The Rebirth Of The Beast Tamer

The silence was broken with the scrape of bone. From the side tunnels, they came slow at first with shapes staggering out of cracks in the Hollow's skin.

Corpses were stitched in necrotic fire, while their veins lit with crawling runes that pulsed like dying embers.

Some had once been soldiers, with armor still fused to their rotting flesh. Others had been beasts dragged down into the fissures, which were forced into mockeries of war machines. And the hybrids of those were the worst.

A wolf's skull upon a man's torso and ribcage that spread wide like a cage of fangs. A horse's frame with its body flayed and dragged upright and eight arms sprouting where legs should be, each limb jerked in spasms.

They did not moan like ordinary undead, instead, the swarm whispered in layered voices, repeating fragments of words that had belonged to the dead.

"Help me...Stand fast, for the king...."

The voices were broken echoes, and hearing them made the Crest's stomachs turn. It was not just death animated, it was memory weaponized.

The first charge came in a flood of claws and the bone blades. Kelvin moved instinctively with his spear sweeping in a long arc. Xerion's flame trailed his movements, but each strike was igniting the corpses that pressed too close.

The spear sang with a burning steel, carving through flesh and rune alike. Yet each kill gave back nothing but dread. The corpses bled not blood but black mist, a necrotic vapor that slid along the stones like smoke searching for a host.

Lyra stood further back with her bowstring taut. She loosed arrow after arrow, each shaft was glowing with runes that she etched in haste.

One struck through the mouth of a hybrid wolf-man, pinning it to the wall. Another skewered was a soldier's corpse, splitting helm and skull alike. Yet the archer's eyes was narrowed, not at the undead, but at the pattern of their movements.

"They are not mindless," she hissed. "The Hollow… it is steering them and watching through them." Darius roared as he met the charge head-on, shield braced and Rhoam crackling with raw force.

He smashed the nearest abomination in half with one blow, then used his shield to plow through the line, forcing space for Kelvin and Lyra.

But for every creature he shattered, two more crawled from the dark with their eyes lit with the Hollow's sickly green fire.

"Hold formation!" he barked. "If we break lines, we are swallowed whole!" The deeper they fought, the clearer it became that attrition was not victory.

The swarm fed on itself. Every time a corpse fell, its necrotic vapor seeped back into the fissures, where new hands, new skulls and new bodies crawled free. It was a cycle, endless and suffocating.

Kelvin's spear split one creature from jaw to belly. As its black mist hissed away, he realized with dread, that this is not a battle.The Hollow is using us to grow.

Xerion's voice thundered in his mind and edged with alarm.

"Burn them completely, or they return. The Hollow will not let its soldiers stay dead."

Kelvin flared his bond, igniting fire through every strike. Whole bodies burst into ash, but the cost was steep. The Hollow drank at his stamina, making each breath heavier and each flame costlier. His vision swam in the heat, but he forced himself forward.

Beside him, Lyra fought like a spirit out of legend. Her arrows were curved unnaturally, ricocheting at impossible angles.

She hit creatures that had not yet stepped fully from the fissures, her shots was pinning them before they could crawl free.

Yet she grimaced with each pull because the swarm shifted in response, ducking arrows and staggering unpredictably. As if the Hollow itself had learned her rhythm and adjusted.

"It is thinking through them," she muttered, almost to herself. "Every shot I fire, it learns faster."

Darius's shield cracked as three hybrids hit him at once with their claws screeching across steel. He shoved back with blood running from his forearm, and slammed Rhoam into the ground.

The hammer discharged a concussive burst while flinging their bodies into walls. Bones were shattered and limbs tore, but still the mist coiled back toward the fissures.

"Damn it all, we can not keep pace!" he spat, with his voice ragged. Kelvin risked a glance past the melee. More shapes were crawling down the walls above them, with hundreds, maybe thousands.

The fissures had become rivers of the dead. He felt the weight of it pressing against his chest, that endless tide. "For every one we cut down…" he said aloud with his voice low, "…two more rise."

