The ground beneath their feet shook with gigantic footfalls from the next chamber, and soon after this chamber’s lightgems shattered in a burst of cyan light. Pillars began rocketing up all the way to the ceiling, seemingly targeting the locusts; most missed altogether, took with them a limb, whilst three hit dead-on, smearing a beetle-boar and two Locust Nobles across the ceiling. Still, most of the assailants were unscathed, and even the two Locust Nobles who had lost an arm just kept going as if nothing had happened.

In fact, they became even more aggressive, weaving through the rising forest of pillars, trailing a miasma of pheromones for their subordinates to follow.

A mighty voice comparable to the thundering of an earthquake shouted a wordless cry from beyond the door, followed swiftly by an earthshaking impact that sent cyan-glowing cracks spidering across its stone surface. Then, another, and another. Something on the other side was trying to break down the door. 

Thump. Thump. Thump.

Unwilling to hedge her life on the door getting broken down before the locusts would reach them, Zel took a moment to restart the Breath Engine. One of the beetle-boars charged far ahead of the pack, its pincers snapping. Zef shot it, but the bullet only cracked its incredibly thick armor. 

“It’s fine, focus on the Nobles and Spitters,” Zel said, pulling the Butcher free once again, not waiting for a response before she ran right at the boar. She was still in pain and suffering with muscle spasms just frequent enough to be annoying, but it changed nothing about what she needed to do. If anything, it just motivated her to get rid of what excess Fulgur she was still charged with.

The beast saw her charging and released a gust of steaming breath, opening its pincers wide and changing direction to a collision course with the beast-slayer. Dragging her blade against the floor saw-side forward, Zelsys willed its sawteeth to wake only a few steps before she would collide with the boar. Then, it was half a lung’s breath to throw herself into a forceful forward jump right over the thing’s pincer-tusks.

It twisted its head in an attempt to catch her, snapping its pincers shut, but all it did was make sure the Butcher wouldn’t slip off before it split its head wide open. Zel felt the vibrations of the saw ripping through meat and bone, readily landing by the beast’s side when the resistance overwhelmed her momentum. She grasped the black-stone handle with both hands, pulling it back as the mutant animal thrashed about, wildly snapping its pincers and squealing bloody murder. 

Chunks of chitin, flesh, and fur, fragments of bone, even mulched brain matter sprayed forth in every which direction as the screaming saw ripped its way through the beetle-boar’s head, frying the brain to mush well before it could be physically destroyed. And still, Zelsys struggled to pull the Butcher free, so resilient was the combination of boar skull and chitin plating. 

One of the surviving Locust Nobles took notice, weaving between a number of pillars with a substantial black-stone axe gripped in his hands and ready to kill. Before Zelsys could decide on how to deal with him, a lance of flaming lead and gunsmoke turned his head to mush. The corpse toppled over under the weight of its weapon, bloody bubbles forming around its mouth as it began to speak in perfect Ikesian, of the sort used by those who knew the language fluently but hadn’t lived among its native speakers.

“The world does not revolve around you,” the dying locust gurgled, “it will not change just because you will it...”

Zel scoffed, finally ripping the cleaver free just in time to defend herself from one of the bug-deer. She caught its antler-shield with the Butcher’s edge, its convenient launcher-rest groove now serving to stabilize her blade. With her focus switched to the edge, the sawteeth fell silent and it went through the colour spectrum of hot iron, from dark red to bright red to orange. Vile-smelling smoke rose from the creature’s antler-shield, the blood that coursed through it spilling out and evaporating whilst the bug-deer emitted truly horrific noises.

Exhaling a lungful, she kicked the bottom of the deer’s jaw to drive the Butcher’s red-glowing blade through the antler-shield and into its skull. One more push to cut its head in two, and it crumpled to the ground. No enemy in sight, but she could hear them between the thunderous strikes that still resounded against the door. She could feel them, surrounding her, hiding from Zef’s gun behind the pillars.

She saw a copper coin come flying between the pillars, saw the flash of light and heard the ringing noise just after it passed out of view. The ever-familiar flaming spear of a bullet followed suit, only for the head-exploded corpse of another Locust Noble to topple out from behind a pillar ahead. 

Thump. Thump

Another charging boar. This time, she jumped back to avoid its snapping pincers and invoked with a downward thrust, “Beheading Saw!” 

The blade twisted itself in an unnatural way, its teeth undulating and changing shape to get wedged between individual plates of armor. A lung’s worth of Fog to fuel the saw and a single violent sawing motion was enough to get through, as the boar’s body was no more durable than a normal one’s underneath the extra armor.

From there, it was… Relatively smooth. Another beheaded beetle-boar here, a bisected deer there. The pillars had rendered Spitters worthless, as their launcher-arms were too long to manoeuvre between them without being pointed harmlessly upwards. Zel lost count at one point, but soon enough she felt that only one, maybe two Locust Nobles were left, as well as three or four of the animals at most.

A gunshot rang out, followed by the sound of a body toppling over. She heard a whisper in Pateirian, from behind a nearby pillar. Butcher in hand, she pursued the noise, swinging downward just as she turned the corner.