After healing the light damage doo Juliana’s eardrums, Emily gently wipes the blood from her face before moving quickly between her friends and healing them too.

  Damn, that used more mana than I expected. It feels like I’m wasting a lot to heal people. Do I need a better uanding of the human body to heal more effitly? It couldn’t hurt.

  Emily adds a remio her notes while turning away from Ivor, the st to be healed. She approaches the dead bodies of their attackers uhe light of her bird, h in the air in the tre of the small cavern.

  The creatures are rge, with a wingspan slightly bigger than Emily’s, and a lithe torso the size of her forearm. They’re hairless, with grey, stone-like skin stretched thin from their sides to the small cws at the ends of their wings.

  “Screamers,” Emily mutters, walking beside Tom who’s poking oh a knife.

  “Their skin is hard,” he says. “Do we want any bits?”

  “Only their voice boxes. Don’t worry, I’ll deal with these ohey’re much harder to harvest.”

  Tom nods as the group spreads across the cavern to set up camp while Emily presses ara button and tosses the barrier disto the air, letting the anchors burrow into the surrounding rock. The moment it sets up, a sound barrier s the cavern, and the disk lights up with a warm glow, giving off a calming light.

  Emily’s bird nds on her head, and she pulls off the light pack, switg it with a thermal pack, before sending her scout to sit on a cable in front of the exit.

  Das up a campfire at the same time, which Emily drops dowo to start butchering her screamers. She pulls a small knife from her belt and els maa into it. The energy crackles along the bde, sharpening it as she lowers it to the top of the first corpse’s neck.

  She slips the bde ih its jaw and slides it along, splitting the stone skio reveal the raw flesh beh. She cuts away at the muscle and sinew, quickly log the screamer’s rynx and pulling it out. She summons a spare jar and drops the bloody anic matter in, before tossing the harvested body to the side.

  She repeats this five more times as her friends finish setting out sleeping bags and join her and Dante around the fire. They eat and chat as usual, before turning in for the night, leaving Emily and Juliana together on watch, uhe dim light of the barrier disc.

  Emily gnces over at Juliana’s weaving, seeing her pull out a few dried flower petals and y them on top of a wind-imbued ruwisted into the weave.

  “What are you making?” she asks curiously.

  “Nothing,” Juliana responds, quickly c the ruh her hands and turning a pleading gaze on Emily. “Don’t peek.”

  Emily raises a brow, but after a few seds of puppy dog eyes she chuckles and looks away.

  “Fine, keep your secrets.”

  ***

  The day, they tinue heading through the tuowards the ke, this time with Emily using infra-sight just in case. Midway through the m, Emily spots a three-lit ih ahead through her spider.

  “Tsk,” she clicks her tongue in irritation.

  “What’s wrong?” Juliana asks with , the rest of their friends tensing up at Emily’s sudden excmation.

  “Don’t worry,” Emily says, notig their tension. “It’s nothing major. It’s just the tunnels have ged. There’s a three-lit ih ahead where I was expeg two, and I no longer know if we’re heading in the right dire.”

  “What does that mean then?” Tom asks, rexing.

  “Nothing much. Just that we o navigate blind from now on,” Emily answers, shrugging off the minor setback. “Besides, it may not make much of a difference, since I don’t know how much the tunnels have shifted.”

  They catch up to her spider shortly, and Emily chooses the left route, keeping as close to their inal path as possible. They keep winding deeper into the earth, killing off the cave-dwelling creatures that block their path and harvesting a few herbs in their way.

  At just gone midday, a little after Emily was expeg them to reach the luminis yer, they stop in front of a split in their path brang off at a jaunty angle. Emily pauses uncharacteristically as they reach the split.

  “Why are we stopping?” Enzo asks, fused when Emily doesn’t plow on ahead as at most juns.

  “I spotted some movement down this tunnel so I’m sending a scout in to check if there’s anything iing before we move on,” Emily expins, keeping her focus on the e with the spider skittering off into the darkness.

  The images being transferred to her, created from the spider’s ss, suddenly expand. The narrow tunnel taining a few wandering bugs opens to a wide open cavern with a writhing mass of movement in the tre, dist into a blur she ’t distinguish.

  Hello there. Looks like there’s a gathering of beasts. Maybe a ? I’ll have to get a closer look. It seems like something is interfering with my dete.

  Emily turtention back to her friends, looking at them with aed grin.

