Colin Collins strafed .50 cal machine guns across the ramp, shredding Faeran before they could reach his dad and that intense woman.
The flying wing was handling like a breeze.
He had been worried about all the sand and particulate matter doing a number on the miniature jet engine, but his upgrades to the filtration system were working like a dream.
So was the swivel turret set into the bottom of the wing.
Now, he could get them coming and going.
Problem was the ammo.
He was running low even with his extra ammo Skill and his Hammerspace Magazine Skill.
It was a strange thing.
He had no idea why he had been drawn to the Emerald Bomber’s flying wing on that terrible night over a decade ago.
Barely knew the woman.
They fought on the same side.
She died.
He lived.
Was it their shared loved of invention? Of building things with their hands?
Probably… even though they had very different interests.
She had her wing, while he had his dad.
Except, his dad pushed him to find a different path, something wholly his own.
The broken wing.
A sacrifice for freedom.
That seemed like a right path to him.
Strong will became truth as it often did with the spires.
Fixating on the wing sparked his imagination and changed his class.
He became the ‘Emerald Raptor’ in honor of the woman and the last, most advanced fighter jet in the world.
Now, he was a front line fighter, while occasionally providing tech support for his dad.
The advanced technology from another world that Cal had shared made Colin’s dad practically self-sufficient.
Better material… Threnium might as well have been magic. Stronger and lighter than anything on Earth and it wasn’t even close. It was even self-healing, like it was alive or something. Super science ridiculousness had been always been a guilty pleasure for the younger Colin, for as much as it sparked his imagination it made the engineer in him cringe.
Better power sources… enough to keep his dad operating at peak output for weeks rather then hours. Easy, wireless and solar recharging capability. Hell, kinetic motion charged it. All in a unit that fit in the palm of a hand.
Better weapons.
Better defensive systems.
Automatic repair systems.
The fact that a lot of that involved nanobots gave him a bit of a pause, but the shit had been working fine for, like, tens of thousands of years for the Threnosh and they never had any gray goo issues.
So, he figured he’d go with the super science aliens on this one.
The HUD beeped red, pointing urgent red arrows in multiple directions.
He shifted his weight, cutting power to the engine for a split-second with a cybernetic thought to bank into a steep dive.
Micro-thrusters fired automatically to keep the wing stable.
Burrowing darts zipped just past him.
One struck his armored arm.
The disgusting thing spun and wriggled trying to eat through.
“Threnium, bitch,” he muttered, slapping the worm round off.
The acid-like substance barely affected the surface and the only the saw-like teeth left were superficial scratches in the purple paint job.
He flipped into a roll, giving the turret a clear shot.
.50 cal bullets raked across the pursuing Faeran, dropping several and forcing the rest to peel off.
Too bad Cal hadn’t grounded all of them, but that was just being greedy.
He looped into a steep dive.
The V.I. in his helmet was warning him about incoming trouble for some of the mercs fighting in the northwest quadrant.
The men and women were locked in battle on the ground with Faeran soldiers and one terrifying scorpion the size of a bull.
They didn’t see the swarm of Faeran and insects swooping down with the sun at their back.
“Visual targeting on,” he said.
His eyes darted to each Faeran.
“Seeker micro-missiles. Fire!”
They streaked from his wing, trailing white smoke.
“Incendiary micro-missiles. Fire!”
The first volley struck home before the second was a quarter of the way to target.
Every single Faeran he targeted went down with a gaping wound in their chitin-armored chest.
The second volley consumed the wasps and scarabs.
He banked and strafed the thickest portion of the ground-bound Faeran.
Every third round was a tracer.
Every fifth round was white phosphorus.
War crimes?
Technically, that was only for humans, right?
Faeran didn’t count, especially since they laid their eggs in living people.
Fuck em, he thought.
The giant scorpion had some tough chitin.
He had to circle strafe it with his turret mounted .50 cal until he managed to blow enough of its legs off for the mercs to finish it.
A few of them raised their weapons in salute as he streaked back into the sky and headed for the next trouble spot.
He was running low on his preferred weapons. He still had magitech spell modules, but the range on those things weren’t nearly as good as the old-fashioned combustion based ammunition. He did have a couple of Threnosh weapons, but those were his most powerful ones and he needed to keep them reserved for the worst case scenario.
