“What are those?” She asked the System.

They are Teryls. The System told her.

These ‘Teryls’ were just… metal humanoids, it looked like. Most of them were six or seven feet tall, but there were two in the middle whose heads scraped against the tops of the tunnels, and were very bulky. They hadn’t noticed her, yet, and so she continued watching them.

They projected lights everywhere, making it hard to make them out, but also telling her that they probably wouldn’t be able to see her for a minute, as she was lurking in the darkness.

Even her Superior Compound Eyes took a few seconds to adjust to the lights so that she could better make them out.

The closest one was facing her, and she examined it. It was seven feet tall, and as she got a good look at its face, she realized…

‘Animals in metal?’ She wondered. It had pale blue skin and weird facial features. There were no mandibles, but there was a maw, and there was also a bump in the middle of its face with two holes and weird-looking eyes. It had pale blue skin, and… that was about all she could see of the creature itself.

The Teryls are intelligent but weak humanoid creatures that make up for their weakness using technology. The System informed her.

The eyes of the Teryl she’d been staring at narrowed, and an orange visor slid down to cover its face as it pointed a small rectangular metal object at her. A narrow but powerful light was projected from its end, and it landed right on her.

She wasn’t sure what to do with them. They were weird and interesting, but her instincts told her that they needed to die for the good of the hive. She was willing to listen to these instincts, but not just yet; she wanted to see what they did.

She got her answer very quickly. The group of Teryls burst into motion, but the one that had already pointed its metal stick at her got there first. One of its many articulated fingers twitched, and…

Pain erupted in her forehead almost instantly, and she ducked behind the curve of the tunnel and paused, momentarily stunned.

‘What was that?’ She wondered. She could still feel something beneath her exoskeleton, having bit deep into the chitin. She dug it out with her one of her Articulated Arms and held it in front of her. It was a deformed, extremely hot piece of metal.

The heat must’ve been where the pain came from, because even after she double-checked, it hadn’t gotten through her exoskeleton. Maybe it also had something to do with the jolt to her brain?

She let the bullet fall to the ground, detecting the Teryls only a few seconds away from turning the corner and getting to her. She wanted to run now, especially knowing that the metal rod she’d been shot by wasn’t all that large compared to some of the others she’d seen.

She turned and ran.

∑

“It’s getting away!” Dav, their sensor specialist, shouted.

“Push your exosuits and chase it down! Keep your distance!” Ter ordered. Mar, Ray, Dav and Yon did exactly that, darting forward. Ter did, too. “Tol, don’t push your Construct too much. Gat, how much power’s your Construct got left?” Ter asked as they moved.

“Ninety percent, Ter.” Gat answered.

“Good; I’ve been keeping you back for a reason. Push it to expenditure seven and chase that Myrmeke down.”

A Myrmeke that managed to reach stage five in the breeding pits was a Myrmeke that needed to die. Within seconds, Gat shot past them all with relative ease.

Ter let out a slight sigh of relief even as they continued sprinting after the Myrmeke and, now, the Construct. They were all going to die, but at least their deaths would be for the greater good… at least they’d be able to take down a dangerously talented Myrmeke.

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∑

She tore forward with every ounce of strength in her body. Her four arms dug into the tops of the tunnels and her legs were a blur as she desperately maneuvered through the tunnels with mind boggling speed… and yet, she could still sense the enormous Teryl ever-so-slowly gaining on her. As it did, she continued to continue her mad sprint but dropped the possibility of escaping. She would need to fight; all she was doing now was buying time.

Her antennae twitched, sensing a nearby Myrmeke. It was out of the way, meaning that the enormous Teryl would gain on her even more, but she turned that way regardless.

Soon, she turned into the tunnel where the Myrmeke was. It was a third Stage, most likely, and it ran the other way the instant it saw her. She tore after it, but rather than attack, she simply weaved past it and continued fleeing, before stopping at the tunnel’s bend.

The third Stage Myrmeke turned around now that she was in front of it, and was almost immediately met with her pursuer. Its weapon had already been aimed, and the instant it got sight of the third Stage Myrmeke, it pulled the trigger.

…And an enormous hole instantly appeared in the center of the nine foot long Myrmeke. The power of the attack had been so great that she could feel the shockwave of vibrations through the ground with ease.

