The gallery smelled like black powder layered over something older and worse, the stink had thickened into something almost solid, a biological rot trapped in stone.

The six creatures from the first contact still lay where they had fallen and reinforcements had come through the shaft and stepped around them without comment. Now the corpses sat in the middle of an otherwise organized defense, obstacles nobody had time to move.

Cete stood near the shaft entrance, directing men as fast as they emerged.

"Second squad, north spur. Third squad, hold position and rotate forward when I call."

He wasted no words explaining their tasks. He did not need to. The soldiers moving through the five-foot entry in single file heard his tone and understood the expectation immediately, to move first without question.

Both spur entrances had blocking formations established now.

The Crawlers came one at a time or in pairs, at irregular intervals, either attacking due instinct or responding to noise echoing through the stone. Every creature that entered the torch range died before it could assault them properly, some never even reached the gallery before swords or pistol fire cut them loose from the walls.

The defense was firm, but Harr could see the real problem clearly enough. The men cycling through were exhausting themselves and their ammunition against an enemy with no reliable count.

Mord called across the gallery toward Harr with the tone of a quartermaster discussing dwindling ammunition.

"Three in the last minute from the west spur, two more behind them."

"Understood," Harr said.

He considered the numbers automatically, west continued to create more pressure than north.

The north spur was in a tighter formation than the west. The passage there narrowed to five feet, forcing the Crawlers into a direct path the defenders could fully cover.

One soldier near the front had a deep gash running along his face where a limb had reached farther than he’d expected. The wound should have rotated him out, but instead he stayed forward, compensating by keeping half a step farther back.

Then the north spur defense failed.

Only for a moment, but a moment was enough.

The Crawler that came through was larger than the earlier ones, and it struck the soldier on the right flank before the man’s sword could intercept properly.

The limb punched in below the ribs on the left side and drove deep, hooking the flesh as it entered, hard-edged and serrated, then ripped outward as the creature’s momentum carried it forward. The muscle and membrane tore open together.

The soldier dropped instantly, both hands clamped over the wound as if pressure alone might hold him together, his knees failing unevenly beneath him. What escaped his lips was worse than a scream.

The soldier beside him shouted, " Man down! Close the breach!"

The formation closed immediately in a way training and survival instinct overrode hesitation. The defense re-formed without the man who could no longer stand in it.

The Crawler died three seconds later, two sword strikes cut into the joints while a pistol fired almost point-blank into the torso. The blast in the confined passage deafened everyone nearby on that side of the gallery. Harr saw mouths moving without hearing words.

The man on the floor laid there lifeless.

At the west spur, roughly twenty minutes into the defense, another problem emerged.

A Crawler reached the formation, hooked one limb around the torso of the soldier holding the far-left position and pulled backward with its full body weight.

Other soldiers grabbed for the man before he could disappear into the dark. One caught his wrist. Another reached for his shoulder. Neither grip was firm enough.

The Crawler already had his weight and darkness behind the motion. The soldier slid backward across the stone.

"Help m-!" the soldier managed.

Then his voice moved beyond the torchlight.

Then farther.

The clicking deeper in the spur changed pitch, communication, maybe. Or response to prey entering range.

The pitch did not change back.

Then the tunnel went silent.

Eard stood at the west spur formation watching the darkness.

"We can’t follow in the dark."

His voice stayed bland, almost clinical, as if he were confirming distance on a survey line instead of abandoning a man.

Nobody argued. There was no practical counterpoint to offer.

Harr had kept counting since they took over the gallery.

The rhythm was becoming obvious now. North spur created lighter pressure because the narrow passage restricted movement. Meanwhile, west created continuous pressure, and the clicking through the stone from that direction had not decreased once in the last hour.

That meant the source was west. Either the nest itself or the main route leading toward it.

If they tried to defend the gallery indefinitely, it would only drain the company.

That gave him the next problem and the only workable answer.

"North spur stays in position."

Harr told Cete. "Keep the north line under rotation with squads seven to ten. The rest will push west with me."

Then he turned toward the west spur soldiers.

"Wedge formation. I’m taking point, rotate on my signal."

Somewhere in the mass of soldiers behind him, Beald said, "We’re going in? Into the spur itself?"

"That’s the job. We hit them fast and destroy the nest." Harr said.

The wedge entered the west spur with Harr at the point.

Four men spread behind him as wide as the passage permitted, the torch carriers on the second rank. The pistol soldiers forward where reaction time mattered most.

Harr watched the tunnel as they advanced, how the ceiling dipped irregularly in sections. It wasn’t low enough to stop the Crawlers, but low enough to interfere with their full wing extension.

The clicking became higher almost immediately after they entered, ahead of them and with no pauses.

Then, one Crawler dropped down the wall instead of the ceiling.

Harr fired at ten feet.

The iron ball punched through the thorax section. The creature’s limbs spasmed simultaneously.

The body slammed sideways into the spur floor.

Its wings tried to spread reflexively, but the walls blocked them, the membranes striking stone on both sides. The creature convulsed at Harr’s feet, limbs still moving for another four seconds before finally stopping.

"When melee, focus on the limbs," Harr said immediately.

The soldiers adjusted tactics for the next engagement.

For the first eight minutes the rotation worked exactly as intended. The point position rotated before exhaustion became failure, men stepped out when their arms slowed too much to guarantee a clean response. 𝕗𝗿𝕖𝐞𝐰𝗲𝕓𝐧𝕠𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝐨𝚖

The soldier who replaced Harr after the first rotation looked young enough that Harr realized he had barely noticed him before entering the spur.

The young man held position for maybe thirty seconds before a Crawler’s forward limb smashed into his sword shoulder and drove the arm backward.

Eard moved from second rank before anyone ordered him to.

"I’ve got it," Eard said.

The young soldier retreated and focused on stopping the bleeding on his arm.

Another Crawler descended midway through the spur along the left wall, a larger one again. Harr caught the pale length of its body in the torchlight as it came down.

The soldier at the left flank managed to drive his blade through the creature’s throat section, but not before the leading limb sliced along his forearm.

The cut opened the skin from wrist to elbow.

The creature’s clicking rose through several sharp pitches as strength failed, then the body collapsed hard enough that the rear rank had to shift footing to avoid stumbling over it and breaking formation.

The wounded soldier pressed his bleeding forearm against his side.

"Still have more on me," he said.

Then he dropped back one position to rest the arm before cycling forward again.

Farther in, the spur narrowed back to five feet where the stone had not been cut as broadly, the walls compressing around them.

That changed their tactics immediately. Crawlers could only attack from directly ahead now, which meant the flintlock pistol rotation worked almost exactly the way it had during drills.

Front rank fired and stepped back.

Second rank stepped forward and fired next.

Three Crawlers came through in rapid sequence and were butchered by the gunshots.

The problem became noise.

The pistol blasts in the tighter passage struck the ears like physical impacts.

Beald, somewhere near the rear third of the wedge, shouted, "I can’t hear anything! Just a ringing-"

"Keep moving," the soldier beside him pushed and said.

The spur widened suddenly.

The wedge emerged from the passage into the open chamber beyond.

Harr stopped.

His body froze before his thoughts fully caught up with what he was seeing.

Behind him, somewhere inside the wedge formation, a single voice spoke.

"Fuck me."

Nothing else followed.