The revelation hung heavy in the air of the besieged communal hall. The Brood Mother wasn't just an engine of mindless destruction; it was hunting the Heartstone.
"If it reaches the Heartstone..." Elara's voice trailed off, the implication clear. Havenwood would become another Blighted ruin, its protective Aether extinguished.
"The root cellar," Martha said, her eyes narrowed in thought. "It's directly above where the old tales place the Heartstone's chamber. There's a trapdoor in the old pantry, sealed with stone and iron."
"We have to protect that entrance," Finn declared, gripping his spear. "If they're burrowing, they'll sense it too."
Kenji, despite his profound weakness, felt a new surge of adrenaline. His SAI might be crippled, but his mind was still an architect's. "We can't just defend the trapdoor. If it's burrowing, it might try to come up directly through the floor anywhere above the Heartstone's chamber." He struggled to sit up further, Lyra helping to prop him. "We need to know where the chamber is, how deep."
Elara nodded. "The old village records, those that survived the ages, speak of a small, natural cavern about ten meters down. The Heartstone rests on a pedestal within."
Ten meters. The Skitterers could burrow that far. The Brood Mother, given its size and the way it made the earth tremble, almost certainly could.
As if on cue, a new series of tremors shook the communal hall, stronger this time, more localized. Dust rained from the rafters. A section of the stone floor near the center of the hall cracked with a sharp retort.
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[SAI - System Log/Passive Scan - Degraded Mode - URGENT ALERT!]
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LOCALIZED SEISMIC ACTIVITY - INTENSIFYING!
- Epicenter: Directly beneath communal hall.
- Probable Cause: Mass burrowing activity by large entity.
BLIGHT AETHER SIGNATURE (Subterranean) - RISING SHARPLY!
- Source: Directly below floor.
- Intensity: Approaching critical levels for unshielded entities.
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"They're here! Underneath us!" a villager screamed.
Panic erupted. The defenders instinctively backed away from the cracking floor.
"Hold your positions!" Martha bellowed. "Don't let them break our formation!"
Kenji's mind raced. He had almost no Aether. His advanced scripts were useless. But he still had his analytical ability, his understanding of systems. What would be the most efficient way for the Brood Mother to access the Heartstone chamber? Not random burrowing. It would target the path of least resistance, or the point of highest Aether concentration.
"Elara," Kenji rasped, "is there any part of the cellar that is directly above the presumed location of the Heartstone itself, or any 'conduit' that the legends speak of?"
Elara thought for a moment, her brow furrowed. "The legends say the very center of the cavern, where the Stone pulses strongest. The old pantry and its trapdoor are slightly offset, built over what was considered the 'antechamber'."
The central part of the hall floor began to bulge upwards. Cracks spiderwebbed out, and the sickening sound of chitin scraping against stone could be heard.
The Brood Mother wasn't just sending Skitterers. It was attempting a direct breach, likely using its own immense power or specialized burrowing appendages. It was a gambit, a focused assault on what it perceived as the core.
"It's coming up through the center!" Finn yelled, aiming his spear at the bulging floor.
Kenji knew they couldn't fight the Brood Mother itself in these confined quarters, not in their current state. They needed to delay it, to somehow make its breach costly or redirect it. He looked around desperately. Barrels, benches, a heavy oaken table.
Structural integrity. Load distribution. The programmer in him surfaced.
"The table!" Kenji yelled, pointing to the heavy feasting table in the middle of the hall, currently pushed to one side. "Drag it over the bulge! Quickly! And pile everything heavy on top of it! We need to make it as difficult as possible for it to break through cleanly!"
It was a desperate, low-tech solution, but it was all they had. Martha, Finn, and several other villagers heaved the massive table, sliding it over the ominously cracking section of the floor. They began piling benches, sacks of grain, anything with weight, onto it.
The floor beneath the table bucked violently. A monstrous, chitinous claw, as thick as Kenji's torso, punched through the stone flags beside the table, sending shards flying with deadly force. The Brood Mother was indeed making its move.