Chương 56: 2.15 The Only Thing They Fear Is You - Mick Gordon (6:52)

Z3ke (Original Poster) There was too much work to do and nowhere near enough time to do it. We were stuck in a large room, with a bunch of murderbots locked behind a weakened door, and you all wanted me to rush head-long into them and start swinging. Overall, I wasn't all that confident with the plan. But it was all I had. While Jared was hunched over the map that the Pale Regiment had given us, committing everything to memory, I pulled Milicent off to the side.

If we were going to survive the Hemocyte Swarm, she needed to know her part. Forcing me to memorize the two glyphs was not something that I enjoyed. I've got a pretty good memory, but it's only good for words. And the two glyphs that you all gave me were so much more than just words. Not only were they a maze of lines and dashes and weird little symbols, but you all also made it very clear that if I screwed them up it would cause "catastrophic consequences."

That's not exactly a reassuring thought when you're already someone struggling to remember complicated drawings. I desperately wanted to just pull out my Tech Slate, hand it over to Milicent, and have her copy down the two glyphs. But I knew it would be a bad idea. Instead, I pulled out my notebook and carefully sketched out the rubber-band glyph the way you all drilled it into me, and then tore out the page and handed it to Milicent.

The moment she saw what I'd drawn her eyes widened and she looked like I'd just given her a winning lottery ticket. She stared at the page with an intense hungry focus as she absorbed every line and every curve. It was obvious that she'd never seen this glyph before, and she wanted to memorize all of it. After a minute or two of silent studying, she tore her eyes from the page and looked up at me with a sharp, questioning expression.

I knew that she wanted to interrogate me about how I got such a glyph, so I cut off her questions before they could start.

"I'm not a glyphwright," I said, repeating the cover story that you all had come up with.

"But I did copy the entire notebook that I'm paying you with. And that let me pick up a few things here and there. Let me know if you think it'll work." Milicent just stared at me and I knew that she had about fifty questions all ready to burst out of her, but then her eyes drifted past me and to the far side of the room. I followed her glance and noticed the Pale Regiment standing there, working on clearing the debris from the collapsed corridor.

Her expression tightened and she leaned close to me and lowered her voice.

"Whatever you do, don't tell them about the book." I pulled back and gave her a puzzled look. She huffed.

"I know you're still trying to decide whether you can trust me. If I were you, I'd be doing the same thing: wondering whether I'd betray you if I thought I could get that book quicker. Believe whatever you want about me, but know that those freaks," she sneered the word as she jutted her chin out at them, "are so much worse." With that, she turned away and got down to studying the glyph I'd written out. I sighed and wondered if she'd be a problem now that we were working with the Pale Regiment.

I didn't know how talented she was, but if we were going to survive the upcoming fight, then we'd need her glyph writing skills. I grabbed Jared and we crossed the room to where the Pale Regiment leader was standing. He watched his people work and I couldn't get a good read on the man. His porcelain mask showed no hint of what he was thinking of. I couldn't tell if he was bored or suspicious or quietly planning to kill the lot of us once we got done with the Hemocyte Swarm.

Jared reluctantly handed me the map as we approached. Well… he eventually handed it to me. His fingers lingered on the edge of the paper for a second too long before finally letting go, and the look he gave me made it seem like I'd just kidnapped his firstborn child and was about to march the kid straight into oncoming traffic. I mean, I kinda understood where he was coming from. Here was an entire map of the Fossilized Factory Belt. It was worth almost as much as everything else we'd managed to grab down here.

He'd spent the last hour hunched over it, tracing his finger along the various paths it showed, all while the rest of us tried not to think about the swarm of murder-bots lurking outside. Still, it wasn't our map and the last thing I wanted was for the Pale Regiment to think we were trying to steal it. The way you all talk about them, I definitely didn't want to paint a target on my back. When we got closer to the leader, I was able to get a better look at the Pale Regiment scavenger team.

They were wearing these heavy gauntlets strapped to their forearms, and I was able to see that each of the gauntlets had these emitters built into the knuckles. Every so often, one of the scavengers would activate their gauntlet and a thin beam of energy would flare out like a cutting torch. The beams sliced through rusted steel like it was butter. One of the scavengers would brace a chunk of collapsed machinery while another traced a glowing line across it.

