The mud was a soup of grey slush and hot red spray. I sprinted toward the treeline, my boots skidding on a discarded silver helmet that still had a chunk of scalp stuck to the rim.
The command tent was a heavy, wax-coated eyesore pitched near the creek. Two guards stood outside, their repeaters leveled at the village. I didn't slow down. I cooked the grenade for two seconds and rolled it under the back flap.
The blast wasn't loud, but it was effective. The tent puffed outward, and a scream cut through the canvas. I jumped through the smoking hole in the fabric.
Inside, an officer was clutching his shredded thigh, his silver plating peeled back like an orange skin. He was reaching for a flare gun on the table—the signal fire to call in the aerial bombardment.
I slammed my boot onto his wrist. The bone snapped with a wet pop. He howled, his face twisting under a thin layer of soot.
"The code," I growled, pressing the hot barrel of my gun against his teeth. "Give me the abort code for the Drakes, or I start peeling your fingers off one by one."
"Burn in hell, traitor," he spat, his mouth full of blood.
I didn't argue. I grabbed his hand and drove my knife through his palm, pinning it to the wooden table. He shrieked, a high-pitched sound that made the radio equipment on the desk rattle. I grabbed the flare gun.
Outside, the snipers were still picking off rabbits. I saw a hut go up in flames, the dry straw turning into a torch. Mo was pinned behind the well, his shoulder bleeding from a grazing shot.
I looked at the radio. It was sparking, the internal gears jammed with shrapnel from the grenade. There was no aborting the swarm now. The signal fire was already lit in the officer's eyes—he'd sent the ping before I arrived.
I grabbed the officer by the throat and hauled him out of the tent. I dragged him through the dirt toward the village square. He was heavy, his armor scraping against the rocks, leaving a dark, wide trail in the mud.
"Mo! Agnes!" I yelled, reaching the center of the carnage.
Agnes emerged from the cellar, her white fur almost entirely crimson. She looked at the officer, her eyes narrowing into slits. She didn't wait for an order. She walked up and kicked him in the ribs, the sound of breaking cartilage echoing in the quiet moments between shots.
"He called them," I said, pointing to the sky.
The clouds were churning. The Queen's Stormbeasts—the big ones—were dropping from the rifts. They weren't just scouts or Drakes. These were the Heavy Breeds, massive winged nightmares that looked like they were made of lightning and spite.
"We need to move the villagers to the caves," Mo said, his voice ragged. "This whole place is going to be a crater in ten minutes."
I looked at the officer. He was laughing now, a wet, bubbling sound.
"You're all dead," he wheezed. "The Queen doesn't leave witnesses."
I pulled my knife out of my belt and handed it to Agnes.
"Make it slow," I said. "We need a distraction while we move the kits."
Agnes took the blade. She didn't hesitate. She drove it into the officer's gut and pulled upward, a slow, steady rip that sent a flood of steaming offal into the mud. The man's laughter turned into a gurgle as his insides became outsides.
"Grab the supplies," I told Mo. "We're going back into the mountains. This village is over."
The officer's guts spilled onto the mud in a steaming, grey-and-red heap. He clutched at his own intestines, his fingers sliding over the wet surface as he tried to shove them back into the jagged hole Agnes had carved. He made a sound like a wet boot pulling out of deep sludge.
"Keep him alive for a minute," I told Agnes. "Let the others see what a 'god' from the capital looks like when he's turned inside out."
I turned toward the cellar. The villagers were piling out, their eyes wide and glassy. They saw the officer dying in the dirt and the smoke rising from their homes. There was no time for a funeral.
"To the caves! Move!" I roared, firing a burst from the repeater into the air.
A Heavy Breed Stormbeast shrieked from the clouds. It was a massive, bloated thing with four wings and a tail that ended in a dripping, bone-white mace. It dived, its weight slamming into a granary at the edge of the square. The building exploded into splinters. The beast's jagged teeth snapped a fleeing rabbit-man in half at the waist. His upper torso crawled through the mud for three feet, trailing a red wake, before his eyes went dark.
"Mo, get the kits to the treeline!"
Mo grabbed two kids by their scruffs and hauled them toward the shadows. I stayed back with Agnes. We stood over the dying officer. I grabbed the flare gun from the dirt. It was loaded with a phosphor round meant to guide the swarm.
"You want a signal fire?" I looked down at the officer.
I jammed the flare gun into the open wound in his stomach and pulled the trigger. The flare hissed, igniting inside his body cavity. His eyes bugged out, and white smoke started pouring out of his mouth and ears. He cooked from the inside, his silver armor turning into a furnace.
The Heavy Breed turned its massive, multi-eyed head toward the bright white glow. It roared, its mandibles dripping with the blood of the man it just ate.
"Run," I told Agnes.
We sprinted. Behind us, the beast slammed into the officer's remains, its claws tearing through the silver plating to get at the sizzling remains inside. The sound of metal being peeled back was deafening.
We hit the treeline just as a second rift opened directly over the village square. A bolt of jagged energy hit the ground, turning the mud into glass and vaporizing the remaining huts.
"They're leveling the place," Mo panted, his face covered in soot.
"Let them," I said, looking up at the dark ridges. "The caves are deep. We'll wait for the swarm to settle, then we hunt the big ones."
Agnes looked back at the burning remains of her home. She wiped a smear of officer's blood from her cheek and gripped her chitin blade until her knuckles went white.
"We aren't waiting," she said. "We're going to kill every single one of those things."
I looked at the repeater in my hand. The barrel was hot enough to burn through my glove. The hunt was just getting started.