CHAPTER 58: CHAPTER 58 – THE MIXED WAVE

Bright stood at a higher vantage point at the center of a cracked stone platform, hair matted with dust and sweat. Baggen towered to his left, hammer braced into the ground like he was trying to pin the world itself into place. Estovia knelt beside them, preparing her serums and all other necessities for the fight she was about to partake in.

Most of the young fledglings and workers; Bessia, Adam, Duncan and the rest wouldn’t know the emitions that would be triggered or locked away on this day. Lost and never to be found. A tragedy for a young mind.

Bright had watched them vanish into the flickering tunnel of safety with a slight wish to have followed.

The crawlers were a mixed wave, with different powers jumbled up together in a morbid demonstration of carnage.

Mixed waves were always the worst.

Having to figure out what your adversaries hid in their pocket before trying to steal it was a recipe for disaster.

As they steadied their hearts, the earth thrummed under their boots again.

Bright, ever the scout, sensed the danger before it breached their line of sight. The ground ahead rippled—an unnatural swell, like serpents twisting just beneath the soil.

The earth wall Baggen had worked so hard to raise became meaningless; the crawlers could simply tunnel beneath it.

The irony stung: this wasn’t a mutated beast or some higher-tier nightmare. It was a common crawler, the kind that prowled the outpost’s edges routinely.

Burrowers.

In a fight like this, they became a tactical nightmare—especially for a squad stitched together moments before the battle.

They were weak by initiate standards, brittle as a pencil waiting to be snapped. And yet a pencil, placed in the right spot—like an eye—could still ruin you.

Estovia steadied her grip on her weapon . "How many?"

Bright tilted his head, listening with his borderline uncanny senses."Seven... no. Nine. Two clusters.There are more coming."

"And the crawlers that look like a mass of bones?" Baggen asked.

Bright answered, not looking up. "Already positioned overhead. Their bone plating is vibrating—they’re preparing a coordinated dive."

Estovia exhaled slowly through her nose. "Perfect."

Mixed waves weren’t random. Something—more dangerous —was coordinating them deeper in the shadows. The acute coordination of the creatures confirmed it.

Baggen crouched beside Estovia. "How long till the fireworks?"

"A minute. Maybe less if you both stop distracting me."

Baggen barked a deep laugh. "If those things pop up before your done, we’ll be very distracted."

The ground vibrated again, firmer this time. The Burrowers were close enough Bright felt the tremor buzz along his teeth. He swallowed and tried to center himself.

He had fought different types of crawlers before.

But rarely both at once.

The difference was simple but deadly:

The Burrowers could strike from below while the Bone Crawlers could strike from above.

A two-layered attack was enough to overwhelm one-layered fighters like Estovia and Baggen—but not Bright. His ability made him a different equation entirely.

Still when both struck at the same time, your death could be a matter of which attack you faced first.

Across the courtyard, the outer barricade rattled. Dust fell like gray snow.

Baggen steadied his grip on his hammer. "Private. You hear anything else?"

Baggen nodded once. "Yeah. They’re not just burrowing. They’re weaving."

Bright’s stomach dropped. "A trench-net."

Burrowers didn’t usually have the coordination for that—they were solitary ambushers. A trench-net meant something was guiding them, forcing their tunnels into a patterned kill-zone so that when a target stepped wrong, the floor collapsed beneath them into waiting maws.

Intelligence in a creature built only for harm was the worst kind of nightmare—cruelty sharpened by thought. And this was the second time he’d faced it. Only now, there was no convenient author twisting fate to wrap up an arc.

Estovia froze mid channeling . Her expression flickered—worry, then focus again. "Then we don’t have a minute. I need twenty seconds. Hold them."

Bright rose smoothly. "Baggen—"

"I’ll take the ground," the large man rumbled, sliding his hammer forward until it hummed with energy.

"Good. I’ll take whatever’s left."

Baggen grunted. "Try not to die boy."

"Only if you go first."

Estovia hissed at them, "Less flirting, more fighting!"

Bright smirked despite himself. He activated his ability and felt the world narrow into a sharpened tunnel of adrenaline.

Then—

The ground exploded.

A geyser of soil and debris shot upward as the first Burrower erupted beneath Baggen’s hammer. The creature was massive—its segmented flesh wrapped in darkened chitin, mandibles serrated like jagged saw-blades. It lunged, mouth opening wide enough to bite a man in half.

Baggen met it head-on.

His hammer slammed into the creature’s face with a brutal metallic crack, forcing its head sideways. The Burrower screeched and tried to coil around him, but Baggen planted his feet and shoved again, driving it backward until it skidded across the courtyard leaving a trench.

Another eruption to Bright’s right.

Then a third.

Estovia shouted, "Fifteen seconds!"

