Damn it.
“You see them too, right?” Kyyle asked, watching Finn’s face.
“See what?” Julia demanded. “There’s just plain glass here.”
“Try touching it,” Finn offered, running a hand through his hair. “It’s rough. There must be hundreds of scratches etched into the glass. They look a lot like small claw marks.”
He shot a look at Kyyle. “So, as our resident bug guy, you have a theory for this one?”
Julia let out a snort, and the earth mage glanced at her with an embarrassed expression. “I’m not sure I’m the bug guy…” Finn just rolled his eyes and motioned for him to get on with it. “Well, it’s likely that the female ants have at least two phases, like a butterfly. That would explain why they started nesting up here.
“My guess is that they hatch down below, some sort of larval stage crawls up here,” he continued, gesturing at the walls, “and then I bet the larvae create pupae, converting their bodies and growing wings. The mature females must migrate out into the central shaft after they hatch and set up their nests where they can easily hunt those bugs.”
Finn nodded along with this explanation. “Waiting until they are fully grown to venture toward the larger blasts of air mana in the queen’s lair,” he added.
“That’s my guess anyway. If I’m right, it would lend some credibility to my theory that the former queen basically set up a system where she segregated and then killed off her competition,” Kyyle offered.
“You’re giving her a lot of credit,” Julia retorted. “She was a bug. I mean a really, really big bug… that could cast magic… with a flaming crown.” She hesitated. “Actually, you know what, your explanation kind of makes sense as I say it out loud.”
Kyyle chuckled. “Especially with the notification we saw. We threw off the balance down here. So, my guess is that all those mature females that we saw out there are going to be migrating downstairs pretty soon…” He trailed off, letting the implication settle in the air of the dark tunnel.
“And make plenty of ant babies or migrate to find new colonies,” Julia finished. “Perfect.”
“Not our monkeys, not our circus, as far as I’m concerned. We’re not here to do pest control,” Finn said, swiping away his map. “We’re here to get this damn relic and then get the hell out of here. It sounds like the main takeaway is that this tunnel likely leads to some sort of gestation chamber,” he said, eyeing Kyyle for confirmation. The earth mage gave him a nod.
“Makes sense to me,” Julia said, pulling her shield from her back and hefting her lance. “Since I don’t have any mana, and everything we’ve encountered down here seems to be able to sense it, I guess I’ll take point,” she offered, gesturing down the hallway. With that, she set off, clearly expecting them to follow.
As she walked out of earshot, Finn heard Kyyle grumble to himself. “Bug guy…”
“Ahh, don’t worry about it,” Finn said, throwing an arm around Kyyle’s shoulders, as the pair followed Julia. “I don’t know if you’ve gotten the memo yet, but being a nerd is great. We get all the girls when we grow up.”
“I’m 21,” Kyyle responded in a dry voice.
“Well, maybe you’re just a late bloomer then,” Finn offered with a grin.
Kyyle’s unamused snort of frustration soon echoed off the glass walls of the tunnel, followed shortly by Finn’s laughter. Messing with the younger generation was just a prerogative of age, in his opinion.
***
A few minutes later, Kyyle and Finn heard a low whistle from up ahead, the sound rebounding down the glass tunnel. They stopped short, slinking back against the walls and gripping their weapons tightly. Julia appeared a moment later as she dropped Sneak – possibly a pointless precaution, but they weren’t taking any chances.
“What are we looking at this time?” Finn asked, his voice sounding more tired than he meant it to. It felt like they had been sprinting against the clock for days now without a break. The fatigue was starting to get to him.
Julia shot him a sympathetic look. “There’s a big chamber up ahead. And I mean big. At least 50 yards wide and deep. The entire thing is filled with glass fragments – they’re jutting out the walls, floor, ceiling – you name it. Didn’t see any movement, though.”
Kyyle grimaced. “Dense clusters of glass or thin panes?” he asked.
