Survivors

by Dave Willmarth

  About that time, an ant on the wall to their right climbed higher than their ledge and spotted them. Its antennae began to wobble frantically as Lila threw a dagger at it and Layne shot it with an arrow, knocking it off the wall to fall to its death.

  But it was too late. The others had been alerted. As one, every ant in sight turned and rushed toward their ledge. Mace quickly heated a large stalactite just beyond where they stood as Shari began to fire arrows downward at the climbing ants. Layne fired a dozen arrows in rapid succession, then switched to her lute. The ants climbing toward them slowed visibly.

  Mace shouted, “Shari, now!” and she targeted the heated stalactite. Her first arrow didn’t quite dislodge it, as this one was larger than the others. She took her time and concentrated, then fired a second arrow. The stone split in two lengthwise, then both sides separated from the ceiling, one slightly before the other.

  The results were spectacular. Instead of one wave of impact shrapnel, there were two. Hundreds more of the creatures, including a group of the soldiers that were just about to begin the climb, were shredded.

  Mace began casting fireballs down toward the base of their little cliff, burning away living and dead ants alike. Shari resumed firing arrows at those who managed to climb the vertical ice face Mace had put down.

  More and more ants poured out of the hole. Mostly soldiers, now. The workers were still dragging the wounded ants toward the hole and down. Mace heated another stalactite, this one about halfway between the hole and their ledge. When Shari dropped it, it crushed and shredded a contingent of the larger soldier ants.

  But her change of targets meant that a few of the climbers reached the top. Brahm kicked the first one in the head as it appeared, sending it flying. Lila put away her daggers and pulled out a spear. She began to stab and slice at the ants that reached her section of the ledge.

  She and Brahm ran back and forth along the two sides, doing their best to keep the attackers at bay, but in less than a minute they were getting overwhelmed. Mace shot a few fireballs in between his allies to clear spaces where ants were getting through. They were holding their own, but it was a losing strategy. There were still at least a thousand of the creatures swarming toward them.

  Layne’s music stopped abruptly and she cursed loudly from behind them. They all turned to see her laying on the ground with an ant atop her, using her lute to keep its pincers from her face. Shari instantly blasted its head off with an arrow but three more dropped from the wall above.

  Mace dashed forward as Shari shot another one. Daggers in hand, he leapt onto one ant and slammed his right-hand dagger into a joint just behind its head. The dagger barely had time to drink before the joint popped and the head dropped to the floor. He kicked at the last remaining ant, sending it flying over the edge. Looking up, he blasted several more off the wall with fire.

  “Infier!”

  Brahm roared a challenge at the ants that were now swarming him. Great swings of his axe swept three or four of the mobs off the ledge at a time, causing them to fall and knock a few others loose before they dropped thirty feet to the floor. But several had latched onto his legs and torso, and were pumping some type of venom into him.

  Layne, now back on her feet and playing again, slowed them down. Mion was casting heals on Brahm, and Shari joined her. Mace was quickly draining his mana chain casting fireballs in every direction, trying to clear the ledge. Lila was doing her best, sweeping her spear back and forth and holding a small section near the wall.

  Still, the ants kept coming. Those reaching the top now were soldiers more often than workers.

  Mutated Fire Ant Soldier.

  Level 29

  Health 8,000/8,000

  Bigger, and with twice the health, these ants took more hits to kill. And the time spent killing them allowed even more ants to gain the ledge and attack. Brahm was starting to slow, his movements less coordinated. Whatever the ants had pumped into him was taking effect. He roared in pain and stumbled back a few steps from the edge. More soldiers immediately began to pop up, rushing toward him.

  The dagger in Mace’s right hand pulsed, and his vision blurred slightly. His pulse accelerated and a there was a rushing sound in his ears. He felt anger like he’d never experienced before. And a need to kill.

  Almost without conscious thought Mace’s body raced between Brahm and the oncoming ants. Without any hand movement or trigger word, a blast of arctic air burst forth from him. The ants were slowed, then stopped completely. In a matter of seconds, they were frozen solid. His body went into a spin, a hand striking one ant, a foot hitting the next, each ant shattering upon impact.

  When the ledge was clear, he turned to Brahm, who still had four ants clamped onto him. Mace grabbed one in each hand, jerking them from his friend’s body. The force was such that the mandibles, still stuck in Brahm’s flesh, ripped from the insects’ heads as they were flung toward the edge, knocking down the next wave just coming over the top. Mace fed his dagger with the souls of the two remaining ants, and Brahm fell to one knee as heals washed over him. The minotaur began to pull the detached mandibles from his body.

  The immediate threat eliminated, Mace found himself staggering. His head cleared, and his pulse began to slow. The others were staring at him, eyes wide. Even Brahm seemed impressed.

  “What the hell was that?” Shari asked. Mace just shook his head.

  “I think the dagger gave me some kind of… buff? Or berserker mode? Not sure,” he said, before turning to blast more incoming ants with fireballs. He quickly checked his mana bar, concerned that he was running on empty. But both his health and mana bars were at 100%. He grinned at his dagger, then resumed throwing fire.

  Mion let out a tiny roar and soared out past the ledge. Turning toward the wall of ants climbing up the ice, she opened her mouth and shot a bolt of lightning! The bolt struck an ant near the top of the climb, paralyzing it and roasting it at the same time.

  The charge from the bolt transferred through the husk into the ice. Water being a conductor, the shock spread, and every ant on the wall was stunned. Most fell, smashing into their brethren below, the heavier soldier ants doing significant crush damage.

