Three bullet ant soldiers pressed up the slope, and it wasn’t even the killing of two elders that broke the Worm Mages' focus—it was the fear and shock of it all that kept the children from paying attention to the skies, and then all it took was another instant.
A hundred mortar shells descended upon Immanu, and only Sparrow managed to open three measly wormholes above them, reflecting the ones that would’ve landed direct hits on them. The rest pummelled the wall of spikes, the immediate houses behind them, and shattered everything in the vicinity with a series of fiery cracks. The Worm Mages cried and dropped to their stomachs—they couldn’t warp away because there were more explosions than there were safe places to warp to—and for his part, Sparrow held Ninmah in his arms and fired through the deafening mortar volley, aiming to take out at least one of the bullet ant soldiers before they could reach the edge of the slope.
But they were faster and far stronger than they’d been when they were alive. With a single bound, they leapt ten metres up into the air and fired three times. Felling three more elders with bullets straight to the head.
By now, everyone had mostly recovered from the first mortar wave. A shrill voice shouted to his side, roaring at everyone to warp back to the second defensive lines inside the village—it was either Utu or Minki, he couldn’t quite tell without turning to look—and everybody immediately knew there was no hope of holding the natural chokehold that was the three-thousand-metre slope to the skies. The children started warping back, each group of ten led by a surviving elder, and while Ninmah tried to warp away with him for a second as well–
He let go of her at the last moment, let her warp away with eyes wide and teary, and gripping his rifle in both hands.
The three bullet ant soldiers soaring through the air aimed down at him, and the retreating firefight began.
He fired as he warped back, opening tiny wormholes in front of his barrel to make his bullets fly in at unconventional directions. Most of his shots landed, hitting the soldiers’ heads and torsos—the bullets were but minor inconveniences, throwing them slightly off balance as they pursued. They chased him across the outskirts, past the charred holes and trenches the mortars burned into the ground, and he was reluctant to continue leading them on as he backed up into the village’s plain wooden fences; if he brought the fight inside the village, there was no telling how many children would be caught in the crossfire.
…
But he had to do it.
There was no other choice.
[Strain: 9% → 19%]
Ejecting the normal rounds and chambering in the high-calibre anti-chitin rounds, he warped over the fences and narrowly dodged three bullets aimed at his head. The soldiers’ volley was endless, unceasing, and any houses that hadn’t been brought down by the first wave of mortars were ripped through by their own anti-chitin rounds. There was an advantage to fighting inside the narrow alleys and slanted roofs of the village: he had home turf advantage, he knew where all the best cover spots were, and his extrasensory perception was stronger than the soldiers’. He immediately ducked into a cluttered alley and slid behind a crate, hissing out a cold breath to ‘reset’ himself.
The moment he left the soldiers’ field of vision, the endless firing volley stopped. A tense silence filled the air alongside massive columns of smoke in the outskirts of the village. Soon, the Forward Army’s second mortar volley would begin—he had five minutes to take care of the vanguard force and regroup with the children.
… They’re at least five times as fast as they were, he thought, pressing a palm to the ground and feeling for movement with his vibrational senses. Are the zombie ants puppeteering them and moving them past their normal human limits, or are they still half-conscious with individual minds of their own?
If they still have their own minds, then could it be possible to reason with them?
It was a half-hearted pipe dream, but even if they were still implanted with ant systems, a part of him wanted to believe the diamond flower ornaments they still wore in their hair had struck something in their hearts. If there was something he could say to hold them in place for just a few seconds, he could line up eight shots in a single second, ripping their entire bodies apart to the point of no regeneration; surely, even the zombie ants could only pull so much weight when it came to keeping them on their feet.
The zombie ants were just another biological ability, after all—so there had to be a limit to how many zombie ants could be active at once.
As if the General could really bring people back from the dead.
He snapped his neck and jerked his head out of the way when he saw light glinting above him, a bullet fired from Crow soaring over his narrow alley. He warped back two, three, four times, retreating deeper into the village; the soldiers pursued with a frenzy. They traded bullets through walls and fences, anti-chitin rounds ripping through entire houses to barely graze each other, and Sparrow finally understood why the Spore Knights in the Capital—or any of the elite battalions in the Attini Empire—generally shied away from ranged warfare. When their antennae could sense triggers being pulled and their bullets flew slower than the swing of an axe backed by mutated muscles, trading fire that’d hit was mostly just pointless exhaustion… and Sparrow wasn’t trying to fight a war of attrition with the undead.
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One of them would have to give sooner or later.
Without warning, arrows and bullets flew back at the soldiers, supporting him from the back end of the village. The soldiers dodged most of those with ease, but Sparrow immediately whirled, glaring back at the few elders and children hunched behind a few rows of reinforced roofs.
“Get back and hold the second defensive line!” he roared, directing his warping voice straight into the Worm Mages’ ears, but now they’d made their presences known; they were just more targets to shoot down.