Julia sighed. “Dense clusters. I take it that’s bad?”
“Probably the pupae,” he offered. He spared a glance at Finn. “Although you could likely give us more information if you used your sight.”
“It’s only a few yards ahead and around the bend,” Julia said, waving into the dark tunnel. “Might as well take a look.”
Finn nodded and headed off into the dark tunnel, dismissing Daniel, before the AI could complain. He moved carefully, keeping his movements slow and his breathing measured. There was no evidence that any of the creatures down here hunted by sound, but he also didn’t want to accidentally attract unwanted attention. Like Kyyle had said earlier, it seemed they kept making mistakes – a function of fatigue and ignorance.
So, better safe than sorry.
He soon rounded a bend in the tunnel, keeping close to the wall and peering into the room on the other side. The enclosure was massive – bigger than many of the caverns that they had witnessed so far. Just like Julia had described, the room was also filled with clusters of glass, jagged shards lancing away from the floor, walls, and ceiling. Finn could make out patches of smooth ground, but they were rare, not offering any clear path through the debris. The glass shards were almost entirely opaque and made it difficult to determine if anything lingered in the center of the clusters.
Even more interesting, the room was dimly lit. A pale-orange light was being emitted from a substance that coated most of the room, resting on the surface of the cavern between the jagged clusters of glass. His first thought was that it might be a fungus. But based on Kyyle’s theory, it was more likely that he was looking at some sort of refuse or waste – a byproduct of whatever sort of larvae had clawed their way into the room.
Without wasting any time, he closed his eyes and activated his sight.
“Mashhad,” he whispered.
The cave was soon awash in color, and Finn gave himself a moment to pick apart the ambient mana floating through the room. The walls were the typical dark green he had come to expect. Many of the shards jutted away from the walls, and the ceiling appeared to be ordinary glass. However, the thicker clusters glowed with an unusual emerald-and-yellow light, the colors blending to create an almost-sickly pale green. The energy also coated the clusters in dozens of layers – making it difficult for Finn to peel away the mana. They almost looked like they had been created, and Finn could visualize larvae secreting the many crystalline layers necessary to form the rigid cocoons.
More evidence that Kyyle is on to something.
The orange sludge was roughly the same color in his sight. That signified fire mana at work. Maybe the larvae shed the fire mana as part of reforming into the more-mature female ants, or used that energy to lure the fireflies inside to provide a source of food? That seemed somewhat plausible.
As his eyes skimmed the room, Finn also caught sight of an opening on the far end of the cavern. He had almost missed it with his regular vision, but it stood out brightly in his Mana Sight. That passage looked promising. It was heading in roughly the right direction as the vault. A glance at his map confirmed that if that passage kept going for a few hundred feet, they’d be almost directly below their target.
Finn abruptly dropped the sight, rubbing at his chin as his thoughts raced. He had some ideas for how to deal with the room, but he’d need to talk with the others. He suspected they weren’t going to like this new plan.
With a sigh, he turned and made his way back.
“So?” Julia asked bluntly as she saw Finn reappear.
“It looks like Kyyle was right. The room is filled with a mixture of normal glass and more unusua
l clusters – pupae most likely. There must be hundreds. Even worse? I saw another tunnel on the opposite end, one that’s heading directly toward the vault.”
There was a short silence as they processed that information.
“I’m guessing you have some harebrained plan for getting us through this cavern?” Julia asked.
Finn winced. “Sort of… I think we need to blow it up.”
“I’m sorry, what did you say? I could have sworn you suggested we should blow up all of those strange ant larvae,” Julia offered in a dry tone.
“Yeah, I only heard crazy nonsense too,” Kyyle added.
“Funny. But I’m not sure we have much choice,” Finn began, ignoring their teasing. “It would take too long for Kyyle to tunnel through the walls. The other champions are probably close to or already at the vault by now. Kyyle could build a platform through the center of the room, but there doesn’t appear to be enough clearance with the way the glass juts into the room. Also, that would—
“Take too long,” Julia finished for him, shooting him a suspicious glance. Clearly, she was still questioning why he was so keen on finishing this competition. “Yeah, we got that.”
