Round 136

Jeane staggered backward instinctively as the ornate door at the chamber's far end began to open, moving inward toward them with agonizing slowness. Halie pressed herself harder against the wall beside it, her blue-grey eyes fixed on the widening gap. The sorceress's tall frame jerked as she pulled her arm free from where she'd been pressed against the opposite wall—the movement jerky and panicked. "What the fuck was that?" Her voice came out higher than intended, panic bleeding through despite her best efforts to maintain composure.

Jeane's crimson eyes were wide with terror as she stared at the now-open doorway. "I didn't touch it—I swear I didn't—" Her words trailed off as something moved in the darkness beyond—the sound of heavy footsteps echoing from the corridor beyond. She grabbed Halie's arm without thinking, fingers digging into soft flesh in a vice grip.* The shadow-kin feeder chose that exact moment to surge forward...

Jeane looked at the hooded woman with narrowed eyes—her casual cruelty combined with that shadow tendril made her far more dangerous than anything else here. Surrendering her remaining holy water would be effectively surrendering entirely, especially since she had no idea what the woman actually was or wanted beyond this twisted entertainment. But refusing and letting Halie burn alive while trying to create a barrier would be monstrous regardless of the magical exhaustion causing her hands to shake.

The fire spreading along the floor crack consumed more stone with each passing second—the flames reached within three feet of Halie's position now. Jeane's concentration was already split between maintaining the containment field on Silra's magic and managing the hellfire spreading from the holy water interaction, and adding another threat to her attention span felt like too much.

I dropped my hands from Jeane's barrier immediately—no point maintaining it while she was channeling energy toward the fire. The magical feedback arced between us painfully but I ignored it in favor of scanning the room for immediate threats. That hooded woman stood maybe fifteen feet away now with her shadow tendril coiled like a pet, still smiling with that infuriating amusement.

Zha'thik's grinding sound beneath us had reached a frequency that made my teeth ache—he was breaking through any remaining barrier between us. The binding pulse between Jeane and me felt like a dying heartbeat, each beat weaker than the last. Maintaining even the minimal containment field was becoming impossible with my divine reserves already critically depleted.

I couldn't trust anything Jeane said right now, but I also didn't have many options beyond her—her magical power was our only hope of dealing with whatever was coming through that door or stopping Zha'thik. The choice she offered was between certain death by fire and potential betrayal. Neither option felt great.