I watched as the pair struggled; their screams would haunt my dreams for years to come. The Annihilation Engine began to wobble a bit more violently as it stretched and snapped back into shape. The pair turned, and I could see Lastaf had thrust the shard into the Drow’s abdomen. Both figures’ flesh began to flake off like ash floating into the air before dissolving.

The Drow’s body stumbled backward into the grey sphere. As his body touched its surface, he twisted upon himself and was sucked into the sphere as if he had been sucked through a far too small straw. Lastaf crashed to his knees, the arm that held the shard falling off to flake away into the air before hitting the stone floor.

He looked at me and smiled before pointing to the now rapidly undulating grey sphere and shouting, “I’d probably take this time to run, my boy!”

I glanced at the sphere for a moment and turned back to see his body dissolving away. The black bars pinning me to the ground vanished, and I pushed myself to my feet to summon my magic map. I turned towards the tunnel we came down and began pushing my legs as fast as they could before I remembered the speed spell.

I dashed forward, the air around me stinging the ends of my ears. I spotted one of the Azure Cores on the ground and swerved to snatch it up but was blasted off my feet and into the far wall before I could lay a finger on the core.

The wind was knocked from my lungs as the sound of metal or plastic being torn to shreds reached my ears. I pushed myself up and looked towards the now colorful sphere of blinding light. The Annihilation Engine had reversed and became a Mana Well; I hazarded a guess.

The sphere was still throbbing and stretching when a beam of pure light shot towards the cavern’s ceiling, and the Glitterstones above exploded into millions of shards across the now empty cavern. The light beam seemed to be drilling through the stone going further up.

I summoned the magic map again and shrank its size to see my position in relation to the surface. The Annihilation Engine had been directly below the Mana Well inside the crater. What was going to happen when that beam connected the two wells?

I sprang to my feet, cores forgotten and began running up the tunnel. I felt the drain on my mana as I neared the queen's level and cut off my speed enchantment. I then felt the earth around me shake, I assumed from the beam drilling upwards through the stone. I ran out into the large tunnel with the queen’s chamber at the end a moment later, my body feeling surprisingly good.

A queen’s guard met me in the tunnel a moment later before pushing me to the side and taking a strike from an abomination that I had not noticed behind me. Now missing an arm, the guard flicked its other blade-like arm before the malformed Gnit’s head rolled.

Behind me, in the large tunnel, hundreds of Gnits were fighting, and I soon realized that it was the queen’s loyal hive members versus the now leaderless Darkness transfigured army. I summoned blue fireball after blue fireball, launching them down the tunnel towards the wave of Gnits with inky blackness on their bodies. The explosions rocked the tunnel, body parts flying in every direction before dissolving into white, green, and blue sand.

Behind the area now devoid of bodies, more began to fill the gem-covered ground. I turned and ran towards the queen’s chambers, the guards allowing me to pass unmolested. Reaching her chambers, I could see the lack of black bars in front of the now missing queen. Her ovipositor filled the entire back wall squirming and pulsating away.

I turned to the tidal wave of Darkness’s Gnits pushing forward and slaughtering the queen’s members. I yelled for the guards at the door to come inside. They flashed me looks before turning their heads back to the mass of destruction and running towards it.

I willed the stone at the entrance to rise and sealed off the queen’s chamber. I fell to my ass and tried to slow my breathing before I heard a muffled scream from somewhere towards the back of the room. I got to my feet just as the ground heaved up a few inches, tossing me back to my ass.

I stumbled to my feet again as the ground grew motionless and heard an even louder scream of pain come from the chamber’s back again. I raised my hammer and walked towards the noise of movement at the chamber’s corner. I passed one of the stone pillars and found the queen on her back, drones all around her. She seemed to smile with her alien-like insect face as I grew closer.

“Zeal, you have removed the Darkness. I sense my final release is now close,’ the queen said as she waved her hand towards the wall, a few dozen drones began to swarm the wall, and it began to crumble away from the drones digging.

“Take what you wish. We have no need for any of it. I ask you a final favor, so my race may live on. Inside is my last egg containing a queen. Please provide your blood to the egg so she may retain traits from your race, and maybe, she may, what you call, evolve into a new queen. A queen who may work with other races, not living and hiding underground to wait and fight those on the surface.”

“My blood?”

“I have no guard left to supply me with the genetic materials I need. You’re male. That should suffice.”

“As long as it’s only blood you need.” I don’t think I could have given anything else. “What do you want me to do with her once she hatches?”

