"You're checking that internal mystery of yours," Selene said quietly, not looking at him as she scanned the horizon with a pair of enhanced binoculars. "Don't. Out here, your focus needs to be external. The moment you look inward is the moment something out here decides you look like lunch."
"Right. Sorry."
"Don't be sorry. Be alert." She lowered the binoculars. "Sector clear so far. The migration's disturbance is messing with long-range sensors, making these sweeps critical. The beasts we're likely to encounter are lesser types. Skitterlings, maybe a Razor-wing. Nasty in packs, but manageable if you see them coming." She glanced at him. "Your scanner will pick up their life-signs as orange blips. Their Aether signatures are chaotic, unstable. It'll look like static on the screen. You see that, you say 'contact' and give me direction and range. Immediately."
"Skitterlings. Razor-wings. Got it." He knew them from the game. Skitterlings were dog-sized, six-legged insectoids with chitinous shells and piercing mouthparts. They moved in swarms. Razor-wings were larger, avian creatures with blade-like feathers they could launch. In the game, they were low-level trash mobs. Here, they were living creatures that could tear him apart.
They moved on. The sun climbed, a dull copper coin in the toxic sky, doing little to warm the land. Xylon's mouth was dry. He sipped from his canteen sparingly.
It happened two hours into the sweep.
They were navigating a field of the glassy slag formations, which rose like twisted, frozen waves. Selene held up a clenched fist. Halt.
Xylon froze. She pointed two fingers at her own eyes, then towards a gap between two large slag mounds about fifty meters ahead. Xylon lifted the scanner. The topographical map was clear. But on the secondary thermal overlay… a faint, pulsating cluster of orange smudges, shifting and merging. Chaotic static.
"Contact," he whispered, his throat tight. "Eleven o'clock. Forty-five meters. Cluster. Thermal signature."
Selene was already moving, dropping to one knee and bringing her rifle to her shoulder. "Confirm. How many?"
The blips shifted. "Hard to tell… six. Maybe eight. Moving behind the cover."
"Skitterling swarm," Selene confirmed, her voice a calm monotone. "They've detected us. They're flanking. Listen."
A new sound entered the wind's whistle. A dry, chittering scrape, like stone on stone. It came from multiple directions.
"They're trying to surround. Standard pack tactics." Selene's finger rested on the rifle's trigger. "You stay behind this rock. Do not move. The scanner will blind you to anything close. Use your eyes and ears. If anything gets within ten meters of you that isn't me, you use that knife. Aim for the eye clusters or the leg joints. Understood?"
"Understood." Xylon's heart hammered against his ribs. He crouched behind the indicated slag formation, the rough glass biting into his palm. He put the scanner down, its screen a distracting riot of orange static now. He drew his field knife. The blade felt pitifully small.
The chittering grew louder, more frenetic. Then, they emerged.
From behind slag pillars to the left and right, they flowed. Skitterlings. They were worse in person. Their carapaces were a mottled, dirty brown, covered in jagged spikes. Their six legs ended in sharp, hooked points that dug into the hard ground with audible ticks. Their heads were all multi-faceted eyes and a circular maw of rotating, needle-like teeth. They moved with terrifying, skittering speed, a horrifying cross between a spider and a beetle.
There were ten. Not six.
"Opening fire," Selene announced, her voice still eerily calm.
The report of her Aether-pulse rifle was a sharp, concussive CRACK-THWOOM that echoed through the glass field. A bolt of condensed blue energy lanced out, striking the lead Skitterling center-mass. The creature didn't screech; it simply exploded in a shower of sizzling chitin and violet-tinged ichor. The smell was instant and revolting—ozone, burnt meat, and something sourly alien.
The swarm didn't falter. It split, half charging Selene's position, half veering towards Xylon's hiding spot.
Selene fired again, twice more, dropping two more beasts. But they were fast and low to the ground. Two closed on her position. She abandoned the rifle for a moment, drawing a sidearm—a smaller Aether-pistol—in her left hand. She fired it one-handed while using the rifle as a blunt instrument to smash the legs out from under another. Her movements were brutal, precise, economical. A dance of death honed by countless engagements.
Xylon didn't have time to watch. Three Skitterlings had broken around Selene's flank and were scuttling directly towards his rock. Their chittering was a maddening drone. He could see the individual facets of their eyes, reflecting the dull sky.
This is it. The crucible.
Fear was a cold fire in his veins. But beneath it, a strange clarity descended. The game knowledge surfaced, not as strategy, but as instinct. Skitterlings were pack hunters, but cowardly if directly confronted. They preferred to overwhelm from the rear.
He stood up from behind the rock, stepping out into the open. It was the last thing they expected. The lead Skitterling, mere feet away, hesitated for a split second, its mandibles clacking.
Xylon didn't scream. He charged it, a short, explosive burst of motion.
He ducked under a lunge from its front legs, feeling the wind of the passage. He didn't try to stab the heavily armored back. As it passed, he drove his knife upward with all his Strength-14 might, aiming for the softer, jointed underbelly where the thorax met the abdomen.
The blade sank in with a wet, crunching resistance. Violet ichor, hot and acidic, sprayed over his hand and arm. It burned like a chemical burn. The Skitterling thrashed, a horrible, jerking motion, its legs scrabbling. Xylon held on, twisting the knife, his mind blank with a savage, survival-focused intensity.
The other two Skitterlings skittered to the side, confused by the direct attack on their packmate.
A blue energy bolt sizzled past Xylon's ear, so close he felt the heat. It struck one of the hesitant beasts, vaporizing its front half. Selene.
The final Skitterling turned to flee back towards the larger slag formations.
"Don't let it call more!" Selene shouted, her voice tight. She was wrestling with the last of her group.
Xylon yanked his knife free from the dying creature and sprinted after the fleeing one. It was faster. He'd never catch it. Desperation lent him a final burst of speed. He didn't think. He drew his arm back and hurled the field knife like a spear.
It was a clumsy throw. The knife tumbled end over end. But by sheer, dumb luck, the pommel struck the Skitterling in the center of its back, not hurting it but making it stumble for a crucial moment. Xylon closed the distance, leaping and landing on the creature's back. It bucked wildly. He seized one of the spiky protrusions on its carapace, holding on with his burning, ichor-slicked hand. With his other fist, he punched down, again and again, aiming for the same vulnerable joint at the base of the head. Chitin cracked under his knuckles. He felt something give. The creature went limp.