Location:Outer Ring, Vel'thari Containment — All fronts
Date/Time:Flamefade–Emberwane, 9942 AZI — Day 340-345
Realm:Lower Realm, Doha
It took the Praetorians five days to cross ground a Ravager could have run in one.
They were too large for the tunnels they were walking through. That was the whole of it. Every narrow section had to be widened by the creature standing in it, cathedral chitin grinding against stone until the stone gave way, and the army behind them had to wait while they did it.
So the perimeter listened to them coming for five days.
That was worse than the fighting. The Siegebreakers kept up their bombardment. The Ravagers kept feeding into the corridors. And underneath it all, every hour of every day, the footsteps — closer, spaced, patient — while sixteen hundred soldiers went about the business of reloading crossbows and hauling corpses and eating cold rations with the sound of their own ending walking toward them through the rock.
