Morgan Mackenzie was running again. This, in itself, was not a new occurrence. In fact, she had spent most of her waking hours since arriving on Anfealt running; she was either running towards something she wanted to eat, or away from something that wanted to eat her. She had spent her share of time walking, but rare had been the day she had not, at some point, needed to run for one reason or another.

Today was a day where the [Skyclad Sorceress] had something to run to. Or, perhaps, to run for. The thoughts and emotions swirling around her mind yielded to no words she had to describe it. The confused mass of footfalls that she had sensed from her spire may not have been panicked at all, but the rythmic thumping that had seemed so much like machine-gun fire meant they were certainly fighting with something. What that something was could not have been the massive presence she felt approaching, as it was still days away by her best estimation. The cacophony of sensations, vibrations, and echoes she had felt were difficult to decipher.

Morgan did know one thing for certain, though: there were people. There were lots of people, using what could only be modern Earth weapons. She realized she could technically be wrong about that, as she had no idea what sort of civilizations lived beyond the mountains -- but her gut feelings pointed towards someone else from Earth, and that thought spurred her feet to move faster. The massive presence moving along the ley lines was travelling slowly but steadily, and she knew it would take her at least two days in order to reach where she had sensed the people. While her instincts did not warn her of any direct danger associated with whatever it was, she knew an avalanche or a rock slide didn’t have to intend to hurt you in order to be dangerous. So, Morgan had packed as much food as she could carry in her [Runic Belt] along with several crystals, and Lulu had latched onto her shoulder, refusing to be left behind when something had its mistress so excited.

And then she ran to meet new people.

==========================================

Terisa Aras picked her way across the lowlands outside the walls of Castra Pristis. The smell of slaughter and death hung, miasma-like, in the early morning light, and the croaks and caws of oversized carrion birds reminded her of battlefields from her past. Normally, the Expedition sent out hunting parties from the fort to gather resources such as furs and horns, and other valuable parts of the various denizens of the wilds, but a migration year presented new challenges -- as well as new opportunities. Creatures tended to swarm up to the walls as they passed, meaning hunting parties didn’t have to travel nearly as far.

I suppose this year’s take will be heavy on furs and crystals...but lacking in witchwood and herbs, she thought to herself. It was too much of a risk to send out gathering parties with so many beasts on the move; there was no telling which areas were even relatively safe this season. The [Dozer Moles] had been only the beginning, and Dana’s rapid-firing gun emplacements had more than proven their worth next to experienced Dwarven Cannoneers. Thankfully, the mana-based weaponry didn’t damage the hides anywhere near as much as her crawler’s guns would have, and there were now racks of hundreds of mole-skins stretched out and drying within the walls of the fort. It had taken two full days to salvage that many before the rest simply spoiled, leaving the clearing south of Castra Pristis an abattoir which the huntress now carefully traversed.

Giant moles weren’t the only corpses rotting in the field. The first day’s dead had drawn scavengers, and those had to be dealt with as well; they made no distinction between the corpses of the fallen moles and the adventurers seeking to strip them. Many of the creatures of the wilds had trade value in various magical and mundane markets, but not all of them, and Terisa detested the wasteful slaughter as much as she recognized its necessity. If the fort were to be overrun, the entire Expedition could be a wash for the year, notwithstanding the potential loss of life if some of the less stable things stored in the wagons were to be trampled.

One benefit to a migration year was that certain other ventures didn’t have to travel as far into the wilds to accomplish their goals. It was one of these groups that Terisa was now heading towards, having seen her husband approaching through the trees with a small group of younger beastkin tribesmen. She could see much further than the part-beast man, but his sense of smell had no equal, and the huntress saw him grinning in the distance when the wind shifted, bringing him her scent and alerting him to her approach. One of Dana’s flying drones zipped by, low over the treetops and heading for the fort. Terisa was used to their passing by now, and simply ignored it.

More of the poofy creatures that Dana had called scrubbies had appeared the morning after the slaughter of the [Dozer Moles], and they seemed to be driven to clean up the mess. Terisa stepped carefully around several wurbling puffballs that were gathered around a shiny, gleaming skeleton, and approached the weary group of beastmen.

“Good hunt,” grumbled Foz amicably. “Ka’Na Oko will be well pleased, the younglings fought a mighty Na’Kohe.”

Several Lupara wolfmen panted happily, exhausted from the run, and a lumbering Ursara full-blood bearkin brought up the rear. One of the wolves spoke up then, unable to contain his excitement. “Graz gained a berserking skill during the fight, Lady Huntress! Foz had to wrestle him down so he wouldn’t kill the bear!”

Graz, the younger Ursaran of the group, grinned sheepishly but made no response. Foz chuckled. “Good skill. Be strong, when he learns to control it!”

“Honor to the Children of Ka’Na Oko,” Terisa complimented the youth with a nod. The young Ursara was obviously wounded, deeply enough that he would bear scars, but the Huntress knew better than to belittle his accomplishments by suggesting he accept healing after what was, essentially, his tribe’s test of manhood. All of the Children of the First Beast were prickly about honor, and the Ursara more than the rest. She ignored his wounds, and the others responded with nods and flicks of ears acknowledging the respect given.