  “I think we found a .”

  Her friends start in surprise, with various reas from nervouso excitement.

  “Is it big?” Juliana asks tentatively, being reinforced by an exaggerated nod from Dante.

  “I’m not too sure, something is interfering with my dete spell so I o take a closer look to know. But, there are quite a few bugs iuo get there, so I expect so. Keep quiet until we know what we’re up against. We may be able to surprise them.”

  Emily marches forwards, followed closely by her friends, who begin ting as they step off their inal path. Flying lightning forms around Emily’s right arm as she pulls out the Spitter with the other, screwing the silencer into pce.

  The familiar clig of chitin on rock soon reaches them, before the first inhabitants of the tunnel e into view. Three, metre-long ants charge into the light, ing straight towards the group.

  With a fliily’s wrist, a silver light fshes before her, ing around the front two ants before ripping them to pieces after a sharp yank. Juliana throell over Emily’s shoulder with a light gesture, crag the final ant’s exoskeleton and slig a gash into its side, halting it in its advance. Emily fires a burst into the final ant’s head the moment it stops, killing it before it make a sound.

  Without stopping to harvest the bodies, Emily tinues forwards, f her friends to follow on high alert. Emily spares the corpses a qui the ast, quickly identifying the creatures.

  Burrower ants? I didn’t think we’d run into these guys outside of a desert.

  “It’s burrower ants. Don’t worry about making hey’ll already know we’re here now,” Emily alerts her friends, to Dante’s glee.

  Four more ants charge out of the darkowards them as they advance. Emily sends out flying lightning again, this time impaling the front ant through the head. She points the Spitter at the ant, flig it into burst, iing a small amount of maa, and squeezing the trigger. Three rounds burst out in a near perfect lihe first crag the ant’s exoskeleton, the sed b a hole into its head, and the third tearing through its torso and out its back, dropping it instantly.

  She whips back flying lightning and turns her barrel on aarget, but a twisting projectile of fire flies past, digging into its head aing it alight. At the same time, a bde of water cuts into the the st uninjured ant. Emily grins at her friends’ coordination, flig the Spitter into single fire and shooting a finisher into the burning ant in sync with Tom doing the same to Hester’s target.

  “Good job,” Emily praises them, l her ons and moving on.

  Tom aer quietly fist bump each other behind her, drawing a ugh from Dante and Enzo as they prepare more spells. They walk deeper into the tunnel, closing in on the supposed and killing a few more scouts.

  The enters Emily’s magical perception before they turn the er to face it, and aed shiver runs down her spine.

  “It’s a alright,” she mutters, feeling over a hundred inhuman magic signatures gathered together in anised formations around a pulsing mass of mana. “They’re set up for a siege, and appear to be guarding a vein of mana crystals. Hester, barriers please. Everyone else, prepare for a full force assault.”

  They pause for a moment to prepare, their adversaries already waiting, motionless, for them to approach. Emily reaches up and taps the light pa her bird’s chest, sending a burst of mana into it to temporarily overload the spell.

  This should light up the whole cavern. I’ll o s out light packs and recharge this ohough.

  The field of light around them quickly grows, filling the eunnel and revealing the final sharp turn before the group will be exposed to the ants. Emily draws back the spider from a nearby wall, walking it up her leg and into a waiting hand before colpsing it down and sending it into her ste again.

  She starts preparing spells, dismissing flying lightning and kig all of her cores into gear. Mana explodes out of her, giving her nearby friends a sense of danger as a dense pressure pushes down on them, before twisting into a swirling mass of runes as several magic circles form around each other, carefully positioo not cause interference.

  e, white, blue, and silver mix together in a beautiful blend of colours. Ars a tained, crag orb of lightning over one of Emily’s shoulders, as fireball forms a swirling orb of fmes over the other. Her skin crackles with lightning as mana seeps into her muscles, enhang her speed, and the final silver circle freezes unpleted, waiting to throw up protes with a moment’s notice.

  With infra-sight still active to assist in differentiating targets, Emily turns back to fsh her friends a fident smile.

  “Let’s go crush some ants.”

  Her friends smile back, even Juliana and Tom giving fident nods as they steel themselves for the ing battle. Emily tinues dowunnel, quickly turning the er and seeing the narrow pathway start to open up.

  She immediately sees a wide open cavern, filled to the brim with burrower ants. They’re standing in rows, some on the floor, and some ging to the walls and ceiling.