The beam cut cleanly through pipes and girders and whatever else was in the way. Then they'd yank the severed piece aside and drag it all off to the side. Layer by layer, the blocked access corridor was peeled away. Watching them work, I remembered what you all said about the Pale Regiment and how they had warehouses filled with pre-Fracture tech and all sorts of experimental weaponry. If that was true, then these gauntlets were the first real proof that I'd seen. And they were impressive as hell.

No joke, I really wanted to try and steal one, and Crush should be excited to hear that for a brief moment, I thought about trying to plan an ambush on them so we could loot them. But that would have been a stupid idea. I turned to the leader and held out the map he'd given us. His porcelain mask tilted slightly as he looked at it for a moment before finally taking it.

"Jared worked out a path," I said.

"My group's willing to help you fight that swarm. And I've got a plan." The leader didn't respond right away. He just studied me for a moment before unfolding the map slowly. He held it steady while the flickering orange glow of the factory lights reflected off it. I leaned closer to him and pointed to a section deeper inside the factory, not too far from where we were.

"We run here." His head tilted again.

"A stamping chamber," he said after a moment.

"Uh…yea. I guess that's what it's called." I tapped the location again.

"What matters is that it's a big room with an entrance corridor and a single exit. It's the perfect funnel." Behind him, one of the scavengers cut through a thick pipe. The metal gave way with a heavy clang as it hit the floor. The leader glanced back briefly to check the progress of his team, then returned his attention to me.

"You said you had a plan."

"I do." I traced the route that Jared had mapped.

"I've got a glyphwright on my team. Once your people finish clearing this corridor, we all sprint for this room. Jared knows the route and we should be able to reach the room before the swarm completely surrounds us." The leader traced a finger through the route before nodding again.

"When we get to this chamber, I'll place a heat-conducting glyph in the center of the room." The mask angled slightly.

"The Hemocyte units track heat. You know that already. The glyph will concentrate it in one spot and light up like a signal flare. It should pull the entire swarm straight into the chamber."

"And then?" he asked.

"Then, my glyphwright sets the trap. It's called a rubber-band glyph. It creates a pull effect. Once the swarm crosses it, the farther they move away from the center of the room, the stronger the force dragging them back." Another slab of wall tore free behind him with a shriek of twisting metal.

"If it works, they'll end up fighting the effects of the glyph instead of chasing us." The leader was quiet for a moment as he ran through the plan. Finally, he shook his head.

"Glyphs do not hold forever. At best, it will buy minutes." I shrugged.

"That's fine. Minutes are all we need. Once they're stuck in the glyph's pull, both teams stand back and start picking them off." The leader folded the map closed and then handed it back. Jared's eyes lit up like it was Christmas. No doubt the rest of the Pale Regiment had backup maps of everything that they'd seen so far, so this was a gift for us. The man's porcelain mask tilted in what I think was approval, or maybe it was just acknowledgement. Honestly, with those creepy masks it's impossible to tell.

Either way, the meeting was over and I headed back to my team. I made my way over to where Milicent was working and sat nearby, pulling out my notebook and pencil. My hands were sweating from the heat of the factory and it made the paper feel soft and flimsy in my hands. I flipped to a clean sheet and started drawing the heat-conducting glyph. I sketched the outer frame of the glyph and then the interior markings, and while I drew my hands started to shake.

This was going to be so much worse than fighting the jackal runners or the echoes or that scavenger team that had ambushed us. I was willingly marching into a massive fight and it was such a stupid idea. The paper held the glyph and before long I marked out little anchors in the corner of the thing and a spiral node in the center. When I was finished, I sketched it again. And again. And again.

Whenever I finished one of the glyphs, I'd find a small spot on the paper and try to make the lines cleaner and more precise. The entire time I was trying to burn the thing deeply into my brain so that I could draw it all out with my eyes closed. It was around my twelfth sketch that my pencil snapped. I pulled my knife from my storage and quickly sharpened the pencil before going back to drawing, but I didn't get far when Milicent came over.

