…

Uncharted Lands

…

Helena edged towards the center of the cavern. The larva was almost as large as a normal cutter, and seemed to pulse with heat. It hung from the ceiling in a thick, white, membrane sack. "This isn't a normal cutter larva," Helena said to Gregor.

His sword lowered ever so slightly. "No," he said quietly. "This larva is female."

Helena gasped. A new Queen. Then, she hesitated. "Should we…" she trailed off.

The tip of Gregor's sword touched the membrane. "Luxa would want us to do it," Gregor said aloud. Abruptly, he lowered his sword. "No. We won't. Not unless we have to. This larva is innocent of her mother's crimes."

She nodded in agreement. "Onwards, then." The two of them made their way through the next tunnel, which widened and widened until it opened up into that all-too-familiar cavern.

Helena was shocked by how few cutters remained. While there were still hundreds in the Queen's chambers, it was nothing compared towards the millions marching on the Fount. The Queen must have nearly emptied her colony in the attack. Helena stepped out of the tunnel and into the cavern, and suddenly, the cutters noticed her. Tens of the creatures instantly started scrambling up the cavern walls towards her, and Helena jumped backwards, bumping shoulders with Gregor.

"So, you have returned, Helena," a familiar voice called out, echoing in Helena's bones. The cutters climbing up the wall suddenly froze in their tracks. She dared to lift her eyes to the far end of the cavern. There sat the cutter Queen, Azel, easily five times as large as a normal cutter. She filled an entire enclave in the wall, and several smaller cutters busied himself around her feet.

Gregor leveled his sword towards the cutter Queen. "Call off your attack immediately," he commanded.

Azel rattled strangely, which Helena could only guess was a laugh. "And what, you'll spare my life? Spare that of my daughter's? I think not. I know your kind, killer. This war won't end until the last cutter or the last killer is dead."

"You attacked us," Gregor barked out. "The rest of the Underland has lived in peace since the War of Time. You are the one who chose violence."

"What about your beloved's handling of the gnawer rebellion?" Azel asked. Gregor froze, obviously struggling for words.

Azel rose from her enclave, slowly making her way across the great room. Her cutters moved docilely out of the way, heads bowed, mandibles trembling. A straight line of clear ground appeared between Gregor and Helena and the cutter Queen.

The tunnel Gregor and Helena had come out of was at least twenty feet up the wall of the cavern, but when Azel came to a stop in front of them, her great head was level with theirs. "This land has only ever known violence," Azel said. "When Luxa wiped out that rebellion with such prejudice and savagery, I knew her peace was a lie. I do not blame your kind for following its nature. The only law in the darkness is the law of survival. However, do not pretend to be something you are not."

"So that's it then?" Gregor whispered. "Everyone else has to die?" The Protector lifted his sword towards the great black eye that loomed over them. "That is not an answer I can accept."

The great Queen's body began to buzz with a strange kind of energy. Gregor took a quick step backwards, clearly recognizing something Helena didn't. "Impossible," he choked out.

"Then fight for your people, Gregor the Underlander," Azel said, mandibles clacking. "You against me. Rager against rager. For all the Underland."

…

The Fount

…

Every part of Luxa's body hurt. As she and Howard landed on the wall, she slid off of his flier and ignored the jolt of pain that shot up through her legs as her feet hit the ground.

Wevox, the spinner queen, suddenly was beside her. "My spinners will slow their advance," she said in a series of hisses, her eight eyes focused on Luxa.

Luxa turned her eyes to the approaching horde. Less than a minute now. "Hurry," she agreed.

Wevox made a series of clicks with her long pincers, and Luxa could only watch in awe as hundreds of spinners descended down the wall, sewing as they went. Within thirty seconds, a large sticky barrier easily twenty feet wide had appeared between the ground and the wall. That would certainly slow the cutters, Luxa thought. Spinners were their natural predators.

Hazard came running up to her. She bent down towards him in concern. "Take cover in the palace," she insisted. "Battle is imminent."

