Chapter Eight
Reve began spinning like a tornado and she took her sawblades with her.
Her wings spread straight out from her body, and she was obviously using her telekinesis to remain in the air.
The Avatar of Life rose until she was almost touching the bugs above her.
At the apex of her flight, Reve threw her hands up and her four iron disks flew vertically into the bellies of the goliath scorpions, then she twisted her wrists and the blades flattened and began rotating around each other.
The sudden realignment mangled the bodies the blades had been carving into, and then Reve swept her arms out to either side; a wave of telekinetic force blasted up and outward from her to send the shredded bodies flying.
Suddenly Vester could see the glowing crystals on the cavern ceiling once more, and then Reve was flapping her wings and rising up through the breach.
Kora charged the wall of monsters, her head ducked behind her tower shield—and just before she impacted, she threw up an elemental wall of fire.
The dome of flames roared into being, and then she triggered an air burst on her shield bash.
The combination of moving air and crackling flames sent an inferno blasting out from her position.
Li Ra took advantage of the broken formation to begin sniping the larger beasts Kora had exposed.
Vester canceled his Labyrinth Wards and placed them in a path leading out from Kora’s point of impact. Dent and Ripper waded into the mass of collapsing goliath scorpions without a hint of mercy: serrated whips, claws, hammer, and ax rhythmically destroying the huge arachnids.
Kora let Dent go past and dismissed her shield to draw her second scimitar.
One blade gleamed orange with an edge of flames while the other crackled with a line of lightning.
The look of joy on her face was reflected back at Vester off the surface of her weapons—then she dove after Dent and into the mass of bugs.
“Gods damn it,” Vester hissed at the sight of his lover vanishing under a pile of giant scorpions.
He raced after her and his cane snapped out as he poked the tip against the faces of the largest creatures.
Deprivation Cage stole their awareness of the world and the monsters went mad.
Their huge, thrashing forms tumbled through the smaller swarmers and completely broke the original cohesion.
Vester wasn’t sure why the swarmers immediately treated isolated soldiers like the enemy, but every time the smaller scorpions killed one of the panicking giants, he felt that use of Deprivation Cage return to him.
There was still a cooldown that prevented him from recasting it continually, but the bugs weren’t slaughtering his targets fast enough for that to be an issue.
It wasn’t easy dodging claws, tails, and pincers while trying to hit specific creatures with his cane, and Vester felt his uniform tear from the blows he couldn’t escape cleanly.
So, he cast Phantom Form. His body went intangible, and he grinned to realize he could still use Deprivation Cage while passing through a soldier.
But the mana cost of having the swarm passing through his intangible body was brutal.
He’d have run out of mana in seconds if it wasn’t for the discount on Trickster’s Cane.
Even with that reduction he still lost energy fast enough to rival their fall from the cliff.
He focused on moving through the swarm and was surprised to find himself on the other side of the chitinous wall a few seconds later.
The collapsing dome of arachnids was a thin layer of living monsters surrounded by an army of corpses.
The queen, a massive scorpion the size of a house, was hunched over a stone column as she lifted dead scorpions to her jaws and devoured them. She had no stinger, no venomous tail, just a bloated backside that spasmed and belched out wet scorpions that visibly matured before Vester’s eyes.
Reve was attempting to dive toward the queen, but he saw that the columns around that beast were covered in goliath soldiers, which were shooting a continual stream of webbing to form a mesh above their matriarch.
Every time Reve started to cut through, she had to dodge jumping arachnids to avoid getting tangled in their traps.
Kora, Dent, and Ripper weren’t having much better luck.
The trio was surrounded by more soldiers, and it was only the constant bursts of flame from Kora that kept them from being overwhelmed.
Li Ra was doing her best to snipe the scorpions, but Vester could tell she was struggling to get a good angle to cover Kora.