The group resumed its trek back towards the fort, and Terisa joined them, falling into step alongside her husband. “Did you find any of the plants Biggles wanted?” she asked.

“Lots of witchwood,” he agreed with a low rumble. “Off to the south. Not far; might be worth the trip. Nothing else.

“I’m sure we can manage it,” she replied, nodding. “You didn’t find any whisperveil mushrooms, though? Shame; Biggles could have made an anti-magic compound for my arrows,” she continued, running a finger along her bow.

“Didn’t see any,” Foz confirmed. “Found bindleberries, though.”

Her expression lit up with avarice, and she leaned in. “Oh? You did, did you? Where are they?”

“Already ate ‘em,” came the stoic response. “They were very-uph!”

Terisa had only held herself back a little bit as she drove her fist into her husband’s solar plexus with a cry; Ursara were tougher than most, even for a high-leveled classer like Terisa. “Plague take you, Foz, you know those are my favorite!”

“Mine, too,” Foz replied, grinning and rubbing his chest. “Saved you some, though.” His hand dropped to the enchanted belt pouches he wore, and emerged with a cluster of perfectly ripened berries, which Terisa took almost as soon as they were proffered.

“Should have led with that, then,” she complained, the playful acidity in her reply cut with her obvious delight as she popped the berries into her mouth.

As they continued across the field, the little puffballs could be seen and heard all around them, wurbling contentedly as they continued their macabre work. Some of them had latched onto various Expedition members and let themselves be carried this way and that; this had caused some consternation before it was discovered that they made for interesting and affectionate pets.

Skirting a [Dozer Mole] corpse being attended to by several of the creatures, Terisa mused, “I think these things are going to enjoy a lot of popularity when we return to the lowlands.”

“Cute. Useful,” her husband replied.

At that point, their leisurely stroll back towards the walls was interrupted -- first by the sound of horns, and then a moment later by a resonating whump as a bright flare shot into the sky from within the fort’s walls.

Terisa broke into a jog, with Foz and the others falling in behind her. “That’s our recall sign,” she called. “Dana or the scouts must have found something.” Nessara and Kojeg met them at the fort’s gate, and once inside, Foz led the young beastkin down a side avenue back to their area. The mage and dwarf accompanied Terisa to the central field and pavilion.

“We need to make for the wall,” huffed Nessara. “Dana will join us soon.”

“Skitterlings,” Kojeg rumbled. “The lass’s latest drone brought back images of a full colony on the march, less than an hour to the south.”

“Then why are we bothering with the walls?” asked the huntress. “At least with her drones we have warning; we should be heading for the bridge.”

“T’would mean leaving everything we’ve gathered, and the Worldwalker’s workshop. The lass refused when we suggested it.”

“More than refused,” grumped Nessara. “Either the translation spell the sages at Thun’Kadrass gave her is malfunctioning, or her world is stranger than we ever thought. I’m not sure the things she told me to do with my various body parts and a goat are even possible. It would at least require serious healing after the attempt.”

“You can’t stop a skitterling swarm,” Terisa objected. “They’re mindless bugs except for the queens; you have to wipe them out or run. And I don’t think we have enough here to do that, even with Dana’s help.”

“I cannae say that, Teri,” countered Kojeg. “I’ve seen some of the things she’s built. And she tore off into her workshop yelling about something called ‘counter-zerg protocols.’” The dwarf seemed rattled and unsure despite his casual words, nervously flexing his hand on the haft of his hammer. “I have faith we can hold the walls for a time, but t’would be best to be crossing the bridge sooner than later.”

The dwarven Cannoneers had never left their posts on the walls, and were now being joined by the other adventurers of the Expedition. Terisa recognized one slender, brown-robed figure in particular, and made her way along the wall to the necromancer’s side. The man had a pale green puffball stuck to his shoulder, and seemed infatuated by his new pet despite the news of the approaching danger.

“I know you prefer healing, Biggles,” Terisa began, “but can you do anything with all the dead moles out there to help with the defenses?”

Biggles rubbed his cheek, considering Terisa’s question. “Normally I wouldn’t have the time to prepare them, but Wuffle’s kindred seemed to have been extremely effective at cleaning the flesh from the bones. I can sense hundreds of constructs’ worth of skeletons out there, although I’ll need two or three large mana crystals in order to make anything useful of them.”

Terisa blinked. “Wuffle?”

“Oh, yes! We seem to have bonded quite handily.” Biggles reached up to his shoulder and gently patted the puffball. “Wuffle cleans the bones and my sample jars better than anything I’ve got on my table.”

Terisa turned back to Nessara. “Can you and your fellow mages assist him?”

The other woman leaned on her staff, deep in thought for several heartbeats. “We don’t touch necromancy,” she said slowly. “The Magisterium doesn’t truck with anything that even smells like soul magics.”