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Up close the outer surface of Shalindren was a tryptophobic nightmare.
Spiraling holes within spiraling holes everywhere he looked.
They ranged in size from massive for the Faeran and the giant-sized insects to tiny for the regular-sized insects.
He sped up, aiming for a non-holed section of the flat roof that spread out over a thousand meters in every direction.
Magically-strengthened sandstone melted with a look.
He plunged through a thick section of ceiling, emerging into a chamber the size of a warehouse.
“God. Damn. It. Every time!”
Always with the nightmare fuel bullshit.
Racks of people ensconced in a substance that was similar to crystallized honey. It kept them immobile and imprisoned while keeping them alive by feeding nutrients through their skin. It’d be great stuff if one put aside the other side of the equation.
Why were the people being kept alive?
The answer was in the small eggs implanted inside their abdomens.
Eron heard the embryos? Fetuses— he had no idea what to call the things— scratching on the inside of the soft, flexible shells.
Time was running out for some of the people.
Prison chamber 1. Setting beacon 1. Two minute time limit. Moving to next—
Faeran guards buzzed inside.
They were quick.
He’d only been inside for a second.
His eyes flared.
Solar heat burned them to ash even quicker.
He burned and punched his way through the massive hive dungeon.
It was more spacious than he had expected.
Huge chambers were connected by twisting corridors pockmarked with many different-sized holes leading to other corridors.
It would’ve slowed him down trying to orient himself toward the sounds of human heartbeats had his brother not seared the entire layout into his brain.
Straight up, straight down and every conceivable angle.
The place was truly made for those with flight or the ability to move on vertical surfaces.
The rare horizontally-oriented corridors were there only for the humans to challenge.
Idiots.
How many of those that failed and never emerged had served as incubators?
He should’ve tried to destroy the place years ago regardless of what the spires’ rules had said.
The Faeran and their insects were too slow to stop him.
The few that managed to even get close burned from the sun’s heat.
It took seconds for him to reach each prison chamber and set a beacon, slowing only long enough to burn the guards to ash and to update his brother on the state of the prisoners.
Prison chamber 395. Two hour limit. Moving to the next chamber.
Prison Chamber 500 was a special one.
It was near the center of the above ground portion of Shalindren.
Faeran presence was stronger and prepared.
Amber-colored magic shields barred his way.
Soldiers stood ready.
Countless insects skittered in countless spiraling tunnels all converging on him.
He didn’t have time from the urgent scratching sounds coming from inside the people all over the rest of Shalindren.
A second sun burst into life deep inside Shalindren.
When the light faded an enormous void within the magically-strengthened sandstone had been created.
Eron floated in the center of an empty sphere.
Charred and melted stone surround him.
Nothing remained of the Faeran and their insects.
He flew through the remains of the chamber’s once artfully sculpted door.
There was only one prisoner.
An enormous man stood suspended in a massive ball of the crystallized honey-like substance. His face was hidden behind the glistening mask and tube that extended into the high ceiling. It reminded Eron of a stretched out intestine.
The poor bastard had to weigh over five hundred pounds. He looked fat and flabby.
There was no way he had been like that before his capture.
Eron couldn’t remember seeing a single morbidly obese person over the last twenty years. It wasn’t conducive to survival in a world with monsters.
The Faeran had to have fattened him up for their most precious children.
Prison Chamber 500. Thirty second limit.
Don’t move. I’m piggybacking off your brain. I won’t be able to punch through the magical protections in time otherwise.
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Pain stabbed into his brain.
Unlike anything he had experienced in that last five years or so.
Needles stabbed all over.
An ice-cream headache turned up by a factor of a thousand.
The last time something had hurt even remotely close was when that weird alien woman that kept going on about how she was ‘atomic’ had wiggled her claws around in his stomach.
He had sent her crawling back into the spire she had emerged from.
Done.
Thank fucking Jesus! Is that it? This dude going to be okay?
I turned the royal embryos into a million pieces of protein for his body to absorb. He might get a special Skill or even class out of the whole experience.
Not worth. Heading to next chamber.
A thousand and one chambers.
