"I thought you dragged me here because they forced you to supervise the test and because you wanted to impress Sauce." Zolgrish said.
"Master, why lights blink?" Ratpack asked.
"What lights, you silly creature? We can perfectly see in the dark. There are no lights in the control room." Zolgrish hated it when his assistant disturbed him in the middle of an important experiment.
"Those lights." Ratpack pointed at the holographic console where the integrity indicators of Urgamakka now looked like a Christmas tree.
"Oh, that." Inxialot said. "It means that someone is breaching the city and that the lives of the apprentices are at risk."
"Alarm?" Ratpack pointed at the emergency lever.
"And lose precious data?" Both Liches said in horror. "People die every day, that's why we all have phylacteries. We'll contact the Council as soon as the fight ends."
"But apprentices have no phylacteries!" Ratpack said in frustration but the Liches had already stopped listening to him.
Tired of being treated worse than a slave, the small undead pulled the lever, discovering that the array it was linked to had already been destroyed.
***
'I can't believe we've become so powerful in a little over a week.' Lith thought while changing his form.
Being covered in Origin Flames put a toll on his life force, but he had a way to recover. By transforming into the lesser Abomination whenever the Hordes swarmed him, Lith sucked the spores dry with his Draining Touch and managed to escape.
The Abomination form was much smaller and nimbler than the Fire Dragon, making it easy for him to escape from any encirclement. On top of that, while in that form, his darkness spells contained just enough Chaos to make them faster and more painful than normal.
'Well, duh.' Solus replied. 'The Yggdrasill staff works akin to training wheels and by analyzing the data collected in my Monocle form, we managed to learn at an unprecedented rate.'
'Agreed. Too bad that this mission is almost o- Oh, shit!'
The Hordes had just finished sweeping Urgamakka and now they had all converged around the Awakened fortress. The apprentices had managed to keep three of them in check, slowly gaining an advantage thanks to their teamwork, but now they had to fight nine Hordes at the same time.
They were approaching the building while spreading their spores wide. Their advance looked like a multi-colored mist that hid the entire city from sight as they moved closer.
The less space they had to cover, the stronger and more compact they became until the mist turned into a sandstorm.
The darkness infused spores suddenly swarmed the fortress from every side, keeping anyone from escaping with dimensional magic. A hail of emerald spells destroyed the arrays while a few clouds turned into giants that engaged the Emperor Beasts and the Tiamat in physical combat.
Lith's Voidfeather Dragon form had no problem blocking the attacks, but a Horde could grow as many limbs as they wanted.
Two hands weren't enough to defend against a flurry of dozens of fists and the Origin Flames covering his body had been smothered by another Horde that now was wrapped around him like a blanket.
Lith turned into a lesser Abomination, but even his Draining Touch couldn't keep up with the tons of darkness infused spores that dealt him more damage than he could heal.
Aalejah did her best to protect and fuel the arrays but, the moment the magical formations collapsed, it took a Horde but one punch to knock her out. Phloria fought until her last breath, managing to keep busy two Hordes at the same time before being overwhelmed by the gap in mass, core, and experience.
She was just a blue core whereas they were all bright violet. Athung fell right after the elf and her arrays faded along with her consciousness. The Hordes she had trapped until that moment in the gravity field joined the battle again, razing the base to the ground.
'Why am I still alive?' Lith thought after being forced back into his Tiamat form.
A grey giant with a deep violet core stood between Lith and the two Hordes that had pummelled him until a few seconds back.
"May the Great Mother bless you. We haven't forgotten the debt we owe you." The creature said.
Lith didn't recognize the words, but he recognized the voice and the energy signature.
"Are you the creature I fought- I mean, that I freed in Kulah?" Lith asked while the young Horde helped him to stand up and treated his wounds, even sharing with the Tiamat a bit of their life force.
"Yes. The test is over. Now run. We'll take care of the rest." They said.
"I was right, then! This was all a t-" The sudden collapse of the ceiling above the city cut Lith short.
'I doubt this is part of the test as well. Take Phloria, Athung, the Yggdrasill staf-, I mean Aalejah, and run! Gods, Elina was right you really ruined me.' Solus said while pointing at him the various black cores that swarmed the city.
'I get that we owe the elf a debt of gratitude, but why do you care about Athung?' Lith asked while darting below and waking his companions up.
'Because she's the human Lord of the Distar region. We don't know her much, but Athung has always been friendly to us. If something happens to her, do you really want another Gaaron messing with Faluel's turf?' She replied.
'Point taken.' Lith used a mind link to quickly explain the situation to his companions.
'Thanks for your concern.' Athung needed just a couple of breaths of Invigoration to go back to her peak condition. 'Does any of you remember the spatial coordinates of the tunnels? Because I don't.'
Meanwhile, Phloria had recovered as well and helped Aalejah after making sure that she wasn't holding the Yggdrasill staff anymore. Phloria had no idea if the World Tree could use their breathing technique through the elf as well and she couldn't afford to expose Solus's existence.
'Me neither.' Aalejh said. 'But I remember the way we came in. We can get out by flight.'
'I'm sorry.' Solus replied in private to Lith's silent question. 'I have your memories but neither of us is a dimensional mage. Remembering a place and their spatial coordinates are two completely different things.'
'This is awesome, we-' A meteor shower of emerald energy derailed Lith's train of sarcasm as he stared in awe at the battle in front of him.
The Hordes emitted such a powerful aura that they illuminated the entire Urgamakka akin to a violet sun. Each one of their spells was as big as a building and had the power to break a mountain in half.
Yet even such display of mastery over the seven elements barely slowed down the advance of what looked like a black hole the size of a man.
'How the heck did we last so long against creatures that powerful?' Phloria thought while realizing how big the gap in power between a blue-cored and a violet-cored was.
'The spore guy from Kulah told me this was just a test so they were probably pulling their punches against us..' Lith replied.