She leaned down slightly and took a look at my notebook as I drew out another version of the glyph. Her eyes tracked each line I scribbled and when I was finished she gently tapped the page.

"You've got it," she said.

"You sure?" I asked. She nodded.

"It's correct." Relief washed over me but it was short-lived.

"Drawing it out is only half the process," she said as she crouched down next to me. She reached out and traced a finger just above the marking of the glyph.

"When it's finished, you need to push mana into the anchor points to activate it. And it needs to be done in sequence." She pointed to the small marks I made in the corner of the glyph.

"Here. Then here. Here. And finally here." Her fingers moved to the spiral in the center.

"Once the anchors are primed, the core binds them together." I frowned at that.

"Uh…I never drew a glyph before and I don't know how to activate them. What do you mean by pushing mana? How…uh, how do I do that?" She gave me a flat look and then sighed.

"The easiest way is through using your breath. It's something the desperate do and it can go wrong, but this glyph is fairly simple so it shouldn't take too much mana. I don't have time to teach you how to control your mana, and the glyph doesn't care how talented you are at pushing your mana into it. It just needs something to start the reaction. Go to the anchor points and breathe on them and the glyph will do the rest."

That sounded suspiciously simple and I was sure that there was more to it and I'd screw it all up. But before I could ask any clarifying questions, a loud metallic crack echoed from the far corner of the room. Everyone turned to the Pale Regiment scavenger team working there, and it was clear that they'd just finished their job. The last slab of twisted and broken machinery fell away, revealing a narrow access corridor.

They stepped back from their work and I watched their gauntlets dim as the cutting beams powered down. A calm seemed to settle on everyone in the room. Now that the access corridor was clear, we all knew what was going to happen. We'd soon be rushing headlong into danger and there was a good chance that we'd all get torn to shreds. The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

The Pale Regiment leader walked up to the opening and stuck his head inside to look down the corridor. From where I was seated the corridor stretched a long way and disappeared into shadow. I could see heat distortion rippling faintly through the air from the entrance, and I wondered what that was. Both my team and the Pale Regiment all gathered near the entrance to the corridor and, the closer I got, the more I felt a wave of hot air rush out at me.

It felt like I was standing in front of a massive oven as the heat brushed over my face. The leader looked over at me and gave me a short nod.

"Once we cross this threshold, the defenses will detect us." Everyone did some last minute adjustments as they got ready. Behind me, Daryl was checking his sawed-off shotgun. He made sure two shells were loaded as he checked over the gun and then grabbed a handful more and stuffed them into his pockets. To my left, Milicent was holding a few sticks of chalk. She handed me one and then tossed the rest into a pouch that hung from her hip, no doubt doing that so she could grab them instantly.

I noticed that her hands were calm and steady, which made me feel so much worse about how shaky mine were. Jared moved to the front of the group and stuffed the map into his coat pocket. He glanced down the corridor and pointed to it before raising his voice.

"Our target is a stamping room, four corridors that way. One entrance. One exit. Follow me. Don't get left behind." He gave one last look at everyone, took a deep breath, and then stepped into the access corridor. Just like that, the race started. We sprinted through the access corridor and eventually burst into the factory. The hallway stretched out ahead of us and it was long and dark and lit only by scattered red emergency lights bolted into the walls.

The bulbs flickered weakly and the air felt thick as we raced through it. The entire place was an oven and all the heat had nowhere to go. The farther in we ran, the worse it got. Within seconds sweat was pouring down my back and soaking through my shirt. I silently cursed Riley and her friend who gave me the armor. I was wearing a damn leather jacket and it felt like I'd wrapped myself up in a portable sauna.

I felt like I was swimming in my own sweat and I desperately wanted to rip the thing off and throw it to the side, but the thought of the Hemocyte Swarm closing in on me and tearing me to pieces stopped me. I kept it on and suffered. My shoes hammered against the metal flooring as we ran. Left. Right. Forward. Jared was at the front of the group, barely slowing as he barked out directions at us.

"This way," he called out as we cut through another passage. To my left there was a massive conveyor belt that ran parallel to our hallway. I could see it through the metal grates that kept us separate from the rest of the factory. The machinery had no doubt been frozen in place for the past few decades. Its rollers were caked in rust and grime and its frame was sagging from neglect. Overhead, there were gantries that stretched across the ceiling.