Biggles made a placating gesture as he broke back into the conversation. “No, no soul magic. Even if I wanted to, there's too much death energy; it'd take days to sanctify the grounds to the point where things won't get corrupted on their way across the veil. Second, I've never tried necromancy in the Wildlands; I don't know how the mana will react. Even after all that, we'd need to strike a bargain with whatever we found. I refuse to simply bind a soul; I don't need the [Oracle]'s eye on me." He shakes his head. "No, this would just be a simple reanimation; all I'd need is raw power."

“That, we can help with,” Nessara replied, relieved. “As can the Swift Waters enchanters, if their representative is agreeable?” she continued with a nod as the guild representative joined them on the wall. “Mister Chadwick, Swift Waters claimed the largest of the intact rockmaw crystals. May we use a few of them for a linked circle?”

The man’s robes were an almost offensive shade of blue, with ostentatious gold embroidery filigreed across his shoulders and down his sleeves. The rings and bracelets he wore on his hands were as pompous and gaudy as they were useful, and the expensive enchantments layered into the adornments leaked enough magical energy to set Terisa’s nose to itching. He wasn’t the usual Swift Waters delegate Terisa was used to dealing with, and she wouldn’t have even entertained the notion of bringing him but for the fact that the guild funded a significant portion of the expedition’s expenses every year. She could tolerate snobbishness and foppery for the right price, and it helped that Chadwick seemed capable, even if supremely annoying.

“If it means keeping the rest of the crystals safe, by all means,” he agreed, spreading his arms. “We’ve sunk entire fortunes into this year’s venture, and it would be a shame to have to return empty handed.”

Nessara stepped closer to confer with the necromancer. “Which form of circle are you more familiar with?”

“Three groups of three magi with a crystal for each group should be enough. I’d like seven groups, if I thought we could spare the mages.” Biggles patted Wuffle gently while he considered. “I suppose three of three would be best, though, so the others can link up for barriers.”

Terisa turned away from the mage and the necromancer, her attention drawn by the sound of a young Luparan running towards their section of the wall. In her impatience, she simply leapt off the wall rather than take the stairs, landing on the cobblestone path below with a grunt of exertion and a sudden ache in her knees. I’ll regret that later, she mused. I’m not exactly young anymore. Her thoughts were tinged with a rueful melancholy; for all that she’d accomplished, she hadn’t taken a level in two years, and her natural regeneration was leaving her more and more. I should probably just retire and let someone else take over the Expedition.

The wolfling slowed as she approached, clearly excited or agitated by something. “I think the worldwalker is in trouble, Lady Huntress. She tore apart the back of her giant carriage, and keeps shouting horrible things at it.” His ear flicked, directing his attention behind him for a moment as he cocked his head curiously. “Is her world full of people who mate with their mothers?”

“I don’t believe so, but it’s certainly full of strange people and things.” Workers in the livery of the Swift Waters Guild went jogging by as the huntress and the wolfkin made their way to the center of the fort’s grounds. Nessara and Biggles had the initial defenses well in hand, it seemed, and Terisa stepped to one side of the path to let a pair of porters pass carrying a crated mana crystal. As they approached the central clearing, clangs, shouts of helpers, and one swearing worldwalker could be heard.

Dana’s “mobile workshop,” as she called it, normally travelled as three massive metal sections connected by an assortment of hinges, hoses, and cables that allowed it to wind its way along the roads on its massive spoked wheels. The three oversized carriages that made up the travelling behemoth were now disconnected from each other, and Foz was helping several other Ursara push the middle section to another recently cleared area of the fort’s central courtyard. The front section was opened wide, racks of strange tools and coiled loops of cables scattered about in Dana’s rush to do her work. The rear section that the otherworlder had referred to as a crawler was now partially dismantled, exposing an inner construct that Terisa barely recognized as a golem core. She had seen many sorts of golems, and up until now, they had all been powered and controlled by a single mana crystal encased in an enchanted frame.

The crawler’s heart, however, was a contraption of interlocking ring gears around a central grooved spindle, each groove holding a single sliver of crystal thinner than one of the arrows the huntress fired from her bow and almost as long. The otherworld engineer was just finishing seating the last of the new crystal spines into one of the grooves, seven discarded crystals of lower quality dropped haphazardly on the ground. As the huntress drew closer, Dana scuttled around to the other side of the crawler. Several clanking thunks and declarations about the contraption being derived from incestuous heritage later, the assembly of rings rotated around the center and with a thrum of power they shrank down to fit neatly around the slowly spinning core.

“I’ve never seen a golem core like that in all my years,” exclaimed Terisa as a steel housing engraved with control runes slid smoothly into place around the mechanical wonder.

“That’s because it’s technically not a golem core,” mumbled Dana past some sort of flanged tool she held in her teeth, both hands and all but two of her mechanical limbs making adjustments on the underside of the contraption. “It’s a- Hold on.”

