“Do you think we’re ready?” Brand asked.

The Incursion was still negating our wyrmly god-modding abilities. Brand had personally confirmed it during his own expeditions beyond the mountains. As a result, we had to acquire abilities and equipment the long way, “playing” the game, as it were, stocking up on supplies for our adventure. The way my mind-world powers had fizzled out as we’d entered the tunnel at the edge of the Forgotten Sands was truly uncanny, leaving me feeling hapless and insecure—and even more than usual.

You could say it was the Incursion bidding us “hello”.

I patted the Backpack of Holding strapped to my back. “I think we’re good.”

If push came to shove, I could go pangolin and give Brand a ride, and he’d have easy access to all of our dangerous consumables.

We descended further into the cave. The deeps’ air was moist and cool. Water pooled in plateaus upon the rock, trickling down from dripstones like dragons’ spit. Brand let power flow into his staff, filling the emerald with a gentle radiance that pushed back at the darkness of the cave.

As we descended, Brand’s metal feet should have been making a minor racket from clanking on the cavern’s stone floor, but thanks to the muffling charm on his ankle bracelet, they didn’t.

“So, do you know where this tunnel leads?” I asked.

“Nope,” Brand replied. “We can’t know where any of the tunnels will lead until we’ve traveled through to the other side.”

During my two-hours long absence, Brand had been systematically exploring the various tunnels the Incursion had made in the Hoduul Mountains. Each one led to a different section of the Incursion.

As we pressed onward, I let my thoughts drift.

Despite all the stress and pressure that I was under, the three days we’d so far spent on our (mis)adventure had still somehow managed to be fun. I was enjoying myself, despite myself—and that just didn’t sit right with me. I felt I didn’t deserve it. Not when the world was ending all around us.

Not when there was so much at stake.

While I was stopped in place, lost in thought, Brand had continued on down the bend. My thoughts held on to me just long enough for a glob of cave slime to drop from the ceiling and fall onto my shoulder. Mercifully, it was not the living kind of cave slime, just the disgusting kind.

“Ugh!” I groaned, loudly. The sound echoed.

Brand whipped around.

“Are you alright?” he asked.

“Y-Yeah,” I said, dismissively, using the back of my hand to wipe the slime off my armor. “I just got slimed, that’s all.”

I was wearing a lightweight chainmail hauberk beneath my dark, long-backed overcoat, with boots and leggings atop my tail-friendly undergarments. The chainmail clinked as I walked. My pangolin scales also brushed against my undershirt.

Yet all I could think about were the people I’d failed. I’d killed a man and eaten him. I’d lied to my colleagues and patients by pretending I wasn’t infected. My desperation for answers had led me to push Andalon to the breaking point. I’d driven her away, just like I’d driven my family away. Just like I drove my mother away.

Say what you will about postpartum depression. Say it wasn’t the child’s fault if their birth drove their mother to suicide. Now, try to tell that to me with a straight face. Raising me in my mother’s absence and my father’s mostly-absence had taken its toll on Dana, and her schizophrenia was the price, and years of therapy and a career in neuropsychiatry had done little to help convince me otherwise.

Our feelings didn’t care about facts.

Brand narrowed his green LED eyes at me.

“You’ve been lagging behind a lot, Genneth.”

Fudge, he deserved an award for noticing that.

To anyone except Brand Nowston, my behavior and body language should have made it obvious that something wasn’t sitting well with me. But he was mostly unaware of it. At first, I’d actually been somewhat thankful for that, because I feared I wouldn’t have been able to hold things back if he stopped to ask me what was amiss.

But now…?

“I…—”

—I started to speak, but I was cut off by a ping from Brand’s built-in proximity sensors. The antennae at the back of his head whirred, their motors wiggling them up and down. Brand’s face vanished, giving way to the circling sweep of a radar display.

“Sensors indicate hostiles ahead,” he said.

There was a cluster of red dots in the distance. They weren’t heading toward the two green dots in the middle of Brand’s screen that represented us, but it was only a matter of time.

“Great…” I muttered, with a flick of my tail.

“I was expecting this,” Brand said, his face staying in radar mode. “This should be the halfway point. Once we clear this last area, the rest of the way should be clear, at least until we exit the caverns.”

“I know,” I said, with a nod.

“Are you—”

“—Yes, I am,” I said, grabbing my Backpack of Holding’s stretchy strap. Pulling the bag off my back, I rummaged through it and took out some potions.

