Who can say, truly, how many termites were defeated, down in the dark? Amongst the roots of the world tree we hunted and were hunted in turn. The fighting was vicious, brutal in the extreme. In some ways it was a good thing that our non-monster allies were unable to join us, despite the enormous help their auras would have …

The grind of an ongoing melee was a very different type of combat than the thrilling and domineering charge of the Immortals. The mass that had propelled them through the ranks of the enemy now bore down on their back. Leeroy welcomed it. It had taken her a long time to grow accustomed to fighting with a second shell, but …

It was almost as if Leeroy had died and entered some sort of paradise. Except, frustratingly, she still clung to her mortal shell, along with the other Immortals. Despite this, she revelled in her current existence. The release she sought, the glorious end she strove to experience, had never felt as close as it did now. As she strode back …

Damn termites. What the hell are those ka’armodo doing over there? They seem to pop out reinforcements just as fast as we kill them. I refuse to believe they can spit out tier four and five monsters so quickly without incurring some kind of cost. After all, the Colony has been doing this for months and have honed the process …

In the first place, what does it mean to be a monster? It’s a question that has special significance on Pangera, a world under constant threat from monster attacks. Whilst the sapient races of the planet are fully capable of monstrous acts, visiting great violence upon each other for petty or worthy reasons, the term exclusively refers to those who …

“Well, isn’t this the plops.” Isaac Bird looked out over the vast, smoke filled expanse of the third stratum and sighed. After his first trip here, he wasn’t sure he’d ever be back, and yet here he was, back fighting alongside an increasingly fanatic band of mostly human ant worshipers. His first battle in the demon layer had been a …

From the floor of the third stratum, four giant pillars were rising. Compressed stone, marked with grooves, rotated upward from an enormous base of gathered material. Around the base of each laboured a thousand earth mages, combining their will to enable the great working, shifting thousands of tons of rock with their minds alone. Hundreds of metres above, lashed with …

Death. “Minerva, you’re gripping too tight.” “Oh, damn.” The pressure eased just enough for Morrelia to gasp down a breath of air. The darkness receded long enough for her to raise her hands and pat her mother on the back. “Nice to see you too, mother,” she rasped. “Aww, it’s great to see you too kid.” With one final bone …

“She did what?” “She cut ties between the Legion and the Ka’armodo, completely.” Titus nodded with a satisfied expression on his face as he confirmed the news whereas Morrelia could only sigh and bury her face in her hands. “Isn’t that, a bit, extreme?” she pleaded with her father. “Isn’t everyone worried about a second cataclysm? Isn’t the Legion being …

My father, and even at this early juncture I must apologise for every one of my writings circling back to the man who raised me, was the first to ever mention the fifth stratum to me. He described it as a world of endless and profound noxiousness. A place where every particle of substance that filled it had been bio-engineered …