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I didn’t walk very far down the passageway before Mongo clambered past me in his new armor and pushed to the front. “Warrior’s take point,” was his only response as he brushed into the lead position. Crystal laughed lightly and then moved up behind him as supporting second, which forced me to move all the way to the back of the group and take Dino’s old spot. I just couldn’t imagine the healers not having some sort of rear guard to keep an enemy from sneaking up on them from behind – they were simply too valuable to leave unguarded like that.

One problem that I discovered quickly was that I really wasn’t cut out to stay in the rear like Dino had. Every time Mongo and Crystal engaged more than two of the dead, I had to stop myself from rushing forward and entering the fray. Father had trained me to be a swordsman, and he’d wanted me to follow in his footsteps as a respectable warrior. Simply waiting in the back wasn’t something I was good at doing, and it made me figidity and nervous.

To distract myself from the battles going on up front as much as possible, I unleashed Nature’s Wrath upon anything that so much as twitched behind or to the sides of us. Megan would probably never realize it, but she’d help me acquire a very useful and versatile weapon. By shattering my small engravings into fragments, I’d enchanted those fragments with a strong magically attraction to each other – similar to a magnetic force. The magic is what held all the tiny pieces of Nature’s Wrath together and made it into the naginata that it was, and it gave me a powerful projectile weapon with almost unlimited ammunition.

By using a little earth magic, I could grab a few shards of broken statues from the staff, and fire them outwards much like a bullet. The amount of energy I expended was actually quite small, and the impact the stone made could be quite impressive – it was a very effective way to fire stone at a target at range. And, the best trick of all was the fact that the chaos enchantment would pull the stone back to its proper place in the staff, after I released the earth magic that forced it apart.

Gather a little earth magic, use it to fire a small hunk of stone from the staff – like one of the broken rabbit sculptures – and then I could rocket it much faster than any arrow at a target. If I hit the target, the impact was something memorable; skeletons usually simply shattered with one blast. If I missed the target by some odd chance of targeting, all I had to do was release the earth magic on it and it’d rocket back with just as much force as it rocketed away, much like a boomerang.

If I missed a skeleton from the front, I could blast it from the rear with the return shot! And, as fate would have it, I was distracted by experimenting with this new means of attacking targets from the rear, when a new opponent swarmed our front lines!

Mongo was slashing and chopping his way diligently forward, with Crystal picking off any stragglers which tried to move around his sides, while I was playing with skeletons well behind us and practicing my ‘rear shot’. Things had settled more or less into a routine of slow, but steady progress, with Mongo’s heavy armor easily being able to deflect anything the boneheads could toss at him, when suddenly Tiffany screamed and Mongo flew over my head and clanged end over end down the passage behind us.

Something large and black, looking almost lizard-like and almost human at the same time, was on his back and raining massive blows down upon his still form. Take my eyes off the front for just a moment, and all hell breaks loose! ‘You Okay up there?’ I didn’t feel any wounds or problems with Crystal, except for a feeling of raw shock, but I wanted to check to make certain.

‘Fine. Busy,’ was the only response she shot back at me as I unleashed a torrent of Nature’s Wrath upon the creature. Dozens of stone fragments shot from the blade and side of my new toy and blasted into the creature, knocking it off Mongo and down the hall. I was certain that much firepower would destroy it, but I was proved wrong when it slowly got up, shook its massive lizard head and crouched down on all fours to study me. We were a good thirty paces or more apart in the hallway, but as I waited for the fragments of my naginata to return back to rejoin the whole, the creature flicked a long forked tongue across its face and then leapt towards me.

How something so big could move so far or so fast was beyond me! Like a rocket, it closed the distance instantly and had its massive claws wrapped around my torso; the force of its momentum barreling me into and past Jess and Tiffany just as Mongo had been. End over end I flipped down the tunnel, and only by using my magic to change the shape of my staff instinctively, was I able to keep the creature’s massive fangs from my throat. Pain poured into my shoulders, and it felt almost as if I was going to have my arms torn completely off by the beast, before I released a burst of raw panicked magic which…

Hell if I know what it did, to be honest. I wasn’t thinking of anything in particular except maybe, “AAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!”, and I didn’t form or shape the magic at all that I hit the creature with. Its fangs were inches from my throat, its claws were deep into my shoulder, I could feel some nasty poison burning into my bloodstream, and it felt like I was being torn in half! I didn’t think. I didn’t focus. I simply unleashed pure, raw, unadulterated power in a burst as I’d never unleashed before.

