The loudest sounds were the scraping of their boots and the low, mournful hum of the Stomper’s volatile heart. The hewn ceiling pressed down, a five-foot-high weight on their world.

  For Trenn, every movement was a grind of leather against skin, an ache in his thighs and lower back as he crawled. Beside him, Mara’s fluid grace had condensed into brittle tension. Her breath hitched with every claustrophobic foot of progress, her gaze darting to the unyielding stone walls, searching for an escape within the solid rock.

  The air itself was a weight, thick with the scent of damp stone and a metallic tang from the brass rails. Mara’s knuckles brushed the ceiling, a constant, grating reminder of the tons of rock above. She fought to keep her breathing even, like her lungs were too large for the space.

  Ezy could stand comfortably upright, but kept casting anxious glances at the Stomper’s chassis, measuring the scant inches of clearance between its hull and the rough-hewn ceiling.

  Only Ezy and Zeen could stand upright. Mara’s unease was a palpable thing, her eyes constantly flicking to the hulking blue machine at her heels. On silent "follow mode," the Stomper was a liability, its combat systems dormant and its bulk a constant snag in the narrow passage.

  The elemental glow pulsing from its core painted their faces in long, dancing shadows, making it feel less like a machine and more like a massive, nervous beast being led to slaughter.

  Zeen, however, moved as if strolling through a sunlit market, his swagger undiminished.

  “I've been collapsing the side tunnels for weeks,” he said, frustrated. “Sealing them with controlled blasts. The damn Giant Ants were using this whole section as a larder. Got them cut off, but the moment the ants were gone, these scaly bastards moved in.”

  His gaze fell on the Stomper’s fiery pulse. “Looks different,” he noted, nodding at Ezy. “Made some upgrades?”

  “New power source. High-grade Fire Elemental.” Ezy’s voice was a mixture of pride and a scientist’s caution. “Experimental, but the flamethrowers I put together can melt stone.”

  Every fifteen minutes, they stopped. Trenn would settle, touch the heavy stone of the amulet, and let his consciousness drift ahead.

  On the fifth or sixth scan, his mind’s eye spotted a barricade, bristling with spikes and built onto a heavy cart that straddled the rails. The glint of bronze spear tips poked through a dozen murder-holes.

  It was as wide and high as the corridor, sealing its end hermetically.

  “Shield wall,” Trenn hissed, the clairvoyant image seared into his mind. “Ahead. Zeen, they're using your tracks to push it towards us.”

  Trenn’s senses plunged backward, a desperate bid to verify their escape. His face, illuminated by the Stomper’s glow, went slack with dread.

  “Wait!” The word was a choked gasp. He scrambled to his knees, his eyes wide. “There’s another one coming from behind us,” he forced the words out, his voice cracking.

  “We're trapped!”

  Mara, her back plastered against the wall, choked on the stale air, her breath coming in shallow gasps.

  She fumbled an arrow from her quiver, nocked it with trembling hands, and loosed. The arrow flew wide, sparking uselessly off the metal plating. A growl of frustration tore from her throat as a second shot clattered off the stone ceiling.

  The spiked bronze shields were closing in.

  “The ceiling is too low! I can’t get in the Stomper!” Ezy’s voice was a reedy shriek against the grinding wail. She scrambled along the wall, her fingers scraping at the solid rock, searching for a crack, a hold, any escape from the coffin that was sealing itself shut around them.

  Trenn dropped Skate to the ground, letting it bounce in front of him, its obsidian surface rippled by a joyous hum as the Stomper’s pulsing orange light.

  Trenn grabbed his enchanted long-club and swung at Skate’s bouncing form.

  The moment the carved bat connected, Skate’s glassy exterior dissolved into pliable matter, yielding to the impact. A swirling nebula of violet and rose ignited within its core.

  In the same instant, it hardened into a glassy black finish and launched from the club in a violent blur.

  It crashed onto the bronze shield, and its obsidian shell exploded under the impact. The shield wall was peppered with a shotgun blast of vitreous shrapnel. Some of it found its way through spear holes, and a few agonized shrieks came from behind the wide bronze shield.

  The raw violence of the explosion shocked him, forcing him to take a step back. Skate’s rebound was already a blur—ceiling, ground, wall—its fragmented obsidian shell visibly flowing back together as it returned to his hands.

  The explosion had caused the forward shield wall to sputter and come to a stop. Kobolds were issuing panicked, guttural orders.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  “Get the wounded out of the way and take over!” barked a voice.

  But the other wall, the one at their backs, hadn’t stopped. It continued its relentless, grinding advance, its bronze spear tips glinting.

  A fuse hissed in Zeen's hand, his arm already cocked back.

  "GET DOWN!" he roared.

  His arm whipped forward, hurling the sputtering bundle of dynamite at the approaching shield wall.

  Trenn, who’d caught Skate, shoved it on his head before bracing for the impact. A deafening roar consumed the tunnel, the concussion sucking the air from their lungs in a blinding flash.

  The tunnel shuddered, and the floor gave way beneath them. The world dissolved into a weightless tumble, a storm of falling stone and twisting brass rails.

  A blur of pink and yellow shot past Trenn. Bomber, diving with unerring purpose, caught Ezy in its six puffy legs, breaking her fall before she would have been crushed by the crashing, coffin-like Stomper.

  Mara, a vision of deadly grace even in the chaos, drove her claws deep into the cavern wall, arresting her own descent to climb down with controlled precision.

