Mallard made no sound once he determined he was far enough to start the distraction. There was no need. Primal instincts surged within the urvai all around them as the imperceptible scent travelled down serpentine streets. The clack of claws on rock and the buzz of diaphanous wings filled the air.
Now we hope the dwarf survives long enough for us to get through.
The secondary nest just down the way was a flurry of activity in Talia’s mindsense as worker drones retreated within, scuttling under the legs of larger warriors. Though she couldn’t see them, a vivid spark of intelligence here and there told her that the hive had dispatched some of its precious few hunter warriors.
The delvers pressed further into the small home, crowding up against the back wall.
Outside, the flurry of movement slowed. Agonizing minutes went by as Talia waited for the density of enemies to drop.
The gland Talia had dug out of the slayer’s chest created and stored the pheromones used to mark the hive’s enemies. What she knew from her father’s story, and what she’d read in her bestiary, all suggested that slayers used minuscule amounts to direct their brethren toward the fight. The bigger the threat to the hive, the stronger the spray. Mallard, if he’d done it right, had just crushed a whole gland in his palm before rubbing it all over himself, marking himself as the biggest threat in the area.
Simply accidentally piercing one was usually a death sentence. Luckily, only slayers and hunters carried them. In the former, it was protected by a thick armour plate, and in the latter… the less said about urvai hunters, the better. Either way, the biology of the scourge was neither here nor there.
It was time to move.
Talia winced as she checked on her mana. It was holding steady, but that wouldn’t last. She tightened the bounds of her shroud, though the word was something of a misnomer, considering the mass of psionic tendrils it appeared as in her mindsense.
The group darted down the street, making their way toward the small square at the centre of a three-way intersection. Above them, walkways and bridges slithered between the upper stories of buildings. Shattered stone and torn metal hung precariously above them like the waiting jaws of metal stalactites.
Maybe Yasida had a point with her suggestion…
If she did, it was too late now. Most of the hanging passages looked like deathtraps anyway.
The stillness in the street was eerie after the bustle of activity Talia had gotten used to. A few drones scurried about still —their tasks more essential than their lives— but for the most part, the area around the secondary nest had been emptied. Distant clacking and screeching reminded her that their respite was temporary.
We still have to come back this way, eventually —unless we can find another tunnel? It might— Shit. Not the time to think about that. Focus.
Talia’s thoughts frayed at the edges, buckling under the strain of maintaining a spell for so long. Even the crystal mind spell was not enough to keep her focused for such an extended period, it seemed.
The soft padding of leather against stone and the puff of harsh breaths were the only sounds for a moment. Then they came up to the small plaza.
Not a plaza. Another park.
Fungi, imaginatively name rockstems, as prolific and hardy as they were unpalatable, clung to the corpse of some kind of giant tree, its trunk and branches long calcified to near stone. Gnarled roots dug into packed dirt that may as well have been granite after all these years. And in the centre of it all, the secondary nest.
A bulging, haphazardly constructed shape of milky-white rock and chitin that gave the impression of a living being. Its entrances were —thankfully— sealed off, a defensive reaction Talia had read about, thought to protect worker drones until threats to the nest were destroyed. Remains of rockstems, diminutive, unrecognizable corpses, and even bits of the tree itself lay scattered about the plaza, left by drones in their haste to flee.
Talia shrugged, not sure if the delvemaster expected a response.
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Talia shook her head, utterly befuddled.
How Silversweep managed to hiss telepathically was a mystery for another time.
The world was shaking once more.
Cr—aackk BOOM! Rumble—
The delvers braced amongst each other. Talia nearly fell as Lored crashed into her back.
Calisto’s cowl snapped back, fixing Talia with a look she couldn’t see.
The next quake threatened to send them all to the ground. Rent buildings shuddered, metal jingling against metal.
Somewhere far to their right —but still too close for comfort— a pair of barely visible buildings crumpled under the weight of a black and brown mass.
For the first time since she’d thought of the idea, Talia considered that perhaps painting something as the highest threat in the area to the hive that was holding back an aberrant behemoth was perhaps not the brightest concept she’d ever come up with. The notion that their distraction would somehow impede the urvai’s fight with the karztwyrm was simply…ludicrous. It hadn’t even crossed her mind.