I strongly recommend that you flee. The System told her.

“I would if I could!” She mentally shouted at it.

It more slowly advanced through the tunnel, tossing the third Stage Myrmeke’s body aside with relative ease. She felt it stop, and for a brief moment, the world seemed to warn her of her impending doom.

And then, with a brutal shockwave, a hole appeared through her abdomen. She felt the Ether in her body shoot towards her brain, and almost instantly, that part of her mind awoke, and the world slowed.

Suddenly, she understood how to get her Ether to move. She couldn’t force it to move, she needed to guide it. She tried to activate Rapid Regeneration… but she had no Biomass. The hole in her body remained.

She lunged backwards in the briefest of instants before a second hole appeared in the tunnel’s wall, right where her head had been.

She needed to do something, but what? Attacking was suicidal, but fleeing was pointless.

‘Is it?’ Her body still had a decent amount of Ether lurking inside it, even with a large amount having gone towards her brain. She might be able to escape if she used it to make her faster. The issue was that doing so would be incredibly difficult to do whilst fleeing at tremendous speeds.

It wasn’t like she had any other choice, though, and so she turned and fled down the tunnel. A second hole appeared in her thorax when she took the second to turn, but she didn’t let the pain cloud her mind; if anything, it helped to make her thoughts more vivid and urgent.

She tore through the tunnels with tremendous speed, and as she did, she gradually tried to devote more and more attention towards the Ether in her body without slowing down. She could feel the Teryl closing in on her rapidly; each time, she only barely managed to turn into a different tunnel before the Teryl could turn and shoot her. A few times, holes in the walls appeared around her and a shockwave traveled through the ground when the Teryl tried to hit her through the walls, but it wasn’t easy to hit a creature moving at the speeds of a freight train through tunnels.

She knew what her subconscious had done to get the Ether moving towards her brain now, and tried to replicate the actions. First, she had to stimulate it by pushing her desperate fear into the miniscule, ethereal particles of Ether. When she did, they stirred slightly, but didn’t know how to help her and still didn’t obey her mental commands.

Instead, she had to push not only her emotions into the Ether, but also what she wanted it to do. The process was much more difficult than pushing her desperate fear onto them, partially because it was significantly more complex and partially because her fear was overwhelming.

‘I need you to make me faster,’ She tried at first, but the particles still didn’t respond. She could faintly detect some confusion from them, and she realized that the Ether particles were ‘alive’.

‘Make me faster, or I’ll die, and you will too.’ She didn’t know if it was true or not, but that didn’t matter. The Ether became a bit panicked and seemed to want to help, but the particles didn’t know what to do. Finally, she tried once more.

‘Go to my legs and reinforce their muscles.’ She suggested. That seemed to be what the Ether in her head was doing, so it would hopefully work with the rest of her body.

Finally, the Ether started moving. The ethereal particles escaped from the gluttonous wells of her cells, flooding towards her legs. Before they got there, though…

A third hole appeared in her body, this one smashing through one of her four lungs. She couldn’t just shrug this one off, and stumbled mid-sprint. She scrambled to get up, but another hole appeared a moment after she did, this one an inch from her heart.

Behind her, the enormous Teryl finally rounded the corner, having shot her through the tunnels. A smaller Teryl sat on its shoulder, and enough heat was coming off its surface to make the air wavy. She took off, but the next bend in the tunnels was yards away… which would only take a second for her to cross, but that wasn’t nearly fast enough.

‘I’m going to die.’ She realized. The next time that the giant Teryl pulled the trigger, she would doubtlessly die… hell, even if she escaped by now, with so many grievous wounds leaking pounds of blood and no Biomass to activate Rapid Regeneration, she’d die.

The Ether finally settled into the muscles in her legs, and she could feel the Ether in her brain burst into activity. The world slowed to a crawl as it had once or twice before… and yet, she could still move with relative ease. She continued forward, twisting around the bend... and then, everything became a blur, and a second or two later, she found herself three tunnels away from where she’d been, and without any new wounds.

Every drop of Ether in her body was faint beyond belief, to the point she was worried that she’d ‘killed’ the ethereal particles. That worry didn’t last for long, because she had other concerns… like the utter agony in her legs and her inability to force them to move.