Steel and Mana

Piloting the Excalibur was kind of fun, I can't lie. It has been ages since I sat in any of our mechs, and I am glad to say, Galahad did a really good job with this one. It felt natural to walk with six legs, and I wasn't even feeling weirded out from the sensation. The only thing that 'felt weird' was the fact that after crossing the threshold of the hive, it became... crunchy. I could constantly hear how the Excalibur's heavy steps squashed the burnt and cracked shells of hundreds of bug corpses below us.

Even without seeing, I knew that Sasha was sitting to my right, monitoring the mech's magic flow, still looking for any possible signs of residue from the worm's attack. But, so far so good as there was no interference either in the mech's workings, and neither soldiers following us on foot reported any feeling of nausea.

"All groups in position," she said without looking up, a small formation rotating before her, directly interfacing with the magic driving the Excalibur. "Yuri's team has also entered the hive from the east, and Polo is coming from the west. No movement to report... Also, the Camelot is now in place over the fissure... So far... everything is as expected."

"Let's move in, then," I said, steadying my breath and starting to pick up a bit of pace. "Not much remained from the place after our heavy bombardment," I added, watching the wholly ruined city.

"Are you complaining now?" She moaned, and I could feel her pursing her lips.

"Nah. I just like preservation. I can still see some of the buildings and parts of the decorations on them... This place had to be... beautiful."

Yes... It must have been a bustling hub in its heyday, possibly a gorgeous city. However, it was transformed by these monsters, and now we've turned it into a crater-filled, smoldering ruin. There was simply no chance for it to be repopulated, even if the monsters are gone.

I leaned forward a little, scanning the ruins while the mounted weapons on the Excalibur followed my eyes, always targeting where I was looking. But I didn't think we were in danger. If anything survived amongst these twisted, rebar-looking, bug-welded spires, collapsed buildings coated in now-burnt, organic mucus, or within the bone-like outgrowths twisted into roads and bridges, they would have burst forth already. They should be either trying to escape or attack us, but they are doing neither.

So... the hive had to be empty, at least on the surface. And, as if reading my thoughts, my wife also confirmed it.

"Everything is dead," Sasha said, scanning the area around us. "I can't even pick up any remains of magic or signs of possible CC dust... The only pingback I can locate is the corpse of the worm."

"Mhm, I don't know what we should do with that one by the way," I said, letting my thoughts wander a little, "That corpse is too big and dismantling it here would take a lot of time..."

"We can carry it back to Avalon." Sasha offered, but I was slowly entertaining a different idea.

"Maybe I will gift it to the Khan."

"Why?" She asked, audibly surprised.

"Dunno. Let it be his headache. Or take it as a sign of friendship or warning... Whichever he wants... Honestly, I can't always read that man. Of course, first, I do hope we can find its core and take it for ourselves, but the rest... mhm, he can have it."

Then, before she could answer, thinking it over, a flicker of static hit the comm.

"Yo, hubby, you seeing what I'm seeing?" Yuri's voice broke through, drawing my attention towards the direction from where her group was entering the hive, "There's a tower on my end that looks like it melted, and it's now in the shape of a massive, floppy penis. I can even see the pee hole! Ehehe... it has symmetric balls! And... its walls are soft to the touch, hehehe. And it is warm like––"

"That would be enough," Sasha grunted, her initial alertness fading into annoyance. "You are a married woman... A MOTHER, for Avalon's sake! Only report something if you found anything noteworthy. Like hiding monsters, a surviving nest, anything like that..."

"It is pretty noteworthy in my books," she continued, giggling, "It's funny looking. Anyway, we are nearing the main fissure in the center. Where are you guys?"

"This is not a race," Sasha muttered, and then, Polo joined the conversation at the worst possible time.

"Arriving now. Nothing to report on our end, the city is as dead as it can be."

"We will be there shortly," I also chuckled, pushing the Excalibur to its top speed.

