The chamber was larger than the gallery, and Crawlers covered nearly every surface in it.
That was the first thing Harr understood before the rest of the scene made itself into sothing concrete.
Then he noticed the eggs.
Pale shells, thick and swollen, so rising as high as a soldier’s chest. They sat in clustered groups across the chamber floor, leaving only narrow paths between them.
At the far end of the chamber, partly obscured by the egg clusters and the Crawlers moving among them, Harr saw sothing larger.
Far larger.
Its eight legs had dense pale fur that caught the torchlight differently from the pale smooth bodies of the creatures they had spent the last hours killing. Heavy curved mandibles worked against each other in a slow clicking rhythm, separate from the background noise in the chamber.
Wings folded tightly against its back and sides, but even folded they pressed into the egg clusters around it. The body between the legs was broader than the spur passage the wedge formation had just forced through.
Harr’s mind processed the thing in parts instead of as a whole. That was the only reasonable way to understand sothing that large on first sight.
He took one breath. Long enough to identify the threat.
Then he moved past it ntally and focused on the imdiate problem.
"Squads, spread out in formation. One and Two, fire together," he called.
He had to raise his voice higher than before to pass the orders to the squad leaders. Nearly sixty soldiers in a stone chamber created constant noise from breathing and shifting equipnt, besides the background noise.
"Three, Four and Five, ready. Six, torches to the eggs. Left cluster first."
Sowhere in the formation, before the volley fired, one soldier made a short broken noise, almost forming a word. The man had seen the matriarch without Harr’s ntal fortitude to accept the sight.
More than a dozen flintlock pistols firing together did not sound like separate weapons.
The noise beca one massive pressure wave striking from every direction at once. The walls carried it. The floor carried it. The creatures felt it. Harr himself felt it in his chest and in the roots of his teeth.
The ringing afterward was worse than the spur passage had been.
Through the ringing, Harr picked out impacts against stone, multiple and heavy.
The volley had torn through the near the egg clusters and several Crawlers. They corpses lay collapsed there with holes punched through the thorax or entire sections missing, pale limbs twitched uselessly.
Two eggs cracked from the concussion alone. A third split open along one side, and sothing pale and wet spilled across the floor beneath it.
The Crawlers on the walls did not hesitate after the volley.
Three dropped from the left wall. Two from the right. Another pair descended from near the spur entrance behind the formation while the soldiers were still half deaf from the gunfire.
"Three, forward," Harr shouted over the ringing. "Swords to the walls. Two, reload. Four, left."
Eard intercepted the Crawlers on the left with two soldiers from the third squad. He reached the nearest creature before it fully charged into the formation.
His blade drove into the gap between the second and third legs on the left side. The Crawler hit the floor dragging itself in a partial circle.
One of the soldiers put the sword through the mandibles before it could recover. The dragging stopped.
Mord called from the right cluster.
"Two coming in low under the eggs, right side. Few seconds out."
His tone never changed. Harr trusted the information imdiately because Mord never wasted words.
"Five, right side. Low targets."
A soldier near the right cluster died before anyone could reach him. A Crawler’s forward limb punched through his chest from the front and erged between his shoulders. He hit the stone floor already bleeding out.
The man behind him stepped sideways to close the breach in the formation before Harr needed to order it.
Deeper in the egg cluster, two Crawlers seized another soldier at the sa ti. Each gripped part of his torso and pulled in opposite directions.
The cries he made lasted three seconds.
Neither man died quietly.
The formation reacted to both deaths, absorbed the disruption, then continued to fight.
"Six, burn those eggs now. One, reload and ready."
Torches shoved into the nearest cluster.
The burning shells produced a sll unlike the stale mine air they had endured for hours. It was acrid, wet, biological. The thick shells resisted the fire at first, but cracked eggs ignited faster.
Smoke spread across more of the chamber.
Near the right cluster, one soldier took a wing strike that hurled him into the eggs against the wall hard enough to crack two shells. The position of his neck when he landed told Harr instantly the man would not rise again.
Another soldier caught a forward limb across the abdon. He stayed conscious just long enough to clamp both hands over the wound and say sothing to the man beside him.
Then the surviving soldier had to make a decision and keep fighting.
The chamber floor was increasing with tension from every direction. Crawler corpses. Broken shells. Blood from both sides.
Then the matriarch moved.
Harr felt it through the stone before he saw it clearly. The creature was heavier than the Crawlers, slower too.
The Matriarch advanced directly through the far egg clusters without changing direction. The shells shifted around its furred legs as it pushed through them. Its mandibles continued that steady clicking rhythm.
The wings remained folded, but the tips dragged across stone on either side as it crossed the chamber. The scraping noise stood out even through the fighting.
"One and Two, fire!"
More than a dozen shots struck nearly the sa point.
The matriarch flinched.
It didn’t kill the creature, but the flesh was ripped apart and bled regardless. The concentrated fire had done real damage, and it slowed down the Matriarch for four strides before the creature charged at the formation.
Eard recognized the weak spot imdiately.
"We need to focus on the sa spot."
He left the tactical use of the information to Harr.
"Three, Four, Five. Front of the body. Fire together."
Harr stepped sideways to clear their line of fire.
"One and Two, swords out, on the walls."
The three squads fired simultaneously.
The concussion hit harder than anything the chamber had seen yet. Harr barely heard it over the ringing, but he saw the result clearly enough.
The already mangled skin of the matriarch’s forward thorax collapsed inward.
Its forward left legs failed one after another in sequence.
The front half of the creature slamd into the stone floor, the mandibles striking hard enough to gouge lines into the rock.
But the rear legs kept working.
The matriarch dragged itself forward anyway, trying to force movent from the undamaged half of its body while the mauled front carved a trench through the egg clusters beneath it.
"Six," Harr ordered. "Finish it."
The remaining squad fired at the creature.
The rear legs stopped moving.
The enormous body crashed fully against the chamber floor. Harr felt the impact through his legs as the creature’s weight finally ca to rest against the stone.
The air displaced by the collapse shoved at the nearest soldiers hard enough that multiple stepped backward.
Then the matriarch stopped moving entirely.
The clicking faded slowly instead of cutting off at once. Two seconds. Maybe three. The rhythm that had taken over the mine for years finally wound down into silence.
For the first ti since forever, the mine beca quiet.
The Crawlers remaining on the walls and among the burning eggs imdiately changed behavior. So moved toward the torchlight, others toward the fires, a few converged on each other near the cluster.
The coordination was gone.
Whatever had led them had died with the matriarch.
Harr surveyed the remains of the formation. There were a few n that were gone, and more than just a few injured in the backline. Sabers had been drawn across the entire company after the six squads fired their pistols.
Mutilated human bodies, far too many mauled creature corpses and shattered egg casings covered the chamber floor.
The battle was over. What remained was cleanup before the surviving creatures regrouped under instinct.
"Everyone," Harr said.
He used the command tone, yet it was weary now.
"Kill what’s left."
The company moved.
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