Page 2403

((The Father's Day Special -- page 19 of 24))
Hector stopped trying to collect the spawn so that he could instead focus on just counting them. Between keeping track of the non-servants, the Rainlords, Roman up in the sky, and fighting and capturing the dozens of spawn that were swarming them, Hector couldn't spare yet another thought process for counting, too. Something had to be sacrificed to make room for it, so the collection was put on pause.

And as he counted, Hector became increasingly certain that there were fewer spawn here than there had been in the cave. Not a lot, though. Only a handful, maybe.

But that begged an important question. Where were they? They weren't in his collection. He'd made sure to count them, too.

They must've been with Chort underground, right? But doing what? Why would Chort be holding any of them back? If its objective was to overwhelm them so that he could summon another storm, it should've been sending all of its spawn. So why wasn't it?

Well, there was one answer that Hector could think of.

He didn't have long to dwell on it, though, before it was confirmed for him.

The ground heave up from beneath everyone's feet, then plummeted immediately back down--and it didn't stop. It kept falling.

The entire section of the forest lurched and slid down, sinking scores of trees into a freshly dug pit.

That was what Chort had been up to. Trying to destroy their footing. What better way to throw them off balance than to eliminate the very thing they were all standing on?

If Hector hadn't seen it coming at the last moment, they would've been down there with all those uprooted trees and shattered boulders. Instead, a hovering iron platform was keeping everyone aloft where the ground had just been.

And man. This was not easy. There were more people here than he'd ever supported on a hovering platform before. And there were several spawn still leaping and spitting at them.

Agh.