I couldn't see my opponent. I couldn't smell it. I could barely hear it. But that didn't mean I couldn't kill it. Every one of its movements was preceded by a mechanical clicking, and I had been able to use that indicator to stay a step ahead of the deadly blade's unseen attacks. I wielded my hammer in two hands, mostly to parry, but occasionally I would swing and connect, and whatever metal armor my opponent wore would clang like an alarm bell. But for all the times I hit it, and for all the strength I put into my strikes, my assailant didn't waver. Not once. Whatever this thing was, it wasn't getting tired, and even with a magicked heart beating its perfect rhythm in my chest, there was only so long I could keep doing this. And my opponent knew it. The attacks were swift, precise, varied, and constant. I could already feel the burn in my arms as I sensed an opening, but I took the bait and struck anyway, with the full power of my arms, legs, and hips. If I had hit an Erinye with that strike, I would have turned his ribcage to a pulp. If I had hit a burug with that strike, I might have slowed it down, or even made it hesitate. But the only answer I received, for all of my newfound strength and stamina, was a loud clang and a lizard-quick stab toward my face with a chattering blade.

I didn't bother deflecting the strike. Instead, I twitched backward out of the reach of that hissing point and let myself fall. I took the fall the way I had been taught, and rolled back over my shoulder to regain my feet. That was when the rodent things decided to resume their mad assault. I lunged up off the stone, intending an arcing strike to where I guessed my metal-clad opponent's head to be, but I was met halfway by a twitching, bulbous, screeching body. It was not strong enough for the hit to be very painful, but mid-leap it still took me out of my planned momentum and sent me sprawling. Other rodent-things took the opportunity, and in a heartbeat, I was buried beneath shuddering, plagued furry bodies, each of them possessing a uniquely vile stench. I gagged and tried to thrash my way free, but there were too many of them, and within seconds I heard the scratching sounds of mutant rat teeth against the crystal of my armor. I was not wearing my helm- it was stowed in my bag so as not to restrict my vision. I knew that if I didn't get out of this immediately, I would feel those teeth on my face and neck within moments. Or at least I would if my metal clad assailant didn’t skewer me first.

The telltale clicking came out of the darkness, and I knew the strike was coming. I let go of my greathammer and rolled, as hard as I could, to one side, and was rewarded with the piercing squeal of one of the rodents as the hissing, clattering blade pinned it to the stone. I continued my roll and slammed my arms down on the ground hard, stunning some of the little monsters clinging to them, and with some effort, I managed to scramble and get my feet under me. I immediately had to dive to the ground again as the seething blade came whistling overhead. Some of the rodents I had shaken loose, heaved themselves back onto me and held fast, slowing me down again. I roared in frustration, a loud, full-throated roar which echoed off of the cavern walls, and I heard the whispery movements of my opponent in the dark as he readied himself for the killing blow. There was a rapid, frenetic clicking sound, and I tried to twist away, but at that moment, one of the rodents managed to sink its fangs into the unarmored place behind my knee and that leg buckled. I lurched forward at an angle, helpless to change my momentum, and I knew then that I was dead.

Burning pain lanced across the right side of my face, from my mouth back toward my ear, and immediately hot blood drenched my jaw. The edge of the blade glanced off my skull, however, and I fell forward to my hands and knees, bloody but still alive. If I didn't do something soon, though, that would change very quickly. I scrabbled my feet frantically at the stone and exploded up from the ground, throwing my whole weight into the armored metal chest of my assailant. I hit it hard, but I didn't trust the blow itself to do much more than annoy it. So I wrapped my arms around it and kept moving, pumping my legs and shoving it back until it lost its footing on the uneven stone. We crashed to the ground in a screech of tortured metal, showering panicked rodents in all directions, and I didn't wait for further openings. I snatched one of my climbing axes from my belt and rained blows down on what I took to be my opponent's head. The darkness was nearly complete, but I could still make out the dim shape of an Erinye-sized head beneath my blows. I kept the hits coming, slamming my ax down over and over against the head, splitting the metal shell I found there after a dozen or so blows. My attacker fought back, hard, but it didn't seem to have as easy a time dealing with me when it wasn't on its feet. My vicious attack appeared to have stunned it. My arms burned, and I felt myself getting more and more tired. I couldn't give up, though. I had to be sure this thing was down. I would probably not get an opening like that again.

