by The Eurostar and Tobias Christopher
"Think fast, think fast," whispered Aurochs to himself, hiding in a crevice of the tunnel wall, hoping that the metahumans would not find him.
Teleporting to safety was still impossible. It would cost too much energy, and he would need half a day's rest to be able to teleport again. And that would have been stupid. Running away would not give him the secret of immortality. "You must find a way to fuck over those freaks!" Aurochs said, still talking to himself. "They're following me, coming back to the surface... they think they have ended their job."
A strong wind gusted by him. The speedster! the mage realized. He was too fast to notice me. Now he was caught between the swift one at the entrance and the others behind. "Mmm... maybe that's good..."
The mage stood up, making an ample gesture with one hand. "Lord Sghiassaha, bearer of the ice mantle, come to the land of the mortals!"
Near the entrance of the cavern, the air flickered, and a white, gloomy form began to take substance. Instant after instant, the unformed mass took the shape of a giant woolly elephant. From its thick mantle, streams of water ran off, and a dense mist evaporated.
Its heavy steps resonated through the tunnel, while all around it the ground and the walls became a smooth layer of ice, a layer perfect to the molecular level, where no friction could be possible. And without friction, in no way two legs, as fast as they could be, could stand. And Tobias Christopher fell.
From the trunk of the monster, iced vapor at near absolute zero steamed out, wrapping Tobias in a thick crust of ice.
Body temperature... dropping... Tobias thought as he was trapped in a thick block of ice. Have... one... shot... Tobias started vibrating his body in a last attempt to shatter the ice.
Not... going... to make it... Tobias thought as he was expecting to die from hypothermia. Suddenly, the ice block exploded as Tobias hit the ground, about to pass out. So... cold... Then the darkness came as he finally passed out.
"And at zero kelvin, every atom stops. The speedster is stopped!" whispered Aurochs. "One down."
Just as he thought that, the steps of the other metahumans resonated through the tunnels.
"The monk... he seems connected to Gaia. Who I could abduct here... shit shit shit... what was his name... Varkunth, lord of the void!"
Aurochs waved his hands in the air, whispering forgotten words, and the air in the tunnel began to blow, like a gentle wind at first, and then stronger and stronger like a hurricane. Then it stopped, and the darkness of the tunnel was gone, replaced by a neutral gray nothingness. And in the middle of it stood Varkunth, tall as ten men, wrapped in a gray armor covered in spikes, fangs sprouting out from his closed jaws, and smiling.
Turkish Stringfellow looked around. His friends had disappeared.
"He should be occupied for some time," says Aurochs, still talking to himself. "Now on to the others. The dark one is surely a true demon. What can I...? Oh... should I dare...? Well, why not?"
Not many months ago, Aurochs stumbled by chance over an authentic clay tablet from the time of ancient Sumeria, written by a slave writer of Gilgamesh himself. A tablet talking about magic, the only one in the world containing the spell to summon angels.
"Leshi-unn, of the Kite flocks, come! Clear the Earth from the walking dirt of Hell!"
A tall winged man with long black hair and wearing a long tunic interweaved with arcane symbols appeared, holding a flaming sword, right in front of Naecken.
"Heh heh, too bad I can't stay here to watch them," Aurochs said boldly, his fears totally gone. "The others don't seem so powerful. I will simply reopen the gates of the hidden world."
A few gestures, not too many strange words, and a dozen beasts, awkward compositions of Earth animal parts, appeared out of thin air, running toward the remaining heroes, pointing fangs, claws, spikes, darts, stings, and all kinds of offensive means toward them.
The mage smiled at the sight and retreated deeper into the tunnel, awaiting the final defeat of the band of metahumans.