From the head of the fight, Garyung seemed to fall easily into his normal routine. He shouted helpful suggestions and loose instructions to the adventurers around him.

As a result, Kaldalis’s group shifted farther to the left, towards the wall, covering the flank. Gavinkim’s group moved to the right, covering that wall. The center was covered by two parties, one of them was Garyung’s group, positioning him well to give orders and instructions. The other group was nearer to Kaldalis’s side, He didn’t recognize the tank - a Human in heavily stylized black platemail with sword and shield - but there were a few familiar faces among the DPS. Haldir was there, and Kaldalis wondered if he’d grouped up before seeing Balrim, or if he had purposely snubbed them.

Kaldalis resolved to pull him aside and give the man a proper explanation and apology. It was long overdue, even after less than a day.

But for right now, he had enough on his plate.

“Hold fast!” Garyung bellowed over the roar of combat. “Don’t give an inch! Only a few feet of lost ground and the camp is doomed!”

Kaldalis focused on his immediate surroundings. As the fighting had sent Infernal Horde members running, more had leaped up to take their place. Kaldalis had something like a dozen aggroed onto him, with more jockeying for position behind them. He had to pay attention to his movements and positioning. Whenever he could, he took a few hits here and there to establish damage and dominance. But he had good healers behind him. Not to mention that once every two minutes or so, Gabriel did something that topped off everyone in the fight.

Kaldalis wanted to use his Flicker ability frequently, due to its relatively low cooldown, but he held off. With this many Infernal Horde, there was no telling how much damage they could do with the dark blast attack.

Now that he thought about it, he wasn’t sure why they hadn’t employed it yet.

It was a little ominous.

That attack would be particularly devastating if they waited until they pushed in through the gate and blasted then. The adventurers could avoid the blast with Kai’s Flicker, but if the horde pushed through to the courtyard they could obliterate the crafting area.

He suspected that was the plan. Look for maximum material damage rather than using their abilities for the fight.

“Of course,” Kaldalis said, as he ducked under a malum’s left hook and then spun to the right to avoid a syncoresi claw. “They have to damage the camp,” he shouted across the fight to where Garyung as fighting. “They’re here to stop the upgrade. It means they don’t care about killing us, they care about breaking our shit!”

“The beachside gate!” Garyung bellowed. “Gavinkim! To the beachside gate! I’ll cover your retreat! All tanks shift right!”

There was a huge shuffle of the group adjusting to cover a quarter of the adventurers disengaging, and Kaldalis had to pick up another handful of malum to fill the gap.

With so many enemies to focus on, Kaldalis couldn’t keep up with every swipe and swing. He was glad for the healers behind him. Balrim and Yosini turned his hit points into a yo-yo instead of a freefall to death.

It was made more complicated by Gabriel going with Gavinkim’s group. No one else was high enough level to have the big AoE heal.

That meant the parties were all fending for themselves now.

The damage dealers were keeping up their end of the bargain, though. Aurigeant kept pounding out damage, his periodic bursts of Sweeping Strikes softening the whole crowd at once. Bangen was a spear-wielder as well, and her Sweeping Strikes were a little less impressive, but no less welcome an addition to the melee.

Myrin called the shots for the rest of the group, tunneling in on one target at a time and sending it running before moving to the next. The syncoresi that ran pushed through the crowd around them and out the outer gate, vanishing from sight, but the malum weren’t making it that far. They were turning back around to push their way back to the fight before making it to that outer gate.

“Focus the syncoresi,” Kaldalis called across to Myrin. “They’re running the farthest. The malum are turning back too soon!”

“No,” Garyung yelled over him. “Focus on the malum! We can kill them when they rejoin the fight! We need to thin their numbers for good, not just push them off for later!”

“What’s the call?” Myrin asked, lowering her voice to just include their party.

“Garyung’s right,” Kaldalis called, raising his voice to show solidarity - and to hide that his party would have undermined the new Expedition Leader’s order on his command. “Focus the Malum! Tear them apart!”

Their adjusted strategy meant that the numbers of the horde pushing in was growing in sheer numbers as those outside the outer gate pushed inwards, while no more of those pushed to flee were leaving. The pressure was building, and Kaldalis hoped it would break their way before they were forced back into the gate. As soon as the Infernal Horde could meet their objective and rip up their structures, the fight was going to spiral out of control.

Kaldalis and Garyung shoring up the sides had the worst of it.

For whatever reason, the burlier malum were pushing the synocresi out to the sides, dominating the center. While the malum were the larger damage threat, the syncoresi’s defenses meant that the monsters were much harder to deal with even before the order had been to ignore them.

The sides of the formation were starting to buckle.

“Ease back!” Garyung shouted to the black knight leading the center group. “We need to form ranks!”

As soon as the tank started to give ground, the first Malum truly fell. Haldir’s blade cut it across the gut, and instead of weathering the blow, it crumpled and melted to a pile of goo. A half-second later, Myrin let out a cackle of triumph as a blast of flame from her blade inflicted the same fate on one of the ones Kaldalis was tanking. He felt the chunk of exp come in right as the mood of the whole fight shifted.

“Push!” the black knight screamed, forcing himself against the wall of infernal horde before him. “Push them out! Revenge for the fallen!”

“Hold!” Garyung yelled. “Hold formation!”

The middle group surged forward, heedless of Garyung’s words. The concentration of Malum in the middle meant that the party started hacking through them. The numbers of a real raid group overwhelmed even the high hit point pools of the infernal horde, and the weakened Malum that had returned to the fight started falling.

For a brief, glorious moment, they were the scythe cutting through wheat. They pushed into the heart of the enemy, thinning their numbers. Malum fell before all three groups in numbers Kaldalis couldn’t have dreamed up, but the syncoresi focused on the sides meant that for every malum his group slowly filtered through, that middle party secured three kills.

But they were still pushing forward. The weight of syncoresi crashing against Garyung and Kaldalis were preventing them from matching the momentum of the middle group.

“We have to push!” Kaldalis yelled over to Aurigeant. “If you’ve been holding anything back, now’s the time to cut loose. We need to protect their flank!”

Aurigeant gave a grim nod and pulled a potion. The red-orange flask almost matched the color of the malum. The Finnian chugged it down and then stepped up beside Kaldalis.

“Bangen!” Kaldalis yelled to her on the far side of Myrin. “With us! Sweeping Strikes! We clear the path!” He regretted that his ability still had twelve seconds left before it was ready, but his damage was negligible even with the bonus. Aurigeant and Bangen would need to carry the day here.

The researcher scrambled around to Kaldalis’s other side, and two damage dealers’ polearms crashed across the front lines in tandem. Kaldalis accepted what damage he had to do just to keep the line in place against them, and behind them Balrim cried out in a panic as Kaldalis’s hit points were chunked down.

It was obvious that whatever Aurigeant had drank, it was potent. The syncoresi flinched back from each swing of his weapon, buying Balrim and Yosini the time to get Kaldalis back above the fifty percent line. The combined efforts of both DPS together caused that front row to turn and run, breaking ranks and letting Kaldalis step up and start poking the next line to establish aggro.

Aurigeant grunted with each swing, sweat pouring down his silver-gray face.

He looked tired, in a way Kaldalis felt below the adrenaline of the fight.

As a whole, they’d made more progress at pushing in that one step than they had in the previous minutes, but these syncoresi hadn’t been worn down yet. They were fresh and ready to fight, and the group just couldn’t put out enough damage.

Bangen’s Sweeping Strikes cooldown ended before Aurigeant’s - the alpha player was higher level and must have earned a duration increase at some point - but they didn’t fully burn through the second row before his ended as well.

On the other side, Garyung’s group hadn’t even pushed that far.

“You have to pull back!” Kaldalis yelled. “Haldir! Get him to pull back!”

Haldir turned to look back at him.

The teal-skinned vathon gave him a dirty look, and Kaldalis felt suddenly full of regret for his actions the previous day. Even a threat this large wasn’t big enough to make Haldir put the fight behind him. That meant that there was more to this than just one punch. Haldir had a bigger beef than just one bad interaction. Kaldalis had to prepare himself for a real heart-to-heart, and not just a simple apology.

Of course, right then was when everything went wrong.

The syncoresi on the flanks of the center group diverted their attention from pushing forward at Kaldalis and Garyung, and gravitated towards the center group. They closed in around their unprotected flanks, isolating them.

Kaldalis cried out in a panic, a sentiment that he heard echoed by Garyung, but while he could gather another three or four syncoresi from the nascent dogpile, it was far from the bulk of the Infernal Horde forces enclosing them.

There was a scream of agony.

And then two more.

And then three.

And then one more.

That one was unmistakably Haldir.