  In the tre of their rows stands tall a rge structure of rod dirt, the , with several holes spilling ants into the surrounding cave. Emily feels waves of earth attributed mana emanating from within the , causing the smile on her face to grow.

  Jackpot.

  The moment they spot the ants, the ants also see them. A flood of s them as they step into the cavern and half of the ants, those close to the , start g their mandibles together angrily, mana bubbling from them all to their . The cavern shakes as thick walls of rock extend from the floor and ceiling, stretg to join in the middle and pletely seal off the with half the ants behind it.

  Emily points forward the moment she sees the barrier f, sending her fireball flying forwards in a spiral of fmes. The spell bursts against the rock wall, crag it and flinging fire into the nearby ants, scorg their exoskeletons and ripping a few close to the detonation to pieces. However, the wall stands strong, the cracks quickly shrinking as more mana is supplied. The injured ants scream in anguish, signalling a full charge.

  “Kill everything in sight!” Emily calls, sending her bird up to the roof of the cavern to illumihe space fully, and sending arc’s orb forwards while releasing her hold over it. “Leave the wall to me.”

  Her orb of lightning crackles, sending out whips of psma to cerate the flood of bodies ing towards them. Hester casts her spell, ing their whole group in a rge bubble of water just in time as the tide of ants smashes into it.

  Ripples spread across the barrier aer grunts iion as she pours more mana into the spell, but it holds fast. Bdes of wind and fire fly out, slig into the mass of bodies, drawing blood and severing limbs. A few heavy rocks fly up, leaving the top of the barrier before nding os in front of them, crushing their bodies ft. Tom tries shooting the armoured ants, crag a few exoskeletons, but otherwise achieving little.

  Arc fires off rapidly, shog dozens of ants and slowing their advance. In respoo the assault, the ants at the front of the group cck their mandibles, gathering mana and f jagged jaws of roour their faces and enhaheir attacks. They charge forward, biting at the barrier and weakening it, ign the ining spells to inflict as much damage as possible.

  The ants behind them, protected from the worst of the group’s spells, cck out a rhythm together. Mana collects in their mouths, f into a visud. A few tendrils of lightning flick out, hitting the casting ants and interrupting them, but the majority of the spell is blocked by the armoured fros.

  Emily begins casting at the same time, spinning together another spell using fire, metal, and light. She notices the ants preparing an attad ighem, firing a few bullets into them while trusting her sedary core to use the defensive spell already prepared. The runes, f a plicated tri-element matrix around her, pulse with pathering dense mana into a glistening bow and arrow, a third circle version of her bzing arrow of light.

  The ants release their attack, sending a deluge of mud towards them that flows around the ants up ahead before smashing against Hester’s barrier, shattering it and threatening to engulf their group.

  “Shit, Enzo!” Hester winces and cries in panic, hoping for another barrier.

  Instead, silver mana flows from the glittering magic circle waiting behind Emily. It quickly solidifies into a wall of shinial that blocks the flood of mud in its tracks. Harsh screeg rings out as the ants oher side sm their rock covered jaws into the metal, trying to pull it apart to no avail.

  Emily’s friends freeze and turn to look at her, uo keep casting spells with their targets blocked.

  “It’s a bit basic,” Emily admits shamelessly, even as their attention is drawn to the extravagant bow and arrow h above her. “It’s the simplest third circle metal defence spell I could e up with. A thick wall that my allies ’t evehrough.”

  “How are you meant to shoot that thing with a wall in the way?” Tom asks, gazing up at the bow and arrow in awe.

  Emily points forwards with a smug grin, opening a small window ial wall and releasing the heavy metal arrow above her. With an explosion of sound and mana, the arrow rockets out, drawing a straight lihrough the battlefield and into the defensive wall c the .

  The wall bursts as the arrow impacts, shattering into pieces, and Emily quickly disperses the arrow before it destroy the and whatever’s kept ihe ants behind the barrier cry out in pain as the spell explodes, spreading fire, molteal, and burning light.

  Emily flicks her wrist, grasping ard rapidly twisting it into arc-bolt. The orb presses before sending a violent snake of power through the front attackers with a loud roar, vaporising the mud it passes through. Tens of metres in front of their group are cleared in an instant, the ants dropping dead quickly as Emily lowers her barrier, relieving herself of the mana draw.

  “Like that,” Emily finally aom’s question.