The creature came down hard. Its claw swept in a wide diagonal arc aimed at Damien’s chest, fast enough that the air moved ahead of it.

Damien’s blade was shining with golden light as he covered it with his element densely.

"Grchhkkkkkk!!"

Damien didn’t step back. His sword came up to meet it.

The moment the blade connected with the creature’s claw a burst of golden light detonated outward from the point of contact.

Not a large explosion. It was ontained and very sharp. The light that hit the eyes and forced them to adjust.

The creature recoiled. It eyes weren’t able to handle the bright light.

It stepped back from Damien. Not too far away. But it pulled the arm back and turned its head away from the light source for a full second, the red eyes narrowing, its breathing pattern breaking from its steady rhythm into something more irregular.

It had hesitated before too, just for a moment when Damien’s blade had first blazed up. Now it hesitated again.

It didn’t like the light. No, more Luke he didn’t like that particular light Damien was using.

Damien pressed into that half second immediately.

He stepped forward and drove the sword in a straight thrust toward the creature’s shoulder where the neck met the upper body. The blade connected and the golden light poured into the wound, not just cutting but burning from inside the point of contact.

The creature had been hesitant toward the loht once again and was unable to react in time.

So the creature screamed.

Not the same sound it had made coming out of the hole. That had been alien and distant. More like a creepy.

But this time it was pain. It was a scream filled with pain and agony.

It swung its other arm in a backhand motion that Damien barely caught in time. He got his sword across to block. But the force of creature’s attack was enormous and it threw him sideways into the chamber wall.

He hit the stone. "Gaah!" A groan filled with pain left his mouth.

And then he dropped to one knee, sword still in hand, golden light flickering.

"Damien!" Noah shouted.

He had been observing everything, rather than fighting head on like Damien.

The creature turned toward Damien on the ground.

’No time to waste now.’

Noah moved.

He crossed the space between them at a run and sent his mana hard into his left hand, pushing it faster than the careful controlled pace he had been maintaining all day.

An ice spear formed in his palm once again, longer than the ones he had made earlier, thicker, the frost color deep and concentrated.

He threw it at the creature’s back. It hit between the shoulder blades. The creature spun around with a sound of pure fury, abandoning Damien and fixing both red eyes on Noah instead.

Noah had exactly enough time to think that this had worked and also that he was now the sole focus of a seven foot nightmare.

Then it charged him.

He threw himself to the side and the creature’s momentum carried it past him, claws raking across the stone floor and leaving deep gouges in the rock. Noah came up from his roll with his sword drawn and drove the ice coated blade into the creature’s side as it passed.

Cold spread from the wound. The creature’s skin resisted it differently than the hobgoblin had. The ice formed but slower, and it broke apart faster, the green veins beneath the white skin seeming to push back against it actively.

’It resists cold,’ Noah noted in the back of his mind. ’Not immune. But it resists it.’

The creature rounded on him again.

Behind it, Damien was back on his feet.

His sword was blazing stronger than before. Whatever the hit against the wall had done to his focus it had not touched his mana output. If anything the light was more intense, the golden color deeper, less like ambient glow and more like something deliberate and concentrated.

He ran at the creature’s back. The creature sensed him coming. It started to turn.

"Noah, its eyes!" Damien said sharply.

Noah didn’t ask for clarification.

He pushed his mana into his hand and formed ice, not a spear this time, a flat sheet of it, thin and curved slightly, angled like a mirror.

"Now!!" Noah yelled.

He held it up directly in the creature’s line of sight and let the light from Damien’s blazing sword hit it.

The reflection caught the creature full in the face.

It recoiled violently, both arms coming up to cover its eyes, the red light within them flickering and dimming as it turned away. A sound came from it that was different from anything it had made so far, lower, almost distressed.

Damien was already there.

His sword came across in a full committed slash that hit the creature at the side of the neck, the same area Noah had noted earlier when fighting the hobgoblin. But this was not an ice burst at a joint.

This was Damien’s full output directed into a single strike.

The golden light tore through.

The creature stumbled.

Its legs lost coordination briefly, the massive body swaying, one arm dropping to the floor to catch its weight. The red eyes were dim. Its breathing was ragged and broken through those two face holes.

It wasnged one arm out sideways blindly. It caught Damien across the ribs.

He went down again, harder this time. His sword skittered across the stone a short distance away from his hand.

Noah was running before Damien hit the ground.

He slid on his knees across the stone and got to the sword first, picked it up, and felt the golden light surge up his arm like touching something extremely hot that didn’t quite burn.

His body was not built for this element. He could feel that immediately. It sat wrong in his mana channels, incompatible, like trying to pour water through a path built for something else.

But he held it.

He stood up and planted himself between Damien on the ground and the creature which was slowly steadying itself, head lifting, red eyes beginning to glow again as they readjusted.

"Arghghh!!!" The hilt felt hot. He used ice to cool it down.

Noah held Damien’s sword out in front of him with both hands.

The golden light was dimmer in his grip than it had been in Damien’s. But it was still there, still bleeding out from the blade, still doing what it did to the creature’s vision.

The creature looked at him. Noah looked back at it.

His arms were shaking slightly. His mana reserves were genuinely low now, not dangerously empty but close enough that he could feel the bottom of them. His head was pounding from the ice usage earlier. His legs were tired. His borrowed armor felt heavier than it had at any point today.

The creature took one step toward him.

Noah didn’t move.

’Okay,’ he thought, with a kind of flat calm that surprised even him. ’Think. There has to be something. The light bothers it. Ice slows it but doesn’t stop it. It killed its own summoner without hesitation so it doesn’t follow loyalty or contract. The hole it came from is still there. Was it living there, sleeping there? Also it doesn’t seem like bother by light...but by the special light element use by Damien. it must be that which makes it hesitate.’

He glanced at the hole in the floor behind the creature.

’Something is not right. It feels like as if...the creature is too weak for some reason. If he was worship by something...then it might have more strength.

The red circle carved into the stone was still faintly glowing. The ritual hadn’t closed. Whatever the robed man had opened was still open.

’The circle is still glowing,’ he thought, ’maybe its awakening...and stil recovering its powers. That means we have ro kill it as fast as possible.’

Damien’s voice came from behind him, rough and tight with pain.

"I’m up man," he said.

Noah exhaled slowly.

"Can you stand?" he asked without turning around.

"Working on it."

"Work faster Damien. We are in shitty situation."

The creature took another step.

Noah kept the sword raised and kept his eyes on those red eyes and kept thinking, pulling at every piece of information he had on dungeons and waking up that abomination and the way old buried places worked when something went wrong deep inside them.

There was something here. There had to be.

He just needed thirty more seconds to find it.

"Damien," he said quietly.

"What."

"I might have a bad idea."

A short pause.

"How bad?"

Noah watched the creature gather itself for another charge, the long claws flexing against the stone floor, the horns catching the ambient light from the crystals in the walls.

"Fairly bad," he said honestly. "But I think it might work."