Chrysalis

Donnelan was exhausted. The young fire mage has been repeatedly rung dry over the last twenty four hours, expelling every ounce of mental effort until his mind felt as if were on fire and blood had started leaking out of eyes.

Blood! Right out of his eyes!

When he’d turned to the centurion in charge of his section to indicate the distress he was in, all he got was a cold snort of contempt and five minutes rest. He’d spent his five minutes with his head in a bucket of ice water in the med tent before climbing back up the wall to finish the last thirty minutes of his shift.

This was the first time Donnelan had been involved in defending a wave, so he wasn’t sure if what he’d seen was normal or not, but what he had witnessed in the last day had shaken his impression of the Dungeon forever.

He knew the Legion was strict, really strict, on the management of the Dungeon. The mercenaries had a nickname for the Legion’s rules in the Dungeon, they called them the ’Stone law’, unbreakable and crushing like a mountain.

Donnelan had felt some sympathy for their view in the past. The Dungeon was dangerous to be sure but it wasn’t that bad, idiots got themselves killed exploring down here sure, but idiots could kill themselves shaving, was there really such a need to regulate them?

The mage didn’t feel that way now. When the light returned the Legion had been in full force on the wall of their temporary fort, officers striding up and down like angry demons, checking equipment and snapping angry hand signals to any Legionary found wanting in their preparations.

When the monster started bursting out of the soil, tearing out of walls and even dropping down from the roof Donnelan was sure he was seeing a vision of hell. Brutal combat erupted everywhere in an instant, the stench of blood and the shrieks of monster flooded his senses until he wanted to puke. Several trainees had, thrown up right over the edge of the wall. The centurions turned a blind eye to reaction of their younger soldiers, some of them had been in the exact same position once.

The endless waves of monsters crashed into each other like a roaring sea before converging on the fort in fury. None of the Legionaries could explain it but once the monsters drew close enough to the fort they seemed attracted to it irresistibly, suicidally charging in an attempt to scale the walls or burst their way through.

It hadn’t taken long for the fort to be surrounded by so many monsters it looked like an island under assault by the endless tides.

The only reason the monsters didn’t spawn directly under their feet was due to the deployment of an ancient Legion artefact that suppressed monster spawning in an area in the center of the camp. This was another of the Legion secrets Donnelan had been exposed to over the course of this expedition, he wasn’t sure how much more they could possibly hide up their sleeves.

It was shocking to him that he could be a trainee alongside these people for five years and not a whisper of any secrets had ever reached his ears, nothing!

"How are you holding up Don?" an exhausted voice reached him.

Mirryn, face covered in dust and dried ichor approaching his position in the rest area

had, pushing her archery skills to the extreme in order to damage long range monsters

of magic they could grasp. Donnelan had never felt mana so thick in his life, every mage felt as if their spells were super charged in these conditions, their fire hotter, storms larger

same was also true for the monsters of course. Hence all

they called him ’Fingers’ due to his extremely dextrous digits he deployed in his archery, after about 14 hours of the wave he’d collapsed in a quivering mess, screaming for the noise to stop, right in the

a rune,

was almost enough to cause Donnelan to wonder if he should start shrieking himself, maybe then

better Mir" Donnelan drawled, "I’m practically

and head leaning back against the post. "I heard about

"Really" Donnelan affirmed.

her head in disbelief, too

a pause she spoke again. "I may have some

"Oh?"

the trainees are going to be given a twenty four hour break before

so shocked he sat up too quickly, causing a cramp

"Ouch!" he wailed.

his leg and stretch it until the pain faded, during which

they giving us a rest? Don’t they need us up there? I don’t

do. I have no idea what the brass are planning but I was passed this news by the

young fire mage could only shake his head. How were they going to hold the defences if so many

the senior officers had gathered together, hundreds of

camp the officers were unruffled, stroking their beads or thumbing

towards their left as a unit, conversation falling away. Moments later Titus emerged from with his command tent, dark plates of armour strapped to his aging yet still bulky