[ I started talking to Gina again, after the subterranean excursion. I didn't see the sun for four months. Tunnels suck. Bugs suck worse. I never want to go underground again. There's more shit down there, things that even I'm not ready to fight yet. But yeah, writing because Gina asked me to, unrelated to the tunnels. A man told me I was his hero today. A 40 year old man. He's never known a life that wasn't about the System. He's only read about the continental wars in history packets. There are people that worship me - literally. Some nut from Norway started a religion. The followers and these young people only see one side of anything - but I'm not some one-dimensional person. They light candles for you on remembrance day. They never even knew the recent wars - so how could they possibly understand who you are or what you did? You're just another simplified icon to them. ]

  + Reid +

  Bonding with their armor had subtly changed its appearance on both Lycra and Win.

  Lycra’s morphed so that the surface was stippled, and there were even more joints set into the fingers. It made his gauntlets even more odd and sinister - and despite his teddy-bear-adjacent appearance, Lycra now looked the part of an evil scientist as he tinkered with a crystal while listening to Win.

  Win's was now set in reliefs and pop-ups that closely resembled her own scales. She idly rubbed a hand over them as she spoke.

  "We've been down here for a few months now - I'm going to be honest, I'm worried about how the miners are doing just as much as I'm worried how they'll take us coming back. There could've been cave ins, or other kinds of trouble that we'd be walking into. So I don't want to pretend to return as the party full of injured warriors, I want us to appear as the conquering heroes. All the moles are dead, and we should tell people that. They can mine and explore without the risk of being eaten. The older folks can use the power tools. It's a good thing."

  Reid frowned. "But then they'll know we're more powerful than we should be. I get that you want people to know they're safe, but what about keeping ourselves secret?"

  Win flashed teeth. "I've been thinking about that, and Lycra and I came up with an idea together." His yellow-eyed friend looked up, obviously confused. "Alright, he gave me the idea - even if he didn't realize it at the time. People killing moles is an achievement. Moles killing moles is a territorial dispute."

  She punctuated the point by dropping two cleaned skulls on the table. Lycra was forced to abandon his idle tinkering and fully pay attention.

  Win picked up one skull, and slammed the jaws together at the other like she was holding a giant hole punch. She cracked bone apart in four places.

  "I have good reason to believe we don't need the whole head to get credits out of the processors - just the skulls. So we make everyone think the moles wiped themselves out, and we were the lucky ones to find some. We haul a few in now, then we can 'stage' ourselves to find more in other tunnels, until we turn them all in or your debts are gone."

  #

  The mole heads were almost done. Flesh was burned and scraped away, and teeth marks had been punched into them to sell the story. The only head they hadn't tried to do it with was the king's. If the processor refused to take cleaned skulls, it meant that they would at least have one left to trade in. Reid was part convinced that it was the only one they'd need to trade in.

  Win paced back and forth in the mouth of the tunnel while Lycra worked. He had every cleaned skull out in front of him, to ensure he didn't repeat the same puncture patterns. Win was mumbling to herself, and Reid caught snippets.

  "Have to keep that chair - it's the only comfortable thing in this mess... Reid's movements are better, but his form is still nonexistent - if I had another week or two, I could teach him some Puturtiwati mace stances... So the clinic probably needs purification effect pills the most. I can make more, but... and really, why am I still holding onto the notes anyway, if I give..."

  He walked over and placed a hand on her shoulder. "Hey - care to loop me in on your master plans?"

  She looked embarrassed. "Ah... I suppose I'm trying to plan more than I need to. It's not like everything's collapsing around us. We have time and-"

  A massive rumble shook the tunnel and the den for a full two seconds, then everything stilled. Reid looked around for a bit, then smiled.

  "Everything collapsing - like an earthquake. What was it you said in the poop cave? 'I swear, if I die because you jinxed us, I'll haunt you', right? How about you don't say things like th-"

  Reid and Win both lost their footing as a larger quake - the main quake - rattled stone off the walls. Three seconds in, Reid was back on his feet.

  Five seconds in, the den began to collapse.

  ||+|| Win ||+||

  Win watched on with horror as the den shook and began to crumble. The ceiling fell into the floor, and the floor fell away into darkness. Massive amounts of rock came loose like clods of dirt, and she could see earthworms hiding in the descending material. They looked to be more than twice as thick as she was tall. As the den fell, shapes jumped off the walls below and onto the still-plummeting earthworms, then tore into the things with a ferocious hunger.

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  The rumors, passed down between superstitious miners, were true. Because of course they were - even though no living person had been attacked by some insectoid thing.

  Ideas shifted into understanding. The challenge dungeon was an unassailable fortress. Even if the insects could've made it inside, the system would've never allowed them to truly damage the king nor the princes. But they had been able to kill some of the mole's young. There were also starved corpses inside - which meant the moles weren't getting enough food on their own. If the bugs had overeaten the earthworms - or worse, if they had burrowed inside of the earthworms to launch surprise attacks against baby moles - they would've effectively starved out the entire den.

  With creatures starving and a lack of supporting resources, moles would've had no choice but to leave the den area permanently in search of food and survival. They would've found miners.

  This interaction, this dynamic between the moles and the insects below was the biggest contributor to years upon years of struggle and death.

  Lycra had quickly moved himself back to the mouth of the tunnel with her and Reid - which she was extremely grateful for. Only a few seconds after he'd gotten himself to safety, the lines of mole skulls he'd been working plummeted down with the dirt, and earthworms. Everything up to the mouth of the den itself was just... gone.

