Rodwald, glutton for the violence he may be, was up to his gills in it. It was frustrating. He kept searching for the moment in battle he could look over his carnage with a smile. He searched for the end. For Success. It never came. He crushed one enemy, two, four! And more pale-skulled swaying specters shuffled from the gloom.

Okora felt the cost of his spellcasting in his joints and chest. It wasn't the soreness of strain that wracked him, but a burning liquid heat. It felt like his chest was stripped bare of flesh and feather, his ribs tightened on his beating heart like jaws. But he needed to stay casting.

"The bridge! Tirah and Okora first. Rod, you after them." The human barked, and Tirah was in no place to complain. Sapped of energy, she was pleased to take a back seat.

Holding the rear alone now wasn't too bad. He just needed to keep the tide at bay. Don't let them pile you, he said to himself through grated teeth. Desperate to fell who came upon him before another set of clawing hands could make it worse.

The two got across fine. Until he heard Okora cry out for help. A look over his shoulder made his heart sink. The other end of the bridge, swelling with the undead. A desperate haze fell over Cajetan he struggled to shake.

Rodwald stomped across but by some miracle did not shatter the wood of the bridge. With him on the other end, at least the two soft targets were safe.

The grail-knight sank his teeth into his cheek, blood welling from his lip. Faith. Focus. Devotion. Sommne. This cold, dark place would not be his grave. He knew it wouldn't be!

A skeleton collapsed atop him, clawing with razors against his vambrace. He shoved it aside, following the calls of his companion to sprint across the bridge. He did, step by step, to the safety of his companions.

Wood slipped. A dull creak and groan. And the ground fell from under him. His adrenaline spiked and he launched himself at the other end, leaping for it. But he was sinking! He was too far! And he collided hard against the wall. 

Even with the doom of falling into the pit becoming his reality, his mind had time to comprehend the brain-rattling shock of his chin cracking against the stone wall. His eyes had been squeezed tight from the impact.

An awful yanking, pulling feeling nearly tore his left arm from his socket. He opened his eyes not to find them ripped out by the pit's inhabitants. Instead, the yellowed half grin.

"Didn't think 'was gonna leave you behind, did ya pal?"

A breathless cackle croaked from him and he threw his other hand up, grasping for the ledge. With his pal's help, Cajetan clambered back to safety. Okora gave him a smile that had just stopped being horrified worry.

The grail-knight's pernach was lost, but he still had his short blade. And his life. 

"We're far enough!" Okora said, mostly for himself. He sent a lead ball whizzing down the hallways, and a few seconds later there was a low and forceful rumble. A lung-clenching feeling of force whipped through the tunnels as the atrium was ignited. A loud explosion accompanied a flash of light that traveled even to their corner of the structure. 

Stones rumbled and the earth groaned in frustration, collapsing in on itself in the distance. They hustled, running and rushing forward. With no enemy ahead of them, and one behind, they abandoned fighting in favor of movement. But their heart's sunk.

The exit had collapsed in on itself. Tirah cried out in denial, sinking to her knees. 

"Get a hold of yourself," Cajetan shouted. He'd seen what low morale could do to a unit. And it served him well, the panic on Rodwald and Okora's faces faded when they saw Cajetan take charge. "Rodwald, can you dig us out? Stone by bloody stone."

"Yes, sah!" He immediately set his task, his club dropped to the floor and hung to him only by his wrist strap.

"It's you and me," Cajetan said to Okora, turning to face the enemy. And the enemy was numerous. The waterway opened in front of them, glimmering with dozens of ghostly eyes. 

Worse, they had reinforcements. A moment too late, Okora realized arrows were whistling toward him. Two lodged themselves into his left clavicle and bicep, the rest suddenly evaporated by a wind ward. The mage, for all his feminine qualities, merely hissed and squeezed his eyes shut against the pain. Deep set in enemy lines, skeleton bowmen plotted the living's doom.

Skeletons banged on Okora's barrier, the strength of the wind waning. When before they'd be sheared clean off, now they could stick their hands through. Arrows splintered when now they cut through. 

Cajetan bashed what got close, his sword cracked their heads open upon contact. The bones rattled with the omen of death for them all. Seconds ticked to minutes, and further on. Okora was at his wit's end, his arcane energies so spread thin it was a miracle that he could still stand let alone cast. The throbbing pain in the shoulder he kept stiff and still was no aid in his focus.

A warbling darkness befuddled the corners of the wren's vision. Tentacled vines of black called out to him, telling him to drop his spell and merely give in. He exhaled, losing himself for only a second. Okora's barrier wavered for just that moment and a pair of arrows slipped through, one grazed the mage in the thigh and the other splintered off the knight's besagew. 

He sucked in air in panic and muttered renewed incantations with the vigor of adrenaline and fear of mortality.

"Move back," Cajetan barked suddenly. He shoved Okora behind him. "Hold your barrier. Drop it when I say."

"If I stop my spell, we'll be dead!"

"Hold it for now," he growled. "Drop it when I say." They needed time, and the mage was wavering. 

Okora had trust in him. But he didn't need that. Cajetan needed faith. And an old flame trickled up from his chest. Love of the sun, of light. The strength that made his muscles fill with power. It drove his mace forward. 

"Fulfill your promise to me, spirit me and my companions safely from this tomb. If you forsake me, then to hell with you," Cajetan said under his breath, clutching his icon in his left hand, his teeth gritted so tensely he drew blood, trickling down from his gums.

"Drop your spell," Cajetan couldn't do much more than whisper, such was the thrumming energy filling him.

Cajetan ripped from the cord on his neck the icon of Sommne. It burned. It burned his palm through his glove, the ? searing into his skin even as he chanted. Words older than Elsteron passed by his lips. 

It met the undead of the tunnel with such splendid force that Okora and Tirah would have been right in mistaking the brightness for Rod finding a hole to the outside. From the ceiling cracked down a bolt that Cajetan raised his blade too. Or perhaps his sword, his arm, was drawn to it with a magnetic force.

He moved with a will equal parts supernatural and his own. Gleaming light reflected like spinning blades from the blood grooves of his weapon. His icon, held aloft, pulsed with wisping, crisp golden rays. The warmth of summer graced their skin.

Okora's plumage perked up straight, all of their skin pimpled with goosebumps at the feeling of grace. Sommne's grace. It was serene. The spectacular, stunning illumination of the tight waterway. 

Fear struck their undead souls first, Cajetan's light exposing all the dirty skulls to them. There were dozens, packed in tight, rattling at them. And yet, he walked forward, wading into them like stalking into the ocean. The bowman could not aim, they could not see past the blinding radiance, when they looked at it they were shown a true and final death. A fate now foreign and untenable to them.

They collapsed under the might of Sommne, under the hews of his weapon and the glitter of his icon. He kept it high and forward, like a torch above him. A chant bellowed from him with such sonorous sound one might think a drum had replaced his lungs. 

He shattered them to dust, either with force or the light he wielded. Keeping the hordes at bay, so stuck in his trance, no shout or call could rouse him. It was only when the light of Sommne wavered, his strength drained, exhaustion filling his mortal frame, that he heard Okora's words.

"We can go! Rod has a path, start moving back, Cajee!"

He gasped, his biceps burning, chest feeling as though it had ripped itself apart. He beat back the closest fiends and scrambled up the loose stones to follow his companions. Okora covered him as needed, and all four escaped through the hole Rod had dug. With the ogre sealing shut the way behind...