C. Sebastian Nutt
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Chapter 155 - The Hive: Part 5
🕑 Added 2025-04-19 18:50:19 +0000 UTCI’m not happy about it. Sorry to say, but I just plainly ain’t. When we claim one as ours, that is supposed to be respected. That is your rule.
…Yes…Yes, I understand. I’ll have to be there. I don’t care about the others. I want to see the moment she stops breathing for myself. I like those eyes.
- Ferro
This is an awful idea. A white claw the size of a bear swings down at me, its arc predictable but unstoppable. In the slowed world of the battle fever, I drift backward, letting the dangerous strike pass me by. When it crashes into the earth, the entire chamber quakes, and debris rains from the ceiling.
I can’t help but flinch at the shaking of the earth below us. This main chamber sits directly above the cavern filled with thousands of eggs. I never got to see what creeping monster lurked in the darkness below, but I imagine that it would only add more chaos to this battle.
Royal Termite Guardian<Level 104>(Rank Three)
The insect that stands taller than my barn back home shifts, two of its myriad eyes tracking me as I move through the air. It would be a beautiful beast were it not for its determination to kill me, ivory chitin covered with a complex pattern of golden markings. Its body moves like a chain, each segment of its arm aligning to power the retraction of its claw. I watch it all inside the slowed world of battle fever, feeling everything feeling sluggish, including myself, as the world moves past, taking its time.
A blow to its side rocks the monster sideways. Jor’Mari shines below, his body glowing with the light of two different essentia abilities augmenting his raw power, abilities used by those among the support staff who linger near the walls of the main chamber. I can’t even fathom how monstrously powerful his hulking arms are at the moment, but even all of that power is hardly enough to knock the royal guardian to the side before it regains its balance with three ponderous steps. The blow doesn’t even manage to break through its carapace.
Every second of the battle ticking past in slow motion confirms to me again that rank three monsters are in a different league. While the blow might not have been enough to cause injury, it does distract the royal guardian.
I dive forward, using the momentary distraction to my advantage. My hand is ablaze with barely contained fire, shining like a beacon as my open palm falls toward the monster. There is a momentary sizzle and the sensation of something wet against my skin as my slap lands on the huge eye of the monster. Then, the world alights in a fiery explosion.
The force of my attack knocks me back in the air, sending me falling head over heels toward the earth while I desperately try to stabilize. I don’t manage in time, my shoulder cracking against the stone as I roll backward. It turns out to be a lucky break, as the air and field on the left side of the creature turns into a minefield of blind attacks. On the ground, I feel the shudder of the ground beneath me as the royal guardian roars its pain, hammering empty space while trying to turn its head properly to see where I went.
I release the battle fever, feeling a wave of weakness wash over me as time begins to speed toward its normal flow. The slight injury in my shoulder scabs over the instant my healing energies are released from the siphon of maintaining that state. Still, a few seconds at a time while I duck in toward the royal guardian is all I can risk.
With my new equipment boosting my vitality considerably, I have more of a pool to play with regarding maintaining the battle fever. Still, keeping it up is draining. I have only dared to use it five times during the long and drawn-out battle, each time attacking the same spot on the monster with a point-blank explosion of dragonfire, but already, my healing resources are half-drained. If I take a real injury, I might not have enough left to shake it off.
But what was the alternative? The battle throughout the chamber has quickly turned into an overlapping conflict of dozens of soul presences. Using the black sand is entirely out of the question. Was I supposed to sit back and be useless? I simply refuse to do that.
As I jump back into the air, I see that my last strike against the royal guardian seems to have finally worked. The plating around its eye still burns as the orange and white fire burrows into the exposed flesh, and the eye I hit directly is a broken and bloody hole.
