“I knew something like this would happen,” Lila complained, her irritation showing through her flat, monotone voice.

“And it did!” Hiran looked over his shoulder and flashed the Savant a grin.

She glared mutely at him in response. One of her smaller limbs prodded the straps securing her block-like torso to his back with no small amount of indignation.

“It’ll be fine,” he promised her for the umpteenth time as they slid down the side of the ventilation chute. He had his left hand pressed to the synthcrete and synthsteel wall of the chute. Using the Fallen Spiral technique of [Woven Cloud], he exuded swirls of Aether from the tips of his armored fingers that clung to the wall, keeping him relatively parallel to its surface.

At the same time, he adapted footwork from [Darkened Mist] to propel him downward, his armored bootheels striking sparks against sections of synthsteel and chipping into synthcrete panels as he did so.

Hiran’s grin widened as he applied techniques from both Martial Forms to keep their rapid-yet-controlled descent from turning into a headlong plunge down fifty-six floors. He briefly wondered if he had been possible of such a feat during his previous life, only to conclude that yes, he absolutely would have been, such was the depth of his mortal cultivation and his absolute mastery of his Martial Forms.

But it would have been quite an exertion, one that would have strained his mortal body to a fairly noticeable degree, but also one that barely troubled his current Starforged physiology, even though he possessed less than a tenth of the power he once had, and his Martial Forms were still wreathed in mental fog.

“Incoming from above, left and right,” he told the Savant, reading the Aether signatures of five buzzers and ten stingers that had broken through the wall of the chute and were now flying or climbing rapidly after them.

“Acknowledged.” Lila aimed her shotguns upward and began blasting away. Buckshot roared from the barrels of her weapons to scythe the descending aliens to pieces and rain the tatters of their bodies and viscera down the chute.

A new type of creature had appeared to confront them. Hiran had dubbed them clingers, long-limbed monstrosities sheathed in chitin capable of climbing the chute’s walls easily thanks to the sticky pads on their paws. Two dozen of them swarmed up toward him now, their fang-filled maws clashing frantically.

Hiran swept Azure Fang from its sheath and seized it with his will. He commanded the sword to dance through the midst of the aliens, and it obeyed him, sweeping its bladed length into the clingers’ skulls, throats, and abdomens.

A moment later, he crashed through them and continued his descent, sending their severed body parts, heads, and innards flying everywhere. Hiran winced as some of the gore splashed across his face.

“Is there a helmet for this armor?” he asked Lila, who was similarly drenched in alien ichor.

“There is. But I have not been able to fabricate it yet with the Hallowed Forge.”

“Hopefully, you’ll have time to finish that up soon,” Hiran said, summoning Azure Fang back to his grasp. “And after you do, remind me to bring it along the next time we’re out and about.”

Something flickered in his vision, then. A brief line of text appeared, superimposed over everything in front of him.

Reminder: Bring your helmet with you.

“There,” Lila said, her flat voice somehow oozing with smugness. “Your reminder has been set. Permanently.”

Permanently? Hiran pushed the reminder to the side and minimized it as much as he could, but try as he might, he couldn’t dismiss it. He glanced over his shoulder at Lila again and arched his brow.

She simply returned his regard with her customary stoic coolness. Hiran sighed and turned his focus back to the descent. Balancing techniques from [Woven Cloud] with [Darkened Mist] was starting to take a toll on his mental stamina, so he cycled Aether from his Core into his Moon Circuits, bringing them to life alongside his Sun Circuits.

His thoughts cleared immediately, and he was able to renew his grasp on his techniques and smoothen out his descent down the chute. These Moon Circuits are a lot handier than I’d thought they would be. I’ll take whatever upgrades Lila can apply to them, even if those upgrades are made of alien guts.

“I just connected to the view-lens on Chaoswing and used them to do a visual review of the cordon around this habitation block,” Lila reported abruptly. “Only two hundred Levy guardsmen are maintaining it. They have armored vehicles and heavy weapon emplacements, but the sum total of the combat-oriented alien organisms we have encountered so far could easily break through that cordon and make their way into Pragha proper.”

“So why haven’t they?” Hiran wondered. “Maybe it’s just biding its time and building up its strength until it can be absolutely sure it can succeed?”

