NOVEL NEXT AF Chapter 14 – What Waits Within Where?
I didn’t even have Arcane Theurge Levels yet, tying my Wizardry to Sorcery, and which would’ve allowed the incoming mana to regenerate my spent Web. It sucked, but I could get the spell back, so I wasn’t worried.
The Natural Armor boost from that little blue Runestone had faded with the dawn, so I hit it again to refresh it. Likewise, my Force Armor, Force Disk, and Mana Renewal had gone down with the dawn, so I had tied them off to auto-renew, and Meditated until I drew in the mana to pay for them.
The additional investment in Meditation was small but noticeable, and would only get better with time.
I didn’t want anything behind me to worry about. I was certain that at some point the olthoi would follow after those who came before them, but the ‘alarm’ that should have spread with their deaths via pheromones had been cleaned away by the vivus. I didn’t know how long I had, but hopefully it was long enough.
I had to find out what that thrumming was and get rid of it if it was dangerous, which it doubtless was.
---
The obstructing mound built atop some stacked tailings had collapsed from within and left the upper half of the passageway on the other side mostly clear. The bones were Burning still, and there were minor trinkets among them I pulled out and stacked onto my Disk with Sift and Minor TK.
I definitely wasn’t going to scramble over the mess and alert whatever was on the far side. Instead I just laid down atop the stuff on my Disk and let it float serenely over the stones, staying close to the wall and just squeezing through as it made a juking turn, where I could look into the room beyond.
Uh-huh. My eyes got a little wide as I winced, and then I pursed my lips.
There were a dozen wasps hovering in midair, wings beating with a combined thrummmm tirelessly, just holding position and sitting there. Around them, half a dozen other, similar wasps were moving in and out of a hive taking up a quarter of the room, leading up towards a broken or cracked window at the top of the room that looked just big enough to admit one of them, and was letting in some scattered light to the otherwise dark room.
The stacked tailings were stacked up just high enough that the wasps couldn’t fly through.
Red Phyntos Wasp, the Assay said. Only an 8 for a challenge, with 35 health. Quick kills.
But if they were spawns set here guarding a real Wasp nest, that meant they were an unending series of defenders repeatedly popping to kill anything that wasn’t a Red Phyntos Wasp in this nest.
The vivic mist hadn’t gotten into here yet, but I was obviously going to need it to shut down the Summons.
More pointedly, they should all go down with just the Kicker damage on a surprise attack. However, I’d need to vivify the corpses on the ground.
Shouldn’t need to juice my Shards for this. Actually, this should be like shooting ducks. I just needed to get the second volley up really fast...
I looked out there just enough to mark my first eight targets, put my wand against the corner, and hissed out the word to launch straight Shards.
They flashed out in full weapon-mode, catching the bugs completely by surprise as they trailed ice, thin red Banefire, and some electrum Holiness with them. The blunt impacts shattered them, blew off their wings, and sent them tumbling from the air, unable to fly even if they weren’t dead.
As I expected, the Summoned Wasps all turned on me and swooped my way much too quickly, while the real Wasps all jumped into the air and joined the coming Swarm.
Running right into the next volley of Shards I brought up with iron nerves, looking the incoming swarm straight in the eye as I picked my next eight targets and hammered them with hammers of force Burning with happy Kickers.
The slamming impacts warred against the thrum, and suddenly the thrumming was basically almost gone.
Almost, as I shoved myself backwards, and the last two wasps swooped into the tight quarters, finding they couldn’t fly in the narrow gap. They aggressively landed and began to claw their way urgently towards me, while other thrummings started up in the room behind them.
I just pushed backward, flicked up two Lightning Darts, and popped them both at point-blank range, smashing them back and out of the tunnel with shredded wings and ruptured glossy eyes.
Seconds later, crimson shadows were thrumming in the entryway, landing to come in after me. I coolly waited until their bulbous heads peeked up, and then blew them off with two more Darts.
I was on a timer for the first respawn, and I didn’t have the Vivic Spell Meta to add as a Kicker yet. One day at a time...
I kicked back forwards, bringing up Vivic Darts now.
Coolly and quickly, I began to pop the Summoned Wasps on the ground, turning them into little balls of vivic mist almost instantly as the ectoplasm of their forms promptly ruptured. I had to shift my attention between targets on the ground, possibly coming in through the window overhead or crawling out of that bigass hive, which I was absolutely sure was going to happen.