“Bring her with you until she matures into a queen. Provide her with a chance to help you and your kind build a new hive. Teach her about what I’ve seen on the surface. Massive cities called civilizations. Give her what our race hasn’t had. I beg of you…,” The queen was cut off as the ground shook even more violently.

I looked into the room, revealed by the drones in the wall, and tossed a light orb inside. The room was filled with cores, weapons, and coins. I went to the entrance and looked around but could see nothing that looked like an egg.

“I’ll try my best to save your race, but I don’t see anything that looks like an egg inside.”

“Thank you,” the queen said before her arm flashed, and she cut the bottom of her body open. She reached inside her body and pulled a small crystalline red and orange object that glowed ever so faintly.

She held it out to me. What I assumed was the queen’s egg began to roll off her hand and fell to the floor. I jumped and grabbed the object about the size of two of my hands. I looked up to the now lifeless body of the queen. The drones began to circle the body before picking it up and dragging her down a side tunnel.

I looked down at the object in my hand. It looked like glass art from back home. It was twice as long as it was wide and had grooves that swirled around the edges from point to point. Thinking back to it needing blood, I cut my hand on the sharp point and let my blood flow off my palm and onto the egg. The glow began to grow bright as the blood seemingly soaked into the hard surface. The blood dripped onto the shell until the cut healed completely.

The egg was now glowing a pinkish color in between the reds and oranges, and the egg had a slight pulse or throb I could feel on its shell. Not wanting to chance putting it in a magic bag, I kept a hold of it and walked into the treasure room just as the ground shook violently, and I went flying into the air and hit my head on the ceiling before crashing back to the floor.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck.” I scrambled into the room and began tossing gems and coins into my bag. The ground shook again, and I figured my luck was at its end. I stopped looting the cores and looked around the queen’s chamber. My eyes settled on four small drones facing me.

“Can you take me away from here?”

The four drones formed a circle and walked in that circle for a few moments before darting to the side of the queen’s large egg sack and into a smaller tunnel than I would have liked. Not giving up, I knelt and tucked the egg inside my shirt, the shell warm against my skin, and began crawling after the drones.

Moments later, I felt my stomach burn slightly. What the hell? Did I just form a Bond to an egg? Had the queen conned me? The ground shook a final time, and the earth went still. The drones sensing something began to skitter faster down the tunnel.

I screamed when my dull light orb went out, thinking I had been crushed. I summoned a new orb placing it under my chin to keep the tunnel lit in front of me. The air began to fill with that tang I had felt on the surface. The Mana Wells had connected. Now, what would happen? We kept rushing down the tunnel, my hands and knees getting scrapped as they healed over and over.

Possibly hours later, I wasn’t sure, we came out of the smaller tunnel and into a much larger one. The drones made a circle again as they waited for me to leave the cramped tunnel. They formed a line and headed down the tunnel as I stood up, ascending upwards at a much slower pace. I opened my magic map up and found the surface was only a few meters above.

I created one of my Sewer Tunnels, fine Lastaf; I’ll call it that. I forced my way to the surface with three of the spells. The drones followed behind. When the last tunnel opened to the surface, my ears popped as the air rushed into the tunnel, equalizing the pressure.

The tang in the air was far more pungent than it had been above the crater. Climbing out of the tunnel, I turned towards the direction of the crater and was shocked to see what looked like the rainbow bridge I had traveled through, shooting up into the sky and possibly space. Movement beside me caught my attention, and I watched the drones return down the hole.

I looked around and moved up a hill to get a better look. Atop, I could see the pillar of multicolor light coming from the center of the crater. Looking at my magic map again, I calculated I was anywhere between eight and ten kilometers away. I felt an odd sensation and looked up and held my breath.

Directly above the towering beam was now a silver vessel that would have dwarfed the largest of our battle cruisers back home. The vessel began to rotate, its length going from horizontal to vertical, and positioned itself over the rainbow beam. Then the vessel shot down a blinding light. The iridescent teal beam dispersed the rainbow beam. Moments later, I felt the ground shake for a moment causing me to roll down the hill.

I looked back up to see the vessel had vanished, and the beam of rainbow light was gone as well. I began to run towards the crater to see what had happened to the surface’s Mana Well. I held the queen’s egg in the crook of my arm like a flip ball as I cast the speed buff.

When I got to where the crater’s edge should have been, I found myself at the forest’s edge and a massive field of short, neatly trimmed green grass. The crater had vanished and been filled in and planted with manicured grass. What the hell happened, and was that one of the metallic vessels Lastaf had mentioned in the Dwarves’ legends?