Within the echoes of the great halls of the Leovian base, I have stood vigilant. For nearly a decade my watch has endured, my eight eyes always scanning the dented landscape of the lunar surface. For nearly a decade I have stood guard to the final gateway to the Queen Mother’s great bastion—the great Woven Citadel of Rachnari. My sisters dashed around me, acquiring weapons and scrambling up the walls of the fortifications to the battlements in a hurry. One particularly hurried woman used her webs to bypass the gap between the northern and eastern walls, her legs a blur as she dashed overhead. Another, a Dame of the Order of Silver Tread, looked ready to snap at a pair of artillerymen who fumbled an anti-air missile meant for the defensive weapons placed in turrets along the walls.

Outside of the walls, however, it was silent. One could even call it serene, calm, as still as a tomb. I smiled bitterly, fangs twitching, after almost ten years I knew better than most how quickly that could change. I looked back for a moment, over the stone walls of the fortress I stood within to the jewel of the moon. The shining city of Arachne stood proud, lights glittering even as we prepared to do battle outside the walls. The people there would be settling down for the night, groaning as they lay in their nests. An accountant complaining about their superiors, or perhaps a spiderling, thinking about how much they hated school.

My many eyes turned back to the lunar surface, back to the craters that dotted the landscape. The glow of the simulated starlight overhead, fixed upon the faux ceiling far above. The barrier both housed us and protected us from far greater dangers. After all, one could fight an enemy with a weapon well enough, but I’d yet to meet an individual who could endure without air. A small smile spread upon my lips, the shimmering on the air warned of the eternal enemy coming to destroy us all.

The light was dimming, not shut off, obscured by a violet miasma the enemy used to darken the battlefield. For another bastion, this may have been when they would start activating lights or otherwise reacting to the smog. We had no such weakness, as children of Arachne, our vision and senses are perfection. Not that an unthinking, unfeeling, uncaring swarm of beasts could tell the difference between our glorious forms and any other species. I could see them now, their movements jerky and uneven as if unaccustomed to their forms. Nothing like the rapid yet graceful movements of my kind. Long and lanky beings moved towards us, appearing lizard-like in appearance. Their clawed feet moved in wide ungainly arcs as they slowly moved forward. That would not last, soon their strides would quicken, and the awkward-looking mock reptiles would be able to run with a speed that defied their ungainly appearance.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

A few of the younger warriors jeered at the enemy, throwing obscene gestures and mocking words. They wouldn’t be at the centre of the coming battle, but that didn’t stop them from enjoying themselves. Hopefully, they would survive long enough to get their chance to defend the city on the frontlines one day. A few of the heavier defence cannons barked their displeasure as a wave of the eternal enemies began to charge the walls. The explosive shells leave new craters that those behind would hopefully fall into. Again, and again, the great guns thundered as if enraged that the enemy dared to exist in their presence. Even as the smaller cannons fired, now in range of the great swarm, more and more of them surged forward like a purple tide of corrupted flesh.

Rifles were braced against the walls, orders barked over cannon fire and bayonets were fitted in place. My weapon slipped into my hand, I aimed it towards the seemingly unending swarm. A moment later a wall of plasma spewed forth from the battlements, so thick that it stunned the swarm in its entirety. That didn’t last long, the dead were trampled over, and the tide rushed forward. They, however, were of secondary concern to the sudden bursting of stone at the foot of the walls. A reptilian head was blown off as its owner gripped onto the defensive structure, a particularly trigger-happy young man having made the shot. The second of the abominations smashed against the walls so hard that its neck snapped back. Moments later it was crushed against it as another of its kind used it as a hold to grip onto the walls. A half curse half order spewed from an officer’s lips to the left of me and the forward row near instantly opened fire on the closing targets. I stopped firing for a moment, gripping the shoulder of the man next to me and yanked him back a step as a fleshy appendage shot out towards where his head had been but a moment before. He nodded his thanks to me, even as he cut the tongue from the creature with a swipe of his chitinous claws. The blue blood made the creature gurgle as it tried to scream in pain over the lost muscle, or the lost prey, either was likely.

My armoured gauntlet returned to my weapon, aiming it towards the dwindling forces of the reptilian tides. A shot from my rifle took one in the eye and through its brain, leaving a smoking hole, the beast tumbling head over tail taking three of its scaly brothers with it. I wondered at that for a moment, did these things even have a concept of family in the first place? I mentally shrugged the thought off as I reloaded my plasma rifle. The scaly bastards would not kill themselves after all, it would be a long night yet.