Five, six, seven bullets rang out from three corners of the village, and Sparrow could only make three bullet-sized wormholes to protect a few Worm Mages. The rest were struck through the head, met with death in an instant. He didn’t have time to roar at the untargeted to warp back, however, as movement from the left had him whirling, blocking a bayonet stab from Peregrine bursting out of a snow-filled gutter. Crow and Harpy elected to ignore him, letting Peregrine distract him in melee range as they raced past to take down the survivors, running almost as far and as fast as the Worm Mages could warp—at this rate, Sparrow would be the only one left with nobody to protect.
I don’t have time for you, Peregrine!
Growling, he blocked four consecutive stabs from Peregrine and warped around her, then back in front, then above her to smash her skull in with the stock of his rifle. She definitely tried to keep up with his warps, but he was a bit faster, still, and that little gap between their speed was bridged by the fact that she just couldn’t die; zombie ants burst out the bloodless crack in her skull and jumped at his face like a spray of acid, and he had to dodge, not knowing what’d happen if even one of them got into his body.
[Strain: 19% → 31%]
Her entire body’s a weapon now, he thought, warping ten, ten, and then ten more metres back, putting him in front of Crow and Harpy again. And if the zombie ants get to the Worm Mages, would they also be able to use worm abilities?
Every Worm Mage that fell could be turned against them. Huffing for air as exhaustion clawed into his lungs, he tried to aim for the soldiers’ legs, halting their movements, but for once he was thoroughly outmatched in speed and tenacity. Bullets grazed his arms and cut past his cheeks, but none of his dealt nearly the same amount of damage in return. He had to hold them down so he could line up consecutive shots to destroy all their limbs at once.
And how can I stop them?
Just three seconds.
One second for each of them, and–
“All hands on ground!” Ninmah shouted, “and bring down the mountain!”
Someone grabbed his collar and yanked him back. Minki. One warp from her dragged him thirty metres back to the mouth of the Barrows, and then the surviving Worm Mages slapped the ground with both hands, sending peristaltic vibrations backed with pure physical strength into the walls of the cave.
Icicles cracked and boulders fell as they tried to bring down the ceiling.
Upon realising they were going to be blocked out of the cave, the bullet ant soldiers charged straight ahead with reckless abandon, having run out of bullets to stop the elders from bringing down the entrance from afar. However, twenty or so children were already standing in front of Sparrow, opening massive wormholes in their palms. Wherever those wormholes were connected to—and Sparrow had never learned—they sent out an invisible force that bore down on the soldiers’ shoulders, shoving them back, keeping them back for just long enough–
And then the mouth of the Barrows collapsed, crushing all three of them under the mountain’s weight with a shuddering groan.
…
Snow kicked up into a cloud of dust. The sounds of mortars shelling the village outside were distant, muffled. The rubble sealing them inside the Barrows had to be at least fifteen metres thick, and now they’d created another chokepoint in these narrow, crystalline caverns. With the Brightworms’ chasm behind them, they could harvest food and survive indefinitely without seeing the sun; this was Immanu’s second line of defence, and, in Sparrow’s opinion, a far less effective one compared to the slope.
But it’d have to do.
“... It’s not over yet,” he said, grinding his teeth as Minki helped him stand. He turned and counted the number of heads; there were fifty or so shivering and sniffling Worm Mages scattered all around the first cavern in the Barrows, and only six elders remaining. “They won’t be able to dig through the block mountain around us without proper equipment from the Capital, so they’ll try to blow the rubble open. When they do, we’ll have to hold this entrance. If there are too many of them, we’ll fall back to the narrower chutes. It doesn’t seem like the zombie ants can regenerate a crushed body, so as long as we keep bringing down the ceiling, we’ll eventually whittle the entire army down–”
The rubble exploded behind him with a gust of screeching wind, throwing all of them deeper into the cave, and it was only Minki’s quick reaction to warp him away that he avoided getting caught point-blank in the blast.
Sliding back, rifle dangling loosely in his hand, he held out an arm to keep the rest of the Worm Mages behind him as sunlight tore into the cave—and through the smoke, the flames, and the melting rubble, Vice-general Kuraku stepped through with the Forward Army behind her.
Her eye sockets were hollow. Her skin was peeling off her muscles. Her long and flowy hair, once bright like fire itself, was now a mottled mixture of black and blood; undead exploding ants crawled around her forearms like living gauntlets, and while she may be clad in her usual uniform, her movements were quite obviously jerky and clumsy. Now Sparrow was sure he’d killed her all the way back then, but… he wasn’t sure if he could kill her again.
Her empty eyes were bursting to the brim with writhing zombie ants, and when the exposed tendons in her jaw relaxed to let her speak, it was the General’s voice that spoke.
“... Pushed back against a wall to die in a cave,” she said, shaking her head in dismay, “I remember the first day I was sent to war as a grunt carpenter ant builder. It was a bright and sunny winter’s morning, just like today.”