The climb was three hundred meters of vertical hell.
Chinedu's fighters scrambled up the rock face in clusters of two and three, bleeding hands grabbing at stone that crumbled under their weight, boots slipping on slick mineral deposits while Slashers snapped at their legs from below. The ones who'd made it highest were sixty meters up and already exhausted, arms shaking, armor dragging them down, every handhold a negotiation between gravity and the desperate need to not be in the basin anymore.
The basin had become a pit.
The Colossus had stopped chasing Chinedu's squad. The massive creature had turned its attention to easier prey, and easier prey was everywhere. A fighter who'd fallen from Nyx's second boulder lay crumpled against a slab of dark stone, trying to drag himself toward the wall with one working arm. The Colossus found him and he was trampled to death.
Stacy was thirty meters up when her arm gave out.
