Hartos looked around and was satisfied with what he saw. The mercenaries had managed to penetrate the mountain in good order, and despite the intensifying attacks from the ants, they had maintained their formation.
He couldn't help but sneer. Those fools who'd refused to join him would be crying bloody tears when they saw the haul he returned with. Thousands and thousands of ants surrounded them already, and soon enough they'd be dead, just waiting for their cores to be extracted.
But it didn't hurt to be careful.
"Artis!" he barked.
"What?" his long-time crewmember replied, sounding harried.
"I need you for a second."
"Make it quick," she snapped, "this shield doesn't maintain itself."
He frowned, both at her tone and the implication of her words.
"Are we really being pressured that hard?"
The mage glared at him.
"Of course we are! Look around you, the bugs are endless! No matter how much firepower we pump out, they keep coming."
"But you can hold?"
"Yes, we can hold. It's just very difficult work!"
He nodded.
"Good. I want you to check and make sure the mythic is still asleep. We don't want to be in here when the damn thing wakes up."
"That's the truth," the mage muttered.
She fumbled about in her robes and removed the array from one of her dozens of pockets. She stared at it intensely for a few moments.
"Well?" Hartos demanded.
"There's tens of thousands of monsters in this mountain, wait a damned second."
He turned his eyes back to the struggle along the perimeter as the mage continued to study the device.
"No," she said finally. "It's still asleep."
"You're sure."
"It's hard to get clear readings with so many cores between the mythic and us, but a signal that strong is hard to miss. I'm sure. Now can I get back to work?"
"Go for it."
Satisfied the worst case scenario could be avoided, the leader let his mind dwell on the best case scenario. If they managed to dig in deep enough and snag that mythic core….
"Push harder!" he roared to the surrounding mercs. "We get a little deeper and we can set up a perimeter. Then we can start getting paid!"
The mercenaries roared back as they redoubled their efforts. The fighting was thick along the edge of the shields as the insects continued to press in on them from all sides, but so long as the mages held the barriers in place, they would hold the advantage.
As long as the ants couldn't use the full weight of their numbers, it didn't matter where they fought them, on the surface or in the heart of the nest. In fact, the nest was better, since that's where most of them were.
The young lad Drake was nearby, still doing what he could to support the more experienced fighters closer to the edge. Hartos walked forward and clapped him on the shoulder.
"Ready to make a fortune?" he said.
When Drake turned around, he noted how tense he looked. The pressure was clearly getting to him.
"Y-yeah. I'm ready," he said.
The older mercenary steadied him with a firm grip on his shoulder.
"Relax. The mythic is still sleeping and we're holding off the insects just fine. We'll start pulling them into the shield and harvesting cores. You'll be drowning in them soon enough."
Drake's gaze firmed and he took a deep breath to settle his nerves.
"Looking forward to it," he grinned.
"That's the spirit, lad!" Hartos roared. "Another ten metres and we'll start! Listen to your crew leaders and keep your eyes on the prize! Efficient killing and harvesting is what we're here for. No screw ups!"
His words lifted the spirits of many mercenaries who were flagging under the intense pressure the insects put out. Twice the size of a human, the giant soldiers were intimidating beasts, especially when they came in large numbers. They were everywhere, climbing over the roof, on the walls, even walking on the shield itself or lunging up from beneath. Along with the rising heat the deeper they went, it was an oppressive, suffocating way to fight. It was a good thing nobody became a mercenary for an easy day's wage.
"Why aren't they coming with more?" Drake asked as he flung another slash through the shield. "They could hit us with ten times this many. Why don't they?"
Hartos chuckled.
"Don't try to understand a monster's mind. These ants may be smarter than the average, but that doesn't make them as clever as you and me. Perhaps they're protecting something and don't want to leave their posts, or they're fighting other monsters, or a hundred other reasons. Besides, even if more came, it wouldn't make a difference, we haven't shown them half of what we can do yet."