Though our Giant-Pangolin-Damage-Sponge strategy worked pretty well, it had one downside: my character level wasn’t high enough to give me access to the perk. Without that, I couldn’t cast any spells when I was in . That meant I had to put our defenses in place now, and hope they would be enough.

I cast , , , and a couple other buffs—all for both of us. In addition to defensive spells, I downed a Potion of Physical Might and a Potion of Woodhide. It helped that the potions’ magical components were dissolved in more than just a little bit of quality ethyl alcohol.

At the rate I was going, I was starting to worry I’d need to go to an adventurer’s sobriety society.

“Don’t forget your crossbow,” Brand said.

“I won’t,” I said, as I strapped the backpack back on.

After peeking ahead to see whether or not the tunnel kept winding or had actually, finally, flattened out—and noticing the latter to be the case—I cast right as I activated . My bones creaked as my body grew. I repositioned my legs as my posture changed, quietly lowering myself to all fours.

In a matter of seconds, the pangolin was back in town. My armored plates were as large as two human hands spread wide, and nearly twice as thick. I felt a burning sensation at the tip of my tail—that would be the taking effect. My crossbow fused with the tip of my tail, leaving me with something like a scorpion’s sting, only with a ballista instead of a stinger. The ammunition was unlimited, magicked directly from my body.

I turned to Brand. “Keep to my right. I’ll do my best to protect you from incoming fire.”

Stepping forward, the cavern was just large enough for me to pass through and wiggle around. I could easily obstruct the passage by turning to the side, keeping foes at bay with my keratin plates.

Because of how narrow and winding the caves had been, this would be my first time going up against the rifle goblins as a giant pangolin. I didn’t know if my scaly armor would protect me against the laser beams’ paralyzing effects, but I was going to find out soon enough.

“Alright,” Brand said, “let’s do this.”

My blessings had surrounded him in halos and protective numina. The protections’ light glinted off his robot body’s satiny polish.

Like any ground pangolin, I could walk forward on my hind legs, tucking my forelimbs underneath my chest like I was some mad scientist’s timid minion.

Turning down the cave’s broad curve, the tunnel opened up into a long, wide passage with a mouth-shaped cross-section. Further down, the tunnel opened into a large cavern with a tall ceiling. Tribal totems stood against the walls, alongside crude tents of bone, horn, hide, and skin. Bonfires burned, casting a lurid, flickering light on the goblins and their frenzied squabbles.

I wrinkled my nose as their awful goblin-stink.

No doubt, the goblins were preparing for our arrival.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Had we not had the run-in with the goblins’ reconnaissance party, we would have had the advantage of surprise, but it was too late for that. Still, there was one way we could game the system.

The first rule of enemy encounters? Lob nasty area-of-effect spells at them before battle starts. The soft chanting from the speakers in Brand’s chest and the cyan light now swirling about him indicated he was doing just that, his face still on radar display.

Underneath the goblin-scents, however, I smelled something new—metallic, yet delicious.

Delicious?, I thought.

“Brand,” I whispered, “I think I smell bugs.”

I flicked my slimy tongue’s tip out of my snout.

“No,” I said, correcting myself. “Ants. I smell ants.”

I heard them, too. I heard the clicking, clacking tick-tock-tick an egg-timer might make, only the sound was far larger and deeper than any egg-timer. But I had no time to process it, because, with a vicious yell, a squad of goblins charged down the tunnel, tribal laser rifles at the ready.

“Genneth…!” Brand said.

“On it,” I said.

Tension bristled down my scaly back as I lumbered forward on all fours. Halfway to the goblins’ caverns, I dug my claws into the stone underfoot and turned on the spot, barricading the tunnel with my body. My claws raked sparks from the stone as I skidded to a standstill.

The goblins cackled as they fired. Their laser rifles’ green beams blasted into my energy shield, sending waves of heat and pressure rippling across the forcefield.

Raising my crossbow-tipped tail, I bobbed it about, launching bolts at the goblins at regular intervals. My bolts hit the goblins in their eyes and bellies, making them shriek. The downed goblins lost their grip on their rifles, making the laser beams fly out of control in a wayward rave. The green beams sliced through flesh and seared the cavern walls and floor, leaving the stone red hot. I managed to down five goblins—and injure twice that number—before the energy shield began to flicker, having taken heavy damage from the lasers.

But by then, it had already served its purpose.

“Intúcion!” Brand yelled, his spell complete.

Lowering my tail, I crouched down on all fours as Brand launched a pulsing, swirling mass of cyan ball-lightning from his staff and outstretched robot hand. The spell lit up the tunnel as it hurtled by.

