Even the worms stopped. Eyeless heads turned toward the light, bodies freezing mid-writhe as something that might have been instinct—or might have been fear—rippled through their alien forms.

  Wymon hadn’t seen this power before. Not even when the Phoenix Company commander fully activated his battle intent. Glowing eyes, yes. Maybe a thrum of energy that choked the air with power. But wings? A halo?

  This was not the battle intent he knew.

  This was something else entirely.

  Had he been wrong about the girl? Was she, in fact, not using battle intent, but instead had access to a power he didn’t understand?

  Before he could even fully come to grips with what was happening—

  The black worms moved.

  All of them. At once.

  Not toward her. Not toward the soldiers. Toward each other.

  They streamed from the edges of the battlefield, flowing over corpses and debris with terrible purpose. More poured from gaps in the fortifications. Still more came slithering from the direction of the healing hall—an endless tide of glistening black shapes converging on a single point.

  Squelch. The first bodies merged, segments fusing with wet sounds that turned his stomach. Crack. Chitin plates snapped and reformed, growing denser, darker. Schlick-schlick-schlick. More joined. The mass bulged outward, pulsing like a diseased heart.

  It began elongating.

  What had been a writhing pile became a shape—a warped column of fused flesh that stretched toward the sky, thickening as more worms fed into its base. Ten feet tall. Fifteen. Twenty. The segments were larger now, each one as broad as a man’s chest, and the chitin that covered them had gone from black to something deeper. Something that swallowed light.

  Still, the worms came, and the thing grew.

  Thirty feet. Forty. Its girth was now wider than a cart, and still it expanded, segments clicking into place with sounds like breaking bones. A head began forming at the apex, a blunt mass of fused chitin that split down the middle to reveal a maw lined with teeth that had no business existing.

  The stench hit him all at once. Copper, rot, and something acrid that burned the back of his throat.

  Fifty feet now.

  And still more worms flowed in.

  Wymon’s grip on Thirteenth Wick went slack. The flames along its edge guttered, died. He couldn’t even muster the will to reignite them.

  This was how it ended.

  Not with glory. Not with a warrior’s death. With a monster that had to have come from the void itself, fed by its own death, and grown beyond anything they could hope to stop.

  They were all going to die.

  —- —- —- —-

  Hector’s feet beat across the ground, grass crunching as he moved, with Quiness on his right and Lincoln on his left. The horde bore down in front of him, clacking mandibles and shrieking.

  Somehow, all that seemed to pale in comparison to the heavy thumping coming from the large, tiny-headed colossus that moved at the back of the swarm, towering above the trees.

  It was far too big to have squeezed through the hole they’d collapsed when fleeing the hive.

  So how had it gotten here? How had such an enormous creature left the hive? It struggled enough to move between its various passages. Was it better at clearing holes than he’d given it credit for? If so, why hadn’t it killed the survivors quicker? Why hadn’t it taken them when he’d used [Blazing Arsenal] to trigger the cave collapse?

  It was annoying to have all these questions, and none of them answered.

  “We’re going to hit them soon,” Quiness said at his side, voice tight. Yet the maid didn’t display even a trace of worry on her face. It was as if they weren’t running into bugs that would tear them limb from limb as soon as one wrapped around them.

  Did she have an escape plan as well?

  Whilst his use of [Force Cry] and [Blazing Arsenal] could get them out of a pinch, he doubted that alone would be enough to secure at least a safe escape. And Quiness did not know that.

  So why so calm?

  To make sure he wasn’t the only one feeling the pressure, he glanced briefly to Lincoln, who puffed at his side, spear hitched on his shoulder. Lincoln’s face made much more sense. The colour had all but left it—a pale white—and even though his legs continued to carry him forward; it was clear he wanted to turn back, and at the drop of a hat probably would.

  “You alright there, Lincoln?” Hector said, forcing a little more confidence into his voice. Not that he had much to begin with. But that was the nature of a gamble.

  Lincoln nodded grimly, his lips pursed thin.