"This is the mark!" Artis called from amongst a cluster of mages.
"Time to get to work then," Hartos said.
He drew a breath to bellow his orders to the hundreds of gathered mercenaries, but before he said a word, the world turned upside down.
Drake felt the floor shake, then it vanished, like a magic trick. He didn't have time to be afraid, the only thing in his mind was confusion as the ground beneath his feet simply disappeared and he began to fall into the dark.
An image flashed through his thoughts of mandibles scraping and scratching at the shield below him.
"No!" he cried as he flailed wildly with his arms, trying to grab hold of something, anything.
Similar screams and cries rang out around him as the entire expedition plunged downwards. What had happened?
No sooner had it started than it finished, the mercenaries thudding to the ground heavily. Drake crashed into the stone floor, landing on his side. He managed to brace himself and prevent his head from smacking into the rock just in time, a trick Rillik had taught him.
"What in the name of the Path was that?" Hartos bellowed from somewhere nearby. "Sound off! Get the shields up! Are you trying to get us killed? Artis!"
Voices rang out, harsh and authoritative, but with an undercurrent of tension that sent a chill through the young mercenary. Something had gone terribly wrong.
"Where is the light?!" Hartos demanded.
A second later, a dozen bright fires flared into existence, casting their surroundings into stark relief. Drake almost sagged back to the ground in relief when he didn't see any ants nearby. His mind had conjured a thousand ravenous mouths ready to descend on him and the other members of the crew.
A moment later, he realised how strange that was. Where were they? They'd been everywhere around them only a moment ago, so what had happened, did they retreat?
Something shifted behind him.
"Oh no," he heard someone groan.
He turned and looked up at the largest ant, the largest monster, he had ever seen. The almost black carapace shimmered with a deep purple glow that ran up and down that enormous chitin frame. Its jaws were horrific, each as long as a full grown man and barbed, connected to a large, wide head that sported two spherical, unreadable eyes.
The antennae drifted slowly through the air, as if utterly unperturbed by the hundreds of deadly, experienced monster hunters in front of it. Each ten metres long, they glittered like threaded gemstones as they caught the light from the fire.
"It's supposed to be asleep," Hartos mumbled, and Drake's heart sank.
He'd known it the moment he'd seen it, but to have it confirmed. A mythic rank monster. Right in front of him. His eyes widened in terror.
Those massive jaws flexed and a dozen men leapt back, brandishing their weapons in shaking hands.
"It was a trap," Artis, the mage, said. "The ants weren't trying to kill us, or stop us, they wanted to feed us to that thing!"
"It's supposed to be asleep!" Hartos bellowed at her.
"They tricked the detector!"
"Isn't that impossible?"
"Apparently not!" she shrieked back, near hysterical.
The ant barely reacted as they yelled back and forth, merely watching, patiently. Then it stepped forward.
Several hundred mercenaries leapt back.
[This wasn't my idea,] a voice stabbed into Drake's mind, pressing down on his consciousness with its size and power. [They do things like this without asking.]
"Where are the wards, damnit all?" Hartos shouted, but no one was listening, all eyes were fixed on the creature.
It stared back at them with those cold, alien eyes.
[To be honest, I would have let you go. But… you should never have killed my sisters. That is the one thing I can never allow.]
The purple light shifting across the monster's carapace flared, then exploded outward. Drake turned to dash away, his feet dug into the hard stone beneath his feet, except they didn't.
He looked down in shock to see he had risen from the ground, his feet scrabbling through nothing but air. He rose higher, along with every other mercenary in the room.
[Sorry about this. I haven't worked out how to control it yet. In fact, why am I even apologising? Actually, the apology is fine, gotta keep it classy, Anthony. Anyway, better luck next time.]
Drake's heart dropped. Then his ascent stopped. He dangled there, along with hundreds of others, for one terrifying beat.
Then they fell. Fast.