The world blurs by as I fall, tumbling wildly through the air. In what feels like less than a second my head impacts whatever is below me and I black out.

Consciousness returns to me quickly as I feel my lungs burning. Thrashing my arms around I feel the resistance of water. Without knowing which way is up, I swim in whatever direction I'm currently facing.

I make it to the surface somehow and try to look around me as I try to breathe while coughing up water. I see a figure at the water's edge close by and swim towards it. As I draw close they reach out a hand and pull me up.

Crawling onto the solid ground I cough the remaining water out of my system. Turning to face the person who pulled me out, I see it's Talon. He's still looking out over the water.

Following his gaze I see two more flailing forms in the water. One is the stout Morvin, paddling towards us with a limp figure over his shoulder. The other is somebody further out, frantically splashing around in the water.

Morvin reaches us and Talon and I pull a limp Holeria out of the water, relieving Morvin of his burden. Turning in the water, Morvin swims back off to assist the other flailing swimmer.

Turning my attention to Holeria, I put my ear next to her mouth to check if she's breathing. I hear slight wheezing coming from her and start patting her back and calling out to her. After a few seconds, she opens her eyes slightly before bending forward and coughing up a load of water. After getting the water out of her system she lays down on the cool stone and shivers as she tries to catch her breath.

Looking back I see Morvin is close again with the other struggling swimmer, who appears to be Redina. Once again Talon and I reach down and pull her out of the water. I extend my hand out to Morvin as well, but he hauls his muscular frame up out of the water with little trouble.

Behind me, I hear a crash. Turning, I see Redina has recovered without issue and shoved Talon to the floor. "Watch where you're standing next time, idiot! You could have got us all killed!" She yells in his face.

"Quiet down!" Morvin hisses, "This isn't the time!"

As he says that I hear something crash into the water. I look to see if someone else had fallen, but can't see anything in the gloom. As I look over the water another something comes down, splashing into the water. Seeing light from above I look up.

Above us I see the bridge we had fallen from, and what looks like a hundred little forms crawling around it. Whoever is still up there is letting loose with magic, and the corpses of the creatures start raining down on us.

Turning back to the group I say, "We gotta move."

"What?" Redina asks. Looking up as I had, she sees the battle happening above us. "We have to help them!"

"Bad idea," Morvin says, "They can fall back as far as they need to down that corridor. If we draw attention to ourselves down here we'll get swarmed. Not to mention we're not all in fighting shape." He looked to Holeria, who was still coughing.

"They'll be fine, we gotta look out for ourselves." I say, "Looks like we're at the edge of the city. Let's head inward and look for someplace to hold up and get ourselves warm. That water is going to give us all a chill if we don't do anything."

Redina clicks her tongue, but doesn't say anything. Taking a knee next to Holeria I take her arm and pull it over my shoulder. Pulling her up I start walking toward the city as more bodies hit the water behind us.

The ruined buildings instill a sense of dread even with my cold fogged mind. It's clear much of the damage to these buildings was caused not by erosion, but some long ago struggle within the city. Some of the damage is… odd. In some places it seems as though stone structures have been cut clean through or melted, like someone used a legendary sci-fi sword without regard.

After half an hour of wandering the dilapidated city, we find the husk of a building that remains roughly intact. This part of the city has dipped in elevation, and we've been wading through ankle-high water for a while.

Once we decide who will take watch, we make a campfire in one of the second story rooms with a window and start the process of drying our clothes. There's a debate about using magic to do it, but we decide it would be better to save our mana in case the swarm circles around to us.

Holeria, who's sitting closest to the fire, asks, "So what happened back there? We were looking over the city then next thing I knew…"

"Our idiot scholar didn't bother to watch his step and made half the bridge collapse from under us," Redina says scathingly.

Talon scratches the back of his head, "I admit, I could have been a bit more cautious…"

"Could have been? Why I oughta…" Redina stood up, ready to throw down with the scrawny scholar.

"Knock it off!" I say, voicing my frustration with the both of them. "Just chill the fuck out before you get us even further down shit creek, alright? Bickering isn't going to help us. We need a plan. How can we reconnect with the others?"

Redina sits back down but says nothing. Morvin is silent from where he stands at the door.

