Welcome back! Lots and lots of snow… I had to use a shovel as an icebreaker to plow through the accumulations on the driveway. This is like the eighth storm in a row. Which means less school and more writing, but that doesn't matter too much right now because winter break is here! Aha!

I've been kind of out of it lately, so this chapter might contradict the rest of the story a bit if I'm not careful. Also, in case you guys wanted to know, the views are past a thousand by now.

Thanks to the great people who take time from their day to review: The Toast Ninja, FanMan2234, Tytonic, and CrazyJ888. Also, much thanks to all who have favorited/followed.

All right. Enjoy!

Disclaimer: incoming nonsanity


Chapter 9

The Next Wave

Minutes later, they were in a side wing of the armory, suiting up.

A lot of their stuff had been brought here after the Underlanders had dug through it and found anything that was of worth in a battle. They hadn't brought armor, so they had to get that from the Regalians.

All the soldiers had already equipped themselves when the alarm first went up. Some had been ready even before that, because their training exercises called for it.

When Gregor had asked, his friends had all agreed they wanted to help defend the city, though Lizzie said she didn't want to get directly involved. Gregor was honestly impressed with them for being willing to fight for a completely unfamiliar and foreign population.

So as they put their armor on, Gregor gave directions. "Larry, Josh, you can come with me and fight out at the front. Josie, you can go find gaps in our defense and assist anyone filling them in. Angelina, support the guys on the wall, help organize them, and if anything breaches the main battle line and reaches you, defend them."

They finished up with the armor and started finding weapons. Larry took his halberd, Angelina a bow. They all equipped themselves with some extra Underland weapons just in case. Larry, Angelina and Josie quickly finished up and left. But when Gregor went to sort through the racks for a suitable sword, Joshua stopped him.

"Gregor. I, uh, I brought... Um." He visibly swallowed. "This is for you." He held out a sword, hilt-first.

Gregor's initial impression was immediate: This is the most beautiful weapon I have ever seen.

This thing gave Sandwich's sword a run for its money. The blade was straight, double-edged, and the last few inches curved together to a streamlined point. The grip ended in a thick disk-shaped pommel with chamfered edges [1] and sported a straight cross-guard.

Overall, the design looked to be elegantly simplistic, yet the blade shimmered with colors like an oil film on water. Underlying the flashing colors were patterns of shiny and dark metal, as if the sword had gone through a lot of folding and forging. To cap it all off, a gem was mounted at center of the crossbar so that it was visible from both sides. It was a dazzling violet, somehow reminding him of the color of Luxa's eyes.

Taking the sword, Gregor swung it once, marveling at its properties, which were on the level of Sandwich's. He could tell by the way it cut the air that it was incredibly sharp, and the balance and size were perfectly fine-tuned to him.

"It—this—you... this is for me?" he sputtered in awe. "How long did it take you to make this?"

Joshua, nervously standing in front of him, held out a plain sheath. "Longer than usual. Do... do you like it?"

Gregor just stood there for a moment, unable to put any words together into a sentence. After putting a hand to his face, he just gave up and yanked his friend into a hug.

"Do I like it?" he managed. "It's... this is incredible!" Then he blinked. "Come on, we have to get going."

As if to underline the urgency of the situation, a rumble and cracking echoed from a tunnel about halfway around the cavern's circumference.

After Gregor sheathed the sword, they sprinted over to where Larry was waiting at the now deserted passage to the city, with the moth-filled archway. "Are you ready?" he asked.

"Yep. Let's go," said Larry, stepping through. They were immediately greeted by a few fliers, who quickly carried them over to the front line, as if they already knew the plan. As they crossed the city wall once again, he spotted Angelina, already taking up positions with the defenders there.

When they arrived, they saw the army setting up defensive measures, and a few familiar people backed up by soldiers—Ripred, Mareth, Perdita, York, Simon, and Luxa.

Their group advanced forward, starting to preemptively block the tunnel. As Gregor looked back, he could see that the army had set up row after row of defenses, which he hadn't noticed on the flight in. Looking back at the wall, he could even see something looking similar to a catapult. He wondered where they had gotten that from. But anyway, it appeared they could do a lot with an hour's warning.

Incessant rumbling came from the approaching forces as the Regalian army assembled into a large arc formation, with Ripred taking the key point. Simon and Gregor were on either side of him, then Luxa and Joshua, Larry and York, and where the ends of the arc left off with Mareth and Perdita, soldiers continued it. Normally, they would all be mounted on fliers, but that wouldn't provide enough power to restrain the sheer forward speed of the approaching army. So they were mostly on the ground now.

"Okay! Everyone listen!" yelled Ripred, raising himself up on his hind paws in the effort to be heard over the rumbling. "The onslaught will probably be too much to hold a solid arc. If the formation breaks up, try to split the enemy into smaller streams so the rest of the army can deal with them more easily."

There was no more time to talk. The attackers had arrived. With groans from the already weakened tunnel, spinners seemed to flow out of the darkness, scattering all over the walls. While Gregor drew his sword, webs sprang up like giant snowflakes, appearing in greater and greater numbers until they covered the surface beneath. As they finished up the webs, which covered the tunnel walls and a portion of the main Regalian cavern, the giant spiders started dropping from the ceiling, attacking from above.

