Tiny is the first up, leaping to his feet from where he sat at the entrance to the chamber, his muscles bunching with excitement as he does his little gorilla boxing shuffle, throwing mini-punches into the air. The ape is pumped up and ready to fight. In fact, even Invidia has allowed his Cheshire cat grin to appear. Seems like the whole crew is ready to rumble.
Who am I to deny them? We speed out of our chamber and race through the nest, taking the fastest route through the mighty gates—still being reinforced—and taking new paths deeper into the stratum. It’s hard to move too quickly in the second stratum, what with poisonous little barbs attached to almost everything we see. By now, we’ve become far more comfortable traversing the tunnels and we need fewer breaks to heal Tiny after he stumbles into something else that wants to kill him.
In this way, we make solid progress as we descend, clearing out tunnels and stripping them bare of Biomass. The pure black Mana pulses from the walls, filling the air like tar. I swear that it’s getting thicker. Is there going to be another wave soon? I get the feeling it’ll be harder to deal with this time, exposed to the second stratum, and the third beneath it, as we are now. If we can master the technique that Rylleh used to push the Dungeon veins out of their territory, we’ll manage to survive it much better. I should ask how we’re progressing with that the next time I get a chance.
For now, I don’t need to focus on such things. There’s only me, my pets, my babysitters, and the need to smash as many monsters in as short a time frame as possible. We need dat sweet, sweet experience! Elemental Constructs, whizzing with Mana, unleash all the Mana I have into our foes as we press forward. Slowly but surely, the Levels come.
In the third stratum…
“Do you know what we’re going up against?” Myrrin asked her friend.
Morrelia frowned and resisted the urge to spit.
“No,” she said sourly. “The old man loves his secrets. Aside from the fact we’re in the third stratum, I don’t even know where we are. I don’t think anyone does. The commander is keeping his cards close to his chest.”
The two remained standing to attention along with their full Legion as they awaited permission to exit the citadel they’d arrived in. Even though the Runic armour shielded them from the elements, the searing heat scalded their skin and the taste of ash filled their mouths. Morrelia had never been in the third stratum before, and she wasn’t particularly enjoying it now. That was an understatement. She’d barely seen any of the place, and she hated it.
The Legion was thoroughly drilled, to the point that when the commander strode into the hall in which they waited, not a one of them moved. But the tension in the air certainly raised a few notches.
“Finally,” Morrelia muttered as she moved forward with her fellow guards.
Her Centurion, a grizzled veteran named Pompeus, shot her a dark look and she sighed internally, knowing she’d get another grilling. She wished he wouldn’t waste his time. She’d done everything she could think of to get thrown off this duty, but Titus wasn’t having it. She had too much respect for the Legion to keep pushing the boundaries and had fallen into line, but a few muttered complaints were inevitable in this situation.
“We’ve got our marching orders,” the commander told them. “Form up the troops for an address, we move out in an hour.”
Auxiliaries were sent running to inform the Centurions, while Morrelia and her comrades fell into line behind the commander. She spotted Myrrin in the crowd and rolled her eyes, which caused the younger woman to stifle a laugh behind her visor.
In a matter of moments, things were ready, and a thousand heavily armoured, heavily armed members of the Abyssal Legion looked to their commander expectantly.
“Legionaries. Welcome to the first deployment of our newly formed Legion,” Titus announced. “We have many old faces from Liria, new recruits from around Pangera, and a smattering of veterans from the deep world. I welcome you all.”
He paused to stare at them, and each soldier met his eye with firm resolve.
“We’ve not had long to acclimate, only a few weeks. Like most units, the real work of forging us into a cohesive whole will be done in the fires of battle. We have been deployed to the Plains of Lang, directly beneath Old Liria. During the last wave, the local kingdoms were annihilated by a monster uprising, though there are several Dungeon communities that still stand.”
Morrelia’s stomach twisted upon hearing where they were. The ruins of Liria, the horrific army of the beast Garralosh. These were not pleasant memories.
“It appears as though the Dungeon hasn’t done enough damage here. We’ve been called in by allies in the Empire of Stone to deal with a local infestation. A colony of ants has taken hold of the area, several months old, and from what we understand, has evolved in a fairly unique way. We will reach the engagement zone in three days, at which time, we will launch a cooperative assault with our allies. Our goal is the complete and total extermination of the colony. Not a single insect is to survive the purge. Understood?”
A thousand fists crashed into a thousand chest plates. Morrelia followed suit, but inside, she grew numb. The colony? She was here to kill the colony? …Anthony?
73. Elementary my Dear… Deer
Dungeon warfare is probably the most studied and practised craft on Pangera. The Rending was a rude introduction to the intricacies of the three-dimensional conflict beneath the surface, but the sapient races of the surface proved to be quick studies, and basic strategies were established, most likely independently, all across the world.
Fighting monsters is always a losing prospect. They can’t be exterminated, they simply respawn, and nothing that is known will prevent the Dungeon from doing so, not on a global scale. But population control is possible and is the primary occupation of those who are tasked with defending the surface from a repeat invasion. By culling populations, scattering concentrations of spawn points, and draining Mana from areas of particular density.
These tactics can be effective, but the work is relentless. Without constant monitoring, depleted respawn points will reform elsewhere, populations will swell, and Mana will flow, like water, to pool in another location. War with the monsters is an exhausting, never-ending chore that all civilisations of Pangera must engage in ceaselessly.
But this is not the true conflict.
There are a multitude of empires, kingdoms, city-states, and alliances within the Dungeon, and their wars, battles, and spats are endless. Several historian colleagues of this author have spent decades attempting to map the history of inter-sapient conflicts and have floated the idea that there has been no time during the post-Cataclysm era, that all of Pangera has been at peace.
As stunning as it is to think about, the records appear to line up: there has never been a time when the Dungeon hasn’t been home to an inter-sapient conflict.
Which means the strategy of warfare within the Dungeon is a highly developed art form. Even the relatively simple act of breaching walls has become an intricate process. The more rigid the doctrines become, the more predictable the outcomes. It’s said that the Grand-Strategists can predict the outcomes of a decade-long war before the first blow is struck.
Regardless, it’s a fascinating area of study that I don’t think I’ll ever tire of.