“Or perhaps it is consolidating its forces while it waits to hear from other hive minds in other alien nests. You are right about needing to make contact with the Ashen Guild’s leader. These aliens could prove to be an existential threat to Madhya itself.”

“And one that has been allowed to grow and fester. How could the Enforcers have allowed this to happen? What is the Governor-Warden doing? Surely he can’t be unaware that this is happening on Madhya?”

“Scholar Bei Feng alluded several times to the continued absence of the Enforcers garrisoned on this planet,” Lila said. “However, he did not offer any further explanation as to the reason why. Perhaps he simply does not know.”

“Or maybe he’s got a hand in it.” Hiran grunted as he sent Azure Fang out to annihilate another cluster of clingers racing toward them. “In any case, we’ll have to worry about that later. We’re nearing the bottom, I think.”

“That is where the central air filter plant for this habitation block lies. But if we descend upon it from this angle, we will get caught in the blades of its intake fans or blasted away by the pressure of its outtake fans.”

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“No, we won’t.” Hiran kicked off from the wall when he saw the array of spinning synthsteel blades approaching and cycled as much Aether as he could into his Sun Circuits. He spun in midair, angling himself to descend directly upon the central pinion of fan that was roughly twenty feet across. The word ‘intake’ had been clearly stenciled upon its rim.

A mechanical beep blurted from Lila as he dived down toward his target feet-first. Executing dual Contemptuous Comet techniques, Hiran crashed both of his heels thunderously upon the pinion. The impact tore the entire fan from its mounting and blasted its blades to shreds.

The filter plant’s ceiling was next, crumbling beneath Hiran’s kicks. He fell into the chamber amidst a shower of synthcrete shards, twisted lengths of broken synthsteel, and clouds of swirling dust.

This is it, he thought, as he undid the straps around his chest, so that Lila could tumble off his back. This is where the greatest concentration of Aether is. The hive mind must be here.

Sure enough, as the outtake fans cleared the dust, Hiran saw a pulsing organic mass sitting in the middle of the room, framed by a ring of bone-like material. It reminded him of an oversized brain, and it quivered as he took a step in its direction. There was no doubt that this was the hive mind.

And it hadn’t left itself unguarded. Cracks appeared on the surface of the synthcrete floor in front of the hive mind, heralding the arrival of an alien creature. A moment later, the floor erupted, and a massive chitin-sheathed form emerged. It was larger than a rammer, but its limbs were sleeker and its bearing less lumbering.

The new alien didn’t have claws or hooks at the end of its forelimbs. Instead, it had a pair of grasping appendages that resembled human hands, only four-fingered instead of five. Its crimson eyes blazed with cunning, setting it apart from its more brutish kin.

The alien spread its palms, which split apart, allowing short lengths of bone to emerge from each of them. It then grasped the poles and jammed them together, forming a single foot-long rod. The alien opened its fanged maw and hissed, as if uttering a command to the object it held in its hands. In response, the rod telescoped forth, extending to a length of five feet before flattening out, so that it now resembled a long, straight sword.

Arcs of blue lightning coruscated down the bladed length of the alien’s weapon, leaving Hiran in no doubt that its edge could readily breach his armor and cleave him apart. The creature spun and twirled its sword in an impressive display of control and grace, if not actual skill.

Wait. It’s mimicking some of the basic techniques I used against the other aliens, Hiran realized. But it doesn’t really understand them at all. The best it can manage is this poor imitation. Still, how is this possible? Did those gazers observing me give the hive mind information about my swordplay?

The alien swordsman—Hiran decided to call it a reaper then and there—roared out a challenge, filling the chamber with the fetid stench of its breath. It took its blade in a two-handed grip and fell into a combat stance, its feet spread in a loose but balanced bearing and its weapon held above its head in readiness to strike.

A swarm of clawers and stingers emerged from the floor around it. The reaper roared again, and its lesser kin charged forward in a tide of chitin and fangs.

Lila met their charge with salvos of buckshot, shredding the front ranks apart. At the same time, Hiran waded into the tide of aliens. Azure Fang flickered in his grasp, cleaving at least four clawers or stingers apart with every swing as he advanced upon the reaper.