The tick-tock noises grew horridly loud. Metal clamped against metal. I smelled ozone and iron filings.

As the rammed into the amassed goblin, the spell was suddenly diverted in several directions. The energy came apart, flying off in little lightning-globs, as if being lapped up by hungry tongues.

I fired off more crossbow bolts.

The goblins dispersed, backing into their cavern, out of our way.

“Brand!” I bellowed. “We’ve got a problem!”

As I said that, the problem rushed forward through the opening in the goblins’ ranks.

A Clockwork ant—a mechanical insect. Hinges and gears folded and spun as the ant’s savage, serrated mandibles snapped at the air. The clockwork ant was half and again as large as a full grown man, with a body of gears and springs. It crawled low to the ground on the pitter-patter of six steel legs.

The cyan energy of Brand’s sparked along the ant’s metal plated armor. The ant glowed briefly as the spell dissipated.

It didn’t affect it in the slightest. Worse, there had to be more of them; the spell had split into multiple pieces, after all.

Jagged gaps were starting to appear in my energy shield. If we didn’t counter the ants soon, I was going to be looking at a brutal mêlée.

Several more ants followed right behind it, the cyan glow fading from their body. The lights from the bonfires behind them flickered on their abdomen plates.

The goblins stepped back into view as the ants entered the tunnel. We only had a couple seconds before the ants leapt on us and rent us to pieces. On the plus side, at least the ants’ metallic bodies were deflecting the goblins’ laser fire, vastly reducing the number of beams that hit me and my nearly depleted energy shield.

I fired a couple more bolts from my tail. The bolts either bounced off the parts of the ants covered by their steel-plate exoskeletons or passed in between the sparse exoskeletal plating and got crushed by the ants’ internal machinery.

“Brand!” I yelled.

“Wait for it!”

The radar display on Brand’s face gave way to expanding green waves rippling across his screen.

He was them. It was one of the racial perks of being a robot: on-the-spot status information on anything and everything.

It just took a little time to do its thing.

Fortunately, I could buy him time.

Three times per day, I could use my magical crossbow’s ability.

I still had two uses left.

Tensing my tail, I activated the , firing an orb of churning silver that hit one of the onrushing ants. Exploding, the orb launched expanding waves of silver flames in every direction. The flame-waves acted like walls, sweeping up everything in their path. I was close enough to the epicenter of the blast that it took about a third of my hitpoints with it. More sparks spilled onto the cavern floor as I dug my claws in to hold my ground.

Fortunately, the clockwork ants bore the brunt of the blast. The lead ant crumpled under the force of the expanding silver waves. The ants behind it were thrown back, their frames and exoskeletons battered by the impact. Behind them, the goblins got knocked down like bowling pins.

Brand stepped back. “Shit! Clockwork Ant absorbs and neutralizes all targeted, ray-based spells!”

The ants’ limbs twitched as they righted themselves. The goblins helped each other to their feet.

“Recommendation?” I said. “What’s the recommendation?”

always came with recommended tactics.

“Melee attacks, contact magic, and any spell that doesn’t have a target!” Brand said.

Glad to hear they aren’t too overpowered, I thought.

Taking advantage of the chaos, I fired bolts at as many goblins as I could.

“Feed the baby!” Brand yelled.

Ugh.

I hated that meme.

But, at least I knew what would happen next.

A gust of light rushed up from the ground in the middle of the tunnel as a pit opened up beneath our fallen enemies, right where the tunnel opened up in the larger chamber. Brand stood off to the side with his arms in the air, fading magic swirling around his hands.

Three goblins managed to jump out of the way, but the rest and all but one of the ants plummeted some forty feet down as they failed to escape the opening pit.

Turning forward, I galloped at the four stragglers that had jumped to safety. Slapping my tail on the tunnel floor sent me toppling forward, a big, scaly battering ram that knocked my foes into the pit. One of the three goblins died instantly, his skull cracked by the force of my impact, and then crushed as it smacked scalp-first onto pit’s jagged walls.

I scrabbled my limbs over the rough stone underfoot to slow myself down, skidding to a stop at the pit’s edge, nearly falling in. My tail and one of my hind legs went over the edge, but I had no trouble extricating myself; pangolins were excellent climbers.

Unfortunately, so were the clockwork ants.

They easily climbed up the pit’s sides. They dug into me with their metallic mandibles right after I’d gotten all of myself back onto sturdy ground. They targeted the narrow gaps between my plate-scales, using their absurd strength to tear my scales right out of my skin. I’d have been deeply wounded had the Woodhide potion not been doing its thing. Beneath my scales, my actual skin had grown a layer of protective bark.