The battlefield of the main chamber spreads out before me. Here, hundreds of termites clash against the forces of the 4th army. The main chamber itself is arrayed in a circle nearly a mile across. A mound of red flesh is stacked in its center, upon which sits a huge green egg. Most of the termites within the chamber itself are middling second-rank monsters who several in the army with the abilities to displace keep corralled with barriers of magic, mental abilities, or bursts of power that scare the termites. The more powerful guardians, like the one that we faced in the tunnels before, speckle the horde, almost like captains in the way they seem able to control the tide. The largest threats by far are the three royal guardians, the massive and regal-looking termites that stayed close to the great egg, refusing to join the battle until an errant bolt of magic strayed a little too close.
The battle had proceeded fairly neatly until the lumbering monsters stomped out from their positions. Now, all is chaos. An orderly line persists at the eastern side of the chamber where the huge tunnel that most found to get here lets out, but more than half the army now finds itself in pitched battles throughout the tide of monsters.
Jor’Mari continues to attack the side and legs of the monster, trying to pull its attention back to himself, but the grievous injury stops its baleful glare from falling on anything other than me. The moment it finally manages to turn fully in my direction, the dark orbs of its eyes falling on my flying form, a sense of danger that shakes my soul stabs through me. I dodge before sensing any attack, pushing sideways in the air with all of my speed.
A cracking sound fills the air as the mandibled maw of the injured royal guardian opens its mouth wide, a white light beginning to glow inside. A part of me expects the royal guard to lob a stream of acid at me as the other termites typically have. With my ranged approach to combat, I have never had to deal with it personally. Instead, a beam of white hot energy erupts from the monster’s throat.
I fall back into the battle fever immediately, any thought of rationing my energy abandoned the second I see the attack. The column of light racing up at me is as thick around as a tree trunk, and the air around it sparks with unstable energies. I dive, pushing my wings for all they are worth as I try to score any hint of speed with my descent.
Behind me, the beam of light slams into the stone wall, disintegrating the stone as it scores a line in pursuit of me. The royal guardian is relentless in its attack, and several of the termites reach out for me as I pass by just above their heads. The frustration they feel as I soar past, dodging between their outstretched claws, is short-lived. A moment later, dozens of the monsters are reduced to ash by the burning energy pursuing me.
The slicing scythe of a guardian termites strikes upward, the protections of my equipment just barely enough to deflect the poorly angled claw. The air around me sizzles, and the world becomes a blur of color and noise as I abandon everything in the pursuit of speed. Then, it all dies away, the danger bearing down on me departed for a moment.
In the next instant, the battle fever falls away from me, the world lurching into motion once more as my healing energy fully empties. I soar above the main chamber, floating at the apex of the stone chamber, trying to still the heart pounding away in my chest, trying to hear anything over the blood thundering in my ears. A new scar decorates the chamber, a line of destruction scored into the barren stone with the flattened bodies of monsters filling the trench. The attack killed dozens of termites, mashing them into paste in the two seconds that the beam chased me.
I feel a strange serenity while floating above the chamber, the earth-bound battle raging below me somehow distant. My mind sharpens, the distraction brought on by a sudden weariness banished. The scrapes from my furious flight across the chamber begin to close, not by my own power, but by the gentle green soul presence suffusing the chamber. Our third-rank healer keeps everyone healthy, sitting on a mat at the tunnel entrance, protected by three sentries.
My attention falls back to the royal guard who attacked me. The monstrous termite thrashes, its claws scraping at a chain of huge bronze links wrapped around its head, holding its jaws closed. The links of the chain are hot enough to distort the air around it, hot enough to begin to char the nigh impenetrable chitin of the royal guard.
A man that I don’t recognize stands near the royal guard’s stamping feet, straining for all he is worth to hold the chain taught. Jor’Mari appears, running up behind the man and seizing the burning links with his hands, helping to pull as the royal guard writhes and bucks. A contest of strength begins as the two men dig their feet into the stone while the monster before them pulls on the impromptu leash. The struggle will not last long, but it doesn’t need to.
