Underground City – Office Sector. Status: Pursued by Hundreds of Mutants.
"RUN! DON'T LOOK BACK!"
Riven's roar was nearly swallowed by the tide of high-pitched shrieks from the thousands of creatures swarming behind them.
SCREEEEEEEEECH!
A tidal wave of pale flesh flooded the cracked asphalt. They didn't run like humans; they skittered on all fours, vaulting over rusted car husks and scaling building walls with impossible speed. The sound of their bare hands and feet slapping against the pavement was nauseating—like a relentless downpour of raw meat hitting the earth.
The Sudrath expedition party bolted toward the nearest building—a glass skyscraper with a main lobby entrance that had long since been shattered.
"Inside! Everyone, get inside!" Captain Garrick commanded, shoving his men past a carpet of broken glass that shimmered under their helm lights.
The moment the last man cleared the threshold, Riven spun around. He swung his Chain-Axe in a wide, horizontal arc with a low growl.
VROOOOM!
The first three mutants to leap at him were bisected mid-air. Rancid black blood sprayed across the floor, drenching the dusty marble of the lobby.
"Rhea! Block the way!" Riven barked, wiping a smear of blood from his cheek.
Rhea vaulted over a long reception desk with surgical precision. She delivered a powerful kick to a heavy steel filing cabinet, sending it crashing down to obstruct the entrance. It was a makeshift barricade, but it was the only one she could trust for a few precious seconds.
THUD!
"This won't hold them for long!" Rhea shouted, her breath hitching as her lungs burned from the exertion.
"To the stairs! Don't touch the elevator shafts—they're dead!" Rianor ordered, pointing toward an emergency stairwell in the corner of the lobby.
They scrambled up the narrow concrete steps. The heavy THUMP-THUMP echoing below signaled that the mutants were already slamming their bodies against the filing cabinet with feral brutality. Upon reaching the second floor, Riven plowed through the stairwell door with his shoulder.
They spilled into a sprawling room that looked utterly alien to Aethelgardian eyes. There were no stone walls or grand wooden pillars. Instead, the room was filled with hundreds of waist-high, walled boxes arranged in a meticulous, dizzying maze. Broken wheeled chairs and silent, dusty glass boxes sat atop desks—the husks of an open-plan office from a lost era, now a silent graveyard.
CRASH!
Window glass along the building's side shattered into a million shards. The mutants weren't just using the stairs; they were scaling the exterior walls and bursting through the windows.
"They're coming from everywhere!" Elara cried out, her face deathly pale.
"Formation's broken! Free-style fighting!" Riven commanded. In a space cluttered with dividers like this, a spear formation would only be a death trap.
Chaos erupted instantly. Rhea proved to be the most lethal in this strange terrain. She leaped onto desks, sprinted across cubicle partitions, and slid under tables just as mutant claws grazed her face.
"Die, you hideous freaks!"
SLASH!
Rhea's daggers sank into the neck of a mutant trying to pounce from behind an old monitor. She kicked the corpse away and leaped to the next desk with the predatory grace of a lynx. On the other side of the room, Riven struggled to find the space to swing his massive axe.
"Tch, this place is too cramped!" he grumbled.
An Alpha mutant dropped from the ceiling, fangs baring for Riven's throat. With no room to swing, Riven reached for the nearest solid object—the half-open steel door of an elevator in the hallway. Channeled by his roaring Orange Aura, he gripped the metal panel.
"AAAAARGH!"
KREAAAKKK!
The sound of screeching metal was agonizing. Riven ripped the elevator door clean off its tracks with raw, unadulterated strength. Just as the mutant lunged, Riven slammed the hundred-kilogram steel plate into it.
BRAMM!
The mutant was flattened instantly, pinned between the steel door and the concrete wall. "Choke on that, you damn monster!"
While the battle raged, Rianor and Rumina took cover behind a large reception counter, guarded closely by Garrick. Rianor noticed something on the desk—a thin slab of metal and cracked glass. An ancient tablet. Miraculously, a small indicator light still pulsed a weak, dying red.
"Elara! Over here! Give me a spark of mana!" Rianor called.
Elara sprinted over, firing off a stray fireball as she went, then pressed her fingers to the tablet's charging port. Zzzzt. The screen flickered to life, displaying a distorted PROJECT LEGION logo. An automated audio log began to play through heavy static.
"...Warning... Leak in Sector 4... Subject 045 is out of control... They're consuming the scientists... DON'T LET THEM OUT! SEAL THE CITY!"
CLICK. The recording died. Rianor stared at the screen, his face as white as parchment.
"They weren't just casualties of war," Rianor whispered hoarsely. "They're victims of a man-made plague. This city was sealed from the outside to bury their failure."
Riven retreated toward Rianor, his breath ragged, the dented elevator door still clutched in his hands. "Rianor! We can't hold them forever! Their numbers are only growing!"
Rianor glanced at a holographic map that had briefly flickered on the tablet. His eyes locked onto a single red pulse: CENTRAL CONTROL TOWER.
"Power," Rianor murmured. "The city's security systems are dead because there's no juice. Riven! Look out the window!" He pointed toward the gargantuan, needle-like tower at the city's center. "We have to get there!"
"For what? A sightseeing tour?!" Riven shot back while crushing a mutant's skull with his fist.
"That's the main power hub!" Rianor explained rapidly. "If we can jumpstart the reactor, the city's automated defenses will come back online! Turrets, electric fences... they'll do the slaughtering for us!"
Riven stared at the tower, a kilometer away. The streets below were a sea of pale mutants. He had no other choice.
"Fine! We break through!" Riven hurled the elevator door at a cluster of mutants like a massive discus, bowling over five of them at once. "GARRICK! CLEAR A PATH! RHEA, GUARD RUMINA! WE'RE JUMPING THROUGH THE FAR WINDOW!"
The party charged across the office floor, plowing through the pale horde toward a glass skybridge that connected this building to the next. They sprinted across the cracking glass, while below them, thousands of mutants looked up and began to scale the bridge's pillars with the speed of cheetahs.
This was no longer a mining expedition. This was an escape from a hell whose gates had just been kicked wide open.