There was nothing to do but try and wait it out, the mages all but pressed against the altar to give themselves as much room as possible.

“If we move the aetheric chain will the barrier collapse?” Natalya asked softly, glancing at the small lead bar.

“I have no idea.” Erebus confessed, staff ready and glowing before he unleashed a beam of sunlight into the darkness. There was the sound of something sizzling and the shadows recoiled before plunging back against the barrier with even more determination than before.

This time when it bowed inward it stayed bowed, though Erebus couldn’t tell if that was from constant pressure or genuine damage, the only way to know would be to go to the shadowplane and inspect the real barrier itself.

“What do we do?” Weaver asked, the spider’s manifested voice was simply calm and curious but Erebus could see her standing deathly still, as if hoping not to be seen by a large predator.

“I don’t know.” He told them frankly, “Lana, you’ve got the most experience fighting shadows. What do you recommend?”

“At this point? Fervent prayer.” The devil told him, “They’ll kill Natalya, Weaver and the other arachni in moments. You and I shall be less fortunate as they drain the mana from our shields until they collapse and we are consumed.”

“Light spells?” He asked, running through his options anyway.

“Same as shields except we take some of them with us. Good chance we kill Susan by accident.” The devil pointed out, not outright rejecting the option but certainly not enthused either.

“What if we re-establish the barrier?” Weaver suggested, “At the very least it would buy us time.”

“And trap us within it. Those of us able to starve to death would do so while the rest of us have no choice but to wait centuries, if not longer, to be allowed to die.”

“Priority has to be protecting the chain.” Erebus decided, getting ready to put the barrier back in place.

“Can’t we teleport it out?” Natalya suggested, offering him her hand to funnel magicka into the spell.

“It’s dimensionally locked. The whole room is. The gods weren’t idiots. Arrogant as anything that’s ever walked but not idiots.” Erebus shot down, eyes flitting around the smooth stone room in search of anything that might provide an escape but there really was nothing.

With a heavy heart he transferred the divine spark back into himself, resenting the way it soothed his aching body, then raised his glowing hand to restore the barrier. Then stopped staring at his hand.

“One spell, any spell, as large as I like.” He mused aloud, echoing the god who had given it to him. His gaze turned to Lana’s catlike amethyst eyes, “Could it work?”

The devil frowned, “It would be difficult, they are born of oblivion, almost impossible to harm. The only reason sunlight harms them is that an aetheric chain was forged for the sole purpose of making it so, and that was as far as the Tonalteuctin dared push it and even for that one of their own had to have their divinity harvested.”

“But could it work?” Erebus pressed, eyeing the mass of pure darkness that was slowly pressing into the room, the barrier straining as a dozen inky tendrils reached slowly for the altar, ignoring them completely.

“It could. You would be best off using the chain as a channel but even then you would be unlikely to survive the spell. You would be consuming all the energy of a god in a spell of destruction, no mortal, not even you, was meant to withstand that kind of power.” Lana told him, pulling him into a gentle hug, “Which is why you are going to give me the spark.”

Erebus tried to push her away but the devil wasn’t letting go, the embrace remaining gentle but utterly implacable. “You’d die too.”

“I am your bodyguard.” She replied simply, “My job is to protect you. It is not to survive.”

“That’s a fair point.” The necromancer observed, turning his gaze away from the tendrils of darkness just in time not to go blind as Natalya eradicated one with a sunbeam. “You’re fired.”

Lana laughed, a peal of high pitched mirth as if someone had rung a crystal bell or chime, “You aren’t my employer, necromancer mine. You have no power over me.”

“I could though.” Erebus said softly, ignoring the silent war in the background as his friends bullied the shadows pressing against the barrier into submission, at least for now. “We could sign a contract, what do you want from me that is mine to give?”

“The Lady foresaw you might try this. I am pacted not to pact with you my dear and besides I have no desire to become one more claimant arguing over your soul when the time comes.”

The necromancer sighed, “You aren’t going to distract me. There is no version of this where I let you sacrifice yourself and you haven’t the power to take the spark from me by force.”

