Not much choice. Alice ran back down the stairs until she found the right doorway, and sprinted out onto the bridge. Below her, the small creatures attacking the apprentices had been joined by a pack of much larger things. The little ones turned out to be fish, not bats, with broad, sail-like fins. The bigger creatures were more like dolphins, but with a green sac where the dorsal fin ought to have been. They maneuvered agilely through the air with their flippers. When one of them darted toward the apprentices, Alice saw it bare a mouth full of nasty teeth. Dex ducked and it sailed just over her head. Garret caught the next one with a shadow-wave, and it fell screeching past the bridge and into the darkness.

They’ll be all right. Alice slowed her headlong run, trotting along the side of her own bridge to keep the battle in view. She was trying to gauge the point at which she should jump—the fall would be forty or fifty feet, which ought to be all right if she hardened herself with the Swarm. Unless, of course, she missed the bridge entirely, in which case it wouldn’t matter how tough her skin was. Maybe this isn’t such a good idea after all.

Something moaned, a vast, terrifying sound that echoed off the rocky spires and seemed to come from a hundred directions at once. Everyone below froze, looking around for the source of the noise, while the attacking creatures scattered in all directions like startled minnows. Alice was close enough now to hear Ellen shouting and to follow her pointing finger, down into the darkness.

An enormous, bloated thing rose out of the darkness, lit by its own pale green illumination. It looked like a deformed, rotting whale, covered with huge, scabby lumps. Five stalks protruded from its forehead, like the antennae on a slug, and as all five aimed down at the apprentices, Alice realized those must be its eyes. Enormous, fleshy lips peeled back from interlocking triangular teeth like the blade of a hacksaw. Its tail flipped lazily, propelling it above the bridge and then down toward the apprentices.

“Get out of the way,” Alice heard Garret yell.

“But—” Ellen began. He shoved her aside.

“Go. Now!”

Even from her high perch, Alice could feel the tension as he pulled hard on his threads. Shadows raced toward Garret from all directions, wrapping his body in shivering darkness. Waves of shadow, like rippling black ink, fell all around him, until he became a black splotch against the torchlit stone. Then he unfolded into a humanoid figure, twice the height of a man, shreds of blackness swarming and boiling around it.