The sound was not a wave. It was a tide. A rising flood of rhythmic, scraping clicks that promised to drown them.
Borin instinctively planted his feet, raising his axe. His expression was a grim mask of acceptance. He was preparing to die, and to take as many of the abominations with him as he could. The tag above his head in Arthur's vision flared a defiant, suicidal red: [Last Stand].
Patrin, on the other hand, had completely frozen. His breath came in ragged, silent gasps, his eyes wide with a terror so profound it had paralyzed him. [System Shock: Paralyzing Fear].
Two men, both useless in their own way. One wanted to throw his life away, the other was already gone.
"No," Arthur's voice was a low, sharp command that cut through the rising noise. "We don't fight. We run."
Borin turned, his face a mixture of disbelief and defiance. "There are too many! We can't let them get past us to the entrance!"
"And what's at the entrance?" Arthur shot back, grabbing the front of Patrin's tunic and hauling the terrified engineer to his feet. "A wall of rock we just spent hours breaking through. They will corner us. They will press us against that wall and grind us into paste. That is not a last stand, Borin. That is a pointless execution."
The logic was as cold and sharp as a shard of ice. The defiance in Borin's eyes flickered, replaced by reluctant understanding.
"Which way, Commander?" he asked, his voice a low rumble.
"Forward," Arthur said without hesitation.
Patrin let out a choked sob. "Forward? Into the nest? That's madness!"
"Madness is running into a dead end," Arthur snapped, forcing the old man into a stumbling trot. "The creatures are coming from deep within. They will chase us. Our only chance is to outrun them, find a chokepoint, a side tunnel, anything. The path behind us is a guaranteed death. The path ahead is an unknown. I will take the unknown every single time."
He didn't wait for an argument. He began to run, pulling Patrin along. Borin fell in behind them, his massive frame acting as a rear guard.
Their flight was a desperate, gasping affair. The tunnel was not a smooth, straight road. It twisted and turned, sloped up and down. They scrambled over piles of rubble from smaller, ancient cave-ins and leaped across deep, dark fissures in the floor.
Arthur was fit for a politician, not an athlete. His lungs quickly began to burn, a fire fueled by the stale, dusty air. Patrin was a lead weight, his old legs stumbling, his breath a constant, wheezing sob. Only Borin seemed tireless, a machine of muscle and stamina, occasionally reaching out to steady Patrin or shove him over an obstacle.
The sound was their constant companion. The rhythmic click-scrape swelled into a cacophony, a chittering, grinding legion of stone and obsidian. Looking back, Arthur could see them. A constellation of eerie, pulsing purple lights flooding the tunnel behind them, moving with an unnatural, unified speed.
They were gaining.
"They're too fast!" Patrin cried, his voice cracking.
"Then we need to be smarter!" Arthur yelled back, his eyes scanning their surroundings, his mind racing. His Gaze was active, highlighting the environment in faint, tactical outlines. He saw a section of the ceiling ahead that was heavily fractured, held up by a single, crumbling stone pillar.
[Structural Integrity: Critical] [Potential for Collapse]
"Borin!" Arthur shouted over his shoulder. "That pillar! When I give the word, break it!"
"It'll block our path back!"
"There is no path back!"
They sprinted, the sound of the horde now a deafening roar at their heels. They passed the pillar, the air vibrating with the proximity of their pursuers.
"Now!" Arthur screamed.
Borin didn't hesitate. He spun, planted his feet, and swung his axe in a massive, horizontal arc. The rune-etched head slammed into the base of the pillar. The stone exploded inwards.
With a deep, groaning shudder, the ceiling gave way. Tons of rock crashed down, throwing up a colossal cloud of dust and completely blocking the tunnel. The sound of the horde was abruptly cut off, replaced by the echoing thunder of the rockslide.
They had bought themselves time.
They collapsed against the far wall, chests heaving, throats raw.
"How much time?" Borin asked, his voice rough.
"Not enough," Arthur replied, already pushing himself to his feet. "They're made of rock. They can burrow. Let's move."
Their pace was slower now, a stumbling jog. The rockslide had given them breathing room, but the silence that followed was almost as unnerving as the noise had been.
It was Patrin who saved them. As they rounded another bend, he suddenly stopped, his eyes wide.
"Wait," he gasped, staring at a blank section of the tunnel wall. "The old schematics… I remember a footnote. An emergency maintenance conduit. It should be… here."
Arthur ran his hand over the wall. It was as smooth as the rest. "There's nothing here."
"It was sealed during the Great Engineering period!" Patrin insisted, his voice gaining a spark of desperate hope. "The records said it was… redundant."
Borin stepped forward, knocking on the wall with a mailed knuckle. The sound was a dull thud. He moved five feet to the left and knocked again. This time, the sound was subtly different. Faintly hollow.
Without a word, he set his feet and slammed his shoulder into the wall. A crack appeared. He slammed into it again. The wall groaned, and the outline of a low, narrow doorway became visible.
A faint scraping sound echoed from behind them. From the direction of the rockslide.
They were coming.
"Hurry!" Arthur urged.
Borin gave one final, titanic heave. The sealed door burst inwards, revealing a small, dark opening.
"Go! Go now!"
Patrin scrambled through first. Arthur shoved him forward and then dove in after him. Borin backed into the opening, his axe held ready, his eyes watching the darkness for the first purple glow.
The scraping was louder now, just around the bend.
"Borin!"
The big warrior threw himself through the opening. Arthur and Patrin were already straining against a heavy stone slab that had served as the inner door. Borin added his immense strength to theirs. With a final, desperate groan, they pushed the slab back into place, sealing the conduit entrance just as the first Geode Sentinel rounded the corner. Its purple fissures cast long, dancing shadows under the new seal.
They were safe. For now.
They lay in the cramped, pitch-black space, their breathing the only sound. Arthur fumbled for his pack and reignited his light-crystal.
The cold, white light filled a small, perfectly square room. It was not a simple conduit. The walls were reinforced with a strange, silvery metal. In the far wall was a single, thick pane of what looked like flawless crystal, like a massive window.
"What is this place?" Borin asked, his voice a low rumble.
"An observation post," Patrin whispered, his eyes wide with awe and terror.
Arthur walked to the window and looked out.
It was not a tunnel on the other side. It was a cavern. A cavern so vast it defied comprehension. The crystal light from his hand did nothing to illuminate its far reaches. It was a subterranean world of its own.
And deep below them, in the very center of that impossibly huge space, a faint, colossal purple light began to pulse. It was a gentle, rhythmic beat, like the slow, sleeping breath of a chained god.
The light was coming from a single, mountain-sized geode. The Heartstone.
It was just as the legends described.
But it was also surrounded by thousands upon thousands of smaller, pulsing purple lights. The lights of the Geode Sentinels. They were clustered around the Heartstone, drawing power from it, protecting it.
It wasn't a power source they had found.
It was a hive. And they were trapped in the observation deck, overlooking the queen.