Chapter 72: Pitch Black and Acid Fire

The damp stench of stagnant water, rust, and rotting algae slapped Mei full in the face the second they hit the mouth of the spillway.

The drop was thirty feet down a near-vertical corrugated pipe, slick with black sludge. Mei hit the incline feet-first, her boots sliding through slime as her gauntleted fingers scraped the iron walls to brake her momentum. Sparks showered around her face, bright against the pitch black, smell of ozone biting at her nostrils.

She landed in knee-deep, freezing runoff with a heavy splash. Above her, three loud, rhythmic thuds echoed down the shaft as Shane, Elias, and Joshua dropped in succession behind her.

"Breathe through your mouth," Joshua choked out, sloshing into the murky water beside her. "Smells like a sewer dragon's throat down here."

"Keep it quiet," Mei whispered, her voice slicing through the roar of cascading water behind them.

She clicked a blue mana-flare onto her shoulder rig. A dim, cold light washed across the massive subterranean pipe. Iron ribs stretched into the gloom ahead, heavy with dangling pale roots and thick, pulsing egg-sacks clinging to the arched ceiling.

Click-clack. Click-clack.

The sound was faint, coming from thirty yards deeper in the pipe—dozens of hard chittering claws scraping across wet stone.

"Crawlers," Elias rumbled, bringing his massive tower shield down into the water with a dull, echoing thud. "Multiple targets."

"Sixteen feet wide, eight feet high," Mei snapped, her mind instantly mapping the kill zone. "Elias, lock the center. Joshua, load incendiaries—don't throw unless I give the word, or the backpressure will cook us alive. Shane, watch the ceiling."

"Got it," Shane said, racking his crossbow with a heavy metallic click.

The chittering exploded into a frenzied scramble. From the darkness rushed a wave of Sub-terran Crawlers—six-foot-long, multi-legged chitinous horrors with glowing, milky-white vestigial eyes and dripping mandibles that snapped like iron shears.

Hiss!

Mei didn't wait. She lunged forward, her boots kicking up spray that caught the blue flare-light.

The lead Crawler leaped, its razor-edged pincers aiming for her throat. Mei ducked beneath the strike, the icy spray hitting her cheek as the beast sailed over her. She drove her right dagger upward through its soft throat plate—crunch—and dragged the blade back, spilling thick, acidic yellow hemolymph into the rushing water.

Before the carcass hit the surface, two more lunged from the wet ceiling above.

"Above you!" Shane barked.

Thwip-thwip! Two crossbow bolts whistled inches past Mei's ear, slamming into the chest plates of the leaping beasts with wet thunks. They hit the water thrashing.

Mei used the momentum of her drop to spin, driving her left dagger directly into the skull of a third beast scrambling along the pipe wall. The blade vibrated violently against the bone before breaking through. Acidic blood hissed against her leather vambrace, smoking in the cold air.

"Elias, brace!" she yelled, springing off the dying beast's carapace.

A massive, armored Brute-class Crawler, easily the size of a iron carriage, burst through the horde, its heavy shell smashing aside its smaller kin.

Elias slammed his tower shield into the submerged stone bed, leaning his full weight against the steel reinforcement. BOOM. The collision shook the entire spillway, sending a shockwave of dirty water cascading over their heads. Elias groaned, his boots skidding back three inches in the mud, but the shield held.

"Hold it!" Joshua yelled, stepping past Elias and firing a heavy harpoon line into the beast's exposed joint.

"Now, Captain?" Joshua shouted over the screeching beast.

"Now!" Mei dropped flat into the rushing water.

Joshua pulled a lever on his rig, sparking an incendiary pulse along the harpoon line. FLASH. A contained blast of fiery orange burst inside the Brute's shell, cooking it instantly from the inside out. The pressure wave washed over Mei's back, hot and suffocating, before the cold runoff swept it away.

Silence slammed back down onto the spillway, heavy and suffocating, broken only by the panting breaths of the four hunters and the steady slap of water against iron.

Mei rose from the water, dripping wet, her daggers dripping yellow grease. She scanned the tunnel ahead. Dozens of dead Crawlers drifted down the current past her knees.

Shane stepped beside her, his crossbow already reloaded, his eyes scanning the pitch-black stretch further down the pipe.

"That was thirty seconds," he said, a quiet, adrenaline-laced grin cutting through the grime on his face. "Everyone alive?"

"Barely," Joshua wheezed, wringing out his coat. "Smells even worse cooked."

Elias hauled his shield out of the water with a heavy grunt. "Clear ahead for fifty yards."

Mei wiped her blade against her thigh, her chest heaving slightly, a surge of fierce, unfamiliar warmth blooming in her chest alongside the adrenaline. No one had run. No one had used her as bait. They had held the line.

"Save your breath," Mei said, flipping her daggers back into her hands with a sharp snap. "The smell of blood will bring the rest of the nest. We double time it to the exit."