Shar'khee felt the heat of her armor begin to sting where metal met flesh. The raging fires and billowing smoke behind her only grew as the seconds ticked by. Every hive vine, every egg, every sac, and every tunnel was set alight in a growing orange wall of deserving death. Each tunnel swelled with charred remains, choking the already small passageways into a trudge of blackened carapace and gooey viscera.

The cave growled under the growing pressure, putting a timer on the Sharkrin operation… Her tight formation of shielded and armed warriors was close, treading along the thickened paste of bug corpses on a path to the heart of the swarm.

She was the tip of the spear, the guiding hand, and the executioner.

"Observe left!" She shouted, shifting her shield toward the ceiling-bound hole curving down into the main tunnel.

Several flashlights converged onto the entrance, holding stable as they passed closer. Her trigger finger twitched, yet her Browning's barrel was as still as stone in her grip, trained on the whirling smoke within. She slowly led the group around the cavity, motioning for the heavy purifiers to step up.

Scorching flames poured up the hole, immediately dimming their headlamps. A wave of heat washed over her, but she did not flinch. The charred stone only further steeled her resolve, tightening her tail around her Harrison and squeezing the tension from his stiff form.

This vile hive will know the Sharkrin force as exterminators. Their horrible ranks will shatter and burn, no matter their size. That much, she would assure her mate—

Gunfire rattled from the drones ahead.

"Hey! HEY! RIGHT FLANK! RIGHT FLANK! DOWN THE TUNNEL!" the Creator called out, elbowing her tail several times as his shotgun came to life with echoing 'BANGS.'

She swung her fifty-cal around and yanked the trigger, cutting into the wave of skittering legs pouring up from another branching tunnel. Her teeth clenched through the recoil pelting her palms.

"FORWARD! COLLATERAL POSITIONING!" she roared above the flurry of machine guns.

The paladin stomped ahead, letting the volume of fire rip apart each screeching, chitinous beast. The stone lip of the tunnel chipped and sparked with incendiary rounds as the squad pushed forward, shoving their shields into the entrance and blasting away the rotten inhabitants.

Shrill screeches died down within mere moments, giving the team all the excuse they needed to drop several napalm grenades into the battered orifice. Beautiful orange flames soon ravaged the last of the darkness within, climbing up the abhorrent-made vines.

Onto the next.

Shar'khee ordered her spears onward, directing their fire and scorching every last passageway on her march to the abhorred heart. She listened intently as Harrison conversed with the Artificer, acting upon his relayed information from the reconnaissance drones.

There was much of the swarm left, yet they hid amongst the crevices, lashing out like vermin they were. She was surprised that the abhorrent had yet to accept their fate, given that they scraped enough intelligence together to know how to retreat.

No matter. She would spill their blood amongst the stone and ash. Their corpses would fuel the Creator's machines, and these caves would soon be harvested for all their metal's worth.

And, once the fires purified these lands clean, and the comfort of the settlement took her in again, there was only one task left to do… She glanced back at her mate and drew a toothy smile underneath her gas mask. Any built-up unrest from these scattered and vicious tunnel attacks would be laid to rest within her hips.

Soon, but not yet.

The heat burned inside her, spurring her on. She needed only to rip the heart out of the swarm and return home.

It was a simple task. She was born for it. She was crafted as the perfect instrument of slaughter. Her muscles, her bones, her thoughts, all tailored into the ultimate machine at his guidance, the spear and the shield to his excellence.

May the Goddess of the Winds witness her confident stride and find awe in her effortless brutality.

Her team marched forward, cutting through swift swarms of flying abhorrent, burning the wretched holes they crawled from, and leaving only fire from whence they came. It was continuous and never-ending, with each attempt becoming more and more frequent.

The paladin was sick of their feeble ambushes, taking the initiative and throwing explosives down every hole before any beast could peek their wretched teeth through. Her shieldswomen became mobile walls to shut off any entrance as purifiers burned their way through the moronic creatures.

