Ever sensitive to vibrations and noises, the swarm queen was well aware of the encroaching dwarves.  They, however, did not know what hit them.  Feeling a rather vicious mood today, Clotho sped toward the source of the noises, dragonfly wings aflutter and rapier bared.  At her nigh-unmatchable speed, she was in the midst of the dwarves before most could even see her, let alone organize some endeavor at defense.  Not sacrificing even a single kilogram meter per second of momentum, Clotho went into a corkscrew dive with her rapier in front, and dove not into but [i]through[/i] the first dwarf, severing his spinal cord and bursting out the other side.  Panicked yells and wild swings of weapons did not stop her onslaught.  With expert precision, Clotho inserted her rapier's point into a vital organ before abruptly pulling it out again, removing the remains of that organ and anything in the immediate vicinity along with it, courtesy of the barbs.  

However, two of the dwarves kept their heads, the squad leader and a stalwart veteran apparently, and for a moment Clotho found herself engaged in a two-versus-one duel.  With her momentum now gone, she hovered in the air in front of the dwarves, testing out their reaction times with exploratory thrusts and quick, whipping slashes.  They both displayed a remarkable aptitude for survival, and Clotho could not help but feel a small sort of respect toward these foes.  Peeling off, she consciously allowed herself to access her adrenaline reservoir, and her image jittered before seemingly splitting apart, one of her heading left and the other right.  It was a fifty-fifty guess to which side she would be attacking, and the dwarves each chose a different direction to cover, one with a broad axe and the other with a hammer and shield.

Then Clotho's images realigned, directly above both of the diminutive humanoids' heads.  She lashed out in a dual kick, one to each hairy noggin, and one of them dropped to his knee, stunned.  The other, hearing the murmur of her wings, had moved his head to dilute a powerful strike into a glancing blow, and he swung toward Clotho's foot with his axe.  For once, the swarm queen didn't move quite fast enough, and a reddish pus thicker than blood welled from the wound.  The next instant, however, she dived down and injected him with her stinger, bringing him under her influence just as she had with the previous survivor.  Two told a more convincing tale than one, she thought, though she also hoped two would be enough; there was no more prototype toxin left.

After mercifully finishing the other dwarf with a thrust to the back of the neck, and disposing the body by dragging it into a nearby pit, she listened carefully against one of the walls.  There was a certain tremor reaching her, impossible to tell of course if it was one of her own or the enemy, but either suited her fine.  Clotho darted down the tunnel and toward the area where Xahillion lay in wait.