Hudson stared up at the massive, flying silverine with momentary shock. The glow from its body was bright enough to illuminate most of the cavern floor around them; the pulses of qi emanating from its central core were ominous. When the wings began to glow even more brightly, Hudson had a bad feeling and reacted quickly, pushing Cor to the side of the cavern and out of the way.

The enormous silverine rushed past them, moving far too quickly for something of its size. The wind from its passage buffeted Hudson and Cor, crouched next to the wall of the cavern.

“Good news,” Cor said. “Ix says that if we kill the queen silverine, then its core will have enough juice for several trips off this rock.

“Bad news – we gotta kill it.”

“How?” Hudson yelled back. He quickly grabbed the sledgehammer off of the ground, none the worse for wear after being used as a grenade.

“How?” Cor replied. “The same way you kill everything else. Beat the crap out of it until it’s dead.”

The queen rose above Hudson and Cor, circling in open space within the shaft. An angry buzzing sound filled the air, and all of the smaller, pint-sized silverines retreated from the ground floor of the cavern and into a warren of nooks and crannies surrounding it.

“Dive-bomb incoming. Split up!” Cor said and sprinted for the other side of the cavern, diving under a slight overhang.

Hudson looked around frantically for a place to shelter. None of the openings in the walls nearby were large enough for him to crawl inside. The space that Cor found was barely large enough for one person. He ramped up his breathing technique and sprinted further down the cavern, away from Cor and away from the silverine queen.

He took a quick look over his shoulder, and he saw a pulse of silver qi flowing from the queen’s thorax to its almost transparent wings. Hudson dove to the side and pressed himself up against the wall, readying his sledgehammer to attack.

He had just activated his sigil of Rooted Strength when the queen silverine dove from above. Her enormous mass – thousands of pounds – slammed into the cavern floor on Hudson’s left and tried to squish him into the wall.

He swung his charged up hammer with all his strength, and connected with a buzzing claw that was as large as he was tall. The claw was knocked off course, slamming into the cavern wall next on his right. Hudson was pelted with gravel, rocks and boulders and flung off of his feet, landing on his back fifteen feet further down the cavern.

He hadn’t even taken a direct hit from the queen. His back was heavily bruised and he was covered in scrapes and scratches from all of the rock shrapnel. He might be a lot stronger with his cultivation and sigil activated, but mass was mass, and that queen silverine was enormous. He didn’t think he would survive if it managed to land directly on top of him.

Hudson scrambled to his feet and ran to the left, trying to circle around behind the queen’s direct line of sight. It lifted off the ground, however, and out of reach once again.

He spared a quick glance for Cor, who was now running around the bottom of the cavern, picking up what looked like small pieces of maseki and tucking them into his vest. He didn’t have any more time to think about what Cor was up to, since the queen silverine was still on his tail and he needed to figure out how he could fight this thing.

He dove to the side, successfully evading the queen as it tried to nail him from above, with its buzzing claws and massive size. The cavern floor shook from the impact, and Hudson stumbled as he rolled to his feet. He managed to get a swing in, the head of the hammer smashing into the side of the thorax, leaving faint cracks.

Hudson was clipped on the arm by one of the queen’s legs, leaving a long cut, and then the queen was in the air again.

He needed to do something about those wings. It was using its ability to fly to both defend and attack. If Hudson was able to ground it, then the massive size of the queen would become a disadvantage to it.

Reluctantly Hudson threw the sledgehammer on the ground and dug in his pouch for the silverine claws he had stored there. He had an idea, a terrible idea, but maybe using the cutting power of the silverine claws instead of the blunt force of the sledgehammer would make the terrible idea into a slightly less terrible idea.

He jammed one of the claws into his right hand, then desperately jumped out of the way of the queen silverine, slamming into the side of the cavern. He dropped the second silverine claw on the ground, but managed to keep the first secured in his right hand.

