For a while she saw nothing, and then – as if a blindfold had been ripped from her eyes – she dropped out of the cloudy blankness and into the battle below. The sight made her catch her breath and brake, backpedalling with her wings.

The shapewalkers from the Breach were in full attack. They swooped in lines down to the spot on the mountainside where Noxis had opened the tunnel. Roars and yowls of fury followed them, bouncing off the granite walls in overlapping echoes.

Below them were a crowd of gloopy seepers spreading from the tunnel and down a narrow path to the swamp below.

Standing on half-formed legs, they reached up with arm-like tendrils that lashed the air. Pantherines and cockatrices were dodging the filthy whip-arms and slashing with their own claws, jaws and beaks, tearing streams of gluey rot from the seepers and spattering it against the mountainside.

Judging by the thick coating of smoking goo, many seepers had already been destroyed, but more kept coming through the tunnel mouth.

From where she hovered, Liska had a glimpse of Noxis himself, waving his arms, trying to conjure up tree vines or roots to help his army. But he was on rock, not soil, and there was nothing for him to work with.

We got here in time, thought Liska. He won’t be able to keep this up. We’re going to win!

Even as the thought entered her head, she saw something else appear in the tunnel entrance. A different creature, much worse than the seepers.

Stooping, crawling, it was trying to force its way through the tiny gap. Out poked a hand, an arm . . . the thing was massive. If it got through, it would dwarf the seepers. It might turn the tide of the battle.

A gorgaunt, thought Liska. It must be.

Hulking giants, the size of ten men or more, the gorgaunts were made from poisoned fungus grown from the roots of Bitterblight itself. They had stubby, half-formed limbs, heads that bulged from neckless shoulders. Their faces were melted lumps of fungus, their shambling bodies covered in layers of overlapping toadstools like scales on a fish. They stomped and crushed everything in their path: mindless, relentless. Liska had seen them in pictures during her combat training. You could stab them, slice chunks off them, burn them . . . they would just keep on storming forwards. The only way to fight them, she remembered, was to drop rocks and boulders on them from the air. Smash their soft, mushroomy flesh into pulp.

But the shapewalkers were too busy swooping and clawing at the seepers. They hadn’t noticed what was scrambling its way through the tunnel.

‘Gorgaunt!’ Liska yelled. ‘Gorgaunt in the tunnel!’

Nobody seemed to hear her. She had to get closer.