“Besides, while I bet you could make it through all those pupae without disturbing them, Kyyle and I aren’t that flexible,” Finn continued, ignoring his daughter’s glance. “And even if we could get past, Kyyle walled off the natural exit to the central shaft. So, if those things hatch, we’re going to have them funneling up the tunnel behind us.” The pair looked at each other with a grimace. Clearly, no one enjoyed that option.
“Which leaves destroying them,” Finn said finally.
“How do we even know if they are mature enough to attack us?” Kyyle asked. “They could be days or weeks away from hatching. And if they are midway through the gestation process, they might be relatively harmless.”
Julia and Finn just stared at him incredulously. “You want to bet on that?” Finn asked.
“Okay, fair enough,” Kyyle admitted, raising his hands. “So, we’re going to assume they’re killer larvae then…”
“And I’m guessing you have a plan for destroying them?” Julia asked Finn.
He met her eyes evenly. “Yeah, I think I do.”
A brief pause and then, “Although, I have two somewhat related questions for you first. How many of those explosive fire crystals do we have left? Also, how flexible are you feeling right now?”
Chapter 39 - Incendiary
Bilel’s Journal – Entry 141
I followed the river of mana to the north until I reached its end.
You will never guess what I discovered at the end of that rainbow… none other than the Seer’s temple! Much as I observed near the undead capital, the energy coalesced around that point, fire mana concentrating so densely that it almost entirely obscured the other affinities. To my sight, it created a whirlwind of glowing orange energy that swirled around the temple.
That is curious. The Dark One’s temple is also located in the undead capital. Could the temples be drawing the rivers of mana toward them? Possibly the work of the acolytes? Yet that seems impossible. Those currents are so dense and wide that they are entirely solid in my sight and span the sky. Even hundreds of mages working together couldn’t accomplish that feat…
No, something more is at work here – a mystery that feels inexplicably tied to my own research… and possibly the loss of my memories and Renquist’s death. I have resolved to infiltrate the goddess’ temple. My water affinity is now more than sufficient to maintain an illusion for days at a time. And while it pains me to don the robes of my enemy, I will suffer that indignity if it puts me one step closer to my goal.
***
“For the record, I think this is a risky plan,” Kyyle said.
Finn spared a knowing glance at him but held his tongue as he gingerly placed a stack of fire crystals into one of their extra packs. Luckily, they still had a huge stockpile of the raw crystals – on top of their usual inventory of mines and incendiary grenades. He supposed that was one upside to spending days down in the fire ant colony.
“This strategy actually has a 13.27% chance of success by my calculations,” Daniel chirped.
Kyyle gestured at him to emphasize his point. “See? We have like a seven in eight chance of dying horribly.”
“That is, in fact, several times higher than previous strategies employed by the group. For example, your engagement against the fire ant queen had only a 4.65% chance of success,” Daniel added helpfully, earning him a glare from the earth mage.
“Well, I still don’t love this plan,” Kyyle replied, glancing nervously at Julia – a fact that didn’t go unnoticed by Finn. He didn’t love this strategy either. However, he also didn’t see another way.
“Sure, but what exactly are our other options?” Julia retorted, echoing Finn’s thoughts. Kyyle just grimaced, running a hand through his hair as he tried to come up with a rebuttal.
Finn’s daughter had stuffed her shield and lance into one of her packs and was stretching, preparing for the journey across the glass-coated cavern. After taking another look at the room, she’d decided she couldn’t traverse the glass with her equipment on – for fear that her shield or lance might snag on one of the living, glass clusters.