  An acceptable response, Hector supposed. He continued running; the egg pressed firmly at his side, its crystal surface biting through his tunic and rubbing against his skin. Would these creatures really stop in order to ensure it wasn’t hurt, or did they not care at all?

  He supposed the answer had to be care, because they wouldn’t assault the fort endlessly the way they did unless there was something in there that they wanted. That, or they really just didn’t like people on their land.

  If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  Which made some sense… maybe.

  A moment later, the horde was inches from them, consuming the distance as the seconds moved by. He readied himself to unleash a [Force Cry] when Quiness bolted forward.

  Grey robes fluttered behind her like storm clouds given cloth, snapping in the wind of her wake. Her arms splayed wide, fingers spread, palms open, and the air between them sang.

  Thin strands shimmered into existence. Mana itself or an armament—a difference that ultimately didn’t matter. Humming with contained violence, threading through the space before her in a web of lethal shape, the strands caught the light like spider silk, delicate yet deadly.

  Then they moved.

  Schlick.

  The first ant’s mandibles separated from its head, the cut so clean the pieces hung in the air for a heartbeat before gravity remembered them. Schlick-schlick-schlick. More strands lashed out, dancing through carapace like it wasn’t there, carving through the horde in ribbons of chitin and ichor. Legs tumbled. Heads rolled. Bodies collapsed in pieces that hadn’t yet realised they were dead.

  A furred mantis, Hector had dubbed them, lunged from the mass—all scything forelegs and compound eyes—and the threads simply wrapped.

  They coiled around it mid-leap, tightening in an instant.

  Crack-crack-crack.

  The creature came apart. Chunks of carapace sprayed outward, flesh separating along invisible seams, viscera painting the churned grass in streaks of yellow-green. What had been a predator became a rain of wiggling chunks.

  Hector’s eyes widened.

  He pressed on. On his left, Lincoln stumbled but kept pace. Ahead, Quiness moved through the swarm like a dancer through water, her threads singing their lethal song.

  “I’ll keep them off you as best I can,” the woman said, meeting his eyes as he drew alongside her. “Just do what you’re doing.”

  It made sense now. She had her escape plan. And it was simply to kill as many as possible and leave.

  With such strength, he never should have dismissed her as a mere maid. So the words came to mind as a matter of course: System scan her.

  The words manifested on screen.

  ————————————————

  ///: Acquiring target stats…

  ————————————————

  ///

  Cultivation level: [Gravity Forging - 5]

  Talent: [None]

  Talent Fragment: [None]

  ///

  ————————————————

  So she was at Gravity Forging-Five. He nodded, though something about that sat wrong. She displayed such a level of prowess that it was shocking, really. He would have put her more towards Gravity Forging-Seven. To be only one minor realm above him...

  Was the dividing line really that large?

  He hadn’t seen this kind of strength from Emela, but then again, she didn’t have a mana armament—if that was indeed what Quiness was using. So who was to say what she was fully capable of if she unleashed all she had?

  To the side, Hector spotted movement.

  His palm crackled with purple static, a blade manifesting as he lashed out in a wide sweep. The ant barely let out a cry as the edge cleaved it in two, the chunks slumping with wet crunches to the ground as Hector continued pushing forward.

  How far into the horde would they actually need to go before the swarm stopped attacking? Would they even stop? Had they noticed the egg clutched within his grip?

  The ants clearly hadn’t. They continued with fury, as if wanting to tear him apart, and each one he cut down with successive grunts simply added to the growing pile—no doubt being consumed by the horde that was slowly encircling them.

  “Hector, I don’t know how long I’m gonna be able to hold out.” And there was the usual gripe from Lincoln. How was it that in every fight they entered, he seemed not to know how long he’d be able to hold out, yet would do just fine at the end of it?

  No, he couldn’t dwell on such a matter now.

  Skidding to a stop, he barked, “Quiness—hold them here.”

  The woman’s threads lashed out, glinting through the air as they shredded through more bugs.

  How would he do in a fight against her?

  Probably not well.

