Her Belemental form – large and glowing – would have been an easy target for Technis’ cannoneers to hit if they hadn’t been so distracted by the growing ball of stone that was careening towards them. She wasn’t sure that had been Tim’s plan when he immobilized himself, but he was successfully drawing all the cannon fire.

  She enjoyed her explosion-free run until she kicked through one of the exploding tripwire traps. She remembered her group’s first casualty as she flailed, her reactions caught between those of the agile Bel and her bulkier Belemental body, and barely managed to get her shields in front of her face before the blast hit her. Unlike being hit by a cannonball, this was more heat than force, and she found herself drinking it up.

  Her body grew hotter and the cracks in her skin blazed with the orange glow of her magmatic blood. She laughed in triumph and continued her advance. She grinned as she looked back, and noticed that Jan and Flann were now keeping a safer distance behind her.

  She eagerly bounded down the slope, enjoying the occasional bath of fire while Tim continued his unstoppable roll. His fellow delvers were also making good progress, and the speedy Simos hit the moat first. His legs blurred as he simply ran over the water. The Belemental watched with amusement as he treated the water’s surface as a solid. Then something went wrong.

  The delver leaped and twisted, is if dodging an attack, but she couldn’t see anything. His feet slapped at the water’s surface, as though he was dancing to an insane rhythm. And then, with a last desperate kick of his feet, he was pulled under. The last thing to disappear were his hands, still wildly clawing at the air.

  Tim hit the water next. He was wrapped in a ball of stone five or six strides tall, and had no way to change his momentum. The Belemental didn’t even know if he could see out of his rocky shell. She expected his momentum to carry him straight across, but instead he stuck to the surface, rolling almost to the far side of the moat before snapping back to its center. She once again surprised when the stone ball sat upon the surface rather than sinking. The rocks at the bottom were slowly floating away as the ball disintegrated, and she realized what had happened.

  A quick look at the hole in the cliff confirmed her suspicion. Beth had assumed that it was used to fill the moat with water, but instead it was meant to drain the moat of water. As for the actual occupant of the moat, it was the same kind of living, eating pond that Bel and James had encountered while escaping through the caves into the Golden Plains.

  The thought of crossing over water was bad enough to the Belemental, but water that wanted to eat her? Unacceptable. And this wasn’t some dinky puddle either – this creature was huge, several hundred strides across. It completely blocked their approach to the Citadel.

  She watched as several delvers made it to the moat’s edge and stopped, unable to find a safe way to cross and unwilling to risk touching the predatory pond. Its edges lifted and grasped, and the delvers shrank back.

  Meanwhile, the soldiers on the walls pulled out their flintlocks and began a new barrage. The Belemental growled when another delver went down in a spray of blood, but she couldn’t do anything but pick up her pace.

  Tim was caught in the moat, and it was only a matter of time until his rocky exterior eaten away, so the cannoneers were free to train their large guns back to the charging her. A few explosion struck the ground around her, and she decided that, while surviving one hit would be possible, surviving an entire barrage would be impossible. She glanced back and saw that Jan had made a sled of rock with a raised front for a basic shield. The two demi-humans were keeping up with her and had a bit of cover, but the old men wouldn’t last long if she abandoned them and attacked the walls. She grit her teeth as bad ideas flashed through her head. Soon, the pressure to do something, anything, squeezed her rocky insides. She felt that she would pop like a volcano, and not in a good way, but she was saved by the arrival of Cress and Oculaire at the Citadel’s walls.

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  The two gorgons had flown over the barriers and descended from the heavy cloud cover, taking the soldiers by surprise. Cress blasted an entire section of wall clear with a powerful shriek while Oculaire worked her way across another wall with her axes. Soldiers fell like rain as they reeled from the unexpected attack, and there was a sudden cessation of fire.

  One of the delvers, the tall one with the strange water ability, ran straight up to the moat and shoved his hands into it. The Belemental expected him to be sucked straight into it, but instead the surface of the creature turned thick and yellow around his touch. Another delver ran up to him and lifted him by his feet, walking the tall man forward like a wheelbarrow. They made slow, but steady progress as the tall delver turned the surface to a thick mucous.

  The creature writhed and frothed at the attack. Thick, clear tentacles lifted from its unblemished surface. It waved them at the delvers, blindly probing the for small parasites crawling over its skin. It looked like they would be plucked free and eaten, but a third delver ran behind the first two and attacked.

  The woman used a whip, and every time it cracked a small discharge of wriggling light cut through the air. It wasn’t enough to cut the water hazard’s limbs, but the light stunned them, at least momentarily, and allowed the delvers to resume their steady progress. Probing limbs rose and fell as the woman lay about her with rapid cracks of her whip.

  Seeing that some of the delvers were making it across, the Belemental turned and waited for Jan’s sled to catch up with her. She grabbed their sled, heaved it over her head, and began running as fast as she could. Their startled shouting grew in volume, but she continued, running faster and faster as her momentum built.

  Her body rattled with her heavy step, and she trailed globs of glowing lava. She grit her teeth and pushed harder, determined to make it to the Citadel before the soldiers could reorganize. She was so focused on her current problems that she hadn’t considered that yet another thing could go wrong.

  The outer towers, each as tall as a four stacked houses, began to shake and twist. Their tops folded together like mouths, and their crenelations slotting together like teeth. Then the curtains inside of the two top windows lifted aside to reveal a pair of eyes. She nearly gasped and tripped over her feet when she realized that they weren’t towers at all, but gigantic beasts half buried in the ground.

  They surged upwards, literally towering over the Citadels walls, and curled down to chomp at the gorgons. Cress and Oculaire dove, snapped their wings open, and skimmed the ground to escape the hungry mouths of the tower terrors. They wove from side to side, pivoting around the neck of one towers to provide cover from the next.

  The central tower remained inert, but the two gorgons didn’t approach it, obviously worried about the surprises that it could be hiding. They swooped and rolled, and had practically tied a pair of the towers into knots when they turned to escape.

  Whoever was directing the defenses wouldn’t let them get away so easily. One of the barriers split into hundreds of small squares that scattered through the air, creating an aerial obstacle course that the gorgons had to dodge through to stay clear of crushing death. The squares constantly shifted and moved, trying to force the gorgons back into the chomping mouths of the tower monsters.

  Seeing the nightmare ahead of them, the delvers who were crossing the living lake finally decided they weren’t ready to confront Technis. The group of three did an about-face and rushed away from the Citadel. The Belemental couldn’t blame them, but their discretion came too late. Two panes of the rotating barriers cut through the air, rushing to take up position on either side of the living lake before the delvers could flee. One of them dove, desperate to escape, but a sudden burst of speed meant that he slammed head first into the barrier before falling onto the mucous-transmutted surface of the water hazard. The group was trapped, surrounded by moat that wanted to eat them.

  The Belemental put her head down and kept running. She had a big bag of tricks and a wily fox and clever meerkat in her arms. There had to be something she could do to get out of the quickly worsening disaster.