The darkness itself became fire under her command, only the lingering smoke daring to choke her sight.

But even the forces of nature did not matter. The stride of the Sharkrin was unmatched, finally stopping at the bottom of the final, winding passageway. Their flashlights only managed to illuminate a small stair-like slope downward into the vast cavern beyond.

The confines of the entranceway widened into a blackness like no other. Faint and distant yellow globules of pus failed to illuminate anything other than themselves, incapable of offering any clear image of the cavern. Not even her order for a spread of flares could fully illuminate the expanse of abhorrent-made arches and stalagmites that towered over the countless beasts below… Why did they appear so familiar?

Another round of airborne lights, instructed by herself, caught the silhouettes of further pillars. They were coated in the deep green flesh of the beasts' blood. All of them were ordered in line with one another. She knew the shape of the cavern from the reconnaissance drones. It was familiar, but in person, with how the organic columns came together, she could not shake the feeling…

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It was impossible. She requested more flares launched as far as possible… and was shocked to realize the resemblance. The positioning, the size… the grandeur was too much to ignore.

The arches formed a heretical, filthy mockery; the way each pillar lined up in massive aisles around a central, pewless nave sent a cold shiver down her tail. Her initial reaction to ignore it was marred by the hive vine and pus-drenched, central altar on the other side, placed right between the three cruxes of a church's cross. Black, shadowed extensions on each cardinal direction of the center immediately tricked her mind into expecting the images of three deities upon the transepts' walls.

But it was wrong. All wrong. It was covered in the pulsing hive's influence, all the way to the breathing ceiling.

Why mock the Grand Cathedral? Not even the bent house of worship strictly for the Mountain Lord, but the central Castle of Prayer within the golden city? What did these vile recreants want with their false recreation? THEY DID NOT EVEN KNOW THE GLORY OF THE GODS!

Shar'khee expectantly glared back at her followers, fury in her heart. Each was tense, but only a few stared up into the vast mockery with tight grips of their weapons. The others, notably village-born, simply awaited orders. The Creator stared at her, jutting his shotgun around her shield.

"The fuck are we standing around for? The fire's not stopping anytime soon, and I'd rather not have to take it for extract."

The paladin growled in agreement, directing the spears. "DO YOU SEE IT? THEY MAR YOUR DEITIES WITH THEIR FILTH! SET YOUR SHIELDS DOWN AND CROSS FAITH ON YOUR HEART. FIRE AT WILL!"

She slammed her bulwark down, cracking the ground beneath and severing vile tendrils of the hive. Her sisters did the same, erupting the dark around them in the flashes of their bullets' ire. The rattle of gunfire reverberated and clapped across the vast cave of mockery.

They held their position and carved through the final horde of beasts. Harrison sent forth the hunters and harpies upon the aisles, cleaning up the flanks as the team let the last of the defenders fall onto their fire.

It was as brutal as it was quick. Recoilless rifles found their mark into the facial tusks of colossi, railguns drilled into the rampaging venators, and all else succumbed to bullets and grenades, mangled and torn apart with ease.

Good. EXCELLENT. Their slaughter was efficient. Satisfactory beyond any measure. Her snout grew a wicked smile of delight as she ordered the team further into the cavern of pulsing mimicry.

There was hardly any abhorrent left to strike; why wait for them to approach? Their ranks had thinned under the hours of battle, leaving naught but a weakened force of pitiful resistance compared to star-sents' mighty firearms. She could already imagine reaping these lands for the glory of the Creator's factories, stripping everything possible to forge the future of the Sharkrin!

The thought of it was euphoric, inexplicably lighting that same flame within her stomach. Her body knew what reward awaited her after she ripped the last strings of life from this cavern, entwining the release of her desires into one blessed goal. Goddess of the Skies, she could not wait to take her Harrison home, free of these fetid fields of abhorrent filth.