  Zeen was small and surprisingly agile. He controlled his fall, but hit the ground with a meaty thud.

  Trenn tumbled and landed hard, the impact jarring his entire frame. The obsidian helmet protected his skull, but agony lanced through his ribs and elbow.

  His fall ended with a jarring thud on something yielding and strange. He had landed in a massive pile of translucent eggs, some as large as the Stomper. They were in a large, cavernous room dug through stone and packed Earth.

  A low, unified, and deeply unsettling chittering echoed from all directions.

  A shadow fell over them, eclipsing the Stomper’s glow. It was a living mountain of polished black chitin, a creature the size of a small dwelling that loomed above them on six spindly legs.

  Her massive mandibles, serrated like industrial saws, clicked with a sound like metal being sheared. A forest of multifaceted eyes turned as one and focused directly on them. As if a singular, unified will concentrated on them.

  Mara landed without a sound on the cavern floor. Her claws were already extended, glinting in the Stomper’s pulsing orange light. Her amber eyes flicked from the chittering, mountainous Queen to the dozens of stirring worker drones, her muscles coiling as she mapped escape routes.

  Trenn shoved himself up from the rubbery translucent egg pile. A grinding agony in his ribs stole his breath, forcing a grunt from his lips. Skate rolled to his feet, its obsidian surface humming with a low, anxious frequency.

  Ezy scrambled into the canted cockpit of her Stomper, her hands a blur over the controls. A series of clicks and the whine of a gyroscope filled the sudden silence. "It's online!" she screamed, her voice a ragged mix of terror and triumph. "The core is stable! We need to GET OUT!"

  Zeen tried to push himself up, but a fresh lance of pain from his leg sent him crashing back into the rubble with a choked cry.

  Ezy jammed a lever forward. One of the Stomper’s metal hands shot out and snatched Zeen from the floor, clutching his limp form like a broken doll. With a hiss of compressed air, the machine’s all-terrain wheels deployed, chewing into the soft fungus as it rocketed away from the Queen.

  Mara didn't hesitate. She launched into a four-legged sprint, her body a low, white missile of fur and desperation that instantly left the others behind.

  Trenn planted his foot on Skate’s obsidian surface and kicked. His leg pumped, a frantic piston against the organic floor, propelling him over the uneven terrain in a desperate, gliding sprint.

  The ants swarmed after them. The chittering unified into a loud drone. A living avalanche of black chitin erupted behind them, converging from perpendicular corridors into a skittering tide of death.

  Mara was at the front, with Trenn and Skate. Bomber flew a few feet from their heads. The Stomper was the rearguard. The slowest. The largest target.

  "Let's see how you like the new core!" Ezy shrieked, her voice a manic mix of terror and glee. She aimed the Stomper's free arm and unleashed a torrent of elemental fire from its open palm.

  The air filled with the sickening smell of burnt chitin and the high-pitched screams of the dying. It bought them a heartbeat before fresh ants swarmed over the charred bodies of their comrades.

  The exit loomed—a narrower, slick-walled tunnel.

  Mara, never breaking stride, leaped onto the wall itself. Her claws sank into its surface as she scrambled through the chokepoint to safety.

  Trenn was next. He kicked hard, his body low as he slid through the passage on Skate’s frictionless surface, emerging into the cavern beyond.

  The Stomper was the rearguard, and it was being overwhelmed. The horde had reached it, mandibles like scythes clamping down on its legs and chassis, their grip producing the tortured groan of shearing metal.

  "Trenn, CATCH!" Ezy's voice shrieked over the din.

  The Stomper's mangled arm swung in a desperate arc, hurling Zeen's two-foot-six form through the air.

  Trenn didn't think. He moved, adjusting his course on Skate to intercept the small Gnome. The impact was a soft thud against his armor that barely slowed his momentum.

  With Zeen clear, Ezy used both its arms to spew continuous jets of elemental fire as the Stomper continued its retreat. They exited the tunnel and kept the flames turned to its entrance. The ants kept coming and hit themselves against the fire.

  The tunnel mouth turned into a charnel house of screaming, burning insects, sealing the tunnel shut behind a wall of fused, glassy corpses.

  Around them, arches of colossal scale, feats of a forgotten Gnomish age, soared into a humid darkness choked with pale, subterranean vegetation. The wide path before them was a murky, stagnant canal.

  A low, guttural hissing echoed from all around them in the swampy gloom.

  From the murky water and the collapsed rubble, dozens of reptilian figures emerged. Kobolds. Their bronze armor and crude weapons gleamed in the Stomper's fading orange glow.

  They appeared to be curious. Unexpectedly, they fell to their knees, their heads bowed in silent reverence. An absolute silence fell over the cavern. The murky water bulged upward, as if displaced by a rising island.

  Its stillness was profound, the calm of a predator that has never known a threat. Its head alone was larger than a small sedan, its massive body stretching back into the dark water.

  A mosaic of thousands of uncut gemstones was fused to the creature's scales. Its jeweled hide caught the Stomper's light in a thousand reflections.

  As it rose to its full, impossible height, the cavern itself seemed to shrink. Its immense weight settled on the stone floor with the sound of grinding tectonic plates.

  Teeth of polished ivory, each as long as a Gnome's forearm, lined its jaw. Eyes the size of shields regarded them, their gaze slow, ancient, and calculating.

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