As best they could tell, the pupae didn’t seem to react to their presence. They had even walked up close to one, hovering a hand only an inch away, and nothing happened. That was promising, but no guarantee that they wouldn’t hatch if they were disturbed. To be on the safe side, they had decided that Julia ideally needed to get across the room without touching anything.
“We could fortify this location and pull them back to here,” Kyyle offered finally, gesturing at the entrance to the cavern a few yards away.
“Assuming they can even hatch right now – which hopefully they can’t. And assuming they’re fire ant larvae and not something else – which we don’t really know for certain. But if we did get attacked, there are hundreds of those cocoons in the cave. What happens if we were to get overwhelmed and need to retreat?” Finn asked. “Where exactly do we go? We’ve got a sheer cliff less than a hundred feet behind us – not accounting for the ambient earth mana or the hundreds of fire ant females nesting in the central shaft.”
Kyyle grimaced, swiping at the air and projecting his map beside him. He rotated the display to show the cavern ahead, a small yellow dot marking a waypoint directly in the middle. “This plan isn’t exactly foolproof either. Even if Julia gets through the glass shards and makes it to the center of the room, she’ll be out of your control range and at the very edge of mine. Plus, she’ll be unarmed if something goes wrong.”
“Well, unarmed is a relative term. I’ll still have my knives. And either way, it’s the best plan we’ve got,” Julia replied. “We can debate about what exactly is living in that cave and how close it is to hatching, but it doesn’t matter. We’re better off killing everything in there in one move without drawing any attention. It’s the safer call for the group, even if it means I’ll be at risk.”
The earth mage grumbled to himself but seemed defeated by her reasoning. Finn could certainly sympathize with Kyyle. He didn’t love sending Julia out there by herself, but this was the tactically sound move. He watched as his daughter drifted back toward the entrance to the cavern, her eyes tracing a path that Daniel had mapped through the clusters of glass – relying on Finn’s enhanced vision to identify the hidden pupae. Unfortunately, without the sight, Julia would need to avoid all the glass fragments, but at least Daniel had provided her with a safer trail through the cavern.
As she prepared, Finn noted Kyyle’s eyes following Julia, worry painted across his face. Finn came up behind him and pulled the drawstrings on the pack closed. He rested a hand on the earth mage’s shoulder. “I get it,” he said quietly. “You’re worried. I am too. But we need to press forward quickly, and this is our best option.”
“I know, I know,” he muttered. “I just real
ly hope I’m right about the pupae. If they aren’t fire ant larvae…”
“Then we’ll deal with that when and if it comes,” Finn replied. “Hell, in a few minutes, we could be congratulating each other on an easy win.”
It was Kyyle’s turn to glance at him skeptically. “Did you hear Daniel? Should I get him to repeat his numbers?”
“Well, no. I heard him the first time,” Finn replied, rubbing at his neck. “But after everything else, we must have some karma coming our way, right?” Kyyle didn’t look convinced, a frown pulling at his brow and lips.
“Alright, you guys ready to do this thing?” Julia called over her shoulder, the pair rejoining her at the mouth of the cavern.
“No, not really,” Kyyle grumbled under his breath.
Finn just shook his head and handed off the pack to Julia. She slung it over her shoulder, taking care to strap it down. When she was finished, Julia bounced and twisted experimentally – yet all her equipment stayed firmly in place. With the way the glass shards filled the room, she couldn’t afford for her gear to slip loose.
“I think we’re good to go,” Finn said. “You know the plan. Get to the center fast, dump the crystals, and then get the hell out of there. Daniel will follow you to light the way since that orange sludge doesn’t make for great lighting. Once you arrive, Kyyle will build a shaped charge around the crystals, and then he’ll blow the room after you’ve had a chance to retreat – your absorption should get you through any flames that manage to reach you.”
Despite his reassurances to Kyyle, Finn could feel a nervous pit forming in his stomach. The earth mage was right about one thing. This plan put all the risk on Julia. He looked his daughter in the eye. “And be careful.”
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