As the heated gases evaporated from the vents on the ground, Hei Yung stood at the front, blue lightning cracking around him in savage arcs.
Behind him, some of the Agathan soldiers leaned on rifles with melted barrels. Others held their sides, blood slipping through their fingers and dripping onto the blackened stones.
At the far front, the Abyssal Maw Lord stood there, its wounded chest—where Longwei's sacrifice had torn through—glistening wetly.
Flesh twitched around its destroyed maw, black-red vapour rolling low across the ground and vanishing into its mouth whenever it breathed.
Leon's jaw tightened as he saw the smaller Oculous Devourers rushing out from the lower vents in packs, snapping their claws at anything that moved.
A wounded Agathan soldier fell to a knee as three of the creatures with black-limbed bodies, too many mouths, and bony forelegs bounded toward him.
