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"And I can fly, and detonation is a natural extension of fire, which I am quite experienced in," Johnstone offered. "On the other hand, the Panzermagus might be the right man for bursting down doors. It all depends on how heavy resistance gets. The faster we hit, I submit the easier it'll be to get through. So, Jace, how fast can you run and or fly? If neither is good, would you be willing to be carried?" What weren't they thinking of? It struck Johnstone suddenly and like an anvil, and Moses agreed - it seemed simple. Strategically, it seemed very simple. Clogging a wall with bodies would do nothing against a Panzermagus, and heavy resistance would prove difficult only if they allowed it to pin them down. So what was the missing link? There was always a variable that would spin wrong at the worst moment, and they needed to anticipate it now, before it was too late.

Anolani scoffed. "You're not the only one that can fly. Jennifer and I are able to as well." Both women were elementalists - wind was something both were decent in.

She heard what Morgan had said and had to agree with him. "Wait." Her eyes widened at a thought. "These things can't burrow underground can they?" It would explain the lack of hivelings. And if they did come from beneath the group, how were they going to reach the queen? The ground would crumble on top of them.

Morgan tried to recall the brief time they'd been shown the files on the Hiveling strains. "Some of them can, can't they? Mostly the- Oh, here we go!"

About halfway through what he'd been saying, the ground collapsed beneath them, sending them tumbling into a large open chamber, perhaps a hundred meters in diameter and thirty meters deep. Dozens of tunnels at all heights lined the edges. Three strains began to descend upon them.

Leading the attack were the Warriors. Not even comparable to the Warmaster strain but still a force to be reckoned with, Warriors were the size of horses, covered in dull black plates of natural armor with spiked and bladed ridges. Even touching one's corpse wrong would end badly. They had two pairs of thick (and, of course, armored) legs and large arm-like limbs with assorted bladed weapons or club/hammer-like growths on the ends. Their heads, though large, existed basically to hold large, vicious mandibles, eyes, and a brain good for little more than sensory processing and basic combat techniques; they were essentially mindless, unlike the other parts of the Hiveling mental work. They were plain and simple shock troops meant to bury their opponents. They also had, they recalled, volatile chemicals that would ignite on exposure to air which they could spit at close ranges from their mouths.

Supporting the warriors were Spitters. Spitters had the same volatile chemicals as the warriors in a much less threatening body, a little smaller and lighter (also less well-armored) with an emphasis on climbing, which was precisely what they were doing as they took up firing positions on the walls and what remained of the ceiling. Furthermore, they were spitting the the chemicals encased in coatings of mucus instead of in a short-range stream like the warriors would; they acted like molotov cocktails, creating brief pools of fire where they landed. These ones were clearly smart enough to be linked more closely to the central network; their individual intelligences, as coordinated by the queen, were very clearly making a point of boxing the invaders in.

Last was a wave of Builders, Hivelings with minor earth elemental powers who created the tunnels - and likely the reason for their present predicament. They were raising fortifications and bunkers of the garish, ugly orange dirt, hardening it into proper defenses, emplacements from which the Spitters could fire with little to worry about.

Morgan smirked, taking a swig from a hip flask and drawing his knives. "I guess we'll just have to start killin' until their rush slows down, eh?" He threw a knife in a wide arc at a group of Spitters on a wall, sending them tumbling to the ground as a detonation ripped a chunk of the wall away, crushing a Builder beneath.

Anolani fell but had a comfortable watery cushion to soften the landing. So what do we have here? There were Warriors. Short range fire. Massive claws. Basically they're the tanks.

No thank you.

She saw the Builders in the back. Earth users. While Anolani could break down the fortification, it wouldn't do much good in the long run.

She'd leave that to the others.

"Are...are those Spitters?" What was odd was the way Anolani sounded. She seemed ecstatic to be fighting those. "I claim the Spitters!" Their spit would be great to add to my collection. She looked like she was a few seconds away from giggling. Or laughing evilly and rubbing her hands together.

One of the Spitters aimed straight for her head, but the mucus made a sharp U-turn and smacked the Hiveling on the face. Needless to say, it's face started to burn and it fell off the wall screaming. "Oooh. How interesting." I. WANT. THIS. She pulled out an empty flask from her pouch and waited for another Spitter. "What...nothing? Come on you stupid bugs!" This time 3 spat at her - one from above and the sides. With an elegant spin, she collected the spit and safely stored it in the empty bottle. "I'm going to need to analyze this later." I wonder if I could replicate it.

But now was not the time. "Let's get started shall we?" She quickly made a pillar of ice beneath her and froze her feet onto it. Now she could attack the Spitters much more easily (not to mention catch any spit that would hit her teammates). A circle of water surrounded Anolani's waist to provide her some protection. The Hivelings on the walls started shooting at her, but they could not get through her flexible shield, and if they did, she was able to redirect the spit away from her. As for her teammates, she'd try and keep the volatile chemical away as much as possible. She was going to miss a few of the shots, but she'd be damned if she couldn't catch as many as possible.

It was an elegant dance of dodging and shooting. And it was invigorating.

Victor had been about to point out that flying was no only useless underground, but that his teleportation would be far more helpful; of course, the ground caving in had done plenty to interrupt his train of thought, so he gleefully switched over to a combat mindset.

Instead of hitting the ground, Victor sank down into his shadow and disappeared for a few seconds. The bugs continued to pour into the cavern, moving past the openings of their tunnels, and then...

Victor resurfaced beneath them, using their own shadows as a personal portal and erupting out of the ground with the momentum of his fall moments prior. He came out with his hands straight over his head, almost comically in Superman-style, except that Shadow magic was positively swirling around him and was burning through the squad of Warriors that he came out under like fire in a dry field.

When he came back down, he disappeared again and reappeared where the majority of the group was. "Hit-and-run is going to work perfectly for me here," he rambled excitedly. "Do you guys see all these shadows around here? I can probably keep most of them back on my own, watch!" Whoop and he kicked a Spitter off the ceiling before falling into another shadow (too fast for a counterattack if they weren't expecting it) and coming back to the group.

"Point me where you need me," he said, grinning.

As the battle continued, the ranks of the Hivelings seemed to be thinning - particularly, the Spitters were not being replaced and the Builders were arriving much less frequently. The chamber seemed darker than before, however.

Anolani was laughing. Not a manic "Oh God, We're Going to Die!" laugh, but an evil laugh. A laugh that relished in the destruction going on around her.

"This is so much fun!" She continued to reflect the spit and destroy Spitters with glee. It MIGHT have had to do with the fact that her hip hurt and it was inadvertently their fault. But still. Laughter like that - even in the name of vengeance - should not have existed.

She noticed quickly enough that the Spitters weren't being replaced and that raised a couple of alarms for her. Oh joyous day. What now?

THWOK

A Warrior charged Victor back into the pit - which he now noticed had a much smaller opening.

As he fell inward, the top was quite rapidly sealed above him by a number of Builders as he fell.

"Well... cocks," Morgan's voice echoed through the darkness as all sounds of the Hiveling's stopped, their chemical fires providing just enough illumination to see the access tunnels being sealed.