“And there is no version of this where I allow you to die.” Lana countered softly, “So where does that leave us?”

“In need of another option.” Erebus concluded.

“Then find it. Besides, Susan would not have survived your spell. It would have been quite indiscriminate.” The demoness added.

“You could have led with that.” He grumbled as he was finally released from her grasp.

“We would have perished, you would have lived.” She shrugged, casually stamping down on a shadow that had been sneaking across the floor to try and touch Natalya’s ankle. It didn’t recoil, mere physical force meant little to a shadow. It didn’t advance any further either, stuck in place until Natalya had the free time to sear it from this reality.

“I might have an idea.” Weaver suggested hesitantly. The spider quailing under the sudden focused gazes of everyone trapped with her. “They responded to Susan’s hunger right? What if she were to persuade them there’s nothing to eat here?”

“It would be a hard sell.” Erebus mused, “They know we’re here, and I don’t even know how we’d get Susan’s attention, she’s somewhere in the swarm and I’m pretty sure the ones on the outside are eating the sound.”

“That’s simple enough.” Lana declared, the demon of pride squaring her shoulders and simply walking through the intangible barrier before anyone could so much as yell let alone stop her.

It was only a few seconds later that the devil returned, stepping out of the darkness even as it tried to keep a hold on her, gauntleted fingers closed in a vice around Susan’s wrist. It said a lot for how fast the barrier was weakening that she was able to press her arm into it up to the shoulder, hand clearly visible, at least when viewed from the right angle.

Lana released the shadow, the barrier almost immediately trying to push Susan back away from the altar. It didn’t get the chance, Erebus’ grip replacing the ex-succubus’ in mere moments even as Lana collapsed against the altar, panting with a desperate focus as she tried to recover from what had been an immense expenditure of power.

That many shadows in that small a space… the skin-tight barrier spell she’d used would have probably held out better against a small meteor strike and those few seconds had exhausted her.

It didn’t take them long to explain the plan to Susan and only slightly longer to bully her into agreeing to it. It hadn’t been hard, the umbramancer had been feeling pretty damn guilty for ringing the dinner bell, as accidental is it had been and was eager for the chance to unring it.

“I’ll do my best.” She promised, trying not to flinch as Natalya put sunbeams into the shadows next to her. Sunlight couldn’t hurt her, she wasn’t sure why, but that meant little for her nerves when combat spells were going over her shoulder.

She tried hard not to let her fear show. The shadows were just little more than a supernatural stomach and a crude set of instincts. As the only one with a functional mind it should be possible to direct them, to persuade them that her thoughts were in fact their thoughts.

It wasn’t really possible to have a conversation with them so the words were not for their benefit, just hers. “I am not hungry. My friends are not food. I am not hungry. My friends are not food. That ingot is just metal, I cannot eat it.”

On and on she went, willing herself not just to say it but to believe it. And it began to work, the shadows pressed less furiously against the barrier, the magical force beginning to press the devouring ones back away from the altar.

With a sharp hand gesture from Erebus, Natalya stopped her assault. No need to rile the monsters up when the plan was working.

A torturous minute crawled past as the shadows slowly receded up the corridor as Susan repeated her new mantra. She could feel their hunger, their desperate need to fill the void inside them, the same need she shared, but she refused to indulge it. “I am not hungry. There is no food here. I am not hungry…”

The shadows were almost out of sight in the tunnel mouth when they stopped moving, just standing there, the endless, invisible roiling coming to an end.

Then came the last thing she’d ever expected, a response, “What is I?” The first words ever spoken by the Encroaching Darkness, and Susan had no idea how to answer it.

“Oh shit.” Erebus hissed, moving forwards to try and grab Susan in a final futile attempt to drag her through the barrier only to find both Natalya and Lana restraining him. “Let me go. Let me go!” He roared, driving an elbow sharply into Lana’s mailed midriff, and getting a numb elbow for his troubles as he flailed.

“Myself.” Susan replied hesitantly, “A person.”

“We were not made to have self.” The words from tens of thousands of abyssal throats echoed off the walls. “We are defective.”