The smaller flying portion of the Regalian army immediately swept in and began to assist the rest in fighting them off. But as they were craning their necks upward to spot threats, Ripred yelled, "Hey! Look out!" and sprang forward with a snarl.

The rumbling had masked the sounds of thousands of cutters streaming forward. Gregor instantly snapped to attention and drew his new sword, diving directly into the oncoming group. Quickly, the full force of the cutters hit him, and he realized that he hadn't experienced anything quite like it for years. But he adjusted more than quickly enough, and after they scored a few initial glancing hits, the new weapon began to dance fluidly as he rapidly and repeatedly sliced at everything he could reach.

Cutter after cutter streamed in, forcing Gregor's rager side into overdrive as he deflected both the attacks and direction of the oncoming beasts. Soon, it was clear that their numbers would increase past his normal comfort zone, and so he kicked off the ground and started spinning. Throwing himself completely into the rager state, he only retained enough control to snap out of it at will, and to be able to observe the surrounding battle as most of his senses went on autopilot.

The cutters' numbers continued to increase, and soon, Gregor noticed the arc breaking up. The dirt was sliding past beneath him as the sheer momentum of so many onrushing creatures pushed him backward. In response, he kicked into even higher gear, ignoring his instinctive urge to retreat, forcing himself to move forward.

At this point, he was cutting through cutters almost faster than he could sanely follow. The tunnel mouth whirled around him as he spun, nearly surrounded by enemies. During every free moment when his spin wasn't hitting a cutter, he was gathering momentum to slam even more of the robotic creatures into oblivion. Gregor, barely aware of his surroundings after handing almost all control to his rager abilities, brought his advance to a halt, after which cutter bodies gradually piled up around him to form a sort of barricade. Of course, that didn't last long, as cutters plowed through the bodies of their fallen in the mad rush toward the city.

His subconscious mind was tallying up his kill count up to nearly a thousand by now. He wondered what proportion of the army's total progress that constituted. He also wondered what the formation now looked like to those on the city wall.


From what Angelina could see of her friends, they looked like rocks in the middle of a red river, cutters sort of cascading past and around them. But behind the frenzied front, the river was split into smaller and smaller streams until it was absorbed like a sponge by the rest of the army.

It seemed to be working well, so she took a good look at every member of the front line in turn. The farthest forward was Ripred. He was still roughly centered in the tunnel mouth, spinning so fast that he blurred into a gray blotch, covered in red ant parts and clear goo. Any cutter that entered his range was instantly shredded, its assorted pieces flung to the side.

Coincidentally, or perhaps not, this barrage of cutter parts was directed toward Simon. The guy was making good use of them, picking up the mandibles as extra weapons. But he didn't bend down, of course. Just in stepping past, he'd use his toe to flick a piece up and catch it. From there, he'd either dismember a cutter with it or just launch it into the mix like a javelin. Often, the pieces completely bypassed his hands, going straight from his foot to his adversaries' faces. On other occasions, he'd pluck stuff straight from Ripred's steady stream of virtually pre-assorted parts.

On Ripred's other side was Gregor. He, like the rat, was in a high-speed spin, but he didn't bother using enough force to propel the cutters any distance away. Instead, they piled up around him, acting like large piles of sand being dropped into the river of cutters, obstructing them for a bit, then washing away. His sword was flashing around as he spun, almost faster than she could register. The metal glinted in irregular patterns as he struck in dozens, perhaps hundreds, of different positions.

These three made up the entire front line, being able to handle the most numbers. Behind him, spread out, stood Joshua, a woman with twin swords, a giant man with a wild assortment of weapons, and the girl called Luxa. And in the final row before the army took over, Mareth and Larry stood mixed in with a line of skilled soldiers.

The people in that front-line area were still in a rough arc formation. After another few minutes, the stream of cutters abruptly trailed off, trickling down to nothing. The attack completely ceased.

Or was it just a pause?

The rumbling hadn't decreased at all. In fact, it was now louder than it had been.

But it was a break in the onslaught, which gave them time to reorganize and recover.


Joshua walked up to Gregor.

"You good?" asked Gregor without turning around.

"Yeah. It's just... I was wondering about those lights over the fields, and how they're powered."

Gregor turned to look at him. "You've just been fighting the biggest battle of your life, and that's what you're thinking about?"

Joshua just stood there and looked at him.

Gregor sighed. "They burn gas. From under the floor."

"How flammable?"

"Well, I'm no expert, but I'm guessing it would have to burn pretty well to light the lamps up that brightly."

"Is it contained in any sort of cave?"

"No idea. Try asking Mareth or something."

After consulting Mareth, Joshua sent a flier messenger back to the city wall.

"By the way, this sword you made for me is absolutely amazing."


Angelina watched as the flier approached.

As he landed, he forwarded Joshua's new suggestion to everyone within earshot. The defenders began to make preparations.

Just when they thought they were ready, the rumbling mixed with a grating, hissing sound as the entire bottom third of the tunnel filled up with an ambiguous solid green flood of new attackers.


Chapter was first posted on 18 February 2014. Most recent edit was 10 August 2018.

In case you're wondering, yes, Luxa is fighting even though she said she wouldn't. She might get chewed out, but meh...

[1] "thick disk-shaped pommel with chamfered edges": If you want to look it up, it's mid-way between types H and I.