The woman’s helmet snapped back into place after she spat out the metal tool, a dark visor covering her eyes as one of her metal appendages flipped its end around with a whirring flash. Bright sparks followed as the Worldwalker fused a steel support strut into place on the underside of the machine before skittering her way back out from beneath it.

“Standard golem cores have plenty of power packed into one big crystal, but they’re slow to transfer the energy out of the core to the rest of the golem. Unexpected power demands can destabilize the core, usually catastrophically, so golem frames keep it nice and slow.” Dana’s voice was tinny at first until her helmet retracted once again. As she spoke, she manipulated several levers and knobs on the side of the crawler and then backed away. The machine’s core slid back into the housing of the metal beast, the deep rumble of gears and other strange devices heralding the metallic clunking as the outer armor plates closed back up and the legs began to unfold from the sides.

“The crawler has different power needs, though, and by design, she needs to draw power a lot more quickly than the standard architecture allows. Her reactor core is seven crystal shards in a stabilizing matrix to buffer the power transference under loads a normal golem simply wouldn’t be able to handle. Smaller crystals, but more total power, and more efficiency overall. She’s actually able to recharge in a third of the time a single bigger crystal would take!”

“I’m no golemist, but that sounds very impressive,” acknowledged Terisa. “But I thought you were limited on ammunition?”

“On physical rounds for the crawler, yes,” replied the Worldwalker as she dashed around picking up tools and parts. The inferior mana crystals went into a crate packed with straw which was soon tucked into the shelving on the still-opened front section of the workshop. “But I’m not using the crawler’s guns for this; Foz and the others are pushing the big gun into place right now.”

“The ‘big gun?’ I shudder to think what you used on the rockmaw stampede wasn’t a ‘big gun,’” said the Huntress, unable to repress an involuntary shiver. Horns sounded from the walls as they spoke, and Terisa glanced back to see flares of light and lightning springing up around the fort. “They’ve sighted the skitterlings,” she said tensely. “Biggles is animating skeletons from the [Dozer Moles] to buy us time, and then it’s gonna be dirty. What are you contributing?”

“Well,” said Dana as several sections of her suit reconfigured, then dropped away, leaving the otherworlder sitting in a nearly immodest state in a stripped down chair-type configuration. A flattened oblong metal crate next to her suddenly split along previously invisible seams, runes glowing and shifting as a new armored shell seemed to assemble itself around her. Where the previous suit had seemed functional and utilitarian, this one was obviously heavier and more heavily armed, shrouding the worldwalker in a far more sinister form.

“There was a weapons program on my world; one of many, of course. It doesn’t matter what it was called, and the name wouldn’t mean anything to you anyway, but the tests were abandoned because the soldiers that would have used the weapon could never have escaped its area of effect.”

Terisa appeared unimpressed. “That does not fill me with confidence. Give me a reason to not declare this expedition over and get everyone across the bridge right now.”

“Kojeg tells me you can kill the queens, if we can crack their armor.”

“I can,” Terisa confirmed as she hefted her bow. “Or rather, we can, my sister and I. But first we have to deal with the worker and soldier forms in the swarm, and it can take hours of battle and dozens of mages to break their defenses down. And if there’s more than one queen…”

The crawler had continued its reconfiguration, clanking and thumping emanating from its internal systems as it lumbered to a standing position on its six metal legs. Dana’s armored glove retracted partially, leaving her fingers and palm bare as she reached up to touch it.

She furrowed her brow, speaking in a short, clipped tone. “Engage Autonomous Mode, Defender protocol.”

Terisa opened her mouth to respond, but before she could, a harsh mechanical voice rose from around her.

“Autonomous Mode confirmed. Initializing Defender protocol.”

Terisa actually jumped back in surprise as the crawler spoke in response. “I thought you said it couldn’t function as a normal golem on its own!”

“It can’t,” she admitted, “but it can follow limited preset directives.”

The massive metal beast shook the ground as it moved its legs to turn in place. One by one each leg raised itself off the ground and slammed downwards, each foot springing open as three spikes lanced into the cobbles of the ancient courtyard. The legs folded in, lowering the front of the crawler’s body. The rearmost section rotated to point upwards, and the outer ringed sections of its shell began to rotate and pulse with a gentle blue light from the runes inscribed on the metal.

“Defender mode will give us an extra shield,” said Dana as she finished packing up the workshop section of the first metal carriage. The shop then closed up, leaving just the hatch-like portal on the side, which the Worldwalker closed behind herself as she stepped out and headed towards the middle section. Foz and the other Ursara had finally managed to push the oversized wagon into place, where Dana had somehow cut markings into the ground to indicate where she needed it to go. She continued speaking as they neared the contraption.

“Between the walls, the shield, and any barriers the mages can give us, I’m confident Castra Pristis can take it. It may get uncomfortably hot, but it will be brief. Or should be; I couldn’t test these rounds at Thun’Kadrass. Shouldn’t you already be at the walls?”

