And atop her head sat a flaming crown that floated between her twitching antennae, the fire arching and spiraling into the air to announce that they were in the presence of ant royalty. Under other circumstances, it might have been a beautiful sight. However, at that moment, it just represented how out of their depth they truly were.
Heat rank level 2 at least, Finn thought feebly, trying to focus. The queen’s fire aura seemed to be hovering just below the temperature inflection point for the dark ore. Which meant her armor was going to be incredibly durable, more so than the regular ants.
His gaze snapped to her thorax. With his sight, he hadn’t focused on the queen’s stubby legs, the limbs clawing at the dirt and rock, glimmering in the glow of the magma in a way that Finn found familiar. They seemed weak, far too short and thin to allow her to walk – probably even too flimsy to pull her bulk out of the lake. That must mean she was stationary, locked in place in the center of the room.
Even more odd, he watched as her forelegs carved furrows in the ground as she lay there, tossing aside clumps of the dark ore that they had seen the ants mining. His gaze panned across the room. His eyes widened slightly as he realized that the entire cavern was filled with the stuff, the metal coating most of the floor and stretching halfway up the walls. It was broken only by the eggs that rested on the ground, likely waiting to be carried out of the chamber by the workers. His guess was that the other ants must have harvested the metal and brought it here for some reason, the regular superheated blasts of air melting it down into a fine layer and making it impossible to identify with his sight.
What the hell is their fascination with that metal? he wondered.
He quickly inspected the queen, hoping for some small bit of information.
Sulphera, The Fire Ant Queen – Level ???
Health – Unknown
Mana – Unknown
Equipment – Unknown
Resistances – Unknown
A named monster? Finn thought weakly. He’d never seen that or heard of such a creature. Then again, he’d also never seen the skull symbols beside her name either – although, he supposed the meaning was obvious. This was an enemy that was not meant to be taken lightly.
“Holy shit. We’re supposed to kill that?” Kyyle muttered, charging in behind Finn and his mouth hanging open as he finally caught sight of their opponent.
“Focus!” Finn snapped. “Blow the charges before reinforcements arrive!” The earth mage nodded curtly and turned back to the tunnel entrances, his hands moving quickly as he prepared to detonate the first of the charges he had planted.
Meanwhile, the queen had reared back, her forelegs smashing into the ground with such force that they splintered the metal coating the floor and sent fragments flying in every direction. Julia crouched and raised her shield to ward off the shrapnel. The queen’s movement pitched the creature’s thorax back into something resembling a sitting position, her torso now towering more than a dozen feet into the air. Her antennae twitched toward their position, likely alerted by the flare of earth mana as they breached the chamber.
Julia rose and moved quickly toward the queen, keeping her shield raised. The metal surface was soon enveloped in flame as Finn’s spell completed. He brought it up to heat rank 2, the barrier already beginning to rotate and come up to speed. If the queen was sensitive to mana like the other ants, the heat should draw her attention toward Julia and away from Finn and Kyyle. That was the plan anyway.
Unfortunately, they hadn’t anticipated the queen’s next move.
The massive creature did indeed home in on Julia’s position, her antennae twitching toward the superheated shield. Then her stubby forelegs darted forward.
Finn frowned. The legs seemed far too short to reach Julia.
However, in a flash of movement, the queen’s limbs telescoped outward, lengthening within a fraction of a second. They stretched at least eight feet, ending in a pair of needle-like points. Even worse, Finn could now identify the material that coated their length.
It was the same diamond-like substance that coated the ants’ mandibles…
Julia dived to the side at the last moment, a foreleg stabbing into the ground where she had been standing. The spear immediately split through the metal, the dense surface barely putting up any resistance. Julia hit the ground and rolled, the forelegs slamming into the ground just behind her in a line as she kept rolling.
Damn it, Finn thought frantically – trying to think of some way to assist his daughter. The queen had immediately put Julia on the defensive.
Kyyle came to the rescue as he finally managed to blow the charges. Both tunnel entrances promptly exploded, and a shower of flame and rubble blasted out of each opening. The workers and soldiers that had been attempting to enter the chamber were swiftly buried under several tons of rock. The queen hesitated in her assault, her antennae twitching toward the source of the fire and earth mana – giving Julia a moment to recover.
Finn crouched in the entrance to their narrow tunnel to avoid the shrapnel, his hand on the wall. That’s how he felt the series of tremors as the sequential charges blew, each one fainter than the last as they drifted off into the distance. He braced himself for the blast he knew was coming.
A massive detonation suddenly rocked the chamber – even the fire ant queen was forced to stab her forelegs into the ground to stabilize her torso. They had stacked up a truly massive pile of fire crystals a few rooms over and blown the entire thing with Kyyle’s sequenced charges. Finn just hoped the blast of flame and rock was enough to distract the remaining ants in the colony from the battle raging in the queen’s chamber.
“60 seconds until the first mini-blast!” Daniel shouted, the AI having completed his rotation around the queen and arcing through the air back toward Finn and Kyyle.
