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Chapter 93 - Ants
🕑 Added 2024-07-15 17:00:08 +0000 UTCAfter healing the light damage done to Juliana’s eardrums, Emily gently wipes the blood from her face before moving quickly between her friends and healing them too.
Damn, that used more mana than I expected. It feels like I’m wasting a lot to heal people. Do I need a better understanding of the human body to heal more efficiently? It couldn’t hurt.
Emily adds a reminder to her notes while turning away from Ivor, the last to be healed. She approaches the dead bodies of their attackers under the light of her bird, hovering in the air in the centre of the small cavern.
The creatures are large, with a wingspan slightly bigger than Emily’s, and a lithe torso the size of her forearm. They’re hairless, with grey, stone-like skin stretched thin from their sides to the small claws at the ends of their wings.
“Screamers,” Emily mutters, walking beside Tom who’s poking one with a knife.
“Their skin is hard,” he says. “Do we want any bits?”
“Only their voice boxes. Don’t worry, I’ll deal with these ones. They’re much harder to harvest.”
Tom nods as the group spreads across the cavern to set up camp while Emily presses an extra button and tosses the barrier disc into the air, letting the anchors burrow into the surrounding rock. The moment it sets up, a sound barrier wraps the cavern, and the disk lights up with a warm glow, giving off a calming light.
Emily’s bird lands on her head, and she pulls off the light pack, switching it with a thermal pack, before sending her scout to sit on a cable in front of the exit.
Dante sets up a campfire at the same time, which Emily drops down next to to start butchering her screamers. She pulls a small knife from her belt and channels machina into it. The energy crackles along the blade, sharpening it as she lowers it to the top of the first corpse’s neck.
She slips the blade in beneath its jaw and slides it along, splitting the stone skin open to reveal the raw flesh beneath. She cuts away at the muscle and sinew, quickly locating the screamer’s larynx and pulling it out. She summons a spare jar and drops the bloody organic matter in, before tossing the harvested body to the side.
She repeats this five more times as her friends finish setting out sleeping bags and join her and Dante around the fire. They eat and chat as usual, before turning in for the night, leaving Emily and Juliana together on watch, under the dim light of the barrier disc.
Emily glances over at Juliana’s weaving, seeing her pull out a few dried flower petals and lay them on top of a wind-imbued rune twisted into the weave.
“What are you making?” she asks curiously.
“Nothing,” Juliana responds, quickly covering the rune with her hands and turning a pleading gaze on Emily. “Don’t peek.”
Emily raises a brow, but after a few seconds of puppy dog eyes she chuckles and looks away.
“Fine, keep your secrets.”
***
The next day, they continue heading through the tunnels towards the lake, this time with Emily using infra-sight just in case. Midway through the morning, Emily spots a three-way split in the path ahead through her spider.
“Tsk,” she clicks her tongue in irritation.
“What’s wrong?” Juliana asks with concern, the rest of their friends tensing up at Emily’s sudden exclamation.
“Don’t worry,” Emily says, noticing their tension. “It’s nothing major. It’s just the tunnels have changed. There’s a three-way split in the path ahead where I was expecting two, and I no longer know if we’re heading in the right direction.”
“What does that mean then?” Tom asks, relaxing.
“Nothing much. Just that we need to navigate blind from now on,” Emily answers, shrugging off the minor setback. “Besides, it may not make much of a difference, since I don’t know how much the tunnels have shifted.”
They catch up to her spider shortly, and Emily chooses the left route, keeping as close to their original path as possible. They keep winding deeper into the earth, killing off the cave-dwelling creatures that block their path and harvesting a few herbs in their way.
At just gone midday, a little after Emily was expecting them to reach the luminis layer, they stop in front of a split in their path branching off at a jaunty angle. Emily pauses uncharacteristically as they reach the split.
“Why are we stopping?” Enzo asks, confused when Emily doesn’t plow on ahead as at most junctions.
“I spotted some movement down this tunnel so I’m sending a scout in to check if there’s anything interesting before we move on,” Emily explains, keeping her focus on the connection with the spider skittering off into the darkness.
The images being transferred to her, created from the spider’s scans, suddenly expand. The narrow tunnel containing a few wandering bugs opens to a wide open cavern with a writhing mass of movement in the centre, distorting into a blur she can’t distinguish.
Hello there. Looks like there’s a gathering of beasts. Maybe a nest? I’ll have to get a closer look. It seems like something is interfering with my detection.
Emily turns her attention back to her friends, looking at them with an excited grin.
