Thepes drove his foot through the frozen stone instead.
Blood rose around him in a ring of spikes. He forced them toward both successors and the runes behind them, spending what he had gathered in one attempt to open a path.
Mingyue raised both swords.
Ice formed across the spikes reaching her. Alex's hammer broke the ones in front of him, but another passed around its head and pierced his right side.
Alex staggered, and Thepes moved for the gap beside him.
Mingyue's blade caught the back of his arm before he reached it.
Thepes turned on her with his fangs bared. His left hand closed toward her throat.
She ducked beneath his reaching hand and drove her shoulder against his chest, keeping her upper sword outside his left arm. Her other blade swept low through the blood supporting his damaged knee.
His weight shifted onto the leg that could no longer hold it.
Alex struck him across the back of the left knee.