Poof, poof. Poof, poof. Snipe one coming out of the nest, poof. Poof, poof! Poof, snipe another! Turn around, poof, poof! Poof, poof! Fwoosh, fwoosh!, fwoosh, fwoosh!
There was a fwzap. No, eight of them simultaneously, scattered around the room. Threads of vivic mist leapt into the air, ate the prismatic ectoplasm forming, and then fell back to the ground in a thick cloud that spread out even further, going after the bones of what looked like a lot of rats and some unfamiliar animals... and more than a few scattered human remains, and the shells of a couple of olthoi, although those were very worn down.
Another wasp was coming out of the hive, and I shot it down, watching as the last four Summon spots activated, and two evaded being taken out by the vivus.
Two more Darts sent them sparking to the ground, and the follow-ups of vivus lit them up instantly.
I proceeded to vivisize the real dead Wasps leading into the hive, and then began to shoot the hive with flaming Darts.
With the backing of Holy power and the Vermin Banefire, I rapidly blew holes into the interior of the thing and set flames shooting through it, hungry for targets. That set off a scramble by the remaining wasps to get out, and I picked them off one by one as they did so.
When I was done, there was no thrumming in the place whatsoever.
---
I lifted the short, straight sword from the withered grasp of the corpse. His flesh was mostly eaten away, but the stinger wound in his eye socket spoke volumes as to how he’d died.
Most of the other stuff he had was organic or leather, and the living wasps had chewed them to bits, including the scabbard for the sword. More of the Air Gold greenish-gold coins among the bits of a purse. Leather armor chewed to shreds, along with all of his clothing.
-Aluvian style,- Mira said softly as I hefted the clean, straight steel of the broadsword with bare familiarity, and shook my head. Gharu’n preferred curved blades, like scimitars and shamsirs, but mentally I was more prepared to use a straight sword. Sword in one hand, wand in the other... well, whatever worked.
There were no identifying marks on him or the blade that I could see, and the smith’s mark was naturally unfamiliar to me. There was an eating knife in the remains of his pack, the only other thing I salvaged from him.
It all went onto my Disk, which accepted it all calmly.
Then I set the remains on vivus, and the bones and scraps of flesh seemed to sigh as they collapsed and began to Burn.
---
I blew the hive open vertically, and charred the interior to black ash with repeated point-blank Fire Darts, letting the Banefire do most of the work. When I left it was a charred husk nothing was going to be using, and no returning Wasps would find a home here.
I did manage to recover two whole and unbroken wings off them, blasted free by my Shards and quite beautiful, more crystalline than organic and with threads of aeromancy running through them, allowing the things to fly. I put them carefully on the Disk, wondering what I could use them for. Potions, possibly?
For the future, when I could make Potions reasonably well.
Two minutes of standing Meditation to recover my mana, and it was time to glide over the rubble and get out of there again.
---
There were still no olthoi outside the wasp room, and the Corpses were Burning down. I Sifted through the remains of the mound and took out the last of whatever was there that was worth taking before pacing down through the hallway, a lot more stone underneath the thinning mists as I did so.
The small room the olthoi had entered from had lumps where shrooms had been growing atop furniture or other long-decayed objects, and one partial large candlestand. The vivic mist had been creeping after the unnatural ecology, but didn’t seem to have followed up the stairs to the left.
Well, we couldn’t have that now, could we?
I politely blew Vivic Darts off with almost every step, quiet rushes of impact washing through the mold and slime and luminescent lines of stuff pulsing slowly through the whole thing. Banefire lashed through the purple-black stuff and deprived it of life, creating gouts of instant vivus as it did so, and the phosphorescent stuff dimmed and receded around me as I blasted it with every step.
Lots of small gouges on the small steps from chitinous feet, I noted, turning right and up, right and up, the stairs turning in nearly a complete squared circle to rise above the ceiling of the floor below.
In front of me was a gooey light-green organic membrane, completely blocking my way forward. I stretched my hand out to touch it, paused, and then simply blasted it with two pairs of V-Darts, evenly spaced. The membrane Burned through and liquefied in seconds, splashing down on the steps as whatever organism managing this entry was reduced to dust in a hostile flash of bluish Banefire.
I stepped past it, and paused in the entry to the room.
It was large and square, perhaps a hundred feet square and thirty feet high.
What might have been in here was moot, as the walls were completely covered by the purple-black resin and slimes, with several short mounds on the floor opening up to form pools of the glowing organic goo. It hadn’t covered the ceilings, but any lights up above looked to have been choked off, and at least an inch of the hard, waxy resin mold was on the floors.
Nothing was moving here, however.