Each, except for this one, meant to hold a thousand human-sized incubators.
A thousand beacons.
The peoples’ last hope.
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Shalindren was much larger than the humans had ever suspected.
The mega structure visible on the surface was only about half of its total volume.
In twelve years the Faeran had dug deep to spread their hive in an effort to prepare for the day when they no longer had to pretend to be simple custodians of the encounter challenge.
The spires’ rules restricted them, forcing them to serve as playthings in exchange for easy, cheap passage to a new world and prime position to strike when the rules were lifted.
Mr. Cruces had told them that this was a common story among the sapient peoples that had arrived on Earth prior to the Terminus Decree.
Willy glanced at the monster eye orbiting him.
It was a little larger than a baseball and it still had an eye-lid, which he hadn’t noticed from a distance.
The creepy thing blinked at him, regarding him with that purple tri-pupil.
Jennylyn had an identical eye watching over her.
The magus had assigned the eyes to provide extra protection just for the two young wizards.
It sucked cause he was just there to be a mana battery and backup for Jennylyn.
Which was bullshit!
Rand would give him shit if that’s all he did.
The former had talked about his epic fight with the demon-corrupted priests beneath the Vatican for months.
Rupert fought in an actual war against eidolons and cowtaurs.
On top of that, he was ‘Wet’ from now until forever.
The codename sucked on multiple levels.
Its origin was lame and he specialized in fire and explosive spells.
He itched to answer the anger swelling inside him with a fireball at the Faeran and their swarming insects.
The air was thick with dust and sand.
Perfect for a huge chain reaction of exploding fire.
Mr. Cruces or the magus could’ve shielded them all even if they were in the heart of a firestorm.
Hell, someone was keeping them safe from the oven-hot winds and scouring sands as they flew down to the gaping hole in the hive dungeon’s flat, pockmarked roof.
He shuddered.
“So many holes…” he whispered in horror.
They had been briefed, but it hadn’t prepared him to see it up close.
The holes had holes, which had more holes.
Small groups of Faeran buzzed past them, sometimes close enough to stab, yet ignored them as if they weren’t there.
Swarms of insects, giant and small, weaved around them or split like a school of fish avoiding a hunting shark only to come together once they flew around them.
They entered the hole.
Stone glowed hot and dripped like molten lava.
Was that possible?
They descended faster, dropping like said stone.
It was weird because the sensation of his stomach shooting up his body was absent.
He might as well have been standing still.
Stone parted before them like water.
The didn’t stop until they hit the ground floor.
Mr. Cruces seemed distracted.
“Forty-five meters that way.” He pointed to an ominous tunnel large enough to drive five trucks abreast into.
The glowing gems the Faeran used for light were too dim to reach more than a few dozen paces past the entrance.
Like staring into the mouth of a giant worm monster.
“Don’t freelance. You wander off in search of treasure and you’re on your own. This place might be emptying out of most of the Faeran and the beasts in their control, but there are still monsters. They’re confined to their areas, but the Faeran do have the capability to open those doors and lift the restrictions on wandering. That also doesn’t account for all the holes we’re making.”
Mr. Cruces spoke to the almost five hundred mercenaries.
His eyes stared straight ahead, like he wasn’t paying attention at what was in front of him.
It was a little creepy.
“Wet!”
“Sir!” Willy jumped.
“Stay focused on your responsibilities.”
It was like Mr. Cruces knew what he was thinking.
Yup… Mr. Cruces must’ve seen it in his face.
“I will!”
“Good. We’re counting on you. Ten thousand people are counting on you.”
No pressure.
He swallowed, mouth suddenly gone dry as he nodded.
“Magus.” Mr. Cruces turned away. “You know what to do. Don’t wait for my go ahead.”
With that the stone beneath Mr. Cruces opened up and swallowed him, closing an instant later.
Willy prodded it with his boot.
The stone was as smooth as it had always been.
It was seamless.
“How does he do that?” he muttered.
“Magus?” The mercenary captain strode over briskly. “One of those eyes of yours can see in the dark? See traps? Normal? Magical?”
“The way forward has been scouted. The traps have been destroyed.”
“Neat trick?”
The magus’ expression was like a stone sculpture.
