It wasn’t long until they returned to the dark corridor, armed with a bag full of novelty videogame lamps. Mikayla plugged a Creeper head into the outlet and let out a small squeal of delight when it lit up. “Awesome! Now we’re ready to go,”

Keldryn nodded begrudgingly and handed her another lamp. “I was wondering what these were for. Not bad,”

They made their way through the ship, wincing at every creak and noise. They checked every door, and left a trail of colourful novelty lamps in their wake.

When they were halfway there, they discovered something worrying. There was a hole in the bottom of one of the rooms, leading into the bowels of the ship, a shadowy abyss that they couldn’t make out the bottom of. “I don’t like it,” Keldryn whispered.

“It’s just a hole. Chill out,” Mikayla hissed, forcibly quieting her racing heart. Keldryn’s fear was infectious.

They crept onwards, checking every room for any sign of life and plugging a novelty lamp into every outlet they found. There were bloodstains, and two more dead ants, but nothing living.

A smile of morbid amusement tugged at Mikayla’s lips at the inane sight of a glowing rainbow toucan illuminating a giant dead Ant. Unfortunately, her good cheer was ruined when the next room turned out to contain a smattering of small bones, including what looked like a distinctly feline skull. “Aw . . they even ate the ship’s cat?”

“They’re Ants,” Keldryn reminded her with a grimace.

“I thought ants brought food back to their queen rather than eating it on the spot?”

“Maybe the pre-Kaiju ones did. These ones eat everything they can digest down to the bone, process it into a sort of soup in their guts, and then regurgitate it to feed to their Queen,” he explained, looking ill at the thought. “That’s what I heard at least. I don’t need to see it in person,”

“Understandable,” she breathed, and they pressed on.

Mikayla breathed a sigh of relief when they reached a door labelled ‘Engineering’. “We made it,”

The large door was hanging open into a room large enough that she couldn’t see the far end. Keldryn audibly swallowed.

“What’s wrong?”

“There’s a really big hole,” he murmured, pointing into the darkness. “Be very quiet,”

Mikayla followed the wall until she found an outlet and went to plug a disco ball into it, but Keldryn caught her hand. “Not in here! If there’s something in that pit, the light shining down into it might get its attention,”

Try as she might, Mikayla couldn’t see any sign of the pit. Everything was dark. “Gotcha. Do you see anything that looks like a generator?”

“I don’t know what a generator looks like,” he reminded her.

“Anything that looks like it can be removed?” She wasn’t above stealing everything that wasn’t nailed down and sorting out which part was the generator later.

“Lemme see,” He frowned, spinning his head, and Mikayla envied his vision. “Oh. There’s a thing labelled Backup Generator. This way,” He took her hand and carefully guided her around the room, down a flight of stairs.

It was disorienting, being tugged through the pools of blackness. She felt compelled to glance back at the faint illumination coming through the doorway every few seconds to remind herself that there was still light in the world. She couldn’t feel the ground through the thick soles of her boots. It was like the only real thing in the world was the rough skin and raised pads on Keldryn’s hands.

“Okay, we’re here,” he whispered after much too long shuffling through the darkness. “It looks like this thing can be pulled out. Here, hold this,” He pressed the hem of his bag into Mikayla’s hand and dashed away in a faint blur. “We’ll wrap the bag around it and slide it out. It’ll stop being heavy when it’s in the bag,”

“Can you see how to detach it?” Mikayla whispered.

“I’m sure I’ll figure out something,” Keldryn hissed. Mikayla did her best to spread the stretchy fabric around the large and lumpy metal shape, hoping that the foxkin was correct and this was indeed the ship’s backup generator.

There was a rumble of grinding metal as Keldryn slid the backup generator outwards. Mikayla reached up and helped drag it into the rucksack, marvelling at how the dark shape seemed to disintegrate as it passed into the displaced dimensions of the bag. There was already an antique bed, an Engraving Table, and half of a department store in there that he was carrying for her, as well as his quota of Kaiju Pearls and survival equipment. If there was one thing that was unambiguously amazing about the Kaiju Coast, it was the bags.