He didn’t have time to tie it or secure it better, so he gripped the claw with both hands and waited for the queen to circle back around. He pushed his breathing technique to the max, but didn’t engage his sigil. Instead, he focused as intently as he could on the queen, on the silvery pulse of qi emanating from the core. Following the qi as it coursed through the queen’s nearly transparent body, out into the finely woven wings, which gathered the qi in a naturally grown qi formation… gradually intensifying until…

Now. Hudson jumped up and to the right, timing his leap for when the queen dashed forward. He thrust out his hands, the qi from his damaged meridians charging the claw.

The queen dashed forward, slamming into the ground where Hudson had been standing only moments before. Hudson safely cleared the queen’s buzzing claws and his jump put him squarely in the path of the queen’s left wing.

Hudson smacked into the thin wing, and the claw in his hand cut through the soft material like a hot knife through butter.

There was a buzzing scream from the queen, vibrating the entire cavern floor, as she writhed in pain from the wound to her wing. Hudson landed on the ground and rolled, avoiding the thrashing legs.

Unfortunately, the damage to the wing didn’t prevent the queen completely from taking flight. It rose up over the cavern again, and Hudson ran in the opposite direction to give himself some space.

As he turned to face the queen again, however, he saw that the queen had decided it had enough of Hudson for a while. It was sighting down on Cor, who was crouched down underneath a slight overhang and fiddling with something on his weapon.

He wasn’t in a deep enough crevice – the queen could reach him where he was hiding.

“Cor! Watch out!” Hudson yelled.

Cor looked up as the queen angled its body towards him. The wings began charging with qi, the parts of the left wing that were undamaged still absorbing qi from the center and glowing a silvery color.

Cor slapped his hand down on the small pile of maseki stones at his feet, just as the queen dived downwards.

The damage to her wing made her fly slightly off course, hitting the cavern wall slightly above and to the right of Cor’s position. The queen’s claws dug into the stone, collapsing that portion of the cavern. The overhang collapsed in a shower of dust.

“Cor!” Hudson yelled.

“Simmer down,” Cor’s voice said from behind him. Hudson turned and saw Cor standing right behind him, holding a few pieces of silvery quartz in his hands.

“Ix opened a rift for me,” Cor explained. “And now he’s going to do the same again. I gathered enough loose rocks for one more chance – get ready! We’re going to drop you on top of the thing. Take out the second wing!”

Cor reached his hands out in a strange gesture. He held the maseki stones in his left hand, then placed his right hand, the hand wearing Ix’s jade ring, on top of his left so that the maseki stones were in contact with the jade ring.

The next thing Hudson knew, an inky blackness surrounded him for a brief and impossibly long second. When his senses returned, he was falling on top of the back of the queen silverine.

He landed awkwardly, unprepared to grab on to the chitinous back. The small silverine claw he had embedded in his palm fell out, bouncing off the queen’s back and falling to the ground below. Ix had portalled him into near-perfect position, though, and as he slid off of the slick chitin, he managed to grab a hold of the thick segment where the left wing connected to the main body of the queen.

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He pulled himself up and straddled the thick articulating joint as if he were riding a horse. It helped that the queen didn’t flap its wings to fly, and instead relied entirely on its internal qi technique.

The queen seemed to realize what he was trying to do, or at least knew he was on its back. It flipped over, flying upside down, trying to dislodge Hudson. He wrapped his legs tight around the wing’s joint and held on tight.

He had lost the claw he’d used to puncture the wing. He tried punching the protrusion of chitin that he was sitting on, but to little avail. It was hard, harder than stone, but also had a flexible quality to it that absorbed the force of his blows.

A bit further up was the first actual joint for the wing. Hudson leaned forward, and shaping his fingers into knife hands, began hacking away at the joint. He focused on a single point at the joint, trying to drive his fingers directly through the chitin and into the softer interior.

He punched harder and harder, breathing in deeply and timing the exhales of his breathing technique with his blows in powerful kiais. The middle finger on his right hand jammed, sending a jolt of pain up his arm. The fingers on his left handle also jammed, but he kept going. Cracks were beginning to form in the chitin, spreading from the single point he continued to hammer at.

