Riftside 3 - Chapter 25

The tunnel was one giant, muddy throat, and we were being swallowed.

I’d been carving a path through the tunnel for what felt like an hour, but probably was only several minutes. Each step was a battle, one where monsters from the darkness threatened to take someone from me. Eryn kept our back clear, clogging up the path with dead carcasses, forcing the ants to waste precious time in clearing away more of their own just to keep up.

With the strap, I braced my shield against the slick, chitin-streaked walls, the impact of another Glowcrest Emmet jarring me to the bone. My lower shield arm, numb from toxin, felt like a dead weight, but I held it firm with my shoulder. The bug slammed against it, its mandibles clicking inches from my face, and I drove Roq’s spike through its eye socket. It gave a wet pop, and the creature collapsed. Another monster dead, another block for us to push past. 

“Still delicious,” Roq said, though his tone was muted. “I must admit, this is becoming tiresome. There is no sport in this, just endless, zesty chomping.”

Another ant attacked as I scrambled over the corpse of its sibling, not having the time to store it, but I managed to bash its head in. The trick was to close the distance fast enough once one Emmet died. They seemed to instinctively avoid spraying their comrades.

But that didn’t help much as the next ant opened its mandibles and the toxin tube extended. I lunged past the recently dead one, and just managed to tap its head with Roq. It wasn’t enough to penetrate its thick shell, but it forced the head down, forcing it to spray the ground instead of me. The creature shrieked as I finished it with a second blow.

“Take that one,” Roq told Lan, who swiped it into her storage as she passed. Any carcass with a Mind Gem was looted, except those killed by Eryn. Those we left as part of the blockade. It made me think back to Edwin’s command during my first raid: ‘This isn’t about glory or loot, it’s about survival.’

Now I truly understood what he had meant. All I wanted was to get my party out of there, alive and well to see another sunrise.

“How’s Nabeeh?” I yelled over my shoulder, the acoustics of the tunnel twisting my voice.

“Breathing. Not moving,” Knut said, the mage over one shoulder and his tower shield in the other.

“Tunnel seems to be widening,” Lan said from right behind me. “Is it the right way?”

It had led up for a while, but then turned downwards. 

“Yes,” Roq said. “It is widening, it is the right direction, and we are about to have a feast.”

We quickly found out what he’d meant as I kicked aside an Emmet and stepped into another vast cavern, one larger than the one I’d dropped into.

And like that, this was a nursery. The chamber was a bowl of glowing green eggs, stretching as far as the dim light allowed. 

“Riftrot,” I breathed. “Another hatchery. Just how many are there?”

“We can’t fight through this,” Lan said, her voice tight. “That’s got to be at least a hundred monsters.”

She was right. 

The monsters stood in silent ranks, their feathery plumes twitching in rhythm, blocking our path forward.

They likely had herded us through the middle tunnel just so they could crush us between two armies.

“Nnnngh…” Nabeeh groaned, and I glanced behind. She was stirring, trying to raise her head. 

“She wakes!” Knut rumbled, carefully lowering her to the ground.

“You got a way through?” Eryn called from inside the tunnel as she shot another arrow. “They’re coming up fast.”

“Yes,” Arclight said. “We may leave now. I have just reached my breakthrough. There is no need for me to continue the hunt here.”

“Congratulations,” Roq said. He sounded so-so sincere.

“Great job, Arclight!”

“Path’s blocked by—” I called looking around the room at the multiple corridors leading out. “A lot of Emmets. I think they’re trying to surround us here.”

Nabeeh’s eyes fluttered open. She blinked, her gaze unfocused, then she groaned again, clutching her head.

“Feels like… Knut sat on my head. What happened?”

“Lan happened,” I said, keeping one eye on the monsters who seemed content to wait for their comrades to press in from behind. 

“Oh, did she now?” Nabeeh said, glaring at the water mage.

“I’m sorry,” Lan said, her voice low. 

“You feeling up to cast a few spells?” I asked Nabeeh.

Nabeeh blinked, focusing on the formation of Emmets, ignoring Lan. She tried to stand and Knut helped her up. She leaned on her new staff for support and scoffed. 

“Seems I have to.”

“What can you do?” I asked, twisting Roq in my grip and moving my shield through a series of warm up motions. My arm was slowly coming to life again.

“Whatever it is, you’ve got to hurry!” Eryn said.

“I’ll fry them,” Nabeeh said. “Roq, can you guide us to the right tunnel even if the room is covered in smoke?”

“Crap,” I said.

“Of course I can guide you! I am a king! Navigating a little smoke is child’s play!” he declared. “The tunnel we want is directly across the chamber. Straight ahead! As soon as I squash all these eggs, we can leave.”

