Swords, spears, halberds, and rusted maces clashed. Both sides fought as if this was their last stand.
Ripler wielded magic with deadly precision, summoning fire to distract enemies or finish them off when they were vulnerable. His spear burned through rat men who got too close. Around them, arrows flew overhead as both sides' ranged fighters targeted distracted enemies.
But nine humans against the fifty remaining elite ratmen soldiers was not a fair fight. Even with their surprise attack and the rear pincer advantage, the humans would eventually lose the momentum. Superiority in numbers was a weapon that didn't care about tactics.
But the ambush was enough. Enough to rouse those trapped inside the sanctuary. They emerged with half-dead eyes and half-desperate hope. Maybe there was light at the end of this darkness. Or maybe they just wanted death, and if they couldn't give it to themselves, at least they could fight for it.
Whatever their motivation, it didn't matter. The enemy was now occupied in both directions, split between two forces. The load on Benny's group lightened considerably.
The real assessment came quickly. The elite rat men weren't particularly skilled individually. What made them dangerous was their combined strength, their perfect coordination. That, and their tails.
Their tails were the real weapon. Imbued with something foreign. Rust. Pus. Rot. Plague. They wore these infections like badges of pride, bound to their tails with iron rings as symbols of their devotion. The humans learned fast to keep their distance.
Benny noticed it first. The way those tails seemed to carry disease. He understood without being touched that grazing contact could be fatal. He kept his distance, watched the ones around him do the same.
Then Lyra made a mistake.
In the chaos of combat, she didn't react fast enough. A rat man's tail wrapped around her arm, and she screamed. Her body convulsed violently, as if the infection had spread through her system in seconds. No time for a healing potion. No time for help.
She was dead before anyone could reach her.
The morale collapsed instantly. Benny saw her fall. So did the others, glimpsing it in their peripheral vision as they fought for their lives.
But Gustav didn't let them break.
"Focus! We will mourn later! Do you want to follow her? Do you?" His voice cut through the panic like a whip. "Scream! Use your rage! Fuel it into every strike. Avenge her! Now!"
His words dragged them back from the edge. Back to the present. Back to the fight.
Benny and the others gritted their teeth. Their attacks became wilder, more desperate. Slashing. Stabbing. Hacking. The rage that had nearly paralyzed them became a weapon. The rat men tried to maintain their formations, but discipline crumbled under the onslaught.
Then something shifted.
The rat men began to feel it. Death creeping into their throats. Fear breaking through the conditioning and training. They saw themselves clearly now. They'd been just like the mutated rats they despised. Lower tier. Bullied by those above them. They'd dreamed of something better, of rising above their station.
But for this? They would have stayed down. They would have accepted being bullied. Anything but this.
The rat men fell. One after another, their heads rolled onto the cold stone floor of the labyrinth. The roles reversed entirely. The monsters became the ones cowering. The humans were the real predators, teeth sharper, hunger deeper.
The rat men Commanders tried to hold the line, and tried to maintain order. It crumbled. Ranks broke apart as casualties mounted. Their pride, their filthy plague-marked armor and weapons, all of it meant nothing now.
They ran.
The elite soldiers of the rat kingdom fled like common vermin.
But the humans didn't let them go.
What started as a defensive stand off became a hunt. The humans chased them with a possessiveness that bordered on possession. Like the rats that they hunted. Those caught were beheaded. Slaughtered. They screamed and squealed in panic.
Benny watched the elite rat soldiers die, and something cold settled in his chest. The desperate rage of survival. The hunger to eliminate the threat before it eliminates you. It was primitive. Brutal.
And it worked.
Ripler and Kael seemed to relish in the chaos. They hunted with purpose, their cuts precise despite the frenzy. Ripler burned enemies with magic. Kael moved with cold efficiency. Lyra's death had unleashed something in them both. A thirst for blood that didn't care about honor or mercy.
The battle reached its conclusion. The entire vanguard force was wiped out. The survivors on both sides were covered in blood and filth. But the cost was high.
Three dead. One from Benny's strike team. Two from the sanctuary.
Benny immediately called out. "Torin! Torin, are you alive?"
The blacksmith appeared, stunned and trembling. He'd barely survived. One of his comrades from the sanctuary had thrown himself in front of a blade meant for Torin. The man had fallen with a strange expression of relief on his face, whispering something delirious as the plague spread through his body. It was the relief of death, no longer worried in whether he escaped this place or not.
"Ahhh... yes... I'm still alive," Torin said quietly.
Benny sighed with relief. Their blacksmith was safe. That mattered.
Gustav moved through the survivors, checking on each person. He saw the despair on the faces of those who'd been trapped inside the cave. Their trauma, their hopelessness, had been compounded by the battle. They'd tasted violence and terror again.
Three more people died. Down from twenty-one to the eighteen of the left now.
Benny didn't seem to break under the weight of it the way the others did. Something had changed in him. He'd lost some of his human empathy somewhere in the labyrinth. The deaths registered, but they didn't paralyze him.
What bothered him was the loss of manpower. They'd gone from a barely viable force to something even more fragile. Every person lost now couldn't be replaced.
Gustav watched Benny carefully. There was a hollowness in his eyes that hadn't been there before. The coward had become something else. Something harder.
"We need to move," Gustav said to the group. "Gather what supplies you can. We don't know if there are more of them coming."
The days ahead would only get harder. That much was certain.
And the humans weren't sure they had enough left to survive them.