Silvery pulses of qi traveled up into the wing, and Hudson knew he was running out of time. He wasn’t sure he would be able to hold on if the queen used her full technique, and she could be aiming to squash Cor.

His hand finally smashed through the chitin protecting the wing’s joint in a spray of ichor. Hudson grabbed what felt like slippery cords inside of the joint, and pulled backwards with all of his might.

The queen dashed forward with its qi technique, but Hudson had damaged its control over its left wing. Instead of shooting straight forward, it veered hard to the left, smashing into the cavern wall.

Hudson’s legs were squished between the wall and the queen’s body as it slammed into the rock. He felt a wrenching sensation in his left knee, and then an explosion of pain.

The queen dropped to the cavern floor, screaming in rage. Hudson rolled backwards onto the queen’s back. He would be crushed if he fell off the queen’s back now.

The queen’s left wing was clearly broken, pointing straight upwards at an unnatural angle. Hudson had torn some ligaments or nerves or qi channels – he wasn’t sure what – that were inside of the wing’s joint, and the unplanned crash into the cavern wall had twisted the wing beyond its normal range of motion.

Hudson grimaced and tried to hang on to the queen’s back as it bucked up and down. His left leg was useless from the knee down. He couldn’t move it, and it sent daggers of pain up through his spine.

Even with the injured leg, Hudson felt a surge of hope. He’d successfully grounded the silverine queen.

The queen scuttled away from the wall on its legs. Hudson sprawled on his stomach atop the torso, clinging onto creases in the chitinous body, before pulling himself forward with his hands.

The queen silverine had chitinous armor covering its entire body, but it was divided into segments. Those segments allowed the queen to articulate its body – particularly its head and upper thorax – but the creases also gave Hudson natural hand holds.

He climbed up the back of the silverine’s body until he was perched on the back of its head, thighs gripping tightly. He had one hand jammed down a crease in the armor segments, the other pulled back in a knife hand.

Out of the corner of his eye Hudson saw Cor dodge to the side as the queen chased him around the floor of the cavern. The queen’s speed on the ground was surprisingly high, but only in a straight line. It had some of the same tactical weaknesses as the smaller silverines. So long as Cor kept circling the massive body of the queen, and didn’t get trapped in a corner, he could stay ahead of it.

The queen screamed in frustration and rage, and moved its head up and down rapidly, like a chicken furiously pecking in the dirt. Hudson almost lost his grip when he was lifted up and then slammed back down on the silverine’s neck. The pain from his broken knee was intense, but he managed to hang on.

Just like with the wing joint, Hudson focused his strikes on a single point of chitin at a segmented joint, where the armor was thinner. As his strikes began to break the chitin, spreading cracks through the armor, the queen’s head movements became even more frantic. Hudson grimly hung on until his hand pierced the chitin, diving deep into the back of the queen’s head. Foul ichor sprayed over his face and chest.

He pulled back and struck again, this time driving his arm shoulder-deep into the silverine’s neck. The queen stumbled and fell, its legs and claws twitching uncontrollably. One last time he struck deep into the queen’s neck, angling upwards towards the back of its head. His hand pierced its brain, and the queen let out a final, gasping scream.

The glow emanating the queen’s body died down, all of the silver color fading away to a translucent, dull gray. A dim greenish glow still remained in the center of the queen’s torso.

Hudson painfully slid off of the queen’s back, landing gently on his good leg. He popped a half-used healing pill into his mouth and continued cultivating.

“Good job, son. This wasn’t your first rodeo, now was it?,” Cor said, walking up and patting him on the back. “That was a tough fight, and I couldn’t help much. I don’t have many rounds left for my rifle, and didn’t think they would do much against…. that.”

“Thanks,” Hudson mumbled out between the pill in his mouth. “Tell Ix thanks as well.”