“I think we found a nest.”
Her friends start in surprise, with various reactions from nervousness to excitement.
“Is it big?” Juliana asks tentatively, being reinforced by an exaggerated nod from Dante.
“I’m not too sure, something is interfering with my detection spell so I need to take a closer look to know. But, there are quite a few bugs in the tunnel to get there, so I expect so. Keep quiet until we know what we’re up against. We may be able to surprise them.”
Emily marches forwards, followed closely by her friends, who begin chanting as they step off their original path. Flying lightning forms around Emily’s right arm as she pulls out the Spitter with the other, screwing the silencer into place.
The familiar clicking of chitin on rock soon reaches them, before the first inhabitants of the tunnel come into view. Three, metre-long ants charge into the light, coming straight towards the group.
With a flick of Emily’s wrist, a silver light flashes before her, wrapping around the front two ants before ripping them to pieces after a sharp yank. Juliana throws a spell over Emily’s shoulder with a light gesture, cracking the final ant’s exoskeleton and slicing a gash into its side, halting it in its advance. Emily fires a burst into the final ant’s head the moment it stops, killing it before it can make a sound.
Without stopping to harvest the bodies, Emily continues forwards, forcing her friends to follow on high alert. Emily spares the corpses a quick glance on the way past, quickly identifying the creatures.
Burrower ants? I didn’t think we’d run into these guys outside of a desert.
“It’s burrower ants. Don’t worry about making noise, they’ll already know we’re here now,” Emily alerts her friends, to Dante’s glee.
Four more ants charge out of the darkness towards them as they advance. Emily sends out flying lightning again, this time impaling the front ant clean through the head. She points the Spitter at the next ant, flicking it into burst, injecting a small amount of machina, and squeezing the trigger. Three rounds burst out in a near perfect line, the first cracking the ant’s exoskeleton, the second boring a hole into its head, and the third tearing clean through its torso and out its back, dropping it instantly.
She whips back flying lightning and turns her barrel on another target, but a twisting projectile of fire flies past, digging into its head and setting it alight. At the same time, a blade of water cuts into the the last uninjured ant. Emily grins at her friends’ coordination, flicking the Spitter into single fire and shooting a finisher into the burning ant in sync with Tom doing the same to Hester’s target.
“Good job,” Emily praises them, lowering her weapons and moving on.
Tom and Hester quietly fist bump each other behind her, drawing a laugh from Dante and Enzo as they prepare more spells. They walk deeper into the tunnel, closing in on the supposed nest and killing a few more scouts.
The nest enters Emily’s magical perception before they turn the corner to face it, and an excited shiver runs down her spine.
“It’s a nest alright,” she mutters, feeling over a hundred inhuman magic signatures gathered together in organised formations around a pulsing mass of mana. “They’re set up for a siege, and appear to be guarding a vein of mana crystals. Hester, barriers please. Everyone else, prepare for a full force assault.”
They pause for a moment to prepare, their adversaries already waiting, motionless, for them to approach. Emily reaches up and taps the light pack on her bird’s chest, sending a burst of mana into it to temporarily overload the spell.
This should light up the whole cavern. I’ll need to swap out light packs and recharge this one later though.
The field of light around them quickly grows, filling the entire tunnel and revealing the final sharp turn before the group will be exposed to the ants. Emily draws back the spider from a nearby wall, walking it up her leg and into a waiting hand before collapsing it down and sending it into her storage again.
She next starts preparing spells, dismissing flying lightning and kicking all of her cores into gear. Mana explodes out of her, giving her nearby friends a sense of danger as a dense pressure pushes down on them, before twisting into a swirling mass of runes as several magic circles form around each other, carefully positioned to not cause interference.
Orange, white, blue, and silver mix together in a beautiful blend of colours. Arc forms a contained, crackling orb of lightning over one of Emily’s shoulders, as fireball forms a swirling orb of flames over the other. Her skin crackles with lightning as mana seeps into her muscles, enhancing her speed, and the final silver circle freezes uncompleted, waiting to throw up protections with a moment’s notice.
With infra-sight still active to assist in differentiating targets, Emily turns back to flash her friends a confident smile.
“Let’s go crush some ants.”
Her friends smile back, even Juliana and Tom giving confident nods as they steel themselves for the coming battle. Emily continues down the tunnel, quickly turning the corner and seeing the narrow pathway start to open up.
She immediately sees a wide open cavern, filled to the brim with burrower ants. They’re standing in rows, some on the floor, and some clinging to the walls and ceiling.