She gave nothing away.
“Alright, my guys will take point and rearguard. The sooner we get this done, the sooner we get out of this hell,” the captain grunted.
His expression didn’t betray anything, unlike a large number of his fighters.
Willy remembered watching many of them grow sick when Mr. Cruces had told them why the Faeran took people and what was the likely fate of their old comrades. The ones that they had left behind in the hive dungeon over the years.
They forged ahead into the dimly-lit tunnel.
He fought the urge to shrink into himself.
The other guys were all walking straight and tall or stalking confidently like tigers in the jungle of the night.
Two built dudes even hairier than Howard walked at the front, just behind the last mercenaries.
They had looked weird with their over-sized chest and back plates when he had first seen them at the staging area.
They had looked like kids wearing their dads’ armor.
Now, the armor fit perfectly.
Weird that they kept their arms and head bare though.
Howard was just behind them with a big-ass gun resting on his shoulder.
Dark gray Threnium armor blended in well with the shadows.
Willy and Jennylyn walked close to the magus.
All three were surrounded by the magus’ fighters.
More family than mercenary band from what he had observed of their interactions over the last two days.
Each one was armed and armored with gear made out of monster parts.
Willy pulled his cowboy wizard hat off to wipe his brow and run a hand through his hair.
“It’s kind of hot,” he said.
“I wasn’t going to say anything,” Jennylyn said.
“It’s freezing in here even without comparing it to outside.”
He glanced back at the voice.
The third member of the guys Mr. Cruces had brought late to the Quest.
Tall and lean with a scent of power behind those startling blue eyes that sometimes gave off a glow.
Willy was tempted to cast an appraisal spell, but that would’ve been a waste of mana and he, they, were going to need every last drop.
The tunnel seemed much longer than it truly was.
Mercs rushed out into the chamber, clearing it with efficiency and haste.
Empty, just like they had planned.
The cavern was empty with only a few dozen tunnels of varying sizes connecting it to the rest of the hive dungeon. Crucially, and the reason they had picked it, was the fact that there were no holes on the ceiling and floor.
“Proceed, Lynjenny,” the magus said.
Even that stupid codename was better than his.
Willy followed his fellow wizard, feeling shame for being a glorified battery.
He’d much rather be like one of the others getting ready to defend the place for when the Faeran realized what they were doing and for when the monsters were attracted to the immense magical energy.
“I want mines in those tunnels!” the captain barked, pointing at the largest. “Sentry guns there! There! There! And there! Machine gun nests! Mortars!”
“Gonna get really loud in here. Good thing there’s plenty of tunnels to spread the noise,” Howard grunted.
Willy jumped.
He hadn’t noticed the stocky, muscular man walk up to him.
“Good airflow too. Should keep the smoke moving out and bringing in the oxygen. That’s the thing about fighting underground that noobs need to learn. Booms and flames can get more dangerous down here. To everyone.”
“I know.” He nodded stiffly. “There were lessons. I passed.”
“Good to know. Just a friendly reminder. Studying’s good, but you never know how you’re gonna do when you’ve got to do it for real.”
“We practiced for hundreds of subjective hours.” He scowled, thankful that his darkened faceplate partially-concealed his expression. “I know this place. I’ve stood here dozens of times.”
“Point taken. Just stick to your role. Everyone’ll stick to theirs.”
“Thank you for the veteran advice.”
Howard grunted before resuming his walk just beyond the circle that Jennylyn had burned into the stone to mark the safe minimum distance.
Jennylyn finished the preparations for the spell when urgent voices cried out.
“Movement!”
“Movement!”
“Movement!”
The call went out from the mercs.
Several of them.
From seemingly every direction.
He flinched.
“Come, young one,” the magus laid a comforting hand on his arm. “They will protect us while we do our part.”
Jennylynn took a deep breath before levitating her spellbook up to her hands.
The pages blurred until she reached the spell.
She began to cast as he prepared to give her his mana alongside the magus and a small group of mage-types pulled from the local area.
The booming explosions and the sharp retorts of gun fire were dulled by his helmet.
Focus on his responsibility?
Sure… how hard could it be to stand with his back to a fight while doing nothing except for feeding mana into the spell?
Extremely, he discovered.