And the creature simply wasn’t there anymore. Did I disintegrate it? Teleport it? Turn it into air? Melt it back into the eternal nothingness that was the universe before the Gods?

Damned if I knew!

All I knew was that I was in agony. What felt like liquid fire poured up my arms from my shoulders to my hands, and spread down from the massive gashes in my shoulders to light my lungs and heart a fire. Every breath was an agony and my vision grew dim and hazy. Honestly, I think it might would’ve been the end of me, if it wasn’t for Crystal.

As the pain got too much for me to bear any longer, I suddenly found myself standing upright in Crystal’s body, with several of the fleshy zombies still around. She was giving me a much needed moment to catch a breath, get a few seconds respite from the pure agony that was the creatures poison, and recover my will. Knowing the agony that she was facing for me, I slashed out and bisected one zombie in two, and then swapped places with her again.

Pain once again filled my being; I honestly couldn’t tell if it was worse or less than it was the last time. Is a thousand bee stings any more painful than a hundred? Who knows?! Once you reach the point of pure agony, scale doesn’t matter any longer. I steeled my will as much as possible, and once I found my awareness trying to leave me, I swapped bodies with Crystal again.

This time we swapped while she was in the middle of a slashing spin attack that I wasn’t familiar with, and I almost lost my balance in her body. Falling to one knee, I used the momentum to help me continue the spin and I slicked the leg off the only remaining zombie. Knowing down with these creatures wasn’t the same thing as dead, I flipped forward to stab it…

…And was once again in the pure agony that was my own body.

This time, I could tell that Jess and Tiffany both were treating my wounds, but that certainly didn’t make things feel any better. Darkness clouded my vision as they worked their magics, and I swapped back into Crystal’s flesh once again. Taking a moment to rise her to her feet, I could see more dead already starting to approach and close the distance from wherever they’d came from in front of us. Glancing back, I was astonished to see Mongo rising to his feet and defiantly reaching for his blade once again. That creature had pounded him dozens of times, and had only gotten ahold of me once!

Then, I was back in agony. The pain was definitely starting to lessen though, or else I was somehow becoming adjusted to it. Determined to hold on as long as possible, I gritted my teeth so hard that one of them popped and cracked. The healers were doing their best to get me on my feet, danger was still around us, and trying to fight in two-second intervals was almost impossible to do. Crystal needed to remain Crystal for as long as possible. Her blade was needed, and I knew it.

But, even with the best of intentions and the greatest of will, the poison was too much for me. After several long and agonizing moments, I was forced to trade places once again. Passing out, with the poison straining my system so greatly, didn’t seem like a wise decision. I was truly afraid that doing so would be more than my body could bear, and it’d be a case of never waking again.

This time, I was puzzled to see that Crystal had moved down the hall and was standing in front of a door. I didn’t know her plan, but I trusted she was here for a reason. With a yank of the handle, I pulled the door open and a dozen skeletons instantly turned to dust – Heartblade’s aura still as effective as even on the ones that hadn’t been darkened by Megan. This room looked to be nothing more than a resting place for the dead, and since the skeletons were down, the room was clear.

“This way Mongo! Grab my body!” Crystal’s plan was obvious to me, as soon as I saw the empty room again. Mongo and his team had been forced to seek safety in the confines of an empty room. We needed to do the same now.

Tiffany yelled something about how it wasn’t safe to move me, but Mongo ignored her and scooped up my body and stormed up the hall. Moving on into the room, I quickly stepped to the side and out of his way as he barreled in and the girls followed. The little floating orb was the last inside, and I slammed the door behind them.

We’d moved deeper into the tomb. We’d made good progress, in many ways; but now it seemed like we were almost back to where we started: trapped once again by the dead. Knowing that Crystal must be in pure agony and holding on as long as possible, I swapped back with her once again…

…Or at least I tried to. The poison, on top of Mongo grabbing my body and then roughly running along with it, was too much for her. She’d passed out and somehow I wasn’t able to force the swap into my own unconscious body right now.

We’d moved forward, but we weren’t back where we’d started. Crystal was unconscious, my body was poisoned, and I was stuck being a woman! Just what the hell was that thing?!