“My own wide-area attacks wouldn’t put a dent in the workers and soldiers of the skitterling swarm,” replied the Huntress as the cannons began to fire, accompanied by the stuttering cacophony of Dana’s mana-bolt machine-guns. “But if you can crack the queen’s armor, Althenea can take out the lot of them with one shot. I just can’t use that skill twice in a row, it will take me days to recover. So it has to count.”

“Oh, it will,” said Dana with a sinister grin. The central section of her workshop reacted as she laid her bared palm against the side, the six wheels churning up stone and dirt as they twisted and the axles bent to lay the rims flat on the earth. The top and sides of the carriage split with a hum and folded outwards as both women stepped back, and what was obviously a cannon of some sort was revealed.

But what a cannon, thought Terisa. Instead of a fat elongated bell shape akin to the dwarven cannons she was already familiar with, this weapon revealed an elegance the huntress could not put words to. The central barrel was narrower than those others, its bore barely larger than her arm. Flattened rectangular ports on the end flared backwards, bracketing the muzzle of the gun, and a pair of massive springs on each side held it in place on a sliding rail. Twice as long as she was tall, the gun slowly elevated with a gentle mechanical whirr that ill fit its deadly purpose. A double row of shells sat nested into a sliding rack on one side, and as Terisa watched, mechanical components took one of the conical shells and fed it into the cannon’s breech.

“First round is a standard charge, to confirm range and accuracy.” Dana held out a strange flattened device inset with impossibly tiny runes, and as it began to glow a small-scale image of the fort and the surrounding area was projected into the air in front of the two women. “I’ve had the drones mapping out the area. If I can build a radio, or find a magical equivalent, I can do targeting in real-time, but for now we’ll have to settle for a little delay.”

Dana thumped a metal barrel on the side of the cannon, and a small golem suddenly sprang to action. Legs sprouted from the barrel, and it hopped off the side of the machine trailing a thin cable that spooled out from within itself. The other end of the cord disappeared behind one of the panels of the gun’s carriage. It followed Dana as she headed for the wall, Terisa in tow.

“That’s a lot of bugs,” said the Worldwalker as they reached the parapet. Nessara and Biggles stood in a circle with the guild representative, a man-sized crystal shard floating between them. Three more mages stood in a circle over a dozen paces to their left, and another three to their right, both with crystals of their own. Eerie drafts of lucent green drifted between the crystals and the mages, flowing around the necromancer as he directed a skeletal army; one which was in very real danger of being overrun simply by the sheer numbers of the enemy. Other mages held position at the ready near each of the dwarven cannon emplacements, and Foz and the beastkin stood on the southern wall, ready for their own grim work when the time came.

Biggles himself stood motionless, knuckles white as he gripped the stone to hold himself up. Sweat ran down his brow with the effort, but his skill at his craft was evident in the growing berm of insectile forms building up over a thousand paces south of the walls. “The skitterlings aren’t going around,” he declared through clenched teeth. “When the queen appears, she’ll be bringing soldiers with her. The constructs won’t hold after that.”

“This is gonna be loud,” declared Dana, pulling a cord from their golem escort and plugging it into a slot on the back of her armored arm. She held out the flattened device once again, inspecting the map and tapping at the runes. “Adjusting angle. Biggles, if this takes out some of your constructs, I’m sorry.”

“A few is no issue, but if I lose too many they’ll hit the walls,” he grunted.

“Fire in the hole!” shouted the Worldwalker, her voice pitched differently than Terisa had ever heard. It carried across the fort, leaving a sudden questioning silence for a single brief moment.

The impact of the cannon firing was a thing felt more than heard, the thump of the ground against her feet almost enough to set the huntress to dancing to keep her balance just a split second before the sound itself reached her ears. Many times louder than any of the dwarven guns, the noise reached her ears with a ringing impact. The world shook, and chunks of dirt and stone flew back from the engineer’s cannon. Foz and the other beastkin crouched instinctively, many wincing and holding their ears.

“Three…” said Dana. “Two. One.”

Several dozen skitterlings, resembling nothing so much as common ants writ large, suddenly vanished in a shower of dirt and stone. The low rumble that reached their ears on the walls was much deeper and less jarring than the initial firing, but no less terrifying for its lack of volume. Two of the skeletal constructs nearest the blast simply collapsed, the animating magic no longer able to hold them together. Biggles breathed more heavily, straining to hold the rest.

The explosion and loss gave the swarm no pause, and Terisa readied her bow as dozens of even larger soldiers made their way out of the trees behind the frenzied horde. “How is that supposed to break the queen’s armor?” the huntress demanded. “She’ll be here soon, following behind the soldiers.”

“That isn’t supposed to do anything to the queen’s armor.” Dana checked her map again, switching her gaze between it and the treeline. “Biggles, the next time I fire, you might consider dropping all the constructs and throwing up a shield.”

“What kind of shield?!” he grunted exasperatedly “You realize the headaches this is going to cause all of us if I simply sever the links to the constructs?”

“What do you mean what kind of shield?” Dana asked. “And I think I see the queen!”