“We can’t fight all of these. They’ll incapacitate me with toxin and then eat us all. Just help me get them out, alright?”

“Fine,” Roq said. “But you’ll owe me.”

“Deal.”

“Do it,” I said.

Nabeeh angled her staff forward, and said, “Flame Wall.”

A roaring curtain of fire erupted from the ground, fifty feet wide and twenty feet high, and moved straight across the chamber. The sound of popping eggs and screeching Emmets was no less than apocalyptic, and the cavern was instantly filled with a thick, acrid smoke that stank of burned eggs and fried bugs.

The fire burned a path, but we couldn’t run through the flames, and what remained of the monsters charged. 

“Lan, help Nabeeh. Knut! Battle ram! Charge through and we follow,” I yelled. 

My brother stepped up, tower shield and axe at the ready.  

“No retreat!” Knut roared and activated Charge. He barrelled forward, slamming into the ants on the right side of the firewall, his shield pushing them aside. 

“Go!” I yelled and ran into the chamber, my eyes watering, the heat intense on my left. Knut had made it a little over halfway with his charge, and was now hacking his way forward. It seemed the flames made the ants wary of exposing their toxin tube, but there were still an overwhelming number of them , and they moved to close the path made by Knut.

I cast Ironburst, having the fifteen Steelhusk Spears appear in one long row, slanted to make it as long as possible, stopping the ants from reaching us.

Cooked by the fire on one side and protected by the wall on our other, we ran as well as we could. 

“I can’t see a thing!” Lan shrieked, her voice tinged with panic.

“Don’t you dare destroy my fire!” Nabeeh said, coughing. 

“Roq, can you guide us?”

“Of course!” Roq said. “Knut, left! A bit more left! No, you’ve overcorrected, you clumsy oaf! Right! Now straight! There!”

I ran, my head low and back hunched. At one point I heard Knut activate his axe’s King’s Rebuke and headed for the sound.

Roq told him when I came up beside him, and I activated Counter just as I cast Shockwave Slam to one side, pushing the monsters back. 

Then the first ant hit me, and without thinking, I struck out fast as lightning, Roq crushing through its head. 

A cool trickle of mana flowed into me through Roq. Then I remembered Blisterbrand’s second ability, and I swiped away my shield, equipping the weapon in my offhand and activated Quarris’s Resonance. The hammer thrummed in my grip and instinctively I knew where everything was around me.

I waded into the monsters, striking with both weapons as fast as I could. Anytime a monster got in a hit, I retaliated with a counter, crushing them. It didn’t matter whether my armor blocked the damage, my ability triggered anyway.

And with each kill with Roq, I replenished a bit of my mana.

“Good!” Roq said. “Now, march, you slow-footed bipeds, before we are cooked as well!”

Guided by his increasingly frantic directions, I carved a path nearly all the way to the tunnel. 

Then Quarris’s Resonance ran out. 

“Taunt!” Roq commanded, and Knut did so. 

“Strike me!” he roared, before coughing madly.

Nabeeh, Lan, and Eryn rushed by as the Emmets went crazy trying to reach Knut, Lan casting her high pressure water spell forward, killing a few bugs.

I grabbed my brother by the back of his plate mail and pulled him with me as he blocked with his shield.

We stepped into the tunnel, and started to climb, doing our best to keep going despite the smoke filling our helmets, eyes, and mouths. 

Finally we burst into another, smaller chamber, collapsing to the floor, gasping for clean air. This room was mercifully empty of enemies, save for the lingering stench of our fiery passage.

“Next time,” Nabeeh wheezed, “Let’s go for reinforcements.”

“Riftrotten monster balls,” Eryn cursed, and I followed her gaze. In the corner of the room was what looked like a pile of trash, but I realised it was pieces of equipment. It looked like it had been eaten and regurgitated.

“Scouts,” Knut said. “Bad death. Bring home?”

Before I could reply, a thunderous roar echoed from the tunnel behind us, a sound of pure, world-ending fury.

The ground trembled and for a brief moment, I was sure we were about to bite the dust. Everything around us shook and dust started falling from the ceiling.

“What was that?” Lan said, eyes wide, all bravado gone.

“The Queen,” Roq said, chipper. “She knows we have violated her nest and now she wants to violate…us.”

“Up!” I yelled, grabbing Eryn by the arm and pushing her towards the room’s only exit.

We scrambled into the next tunnel, this one mercifully still sloping upwards. The air grew cooler, fresher, the smoke thinning. 

I could see a pinprick of daylight ahead.

“Almost there!” Eryn gasped, but a crashing chaos of destruction from behind us was getting closer and the trembling stronger. 