As we marched, the terrain grew uneven, of course, but it wasn't a big deal for the six-legged machine. The fallen buildings gave way to mounds of broken shells and half-melted spires fused together in the fire. In places, the stone had combined with the bugs' resin and with the scorched earth, forming strange, weird shapes, like something out of a flesh-based horror story. Nasty...

In the end, it took about another ten minutes to reach the center, bursting through a half-ruined building, demolishing it, while the ground troops followed suit. After coming to a halt, the belly of the Excalibur opened up, and Oleg and the rest dismounted from the mech, joining Pion and the others, setting up positions around the massive hole.

From down here, it looked way bigger than from the Camelot, and honestly, it was scarily deep.

The fissure itself stretched almost a hundred meters across, its edges rough and cracked, not really giving me the vibe that they were as stable as they should be, so we stopped a bit further back. The last thing I need is for it to crumble, and we fall down into the core of the earth.

"We are heading closer to the edge," Pion reported over the main channel.

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What looked like a hole that the worm was using to get in and out… Well, it wasn't just that. The walls, which went down deep, were honeycombed with dozens of tunnels, interwoven like ant burrows. It was a damned labyrinth if anything. Some were only big enough to walk through in single order... But there were two that could easily swallow a mech and troops, without an issue. Which meant those were the ones the worm used, while the others probably belonged to the bugs.

"Get me a depth scan," I radioed the Camelot hovering above us.

"Yes, My Sovereign," Kustov answered at once, "Sending out the wave."

We waited for about thirty seconds before Kustov reported the findings, penetrating as far as possible. By the initial readings, there were dozens of levels, open pockets... And probably more than what we could get a glimpse of. One or two further pulses came back scrambled because they went too deep to be precisely measured.

"I think we should deem this region a proper, no-go zone," Sasha said with a long sigh, "This is too deep and complex for us to deal with right now."

"I agree, but we can't just leave and let them recuperate," I replied, my voice grim, juggling the options before us.

"Orders, My Sovereign?" Polo asked after about a minute of silence.

"For now? Hold position," I said, blinking my eyes, suppressing my ideas. "Yuri?"

"I can go down, I guess." She shrugged in answer, "What do you want me to do?"

"We will collapse it." I muttered, still thinking, "We will bring down all the gunpowder we have left on the Camelot, place it into the big hole... Then, after we evacuate everything, we will use Camelot's main weapon and send the whole underground hive straight down to hell."

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Grappling down the edge of the fissure was probably the most dangerous thing I have done since... ever. But it was our job as soldiers, and I wouldn't dare complain as we were following Lady Yuri into one of the massive holes.

"Pion here." I tapped my comm once, testing the connection with the surface, "We have entered and marked the first shaft as Sector One. All is clear so far."

"That is a big hole..." Thorken mumbled, standing close by, but before I could respond, Lady Yuri did.

"That's what she said."

Luckily, anything I would have responded to that, her mech's steps drowned out. They echoed loudly down here as she began heading deeper, activating the spotlights mounted now on its shoulders. So, we ignored the last part and followed her.

The tunnel narrowed quickly after the entrance, but just barely, remaining wide enough for Lady Yuri's machine to navigate through it and placing multiple barrels worth of gunpowder at the same distance from each other.

"Movement!" She stopped suddenly, after putting down the fourth barrel, making our twenty-man squad activate our weapons at once.

About thirty meters ahead of us, the tunnel looked like it forked, getting much, much smaller... and in the shadow of the left bank, I caught a twitch in the Princess's spotlight. It wasn't big... but it was quick-moving.

"Can you deal with it?" she asked, making me answer without hesitation.

"Of course."

"Good. I will finish planting the explosives then.

I didn't need a confirmation and gave the order. The moment I raised my hand, Korr had let loose a salvo from his repeater crossbow.

The bolts whistled like a thunderbolt down here, reverberating back and forth. Whatever that thing was in the darkness, he hit it, letting the whole underground tunnel echo with a wet crunch, and the entire underpass seemed to shudder as something inside screamed and died. Well... there were more. Half a dozen small-bodied bugs, mantis-limbed and shrieking like a banshee, burst from the same tunnel. From my position, they all looked injured. Their 'armor' was visibly cracked and burnt, with many of their wounds still bleeding.