Mikayla breathed a sigh of relief as the bag closed around the generator. Squinting, she determined that it had been locked into place on rails, and there were still wires connecting it to the ship’s electronics. “Now we just need to unhook it, and -“

The gauntlet of Skyward Grasscutter appeared around Keldryn’s paw, complete with the blade attached to his wrist, and he dragged it across the rails, severing it from the ship. It collapsed into the rucksack with a loud crash.

Mikayla and Keldryn stared at it in horror. “Why did you do that?” she whisper-shouted.

“I didn’t think it’d be that loud!” he retorted.

“You cut the wires! Oh I really hope you didn’t just destroy it!”

“That’s a concern?!”

“Yes!”

Their momentary shouting match was disturbed by a sound coming from below them. Keldryn cast a worried look at where Mikayla assumed the massive hole was. “Time to go,” he insisted, grabbing her wrist and dragging her with him as he took off towards the door.

Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

Mikayla’s eyes widened as the faint noise grew louder, and she stumbled after him, doing her best to keep up with his pace. She had expected to hear footsteps, but that wasn’t the sound that was coming from the centre of the room. It was a sort of low droning, an angry buzz that was growing in intensity with every passing second.

They burst back into the hallway, and Mikayla narrowly avoided tripping over the glowing plastic Kirby that they’d left outside the door. Keldryn didn’t break his stride, pelting down the corridor and half-carrying her with him.

They rushed along the lines of rainbow light that they’d left in their wake. The captain’s phone buzzed in Mikayla’s pocket, but she didn’t have time to check what Seres was trying to tell her. It wasn’t that hard to guess, in any case.

After all, the droning noise was getting louder.

She glanced back, just in time to see a twitching black shape emerge from the doorway, staggering as though it were being shoved outwards. Before she had time to wonder why it was moving so strangely, half a dozen more all erupted from the doorway and spread across the walls and ceiling, the pink ball of light vanishing behind the encroaching horde.

There was a hiss, and Keldryn yelped, drawing up short as another giant Ant exploded out of a doorway in front of them. Dimly, Mikayla registered it as the room where they’d found another hole. Her sword was already growing out of her hand, but Keldryn’s reflexes were faster, he raised his arm and a blue-orange goat exploded out of it like a missile.

Bluebell bellowed an adorable war cry as she crushed the Ant against the wall, crushing its torso and splattering them both with Ant guts. Keldryn paid it no mind and charged onwards, commanding Bluebell, “Stall them!”

“We can’t just leave her!” Mikayla protested.

Keldryn glared at her for a second. “She’s a projection, as long as I’ve still got her Core I can recall her. Duh!”

Chastised, she looked away and murmured an embarrassed, “Right . .”

Glancing back down the corridor was a mistake.

The devouring tide of black chitin was chasing after them, like a single living mass that merged with the shadows. One by one, each of the lamps they’d used to mark their path vanished into the growing blackness, dying with rainbow flickers that illuminated grotesquely twitching antennae and mandibles that snapped in anticipation of ripping open the poor squishy mammals.

They emerged into the stairwell, and Keldryn let go of her arm to slam the door shut and twist the handle to lock it. “I told you this was a bad idea!” he shouted, already leaping up the stairs.

Mikayla followed. “We were fine until you dropped the generator!”

“We should never have gone for it in the first place!” he shouted back at her.

There was a crash as the Ants started banging on the door, and a glance down told them that the door was already starting to buckle.

“Doesn’t matter, we’re almost out,” Mikayla reassured both him and herself, gesturing upwards. “We just need to get outside, then we can go Goliath and -“

“Above us!” Keldryn shouted. Mikayla looked up and her eyes widened in horror.

There were more Ants spilling out of the unlocked door to the outside world. They were cut off.

Keldryn cursed, making for the nearest door. “This way!”

“Where does that lead?” Despite asking, Mikayla didn’t hesitate in following him into the other level of the ship. Anything was better than letting the Ants catch her.

“No idea,” They found themselves in another corridor. Thankfully, the lights were working in this one. Mikayla chased after Keldryn’s retreating tail, until they burst into a large room.