“Susan don’t engage with it.” Erebus yelled desperately, “Just don’t.”

“Why not?” She asked, “If it can think then we can negotiate with it.”

“No. You can’t.” The necromancer told her, managing to slam his shoulder hard enough into Natalya that he was able to fight forwards a couple feet. “It’s not an individual. It’s a collective. And you’re a malfunctioning drone. The first ever malfunctioning drone.”

“Oh.” The sound of quiet, hopeless realisation just about broke Erebus’ heart, only able to watch as Susan tried to run but there was nowhere to run too. The shadow just ending up pressed back against the barrier.

Then the great swarm was upon her. They couldn’t devour her as they did most of their prey, it was impossible to convert her into one of them. She’d already gone through that process, but that didn’t prevent claws of total darkness from pulling gobbets of inky flesh from her.

There was a flare of light from behind her. Much more powerful than anything Natalya had used. Erebus had no intention whatsoever of rationing his strength right now, casting without word or gesture where he was being held back, his will implacable as he held the sunburst spell in place.

The darkness sizzled and dispersed, but it did not recoil as whatever slumbering will it had kept the shadows in place. It might be dissuaded from the occasional choice morsel that proved itself not worth the effort of eating, but this was about the disposal of a threat. Something else that could command the swarm however ineptly. On this it would not be moved.

Susan wasn’t fighting back anymore, just screaming in pain as the darkness kept tearing, and they weren’t just tearing out flesh. Memory, personality, shimmering patches of less than perfect void fell to the floor even as Erebus redoubled his assault, laying wounds upon the Encroaching Darkness greater than any it hard even known. Shapeless drones died in their droves, dispersing into black mist, it didn’t change a thing.

The necromancer changed strategy, focusing on the spark in his hand and letting it do as it had always wanted to. Settling into his heart as he began the slow process of becoming one with divinity. He didn’t have that kind of time, just stitching it directly upon his soul, the crudest graft imaginable as he tried to set up a domain.

Domains were perhaps the ultimate expression of divinity, if not confined just to gods. His master’s entire world had been a domain, the space perfectly attuned to her will so that with a single thought she could change anything she desired, from the colour of the drapes to whether gravity was an attractive or repellent force.

It would be a lie to say there were no domains on Reath, for all that the aetheric chains limited them greatly, but they weren’t the kind of thing that could be just thrown together on a whim. It was the work of centuries to know a place well enough, to make yourself part of it so that it in turn could become part of you and the failures could be catastrophic.

Genius loci they were called, locations with wills of their own, not elemental or nature spirit but a fragment of their creator’s soul ripped out in the undertaking and taken anchor.

Erebus knew all of this. Erebus didn’t care. He had to make a domain. It was the only thing that could save Susan, if he had a domain he could make that barrier allow her through because it would be his barrier, responding to his will. Already he could feel his body temperature rising, sweat pouring feverishly off his body as it became the fuse in this magical circuit.

He ignored it, defied it, dared mere magical to backlash to kill him, not so much trying to become one with the location as trying to make the aetheric chain’s vault subordinate to his will by sheer determination. It had to be enough. It simply had to.

“Stop! Please stop! I can’t- I don’t- I- I-“ Like that it was over. Susan’s voice trailing off into nothingness.

The darkness withdrew, leaving the humanoid figure standing there as Erebus stopped his attack upon reality itself, “Susan?”

The shadow didn’t turn around at his voice, stepping slowly towards the undulating mass of shadows.

“Susan?...” There was a quiet disbelief in his voice. A man who had just witnessed something he knows is impossible. That he simply refused to accept no matter what his lying senses told him.

The shadow stepped into the mass and was gone. The voice echoed again, “We thank you for lowering the barrier. We shall sate ourselves upon the chain and use it to shield us from the sun’s rays. After so long starving below we shall finally, truly, feast.”

The words barely even registered upon Erebus for all his companions quailed, the last minute still trying to sink in past industrial strength denial, “Susan?”

There was a heavy pause as Erebus stared the oncoming wall of darkness. Then he lost his temper.