Brilliant flames leapt from the inset sconce and rushed along a channel in the cave wall, illuminating the darkness of the tunnel before us. He quickly crossed the entrance and lit the matching sconce on the opposite side to similar effect, then hurried back to his place in the formation. Adrenaline began to pump through my veins as I stared down the flickering mineshaft, watching the flames travel until they gradually disappeared into the distance. It has begun. The buzzing in my spine grew more intense, and I grit my teeth against the feeling. Nerves cannot stop us now.
I turned back to my army and banged my heavily gauntleted fist against my shield. “Tonight, we rid the world of this evil forever!” I shouted, raising my fist into the air. A hundred different battlecries rang out at once as I turned back to the mine entrance, keeping my hand above my head in preparation to send the army forward. I closed my eyes and took what I knew would be the final peaceful breath of my life.
In the moment before I threw my hand forward, the tingling at the base of my skull resolved into a crackling, disjointed voice inside my head. Don’t. Go. Inside. My blood ran cold as I stood locked in place, stunned into momentary inaction by the ominous warning. Dormant synapses flared to life within my brain as I desperately tried to link the voice to one I knew—one I was desperate to hear, but knew I never would again.
The moment passed, and I reopened my eyes, suddenly more set in my resolve than I had been seconds before. Tonight, I make amends. I gave the forward signal with a mighty bellow, then charged into mine headfirst. Hundreds of heavy footfalls echoed behind me as I ran, but they slowly fell away as I outpaced them in my all-out sprint. I tightened my grip on my shield as I ran and felt a comforting tingle in my arm; as in every battle before, the artifact seemed to sharpen my mind and prepare me for the combat ahead.
The first Serathid nearly caught me by surprise as it came into view around a particularly sharp corner, already aware of our presence and charging out to meet us. As I had hoped, the narrow entrance tunnel restricted the beast from its full range of movement, and it began our fight with a single horizontal swing of its bladed forearm. I caught the strike on the outer edge of my shield as I began to twirl, using the momentum of the attack to quickly spin around to face its exposed midsection. The twirl ended with a devastating blow against its chitinous body that sent it stumbling into the opposite wall. Before it could recover, I kicked off of the tunnel behind me and launched into a followup attack, landing the harsh edge of my shield directly on the cracked impact point of the first blow. Its shell snapped and collapsed, and I felt a satisfying, secondary crack as its spine broke. The beast fell to the ground without so much as a shudder, and I gave my shield a hard spin to clear the dark ichor from its edge.
My battle only lasted a few seconds, but it was enough time for Bryce and the rest of the vanguard to catch up with me. At the sight of the dead Serathid, they all let out a victorious yell, and I continued deeper into the mine with the three dozen soldiers close behind me. The echoing noise of our advance began to deepen in tone as the tunnel widened, and we quickly found ourselves at the site of our first main objective: Shadowmine’s Nexus, where countless tunnels and mining elevators all met in a single, cavernous space. A blazing channel circled around each side of the cave, but the ceiling and center of the massive space remained shrouded in murky darkness. Four Serathids scuttled towards us from the back of the room, nearly disappearing as they entered the half-dark center of the cavern.
“Vanguard, hold!” I shouted, banging my shield on the stone floor. I took note of the positions of each of my nearby soldiers through the nervous scuffing and scraping of their boots and armor, and I took small, shifting steps to better reposition myself around them for the incoming attack as I waited for my next signal. The sound of our reinforcements charging in behind us sent a wave of relief through my body, and I lunged forward with another warcry as the second phase of our reclamation began. “Charge!”
I led the vanguard forward to stop our foes with a head-on attack in hopes that our defensive line would have time to set up behind us. Breaking away from the main force, I dashed to the left where one of the Serathids had veered away from our assault in an attempt to catch us in a pincer. My abrupt change in course drew a second beast away from the pack, splitting their forces evenly between me and the entirety of the vanguard. Knowing I would be flanked by the reinforcing Serathid in mere moments, I sprinted harder towards my first target in an effort to capitalize on the solo engagement while I had the chance.
The beast reared up onto its hind legs and launched towards me with both scythes pointed directly at my head. I slid down onto one knee and planted my shield against the cave floor, then braced my shoulder against the metal as the attack landed. The full weight of the Serathid crashed into me, and I roared in exertion as I fought back against the assault. With a final burst of energy, I rose to my feet and threw the beast back into an off-balance teeter. My shield flew out along its geared tracks and whipped skyward in a brutal uppercut that caught the Serathid full in the face, knocking it onto its