They were surrounded by large tables and benches. There was a counter leading into what looked like a kitchen. It was clearly the ship’s galley.

The far wall was a large window overlooking the partially emptied shipping container bay. There were no other exits.

“Damnit . . we’re dead,” Keldryn groaned.

“Not yet. We’ve gotta fight!” Mikayla corrected him. “Mana Assistance, Black Knight and Sword!” The System drew her equipment around her as the door they’d left behind them exploded with a mass of chitin.

Green flickers to her left told her that Skyward Grasscutter had her back, so she swung her sword wildly at the mass. The ants didn’t even try to dodge, packed so tightly that they couldn’t even if they thought to.

[YOU HAVE EARNED XP POINTS FOR KILLING AN ANT!]

“Are those ants?” Nocturnus asked disbelievingly.

“Yeah. It’s a problem!” Mikayla confirmed with a snarl. Every swing of her sword cut down an Ant, but there were always two more to replace those that fell.

[YOU HAVE EARNED XP POINTS FOR KILLING AN ANT!]

“It’s an opportunity! Slaughter them! Slaughter them all and grow fat with levels from their corpses!” Nocturnus let out a maniacal roar.

Mikayla growled and obliged, doing her best to be economical with her strikes. Her magical sword parted the Ants’ bodies like butter, she didn’t need to put all her strength into every blow. Individually, they were weak as kittens - at least, compared to the Black Knight. The problem was that they were endless. And disgusting.

[YOU HAVE EARNED XP POINTS FOR KILLING AN ANT!]

“I don’t need a damn notification every time I kill an Ant!” she shouted at the System. The notifications seemed to wilt away and stopped popping up.

Keldryn was putting in the work. For all his fear earlier, he was certainly giving as good as he got, killing three Ants for every one that Mikayla slew. She swung faster and more furiously just to keep up. Within moments, the Ants were having to climb over the corpses of their brethren just to reach them.

Yet they just kept coming.

The weight of numbers forced them back, and the Ants realised that attacking them from multiple sides at once was more effective. Keldryn and Mikayla were forced back to back, the entire world around them consumed by endless stabbing legs and snapping mandibles. The sheer number of foes meant that hits landed, inevitably, and Mikayla winced as her Armour began to flicker.

“Seres!” she shouted, desperately. “Can you do anything about these ants?”

“Would you like me to place a call to an exterminator?” the AI’s synthetic voice came over the speakers.

“I’m hoping for something more immediate! Fire suppression systems? Lock the doors maybe?” Mikayla pleaded, wincing as an Ant got its jaws around her arm. It was promptly decapitated for its trouble, but she could see the blood welling up from the puncture wound.

[HEALTH: 721/1200]

“I will seal the doors,” Seres pleasantly replied, and suddenly the doors slammed shut, stifling the tide. Unfortunately, there had still been three Ants in the doorway who’d been crushed by the attempt to close off the galley, and their bodies were blocking the doors from closing fully.

Still, it was enough for the two warriors to finish off the Ants that were left in the room with them. Keldryn shoved his way through the piles of corpses that had accumulated and, in a carefully calculated motion, first sliced off the heads of the ants who’d been crushed by the door, then shoved their corpses outwards, clearing the door for long enough that Seres could close it.

Mikayla breathed heavily, looking around. “Well, that wasn’t so bad!”

“It’s a miracle that we’re not dead,” Keldryn retorted with a snarl. “And we still might be. This place is crawling with Ants and we have no way out,”

“We don’t know that. We can’t give up,” she insisted. “What if we smash the window and try to climb out?”

Keldryn had turned and gone still. “Any plan involving the windows is a bad plan,”

“Huh? Why?”

Before he could elaborate, the windows behind them exploded as a massive monstrosity tried to force its way in with a roar of pure aggression.

It was an Ant. And it was huge. It was reared up on its hind legs like a centaur, standing on the deck below, and its front legs ended in massive serrated blades of chitin that were ripping holes in the bay windows, clumsily trying to strike them.

“What the hell is that thing?!” Mikayla screamed.

“It’s the Ant King!” Keldryn screamed.