I would have countered by swatting them with my tongue, but the thought of them cutting it down the middle with their mandible stopped me cold.

“Brand!” I yelled.

“Helping!” he replied. “Watch out!”

I barely had time to look up before a bunch of angular boulders appeared overhead and plunged to the ground. They pounded at my back, and at the ants’.

Yelping in pain, I pounced forward, away from the clockwork ants. I turned around in a half-stumbled spin, thrashing my tail. I curled the front of my body to bring the ants in range of my massive claws, though this did little to faze my attackers.

A couple of the ants lay at the bottom of the pit, smashed to pieces by Brand’s boulders, but the rest were climbing up the pit’s walls once more, venting steam.

Fudge!

“Brand!” I yelled. “Do you have anything else!?”

I fired bolt after bolt from my tail, but it did little to stop them.

“Keep them away!” Brand said.

It wasn’t like I wasn’t already trying!

With a roar, I lunged at the ants as they climbed out of the pit. Screeches echoed through the cavern as I raked my claws against the ants’ plate-metal exoskeletons. The noise made me wince.

I did manage to shatter their compound eyes. The gleaming, faceted gemstones fractured after one or two blows.

But that only made them angrier. They swarmed me. Each one had to be as big as one of my limbs!

“Bran—” I bellowed, only to lose myself in an agonized scream as one of the ants plunged its mandibles into my tail. The ant ran its jaws along my tail, from the midpoint to the base, against the grain, ripping them off like corn from a cob.

I countered with several bloody kicks, rolling away from the pit to shake them off. Brand dropped another handful of magically-summoned boulders on top of us. I rolled out of the way of all but one, but the ants dodged most of them.

Having to climb over the boulders gave me just the opening I needed to strike with my claws. One of my talons caught onto the metal ribbing where an ant’s body wasn’t covered by its exoskeletons. My claws’ long curves gave me enough purchase to clasp those frames and use them like handles to tear the ants off me and fling them into the pit one by one.

Heavily damaged and bleeding out, I staggered toward Brand. Behind me, I could already hear the angry snaps of metal mandibles.

They were climbing back up again!

“Brand!!” I screamed.

White light swirled around him, lashing out at the surrounding ground, billowing his green cloak.

He raised his arms and yelled. “Code Corusca PX-12!”

The light around him ignited in electric fury. Brightness torched the cavern, making my vision flash black. Static ricocheted inside my head, screaming through my ears. My legs and tail tingled in alternating waves of numbness and paresthesia.

I blinked and blinked until my vision returned, moments of clarity flashing in the dark. I glimpsed bolts of electricity leaping all over the lifeless clockwork ants crumpled behind me. The light in their eyes had left; their tick-tock gears were finally silenced.

Unfortunately, it was a mixed blessing.

I walked up to Brand, looking over his body in shock.

Brand was on his knees. Electricity ran amok through his circuitry, making his body spasm and twitch. Green static and other random patterns sputtered across his black LED screen face.

What had he done? It looked like an energy attack, but it couldn’t have been, because the ants would have absorbed it.

And then, brushing aside his cloak, I saw it. His back had… exploded, leaving an open compartment whose frayed and charred circuitry sparked like a box full of stars.

My blood ran cold as I realized what he’d done.

“No!” I yelled. “No!”

He’d made his reactor go critical. It wasn’t a spell, just a massive explosion. He’d dealt them a mortal blow with his own internal power source.

Suddenly, I became aware of the pain encroaching on my every limb. Looking over my arms and back, I saw as much blood and burn marks as I did pangolin scales.

It would have killed me too, were it not for my natural minor electric resistance—another win for Team Pangolin.

Without a second thought, I canceled my —that was my last use of the ability for the day—and rushed over to my friend, nearly tripping over my own two feet in the process. Everything ached.

I smelled like burnt pangolin.

Kneeling beside him, I started converting my unused spell slots into their healing spell equivalents, casting heals again and again, alternating between Brand and myself. The healing light’s radiance grew fainter as I expended my higher-level spells and moved to channeling my lower-level ones. The process was terribly frustrating. It wasn’t safe for us to rest, so I needed to be very careful about which of my higher-level spells to convert into healing.

After several agonizing minutes, the graphics on Brand’s LED screen face reappeared and stabilized as my magic finished regenerating his reactor. I’d also regrown most of the scales on my tail, though the thing still ached dully. It also itched fiercely.

“Did we win?” Brand asked.

“Yeah,” I said, smiling weakly. “Yeah we did.”