The Queen was coming and we were about to pay the piper.

“Knut! The Glowcap! Now!” I said.

He didn’t hesitate and swiped the carcass from his storage and dropped it to the ground with a wet thud. We hurried past and once we were about thirty yards away, I called for Eryn to shoot it. 

She already had an Ironroot Golem arrow nocked, its head glowing like burning coal. Then she loosed, the arrow a streak of fire that buried itself in the Glowcap.

The world behind us erupted and the tunnel collapsed in a storm of rock and fire, the concussion wave throwing us forward and on our faces. We scrambled and clawed our way up the last stretch of the tunnel, and burst out into the harsh, blessed light of the badlands.

We fell to the ground, panting, chests heaving, the taste of dust and freedom on our tongues.

“We… we made it,” Nabeeh gasped, laughing breathlessly.

I pushed myself up, my body feeling exhausted after the prolonged fight, and looked around. We had to be a mile away from the hill, which was considerably shorter. 

Smoke rose into the sky from a dozen places as if camp fires were spread around the area.

“Let’s get out of here before they find their way up,” Eryn said.

“Agreed,” I grunted, my voice shaky with relief. “We’ll head back and report this. I’ll get Harold to set up a raid for this place.”

We started jogging, putting distance between us and the massacre. 

But we had only taken a few steps when the ground behind us exploded upwards.

With a shriek that filled the sky, the Emmet Queen burst from the earth, a nightmarish monster of crimson chitin and vengeful fury. She was the size of a small house, her feathery plume not a crest but a flowing mantle of serrated blades. I didn’t need my sigil to know she was a red-rated threat, and that she was very, very angry. Also, there’s no way the five of us could take her on by ourselves. Not in our current state.

She locked her gaze on us and let out another chittering shriek, and then charged.

“Riftrot,” I cursed, breaking into a dead sprint. “Run! Create some distance and wear her down as we retreat!”

The chase was desperate, as the queen was impossibly fast, her massive legs eating up the ground like a race horse.

“Flame Trap!” Nabeeh cried, pointing her staff at the ground as she ran. The Queen plowed through it without slowing, the flames merely licking at her belly and pushing her a foot or two off the ground.

“Geyser!” Lan shouted and I glanced behind. A pillar of steam and water blasted upwards, catching the Queen mid-stride, staggering it, but that too lasted only for a moment.

Eryn was a machine, running and firing, but her arrows were mostly uselessly against the Queen’s armored carapace. Without stopping to line up a shot, she wasn’t able to hit anything critical.

“It’s too fast!” she yelled. “We can’t outrun it!”

“Forge Anchor!” I tapped Roq on the ground as I ran. Steelhusk roots erupted, latching onto her foremost legs. She stumbled and roared, but tore them from the earth a moment later.

“Fire Bolt!” Nabeeh blasted fire at the Queen’s face, but it simply lowered its head and took the blast upon its crown. 

“Conjure Steam!” Lan cried, and a thick cloud of scalding vapor enveloped the Queen’s head. She blundered blindly for a few steps, giving us a precious few seconds, but then she emerged from the steam and kept coming. 

“Immolation!” Nabeeh said, but if the fire bothered the queen, it didn’t show. 

I wished I had Ironburst, but it was still on cooldown.

In the end, there was only one thing to do. She was too close. 

“Knut!” I yelled. “We’ll turn and hold. Girls, keep running! Get some distance! Eryn, get her eyes, then we’ll try to get out of there again!”

“Ash, no!” Eryn cried.

“Go!” I yelled. “It’s an order!”

I skidded to a halt and Knut stopped beside me, planting his feet and raising his shield. 

“Ready when you are, brother.”

The Queen bore down on us, a crimson juggernaut of death that somehow felt a lot more dangerous than the scuttler or even Quarris. There was something off about her, and she was pissed. 

Then she opened her mandibles and a toxin tube extended, the size of my arm. Instead of a single jet, she sprayed us with the milky poison. There was no time to dodge or block.

“Sweet beer,” Knut said.

But for me, one thought, clear and sharp, cut through the panic.

“Hammer To The Face!”

I didn’t wait to charge it. I just threw Roq with every ounce of my newfound strength. The warhammer flew, a spinning projectile of desperation, straight through the toxic wave.

“FOR PIE AND GLORY!” Roq screamed.

He smashed into the Queen’s enormous chest, cracking her chitin and disappearing within, sending a spray of goo onto the ground. It was a solid hit, but not a killing blow. The Queen stumbled, her charge broken, but she wasn’t giving up.

And then the wave of toxin hit us and everything just freaking hurt.

