The cyclops hit the chamber like a battering ram with legs. Its stone club was already mid-swing before anyone was able to react.
The club smashed into the floor where Dawson had just stood, splintering the rock. Fragments screamed across the room, and dust billowed thick and choking. The jolt ran up through Caelum's boots, rattling his ribcage. For a moment, he couldn't see—only grey, noise, and the ringing in his skull.
"Spread!" Dawson barked.
They spread out—not smoothly, but at least without crashing into each other. Caelum decided to call that progress, whether the others agreed or not.
Blancard went left, not waiting for instructions—he just put himself between the thing and Kifah, gauntlets up. Éloise slid right, rapier raised, water coiling tight around her wrist. Dawson held the centre. Caelum tracked with him, spear forward. Warmth pooled under his ribs, but he held it, letting the drills keep him steady.
The cyclops wrenched its club free, stone shrieking upon rock, and swung its head to pin that single milky eye on Dawson.
Of course.
Dawson was running hot, violet plasma already licking up his blade. He was the loudest signal in the room, and the creature knew it. He went in before it could line up another swing. He cut for the knee, tight and fast—way better than the mess he'd made with the bats.
Good.
The blade hit. And barely did a thing.
A thin glowing line opened across the creature's leg. That was it. Like scratching paint off a wall. The cyclops didn't even seem bothered by it. It just snarled, low and wet, and backhanded with its free arm.
Dawson twisted to dodge, but the cyclops's forearm clipped his shoulder. He skidded across the stone floor, his sword striking against the rock. He barely managed to keep his grip on the hilt.
Éloise attacked right after. Her rapier, tipped with compressed water, thrust toward the creature's eye. The cyclops jerked its head, so her blade sliced along its cheek instead, spraying blood and thick fluid onto the wall.
It roared. Not a dying sound. An angry one.
"Hide's too thick!" Éloise shouted. "Go for joints, the eye, the mouth—anything that isn't armoured!"
Blancard crashed into the cyclops's flank, both gauntlets ready, bulwark resonance forming a protective amber glow. He didn't try to injure, just to push the beast away from Kifah. The creature shifted by half a step—enough for Caelum to exploit the gap.
Caelum took it.
He charged, spear level, blue-white current running down the shaft because he couldn't afford to hold it any longer. He targeted the back of the knee where Dawson's cut had opened a line, drove the spearhead in as deep as it would go. He felt it punch through something softer under the hide. Current is discharged into the wound.
The cyclops convulsed—muscles locking, leg jerking. Reflexively, the wounded limb kicked backwards without thought. It caught Caelum dead in the chest.
The air left him completely. He was airborne for a second, maybe less, and then stone met his back, and his skull bounced off rock, and the whole chamber went bright and ringing. The spear was gone from his hands. He didn't know where.
"Ward!" Blancard, somewhere.
"I'm fine." He was already dragging himself up.
His ribs felt like they'd been rearranged. Copper flooded the back of his throat—the resonance taste he'd gotten used to hating by now. He got his feet under him and searched for the spear.
Across the chamber, Dawson was upright again. One arm hanging not quite right, pain pulling his face into something ugly. Still moving though. Caelum wasn't sure if that relief came from needing the firepower or from not wanting to watch him go down this early.
Probably both, and he didn't have time to think about which one mattered more.
The cyclops drew in a breath.
Caelum felt it before he understood it. The air changed. Got heavier, thicker, like the pressure before a storm, but compressed into a room. Hair stood up on his arms, across the back of his neck, and the creature's eye started glowing from somewhere inside—amber light building under the cloudy surface, building fast.
"Kifah!" Caelum yelled.
The cyclops opened its mouth, and what came out wasn't merely sound. It was force.
The chamber warped with it. The emergency lamps that the old research team had left behind died out one by one. The floor vibrated so hard that Caelum's vision shook. He sensed the pulse slam into his body like a fist through glass, his resonance splintering inside him, going uneven and wrong. Across the room, Dawson's plasma guttered out, and Éloise's water coil burst apart into useless spray.
Kifah came forward.
Not far. A pace, maybe less. Her hands were shaking, the bandages on her knuckles already going dark with fresh blood leaking through. She raised them anyway, and the Blank field unfolded.
The resonance wave hit the field and bent. It wasn't stopped or cancelled out, but blunted enough. The pressure went from skull-splitting to something they could survive. The howl broke apart against the edge of her null zone into ripples that pushed and shoved, but didn't destroy.
Kifah's face went white. Blood started running from her nose, a thin line down her lip and off her chin.