In the centre of their neat rows stands tall a large structure of rock and dirt, the nest, with several holes spilling ants into the surrounding cave. Emily feels waves of earth attributed mana emanating from within the nest, causing the smile on her face to grow.
Jackpot.
The moment they spot the ants, the ants also see them. A flood of noise hits them as they step into the cavern and half of the ants, those close to the nest, start clacking their mandibles together angrily, mana bubbling from them all to wrap their nest. The cavern shakes as thick walls of rock extend from the floor and ceiling, stretching to join in the middle and completely seal off the nest with half the ants behind it.
Emily points forward the moment she sees the barrier forming, sending her fireball flying forwards in a spiral of flames. The spell bursts against the rock wall, cracking it and flinging fire into the nearby ants, scorching their exoskeletons and ripping a few close to the detonation to pieces. However, the wall stands strong, the cracks quickly shrinking as more mana is supplied. The injured ants scream in anguish, signalling a full charge.
“Kill everything in sight!” Emily calls, sending her bird up to the roof of the cavern to illuminate the space fully, and sending arc’s orb forwards while releasing her hold over it. “Leave the wall to me.”
Her orb of lightning crackles, sending out whips of plasma to lacerate the flood of bodies coming towards them. Hester casts her spell, wrapping their whole group in a large bubble of water just in time as the tide of ants smashes into it.
Ripples spread across the barrier and Hester grunts in exertion as she pours more mana into the spell, but it holds fast. Blades of wind and fire fly out, slicing into the mass of bodies, drawing blood and severing limbs. A few heavy rocks fly up, leaving the top of the barrier before landing on the ants in front of them, crushing their bodies flat. Tom tries shooting the armoured ants, cracking a few exoskeletons, but otherwise achieving little.
Arc fires off rapidly, shocking dozens of ants and slowing their advance. In response to the assault, the ants at the front of the group clack their mandibles, gathering mana and forming jagged jaws of rock to armour their faces and enhance their attacks. They charge forward, biting at the barrier and weakening it, ignoring the incoming spells to inflict as much damage as possible.
The ants behind them, protected from the worst of the group’s spells, clack out a rhythm together. Mana collects in their mouths, forming into a viscous mud. A few tendrils of lightning flick out, hitting the casting ants and interrupting them, but the majority of the spell is blocked by the armoured front beasts.
Emily begins casting at the same time, spinning together another spell using fire, metal, and light. She notices the ants preparing an attack and ignores them, firing a few bullets into them while trusting her secondary core to use the defensive spell already prepared. The runes, forming a complicated tri-element matrix around her, pulse with power, gathering dense mana into a glistening bow and arrow, a third circle version of her blazing arrow of light.
The ants release their attack, sending a deluge of mud towards them that flows around the ants up ahead before smashing against Hester’s barrier, shattering it and threatening to engulf their group.
“Shit, Enzo!” Hester winces and cries in panic, hoping for another barrier.
Instead, silver mana flows from the glittering magic circle waiting behind Emily. It quickly solidifies into a wall of shining metal that blocks the flood of mud in its tracks. Harsh screeching rings out as the ants on the other side slam their rock covered jaws into the metal, trying to pull it apart to no avail.
Emily’s friends freeze and turn to look at her, unable to keep casting spells with their targets blocked.
“It’s a bit basic,” Emily admits shamelessly, even as their attention is drawn to the extravagant bow and arrow hovering above her. “It’s the simplest third circle metal defence spell I could come up with. A thick wall that my allies can’t even see through.”
“How are you meant to shoot that thing with a wall in the way?” Tom asks, gazing up at the bow and arrow in awe.
Emily points forwards with a smug grin, opening a small window in the metal wall and releasing the heavy metal arrow above her. With an explosion of sound and mana, the arrow rockets out, drawing a straight line through the battlefield and into the defensive wall covering the nest.
The wall bursts as the arrow impacts, shattering into pieces, and Emily quickly disperses the arrow before it can destroy the nest and whatever’s kept inside. The ants behind the barrier cry out in pain as the spell explodes, spreading fire, molten metal, and burning light.
Emily flicks her wrist, grasping arc and rapidly twisting it into arc-bolt. The orb compresses before sending a violent snake of power through the front attackers with a loud roar, vaporising the mud it passes through. Tens of metres in front of their group are cleared in an instant, the ants dropping dead quickly as Emily lowers her barrier, relieving herself of the mana draw.
“Like that,” Emily finally answers Tom’s question.