The world went numb. My legs buckled, my arms fell limp. I crashed to the ground, my body a prison of unresponsive flesh, my head lolled, looking straight at the queen. I saw Knut topple like a felled tree beside me.

The Queen recovered, her eyes staring at me. She raised a leg, its tip a razor-sharp point, poised to drive it down through my chest.

“Primal Form.”

A last, desperate command to my friend.

As the Queen’s leg descended, Roq exploded inside her, and a gust of black smoke and gore erupted from inside her. He landed in front of me, no longer a warhammer, but a monster filled with rage and vengeance. His four powerful legs ending in metallic claws dug into the ground and his two bladed arms raised to the sky as his lizard-like head lifted in a roar. 

He was a fourth of her size, but his tail quivered with a rage to rival anything in this universe or another. The Queen shrieked, twisting, and stabbed a leg at Roq. His bladed forearms deflected it, sending it slamming deep into the ground. 

Then he twisted and cut. 

My eyes were watering, I couldn’t even blink as I watched his blades cut straight through the leg.

She retreated, only to receive one of Eryn’s arrows in the eye.

The queen flailed and sprayed the general area with the white liquid. Roq squatted, and jumped, leaping impossibly high. As he passed by the queen’s face, he slashed, opening a long wound, nearly taking her other eye, before landing on her back.

A blurry but small figure stepped up next to me. 

Lan.

“Osmosis. Torment. Parasite,” she muttered, casting her spells one by one, and a purple outline sprung up around the queen.

Her movements, already frantic with Roq’s legs digging into her back, became sluggish, her shrieks turning pained. Then she threw herself onto her side, trying to roll, to crush the king who had mounted her. 

But Roq was faster. 

He leaped away and landed on the other side of the massive beast, just out of my sight.

Then a bright and crackling light appeared below the queen. It was the lightning globule from Nabeeh’s staff, and the Queen’s remaining legs spasmed in the air.

“Overcharge,” Lan whispered. “Spray.”

She walked forward, closer to the struggling Queen. As the monster attempted to right itself, Lan unleashed the jet of water. It was a focused, high-pressure beam that she aimed at the wound Roq had burst from. 

Chunks of crimson shell chipped away and flew in all directions, but it wasn’t enough, as the Queen twisted to right herself.

“Damn it!” Lan snarled, shifting her aim and using the water jet as a blade. She sliced, severing two of the Queen’s legs. The monster fell back again with a roar.

Roq reappeared, climbing onto the Queen’s chest. She snapped her mandibles forward, nearly catching my friend, but he dodged low, stabbing into her belly. 

She didn’t scream or rage, which was more frightening. Instead, she opened her mouth, and I knew she was about to spray another volley of toxin, one aimed at him.

“Drown!” Lan shouted, casting her spell.

A perfectly round sphere of water materialized in front of the Queen’s mouth just as she released the toxin and caught it in a swirling milky prison. 

Lan stood like a statue in front of me. 

“Idiot,” she muttered, her voice so low I barely heard it. “I’m such an idiot.” She slapped herself on the side of her face. “Could have done it from the start. You are so fucking stupid.” Another slap.

Roq wasn’t letting his opportunity pass. 

“You hurt my wielder!” he roared and carved his way up the Queen’s chest, his bladed arms a blur. “You will pay!”

Nabeeh cast a final Fire Bolt which exploded against the back of the Queen’s head.

“Back off! She’s mine!” Roq bellowed, ignoring the help.

Lan’s Drown spell dissipated, and the Queen got a face full of toxin, head lolling.

Roq hacked through chitin and flesh, walking up her massive body, and roared in anger until he came to her neck. 

There he dug in, carving her neck wide open until finally, with a final, wet gurgle, the Queen’s massive head dropped to the ground.

Roq stood on the carcass, a triumphant silhouette against the sky and roared, “Victory! Power! Level nineteen!”

Then he leaped off and rushed to my side, bending down to put his molten orange eyes near mine, his lizard-like head tilted to the side.

“Are you dead?” he asked.

With all the effort I could muster, I blinked.

“Good,” he said, and with a surprising gentleness, he scooped my paralyzed body into one arm, careful not to cut me, and Knut’s in the other.

Then he turned, so I faced backwards.

“Run, females!” he roared. “Run like you’ve never run before! The hive is coming!”

“But the loot…” Lan said.

“You are slow, little storm. Best run now. I catch up,” Roq said.

Lan set off, sprinting, Eryn and Nabeeh right along with her.

I tried to smile as Roq carried me over to the queen’s carcass.

“We killed her.”

“Yes,” Roq rumbled. “We did.”

“And I’ve got the storage to bring her back to Dawnwatch.”

“Where we will turn her into weapons against the Hive Mind,” Roq said.