I could go back into the Sanctuary and build Li a firing platform, he thought. With more altitude, she might be able to snipe the queen. But Kora could get overrun before we get the right shot lined up…
When he remembered how the scorpions had reacted to Deprivation Cage, another idea hit Vester. He ran toward the queen at full speed, trusting his intangible body. Soldiers crashed down around him, draining his mana further, but none of them had a high-enough magical density to block his passage.
The queen fired a line of webbing in his path, but Vester ran through it without a second though.
That proved to be a mistake, because the silk sliced his left leg off at the knee and sent Vester tumbling.
He rolled right through a slim column of stone and very nearly lost his head to another silk thread.
He halted his roll and felt the magic contained in that line thrumming against his neck.
Vester found his sense of pain was fully active despite his body being a phantasm, and he had to grit his teeth to avoid screaming.
He threw himself to the right and rolled across the ground, avoiding the queen’s pincer when it slammed down where he’d been.
The stone beneath that claw shattered to fragments, which was when Vester finally spotted the dim glow of mana coating the queen’s chitin.
Clearly she has plenty of mana to count as a magical material, he thought while shaking his head in an attempt to clear it.
She adjusted her position, legs hammering the ground to move her bulk, and Vester was forced to dart between the pillar-like legs.
If she had been any smarter, his plan might not have worked.
Because while dodging legs, Vester had realized that he didn’t need to get close enough to her body to hit something vital.
She was putting herself in touching distance every time she tried to impale him on a leg—his cane clicked when he touched it against the hairy limb, and then the queen went berserk.
Deprivation Cage triggered and the response from the swarm was immediately.
Every swarmer and soldier froze, and one by one the arachnids turned toward their queen.
The behemoth was smashing against the rocky pillars surrounding her, and her own bulk stripped away all the webbing her soldiers had put down to protect her.
Ichor exploded into the air while she stomped through the freshly spawned monsters she’d been birthing.
The queen clearly had no grasp of what was happening around her.
She never saw, or felt, her swarm turn on her.
The surviving swarmers and soldiers were soon all over her, trying to tear her apart.
Their stingers rose and fell, the dull thuds of barbs hitting chitin reminding Vester of someone trying to chop down a tree.
It was like the swarm had completely forgotten he and his Party existed. The monsters were completely focused on trying to take down their titanic matriarch, who killed dozens of them unintentionally, just rolling and thrashing, her weight shattering their bodies.
“What did you do?” Reve asked, coming in for a landing beside him. Vester released Phantom Form and took a deep breath, realizing he hadn’t felt air move into his lungs since he’d activated the power. It was a creepy sensation.
“Deprivation Cage,” he answered, glancing between Reve and the struggling queen. “I noticed that the swarm kept killing the soldiers when I isolated them, so I thought it was worth a shot to see if they’d turn on the queen too.”
Kora and Li Ra joined them, the oni breathing hard from jogging out to reach them at the foot of a larger stone column.
“They likely have some kind of hivemind,” Li Ra offered once she’d stopped panting.
“More-powerful insect creatures often have deep connections, sharing senses, and strong protective instincts meant to keep anything from infiltrating their colonies. I’d wager your spell disrupts that and makes them think the broken link is an enemy. ”
Reve nodded like that made sense, so Vester just shrugged. “Good-enough explanation for me,” he said. “Anyone badly hurt?” he asked.
Reve had more than a few cuts along her right side; her metal limbs had held up fine, but something had taken a few bites out of the flesh and blood. Kora had blood along one side of her face and was squeezing her eye shut, but she didn’t look too bad. For some reason, they were all staring at him.
“What?” he asked, finally unable to hold the question back. “Why are you all giving me that look?”
“Vester,” Li said, motioning toward his feet, “you’re missing a leg.” When he looked down, he remembered the flash of pain he’d felt when he passed over the queen’s silk. He’d registered the injury, then been too busy to really do anything about it.
“Oh, well… that happens sometimes,” he offered with a wave of his hand.
Kora wrapped an arm around his waist, and he realized how much subconscious work he’d been doing to remain balanced on one foot.
“But now I know what the dangers are for trying to pass through a highly magical material while in Phantom Form. Bad things happen.”