Holeria speaks up in a weak voice, "Couldn't we use magic to amplify our voices to call for help?"

Redina opens her mouth, looking like she's about to say something out of spite, but my death glare silences her before she speaks. "It'll draw a lot of unwanted attention. I guess I should be more specific. There's a few ways we could go about getting their attention through magic, likely without alerting the horde, but the real issue is knowing when they're back in the cave."

"What do you mean?" Redina asks.

"You saw that swarm, right? No matter how good Arim and Bodelee are, I doubt the three of them could fend it off entirely." I pause, "I assume Vurt is still with them since we never pulled him out of the water. I didn't even think of it at the time, to be honest."

"Vurt was still up there. It was just you four who fell. Arim saw the splashing and told me to follow you guys down in case some couldn't swim." Morvin said. "Good thing he did," he said, looking at Holeria and Redina.

"Okay, so everyone is accounted for, good." I continue, "That leaves the main issue. How will we know when they make their way back into the undercity?"

Redina frowns, "Well we just watch the bridge for activity, no?"

I stand up and lean out the window to try and get a better look at the bridge where we came in. "They're still swarming it. While I highly doubt those three would have a lot of trouble backing out of that spot, barging back in through that entrance seems dubious at best. I'm guessing they'll be looking for a different way back into the undercity, so the challenge now is figuring out where they'll enter from and how to contact them when they do."

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Talon raises his hand, "I could scout out potential entrances from the roof of this building. That would give me a chance to look for the ruins I seek too."

"Alright, that should at least give us some options." Talon gathers up his now dry clothes and puts them on before leaving the room.

Walking away from the window, I sit down next to Holeria, who had been unusually quiet since our little fall. "How are you doing?" I ask her.

She shrugs, looking into the fire. We sit in silence as we wait for Talon to return. Eventually, she says, "I guess I was just surprised. I'm fine."

"You sure?"

"Yeah."

I still don't think she looks completely fine, but I leave the matter settled for now. I start thinking of a solution to our predicament.

Eventually, Talon returns and tells us there are more than a dozen other tunnels connected to the bridge network above the city. He also found his ruins, located right underneath the nest of creatures.

"That doesn't give us a good idea of where they'll come from. Hmm." I put a hand to my chin as I brainstorm. "There are three problems we have to deal with. We need to avoid drawing attention to ourselves, find a way to regroup, and need some way to deal with that nest. Staying out of sight shouldn't be that hard, but we'll need plans for regrouping and taking care of that nest."

Redina kicks a rock into the fire, "Hmph. So tedious. We should just find a way to do it all at once."

Talon says, "Stealth and extermination don't exactly go hand in hand, you know."

"No," I say, "But it's not as unrealistic an idea as it seems. We just need adequate preparation. Honestly, I'm not a big fan of sitting around waiting to be rescued either."

The remainder of the day is spent making a plan. When we're all satisfied we assign watches and rest.

***

When the light pours from the hole in the ceiling of the cave once again we begin. The first step of the plan required Talon to scout out a tower near the nest, which wasn't very hard.

Once we made our way through the dilapidated city to the tower we start preparing. It was an old bell tower, the massive brass bell still dangling from the stone tower's zenith. The first stage of the plan needs something to draw attention, something I have the perfect spell for.

The second stage is a little harder. It took several hours of trial and error to get everybody on the same page last night, but I think we reached a satisfactory result.

Once everybody is in position in buildings around the tower I start firing off fireworks at the bell. Many of them ricochet off and the small explosions resonate with the bell, creating an odd cacophony of sound that resonates across the chasm.

Then they come. As we silently move away from the tower as a group the swarm descends on the tower, crawling all over it, inside and out.

As we continue moving further away I feel a tap on my shoulder, it seems like Redina has the shortest range. Though I don't think it should be a problem since we've made it almost two blocks away from the tower.

"Alright everyone, brace yourselves," I say under my breath.

Using a tactic like this leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It reminds me of the friends I once watched who had to clear buildings just like this one. That is, buildings that were booby-trapped.

"Go." On my command, the three who had been supplying mana to their explosive spell within the tower detonated them. On three different levels of the tower, three massive explosion spells went off simultaneously. The monsters, not having the brains to run away from an oddity, had been gathering in those exact spots.