The group went from a rapid clip to a dead sprint as the city rumbled around them.
Just how close were they to losing that one little gland was all it took? Or were we just the pebble that broke the ore bin?
Mid-flight, Talia realized that the sound of her breath in her ears was no longer the only sound she could hear. The rumbling stopped briefly as the air was filled with the sound of insect wings.
Talia stole a glance through a gap in the buildings. The acrid scent of something acidic filled her nose as the swarm of spitters unleashed their payloads. The wyrm was just a few blocks away.
Talia barely had time to register the words. Seconds passed at a crawl. Another flight of spitters flicked right over their heads. Acting immediately, Talia snapped off the shroud right on time. Though most of the flying bugs bypassed them, a few hung back, caught off guard by the group’s sudden appearance in their senses.
She never got off her warning.
A flicker of motion dragged her attention to the right side of the street. She barely saw the hulking mass of the karztwyrm’s tail. Then the buildings to her right exploded.
Oh fuck—
Shorn metal and blasted rock rained down on them like the vengeance of Oryx himself.
The formation crumbled. Through the dust, Talia saw Kaina take a stone to the head, her whole body arched over Colum as they ran. Behind her, someone else clattered to the ground in unison. Trusting the rearguard to save whoever it was, she rushed forward, snagging the fallen ganger’s collar with her prosthesis and dragging her along.
Then they were out of the dust cloud and onto a large thoroughfare. Almost as wide as Magister’s Boulevard back home.
The squat cylinder of an edifice she and Calisto had identified as their primary landmark lay within spitting distance. If Talia’s memories were right, the tunnel entrance lay on the building’s leftmost face, recessed into an alcove.
Now they just had to make it across the street.
All eyes, however, were stuck on the fighting behemoth down the way. The immense form of the karztwyrm would dwarf even the Council Hall if it were lined up end to end. A titanic coil of muscle, streaking black blood. Smooth, earth-brown skin. Spined ridges along its back. Two powerful, corded arms the size of a small carriage dragged its faceless, bottomless maw about, smashing into buildings left and right. Shovelling bugs into it like some unfillable void.
It would have been almost majestic if it weren’t for the pulsating mass of tumours. Or the mess of silver spikes piercing from its hide, weeping tar.
Urvai swarmed over it like ants. Full-grown warrior slayers looked no larger than dwarves by comparison. Spitters bled toxic, viscous sludge from open mandibles, pockmarking its skin.
Two of the most destructive things in the Deep, fighting it out a stone’s throw away.
Talia flicked her senses in that direction, realizing that the man was right. Briefly, she considered spinning up the shroud again. Her Core spun weakly at the very idea, drained nearly dry by the minimal work it’d had to do when the spitters flew overhead.
They were caught between the two natural disasters.
The delvers sounded off as they raced across the thoroughfare.
The gruff veteran dropped back into the group. Talia swept the unconscious woman up and onto his shoulders. She winced as more blood trickled down her arm from her soaked bandages.
Silence.
Calisto cursed.
The man was dead, they all knew it. Either now, or later. There would be no surviving the rush of insect bodies and the wanton destruction of a city-killer wyrm.
As they rounded the cylindrical building, the entrance to the tunnels finally came into view. Talia felt a spike of fear as she noticed the shut, runed silverite door, recessed into the wall. It looked more like a mural than a doorway. Some kind of long-defaced statue had been placed in front.
Gods, if rune-rot has set in…
It was a testament to Talia’s exhaustion that she hadn’t noticed the group of five slayers break off from their pod to follow them. They loomed taller than even Bruce, scuttling forward on sharp legs.
Split-second calculations ran through Talia’s mind.
Can’t save the whole group.
She only needed to run faster than the slowest among them, after all. The crystal mind whispered the logical answer to her. A few lives to hold off the approaching warriors. A few lives so that the rest of them could live.
Calisto made the decision for her.
Talia considered offering her support, but she’d likely need mana to power the door. Trusting that Calisto had things in hand, she rushed forward.