A spot on the wall of the chamber erupts as something blurs away from its perch. The object, racing at speeds surpassing anything I can manage, collides with the side of the royal guard’s head hard enough to nearly knock the beast over. There, a woman holds onto the side of its head, her body covered in viscera, her left arm gripping the lead of a lance buried five feet into the side of the royal guard’s head after having entered through the eye I destroyed just a few seconds ago. Althemia demonstrates the meaning of her conflux, cackling while a gauntleted hand cracks into the chitin, holding onto the monster while its thrashing grows more frantic.
She twists her wrist, and an explosion of power thrums through the chamber, the lance in her hand the origin. The royal guard stumbles for another moment before it starts to sag, falling forward onto the ground and crushing two termites who didn’t manage to get out of the way in time. Althemia rides the corpse of the monster to the ground, pulling her weapon free only after the spasming stills, a fountain of gore and viscera spilling from the wound a moment later.
You have defeated Royal Termite Guardian<Level 104>
THRESHOLD FOR SOUL REINFORCEMENT REACHED!
After nearly twenty minutes of struggle, we have finally managed to kill the second of the royal guardians. Despite the deep desire to stop for a moment, to recover my breath, I know I can’t. Not even a dozen seconds pass before termites begin to climb over the fallen body of the royal guardian, swarming as they scurry toward the exhausted fighters on the ground. Jor’Mari kneels on the ground next to the man with the chain, his lungs working like a bellows as he stares down at his hands, watching as the skin slowly knits itself together. Althemia takes a position in front of the struggling men, her lance dismissed into a cloud of white light, a shield and sword made from bone and scale appearing in her hands.
The body of the royal guardian evaporates into pink smoke, spilling the termites crawling over it out onto the stone. Just a moment later, a ball of condensed orange and white fire explodes amidst the disoriented insects. More bolts of dragonfire follow on behind the first, each explosion doing little to harm the insects directly. The dragonfire infused with the growth affix clings to the creatures, however, spreading over the ground as if consuming the stone for fuel, whipping into an uncontrolled wildfire.
This is the first opportunity that I’ve had to let the fire rage out of control. It is the only way I can think to protect the people down on the battlefield while the layers of auras spread throughout the chamber suppress my greatest weapon. The conflagration continues to grow, rising into the air and sticking to the termites moving within it. The out-of-control fire is already too much for anyone in the army to approach safely, and the monsters moving inside its bright flames find themselves blinded as their carapaces begin to steadily rise in temperature. Spurts of acid fire up at me from the ground, but hovering near the apex of the chamber, none have the reach to even come close.
A full minute of firing full-charged bolts passes before the first monster succumbs to the dragonfire. The termite, already injured from some other battle, falls to the side within the writing flames, struggling to rise and eventually failing to. My mana steadily drops as I finish setting the area of the chamber alight, my display of power not even covering a tenth of the enormous room. The climbing wall of fire forms a wall with the left side of the 4th army’s entry into the chaotic underground battlefield, offering a bit of relief as people deal with the isolated termites nearby, pulling back from the ground where we managed to bring down the second royal guardian.
Jor’Mari is among those pulling back. He supports another fighter as they struggle back to the line of fighters protecting the support staff, Althemia watching their backs as they go. I want to join them, but there is still one more royal guardian in the chamber. Without any lingering injuries, I can’t bring myself to take a break.
A slight incline rises in front of me as I fly through the chamber toward the last of the royal guardians. It fights with ten adventurers at the top of the rise in the center of the room, protecting the pile of flesh and the egg sitting upon it. More and more sprays of acid begin to reach high enough to force me to dodge as I near the mound. Burning lines of pain splash against my wings as I put on speed, but I ignore them, allowing the rush of air to scrape clean the red scales. A ball of fire begins to condense in my hand.
The royal guard swings down at a man carrying a massive slab of steel between his two hands like a shield, the impact powerful enough to ring through the whole chamber. The man is driven to a knee, but he does not buckle beneath the strike. Men and women continue to hammer at the colossus of white and gold, two of my friends among them.