He shook his head furiously. "No. I'm of use. I've spoken to the diggers. They want to dig underneath the cutters, and cause the ground to give way underneath them. With your permission, they said, they'd like to take a force of gnawers and Regalians behind enemy lines to divert their forces."

Luxa felt deep pride for her twelve-year-old cousin. "Go back to them, tell them I approve of this plan. Find Lapblood. I want her to lead this." Hazard ran off.

Luxa turned to one of her guards. "Find Edward. He will lead this force. He is the finest field general we have left." The guard nodded and ran off.

Now all there was left to do was wait. Her fingers fiddled with the hilt of her sword as the horde rolled closer and closer. It was truly a horrifying sight. There were so many cutters, all would not fit on the ground at once. Instead, they clambered over one another, squishing their brethren alive and cascading forward towards their position like an avalanche. Luxa's nose twitched at the awful iron stench of their blood.

All around her, her soldiers rose into the air on their fliers. Each soldier carried two torches. An excellent idea, she thought. The cutters were quite susceptible to fire.

The scratching, the clicking, the noise of the horde was almost insufferable. Less than ten seconds now. The entire force assembled on the wall braced for impact. Humans, gnawers, spinners, nibblers, fliers alike. Such unity. It was something she never could have imagined.

Luxa closed her eyes, taking a deep breath. She imagined Gregor by her side, small children dancing around their feet. She'd always wanted a large family to fill the silence of the empty palace she'd grown up in. Had it been foolish to dream of that with Gregor? She grabbed his hand, and he smiled that warm smile of his back at her. That future was still possible. She had to believe that.

She opened her eyes, and jerked her arm forward towards the enemy. "NOW!" She yelled with all her might.

The ants slammed into the spinners' sticky barrier, their avalanche of motion halted immediately. Bodies piled up fast than she could blink, stretching the great web downwards, pushing the mound of pinching mandibles closer towards the top of the wall.

Unbonded fliers dropped down from the alcove in the ceiling, grabbing cutters by their heads and flinging them into the air, letting them fall to their deaths. Luxa spotted Queen Athena and Nike at the head of them.

Next came the wave of bonded fliers. Her men on the walls dumped barrels of oil down onto the cutters thrashing in the web, and Luxa watched with awe as the bonded fliers dropped their torches into the teeming mass. A colossal fire roared to life, and she could only watch dumbfoundedly as the cutters continued to charge forward into the flame, their bodies burning immediately. They didn't seem to have a semblance of a strategy.

Deep in the cutter ranks, Luxa watched as soil burst high into the air, showering and burying countless cutters. The diggers had launched their attack. Out of the holes they created poured gnawers and humans, throwing themselves against the endless red mass in a rough circle formation.

For the first time, the cutter force seemed to shift from its single-minded obsession to climb the walls of the Fount. The great wave of cutter bodies seemed to move inwards, towards the gaping holes in the center of their formation where the gnawers and humans had infiltrated.

Luxa paled. They hadn't anticipated this. They were supposed to splinter the cutter force, not draw its sole attention. As the cutters pulled away from the fire underneath the wall, it slowly began to die, the oil in the soil smothered by the sheer amount of cutter corpses. "Get more oil!" Luxa barked at the nearest soldier.

"There is no more!"

Luxa shivered. The next cutter advance would not be stopped so easily then. "Repair the web!" she ordered, and the assembled spinners descended the wall once more to repeat their work.

She glanced back at the holes the diggers had created. She did a double take. The gnawer and human force behind the enemy lines was now a tenth of its original size. Even as she watched, the survivors hurried back into the holes in the ground, pursued by angry cutters. Luxa raised her arm. It was time. "TREBUCHETS!" she cried out, and dropped her arm.

