Location:Outer Ring, Vel'thari Containment — Protection Base One
Date/Time:Late Ashbloom, 9942 AZI — Day 182, 183 days remaining
Realm:Lower Realm, Doha
The sentry saw the mantis first.
The protection base's outer perimeter was a formation barrier — a wall of cultivated essence stretched across the widest tunnel junction in the Outer Ring. Base One. The main fort. The largest of the six protection bases, positioned nearest to the seal boundary where the portal would eventually open. The other five bases connected to it through a network of defended tunnels that the instructors had established in the first weeks of the Harrowing. The sentry station sat at the barrier's highest point, a platform carved into the tunnel wall where two students kept watch.
They were watching south. The direction the Charlings came from. The direction nothing good had ever come from in six months of survival.
