The syncoresi’s attack swept in low. Kaldalis would have leaped over it if his Jump cooldown was still rolling, but without it, he was forced to back off. The four-fingered monster followed, one single step bringing him in range of its next attack.

Something about its enraged state was increasing its attack speed, and he didn’t have time to think before the next attack raked down at him.

Kaldalis spun to the right, and felt the wind of the claw’s passage right behind him. The beast’s enormous strength shook the ground as the claws dug into the stone of the tunnel’s floor, carving furrows in the rock. Kaldalis lunged and stabbed the monster’s forearm as the claw withdrew, getting his forty-nine damage in. He suspected things were rapidly approaching the breaking point, and he could hope that his insignificant-feeling damage would matter.

The monster attacked with its other claw, catching him before he could react. It slammed into his side, nearly sending him flailing to the ground. Three hundred and eighty-nine damage ripped a chunk out of his hit points, but he was far from being taken out of the fight. Just the same, he activated his Endure cooldown as he lunged back towards the monster, raking the head of his spear across the monster’s stomach.

In its battle-damaged state, the blow left behind a line of red, along with its forty-nine damage.

The monster inhaled deeply, and Kaldalis recognized the wind-up as the howl ability. He had only a half-second left on the cooldown of flicker, making him immeasurably grateful for how rapidly the ability recharged. The power of the monster’s howl could outright kill him, and looking at the health bars of the rest of the party, he might not be the only one riding that line.

“Flicker!” Kaldalis yelled again, “as soon as it’s up!”

This time, Kaldalis had the wiggle room to wait as everyone else popped out. Balrim and Myrin were first again, with the rest of the damage dealers soon to follow, and then Yosini, after getting one more potion across the field to Courbois. Deytambos hesitated almost as long as Kaldalis, playing chicken with the tanks but as the four-fingered syncoresi’s inhale reached its crescendo, he blinked first.

Kaldalis looked over and met Courbois’s eyes as they were the only two left.

Despite his desire to win the game of chicken, she had the hit points to straight-up eat the hit. Kaldalis probably didn’t.

He Flickered once more.

The Paths Between Paths felt empty this time. Not that it was - his entire group was there waiting for him - but there was no one else. No sign of Bangen, Garyung, Gavinkim, Ikzoz, Heluna or anybody that they’d left back at camp. Had the fight gone poorly? Was everyone dead and the camp in flames? The fight can’t have been over and done - the quest was still on the left side of his vision, telling him that the raid had not been repelled.

Kaldalis didn’t have any answers, and in the empty vacuum here, he couldn’t talk theories with his friends. He could just float around.

Barely a second after he arrived, Courbois appeared as well, and it looked like she managed to avoid tanking the howl attack. At least that was one fire the healers weren’t going to have to keep up on, even if she was giving him a smug look after having won the game of chicken. Kaldalis pretended to ignore her and tried to squint out at the giant looming white shapes still in the distance.

He didn’t have to suffer that for long, as everyone started to pop back out of the Paths. Kaldalis braced himself, ready to dodge whatever came at him as soon as he was back.

The empty void - and two distantly floating giant marshmallow-like shapes - was replaced once more by the roaring chaos of the cavern chamber full of syncoresi. The howl attack had come and gone, and the group was still standing.

Kaldalis even caught another three hundred and twenty healing from Deytambos as soon as he landed back on solid ground.

The syncoresi continued the fight as if the entire party lodged in his foyer hadn’t just blinked out of reality for a second there. Kaldalis briefly wondered if he could use that to his advantage somehow, but there was no time. The four-fingered claw swept across, and Kaldalis danced aside. He wanted to attack, but he knew the other hand was coming, and ducked to the right, letting the diagonal slash cut only empty air.

Once he was clear of that second strike, he lunged forward. Jumping up as high as his normal jump could take him and reaching as far up as he could, the head of his spear lanced into the monster’s chest, just below the shoulder. It was only forty-nine damage again, but it still felt a little better to be drawing blood, especially where the white fur across the monster’s body wasn’t coated in red from the efforts of the other DPS going ham on it.

“That one was for killing me a week ago!” Kaldalis yelled up at the monster.

The four-fingered syncoresi’s claws raked out at him again, this time both hands at once, looking to clap together on him, either to grab him, crush him, or rend him from both sides. Kaldalis hopped backwards, and smashed his weapon as hard as he could against the giant fingers when they met in front of him, cutting open both index fingers and the middle finger all the way to the bone - only forty-nine damage again, but still a gruesome strike.

“That one was for putting this extra fucking quest on my list and then fucking off as soon as the fight turned against you!” Kaldalis added.

The monster lashed out all around it again, as if enraged by Kaldalis’s accusations - though probably just going through the motions of some attack pattern that had come back around. Kaldalis leaped back, as did the damage dealers, avoiding the sweeping attacks.

As one, the whole group moved back in for their next attack in turn. Kaldalis aimed for the center of its gut, driving his spear in for another forty-nine damage.

“That one’s for all the raids on the camp!” he yelled as he twisted his weapon and yanked it out at an angle. It didn’t do more damage, but he felt a sense of vindictive satisfaction from it.

The beast lashed out again, a backhand catching him full in the face. Three hundred and eighty-nine damage sucked, but it felt a fair price to pay for the revenge he was finally extracting.

Its next hand came straight down, trying to splatter him like a fly. Kaldalis leaped aside, and jammed his spear into the back of the hand as hard as he could. He twisted it back and forth as the monster snarled, its eyes visibly bloodshot with rage.

“What was that one for?” Myrin called from the other side of the monster’s legs.

“That one was gratuitous!”

The monster roared in anger, the sound causing bits of rock to tumble from the ceiling and rattle to the floor. It reached up with both hands, but instead of bringing them down, it plunged its claws into the rock in the ceiling.

The shriek of rending stone and the fall of gravel seemed to be a signal to the rest of the syncoresi. All of them - even the captains still fighting to push into the room - reversed course. They were running. Courbois staggered for a moment as her attackers abandoned her, rushing to push their way out of the room with such gusto that the archers - and Balrim with the censer - had to stop what they were doing and fight to keep from being carried away by the flow.

“Fuck!” Kaldalis knew what this was. Monsoon was nothing if not consistent and predictable.

“Hard enrage! Hard enrage! It’s going to bring the roof down on our heads!”

“Burn or run?” Courbois asked as she pushed through the crowd to try and join him at the four-fingered syncoresi’s feet.

“Burn it!” Kaldalis called. “We finish this bastard, or die taking him with us!” He gave a fierce grin as he stepped up. “After all, we’ll all get back up in half an hour.”

The whole cavern shook as the whole group put aside any pretense of defense, smashing at the monster as fast as they could. Kaldalis’s Sweeping Strikes still had ten seconds left on the cooldown, but Aurigeant was slashing away with impunity now.

Kaldalis tried to get his spear to move as fast as he could make it.

The polearm’s weight gave every hit a satisfying feeling, but he wished it was feather-light bamboo, letting him hack away with blinding speed like a bad wire-fu movie.

Each strike, no matter how firm or well-aimed, did the same forty-nine damage. He assumed that the weight was to stop exactly that kind of exploit, though. Attack speed needed to be regulated somehow, right?

The monster roared in mingled agony and fury as its claws dug into the stone above it. Bits of rock started to fall around them in little cascades of gravel. He would have given anything for a cast bar to tell him how close the monster was to killing them all. Just the same, he’d go down in a blaze of glory if that was what happened.

It was better to have hit enrage and lost than to never have hit enrage at all.

The plan had always been - and remained - to face their death for the sake of stalling the syncoresi.

As the room finally emptied, Kaldalis could see that they’d succeeded. They were leaving with the same fear as if they’d been forced to flee from damage. The creatures would all be running for several minutes before they regained control.

Hopefully it was enough time.

The lines of the monster’s body reversed direction. It was as if the four-fingered syncoresi had stopped plunging its hands in, and was starting to yank down. The creature bent at the knees and pulled.

Kaldalis stepped up on one of those knees and jumped. He drove the tip of his spear into the monster’s neck, just to the right of center.

It felt like a desperate blow. A final bang before his impending death.

A flood of red poured down out of that forty-nine damage.

The rumble of the monster’s roar in its chest fell silent, and its jaw - just above the haft of his spear - went slack.

Impossible.

Kaldalis received the mental notice that he’d slain a syncoresi major, earning one-hundred and fifty experience points. He got a handful of drops, including several tufts of hair, two claws, and a fang.

Despite his disbelief, the quest on the left side of his vision - Nemesis’s Pursuit - completed, confirming that the syncoresi major had been defeated. The quest for the fight for the town was still there, but the syncoresi weren’t just running.

They were scattering.

Everyone grew very silent. The whole room stood still, frozen by the change.

Kaldalis received a second notification that told him that the Infernal Horde den had been cleared, and rendered inactive. It would no longer harbor or generate Infernal Horde. Kaldalis wished he knew more about what that meant, but he assumed that it was a good sign.

The syncoresi major stood where it had died, held up by its hands buried in the stone ceiling, even as every muscle had gone slack.

In the silence of the room, Kaldalis’ voice rang clear. “And that was for Haldir,” Kaldalis snarled up at it, “you son of a bitch.”