could directly counter.

  Even though it would cost him the flames on the blade, Det threw the sword to the floor beside him, then sent both hands to grab empty ink bottles. Two seconds, then a pitch in each direction sent his improvised Molotov cocktails to cause some chaos at the back of the lines. With the way the flames burned and spread, any new Wordless coming out of those doors would come out on fire. A good start, but definitely not the best he could do.

  Next, Det’s hands pulled scrolls from his hip holsters. One each. A dramatic flourish—as minigun-fire lit up the theatre—sent both scrolls flying out to either side with his extended arms. On and on and on the scrolls seemed to unravel, until each hung nearly fifteen feet long. Black lines along their length shimmered as his magic flooded into the channels he’d painted on the paper. From each hand, a kernel of energy went as well, reinforcing already powerful muscles. When he’d painted these, he’d added durability kernels at the time, so offensive power was what was needed. He could’ve gone for speed—what he’d figured he’d probably need in the dungeon when he’d first painted the scrolls—but he needed something to help restrain or destroy Wordless.

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  These would do that.

  “Crush our enemies,” Det said quietly, his words somehow coming out clearly over the roar of constant gunfire to reach the renditions slithering off the scrolls. Yes. More snakes. A lot more snakes. Painted in every length from one foot to fifteen, the snakes burst into the air in all sizes, dozens upon dozens of them, then immediately shot off in every direction as soon as they hit the floor.

  Embers burned in the air at the same time the first snakes reached the nearest Wordless. Like the marionettes weren’t sure what to make of the new, inky renditions, they reacted too slowly. They hesitated. The snakes took full advantage of it.

  A large specimen, nearly ten feet long, launched like it was spring-loaded, to slip over an extended arm, around the back of the neck, then down and under the other arm before slipping in front of the abdomen. Within two heartbeats, the full length of the snake wrapped around, across, and over the Wordless.

  Then it began to constrict.

  Black, ceramic-like material cracked at the same time the Wordless spasmed, parts of its body going in directions even a marionette wasn’t built to bend. Legs buckled beneath it, sending it sprawling to the ground, the snake pulling even tighter. An arm broke back in the wrong direction, before a second got outright pulled out of the shoulder socket. The chest compressed, and the head tilted back, back, back, from the loop of the snake’s body pulling on its forehead.

  As that horrible way to die played out, the other snakes weren’t idle, either. The largest of the renditions followed the tactic of the first snake to seek out a victim, and found ways to wrap Wordless within the coils of their powerful bodies. Far faster than a normal snake could envelop a target, it was a horror show straight out of any ophidiophobe’s worst nightmare. The smaller snakes, individually lacking the power to take a Wordless on directly hunted in knots.

  Det hadn’t been able to add poison to them—future goal—but they made up for it with numbers. When one buried its fangs in a leg or arm, twenty more snakes quickly followed. Each only a foot or so long, the snakes hardly seemed like a threat to a Wordless. Until it was buried in squeezing, biting, bastard snakes.

  Like the Wordless had made a joke about their moms, the snakes dragged the marionettes to the ground with a vengeance. They didn’t get back up.

  Det didn’t leave all the work to the snakes, though, two more scrolls flung out to the side and already turning to embers in the time it took the snakes to find their first victims. And, if the Wordless thought the snakes were bastards, they weren’t ready for what came next.

  Honey-badgers.

  A full dozen of them, with the kernels Det had used painting them invested into one thing and one thing only. Claws? Nope. Durability? Not that either. Sharp teeth? Not even close.

  What had Det invested some of his most powerful magic into?

  Anger.

  Sure, when Det manifested the renditions now, he added some of his dwindling supply of kernels to up the power of the badger’s claws, but when he’d originally envisioned what he wanted? Angry little balls of unforgiving death.

  Which is exactly what he got, six from each scroll snarling to life as they leapt from the paper. Leaving only flaming embers falling to the floor in their wakes, the things hit the ground already deep in an unhinged rage. Claws gouged deep scratches in the concrete floor of the theatre, while ink-like drops of saliva leaked from between teeth looking to bite just about anything.

