Chapter 85: Sludge Awakens
They didn’t waste any time and started running.
The forest blurred past in streaks of green and brown. Holden led the way, his new Shadow-Weave boots covering up the distance without making a sound. Lyra followed close behind, her spear ready. Emric struggled to keep up, his injured arm tucked against his chest. Renna stayed in the back with her bow ready, watching the trees.
The screaming on the radio had stopped. That was somehow worse than the noise itself.
Holden tracked the signal through the dense undergrowth. The emergency broadcast had been brief, but Maeve had already pinged him the coordinates through a secondary channel. Four miles northeast. Moving fast.
It took them about twelve minutes.
The clearing opened up ahead. It was about sixty feet across, with a massive boulder at the center. And around that boulder was hell.
Th ground was covered in purple sludge.
The toxic mud formed a moat at least twenty feet wide, bubbling and churning like a living thing. From its surface, small creatures kept spawning. Crawlers the size of large dogs, their bodies made of the same purple slime, their mouths full of acid teeth.
There were dozens of them. Maybe hundreds. More kept crawling out of the pool.
On top of the boulder, five figures huddled together.
It was Henry and his squad. Their armor was scratched and covered in acid burns. One of them was down, holding a bleeding leg. They’d formed a defensive circle with their remaining weapons, but their quivers were empty.
"HELP!" Henry screamed when he saw movement at the tree line. "PLEASE! WE’RE OUT OF ENERGY! DON’T LEAVE US!"
He saw Holden step out of the shadows and his face crumpled.
Holden sighed.
"You’ve been out here for what, six hours? And you managed to find the one patch of Abyssal corruption in the whole eastern sector."
"I... we were tracking a rare specimen and..."
"And you walked into a toxic sludge pit. In the wild borderlands. With no backup plan." Holden shook his head slowly. "Next time you want to feed yourselves to monsters, Henry, let me know so I can sell tickets."
Squelch! Squelch! Squelch!
A wave of crawlers surged toward the boulder, climbing over each other to reach the trapped squad.
"Enough talking," Lyra said. "What’s the plan?"
Holden studied the sludge moat. It was too wide to jump. Too toxic to wade through. The crawlers would swarm anyone who tried.
But there was a gap on the far side, near a section of rock that jutted out over the mud. If they could cross the sludge...
"Lyra, I need a bridge."
Her eyes widened slightly. "Across that? The range is at the edge of my limit, and the sludge will resist frost formation."
"Forget your limits and give it everything you’ve got. Focus your power into a narrow beam. Just wide enough for people to run across."
Lyra nodded. She stepped to the edge of the clearing and raised both hands. Frost energy gathered around her palms, denser and more intense than anything she’d tried before.
"Lyra, the crawlers!" Emric warned.
Squelch! Squelch!
A dozen of the creatures broke off from the main group and charged toward her.
"Cover her!" Holden ordered.
Renna’s bow sang.
Thwip! Thwip! Thwip!
Three crawlers went down, pierced by storm-arrows. Emric stepped in front of Lyra with his shield raised, blocking two more that got through. The acid splashed against his shield but the runes held.
Lyra’s eyes locked onto the gap in the sludge. She thrust her hands forward.
A beam of pure frost shot across the clearing.
It wasn’t a wide blast. It was a focused lance of frozen energy that struck the sludge surface and flash-froze it solid.
"GO!" Holden shouted.
Emric ran first.
He sprinted across the ice, with his shield raised. Crawlers threw themselves at him from the sludge on both sides. He bashed the first one aside with his shield, leaped over a second, and crashed onto the rock outcropping beside the boulder.
"COME ON!" he yelled back.
Henry grabbed his injured teammate and practically threw him toward the edge. "Jump! NOW!"
The Vance squad scrambled across the ice bridge. One by one, they leaped the gap and landed on the outcropping. Crawlers lunged for them but fell short, plunging back into the sludge.
Renna was the last one across. She ran over the frozen bridge with crawlers snapping at her heels, her boots barely making it before the ice started to crack.
Holden stayed on the clearing side, cutting down any crawlers that got too close.
Swish! Swish!
Two more went down, dissolving into harmless purple puddles.
"Holden, get over here!" Lyra shouted.
The ice bridge was breaking apart. Chunks of frozen sludge were already falling back into the moat.
Holden turned and ran. He hit the bridge at full Gale-Step speed. He crossed the gap in three steps and leaped to the outcropping just as the last of the ice shattered behind him.
The team was safe.
Henry dropped to his knees. His hands were shaking. His fancy armor was ruined. His pride was gone.
"I’m sorry," he said, his voice cracking. "I was arrogant. I thought we could handle anything out here. I was wrong. You saved our lives."
"Don’t mention it," Holden said flatly.
"No, I mean it. I tried to steal your kill. I insulted your friends. I acted like a complete fool. You had every right to leave us here to die."
"I said don’t mention it."
Renna was about to say something celebratory when the ground vibrated.
Like something massive was moving underneath them.
The sludge moat stopped bubbling.
Every crawler near the pool froze. Then they turned and dove into the purple mud, disappearing beneath the surface.
"Where are they going?" Emric asked, frowning.
The sludge began to rise.
The entire pool lifted out of the ground like a living thing pulling itself upright. The purple mud stretched and fused together, forming a massive, shapeless mass that towered fifteen feet high and was still growing.
It had no eyes. No mouth. No distinct features. It was just a tower of bubbling, acidic sludge.
The Abyssal Amalgamation.
"Oh no," Renna whispered.
The sludge monster turned toward the outcropping.
Squelch.
It raised a massive tentacle of compressed mud and swung.