Bundles of thick cables hung down between them, swaying slighting in the air. The only sound at that moment was our footsteps and ragged breathing as we ran through the corridor. Someone behind me cursed as they nearly slipped on an oil slick. For the briefest of moments, I let myself believe that we were about to get lucky. Maybe the Hemocyte Swarm hadn't noticed us. Maybe they wouldn't bother chasing us.

We'd make it to the stamping chamber and set up the glyphs and the Pale Regiment would decide that the fight wasn't worth it. Jared would find some quiet maintenance route through the factory and lead us down into the research black sites without us having to brawl with a pack of metallic murderous janitors. It was a nice thought that was quickly chased away by a faint, metallic skittering sound coming somewhere behind us. My stomach dropped instantly as I knew what it was.

The Hemocyte Swarm had found us, and they were coming.

"Keep moving!" Jared shouted as we tore through another corridor and swung hard around a bend. The skittering behind us grew louder and closer. I don't know why I did it. Maybe it was curiosity or maybe it was stupidity or maybe it was morbid fascination. Whatever it was, I turned my head and looked back and saw them. The first of the Hemocyte Swarm was pouring out of the walls. Vent grates rattled violently as the machines forced their way through. Panels burst open along the overhead ducts.

Thin mechanical bodies spilled down from the ceiling, their limbs unfolding as they landed. At first it was only a few dozen. And then there were more. Scores of them started crawling after us, along the walls and across the floor, spreading through the factory like an infestation. My first thought when I really saw them was: these things are supposed to be janitors. They were built to keep the factory clean and functional. So what kind of sick bastard decided to design them like spiders?

But the longer I stared at them, the more they started to remind me of surgical instruments. Each one was about three feet tall. Their bodies were dull grey chassis shaped like flattened beetle shells. Overlapping metal plates slid across one another as they moved, locking together like armor. Between the plates were glowing seams that pulsed faintly with red light. And as they moved, they all made the same constant clicking sound. Click. Click. Click. It wasn't loud.

It was more like hundreds of tiny internal machines were adjusting in a perfect mechanical rhythm. Almost like the ticking of a clock. Rising from the back of each unit was a thin sensor stalk that looked like a submarine periscope. At the top of the sensor stalk was a cluster of glowing lenses, about half a dozen sensors packed tightly together. Each lens rotated independently and each one glowed a deep, angry red.

I slowed down slightly without even realizing it, just lost at the thought of them and watching as the swarm poured through the factory. That's when I realized I was an idiot and should have been racing ahead. One of the Hemocyte Swarm units slowly shifted its stalk towards me. The lens rotated and then all of them snapped into alignment. The machine shrieked at me and then suddenly every sensor cluster in the swarm turned in my direction. For a half second, the entire swarm froze.

Then a high-pitched screech ripped through the corridor and the swarm exploded into motion. They surged forward like a wave breaking over rocks, layer after layer of metal bodies flooding the hallway. Their six limbs pumped furiously. The front pair ended in long gripping claws that looked disturbingly similar to surgical forceps. They snapped open and shut as the machines ran, ready to grab anything within reach.

The rest of their limbs ended in circular magnetic pads, and I watched in horror as several units of the swarm ran straight up the wall, the magnets slamming against metal panels as they climbed without slowing down. Others skittered along pipes and overhead ducts, keeping pace with the ones on the ground. One of the machines stabbed a leg straight through a rusted pipe as it rushed forward. The pipe burst and steam hissed violently into the corridor. I heard a shout from ahead.

"MOVE!" screamed Daryl and we all sprinted harder. The swarm flooded in behind us, filling the corridor wall to wall. Then something slammed down beside us. A cluster of Hemocyte units landed on the massive conveyor belt running alongside the hallway. Their metal limbs clattered across the rusted rollers as they sprinted after us. For a brief moment the machinery held, but then I heard a deafening crack and the conveyor belt collapsed under the weight of the swarm.