The magical strain made Biggles’ words sound forced as he snapped, “Flame shield? Wind barrier? Sonic attenuation? Any of a dozen and a half other shield types?”

“Queen, treeline, two hundred paces west of the southern trail!” called Terisa, drawing Althenea and nocking one of her most expensive arrows. The destructive enchantment inscribed onto the adamantine broadhead would have cost a years’ pay to most working classers without the Huntress’ unique connections and wealth. “If you can crack her armor, I can kill her.”

“How do you expect to punch through with just one shot?” asked Nessara. Magic swirled around the woman as she added her own strength to Biggles’s channeling.

“I don’t intend to just break the queen’s armor,” Dana replied, shaking her head. ”I’m taking out most of that swarm too.” The queen lumbered out of the forest then, several times larger than even Dana’s crawler. It was escorted by soldiers even larger than the last group, whose gargantuan mandibles chewed through everything in their queen’s path: rocks, trees, and even the odd unfortunate worker skitterling who failed to clear the path in time.

“How on earth are you going to do that?!” came the frustrated and strained question from Nessara.

Dana grinned. “Remember what I said about pulling energy out of a mana crystal too fast? I engineered a round to do that deliberately, to a shard about the size of my fingernail. Then, I packed it into a compression chamber. When the shell hits, it destabilizes the crystal, then annihilates it all at once! Simple, right? Fire in the hole!”

The cannon thumped once more, as if in agreement, but the assembled group could hardly hear it over their own sudden horror. The blood drained from Nessara’s cheeks, her ashen expression one Terisa would not soon forget. Chadwick lost his bladder, the front of his gaudy blue robes turning a dark color. Biggles and the other mages dropped their necromantic spells, the constructs slumping to the earth. The mana around the crystals changed from green to bluish-white as the mages began casting a shield around them. From the southern wall, Foz heard Dana’s proclamation as well, and his hasty commands had the beastkin and dwarves diving as one, covering their heads in sheer panic.

Dana simply stood in place, her armor suddenly glowing with sigils that projected several layers of shielding around the top of the gate tower. “Why’s everybody being all dramatic? It’s seriously a tiny shard. And the math checked out!”

And then the shell slammed into the ground a few paces away from the queen, who stopped at the sudden geyser of dirt. For a half of a heartbeat, Terisa was sure something had gone wrong.

Then the shell exploded, and the entire world disappeared into a sea of white.

 

========================================

 

Morgan had stopped running to eat, her third such break of the day. Bursts of [Acceleration] let her cover ground at an amazing pace, but the calorie cost to sustain such motion wasn’t something she could keep up for very long. So, she had brought several dozen leaf-wrapped parcels of meat, and in the two days since heading for the people she had sensed she had consumed almost all of them.

“I have to be getting close, Lulu,” she said after finishing her meal, while the scrubby cleaned the grease off her hands. “I know I’m going the right direction, but I could be miles to one side or the other by the time I get there.”

She rose from her seat. A fallen log with moss growing over it had made for a comfortable place of respite while she had a brief rest and a snack. Without wasting any more time, she continued on her way, heading roughly south by southwest -- at least, by her best reckoning. Don’t really have a way to make a compass, not that I know of, she thought to herself as she jogged along. Her meal would take an hour or so to fully replenish her reserves, and she wanted to pace herself before returning to her skills.

It was well past noon before she got close enough that her [Spell Resonance] let her sense the faintest echoes of activity in the distance. She surmised she might make it by nightfall at her current pace even if she didn’t use [Acceleration]. The impressions she sensed at such a distance were vague, and while she was sure some of it was gun or cannon fire, she couldn’t be sure who or what was fighting. Too many feet hitting too much ground over too much of an area; only the rapid thumps of weapons were sharp enough to stand out.

So she restrained herself, resisting the urge to make a mad dash and use up her reserves. She was down to three meals in her storage, and had no clue if the people at the far end would even be friendly. The thought that they may have ill intentions had crossed her mind more than once while she ran, but she was willing to chance it in case they were nice. If they weren’t she’d have to run, and she didn’t want to be stuck without food in such circumstances.

Suddenly, there came a far sharper, far louder impact. Her senses were instantly on edge as she skidded to a stop, pausing to feel for more tremors. Some sort of booming concussion had cut through the low rumbling of everything else, nearly stinging her feet as [Spell Resonance] transferred the sensation. All the other vibrations through the ground seemed to fall away for a moment before resuming again, and Morgan stood still for several heartbeats. She had barely taken another step before her senses were overloaded.

She sensed a flash of heat, a rumble of earth, and it took her nearly a full minute to realize she was actually physically hearing the sound with her own ears and not just through her [Spell Resonance]. Thunder rolled in a continuous rumble throughout the valley, and the sky to the southeast was visibly brighter in the early afternoon. The sorceress stumbled, catching herself just before falling as Lulu wurbled with surprised concern from her shoulder.