"Exterminate them!" I called, sweeping my glaive before me, "Form wedge! Take the floor, soldiers!"

"OOORAH!"

Gouts of green ichor sprayed across the cave as the first few got to me, and I split them in half, dodging the third. The others skittered toward us nonetheless; they were most likely in a frenzy, trying to get past or up the walls. One leapt from farther behind, for which I ducked low, sliced its belly open with my weapon, and rolled beneath its falling weight.

"Two from the right!" Thorken shouted, signaling that now more were coming from the other intersection.

Korr and some of the others were already on it, one hand holding their primary weapon, cleaving and slashing the bugs amongst us, while aiming their crossbows with the other and killing the emerging bastards in the distance.

"I'm done," Lady Yuri reported, "Time to head out of here, boy! Party is over!"

We pressed forward fast, not wanting to get swarmed. Who knows how many sought refuge down here... I saw Korr sweep two bugs into the wall with his burning warhammer, while Thorken knelt to drag a knocked-over squadmate back to his feet, keeping up with us, trailing behind the Princess's legs.

I could see the claw marks on his armor around his legs. I couldn't tell if there was blood, too, but he was a good warrior as he responded with precision after being pulled up by Thorken, firing multiple bolts into the still emerging monsters' line. It was a great shot as his salvo nailed a larger one, a beetle-looking one in the back, hitting it in the thorax, making it hurt and fall over, rolling like someone being set on fire.

Luckily, the entrance wasn't that far, and the ropes and chains that we used to get down here were still dangling there.

"Ready to pull everyone out," I heard our Sovereign's voice, and we didn't need to do much. The moment the Princess and we all jumped, hanging onto them, the Rook and the Excalibur began reeling us back up at a neck-breaking speed... out of the nest of these bastards.

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When we pulled them out, ready for the bugs to follow... they did not do that. It seemed they were afraid to get to the surface, so they scattered back into their underground tunnels. Well... if they like it down there, then let's bury them.

An hour later, only the Camelot remained behind, hovering much, much higher above the fissure. As per my orders, the Eagle's Nest had already departed, hauling the worm's corpse so it won't react to anything we were about to do. I made sure that everyone else had pulled out before we fired up our primary weapon.

"Status?" I asked, standing next to Kustov.

"Main weapon is standing by," He replied crisply, "Any time you wish, My Sovereign, we can send them to where they belong."

"Visual is clear," Sasha added, sitting in my chair now, handling its targeting, "We should be fine even if there is an unexpected reaction."

"Perfect," I said quietly, taking a deep breath, "Let's plug the hole..."

"Hah!" Yuri chuckled, making me roll my eyes but smile, as only she could ease my worry like this... she simply has a knack for it.

Sasha didn't wait and keyed the firing sequence, and the red energy beam from my ship slammed down into the dark hole like some kind of divine tribulation. For a heartbeat, nothing happened, but then the earth itself rippled like it was not something solid, but made out of water. And we just threw an anvil into it from the top of a dam...

I couldn't hear from this high up yet, but we could see the repeated explosions down below before the tunnel walls imploded. Along the whole hive, the ground cracked, folded, and caved in on itself in an apocalyptic chain reaction. I'm not sure if a fire was spreading down there, but the chain reaction was like exploding a nuclear bomb underground, looking at it from here. There had to be more down there than just our gunpowder...

"Sasha?" I asked, still watching the feed.

"The fissure has collapsed... As for what is happening underground, I can't tell. But I can't detect any magical reaction."

"Good enough for me." I nodded, letting out a long breath, "Kustov, mark this spot on our maps of the region. Even with this, we can't guarantee there are no issues left behind... It is best if we handle it as a deadly spot, for at least... hm... About a hundred years."

"It will be done, My Sovereign."

"Mhm..." I turned, looking at Sasha, who looked... tired. Probably all of us did. "Let's leave for now... The winter is not over yet, and we can't be stuck here forever."