“Of course. That was some yippekayee stuff, wasn’t it? Portalling on top of the queen like that,” Cor said, chuckling a bit to himself. “Gonna make a great story, but alright. Time to focus.

“We need the core of the beast… Ix says it’s making that green glow in the center of the torso, but we’re going to have to dig it out.”

Hudson stared daggers at Cor. “We? I can’t even walk.”

“Yup. No need to walk much for this job. I’ll supervise, and keep a lookout, in case any silverines come back.” Cor replied. There were zero silverines in sight. All had fled, and none had returned after the queen died. “Let’s hop to, then!”

Hudson was already covered in the queen’s ichor, so he supposed it made sense. He was going to get even messier digging into the corpse of the queen for its core.

He literally hopped over to where the greenish glow was emanating from the queen’s body; he was still unable to put any weight on his left leg. The healing pill was helping, and would have worked better if he stopped to meditate, but he didn’t have the time.

Standing in between the queen’s enormous claws, he activated his sigil of Rooted Strength and winced at the slight burning sensation that now accompanied it. He pulled back and started punching at the chitin armor.

It was tough going, and without the added adrenaline of a fight for his life, trying to break through the tough exoskeleton was going to take forever. He supposed he could try to dive inside the silverine’s body from the opening he had made on top… then immediately discarded that as too terrible and crazy, even for him.

He fished around in the pouch at his side for a silverine claw, and realized he’d dropped both of them in the fight. Then he paused, and looked over at the queen’s claws flanking him.

“Cor!” he called out. “Going to need some help over here.”

Cor found one of the claws he’d dropped on the floor of the cavern, and it didn’t take long for Hudson to chip through the joint connecting the giant claw to the queen’s torso, helped by the smaller silverine claw jammed into his palm. Cor helped hold the giant claw up, so that Hudson could reach the ligaments inside the joint more easily.

The giant claw was truly enormous, almost as tall as Hudson was, but it was surprisingly light for something its size, weighing no more than fifty pounds.

Hudson gripped the top of the giant claw with his left hand, holding it out horizontally. He then jammed his right hand inside the attached claw arm. With the smaller silverine claws, he had to jam the sharp chitin into his palms to get close enough to his meridians, but with the queen’s claw, it was the other way around.

Hudson ramped up his breathing technique, and the claw began to vibrate slowly. The qi inside the queen’s claw gradually built up until Hudson felt like he had a five-foot long chainsaw in hands.

The queen’s claw bit through the chitinous armor surrounding her torso. Bits of chitin flew off in a cloud around Hudson, and it sounded like a million metal chairs being dragged across a tile floor at the same time, but it was much easier and faster than trying to punch his way through.

After cutting sections of the armor away, Hudson set the queen’s claw aside and hopped closer to the torso, reaching his arm inside. He felt around in the squishy and slimy interior until his hand grasped what felt like a smooth, circular stone. He couldn’t quite grasp it – it was slippery – but he used two hands, both sunk inside the silverine’s body up to their shoulders, and he was able to pull it out.

The queen’s core was a perfectly smooth, jade-green pearl the size of a grapefruit. It glowed softly, and he didn’t need to perceive it with his qi-sense to know that it was full of qi, more so than any of the maseki that he had ever mined.

Hudson handed Cor the core and took a few moments to clean himself off a bit. While he was working on cleaning out his hair, There was a familiar-sounding scream behind him, and the floor of the cavern shook.

Another silverine queen had just landed on the floor of the cavern behind him. Swarming around it were flying silicates, their tentacles latched onto the giant queen and sucking up silvery qi.

More silicates were dropping down into the cavern from the opening above. Some were aiming for the second queen, but others were flying towards them.

“Cor! It’s time to go!” Hudson yelled..

“Right here,” Cor said from behind him. He held the core in his right hand, placing Ix’s ring on the surface of the core, and rested his left hand on Hudson’s shoulder.

There was electric buzzing sound, and an inky blackness surrounded Hudson and Cor with an impossible cold.