“Oh god…”

She continued more slowly, picking her way up the mountainside to the next ridge. Dread filled her at the thought of what she suspected she would see, and was made manifest when she crested the rocky ledge at the very top.

“Someone built a nuke in this world?” she wondered in a small voice.

An ominously glowing cloud was forming in the distance, the emblematic shape of destruction writ large and terrible, simultaneously idolized and feared in the fictional works of her own world. It wasn’t as big as she had been afraid of, but it cast dead shadows across the low mountains to the south. Violent lightnings danced around the edges of the darkness, and she could feel her skin prickle with tingling and burning sensations that healed as fast as they appeared.

“Radiation, has to be. It’s like a really itchy sunburn.” She patted the loofah on her shoulder, but Lulu seemed even less bothered by it than Morgan. “If it gets worse, you may have to hide in one of my runes, girl. I have to check for survivors.”

So Morgan ran once more, discarding caution and using [Acceleration] as much as she dared. She hoped there were still people left when she arrived.

 

===========================================

 

Terisa staggered to her feet, leaning heavily against the stone parapet as she fumbled at her belt. Her breath came in ragged gasps, and twin spears of agony lanced into her brain; she knew in that instant that she’d been blinded, and that if she didn’t move quickly, it might well be a permanent affliction. Her right hand gripped Althanea tightly, who pulsed with barely-contained panic, while her left rummaged through the pouches sewn into her wyvern-hide breeches. She calmed her breathing as her fingers finally closed around a familiarly-shaped bottle, drawing it forth and tearing the stopper out with her teeth. She drank the bitter potion in a single motion as she began to feel again. Her exposed arms, legs, face, what little cleavage her tunic exposed -- all of it stung from the flash of hellish heat that had burned out her eyes.

A standard healing potion would have only stopped the damage and scarred it over -- but Terisa was no standard adventurer, and this was no standard potion. The elixir (which she had saved for emergencies not exactly like this one) tasted vile, but it worked, and Terisa felt her natural regeneration amplify a hundredfold under its effects. Her eyes itched maddeningly as they grew back, repairing the damage and eventually restoring functional, albeit blurry, sight. Such potions fetched a king’s ransom, but when you needed them most, nothing else could compare.

As her vision cleared, the huntress lowered her bow and pushed herself off the parapet to survey the destruction the engineer had wrought. The forest had been blown down like matchsticks in a circle stretching for miles away from the fort, and charred, smoking corpses lay strewn amongst the fallen trees like so many lumps of coal. To Dana’s credit, the crawler’s shield had done its job; though the shield itself was barely visible to the naked eye, its effect was visible as a curved line several dozen paces out from the fort’s walls, against which a wave of debris had piled up to form a noticeable berm.

It had not, however, stopped all of the tremendous heat from the blast, and the battlements of Castra Pristis bore the scars: they had been scorched by the heat, with strangely-formed shadows seemingly etched into the surfaces that had faced the blast. They looked much like the skitterlings, but cast in silhouette against the stones, as if thrown there by an evening sun. The towering cloud above rumbled ominously, eerie lightning flashing in its depths.

Dana herself stood rigid and motionless atop the tower, as if her armor had locked her in place. Terisa thought to herself that that must have been what happened. The suit creaked, smoke drifting in thin, curling tendrils away from the joints and seams. She managed to turn her head fractionally to either side, and that effort seemed to push the suit out of whatever lockdown mode it had been pressed into. With a hiss, the faceplate bulged forward, then slid up over the woman’s head, stunned disbelief writ across her features.

“I-I think…” she croaked.

“I think you made a miscalculation,” Terisa said frostily, not taking her eyes off the field. Biggles and his mages, and Foz and his beastmen and dwarves, were just starting to regain their footing. Singed one and all, but their concerned shouts didn’t have the overtones of panic that might indicate severe injury; nobody else had stared directly into the blast as she had. Terisa scanned the battlefield once more, desperately searching for any sign of the skitterling queen.

Dana’s suit creaked again as she flexed her limbs, runes flickering across its exterior as it worked to repair the damage she had incurred. “Just, ah, a rough estimate,” she replied with a nervous laugh, putting her suit through a brief self-test. “I, ah, don’t have proper equipment to get a real measurement, but I was expecting maybe point three kay-tee? But that was more like...had to be at least a kiloton just to look at the mushroom cloud! I don’t understand, the math checked out, it shouldn’t have--”

The engineer’s babbling was cut short by a low, persistent beeping and strident flashing from a raised section of her armored left arm. Startled, she slid a panel back and peered at something, swearing vehemently. “Ah, shit, I’m getting readings on my dosimeter. It’s not terribly high, but it’s concerning enough as it is--”

Terisa cut her off with a sharp gesture. “Explain later. The queen’s not here, but there are still plenty of soldiers and workers, and they’re still coming.”

The smoking earth around the crater where the weapon went off still glowed with heat, and the skitterlings surrounding it seemed unwilling to cross. Suddenly, Terisa glanced skyward, bade by her instincts, or possibly the rising cry from the people within the fort. As she looked up, a shape fell from the sky, still glowing and trailing smoke. The remains of the skitterling queen, merely a chunk of her armored carapace, slammed back to earth, sending a tremor through the ground as it bounced once, then came to rest.

