The Storm-Swept Crag - Part 2
For hours, they repeated the brutal cycle. Fight a pack to a standstill. Advance a dozen yards. Fight again. The Storm-Cursed were endless, their tactics evolving. They began hurling shards of razor-sharp rock, using the wind to turn them into deadly projectiles. Maya's healing was now a constant, draining effort, sealing cuts and preventing hypothermia.
Liam's Gust Snare became their most vital tool. He used it to disrupt leapers, deflect rock shards, and once, crucially, to create a brief pocket of still air so Ryley could land a clean, mana-empowered thrust into the eye socket of a larger, pack-leader variant.
They were not conquering the floor. They were paying for every inch in blood, mana, and sheer grit. Their health bars, visible only as a deep-seated sense of vitality, were all sinking into the yellow zone. Mana was a precious, nearly extinct resource. The exit was nowhere in sight, just more winding, storm-blasted path, more lurking grey shapes in the mist. The fourth floor was a grinder, and it was only just beginning to turn.
Exhaustion became a third enemy, more insidious than the wind or the claws. It seeped into their muscles as a leaden fatigue, into their minds as a fog that made reaction times lag. The constant, deafening roar of the storm was a psychic battering ram, making communication impossible beyond hand signals and desperate shouts.
They found a shallow cave, little more than a gouge in the cliff face, and collapsed inside. It was damp and offered no real warmth, but it blocked the direct blast of the gale. The relative silence was a shock.
Maya worked frantically. Her Improved Mending stitched deeper wounds, but her mana was a shallow puddle. She distributed the last of their standard healing potions—bitter drafts that provided a jolt of vitality but did little for stamina or the deep cold. They ate strips of tough, smoked Razorjack meat, chewing mechanically, the taste of ashes and ozone.
"We can't keep this up," Jax rumbled, his voice raw. He leaned against the cave wall, his armor a collection of dents and deep scratches. "They're infinite. We're not."
"They're not infinite," Liana countered, her voice a thin, sharp wire. She was checking her daggers for nicks. "They spawn from somewhere. Probably from those energy fissures we've seen in the rock. This isn't a battle of attrition. It's a race. We have to find the source, or the exit, before we're worn down to nothing."
Ryley stared out at the sheeting rain. His mind, the part trained for patterns and win conditions, was grinding away. The floor had a logic. The wind was a constant obstacle. The monsters used the wind. Therefore, the key wasn't just strength; it was leverage. Using the floor's own mechanisms against it.
"Liam," he said, turning to the mage. "Your Gust Snare. Can you reverse it?"
Liam blinked, exhausted. "Reverse?"
"Can you gather the wind? Not disrupt it, but... pull it in, compress it? Make a localized burst even stronger than the storm?"
Liam looked horrified. "The energies are too chaotic... I could try, but it would take everything I have. One shot."
"One shot is all we need," Ryley said. "We find their nest, their spawn point. You gather the storm's fury, and we send it right back down their throats."
It was a desperate gamble. But it was a plan.
They moved out, re-entering the hellish gale with a new purpose. Liana scouted ahead with renewed intensity, not just looking for threats, but for patterns, for concentrations of the eerie, lightning-flickering fissures in the stone. The attacks continued, but they fought more defensively, conserving energy, letting Liam preserve his mana for the single, cataclysmic spell.
After another hour of brutal, defensive fighting, Liana signaled. She'd found it. Ahead, the path widened into a massive, bowl-like arena carved into the mountainside. And in the center of that arena, pulsing with violent blue light, was a Stormheart Fissure—a jagged tear in reality itself, swirling with captured lightning and howling wind. Around it, dozens of Storm-Cursed gathered, not attacking, but seemingly… feeding, absorbing the chaotic energy to renew themselves. This was the engine of the floor.
Between them and the Fissure was the floor's guardian. Not a single monster, but a trio of Tempest Sentinels, the larger, lightning-wreathed brutes they had glimpsed before. They stood between the path and the Fissure, crackling with power, the very storm seeming to coil around them
A direct assault was suicide. They were battered, half-depleted. A straight fight against three Sentinels and dozens of lesser Cursed in the heart of the storm was a death sentence.
"This is it," Ryley yelled over the wind. "Liam, get to that high ledge!" He pointed to a rocky outcrop overlooking the arena. "Jax, you're the anvil. You draw them in, right in front of the Fissure. Liana, you're the scalpel. When Liam unleashes, you go for the Fissure itself—see if you can disrupt it. Maya, you keep Liam alive long enough to cast."
It was the most complex tactic they'd ever attempted. Everything had to be timed perfectly.
Jax let out a roar that challenged the storm itself, activated Blooded Rage, and charged into the arena, not at the Sentinels, but toward the pulsing Stormheart Fissure. It was the ultimate provocation. All three Sentinels turned, their fury palpable. The lesser Storm-Cursed swarmed toward him. He became the vortex, the center of the enemy's attention, a raging, bleeding bull drawing the storm's ire.
Liana vanished, using the chaos Jax created to skirt the edge of the arena, a shadow moving toward the Fissure's flank.
On the ledge, Liam began his work. His hands moved in frantic, complex patterns, his staff glowing with a fragile blue light. He wasn't fighting the wind anymore; he was inviting it, pulling the screaming gales toward him, compressing the furious energy into a tighter and tighter knot of potential violence. The strain was immense. Blood trickled from his nose. Maya stood behind him, both hands on his back, pouring every last drop of her healing and reinforcing magic into him, not to mend, but to fortify, to keep his body from tearing itself apart under the strain.
Ryley watched, his sword ready, guarding the approach to their ledge against any Cursed that broke off from Jax. He saw Jax take a lightning bolt to the chest, saw his health bar lurch dangerously into the red. He saw Liana, a tiny figure against the massive Fissure, planting something—their remaining Razorjack caltrops, the Whetstone of Preservation, anything metallic and conductive—at its base.