Support beams snapped and a huge section of the belt tore loose and caved in, sending the machines tumbling down into the pit below. Rollers tore free and crashed down after them. There was a brief spark of hope there as I saw the swarm fall into the pit. But then I looked back again and saw that hundreds of units were still swarming after us. That little setback had barely slowed them down. To my left, a few of the machines simply leapt the gap that had opened up.

Others climbed the walls and pipes before dropping back onto the floor ahead of the collapse. Above us, the old factory catwalks began to shake. Dozens of Hemocyte units swarmed onto them, their magnetic limbs clamping onto the steel grating as they ran upside down along the underside of the walkways. I pushed my legs harder but it felt like I was stuck in a nightmare and I couldn't get my legs to move properly. My lungs burned and every breath I took felt hot and acrid.

Sweat poured down my face and into my eyes, but I kept running. Jared was still at the front of our group and the hour he'd spent studying the map had clearly paid off. He barely looked back as he called out directions to us.

"Left! LEFT!" We whipped around the corner so hard I nearly lost my footing and slammed into the wall. My shoes skidded on the metal floor before I caught myself. Behind us, the swarm rounded the bend a few seconds later. The clicking sound was deafening now. Click-click-click-click. It was all I could hear as I raced through the corridor and it sounded like someone shaking a bucket full of knives.

One of the Pale Regiment scavengers broke formation and I wanted to yell at him and ask what the hell he was doing, but instead I kept running. The guy had clearly lost his mind. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the man plant a foot, spin around, and face the oncoming swarm. His right arm came up and his left hand grabbed his forearm to brace it. The gauntlet on his arm started to whine and the sound climbed rapidly, like a turbine spinning up. For a split second I wondered if the thing was about to explode.

The man fired and a massive ball of blinding heat and plasma erupted from the gauntlet and tore straight into the swarm. Two Hemocyte units vanished instantly, disappearing in a flash of white-hot light as the plasma burned straight through them. Molten metal splashed across the corridor and the scavenger turned back around, sprinting alongside us, not bothering to check the result.

"CHAMBER! RIGHT HERE!" Jared shouted. We burst through the entrance. The room beyond was enormous. The ceiling rose so high that I almost lost it in the haze of the heat distortion that filled the room. Thick support beams stretched across the ceiling and the floor was littered with broken machines. Debris was everywhere, forcing us to pick our way through the room. There were chunks of rusted machinery and bent conveyor frames and shattered platforms.

At the far end of the room was the exit and for one terrible second, a thought crept into my head. What if we just ran? If my team sprinted straight across the room, could the Pale Regiment hold the swarm here long enough for us to escape? The idea punched me in the gut and for a moment I actually pictured it. Jared could guide us through the far corridor and Daryl would be covering the rear. Milicent would fall in right behind me and we'd all rush for safety.

We'd get distance from the Hemocyte Swarm and they wouldn't be my problem anymore. We could be free. We could be safe. Then the swarm screamed as it hit the corridor behind us and the moment passed. I turned around and got to work. Everyone piled into the chamber and the Pale Regiment scavengers went to work. Two of them dropped to a knee at the entrance corridor while Daryl took up position next to them.

The hallway that fed into the room was narrow compared to the room itself, forcing the swarm to squeeze together as they tried to push through. Their numbers meant nothing here. Daryl opened fire and his shotgun cracked like thunder. One of the Hemocyte units exploded in a burst of metal fragments as the round punched through its armor. The two Pale Regiment scavengers fired next. Their weapons were quieter but so much more violent.

White-hot bolts of plasma punched glowing holes through the machines at the front of the swarm as they tried to force their way into the chamber. The front ranks stumbled, but the ones behind them kept pushing. The corridor filled with writhing metal bodies as Daryl and the two Pale Regiment scavengers kept firing. Milicent ignored the fight entirely and instead dropped to the floor and pulled out a stick of chalk. She immediately started drawing out the rubber-band glyph into the metal flooring.

Despite the fact that the design for her glyph was so much more complicated than the one I had to draw, I knew she would be finished in no time. Sweat dripped from her hair and splashed onto the floor as she worked, and her chalk moved fast and precise as she wrote each line without hesitation. I ran a few feet away from her and dropped to my knees. My notebook was open and I grabbed the piece of chalk that she'd handed me in trembling fingers.