“Let’s get you back into the Sanctuary and tell Krysta she has a patient,” Kora said with an exasperated shake of her head. “And because you figured out a fast way to kill these swarms, well, we won’t tell her you forgot you lost a foot.”
Vester considered that for a moment, then he considered how Krysta would react if she knew he had been so cavalier that he hadn’t really considered his own partial dismemberment as a big deal.
Yeah, she would definitely have strong opinions about my lack of self-care, he thought. “I’ll take that,” he agreed. “And you have my thanks.”
“I’ll start looting,” Li Ra said, while Reve announced she would scout from above and ensure a new swarm didn’t come across them without warning.
Vester nodded, then allowed Kora to lead him into the Sanctuary.
They passed Skylar, who was digging the golem cores for one of her puppets out of a scorpion’s stomach.
Why in the hell would giant scorpions try to eat a golem?
Maybe the cores? Do the monsters benefit from swallowing magical stuff?
The look on Skylar’s face suggested the next swarm they ran into was going to be in for a bad time if she had anything to say about it.
When they got past the carcasses and back to the Sanctuary, Vester grimaced.
Now that he wasn’t worried about being buried under giant bugs, he couldn’t help but register the foul smell of the scorpion ichor all over the ground.
The slime on the stones was so thick Kora had to lift him to carry him over the worst of it.
“Does this make you a princess?” Kora asked him out of nowhere while supporting his neck and legs with her arms.
“What?” Vester said, confused. “Does what make me a princess?”
Kora bounced him a little, signaling she was referring to how she’d lifted him. “You called this a princess carry once when we were watching one of your Earth movies. Does my carrying you make you the princess in this situation?”
Vester opened his mouth, more than aware he was likely going to lose no matter what he said, when salvation came in the form of a scolding.
“What happened to your leg!” Krysta shouted. “I thought you were going to be more careful! How did you let one of those big bugs snip your leg off at the knee? Look at you! Did none of you think to put a wrap on that? Vester! You’re still bleeding!”
Krysta yanked him out of Kora’s arms with a fierce look, then practically tossed him into her tent.
She seemed to remember she didn’t want to hurt him at the last minute, and it was only her huge tail that let her balance her movements so she didn’t fall on top of him.
But the awkward half-fall did leave her hovering above him while she struggled to keep from stumbling further.
Which meant it was the perfect moment for Vester to steal a kiss. “Love you too,” he said gently. “Now, before you start yelling more, I really was being careful. The queen was a lot more powerful than the rest of the swarm, and I managed to avoid almost every attack—almost. Take pity on me?”
He doubted his attempt at looking cute worked, though whatever Krysta saw convinced her to relax. She sighed at him, kissed his forehead, then shifted to kneel at his side. Once she had her hands on his chest, she began pouring energy into his body to heal his wounds.
“I suppose…” she conceded, then she glanced over her shoulder at Kora. “But don’t think you’re getting away until I’ve inspected that eye! I can see the way you’re keeping it closed. Sit down, you’re next.”
Vester opened his mouth, intending to point out that Krysta should mend Kora first, but he snapped his mouth closed when he saw the expression on the pandali’s face.
Nope, I choose life. She hates seeing me hurt, and I’m missing a foot.
Kora would have said something if her wound was life threatening, and this’ll make Krysta feel better.
I’ll let her have this and avoid having her annoyed with me.
Win-fucking-win.
Vester was sure the kitsune couldn’t know what he was thinking, but he swore he heard Kora snort in amusement while she moved to sit at the edge of the tent opening.
She pulled a brush out of her storage and began cleaning ichor out of her tails.
Her milky gaze was watching his face, and the tiny smile on her lips made him think she’d gotten a lot of enjoyment out of listening to Krysta yell at him.
Everyone says they want a harem, he mused, but they never stop to consider what happens when the ladies learn to play off each other.
Serenity is knowing your ladies well enough to know when to let them fuss, because they love me just as much as I love them…
Gods know I’d lose my shit if they got seriously hurt.