The giant feline charged in leaps and bounds, banking off tree trunks and under root arches. Vic’s first shot sailed over the creature’s left shoulder as he adapted his aim to its strange movement. His next two shots took it in its right shoulder and then just under its right eye, killing it mid-leap.

Multiple inbound signatures detected.

“Direction?”

We are surrounded.

“Fantastic.” Vic slipped his rifle’s strap over his shoulder and tightened it in one smooth motion, then made haste back towards the rest of his group. Sue’s earlier scream meant they weren’t in the clear either. They needed him.

Additional signatures detected underground. Increased pace recommended.

Vic started taking risks. He vaulted one particularly large root, coming down hard when the ground was lower on the other side than expected. He turned his stumble into a roll under another root that arched over the ground, then pushed off the ground to be back on his feet again.

“Meant to do that.”

Giving up on the ground, Vic started leaping from root top to root top and made much better time mimicking the cat he had slain previously. He landed on the fallen truck that he hoped his team was sheltering behind with a thud and had to windmill his arms to keep his balance.

“Vic!”

And there was his team.

Wilcox stood in front, his back to Vic, holding a giant warhammer as he faced off against two of the giant cats. A third lay nearby, clearly dead with half of its body caved in. No wonder the remaining ones were wary. Sue crouched down behind Wilcox, tending to an unmoving Emir, and taking shelter in the crook of the trunk and a large branch. Elen was nowhere to be seen, which was probably a good thing.

Vic took all of this in in the time that it took him to swing his rifle off of his shoulder, pull it to ready, and fire on the rightmost of the two visible cats. Without looking at the result he pivoted in place to check his rear as Wilcox gave a war cry and charged the other cat.

Two cats were nearly on him.

He snap-fired at the rightmost one and then dropped down and rolled off the side of the trunk, landing hard on his back and driving the air from his lungs. Overhead, one dead cat sailed past bonelessly and landed on the same side of the trunk as him. The second cat landed nimbly above him and coiled its entire body to spring on the prone man.

The cat’s snarling face seemed to grow large as it filled Vic’s vision just before the decapitated head fell on him, knocking what little wind he had recovered out of him. Elen waved from atop the trunk while the rest of the carcass slid down to land beside Vic. She jumped down and reached out a hand to help him up.

“Thanks for the save. Status?”

“One down, head injury. These guys,” she kicked at the corpse at her feet, “came in right after that stampede.”

Vic glanced over to see Wilcox pulling his hammer out of the corpse of the final cat.

“Wilcox! Grab ‘em and get on the trunk!” He pointed at the hunched-over figures of Sue and Emir, then turned back to Elen. “Something underground too. Let’s go.” She nodded and they both hopped up onto the trunk and then ran along it to finally reunite with the rest of the team, where they all went over what had happened.

It turns out, one of the flying drones had shorted out above Dr. White, falling on his head and knocking him out. Sue had dragged him behind the trunk and begun administering medical aid, but he was as yet still unconscious.

The remaining enemies were not nearly as stealthy as the large cats had been. Vic couldn’t see them but could see trees shifting and toppling as something, or rather somethings pushed them aside on a direct path towards his party.

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The wave of destruction was almost upon them when it suddenly ceased. Creaks and groans echoed through the forest, protesting groans from old trees forced out of the ground and toppled over haphazardly.

“Where’d it go?”

Beneath us.

The giant trunk they were standing on rocketed up and then crashed back down, toppling the party to their knees as some massive force collided with it from beneath. Then again, but this time everyone was clinging as tightly as they could to the trunk. Wilcox held Dr. White in a princess carry, his sturdy frame and low center of gravity keeping him anchored.

The beast emerged from the ground, a giant burrowing serpent that quickly wrapped itself around the trunk of the giant tree and began racing towards them. Its mate erupted behind them. They were trapped.

“Ok screw this,” said Vic. ”Power burn authorized.”

Authorization received. Issuing overclock signal.

A faint hiss of steam could be heard as running lights illuminated all over the manawoven suits the three team members wore. Wilcox visibly increased in size, just in time to turn and catch the jaws of the forward serpent as it struck. He was pushed back, his feet digging deep furrows in the wood beneath them, but as the final lights on his suit flickered on, he stabilized and brought the snake to a standstill.

Behind him, the lights on Elen’s suit began to flicker in a dizzying pattern. She became hard to look at directly and random flickers of movement could be seen between branches and the trunks of other trees. Then she was gone, disappearing and seeming to reappear just in front of the face of the second snake, then disappearing again, only to reappear hanging from a branch of a nearby tree.

Enraged, the snake struck at her. Her image flickered and then disappeared as the giant snake passed through her and headbutted the tree. It wavered in place for a few moments before rousing and turning back to the group.

Vic took a knee while red lights hummed to life along his sides and down his arms. The light reached the rifle as he pulled it to his shoulder, taking sight on the dazed beast. Lights along the grip and barrel of the rifle lit up and the whine built to a crescendo when Vic fired, taking the snake through the throat just as it turned back to face them.

The whine faded and the lights dimmed as Vic turned to assess the initial snake, the one still wrestling with Wilcox. Vic was already out of power, and Wilcox’s likely wouldn’t hold out for much longer. Trying to buy some time, Vic kept his kneeling position and carefully aimed, shooting out one and then the other of the snake’s eyes. Wilcox braced as the snake thrashed in agony, but he had to let go when he was tossed back, catching himself on a branch nearby but left hanging twenty feet off the ground. The trunk pitched and rolled as the snake flailed, and Vic lost sight of everyone as he was thrown from the trunk.

Luckily he managed to get his feet underneath him as he fell and he landed in a roll with nothing more than scrapes for injury. He took off running away from the heaving trunk. The snake was lashing out in a fury now: battering the trunk with its head and its tail in cycles and seemingly heedless of damage to itself.

When Vic felt he was clear, he began to shimmy up a nearby tree to get a look back. Once he was above the level of the underbrush in this massive forest, he saw the snake some distance off strike out two final times before quieting and seeming to lay down.

Vic hopped down and began to pick his way back towards the snake. He subvocally whispered to his AI while he moved, “Watch the snake corpse for vibrations. It could be playing dead and I want to know before I get close.”

Report. Your theory was correct, sir. Its heartbeat has been slowed considerably, but it is indeed still alive. It seems to have entered some sort of dormant state.

Vic slowed his pace to a crawl as he approached the new clearing in the forest. He peaked over a fallen tree limb and, seeing the snake laying out in the clearing unmoving, grunted slightly as he pulled out his rifle and set it across the limb. He took aim at the exposed underside of the head of the snake, breathed out slowly, and started firing. He continued firing when the giant, ten-foot diameter serpent reared up in a final attack. He continued firing when the beast coiled itself up, his bullets digging into the flesh of its face as it tensed to spring. He reloaded and then continued firing when the snake first slammed into the ground twenty feet in front of him, slithering at full speed in his direction.

He continued firing when the snake finally sagged and collapsed, sliding the last few feet to come to rest against the same tree limb that Vic rested his rifle on. Vic reloaded and continued to fire into the dead snake’s head, then he reloaded and looked around for the rest of his team.

No more unknown signatures detected.

Elen reappeared soon after, emerging from behind a tree not too far from him on the edge of the clearing. He stepped out and waved at her. They’d have to help Wilcox down from his perch on a high branch and then find the two scientists, and they’d have to do it quickly. With no power reserves remaining, their suits and equipment would run on life force directly supplied from them until they got back to the portal.

Even with only running mission-critical equipment, they’d have a hard time making it back to the portal before the fatigue of the drain got to them. They needed to hurry.