  The tremors slowly stilled in the rock around them, but the remnants of the fallen den... were still falling. There was no sound of impact yet - nothing to say they'd reached the floor of whatever space was now open. Lycra focused a lantern beam and swept it across the new opening. A rush of water came from a wide opening in a rock ceiling high above, more like a faucet than a waterfall. The ceiling lazily sloped down to sheer walls, which stretched far out to either side of them. Their newly-lost mole den - and the tunnel where they now stood - were set slightly deeper back than the rest of the wall, and limited their visibility.

  But no matter their placement, they could tell the space out before them was massive. Even at full focus, Lycra's beam didn't reach an opposite side - nor a bottom.

  Rocks smashed on something far below, and a chorus of chittering and screeching echoed its way up to them. Win's skin crawled - there were far more creatures down there than she was expecting. Before she realized what he was doing, Lycra had pulled a crystal out of his backpack, entirely wound in copper and silver wires. He quickly twisted two loose ends together and dropped it over the edge.

  The contraption almost immediately began to glow with a powerful, undulating light. It set the sides and expanse of the area below into view - and Win felt a primal fear.

  The space below was massive. the walls sloped out and away from them, and the glowing crystal continued to fall, five seconds ticked by. Then ten. Fifteen. Win worked the math, and realized Lycra's glowing contraption was about a mile below them - and still going. She took a step back from the edge and pulled the other two with her.

  The pulsing light revealed a bulbous shape hundreds of feet tall before it finally landed on the floor of the space. The large form had reflective eyes that followed the light as an unseen mouth let out sharp, audible clicks. Win's pulse quickened and her blood ran cold. That large form wasn't just some Queen or large monstrosity.

  They were looking at a hive mother.

  The hive mother's clicking acted like a signal - and the walls started to morph and move towards the light. Hundreds of varying chitinous forms swarmed, and the mother turned its eyes up to scan for the source of the intrusive light. It let out another series of massive clicks, and forms began climbing the sides of the walls - searching.

  Reid's eyes were wide - and Win prayed he understood the severity of the situation. No matter how individually weak these bugs might be, there were too many to fight.

  "We should run." Reid's tone was severe. "We have no idea what that big one is, and there are too many of those things. We need to run, and try to close this tunnel."

  Win grabbed Lycra by the hand and swung him up to ride on her shoulders. "I agree. Let's-"

  Her words were interrupted by a grotesque black form scraping its way into the opening. Twelve sets of legs met a flower-bulb like body, and a lamprey mouth dripped with paralytic saliva. She'd seen one before - both in textbooks and in the real world, but she still shivered. There were bound to be even more of the things down below - Vicipods were a hive mother's favorite minions, after all.

  A leg shot forward like a spring trap, its sharp barbed end aimed straight at Lycra. She moved to shield him and tensed in anticipation of the impact - but none came.

  The blow was pushed wide by Reid's outstretched arm. He grabbed the leg with both hands, and snapped it in half like he was breaking bread. The vicipod let out a pained screech at the damaged limb, but Reid was already moving. He stabbed the creature's leg back into its main body just below an eye, then dove out from a trio of long legs as they slammed into the ground. Spittle flew, and some landed on Reid's left hand. He grabbed a handful of stones off the ground and flung them at the creature. They peppered its main body with holes. This was only a G grade - only a level 15, identify told her - and Reid was far beyond it. He hefted a larger rock and threw it with so much force, the beast was carried fully out of the tunnel and back into the massive cavern. It screamed the whole way down.

  Reid's mace appeared in his hand, and he ushered Win back. Bone slammed into rock as Reid collapsed parts of the walls, then the ceiling of the tunnel. He didn't stop until a thirty-foot section of crumbled stone separated them from the massive cavern.

  Reid rolled his arm on the way back, with a hint of a grin at the corner of his mouth. He seemed happy with how the fight had gone. "That thing was absolutely disgusting. Let's hope collapsing the tunnel keeps them back in their cave."

  Win cycled some healing through Reid's left hand to prevent it from freezing up, and explained the issue with a vicipod's saliva being a strong paralytic. Chitters joined the sound of scraping stone as insects got to the mouth of the collapsed tunnel - and started to dig. She frowned at the rock. The hive mother knew they were in the tunnel - and that meant it would keep sending minions after them.

  (((..-- DenWu --..)))

  DenWu's tail thumped the floor as he grimaced out his window. He'd been nearly ready to call off the 'legitimate masking' that occupied his last few months, but the single team now dedicated to intelligence gathering promised the CCE was still on his way.

  They were right.

  The tin soldier descended towards his building - directly for his offices. In a bit of auspicious timing, his world had seen fit to mark the arrival with an earthquake. The tremors were as infrequent as the rain, and one often followed the other. Thankfully, his city was built to purpose. Every building held itself up properly, even under the shaking strain. Baubles rattled on his desk and his view swayed, but there were few other signs the event happened at all.

  He switched off the news station feed, and gave a calm order to his secretary. No self-respecting businessman would operate in any official legal capacity without counsel present.

  His lawyer was in the building, somewhere. Ever since the wait for the CCE began, she'd never been more than 10 minutes from his side. Paying her to stay onsite was brutally expensive - and it was time for her to earn her keep.

  Character Cheat Sheet: