113 – Second Extermination

The fifth shot felled three more drones, their corpses taking place as further obstacles for those behind them.

Had she any other firearm, Zefaris might’ve considered trying to use the terrain to her advantage as a choke point, that she might eliminate her foes in melee. With the reassuring clang of Pentacle’s fifth shot still ringing in her ears, she just stepped back and made full use of her weapon’s ingenious reloading mechanism, slipping the bayonet into her belt and grabbing five cartridges from her pocket.

There was a small lever within reach of her thumb, which could be pushed down if the hammer was cocked to disconnect the trigger. In engaging this safety, she could safely use the trigger to rotate the cylinder as quickly as her trigger finger would go. Out of all things, Fog-breathing assisted in reloading the most.

Three seconds later, the cylinder had made a full revolution and its chambers were filled.

A frenetic three seconds more, they’d been rammed down and the ramrod lever was back in its place.

Now all it took was a flick of the thumb, and… A drone jumped on top of her, having run ahead of the horde. With its claws on her arms, its mandibles spread wide as it loomed over her, stinking saliva dripping from its maw as it readied itself to bite.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

With a forceful kick right between its legs, the creature went flying forward and right over her, planting its wide-open jaw against the wall. There was a sickening pop when the joints of its mandibles came free, hanging loosely as it struggled to its feet. A second kick for her bootheel to splatter its skull against the stone whilst she took aim at the bug’s kin.

She hadn’t bothered to count them previously, but by now, there were no more than fourteen. In any other circumstance, without Pentacle in her hand, this would have been a death sentence. Grasped by a muse born from Fog-intoxication and the thrill of combat, Zefaris began to echo the words she’d heard in the trenches on more than one occasion, ofthen sung as a defiant shanty by soldiers who thought their deaths were nigh.

“Praise Gun, our Savior…” she murmured, chuckling at the absurdity of it, letting loose firebound death on the sorry things that raged ‘gainst her. Clang. Clang. Seven fallen, two dismembered and crawling.

“Hail Death, the Master!” she continued, a smile spreading across her face. It was all so ridiculous. Two more shots, five more dead. A fifth shot to finish off a drone that got a little too ahead of the pack, and back to reloading it was. Grab the cartridges, engage the safety, spin the cylinder whilst filling the chambers, spin it again whilst ramming them down. Five and a half seconds, a new record. The Fog made it so easy.

All this slaughter, all this power at her hands and the overwhelming odds against her, there was an uncharacteristic sense of levity to it. Though she was far from desensitized to violence, this singing gun in her bloodied hand made the violence at hand into a symphony, each clang of its hammer reminding her that these weren’t people - they were meat golems in the truest sense, controlled entirely by instinct and pheromones.

The Red Mantis knew what her subordinates were, and had the gall to accuse Ikesia of the very thing her side was guilty of. They were unworthy of consideration, remembrance, ire or even cruelty. In any other case, she would’ve been concerned at her own ability to dehumanize the enemy.

But there was no humanity to strip from these animals.

They couldn’t even be considered former humans.

Just bodies, hatched to stand between the Locust Nobles and a just death. And to the Locust Nobles, she afforded all the humanity they had - all the responsibility for their crimes, and all the punishment they deserved.

It didn’t matter how many enemies she faced, how much bigger than her they were.

With a breath of Fog, a steady hand, and five shots of forty-six caliber lead, she could stop anything that moved, and move anything that wouldn’t.

A thought crossed her mind, Fog pouring from her nostrils, “Why not try the coin-trick? I’ve still a few coppers.”

With her hand digging beneath what cartridges remained in her pocket, she dug up one of the three coppers at the bottom. A flick of the thumb, a breath of Fog, a glint of the coin, a pull of the trigger.

Click. Clang.

The bullet lanced right through the coin, carrying on its trajectory unimpeded, ripping off the forearm of an unfortunate drone. What a waste of ammo. Frustrated, Zefaris holstered her gun and pulled free her bayonet, marching against the remaining locusts with slaughter in her heart.

With each killing stab delivered, she invoked Concussion Blast to toss her limp victims off her blade. “Move! Move! Move!” the markswoman chanted, methodically wiping out drone after drone with a professional precision that only months of continuous warfare could drill into someone.

At the moment she had Pentacle in her hand, this had turned from a battle to an extermination. Right now, she was just finishing the job. A splattered head here, a stabbed-through heart there, her pursuers were no more.

The main chamber was empty, nearly silent. There were only the occasional noises coming from either hive, and with the Doormen still not having sealed the entrances, she faced little resistance.

Each hive held two more drones, each engorged with organic slurry, as well as Warrior cocoons. Most were empty, but those that held Warriors, she dispatched with a quick gunshot before they could hatch.

The drones were slow, and fell with little resistance. The Doormen were virtually defenseless, living doors in the truest sense of the word. She just scaled each one’s back and stabbed it in the head, leaving the shield-armed beasts to die where they stood.

At last, after this ordeal, Zefaris felt it appropriate to move on, leaving the second hive and walking towards the chamber’s door.

This chamber had been purged.

Only the Dead Gods and the Dungeon Core knew how many were left to go.