Finn’s attention shifted to Julia. His daughter was back on her feet with her shield raised. She was more cautious now, no longer attempting a headlong charge as she eyed the beast’s forelegs warily. The queen lashed forward with a lightning-quick movement that Julia intercepted with her shield. The rotation of the shield sent the blow glancing off to the side, the spear immediately carving into the metal floor and lodging there for a fraction of a second before the queen retracted it. Although, Finn noted that the hit had carved a shallow line in the spinning shield, creating an off-color blur.
Shit, she can’t keep blocking like that, Finn thought.
Julia must have realized the same thing because she avoided the next attack by dodging to the side, even as she threw one of her incendiary grenades. A blast of flame erupted around the queen’s head, momentarily distracting her.
Using her momentum and the brief window she had created, Julia whirled into a spin, rotating and slamming the edge of her spinning shield against the queen’s foreleg as it was briefly embedded in the ground. The edge of the makeshift sawblade smashed into the limb, sending off a harsh shower of sparks as the two materials collided. Yet, the queen’s leg held.
Damn it! That’s not going to work either. Finn just had to hope Julia could hold out long enough for him to come up with a real plan.
Although, that might be time they didn’t have…
He could already see that Kyyle was building up a wall in front of them, keeping the angle shallow and reinforcing the stone in multiple layers to withstand the blast of heat that would be arriving shortly.
“Sir, I’ve completed a full scan!” Daniel shouted in Finn’s ear seconds later, pulling his attention away from the fight and Kyyle.
The AI immediately pulled up a three-dimensional image of their opponent, comparing it to the data they had collected on the ants and the dark metal to analyze possible weak points. Nothing was highlighted.
“What the fuck is this?” Finn muttered to himself.
His brow furrowed as he noticed the vents in the queen’s abdomen weren’t highlighted as a weak point either. His eyes skimmed to her stomach, searching for the openings. They widened as he saw
blueish flames jutting from the vents at regular intervals, the energy pointed straight down into lava.
His gaze flitted to the lake of magma. Dark egg-like spheres bobbed in the glowing liquid. “What is she…?”
Then it clicked.
The metal coating the floor of the room and the queen’s body. The metallic eggs they had seen a few rooms over. The way the other ants seemed so intent on mining the damn stuff. His eyes darted to the queen’s body, noticing the blazing aura of flame. There were no crystals embedded in her armor and no obvious way to explain that coating of fire or the flaming crown that danced above her head. Except one…
That wasn’t molten stone the queen was sitting in. It was a lake of molten metal – an initial incubation bath for her eggs. Maybe the metal acted as a protective coating once they were removed from the lava. Even worse, the heat in this room wasn’t coming from ambient mana deposits. It was coming from the queen herself. He stared in shock at the monster that loomed above his daughter. If he was right, that meant the odds were good that the queen could cast fire spells… or at least control the flames.
“Shit. Shit, shit, shit,” Finn cursed, his gaze snapping back to the model beside him. There might not be any obvious weak points in the queen’s armor, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t make one… “Daniel, can you at least identify the location of her brain stem? Use the other ants as a reference point.”
“The queen is much larger than the other ants, and her body’s structure is quite different. However, I believe her brainstem may be somewhere in the highlighted location. Bold blue indicates a primary target, while dimmer areas indicate an acceptable margin of error,” the AI reported in a rush, his voice sounding harried.
Finn could see a spot was now highlighted in blue along the queen’s neck and at the base of her skull – a circle with a densely glowing center and a softer ring around it. Including Daniel’s margin of error, the circle was about three feet wide. That was a big target…
“Also, ten seconds before the mini-blast!” Daniel shouted.
Julia’s head whipped toward Finn’s location. The move almost cost her life as she only narrowly avoided the queen’s next attack, the forelegs cutting a long bloody line down her back as she twisted out of the away. Then she was backing away quickly. As soon as Julia was out of range of the forelegs, she sprinted toward their location.
“Five seconds!”
Julia dove over the small wall that Kyyle had formed even as Finn and the earth mage crouched behind the cover. At the same time, the walls and ground began to rumble softly, the tremors increasing with each second that ticked past.
Blasts of air abruptly jetted from the openings carved in the walls ringing the room, and the wind whipped through the cavern. As the air hit the lava, it caused the surface to burn even more brightly. The fire ant queen hesitated in her assault, the flames enwrapping her bulbous body flaring a bright blue and her armor beginning to glow red as the metal coating her exoskeleton neared its melting point. She seemed to be reveling in the sensation – almost in a trance-like state.
A detail that Finn noted with interest before tucking his head behind Kyyle’s barricade. The artificial wind rippled across the room, carrying the flames with it. It smashed across Kyyle’s barricade before slamming into the wall behind them and curling upwards back toward the shaft in the center of the ceiling. They had designed Kyyle’s barrier to avoid a direct blast of heat. Even so, the superheated air was enough to melt the stone on the other side, and the barrier soon began to glow a soft red on their side of the rock wall.
While Kyyle and Julia eyed the barrier worriedly, Finn’s thoughts raced.