Her team continued along, placing charges within the base of each egg-producing and load-bearing pillar, almost completely unresisted. Any last efforts from the horde to produce a newborn venator or an acid-spitter were met with utmost cruelty. The only light those vile creatures saw was a fifty-caliber round shattering their eggshell.

The plastic explosives were set and lined up toward the 'altar' of the hive, where the Geiger counters erupted like gunfire… The 'queen' thumped like a heartbeat, pulsing liquid through the rope-like tendrils of green into the ceiling. Shar'khee hated the way it softly glowed with yellow pustules within, nor did she like the shrill squeal it made when she cut a hole into its side.

That… thing deserved its own thermobaric charge. Everyone agreed.

The Sharkrin spears hardly spent any more time exploring the disgustingly familiar cave, finalizing the placement of explosives and leaving out the other side. There was nothing to fight on the way back up. Only empty tunnels that received more napalm grenades and direct purification.

The ascent was short, the slope not needing a climbing rope in the slightest. Her body was exhausted as she stepped into the light of day once more, greeted by the other squads awaiting their extraction. They celebrated their victory with embraces and cheers, raising their guns high and their voices higher.

It would be known as the battle in which their enemies bowed before them—a triumph like no other, telling of brighter days to come. And, for as joyous as a moment of victory it was for the settlement, a light in the dark shadows of mourning behind them… she only had one gift left to receive.

Her male stood over the cave entrance, tapping away at his data pad and discussing some matters with Cera and Vodny as the explosives delivered their last echoing eruptions and dulled vibrations. The paladin approached and laid her palms over his shoulders.

He tensed at the sudden contact, but swiftly melted into her embrace. Her hands slowly covered more of him, greedily pulling and tenderly rubbing and…

"Must we stay here any longer, dearest?" Shar'khee enchanted her mate with a low, husky projection. "These hours have been tense for you, have they not?"

Harrison was frozen for a few moments, stunned in her pining grasp—she hardly had control over the way her hips pressed into him. The time on his watch implied it was the afternoon, far from any time of relaxation, save for lunch. But what did that matter? He deserved a release. She needed a release.

His expression was obscured by his helmet, yet his quickening heartbeat told her he knew her desires precisely. "We were just discussing some notes about the hive, but we can go home anytime. Did you want to have lunch first, or…"

She ran a gloved palm along his cheek, brushing along his armored jaw and kneading around the more pliable armor of his neck. "Would it not be proper to take a shower first? Perhaps we could share a massage? As in, both of us have expended such energy to cleave through this grand hurdle… I can feel the tenseness in your muscles. Such a mutual act of repose should be mandatory after our glorious battle, should it not?"

Her male took in a deep breath, finding confidence as he turned around to fully face her. His hands slid their way to her waist, the soft pressure over her armor teasing her loins further. "No wonder you've been so eager to clear the hive… I keep my promises."

He pulled her forward in an unexpected showing of strength. "It's about time we go a bit further."

She held him tight, letting soft words slip from her frills. "I do not believe there has ever been more delightful words… Shall we?"

Harrison turned his head and called out to the others to return to formation, pushing Shar'khee to do the same. She caught a brief glance of Cera, whose finned tail swayed happily as she watched the paladin and her mate start off toward the fortress.

Shar'khee held the Creator in her tail, suppressing everything in her to pick him up fully and squeeze him tight. But she happily held his hand all the way back as a middle ground, so that she might channel such urges into his palm.

His vocalizations tickled her ears as he called Tracy, asking her about approval or something else, but she could not listen to his words in her mind, for her heart beat too rapidly. There was a fiery pump in her veins. A rampant excitement revitalized her, clearing out every strain of exhaustion within… It was as if she had not fought at all.

Sky Goddess above, her hips flexed under every wanton thought of his hot fingers and wet lips over her skin, nearly bucking under how she imagined all of those positions Tracy spoke of.

She could feel the pressure build, twitching her lower fins…

It desired a release like no other.

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