  Then, when they spotted the Wordless, a second of silence crossed over the battlefield. Red eyes met black, each side taking a breath—and the measure of their opponents—in the strange pause before the violence began.

  Little more than small balls of dervish-fury, the honey-badgers leapt bodily at the Wordless. Neither side cared about their own well-being, which made the battle instantly devolve into which side could do the most grievous damage to the other first.

  Snakes and badgers deployed to both sides of the battle to even the odds, Det’s hands found the third—and final—scroll he had on each hip. Limited by the size of the scrolls, he mainly relied on animals that could think for themselves to a limited degree. They could follow orders, and there were advantages to that.

  His eyes went to the honey-badgers, and he winced. Okay, so not everything was really thinking. They were acting though, and he had another proven card to that could work to do just that.

  This time, when Det popped the wax seals from the scrolls and snapped his arms, they didn’t go out and away from him. Instead, his right arm went up and across his body, while his other arm went down and across, in the other direction.

  Magic surged into the scrolls, pulling kernels from deeper in Det’s body down his arms and out his fingers. More wriggling shapes twisted on the paper that seemed to hang unnaturally in the air for two seconds, before dark lines extended from the back of the scrolls to the floor and ceiling. With a final pulse of power, the ten-foot scrolls shot out of Det’s hands, plastering themselves above and below him, then flared, incinerating the paper.

  In their places, new nightmares stretched out. Tentacles. And clearly not the friendly kind.

  Especially not if the Wordless saw the eyes lurking in the lines of black running along the floor and ceiling, like cracks to somewhere else had been opened up. And, maybe they had. Even Det wasn’t sure, with his intent at the last second being for the tentacles to drag their victims into an inescapable darkness.

  Each eye—with three pupils—seemed to pick a target, Wordless that’d gotten too close to the party, and tentacles lashed out at them. Sensing the threat, red claws slashed in a flurry, severing several tentacles before they could reach the Wordless. It wasn’t enough.

  New writhing limbs grew from the stumps to catch the Wordless in bindings of black ink. Then they began to drag the Wordless toward the inky voids from which the tentacles came. Suddenly, the systematic, coordinated attacks on the restricting tentacles became frenzied. Panicked. Red eyes stared at the abyss, and if Det didn’t know better, they knew fear.

  As feet got pulled out from under them, the marionettes stretched out their arms, claws driven into the ground to slow the pull. To crawl away. Neither worked, and as the bottom of the Wordless’ legs touched the darkness near the three-pupiled-eyes, the marionettes began to spasm. Seizures wracked their bodies, red eyes flickering in time with their uncontrolled bodies.

  Then they were gone. Slipping beneath as quickly and quietly as a man beneath the waves of the ocean.

  Not entirely sure what I just created, but that’s a question for later.

  Thanks to the snakes, honey-badgers—Oh… is that one burrowing into the face of the Wordless? Ouch…—and now the tentacles, Det had somewhat evened the numbers side of things. Eriba and her minigun mowed down Wordless, buying Sage and Tena time to give the Bulwark some breathing room. On the other side, Calisco’s explosions were becoming more controlled and…

  The whole upper balcony on that side of the room exploded.

  “Hahahaha,” Calisco laughed, despite the bloody lines from where Wordless had reached her before Tena could intervene. “Feel my power!”

  More explosions brought what was left of the balcony down on the heads of the Wordless, crushing them beneath hundreds of pounds of whatever the hell the balcony was made of. Not that Calisco let the cloud of expanding dust and darkness on that side slow her down, more explosions ripping through that side of the theatre.

  Between Calisco and Eriba, there was plenty of mass destruction going on right then and there. Enough that Det could turn his attention from the horde intent on gutting him and the others to center stage.

  His ink-hawks had protected Kels the whole time, though only one remained, while his giant snake looked to have finally caught up to the Rare Spawn. It had the Pupperina with its back to the wall, the snake’s dragon-like jaws spread wide with only the Wordless’ hands keeping them from snapping shut on its chest. From the way the arms were shaking with effort, it was only a matter of time before the snake’s powerful maw closed. The Pupperina wasn’t snatching victory from those jaws of defeat.

  It was time to get Kels out of danger.