that they’d seen the demons using fire, they stayed closer to him.
The fighting got tougher from there, as whoever Madrok had left in charge was obviously aware of their advance by then. Will began to wonder if bringing the trolls was the wisest decision. It might have been easier to reach his goal if he’d gone with his original, stealthy plan.
But the trolls were certainly more fun.
They moved down the street, and Will began using light-darts to pick off magic-using demons at a distance, while the trolls ripped apart anything that got within fifty feet of them. Shield walls and other defensive formations failed against them entirely, for the trolls cared nothing for their own safety. They leapt into spears and jumped and bounced off buildings to land inside organized units of demon soldiers.
Anything that gave them the slightest trouble, Will eliminated. The lesser demon magic-users had no hope, for he smothered their spell-casting abilities, and any uniquely powerful physical attackers could be crippled with force-lances and light-darts. Once the trolls got their clawed hands on a fallen opponent, it was over. No matter the demon’s size or power, having a troll tear through your belly and eat its way to your heart was invariably fatal.
Eventually, they came to what had probably been the central square. The remains of an enormous stone building filled the wide-open area with a massive mountain of rubble. The top of the pile of broken stone featured a strange metal cube roughly fifteen feet on each side, and from that emerged a tall metal rod that rose fifty feet into the air above it.
Void turyn poured from the cube and the metal rod, rushing outward from it so that walking into the square made Will feel as though he was standing in a deep stream and trying to walk against the flow. The dark energy was so concentrated at that point that even the trolls were beginning to have difficulty. Their skins bubbled and cracked, flaking off in dry sheets while their eyes burned and healed in an endless cycle that left them mostly blind.
Will led them away, until the ambient level of toxic power was low enough that the trolls weren’t in constant agony. They ducked into a recess at the front of a heavy stone building that had possibly served as a bank. At the moment, there weren’t any more enemies nearby, so he activated the limnthal and described what he had seen to Arrogan.
“I don’t see the mechanism you described before,” said Will. The spell-engine was supposed to have a mechanical component that was powered by the energy of the ley lines, pounding some sort of demon-steel anvil to create the void turyn before an enchanted linkage drained it away.
“It sounds like that’s the emitter. The ley-lines in Myrsta meet in an underground chamber, similar to the one you found beneath the Arenatas’ home in Cerria. The spell-engine will be there,” said Arrogan.
Will sighed in exasperation. “Great. How am I supposed to find it?”
“Follow the link back to it, obviously,” replied his grandfather sourly. “You need to sever the link between the ley lines and the spell engine to stop it safely.”
He nodded. “I’ll see what I can do.” Then he deactivated the limnthal. Looking at the trolls, he could see they wouldn’t be of any more help. He had originally had a vague idea that they might be useful as muscle to help him disassemble the spell-engine, but they couldn’t get any closer.
Looking out from the stone recess, Will saw that on the other side of the square a huge swarm of demons had gathered. Where do they keep coming from? The army had fought and killed thousands upon thousands of them, and his trolls had slaughtered a substantial number on their way to the middle of the city.
There weren’t many good alternatives left. Or any, for that matter, Will thought. He was going to have to go it alone, and considering the number of enemies, he’d have to sneak. No problem. I’m good at that.
Using stealth, he would have plenty of time to search for the entrance to wherever the underground ley line chamber was, and even more time to figure out how to safely disable the spell-engine.
He gave the order to Lrmeg. “Go back. Wait for me.”
“Where?” asked the troll leader.
“To the army.”
Lrmeg’s next sentence was too complicated for Will to pick out the nuances, but he got the gist. Lrmeg wanted to know how they would get back