“Miss Dana,” Terisa began, her eyes on the treeline. Her sharp-eyed gaze saw more chitinous soldiers boiling forth from the treeline, ahead of a second lumbering shape whose presence poured icy dread into the huntress’ heart. “While I’m thankful that I didn’t end up wasting my ultimate skill, please tell me you have a less destructive way to crack a queen’s shell?”

Dana’s gaze snapped to Terisa, then out to the treeline. “I...I don’t even have another annihilator,” she said softly. “I-It was a prototype. I don’t know if standard rounds will do the job.”

The second queen broke through the treeline, and the milling workers and soldiers let out hissing, insectile screams as they were driven forth by the new queen’s orders. They surged forth across the cracked, seared ground, the lead ants bursting into flames, falling, and being trampled by those behind them. Foz’s bellowing roar rose from within the fort, followed by howls and barked commands and acknowledgments as the beastmen and dwarves made ready to hold the walls in a desperate stand.

“This won’t be fun, Worldwalker,” the [Wild-Heart Huntress] warned. “Hit the queen with everything you have. If you can weaken the armor, I’ll take the shot.”

Dana responded with a quiet nod, her helmet slipping back into place. Nessara, Biggles, and the mages had finally reset themselves, and barriers once more sprang into existence as they returned to their work. Cheers resounded as the guns resumed their monotonous thumping, flinging death out over the walls into the onrushing horde.

The first shot landed short of the queen, but the second, third, and then several more thudded into its armored carapace. The swarm did not falter, more of the bugs flooding out of the trees, pushing their brethren up against the walls, and then simply up the walls. Terisa kept her arrow nocked, watching the queen and trusting Kojeg and the mages to keep the gate-tower clear. Biggles and Nessara were wreathed in eerie light, each supporting one side of a low translucent dome, and the dwarf laid about with his hammer to crush intruders that pushed under the edge of the shield.

“Twelve more rounds,” shouted the Worldwalker. “I don’t think they’re having any effect!” Each impact drove the queen into a low crouch, but the monstrous creature simply shrugged its cottage-sized bulk and crept forward under the deluge. And then the gun went silent. “That’s all I have,” said Dana, yanking out the cord through which she had controlled the massive gun. “I’ll have to get close and see if I can cut through with my fusion blades.”

As she spoke the last, her suit went from two legs back to four, then six, then eight. Four appendages held her off the ground, and the other four sprouted glowing knives of hard-edged light. Another giant ant had forced its way under the edge of the dome held up by the mages, opposite the side Kojeg defended. Dana’s blades snicked out too fast even for Terisa to see clearly, and the bug fell, hewn into two pieces that dripped smoking ichor.

“Something’s coming!” shouted Biggles suddenly, turning to face the mountainside to the northwest of the fort.

Nessara turned to look as well. “Earth Mana, and Fire! It’s the same as the day of the rockmaw stampede!” she shouted.

Terisa felt it as well, suddenly. A shiver beneath her feet, a low rumble. The skitterling queen stumbled in its tracks, and she finally took her eyes off the bugs to see what the mages had turned to look at.

One of the mountaintops off to the west of the fort lit up with flashes of brilliant purple incandescence. As it continued, even the huntress was struck with the sensation of power.

And the mountain shrugged. The top rose up as if buoyed by that terrible light, and then dropped. And kept dropping. The lower slope facing the swarm bulged out and then, as if a dam had burst, flowed forth like a wave of water poured across a table. Within the churning earth was snapping, crackling, burning purple lightning. The leading edge of the rolling dirt and stone threw up a bow wave of more stone, trees, and then giant ants as it swept across the valley in the span of less than a dozen heartbeats.

The others could not see as clearly as Terisa could, when the lightning and stone reached the queen and crushed it under tons of rock and earth as easily as she might crush a normal-sized insect underfoot. They saw the effect, but not the source. But her [Eagle Eye] skill showed her, in perfect clarity, a woman covered in glowing lines of power from head to toe, leaping from one floating disk of stone to another, several paces above the churning mass of burning earth. Seven flawless mana crystals floated in a circle that slowly rotated around the woman, and a poofy puffball twice the size of Biggles’ own Wuffle perched upon her shoulder.

The necromancer’s jaw hung open, as did those of Nessara and the other mages, as he tracked her across the sky. “One person,” he said weakly. “One person, linked to seven mana crystals? That...shouldn’t be possible! The flux alone should…!”

“Nobody told them that,” retorted Nessara.

“Her,” said Kojeg absently, peering through his spyglass. “Terisa, is it just me eyes, or be that lass as naked as the day she were born?”

“It’s not your eyes, Koj,” Terisa replied in wonder.

“Well,” supplied Dana as the glowing figure approached the fort, resting her hands on her hips. “This should be interesting!”