I leaned down and started tracing the heat-collection glyph onto the metal floor. It was simple. It was just a giant heat beacon in the center of the room, meant to be bright and hot and enough to grab the Hemocyte Swarm's attention and keep them focused while the rest of us killed them. My hands were shaking and I try to steady them, but the chalk still scratched across the metal floor in uneven little jerks as I drew the next line of the glyph. All I can hear in my head are warnings from the forum.

One mistake and it fails. If the anchor points are wrong, the energy collapses. If the flow breaks… There was a faint screech as I dragged the chalk against the metal and the pattern of the glyph spread across the floor in front of me. It was all curves and angles and small connecting marks that had to line up perfectly. My eyes flicked back and forth between what I remember and what I was drawing. Outer arc. Anchor point. Inner lattice.

My heart was pounding so hard that I could feel it in my throat and behind me the skittering sound from the corridor was getting louder and closer. Daryl fired another shot. The shotgun blast cracked through the room and I looked up to notice one of the Pale Regiment soldiers tapped his shoulder and took his place at the choke point. Daryl backed off and then immediately turned towards the wreckage scattered across the chamber.

"Help me with this!" he shouted. One of the Pale Regiment scavengers rushed over to him. They grabbed hold of a chunk of broken machinery - some twisted piece of metal that was about the size of a motorcycle - and then dragged it across the floor. They shoved it towards the corridor entrance, hoping to close off the area and make it so that the swarm would have to climb over debris to get inside. It would slow the swarm down a little bit, and every second mattered.

They dragged another piece over and soon enough the entrance looked like a barricade built from the corpse of the factory itself. At the entrance, the Pale Regiment soldiers kept firing. White-hot bolts slammed into the swarm flooding through the corridor and machines burst apart. Pieces of metal clattered across the floor. But the swarm kept inching closer. The first Hemocyte unit clawed its way past the barricade and it landed inside the room with a sharp metallic clack.

The Pale Regiment leader stepped forward and reached into his jacket. He pulled out a small rod that looked like one of those telescoping batons that police use. He extended the baton and it ignited with a red glow. Heat ripples through the air around it. He swung at the Hemocyte unit and the fiery baton smashed through the machine's legs. It stumbled and the leader brought the baton down on its stalk and crushed it into the floor.

All six of its limbs dropped to the floor and the body collapsed in a heap of twitching metal. Behind it, more machines started climbing over the debris. I force myself to focus on the glyph. Just finish the glyph. Milicent's chalk kept moving and her rubber-band glyph sprawled across the floor near the entrance. It was a complicated web of intersecting lines and symbols and despite the fact that I had to write it out for her I could barely make sense of the thing.

Soon enough she snaps her chalk upwards and the symbols pulsed.

"Done," she said, breathless. She scrambled backwards away from the glyph and, at her announcement, the Pale Regiment leader glanced down at it. Then he started waving his soldiers back.

"Fall back." They retreated step by step, still firing into the corridor while the swarm spilled over the barricade. I drew the final line of my glyph and then waited. Nothing happened and my stomach dropped. Did I mess it up? Did I forget a line? Activation, the thought screamed in my head. I leaned forward and breathed into the first anchor point. I could feel the heat coming off the metal flooring. My breath soaked into the mark. Then I moved to the second and the third and the last one.

When I pulled back, something tugged inside my chest and it made me stagger. The air above the glyph began to shimmer like heat rising off asphalt. A small notification popped up into my vision but I swipe it away, not having any time to deal with it. A wave of exhaustion crashed through my limbs and my arms were heavy and didn't want to listen.

"Zeke!" Milicent shouted. Jared reached over and grabbed me by my collar and pulled me back. I managed to stumble to my feet away from the glyph. By then, the swarm finally broke through and poured into the chamber. Dozens of the Hemocyte units spilled in like liquid metal. And immediately… they turned. Every sensor cluster snapped towards the heat glyph. The machines surged forward in a wave, racing straight towards the shimmering air above the floor.

