Jareth Stonekeep's followers operated like a miniature natural phenomenon. They weren't miners in the way. Instead they communicated with the stone using instruments that combined -fall sonic technology and old goblin-forged devices vibrating with sympathetic resonance. Under the cover of darkness led by Celeste's talent for detecting the "pulse" of corruption, alongside the mountain's rhythms they commenced their task.
Cassiathon observed from a ledge as the goblins shifted. They didn't carve a trench. Instead they persuaded the rock to split. Sonic emitters arranged in a sequence sent vibrations through the bedrock detecting tiny cracks and expanding them with a sound resembling a far-, off avalanche. Trailing behind groups carrying tools emitting an amber glow refined and directed the fall.
"They aren't battling the mountain " Celeste murmured next, to him her eyes shut as she observed the movement of energies. "They're requesting it to release a scale. It's... Reverent."
It happened with speed. By daybreak a wide walled fissure extended from the boundary of the Thorn-Blight to the opening of a large inactive lava conduit, on the northern ridge. The blight appeared to be aware of its looming doom; the glassy thorns. The obsidian tendrils whipped through the air without a sound.
"The slide " Jareth's voice broke through a communicator. "Ready when you are."
The Angel of Death remained positioned at the edge of the abyss gazing upon the corruption. He did not lift his scythe. Instead he fixed his eyes on the junction where the alien growth joined the rock. His intent, the notion of division of a sharp severance, exerted pressure.
With a sound like a giant's bone snapping, the entire mass of the Thorn-Blight sheared away from the mountain face.
"Right now!" Jareth shouted.
At the edge of the abyss his team set off their last explosives. A planned portion of the lava tubes roof gave way. The mountain rumbled.. Gravity seized control.
The hideous throbbing blob of decay plunged into the crevice with a screeching grind, driven by the tremor. It fell into the lava tunnel's depths trailed by a cascade of debris and loose stones as Jareth's group closed the gateway, behind it. Within moments only a new exposed wound marked the mountain and an empty quiet grave lay beneath.
The persistent uneasy tension, in the atmosphere disappeared. The refuge exhaled a breath of ease it had been unknowingly retaining.
Jareth climbed hastily to the ledge brushing stone powder, off his shoulders. "Finished. Its entombed beneath three hundred feet of basalt. No roots, no signal. It will perish in a hundred or two centuries."
It was a victory. A clean, surgical removal. It felt like his father's way. But the method—the cooperation, the understanding of the mountain, the pragmatic violence of the burial—felt like something new. A third way.