“Protectant, get your people stealthed and get the heck out of here! Get behind me!”
Luckily, nobody decides to take this moment to question me. Tiny swings his massive arms to create space and leaps behind me, dragging Invidia along in one meaty fist. Crinis slithers back to my carapace, but at the same time weaves her Shadow Magic to suck away the little light left in the room. The ten babysitter ants that revealed themselves break away and scuttle along the walls, racing behind me as they fade back out of view.
[Tiny, punch the roof! Invidia, help him out!]
Tiny unfurls his wings and leaps upward, slamming into the stone overhead with one colossal fist, just as more explosions detonate around him.
[Crinis, pull us out!]
[Yes, Master!]
An ominous rumble echoes from overhead as Crinis extends her limbs to grasp each of us, and then grab the tunnel ahead. She slingshots us forward as an ominous crack sounds out and the stone shatters, collapsing and burying the tunnel in a tidal wave of tons of rubble that envelops us.
What had only moments ago been a furious fight is now nothing but darkness and pressure. This really hurts. I mean, I don’t really mind being surrounded by dirt and stone, but this is a little more claustrophobic than I’m used to.
[You guys okay?]
[I am alright, Master.]
[You’re so squishy, you probably didn’t lose any HP.]
[That’s rude.]
[Sorry. How about you, Tiny? Invidia?]
[He isss heavily wounded.]
[Try and heal him up, I’ll dig my way to you.]
Wearily, I pull together an Earth Mana Construct and begin to weave some spells to try and create a little space for my mandibles to move and soften up the solid rock. It takes some time, but gradually I’m able to create space by chomping up the stone, pushing it behind me with my legs and compressing it there. When I finally make my way to where Tiny is buried, I find the big ape collapsed on top of Invidia, shielding the eyeball with his body from the stone that crushed his back.
The two of us manage to heal him up, and I wiggle my way to the front to continue digging us out. The entire time, I can’t help but wonder what exactly happened back there. Super powerful armoured soldiers? Morrelia there with them? What’s happening? And if there are two groups of these soldiers, then are there more? What about back in the nest? Have the golgari come?
I’m worried. Buried in the stone as we slowly chew our way out, I’m very worried.
77. The Fire and Steel
When he’d rounded the corner and seen the swarm of insects bear his daughter to the ground, Titus felt the Mana in his blood ignite with rage. When they’d fled, and the ape monster brought down the tunnel, burying his Legionaries, burying Morrelia in tons of stone, it wasn’t fire, but ice that filled his veins.
The roar of fury that tore from the commander was only defeated by the roar of the planet itself as the tunnel collapsed. Without pause, Titus dropped his axe and charged forward, tearing into the rock with his bare hands.
The axe, warm and ready for the blood of battle, began to cool, disappointment flooding its fiery soul. Next time, it promised itself.
The other members of the commander’s personal guard, along with the Legionaries following behind, rushed in to assist. Titus saw none of it, heard none of it. All he saw was his daughter vanishing beneath the rubble. His muscles screamed and the metal of his Legionary armour groaned as he reached out with his armoured hands to pull away tons of rock at a time. He worked with such concentrated fury that the others were forced to step away, lest they be crushed by a stray boulder.
Titus worked as if possessed, without fatiguing in the slightest. When he uncovered a red-armoured foot, he redoubled his efforts, moving even faster when Earth Magic specialists arrived to assist. Morrelia was unconscious, her helmet half-jammed back onto her head, protecting her just enough. Even so, blood ran from her nose as Titus hauled her from the rubble and into the waiting arm of the medics.
There was nothing more he could do for her, so Titus turned back to retrieve the rest of his Legion.
“Tunnel collapse, nasty business,” Alberton muttered.
Titus didn’t reply. The two men sat outside a hastily erected med-post, waiting for word that Morrelia had awoken. It’d taken several hours to clear the tunnel completely. No sign of enemy casualties was found, not even ichor. There was evidence that they’d dug themselves free, along with residual traces of Earth Mana, Healing Mana, and another, unknown Mana source. That last one was causing a great deal of muttering amongst the mages.
“I’m sure she’ll be fine, Titus,” Alberton tried to comfort his friend.
Titus wasn’t listening.
“Have you ever read of an ant-type monster cultivating pets?” Titus asked, his brow furrowed and eyes distant.
The Loremaster looked at his old friend as if he were on stimulants.
“No? I don’t even need to reference the records to check that. No known pattern of ant behaviour includes pet rearing. It’s just not how they operate.”
Titus’ eyes flickered as he put himself back in that moment, running down the tunnel, axe in hand. Morrelia had been attacked, but beyond her were others, an ape, a shadow being, and a large ant.
“I’m confident in what I saw,” Titus said. “A large ant, probably tier five, with two, possibly more pets, each tier four or five.”
Alberton became frozen in shock.
“Tier five? An ant-type?” he muttered. “But that’s… absurd! How would one ant accrue the kind of resources to evolve that far, and so quickly?”
“Don’t forget the pets,” Titus said, his voice low and intense.
“Yes, yes. The pets also. That’s a staggering amount of experience… It just doesn’t make sense. The Biomass necessary would allow for hundreds of individual ants… Let me think now. Have any known species recorded a non-insect resource expenditure…”
The wizened old Legionary continued to think out loud, half-finished sentences referencing the dozens of books on ant-type monster morphology he’d studied over the last month. It mattered little to Titus, he had what he wanted.
The very first encounter they’d had with this infestation, and it already showed multiple paths of divergence from known Dungeon patterns. That gave him pause. It was known for thousands of years that the Dungeon didn’t make wholesale changes to successful, recorded species. Slight changes, occurring over hundreds of years, was the normal, expected sequence. Whatever this was, it wasn’t normal.
With a loud crash that startled the Loremaster from his thoughts, Titus brought his mailed fist down on his armoured knee and stood. This action signalled strategists, advisors, and Centurions who’d been lurking nearby to rush toward him, babbling for attention. He silenced all of them with a glare.
“I want our position fortified right here,” he ordered. “Get the medics in place as a priority. I want logistics established within six hours and bridge-link in ten. Provisional gate can be erected one kilometre down tunnel.”
As he spoke, people peeled off from the small crowd, sprinting to pass on orders.
“I need geomancers and Dungeon seers in every scout group and I want those scouts out yesterday. We’ve had contact with the target colony, any move upward from here might take us into combat, I want all squads to act accordingly.”
He turned and spoke to Aurillia, waiting to one side.
“Once we have further contact, I want you to liaise with the golgari representative as soon as you can. They aren’t telling us something and I want to know what it is before it gets my Legionaries killed.”