Chapter 127: Canyon-Crawlers
Holden had barely put off his mud-soaked jacket when the barracks door flew open.
BANG!
Captain Venus stood in the doorway.
"Up. Now. All of you."
Renna rolled off her bunk so fast she nearly tangled in her blanket. Emric was already sitting up, blinking rapidly. Lyra stood smoothly, her hand instinctively moving to the spear leaning against her bedpost.
Holden just looked at Venus from his cot, one eyebrow raised.
"We’ve got a supply convoy stalled over in Ashfall Canyon," Venus said sharply. "About five miles east. There are thirty soldiers and twelve carts full of ammunition and medical supplies. Canyon-crawlers trapped them around midnight, and they have been pinned down ever since."
He paused, letting the weight of the situation settle.
"Every veteran unit I have is either wounded from last night or holding the perimeter. Which means I’m sending you four."
Renna threw her hand in the air. "Wait, are you serious? Just us? To fight a whole swarm of canyon-crawlers? Look, no offense to our squad, we are amazing, but that is a ridiculous number of monsters for four people. Especially before I’ve even had breakfast, and honestly my arms are still kind of dead from yesterday, and..."
"Try not to die too fast, kids," Venus cut her off, his voice flat and final. He turned and walked away.
The door swung shut behind him.
Holden swung his legs off the cot. "Alright. You heard the man. Let’s go save some supply runners."
They moved fast.
The five-mile run through the freezing rain took them twelve minutes. Emric had calculated the optimal route using the topographical map Maeve had loaded onto his wrist display, and they hit the canyon entrance without running into any stray monsters.
Ashfall Canyon was narrow, maybe sixty feet wide at its broadest point, with steep rock walls rising on both sides. The supply carts were bunched together in the center like a makeshift fortress, their canvas covers torn and splattered with mud.
Around them, chaos.
Thirty soldiers were crouched behind the carts, firing energy rifles into the dark crevices of the canyon walls. Giant armored canyon-crawlers poured out of the rock tunnels and crevices, six-legged bug-like beasts scrambling over each other in an endless wave.
The soldiers were terrified. Their shots were wild, their formation was nonexistent, and every time they dropped one crawler, two more took its place.
"Their formation is completely broken," Emric said, his eyes scanning the battlefield with cold focus. "They are huddled way too close together, their shots are crossing paths, and nobody is watching the cliffs above. This is a complete disaster tactically."
"So fix it," Holden said.
Emric didn’t hesitate.
He walked straight into the middle of the panicked soldiers and raised his voice.
"Listen to me! All of you, listen!"
A few soldiers glanced over. One of them, a sergeant with a bloody bandage on his forehead, looked at Emric like he was crazy.
"Who the hell are you, kid?"
"Someone who is about to save your life," Emric said, completely unfazed. "Shields up! Those of you with barrier wards, form a semicircle at the front of the carts. Angle thirty degrees outward to create overlapping kill zones. Riflemen, fall back ten paces and aim for the tunnel openings, not the crawlers themselves. Cut them off at the source."
The sergeant stared at him for a half second, then something in Emric’s voice made him snap into action.
"You heard the academy kid! Move!"
The soldiers scrambled. It was messy at first, but within thirty seconds, the chaotic clump had reshaped into a proper defensive line. The shield users locked their barriers together at precise angles, and the riflemen shifted their aim to the dark openings in the rock walls.
The effect was immediate. Crawlers that had been pouring out in streams suddenly found their entry points turned into killing grounds.
"Lyra!" Emric called without looking back.
"Already on it."
Lyra stepped forward with her spear gleaming. She planted her feet and swept her arm in a wide circle. Jagged spikes of ice erupted from the ground, sealing off the three largest crawler tunnels all at once. The beasts crawling halfway through froze in place, trapped inside solid blocks of ice.
She walked over to the next group of tunnels and repeated the move. Same angle. Same power. Same flawless result.
The soldiers just stared in shock.
"Renna, skies," Holden said casually from where he was leaning against a supply cart.
"On it!"
Renna had already scrambled up onto a supply cart, perching on top like a gargoyle while her bow hummed with energy. High above the canyon, three winged crawlers circled in the air, waiting for their chance to dive.
Twang!
The first one dropped before it even folded its wings.
Twang!
The second one spiraled into the canyon wall.
Twang!
The third one exploded into a puff of dark mist that rained down on the rocks.
"You missed one on the left, Renna," Holden said, pointing lazily at a distant speck that was rapidly flying away from the fight.
"That one was retreating! I don’t shoot runners, that’s just rude!" she shouted back, already nocking another arrow for a crawler that was trying to climb the canyon wall to flank them.
Holden smirked and crossed his arms.
The fight lasted another four minutes. With Emric directing the soldiers, Lyra freezing the tunnels, and Renna picking off anything that moved, the crawler swarm went from a deadly threat to a minor inconvenience.
The last crawler tried to scurry between two supply carts. A soldier panicked and missed his shot. Emric didn’t even flinch. He simply adjusted the barrier angle with a quick hand signal, letting a redirected energy bolt strike the crawler dead on.
"Clean work," Emric noted, pleased with himself.
Silence fell over the canyon. The soldiers slowly lowered their weapons, looking around like they weren’t sure the fight was actually over.
The sergeant with the bloody bandage walked over to Emric, looking like he couldn’t quite believe his eyes. He looked at the young man in the academy jacket, then at the frozen tunnels, then at the dead crawlers littering the canyon floor.
"Who... what are you kids?"
Emric adjusted his glasses. "Sophomores. Academy Year Two. Now, I’d recommend we get these carts moving before the crawler pheromones attract something larger. The eastern trail has the most defensible approach back to the outpost. We’ll take point."
The sergeant just nodded, completely bypassing any argument.
Holden pushed off the supply cart and stretched. He still hadn’t drawn his sword. There wasn’t a speck of monster blood on him.
"Good work, team," he said as they fell into step beside the moving convoy. "Lyra, great ice work. Emric, you had those soldiers shaped up in thirty seconds. That’s genuinely impressive."
Emric beamed. "The geometric principles are actually quite straightforward once you account for the canyon’s natural choke points. I’ve been running defensive simulations in my head since we arrived at the outpost, so the application was simply a matter of"
"Renna," Holden continued, cutting Emric off with a grin. "Solid shooting. Nine out of ten."
"I got nine out of ten? Which one did I miss? Was it the retreating one because I told you I don’t shoot runners, Holden, that’s a rule, you can’t grade me on a rulebreaker!"
"I’m grading you on attitude. You get a nine."
Renna let out an offended gasp, but she couldn’t hide her grin.
Lyra fell into step beside Holden, her shoulder brushing his. "You didn’t fight at all," she said quietly, a hint of a smile in her voice.
"Didn’t need to."
"You could have at least pretended."
"And steal your spotlight? Never."
Lyra shook her head, but the smile broke through.
[Ding!]
[Convoy Defense Completed!]
[+1,000 KP]
[2x KP Booster Applied!]
[+2,000 KP!]
Holden swiped away the notification and watched his friends march ahead. They were bickering over Renna’s scoring system, completely ignoring Emric trying to teach them the geometry of his tunnel trick.
The convoy kept rumbling through the rain, with every single supply cart intact and every soldier making it out alive.