The first few crossed Milicent's glyph and for a half second nothing happened. My eyes widened and I inwardly cursed you all for giving me a bum glyph and I was pissed at Crush for forcing me to travel deep into the Under-MIZ and getting me killed. Then the trap activated and energy snapped outwards from the symbols like invisible rubber bands being stretched to their limit. The machines kept running, but then they were violently yanked backwards.

Their limbs scraped against the metal floor as they tried to push forward, but the further they moved from the glyph's center the harder the force dragged them back. Dozens of the machines piled into the room and slammed into each other. Their legs tangled as the invisible pull jerked them back to the glyph. The swarm surged and struggled and fell back. One second the machines were charging across the floor as they raced towards the heat glyph and the next they were caught in Milicent's trap.

More and more of the Hemocyte units lurched forward but then the pull hit them and they were yanked backwards. They slammed into the swarm units behind them, metal crashing against metal as the bodies piled together. The clicking noise coming from the swarm turned into the sound of metal grinding on metal. The swarm kept trying to push forward, completely unaware of what was happening until they hit the pull radius too, and then they were caught. More machines poured through the corridor. Dozens of them. Hundreds.

The chamber filled with bodies as the swarm crashed into itself. Some of the units managed to push forward and slip around the main cluster of machines. They darted wide and scrambled along the outer edge of the chamber where the pull weakened. They raced towards us but didn't get very far. Daryl was already moving and he fired a shotgun at one of the swarm units. The cluster of lenses shattered in a spray of glowing fragments and the thing collapsed instantly.

Then Daryl turned to the next nearest machine and fired again. The blast turned the unit into a scattered pile of metal parts. The Pale Regiment leader stepped past both of them and his collapsible baton glowed faintly from whatever power source was running through it. One of the swarm units lunged at him but the man stepped aside calmly and then swung down. Crack. The creature's sensor stalk caved in and the leader pivoted and struck the next one across the center of its chassis.

The blow dented the armor plates inward and sent the machine skidding across the floor. The rest of the Pale Regiment soldiers fell back and kept firing. White hot bolts of plasma slammed into the trapped swarm. The machines had nowhere to go. Whenever they tried to scramble away from the center, the glyph snapped tight and yanked them backwards again. The room slowly turned into a slaughterhouse.

Plasma burned through the metal shells and limbs tore free as the machines slammed into each other under the pull of the glyph. The clicking sound grew frantic and then slowly… everything began to grow quieter. Fewer and fewer machines managed to crawl forward before the glyph jerked them back. More and more of them lay broken in a pile. The Pale Regiment scavengers kept firing and Daryl joined in, his shotgun echoing in the massive chamber. Eventually, the swarm stopped moving.

The last machine in the pile twitched and then went still and silence settled over everything. There wasn't anymore skittering or clicking, just the faint hum of overheated machinery. The floor was covered with broken Hemocyte units. There were cracked chassis plates and shattered sensor stalks. The air smelt like burnt circuits and hot metal. To my right, Jared and Daryl moved forward together, stepping carefully over the wreckage of the machines.

"Make sure they're dead," Daryl muttered as they started walking through the room. Every so often one of the machines twitched weakly, its legs still trying to move. Daryl put away his shotgun and instead just stomped down on them. Jared crushed them with a war club. I didn't move. I just stood there and stared out at the carnage. A few minutes ago this room had been completely empty but now it looked like a scrapyard had just vomited over everything. Metal bodies were piled up where the glyph held them.

My heat glyph still shimmered faintly on the floor, distorting the air above it like a mirage. I stared at it for a second while my legs grew weak and all I wanted to do was crumple to the ground and just lay down. My body felt more than exhausted. I don't know what it was, but it felt like I'd just run a marathon. The notification popped back up in my vision and I finally pulled it up. Glyph Writing - Rank 1 You have taken your first step into the art of glyph creation.

You may now inscribe and activate basic glyphs. I stared at the notification for a second and then back at the room full of smashed machines. Then I let my body crumple. Milicent was next to me in a flash.

"First time?" she asked.

"Did you get a notification?" All I could do was nod, and even that almost felt like too much. She smiled at me and then glanced over at the mass wreckage.

"Well, you could have done worse for your first glyph."