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Cal’s mind stretched to a thousand different directions across miles of three dimensional physical space.
He pulled the wings from a Faeran that Colin, Emerald Raptor, didn’t notice diving from directly above.
It plummeted like a stone, eating a face full of jet engine burn on the way down.
He gathered a hundred thousand biting scarabs into a tight mass for Colin’s father to blow away with a ball of lightning.
In a thousand different places and ways he helped his allies while hindering his enemies.
Faeran shots of living ammunition suddenly went astray when they were mere inches away from hitting their targets.
Bullets, arrows and bolts that should’ve missed, suddenly swerved into their targets.
All the while, Eron’s reports grew more urgent.
Prisoner chamber 693. Two days…
Prisoner chamber 716. Fourteen minutes…
Prisoner chamber 771. Thirty seconds…
Prisoner cha—
That one needed Cal’s immediate attention.
The regular chambers weren’t as protected as the royal one.
He reached through thick stone and earth, hundreds of meters to destroy the Faeran eggs within the peoples’ abdomens before they could be born. Ripping them into pieces small enough for the body to simply absorb and expel.
They were very lucky that the Faeran embryos didn’t have any toxic effects.
He descend through stone, parting it like water. He cut an angle, heading straight for the Faeran Queen’s real chamber.
The closer he got the more he reined his many thoughts back to him.
Those fighting outside Shalindren lost his secret aid.
Those fighting inside would have it for a bit longer.
Those imprisoned in the honey-like cocoons would never lose it.
He hit a magic shield.
It hit him back with the exact same force.
“Fuck!”
In his haste he hadn’t stolen the particulars of the shield from the Faeran.
He took a moment to reach out to the closest Faeran and was most displeased to learn that it didn’t know. The only thing that it and others knew was that it was the strongest magic shield in the hive.
It appeared that only the queen and maybe the Faeran closest to her knew.
He floated in the small void deep underground, staring at the amber-colored shield. It was made of interlocking hexagons, like a honeycomb, but was a much deeper and richer color than the standard shields.
He reached behind the shield with his thoughts.
It was muddled, like viewing something through frosted shower glass covered in foaming cleaner while a hot shower had been allowed to run for hours filling the entire bathroom with thick steam.
He could touch the queen and the other Faeran, but couldn’t hold on to their thoughts long enough to grab any useful information before they slipped free, forcing him to try again.
He tried over a hundred times in the span of a single breath before giving it up as useless.
On the plus side the shield didn’t seem to hinder his telekinesis much.
He traced the shield’s magical energy signature to the sources.
One hundred magical gems the size of large trucks were arranged in a precise geometrical pattern surrounding the queen’s chamber.
He shifted each one in a random direction.
The amber shield fuzzed, wavering like static on an ancient TV screen.
He pushed with a thought. An invisible hand pressing with slowly increasing force.
At just under forty tons of pressure it shattered with the sound of breaking glass.
He dropped through, parting stone and earth until he breached the top of the queen’s inner chamber
The space was larger than an old sports stadium.
Glowing gems set into the rounded outer walls and in scattered pillars provided dim light.
The entire space had been carved out of hard stone and densely packed earth.
The Faeran had dug deep to get under the softer upper layer of sand that made the Sahara Desert what it was.
The spires had helped too by pulling stone from deep underground to create Shalindren. In the process they had hardened the ground to provide a foundation stronger than sand.
The air felt heavier.
He could feel the thrum as the earth grounded against itself and shifted expanding and contracting like a breathing chest.
“Queen Zhax’hess’sesha!” he called out. “I see the spire.” He glanced at the shimmering thing rising through the center of the chamber. “Call your people back. Leave my world with your lives.”
Now that the shield was gone he stole her answer before she could think to voice it.
There was no leaving.
The spires wouldn’t allow it.
The queen couldn’t leave Earth.
She couldn’t leave Shalindren until she reached a specific threshold of controlled territory.
The rule didn’t apply to the rest of the Faeran.
They’d die before abandoning her.
Each one was an extension of her existence.
They were nothing without her.
It was hardwired into them.
A drawback to a species based around a hive mind.
They struck from every direction.
Living ammunition and scintillating spells showered him with death.