It was not hopelessness in his tone, it was realization. The others understood too. This was not an army to be slain. It was the Hollow's breathing, its way of keeping them trapped until exhaustion took them.

The battle threatened to drown them completely, until Salaris stepped forward. The elementalist had held back, conserving what little energy the Hollow had left untouched.

But now her eyes flared with molten light, and her palms burned with unstable fire. She drove her hands into the stone, whispering words in a tongue none of them recognized.

For a heartbeat, the Hollow itself seemed to hesitate. Then came the shockwave. Immediately the fissure-floor erupted. A tidal wave of fire and force surged outward, blasting the swarm apart.

Hundreds of corpses disintegrated at once, bones reduced to white dust, flames devoured the mist before it could slink back into the cracks. The shockwave rolled in every direction, a cleansing light that was cutting through the suffocating dark.

For a moment, there was silence. Kelvin's chest heaved. Darius leaned heavy on his shield and Lyra's bow dipped. They had ground, space and air. Salaris's body trembled as smoke rose from her arms, but she stood firm with her eyes still glowing faintly.

Then the Hollow answered. From deep below, something was stirred. Not the scraping of claws, not the whisper of the dead.

This was heavier, slower and a resonance like stone grinding against stone, or chains dragging through the bones of the earth. The shockwave had done more than clear ground. It had woken something worse.

The fissures trembled with black mist that boiled upward in a column, and with it came a roar of voices that layered atop one another. A chorus of the damned, rising in fury.

The Crest stood in the half-light, surrounded by the fading remains of the swarm, and knew with bone-deep if certainty, that they had only survived the opening act.

The Hollow's roar rolled through the fissures like thunder in a sealed tomb. The ground shook as dust was raining down from unseen ceilings.

The Crest tightened formation, every chest was heaving with exhaustion, every hand clenched on weapon or bowstring. They had survived the swarm but only by bleeding themselves thin.

Now, something deeper was rising, from the black mist, shapes were reformed. The corpses that Salaris had obliterated returned as broken fragments, torsos dragging without legs, arms crawling like spiders, skulls gnashing with no jaw.

But these were not the true threat. The Hollow had learned. The next wave was heavier, denser and more brutal. The fissures vomited forth colossal silhouettes.

Beasts stitched not from one body, but dozens. Wolves were fused into serpentine coils, their heads sprouted in snarling clusters.

A bear's ribcage stretched over a dozen torsos, its limbs doubled and trebled until it staggered on eight clawed feet. The air quivered with their howls, not of hunger but of command. These were generals of the Hollow's army as flesh-wrought titans.

Kelvin gritted his teeth, sweat was disturbing his eyes as it flowed down. "We can't… keep this pace. Not unless....."

Xerion growled beside him, it was low and guttural. Its crimson eyes burned, but not just with flame. There was something deeper, like an ember breaking through stone after ages were buried. Kelvin felt the bond tug sharply, as if his heartbeat had been hooked on a line.

"Kelvin," Xerion's voice thundered in his skull, "the fire you have held me back from, I must unleash it. Or we end here."

Kelvin's hand clenched tighter on the spear. He had always felt it, that sealed reservoir within Xerion, too hot, too wild and too dangerous.

He had feared that channeling it would tear their bond apart. But as the stitched behemoths advanced, dragging their horrors behind them, hesitation became a luxury he couldn't afford.

"Do it," he whispered. "Whatever the cost, let's burn them." Xerion threw back its head. Its throat glowed, not red, not orange, but a furious azure, a hue so bright that it cut through the Hollow's gloom.

The glow spread down its neck, with veins of fire streaking across scales like molten rivers. With a roar that shook the fissures, Xerion unleashed its new breath.

The End-Flame Maw erupted, a torrent of blue fire that was so hot that it burned sound itself into silence. It crashed over the nearest behemoth, consuming flesh, bone, and rune alike.