An enormous boom resounded across the undercity, and dust and debris flew down the street outside the building we had been bunkered in. When the dust began to settle we stepped out onto the road to see it littered with rubble and chunks of flesh.

Holeria put her hands to her mouth, retching. The others voiced similar sounds of disgust. I just looked forward, toward the nest and said, "Come on. We're not done yet."

I lead the group as we run through the streets, not bothering to try and be stealthy anymore. The route we take is a bit roundabout so that we don't run into a big interception force from the nest sent to investigate the disturbance at the tower. Even so, there are a few stragglers we have to cut down along the way,

Reaching the base of the nest is quite an intimidating sight. It's huge, easily three or four times the size of the tower we just blew to smithereens. However, it's also made of wood and leaves. Now that I'm up close my hypothesis from afar is confirmed, the leaves stuck to the outside of the nest form a protective barrier against the rain coming in from above. Like shingles on a house, those leaves have been keeping the inside of the nest nice and dry. And with the great big opening right above the nest, we don't even have to worry about the smoke from what we're about to do.

"Alright, scholar. Time to show us you're more than dead weight." I say to the man next to me already preparing his spell.

"Your knowledge of pyrotechnics is remarkably advanced. Would you happen to be one of those referred to as a powderhead?" He asks, creating gusts of wind, pushing as much air into the nest as he can.

"I'm not sure what that means. Back where I come from it was common knowledge that air fuels fire. This is just a simple application of that, right? Tell me when."

Talon continues his spell for another ten or so seconds before saying, "Now."

Summoning an arrow of flame I launch my proverbial match into a space with highly condensed oxygen. The resulting inferno engulfs the nest in an instant, and the wave of heat that expands from it is even greater than I expected.

The cracking fire can't suppress the shrieks of agony from the denizens within. Dozens of writhing figures crawl out from within the nest, falling to the stone below before meeting their final demise. An enormous figure burst through the upper part of the nest, an unholy amalgamation of arms and mandibles. Melted insides dripped from within its carapace on its several torsos as it screamed in unimaginable torture.

This time, Holeria couldn't contain her revulsion, ducking into an alley to hurl up all the rations we had eaten that morning.

"Get ready," I say, "They may swarm us in a rage. Take shelter in that building."

We duck into the building I point out, with me dragging Holeria in as she still struggles to contain her disgust. Right after we take up defensive positions we hear the scurrying of monsters outside the entrance, but none rush in to face us. They all rush past, blindly jumping headfirst into the inferno.

"In the end, they're just ruled by instinct," Morvin said, putting his axe away. "They're little more than animals."

"Indeed," Talon said, "Whether they simply didn't see us or thought that saving their home was more important is irrelevant. Truly, they're just mindless beasts."

"It's so awful," Holeria says, cowering in a corner. "How can you all feel nothing about those awful screams?"

"Because they're the enemy," I say matter of factly. "If you can't take the screams of some lowly monsters, how do you expect to handle the screams of people? What did you think you would be doing here?"

With the flames of the dying illuminating the room, I see her eyes stare back at mine, terrified.

Why? Why does she look at me so?

Looking around the room I see the others avoid my gaze.

Is that it? Have I not changed at all? Have I laid my wretched personality bare for these people, my comrades, to see?

Turning away from them I look out a window, at the fire that still burns. Noticing the number of scurrying monsters has subsided I step out of the door and look toward the crumbling home of those sad husks. The ruins that Talon had come here to research are becoming more clear as the nest burns away.

The others file out of the building beside me and similarly gaze into the fire. The smoke billows out into the sky beyond the hole, and the ashes of those that once lived litter the lifeless stone floor.

And within the fire, something moves.

A dark form, humanoid in appearance, breaks free from some restraint that had held it in place. With a mechanical whirring sound, it begins to take measured steps toward us.

"Dear God," Morvin says, "Is that what I think it is?"

Talon steps forward, and I see a manic glee in his eyes. Bringing out a book from his pouch, he says, "Sure is. I'd advise you to get ready, boys and girls. Meet one of the destroyers of the old world. One of the Machinus has come out of hibernation to play."