  Lincoln skidded to a stop next to him a breath later, spear levelled at an approaching furred mantis.

  Hector didn’t even give it a chance. He willed Blazing Arsenal to bubble to life beneath it.

  The ground roiled.

  Orange light bloomed from the ruined soil, the earth turning and bubbling over—a pool of molten rock materialising where solid ground had been, its surface popping with lazy bubbles that sputtered and spat gobbets of liquid fire. The beginnings of a fireball gathered above it.

  The mantis’s momentum carried it forward. Its legs found nothing, while its face ate flame. Then it dropped. Barely an inch, but more than enough.

  The shriek that followed was almost human—high and piercing and wrong—before the heat could finish its work. The surface churned, bubbled, boiled. Chitin blackened. Flesh smoked. The creature’s body convulsed once, twice—

  Then rocketed upward.

  Steam and pressure launched the half-melted corpse into the air in a geyser of burnt chunks and heated gas. It tumbled end over end, limbs already fused into unrecognisable shapes, before slamming down into the rising horde. Bugs scattered. Others weren’t fast enough—catching the impact, crumpling beneath the weight of their dead kin.

  “Lincoln—Mudwall. Now.”

  “To block what?” The boy replied, not even turning to face him.

  “Not to block. To elevate.”

  Dropping his spear, Lincoln fell to his knees and shoved his palms into the ruined grass that was now more mud than anything. His fingers sank beneath it with a wet squelch, knuckles disappearing into the earth.

  A moment later, the ground rumbled.

  A wall sprang to life—earth and stone and compressed, surging upward in a wave of displaced soil. The horde slammed into it with chittering screeches, mandibles scraping chunks from the barrier.

  Hector exploded off the ground a second later.

  He landed on top of the wall, his sword dissipating as he raised the egg high toward the large, towering beetle. Its green eyes hummed with an energy he could feel prickling against his skin, pressing at the edges of his awareness like fingers testing a bruise.

  “You want this, don’t you?” He yelled over the screeching. “You want it? Get any closer, and I’ll break it!”

  The effect was instant.

  The swarm froze.

  Mandibles that had been mid-snap locked in place. Legs that had been scrabbling at the wall went still. An ant that had been lunging at Quiness hung suspended, its momentum arrested by something deeper than muscle or instinct.

  Silence crashed down like a physical weight.

  The large beetle raised its small head, compound eyes fixing on him with an intelligence that had no business existing in something so alien. The prickling sensation intensified—not painful, but present, like being watched by something vast and patient.

  Then—

  A distant sound. Flapping.

  It came from behind the beetle, deeper in the forest, growing louder by the second. Thwump-thwump-thwump. Wings beating air into submission.

  A winged shadow tore across the sky.

  It moved too fast to track—a blur of darkness against the grey clouds—and then it crashed down just in front of the wall. The impact was catastrophic.

  Bugs died in the dozens, carapaced bodies pulverised by the shockwave, their forms hurtling outward in a spray of shattered chitin and wet viscera. Slapping crunches and sopping splatter. Fragments punched into their kin, breaking more bodies, creating a cascade of destruction that rippled outward in concentric circles of carnage.

  Hector’s ears rang as the dust began settling. This level of destruction was unreal.

  And then something unfolded itself from the resulting crater.

  Wings first—vast membranous things that spread outwards like a curtain. Then arms, humanoid but wrong, jointed in too many places. A torso rose from the crouch, feminine in shape but scaled in patches, the texture somewhere between chitin and skin.

  She straightened.

  She.

  Because despite everything, despite the horn that curved from her forehead like a blade given bone, despite the tail that extended from her lower back—thick and spiked and swaying with lazy menace—and despite the compound pattern in those green eyes that marked her as something other than human...

  She was shaped like a woman.

  Beautiful, even, in the way a storm was beautiful. In the way, a drawn blade was beautiful.

  “Human,” she said.

  The word wasn’t spoken. No, it thrummed through his mind.

  Patreon. For some casule discusion you can find me on