“Cole, status!” Welthan shouted into the comms after ducking into cover.

  In the next moment, a bolt of radiant blue energy blew off a chunk of the rockface next to where he had been standing.

  “Fodder low, need a piercing round for the Thorn, open field, over!” Cole’s response came through Welthan’s headgear—though they were within four hundred meters of each other, the sound buzzed and constantly threatened to cut out. It had only been getting worse the further they travelled.

  “Lilly?” Welthan asked as he peeked from a different angle, his right eye pressed to the rifle’s scope. At a light press of the trigger, a burst of bullets shot out towards the group of creatures heading his way.

  While the creatures’ bodies varied in size and shape, each of them had four legs attached to a modest, headless torso. At first sight they seemed organic, but what appeared to be their skin, would turn into solid crystal once the glowing core in their 'stomachs' was destroyed. These beings were classified as 'fodder' and valued on par with the Empire’s rookies during wargames.

  They were dangerous, but Welthan’s bullets shredded the approaching vanguards’ cores with ease.

  “She’s on the way, ov—” Shots drowned out Lily’s voice just before she abruptly cut the transmission.

  “Roger.” Welthan acknowledged and slid a fresh magazine into his rifle. “Aetheris, western anchor; armor piercing; north-eastern Thorn-class. Over.” His commands were word-for-word tailored after the way a—now dead—major had assigned orders to the woman.

  At a calmer time, he had agreed with Dora that Aetheris' behavior was akin to a machine's, but Welthan didn’t care much. She was necessary for the mission’s success, so he couldn’t make sacrifices either way.

  Plus, while the finicky commands—of which he didn’t know the full list—were far from ideal, the woman couldn’t be labeled as deadweight...

  Nearby, in the rocky maze that was the valley—

  Crack!

  Another translucent frame shattered in the shadow of an exoskeleton seemingly suspended in midflight.

  Smoke poured out of the gun barrel that its pilot had aimed for the shot. She had long white hair tied in a bun and emotionless silver eyes that had already forgotten about the creature she had just killed.

  She twisted in the air, her feet landing back on the ground and kicking up a cloud of dust. With maintained momentum, Aetheris ran into the sector of the formation that Welthan had designated.

  After a few more steps, she nimbly scaled a large boulder that offered her cover from the south; from there, she scanned north-east for her target...

  “THERE WAS A CASTER! I REPEAT, THERE IS A CASTER WITH THE THORN! OVER!” Cole’s shouts and transmission noise reverberated in her ears, but to Aetheris... there may as well have been no sound at all.

  Having failed to spot her target, the woman leapt to a nearby ledge for a better vantage point.

  “Safety first, Cole! But keep it pinned as best you can until I get there! Over.”

  Disregarding the comms, Aetheris climbed all the way on top of the cliff overlooking the valley below. From there, her eyes finally found a glowing tail and an even brighter spot inside the body it protruded from. She reached for the sniper rifle on her back and took aim—

  If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

  “Aetheris! Elimination; north-eastern Caster-class, Thorn-class. Over!”

  Just as she pressed on the trigger, her body reacted to the new command. The resulting miniscule sway of the rifle caused the bullet to diverge from its intended trajectory, but—through a stroke of luck—the scorpion-like creature moved right into its offset path. The specialized alloy pierced the thick skin of the enemy and shattered the joint holding one of its ten legs... missing the core completely. It wasn’t enough luck.

  And at that moment, somewhere in the distance, Cole cursed. Which he, of course, did with his microphone disabled to keep the comms clear.

  Aetheris, on the other hand, didn’t even wait to see where the shot went. Once her priorities got rearranged, the Thorn no longer mattered. Or rather, not until the Caster was dealt with...

  Welthan’s breathing became rugged as he ran towards Cole’s position. He leveraged slanted rocks and pushed the exoskeleton’s joints to near their limits in an effort to maintain momentum; every second mattered. However, the four-legged monsters were everywhere, seemingly hungry for his blood.

  The terrain in the valley was a mess, often times forcing Welthan to stop and dispose of the creatures blocking his way; after all, he couldn’t just jump over them—no human would, definitely not in this model of the exoskeleton... other than Aetheris.

  How did she do it? How could she avoid the creatures’ claw-like limbs, their ranged strikes, aim her weapon, and control the exoskeleton so that it won’t break on landing—all at the same time? Whether the government had gone too far this time or not, Welthan was aware that the Empire needed such weapons to survive...

  But that didn't mean Welthan’s own skill was negligible. Because to survive this uninvited hell that they had stepped into, everyone had to cover the role for an entire squad, if not more.

  It would've been a much easier task had they all stayed together—is what you would consider if you enjoyed gambling with your life on the line. Which, as they learned a moment ago, would have been a losing bet—there was a reason to this madness...

  Eventually, the echoes of Cole’s shots grew much louder and Welthan spotted the swaying tail of the Thorn from behind a ridgeline, so he veered off towards the crest to asses the situation. “Cole, where is the Caster? Over.”

  The smell of soil permeated Welthan’s nostrils as he laid down on the gently sloped ridgeline and took in the sight in front of his eyes. There, in the middle of a modest opening, writhed the monster whose headless torso measured over six meters in length. It was attacking the narrow passage which Cole had used to escape its deadly limbs and, most importantly, that long tail which had a jagged, triangular crystal formation at the tip.

  Additionally, a stench that was both alluring and repulsive carried over the wind, coming from the creature’s direction. An odd enough fact was that this strange smell wafted only from the wounded living specimens, never from the dead. Welthan quickly spotted the cause, the hole that Aetheris’ shot had left mere centimeters clear off the core, and pondered—could he finish the job before the creature noticed and subsequently finished him? But this train of thought got stopped once the speakers in his headgear came to life.

  “Behind the—” Welthan could now make out Cole’s voice coming from behind the rockface to his left—and then the earth itself seemed to take issue with their presence, as jagged stone spikes erupted in a line, hurtling toward Cole. “—shit!” This time he had no mind, no time, to silence his microphone.

  Welthan heard the thundering sound of stone shattering and saw dust shoot into the sky; he got his question answered one way or another. “Cole, hold on!” He spoke, but was already running. Because he knew.

  The Caster had widened the passage. Even though the attack had had no sympathy for the Thorn, Welthan saw its tail slither into the dust cloud...

  Shots followed and Cole shouted—“RIGHT FLANK, SIR!”

  And a moment later, Welthan burst out from the other side of the powdery mist, the air swirling behind his back.

  There, he saw Cole who had given up stalling the monster. Instead, he was running straight towards a cavity between the rocks. That was his only hope, in the face of the Thorn whose tail had charged up while it had been stuck. An energy that resembled lightning began forming at the tip of its tail, ready to strike, but—

  Bang!

  Crack!

  The energy quickly fizzled out as crystal-like shards began to fall out of the creature’s 'belly'.

  A second ago, Welthan had realized that Aetheris’ shot had left the hole on both sides and synchronized his idea with Cole’s. He had instantly dived on his back to get the appropriate angle and fired a burst of bullets, one of which struck its mark.

  The two could finally catch a breath, but not before they put something solid between themselves and the passage where the cloud of dust had nearly settled.

  There was a far greater threat lurking beyond it...