He proceeded to tip the bottle over while pressing it to his mouth and used the vortex to down the whole thing in one go. It slipped from his grip and shattered on the stone beneath, yet the noise was drowned by the cogworks.

It only took until the inevitable burp for his facial hair to begin smoldering and his Brass Eye to take on the infernal glow of hot metal, at which point he regarded everyone present before settling on the Spearman and barking, “The fuck’re you standin’ around for? Ain’t we in a hurry?!”

“I… Yes,” nodded the bugman, joining his counterpart in their effort to open the door.

Wide, sweeping gestures, murmured incantations, the thumping of black-stone rods.

Cyan light rising from the ground, closing in as great clockworks formed from nothingness all around them, closing in as their noise consumed everything. The small hollow they were contained in was illuminated by the nearly blinding green-blue, glyphic patterns that now covered the ground.

Two wordless exclamations in quick succession, each accompanied a thump of each locust’s rod.

The first against the ground, to which the light moved from the ground to their staves.

The second against the door, bestowing the light unto the stone in the form of myriad cracks.

The cogworks stopped, falling silent.

A moment later, there came a deafening clack when the cogworks resumed, and the door shattered inward with the power of a gale force wind and a sonic crack that made the ears ring and shook the bones. The rubble vanished into an already-opened, dismal grey Fog Gate.

Hurrying into the opening before anyone could question what had just happened, the duo led the party through the gate and into a long, dimly lit hallway that was as tangled as it was impossible. Turns that should’ve just led them back to an earlier point were the least of the inconsistencies. There were crossroads with one option blocked off by an invisible wall, every single one of which the two locusts shattered, and then decided whether to proceed down the previously blocked-off path based on whether their breaching ritual triggered any signs that they had annoyed the Queen, such as the lightgems flashing red or distant screaming.

There were also the occasional traps with no signs of their presence, which the two Locust Nobles defused by invoking their limited authority over the dungeon for just long enough to let the entire party pass before the trap went off at full power.

All the while, Strolvath’s body served as a not insignificant light source, the smoldering glow of his hair, his veins and his scars breaking apart the dim, weak flicker of the corridor’s pseudo-real lightgems.

When at last they reached the end of the corridor, there was no door. It was just an empty door frame and a wall of pillars right beyond it. The three pillars that were visible each had numerous, bloodred symbols painted on them, ones that those in the party who understood Pateirian recognized as insults and mocking implications of inevitable doom.

“This… This is bad,” the Caster remarked gravely, running his hand across the bloodred symbol. “There wasn’t supposed to be anything down here. This place was marked as primordial soup, a blank slate waiting to be formed. We should’ve been able to just make a gate straight to the core, but… It seems someone’s already been here. The Parasite likely thinks she is gaining control, that she is able to break the rule of no impassable obstacles, when in reality the Core is just taking our presence into account.”

The Caster and the Spearman exchanged looks and began another ritual, murmuring three-line incantations each as they thumped their rods, causing the tools to glow with faintly visible cyan lines. Slowly, the pillars before them sunk down and created a path.

The collective authority of the Caster and the Spearman could only force open a narrow path, at points only one floor panel wide. At these points, they naturally fell into a formation with Zelsys in front, after whom came the Spearman, then Zefaris, then the Inquisitor, then Strolvath, and lastly the Caster.

“We know how to find a path out of here,” the Caster reassured. “I just hope we find it before the loyalists find us.”

For a good three, perhaps four minutes, they walked in a mostly straight line, turning right twice. The first time when they reached a wall, the second when they reached a corner.

They faced a two-row firing line line of strange locusts, with those in front kneeling and those behind them standing. The arms of those in front were morphed into tower shields which were covered in spikes that sat within the large chitin plates loosely enough that it was clear they were meant to detach. Their arm-shields were easily large enough to mostly cover their users, yet their heads peeked overtop as if they wanted to watch.

As for those in the second row, their arms were massively distended, with short upper portions and lower halves nearly half as long as they were tall. The upper portions of the limbs swelled with essentia sacs, while the lower portions were covered in thick carapace that held dozens of equally thick spikes. From the undersides of their arms hung long belts of fleshy webbing that held numerous chitinous spears, and these spears protruded from the former places of their wrists, now just muzzles for the harpoon-guns that were their arms.

At the back of the line, a Locust Noble stood atop the back of a Warrior locust. He wore a loose purple robe, and was fully metamorphosed up to just below his eyeline, just like the Red Mantis. What was visible of his carapace was so covered in red plates that it nearly hid his true, locust nature.

His eyes stared down at them, steel in both colour and gaze. The next moment, he raised his hand and simply gestured in their general direction.

“Danmaku!” he roared to his soldiers in a warbling, but perfectly clear voice, filled with the powerful presence of an experienced and charismatic commander.