The gunfire ended within moments though, as Lila’s weapons ran dry. Hiran cast a quick glance over his shoulder and saw the dozens of aliens that had pushed past him rush upon the Savant. She retracted the limbs holding her shotguns and extended a cluster of sturdier ones from her torso, each of them tipped with whirring circular saws, hydraulic pincers, and electrified mauls.

A clawer pounced toward her, only to have its skull bashed in by a maul-limb. Two saw-limbs fileted three stingers with a series of sweeping cuts. A cluster of aliens writhed and burst beneath the pressure of closing pincers.

Lila would hold her own in melee, at least for a while, Hiran realized. He returned his focus back to the reaper, which had come forward to meet his advance in return.

The massive alien lashed out with a horizontal slash of its blade. It was a crude attack, one that Hiran parried easily with a flick of his wrist. He riposted with a thrust, punching Azure Fang’s tip deeply into the reaper’s chest, before withdrawing the blade and following through with a cut to its midsection that split open its abdomen and spilled its viscera onto the floor in steaming ropes.

The reaper howled in agony, but it didn’t have long to suffer. Hiran’s next blow severed its head, sending it spinning through the air and trailing arcs of ichor in its wake as it did so. The rest of the decapitated alien thrashed its limbs wildly as it fell, gushing arterial spray from the stump of its neck. The creature’s electrified sword cleaved through clusters of clawers and stingers as it played out its death throes.

By then, Hiran had withdrawn to Lila’s side and hacked down every alien in her vicinity, giving her the time and space she needed to reload her shotguns. But an endless tide of clawers, stingers, and buzzers poured from the holes in the floor in front of the hive mind.

Hiran killed them as they came, his Sun Circuits blazing at full capacity, but he knew sooner rather than later, he would exhaust his Aether reserves and Lila would run out of ammunition. They needed to kill the hive mind, and they needed to do so quickly.

“Roast the damned thing!” he called out to the Savant, but it seemed she’d already arrived at the same idea as he did. Lila had unhitched the plasma blaster from her back and leveled its barrel directly at the brain-like monstrosity across the room.

The hive mind must have sensed its own peril then, as it pulled its hordes back, forcing them into a dense wall of chitin and meat. Hiran sensed denser concentrations of Aether arising behind that wall, and he knew that another four reapers had emerged. One of them thrust a chitin-covered tube through the wall. A split second later, the tube bucked, launching a spherical object at Lila.

Hiran pushed out his left palm and intercepted the sphere with a Fallen Spiral technique, wrapping it in swirls of Aether that stole its momentum before allowing it to tumble to the floor, where it burst into a hissing, corrosive pool that ate swiftly through the synthcrete.

They have other weapons besides swords, he thought, readying himself to intercept more of the corrosive spheres as another three more chitin tubes—no, rifles—punched through the wall of aliens.

“Get out of the way, Hiran,” Lila said calmly. “You need to be at least ten feet from my field of fire or completely out of its path.”

Hiran complied right away, dashing behind the Savant. He caught another hissing sphere with a Fallen Spiral technique and threw it aside. The rest of the alien rifles began to buck…

Sunfire burned across the chamber in an incandescent lance, incinerating the wall of aliens instantly and sending the reapers behind it staggering back, their torsos and heads half-cooked from flash-burns.

But the hive mind remained unharmed, having sacrificed at least three to four hundred clawers and stingers in its defense. Its brain-like surface quivered again, and more of the smaller aliens began to emerge.

Hiran leveled his palm and fired off a Void Blast at the now-exposed hive mind. The beam of violet light ripped into the grotesque monstrosity and to his surprise, blew it apart in a shower of ichor and gelatinous brain matter.

The effects of the hive mind’s death were immediate. Every lesser alien, including the half-dead reapers, fell into violent convulsions. Ichor and excrement poured from their every orifice. They emitted a collective shriek of agony.

And then they were dead.

The fleshy growths infesting the walls and floor turned a dull shade of gray and shriveled in on themselves, before peeling free from the surfaces to which they’d been attached and falling into piles of desiccated organic debris.

“Victory is ours,” Lila declared. “Well done, Hiran.”

“Good job to you too, Lila.” Hiran nodded to the Savant and sheathed his sword. He pointed to a massive hole in the wall behind the hive mind’s remains. “Come. There’s something I want to check out.”