Attacking the queen from the front wasn’t an option. Her legs were deadly, and even if they could get close enough to cut through her armored shell, there was nothing terribly vital that they could hit from the front – at least nothing that would kill her immediately. Ideally, they needed to puncture her shell in just the right spot and then follow it up with a true killing blow.
That was their best – and possibly only – option.
Unfortunately, the target that Daniel had painted on the queen’s back was big – too big for just Finn’s palm-sized sawblades. He grimaced, his gaze flitting to Julia’s shield, noting the deep groove the queen had scratched in its surface. He suspected his daughter’s mandible-reinforced shield would be enough to cut through the queen’s armor, even with the creature’s enhanced fire aura. But that meant he needed to get Julia close to the queen.
Well, technically behind the queen… except the lava pool was in the way.
Or maybe above her?
His eyes shifted to the sloping walls of the cave, noticing the streamers of molten stone and metal that now ran down their surface as the heated air continued to blast the walls. The metal only stretched upward about five feet – soon giving way to plain stone that had been melted smooth by the regular flares of air mana. Kyyle could probably build Julia a makeshift staircase, and she could leap toward the queen…
A plan was beginning to form in Finn’s mind.
Except he only had a few more seconds to convey that plan before their respite ended.
“Okay,” he grunted to the other two as they cowered behind their cover, his voice hoarse and each labored breath burning his lungs. “Here’s the plan…”
Chapter 34 - Ingenious
Bilel’s Journal – Entry 135
I… I am uncertain how to write this entry or to convey what has been revealed to me. Even as I sit down to pen this entry, my hand trembles, and I can barely resist the urge to rant and tear at the walls… [the writing trails off into a harsh, jagged line.]
I will just come out and say it. The mysterious ward was designed to tamper with my memory. As best we can tell, it was put in place more than a decade ago.
Renquist’s colleague, a talented dark mage by the name of Krael, helped me to remove the tattoo – a painstaking process that took nearly a full day and wasn’t without its own share of discomfort. Yet that pain pales in comparison to what was revealed. Krael explained that the ward’s effects will linger for some time, so my memories are still returning in fits and starts, but what I recall is more than enough…
I had always wondered at my origin. Who were my parents? What happened to them? Why was I so gifted with magic? Now I have at least some answers. My parents were slain – brutally murdered in a blaze of fire before my eyes, their flesh literally burned from their bones as their shrill screams pierced the air. I hear those screams in my dreams now… And I can see the perpetrators – men and women wearing the robes and emblem of the Seer’s temple. I’m sure of it.
Which only lends more suspicion to the acolytes who were present at the waypoint in Lahab. Were they attempting to cover for the temple’s actions? In the interest of time, I have resolved to take the waypoint back to Lahab. I realize this is risky, but I have to move quickly. I must inform the guild of what I have discovered. The other mages must know what the temple’s disciples have done…
***
The air mana began to dissipate from the queen’s chamber, the heat receding quickly as it funneled its way up into the chasm above them. As they peeked out from behind Kyyle’s fortification, the group could see the destruction that even the smaller blast of air had wreaked.
The stone and metal along the room’s floor had melted down into glowing red slag, repairing the grooves and holes that the queen had carved in its surface and blasting their entrance tunnel smooth – locking them inside the chamber. Even now, the molten metal and rock were just beginning to cool, returning to more muted grays and blacks.
And sitting there in the center of the lava lake was the fire ant queen – her black body glowing a dull red under the effect of the mini-blast of air and her crown flaring. She tore at the air with her forelegs, the limbs lancing forward and spearing at the ground. It was like she was overcome with a frenzied rapture, raging against the loss of the heat and flame.
Finn t
ook a deep breath, channeling his fire mana to quell the worried pit in his stomach. He felt a hand grasp his shoulder. “You can do this. Your plan will work,” Julia said, her grip firm and her eyes unwavering. “Let’s kill a queen.”
He nodded and then erupted out from behind cover in a rush. As he moved, Finn threw two of his sawblades in the queen’s direction, his fingers blazing through a rapid series of gestures. The blades soon ignited in flames, and Finn immediately ratcheted up the heat.
This was no time to hold back.
They rocketed through the air, aiming directly for the queen’s antennae. The appendages twitched, as though noticing the incoming blades. Finn expected the creature to intercept the weapons with her forelegs, using the diamond-coated limbs to block the projectiles. What she did instead left him staring in shock.
A ball of molten magma rocketed out of the pool, rising rapidly up into the air, and swiftly hardening in the cooler air of the chamber. As Finn looked on with wide eyes, the blob flattened out into a massive circle and pivoted, the makeshift shield suddenly awash in flame – an effect eerily similar to his Imbue Fire. The barrier sliced through the air, sliding in front of the sawblades, and the projectiles burrowed into the thick surface.
They didn’t manage to penetrate the dense shield.
“Oh shit,” Finn muttered. His guess had been right. The queen could control fire mana. Even worse? She seemed to be using his same abilities and was lying in a pool of conveniently pre-heated metal.
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