I do not wait for an opening as I burn across the air. With my healing energies gone, the battle fever is gone to me, and with it also goes the ability to perfectly plan and time an attack. My burning fist collides with the side of the monster’s head. The snap of bones breaking rattles up my arm the instant before the ball of fire in my hand explodes. The burst of magic is titanic, far more poured into that single strike than any dragonfire bolt I have managed before.
My body falls toward the sea of termites leering up at me as the royal guardian rocks the other direction. The monster releases a warbling groan as it falls to the ground, a smoking ruin in the side of its head bleeding from where the chitin is broken. I land among the mill of monsters just a moment later, my shoulder bouncing off the armored plating of a termite as I crash into the ground. The wan light suffusing the chamber is swallowed by the press of bodies above me.
Something sharp stabs into my thigh, making me cry out as I am pinned to the ground. Crushing mandibles seize one of my wings, yanking at it like a dog with a rope, trying to rip the appendage out of my back. More stab into the stretching membrane of my other wing, and I realize through the pain that the spears of black chitin are the legs of the termites. My body jerks as the one pulling on my wing continues to wrench. The agony where the termites hold my body speared through, pinned to the ground beneath their hideous bulk, turns to fire with each tug.
Panic breaks through my shield of confidence as a claw rakes across my spider silk shirt: once, twice, three times, unable to penetrate the fabrics but breaking ribs and bruising flesh with each collision. The air grows tight, and the sky overhead grows dim.
Dragonfire erupts out of every pore of my being. The sudden flash of light reflects off the dozens of eyes staring down at me with malice. For an instant, the termites reel back, afraid of the sudden flash. I don’t give them time to recover, throwing all the mana I can spare at the creatures standing over me in a delirious frenzy. A gout of flame bursts from my throat and hands as I spray wildly, the flesh and scale of my wings ripping as I pull at my own flesh, trying to get out from beneath the creatures pinning me.
The world becomes an inferno; pain and panic cloud out all thought. I scream my fury at the beasts around me, trying to push them back, trying to burn them away.
I don’t know how long my rampage lasts. I become aware of a pressure on my chest. I try to move, but find myself held in place. There is a sound, a soft whispering in my ear in a language I don’t understand. Somehow, the fire in my mind starts to pull away, and the weariness of my body overtakes the pain. My legs fold, but the weight holding me tight won’t let me drop.
“You’re okay,” Jess whispers, keeping me up as she holds me tight. “You’re okay. It is going to be okay.”
Beyond her, I see a mess of ruined and scorched flesh all around me, smoke still snaking up from the burned plates of chitin. Past even that, the body of the final royal guardian lies still on the ground, its head fully severed from its body, ropes and other bindings pinning the legs of the corpse to the ground.
“You’re going to get blood on you,” I say to Jess.
“I’ll live.”
Despite my protests, she takes me back to the healers and forces me to rest on a mat. With the only rank-three monsters in the chamber dead, the 4th army transitions into a tempo it has learned from the last few days of fighting. The danger has by no means passed, and the sounds of heated battle continue to ring through the main chamber, but our force slowly begins to conquer the chaos of the battlefield.
I stare up at the dark ceiling overhead, listening to the rage of the battle less than a hundred feet away, suffering the ministrations of a healer. Even the healers know my wounds aren’t that bad; I would have recovered from them without outside help.
The earth continues to shake as I find myself almost drifting out of my own body. The sounds around me could never be relaxing, but my bone-tiredness almost forces me to relax. I feel warmth on my hand. Turning my head, I find Jor’Mari lying next to me on a mat of his own, his left hand done up in a bandage, his right in mine, the bandage lying discarded on the floor. We don’t share any words, and somehow that is the best part. Our little moment does not stop the ground from shaking, nor does it stop the cries of fighters suffering blows and near-mortal wounds in the distance, but it makes it just a bit more bearable, like something I can withstand.
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