With my free hand, I seized the metal-clad thing beneath me by what seemed to be its throat. Then I jammed the spike of my climbing ax in under its nominal chin and hammered the point home with the side of my fist. It made a few feeble swipes with its blade, which was apparently attached to its arm, but I swatted them away easily. With my axe stuck fast, I stood, keeping the thing pinned with one leg. Then I bent, seized the ax handle in both hands, and I pulled as hard as I could, putting my whole body into it. For a moment I just stood there, straining, aware of the rodents gathering closer and closer in the dark as they regained their confidence. The metal man beneath me writhed and thrashed, but just as it seemed that it was regaining its wits enough to strike back, the neck gave way, and I tore the whole head away in a shower of yellow sparks. For a moment, the whole scene was illuminated in flickering lurid light, and I got a glimpse of what I had been fighting.

Beneath me lay not an Erinye-like man in metal, but rather a man made entirely of metal. It had been constructed from tubes and struts and hundreds of fine gears, mostly protected by metal plates. Some of those plates had been thoroughly dented by the strikes of my hammer. One of its arms was just a metal replica of mine, with five fingers tipped by short claws. The other arm, however, ended in a retracting blade as long as my forearm- the edge of which glimmered wetly beneath the light of the showering sparks. The false-man shuddered beneath me, spewing sparks and thick, viscous black fluid everywhere, before it finally fell still. The area fell into darkness once more. I stood, raising my axe menacingly, and let a low, threatening growl roll over my lips. The rat-things skittered around nervously in the dark, where I couldn't see them, but none of them attacked.

I slipped my hand into a pouch at my waist and found another glowstone. This one I didn't crush into powder, rather I split it in half with a careful tap against the edge of my axe. Blue light spilled out from my hand, illuminating the shuddering, twitching rat things clearly for the first time. They were hideous creatures, covered in hundreds of foul, pus-filled boils- some of which were so large as to affect their balance. There were dozens of them, but the light seemed to hurt them physically, and they backed up as I raised my fistful of piercing blue light to shine over more of them. We stood that way for some time, until, all at once, the rodents broke, shrieking en masse and scrambling away into the dark. I waited until I could hear their tortured screams no more, before I let my arm fall to my side.

That had been close. I hadn't sensed the metal man's approach, and I sure as the ice hadn't expected it. If it hadn't been for the clattering sound made by the extending blade as it struck, I would have died in its initial assault, speared through the neck before I would even have realized it was happening. Though some of my brethren possessed the Great Mother's gift of sight in the darkness, I was not so lucky, and I didn't think I would survive another fight like that. It had been far too close. I checked my pouch of glowstones. I had six, which if I used carefully, might last me a day down here in the crushing dark. I didn't have long to find Joanna. If I stayed down here after I ran out of the luminescent pebbles, I could be trapped down here forever. I knew what I needed to do, but I didn't want to do it. Nissikul was badly injured and had lost a lot of blood. And Thukkar was walking again, but only with a lot of aid. He could hardly fight, but I couldn't leave him behind either. If I called Nissikul down here, he would be coming too. She didn't want to set foot on the stone, for it was sacred to our tribe. But she could conjure up a light bright enough for us to see - one that would last as long as she willed it. I needed that talent, or all this would be for nothing. Would she even hear me, all the way up there in the bottom of the glacier, the "ceiling" of this land of darkness?

I took a deep breath to yell and stopped. I could hear something from above me, a sort of chittering, clicking sound, much like the sound of rodent claws on stone. I frowned and dropped into a guard, but just a few seconds later I was forced to abandon the stance and backpedal quickly as a great chunk of ice with flailing black arachnid legs smashed into the ground, not five spear-lengths away from me, and shattered into hundreds of pieces of hissing ice. I yelled and tried simultaneously to scramble forward and run away, but ended up falling onto my ass. "Palamun's teeth!" I screamed as I struggled to my feet. "Nissi! Thukkar! NISSI!"

"Quit shouting," murmured a weary feminine voice from just above me. I looked up and saw, to my shock, Nissikul, limned in pale blue light, drifting down at a leisurely pace, Thukkar clinging to her like his life depended on it. She touched down gently and peeled Thukkar's hands off her, leaving him shuddering and leaning hard on the iron short spear I had left him to use as a cane. With a flick of her wrist and a few muttered syllables, Nissi cast another one of her floating orbs of light into existence over her shoulder, so that it floated back there like a lantern. Registering my shock, she shrugged. "The stone is sacred, but Ravanur will forgive me. This is too important just to leave it to you. You would just mess it up."

I snorted. She might have been a Stormcaller, a terrifying avatar of the wrath of the Erinye gods, but she was still my sister. "Thanks, Nissi."

“For the record,” grumbled Thukkar, “I tried to convince her otherwise.”

“Please,” Nissi and I said at the same time. I continued, smiling with my eyes. “You can’t convince Nissikul of anything.” I sighed and bent to pick up my hammer, then stowed my weapons in their appropriate places. “Alright you two, if you’re coming, let’s go. We’ve got a god to save.”