“SHIELDS!” Advant shouted, her pheromones washing over the entire area in a mighty burst.

The two mages, thankfully, were quick to respond and a shield sprang into being around the large soldier, mere moments before the mess of vines engulfed her completely.

She lunged forward, mandibles snapping as she sheared through hundreds of the tough, living ropes, not noticeably making a dent in them.

“Need some fire?” Propellant asked, eager.

“Of course I want some damn fire! Why are you asking? Just cast it already!” Advant hollered.

An immediate burst of flame washed over her, igniting the vines and driving them back temporarily. Of course, it also set the fine hairs on her antennae on fire at the same time….

“Not me, you idiot!”

“Sorry.”

Unsurprisingly, Propellant didn’t sound all that apologetic as she watched the plant monster retreat, smothering the flames with its innumerable vines. Coolant sighed and conjured a jet of water to douse the singed soldier.

“Really now, you should be able to aim better than that, sister.”

Now dripping wet, Advant fumed silently for a moment before deciding she could no longer hold it in.

“You two have been useless since we got down here,” she sniped at the bickering mages. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you’d had a falling out of some sort.”

Propellant and Coolant stood awkwardly for a moment.

“You did?” Advant asked incredulously, before she shook her head. “Fine, whatever. You’re being ridiculous. Get over yourselves and stop making mistakes, or I’ll tell the Eldest how stupid you’ve been while they were sleeping.”

The two mages had the grace to be embarrassed just long enough for the vines to surge up the tunnel once again to snag Advant and drag her into the darkness.

“That was your fault,” Propellant said.

“How was it my fault?” Coolant replied icily. “The creature is clearly weak to fire, you should have fended it off.”

“It has water within its vines. You could have frozen it.”

“You’re just being petulant because you’re mad the Eldest didn’t teach you the volcano spell.”

“I am not! You’re just being petty because they didn’t have a mega-ice spell for you to learn. It’s not my fault that fire is better.”

“If it’s so great, then use it. Go help Advant without setting her on fire, for once.”

“Maybe I will!”

“I’d love to see it.”

The two stood off for a long moment, staring at each other until a bedraggled figure trudged out of the darkness.

“You both suck,” Advant ground out. “If the Eldest were here to see your incompetence, you’d be back in training before you could twitch.”

“I haven’t done anything wrong,” Coolant defended herself icily. “Propellant, on the other hand….”

“No, I don’t want to hear it,” the soldier cut the two mages off.

A small healer came forward and began to go to work, repairing the extensive damage done to Advant’s carapace. There were a number of smaller wounds as well, places where the vines had pierced flesh and inflicted harm. The healer grumbled to herself as she worked, ignoring the council members completely.

Advant was somewhat stumped. It was unusual for any members of the Colony to have a disagreement of any kind. Beyond unusual, exceedingly rare, but it did happen. Then again, two individuals with such diametrically opposed personalities were seldom asked to work together as often as Coolant and Propellant were.

The two mages usually got along quite well, but for whatever reason, they were letting their argument get in the way of their task, which was not acceptable. Especially because Advant was the one counting on them to keep her alive!

“There’s only two options on the table,” she told the two mages. “Either you assure me right now that you can both operate at your best going forward, or we turn around and go back. I only agreed to come with so few in the team because I assumed you two would be such an asset that it didn’t matter. Not only are you not an asset, I would rather have any other two mages than you right now.”

The siblings looked at each other askance, antennae drooping with shame, though neither willing to admit fault in front of the other.

Advant let out a frustrated puff of pheromones.

“Look, I know everyone is stressed right now. The Eldest is out of commission for who knows how long, and we have a ton of things to do, but you two can’t let something petty get in the way of your work. You’re too important for that.”

“You are quite right,” Coolant said. “We are not performing our tasks with due diligence.”

“You don’t say,” Advant remarked, still picking chunks of vine from gaps in her carapace.

“Sorry about that,” Propellant said. “I’ll do my best not to set you on fire. I can’t promise you won’t get singed, though. It’s fire, after all.”

“I can handle singed,” the soldier replied. “The light roasting was the issue. I sincerely hope that whatever is bothering the two of you is resolved as soon as possible. For now, let’s focus on the task at hand.”

Namely, delving into these tunnels and rooting out whatever was found therein. So far, that had mostly been a variety of nasty plant-like things, grown thick and vibrant on life mana.

“You’re good to go,” the medic announced, climbing down from Advant’s back.

“Thanks for that. Hopefully we won’t need to call on you again.”

“I wish,” the little ant grumped as she scuttled back to safety.

Everyone was in a mood lately. The soldier brushed it off and began to face back down the tunnel into which she had recently been dragged.

“Let’s go,” she said.

The small group continued on their way once again, the coordination between them vastly improved over what it had been a moment ago. Coolant and Propellant still picked at each other, but kept their spat on the back burner.

They continued to encounter the subterranean monsters of the fourth stratum and continued to struggle. More of the vine-tangles, some much larger than the first, gave them a lot of trouble, but others were also difficult to fight. There was a sunflower-like monster that spat seeds at them, which would have been fine if the seeds didn’t immediately begin to grow new sunflower monsters at a prodigious rate.

Worst of all was a strange, hairy mole thing with a fire in its belly and a mouth full of rolling, grinding teeth. In the end, Coolant managed to spike the creature through its hide with ice magic, but not before Advant had lost a leg.

“Sorry about that,” she said to the little healer, not quite sure why she was apologising for losing her leg in battle, but it seemed like the right thing to do.

“Don’t worry about it,” the healer replied, “we get used to it.”

Despite their best efforts, the team had covered a disappointingly small section of tunnel before they were forced to turn and head back home. There was a defeated atmosphere hanging over the group, despite the progress they’d made. Largely because they’d be right back down there, after their rest was done.

“Try not to annoy each other before we go back down,” she told the two mages. “We were actually getting somewhere by the end.”

Without waiting for them to reply, she trudged off to a resting chamber. She was slightly dreading the next trip, which was an unnatural feeling. Since when did the Colony struggle to fight in tunnels? It wasn’t right!