Bright didn’t waste time. He sprinted toward the right flank, blade igniting with a ripple of blue energy. A Burrower burst directly in front of him, maw wide—

Bright leapt, planting the blade into its mouth, the force vaulting him over the beast as his energy discharged. The Burrower convulsed violently and collapsed, mandibles twitching.

He landed hard, rolled, and slashed another that attempted to drag him down through a collapsing pocket of earth.

The trench-net was active.

"Baggen!" Bright shouted as the floor beneath them began to give way.

Baggen roared and slammed his hammer into the ground,providing a layer of earth anchoring himself and Estovia as cracks spiderwebbed outward. The stone beneath Bright hollowed—he jumped barely in time.

Burrowers spilled from the rupture like armored worms.

"Lieutenant ! Now would be great!"

"Ten seconds!"

"Ten seconds is a lifetime out here!" Bright snarled, forgetting the protocols and manners afforded to nobility.

Then he heard it.

The skittering. The vibrating, rattling tremor of bone against bone.

Bright looked up.

And the sky opened with descending Bone Crawlers.

The only thought in his mind was how these monstrosities were able to fly.

They dropped like skeletal meteors, bone-plated limbs extended, rib-like wing structures unfolding as they descended in spiraling arcs. Their skull faces clicked in eerie rhythm, multiple sets of eyeless sockets locked onto the three defenders.

Bright braced.

"Corporal—we’ve got incoming !"

Baggen lifted his hammer and the nearest crawler slammed into it with brutal force, bones cracking on impact. The crawler coiled around the hammer like a spider, lunging for Baggen’s exposed shoulder—

Bright hurled his blade like a spear.

It pierced the crawler’s thorax, pinning it to the broken stone.

More came.

Dozens.

Estovia’s voice rose behind them, urgent and strained. "I need five seconds!"

Bright spun, drawing a knife from his utility belt as a crawler almost took his head off. He ducked, rolled, and drove his blade into the crawler’s underside, splitting brittle bone.

Then three more landed.

The mixed wave was reaching peak intensity.

Bright sliced through two more Bone Crawlers before he felt the air shift.

A Burrower erupted beneath him.

He didn’t have time to move.

It clamped onto his leg and dragged him down with brutal strength—

Baggen blurred into motion.

He slammed his hammer downward with bone-cracking force, smashing the Burrower’s jaw open. Bright tore free, gasping as blood trickled down his armor.

"Private!" Baggen growled. "You good?"

"Never better," Bright lied as he limped upright.

"Estovia!" Baggen shouted. "How much longer?"

Estovia slammed her palm together. "Zero!"

The earth shivered under the force of her power. A radiant flare erupted from her, fierce and overwhelming, reminiscent of the great burning sphere the ancients once named the sun.

Bright and Baggen had already leaped back before the devastating attack hit.

Roasted crawlers sprawled around shrieking to the feeling of their flesh melting and the pool of their corrupted blood boiling to the fire that was Estovia Armand.

Bright looked at the aftermath and knew that he could never have done this, the thought that so much destruction hid in that arrogant smile of hers reminded bright that there were levels to the climb for power.

Baggen on the other hand exhaled. "Finally. A moment of rest"

But Bright felt a new tremor.

Different.

He looked up.

The sky was now black with new Bone Crawlers.

Hundreds.

"Oh... hell," Bright whispered.

The fire had stopped the ground attack and some bone crawlers, but not all of them.

So the wave shifted fully to the sky.

The bone crawlers loomed over like a plague.

Some of them, weren’t interested in the leftover’s that were the trio battling against them but the lump sum of meat they felt fleeing south from this position.

Bright saw the location they were headed and sighed knowing they couldn’t stop all of them but they could hold down the bulk.

Baggen raised his hammer, face grim.

Estovia summoned her dual-thread channels, power building in spiraling arcs around her arms.

The first crawler shrieked and dove.

Then the second.

Then the entire swarm.

Bright charged forward.

He met the first crawler mid-air, using a piece of bone he got from a different crawler stabbing clean through another skull. He twisted, using its falling body to vault into a second. Bone shards exploded around him as he struck, the shockwave rattling his teeth.

Baggen held the center, his other quicksand ability useless to the cause but a well timed shield wall, of vital importance . Crawlers smashed into him from every angle, but he refused to move, leveraging his defense for estovia’s quick and efficient kills.

Still every impact on him rang through the courtyard like a gong.

Estovia unleashed arcs of condensed fire that shattered crawlers into bone dust, but she was slowing—her channels overheating.

The courtyard trembled again.

Bright killed another crawler, then another, but they were endless. A living storm of bone and hunger.

He knew they couldn’t hold.

He felt his strength thinning.

Baggen’s breathing grew ragged.

Estovia’s fire flickered.

Still the sky remained full.