It was not a trick of the light, of warping shadows cast from burning kerosene, nor the dark playing on her mind, plying her vision into seeing warped forms as though she was having some nightmare. Except she was awake, skiing prickling from the cool underground. This was all real and tangible and Menov was manifesting these broad ribbons from her arm sleeves, unfurling as if several rolls were dropped from her hands. But these ribbons alive, fanned out like wings, rippling, until the ribbons coalesced into the form of her hands large enough to choke the tunnel.

The tunnel was a quaking artery. Pyrik saw the outlines of thorny bodies, heard their screeches, the deafening rush of thousands of appendages stamping on the ground like a thundering charge of hooves. She braced, along with Cutter and his men as the Hospitallers continued working on the fuse.

The shock was felt instantly, like the air in the tunnel was caught and impossibly compressed, compact as a ball, then allowed to explode. That was the strength that Menov wielded. The insectoids never stood a chance. Their chitinous bodies were brittle in her beastly hands as she swept the frontal assault aside, crushing them against the tunnel wall. Chunks and earth and stone loosened from the impact. Her other hand swept aside another spout of bodies, more insectoids crumbled into twisted, splattered heaps. Pyrik was afraid that the tunnel might collapse.

Menov did not care. She was killing with reckless, giddy abandon like a child with an anthill. She raised her hands and slammed them down, flattening insectoids as she laughed, then brought them together for one mighty clap, crushing even more between her palms. When she opened her hands, bits of insectoids tumbled forth.

“Fuse is done!” The Hospitaller shouted.

None of the insectoids made it past Menov.

“Light it and leg it then!” Cutter ordered.

“Menov! Let’s go!” Pyrik shouted.

Menov popped the head of an insectoid like one did with a dandelion, and threw the slack body into the oncoming swarm. Her ribbons disassembled and receded back up her sleeves, returning her to her normal form.

They ran. Followed the rope. Cutter was leading the charge, his lantern swaying madly. Pyrik glanced back, saw nothing except for the sparkling fuse and chitin glistening in the flame. Then there was an explosion of light, so bright, so all consuming, for a temporary moment Pyrik was blinked completely, her vision spotty, slowly clearing as the explosive force nearly knocked her off kilter.

Menov grabbed Pyrik’s wrist, rescuing her from a tumble. “Wouldn’t want to fall down now!”

Although her eyes focused on the path ahead, on the lantern like a moth to a flame, Pyrik noticed in the corner of her vision that the flames followed them rather than disappear with distance. The screeches did not cease, nor did the stampede. She snuck a glance over her shoulder, then snapped back to attention ahead. Insectoids, drenched in spider fire, burning like torches in a mob, were chasing after them despite continual incineration.

They’re not dropping anytime soon.

“Up ahead!” Cutter shouted. Then there were flashes of steel.

Insectoids were tumbling out of the peripheral tunnels, snarling and agitated.

Cutter swung his saber at an insectoid, and bashed its skull in with a gratifying crunch.

Steel moved in glimpses in the dark. Insectoids shifted in and out of the sparse light. Pyrik growled, annoyed, swinging for a head or a limb and only striking air when an insectoid appeared to dissolve back into the dark. They were practically fighting shadows, figments of nightmares that sometimes consolidated to a physical form to attack them. A Hospitaller at the front suddenly fell to the ground, no, tripped, as he was dragged away, screaming, hands clawing at dirt, where he disappeared into the dark.

From above claws manicled onto Pyrik’s shoulders. Nerves frayed in panic as she glanced up. Tendrils of drool dribbled on her forehead, and a foul stench like rotting flesh wafted on her face, churning her stomach. It was too dark to see, though Pyrik only had to surmise where to strike as she stabbed blindly with her bayonet. The first few, frantic stabs only glanced against chitin while the last stab managed to find flesh, so she buried her bayonet in deeper and twisted until the claws loosened around her shoulders and she was dropped back onto solid earth.

A charred insectoid, with its chitin mostly eaten away from the dying spider fire, shambled toward her, mandiles parted open in a ghastly rattle as it reached forward with its claws. Pyrik slashed her axe across its neck, which severed head from shoulders with surprising ease without the chitin in the way. It made her feel bold, though that did not last long when she heard the screeches from farther into the tunnel.

After scrambling back to her group, she found that another Hospitaller had been killed in her momentary absence. Cutter and Menov were a coordinated melee where his brutality compensated for her more selective and carefully calculated strikes, that always guaranteed to fell a body while Cutter only battered them out of the way. Pyrik had to tear her way through in order to rejoin them.

Eventually there was a pinprick of light in the distance that grew larger and larger with each haggard step. That reinvigorated Pyrik when her body was exhausted long ago. Cutter appeared to redouble in ferocity and insectoids crumbled around him. Pyrik could taste the cool fresh air meandering into the tunnel. The light outside, although somewhat dimmed as day transitioned to dusk, stung her eyes after her descent into the dark.

Hospitallers at the Maw had barrels of spider fire stuffed with a rag soaked in kerosene.

“Now now now!” Cutter commanded frantically.

They lit the rags, then rolled the barrels into the Maw.

As they staggered back the line of field cannons, gasping for breath, each breath coarse and barbed, they felt great trembles that shook the earth. A grated howl, so loud, so ear-splittingly shrill, erupted from the Maw.

“Do you think we got them all?” Pyrik asked after gathering enough breath.

“Maybe, maybe not,” Menov said as she continued to watch the Maw.

“Don’t stop,” Cutter shouted to his men with the spider fire. “This is not the time to relax. I want every drop of spider fire into the bloody Maw.”

As excessive as it was with the deathly wails coming from the Maw, his men did not object. Container after container spider fire was rolled in with a lit rag. The shudders of explosions were continuous, relentless. Pyrik could not imagine anything surviving such an assault, though she did not object either.

Let them burn. Let them burn until their ashes can’t be distinguished from dirt.

The spider fire would only spread. Unable to escape through the Maw, those burning insectoids would spread the spider fire throughout its nest as it tried anything to snuff out the flames, not knowing that would further their demise.

Then Pyrik felt it, a great jolt, like something gigantic came alive. She stared at the Maw, and then she heard a deafening roar.