She heard behind her the tell-tale snapping of ropes and swinging of rusted hinges, and she looked overhead as chunks of rock hurtled overhead. Each one burnt bright against the darkness of the great cavern, slathered in oil and wreathed in flame. Fliers dived out of the way, and the rocks smashed into the cutter horde, the fireballs exploding bloody chunks of cutter in every direction. Yet even as Luxa watched, the holes the fireballs created were instantly filled in by more cutters. Looking out into the distance, there was still no end in sight to the horde. "RELOAD AND FIRE AT WILL!" Luxa said, turning her attention back to the wall.

With the infiltration force now destroyed, the cutters had refocused their attention on the Fount's wall. Once again, they swarmed against the web, except this time, they had no fire to slow them. Luxa turned to the gnawers behind her. "Establish a second line of defense at the inner wall," Luxa ordered. "I need the spinners to make another web. Quickly. We won't hold long here." The gnawer captain, Bloodfang, nodded and took off towards the inner wall, hundreds of gnawers and spinners following him.

Two of the fingers on her right hand were broken and sticking out at funny angles. She wiggled her other three fingers, and deeming them satisfactory, wrapped them around her sword's hilt and carefully drew her sword. Biting her tongue through the pain, she bent her two broken fingers into place around the hilt. Then, she peered over the edge of the wall, and almost instantly jolted her head back.

The web was almost gone, and the cutters were piled up to within five feet of the top of the wall. The fliers continued to dive, picking off individual cutters, and in the distance, Luxa saw the diggers continue to undermine the cutter back ranks. She closed her eyes for a long moment. It was futile. Despite the combined efforts of the creatures of the Underland, they were about to lose the outer wall. There was no use wasting life here. The cutters would simply run them over. "FULL RETREAT!" Luxa screamed hoarsely. "TO THE INNER WALL!"

Immediately, the fliers began to dive, scooping gnawers, nibblers, spinners, and humans off the wall and carrying them towards the slightly taller inner wall. Luxa eyed the battlement. Her orders had been followed to the letter. A great spinner web covered the wall and the buildings immediately below, and even as she watched it was being made ever thicker by frantic spinners. Would it be enough? Another volley of burning trebuchet ammunition rocketed overhead. With a sinking feeling, Luxa began to fear it wouldn't be.

"Come, Luxa," Howard said, guiding her back to his flier. "We must hurry." Next to them, Mareth and James clambered up onto Araxes.

As the two fliers took off, the cutters finally crested the outer wall, immediately swamping the entire battlement and drowning the few defenders straggling behind. Luxa watched with horror as the entire wall disappeared underneath the horde within the blink of an eye.

Howard's flier rapidly gained altitude, landing on the inner wall, where the defenders looked down at the horde grimly. Luxa, however, stalked to the other side of the wall, and looked out into the city. Distantly, at the port, she could see many civilians still clumped together, praying for salvation. She swallowed.

If this wall fell, there would be nothing between them and the cutters, and all that would remain of the Underlanders would be the women and children on the ships at sea.

…

New York City

…

Grace had had to sit down when she heard the news.

Not only was her son trapped in the Underland, her husband had volunteered to go down there to throw himself against a cutter horde.

Now Lizzie and Margaret huddled next to her, the three of them glued to the TV as the news reports continued to roll in. Apparently, the battle below was not going well for the American soldiers. If that was the case… the situation had to be worse for the Underlanders. Grace shuddered.

"They'll be ok, Mom," Lizzie said, trying to put on a brave face. "With Ripred and Gregor on their side, they won't be overrun by ants. They'll be back before you know it.

Grace could only nod wordlessly. She refused to think otherwise. Her eyes remained transfixed on the TV, picturing the men of her life risking everything for that strange, dark land. What was it about that place that drew them so? Why did they tear apart the family, time and time again? What did Grace not understand?

When they returned, Grace resolved, she would ask them. And this time, she would actually try to listen.

…

Author's Notes

Climax of the cutter war next chapter. I hope that the cutter horde comes across as terrifying and threatening as I intended. They don't care how many have to die as long as the mission is completed. And there sure are a lot of them.

Hope you all have been enjoying the ride. I've certainly been having a lot of fun writing this.

- Gyltig