  Mace could have hugged the little dragon right then. “Mion! You’re a genius!” he shouted.

  He turned to Shari, who was staring at Mion, mouth open wide in surprise. By the blank look in her eyes, she was talking telepathically to her little dragon. Mace shouted at her. “Shari! Wake up! We’ve got a way to get them all. We’re going to flood the cavern.”

  He turned and began to heat a stalactite that hung over the pond across the cavern. Shari drew an arrow and fired when the stone was hot enough. The large wedge dropped silently into the water, causing a small tidal wave to wash up out of the pond and across the floor. The water pushed by the falling stone also surged into the stream fed by the pond, causing it to overflow and sending water out over both banks.

  Seeing this, Mace looked to the other end of the stream where it passed out of the cavern.

  “Frigus!”

  He cast ice into the water, freezing it almost instantly and blocking the exit. The water started backfilling, overflowing the streambed and spreading across the cavern floor.

  “Mion! Shari! Use your lightning!”

  Both ladies heeded his call. Shari drew arrow after arrow, focusing for a moment on each as she cast elemental magic into the shaft before firing. She didn’t have to worry about targets. The ants were so thick on the ground that any one of them would do. With each arrow strike, a wide patch of ants would seize up, stunned as their internal organs fried.

  Mion made a game of it. She swooped down, picking a target and firing a tiny bolt of lightning at it. Her strikes were several times more effective than Shari’s, being a creature of magic. After firing, she would swoop back up into the air and let out a tiny roar of victory. As Mace watched, she faltered slightly as a golden glow washed over her and she leveled up.

  Within a short time,
maybe two minutes, there were only a hundred or so living ants on the floor below. A few more still tried to climb the wall, but Brahm and Lila were waiting for them. They all watched as the spreading water began to wash ant bodies down into the hole from which the soldiers had emerged.

  Mace shook his head. Turning to the others, he said, “We’re going to have to go down there and get the queen.”

  Brahm shook his head as a keening noise rang out, echoing off the walls. “No, I don’t believe we will.” he nodded toward the hole. Mace spun around to find the largest ant they’d seen so far. It was easily eight feet long and stood four feet high at the shoulder.

  Mutated Fire Ant Queen

  Level 50

  Health 18,000/18,000

  “Well, that’s convenient,” Mace mumbled as he inspected the queen. She was at least a mini boss, if not the main dungeon boss.

  “Okay guys, light her up. And be careful, she probably has some special abilities!”

  He uttered a trigger word “Magmus!” and started trying to heat up the queen’s body just as he had the stalactites. But the spell had no effect, except to anger the insect further.

  Shari began to pepper the queen with arrows. Layne swapped her lute for her bow and did the same. Mace switched to ice, assuming the queen would not be immune to both fire and ice.

  He was wrong. A thin film of ice formed along the queen’s carapace, but she flexed her body and a reddish glow surrounded her. The ice melted away almost instantly.

  “Lightning! Lightning killed the others.” Mace called out to Shari. She nodded and a moment later a lightning arrow streaked toward the queen. It sank deeply into the rear segment of her body, and arcs of lightning spread through her. The stun effect only lasted two seconds, but the hit had done some damage.

  Mutated Fire Ant Queen

  Level 50

  Health 15,400/18,000

  Lila cried out as one of the ants managed to complete the climb and latch onto her leg while she was distracted by the show. She stabbed a dagger at the thing’s head, but the blade just skittered across the tough chitin. The ant began to walk backward, dragging the halfling with it. Its instinct was to pull its prey back toward the nest where its siblings could help kill and consume her.

  With a roar, Brahm leapt the ten feet or so between him and Lila. His axe slammed down onto the ant’s neck, severing the head. The legs continued to push backward, sending the rest of the body over the edge.

  Shari paused firing at the queen long enough to cast Life of the Forest on Lila as Brahm pulled the pincers apart and tossed the head away.

  Mace’s dagger made its presence known again. He felt a hunger for blood and heard a whispered, Feeeeeed! in his mind.

  At the same time, he felt Minx’s tail tighten around his neck. Her thoughts came to him clearly. “Scary knife. Makes Mace stupid!” Mace turned and grinned toward his invisible pet. He couldn’t disagree. It was demanding that he kill the queen himself, feeding her soul to the dagger. And he found that he didn’t mind.

  “Minx, go watch over Shari. I’ll be back in a few minutes,” he said to her. A moment later, he felt her weight leave his shoulder as Shari looked at him.

  “You’re about to do something stupid, aren’t you?” she grinned as she said it. Shari hadn’t done many dungeons as a player before the world ended. She was having the time of her life!

  “Yep! Turn your recorder on. Later we can snuggle while you admire my bravery and skill.” He returned her grin. A moment later, he dashed across the ledge and disappeared over the edge.

  The thirty-foot fall was no problem for a drow of his skill. Especially since there was an ant partway up the wall that he could use to break that fall. He hit the creature’s head, bending his knees to absorb the impact and knocking the insect loose from the wall.

  He rode it down, jabbing his dagger into its face as they fell the final ten feet or so. The thing’s energy rushed through the dagger and up his arm. He felt stronger and faster with the rush.

  Leaping from the emptied husk, he dashed across the cavern floor toward the queen. The place was blanketed in ant corpses, but he simply leapt onto or over them, propelling himself toward the boss.

  As he got close, he saw another of Shari’s arrows strike the queen. Pausing at a safe distance, he wasn’t sure if her lightning effect would shock him, too. So he took advantage of the brief stun the arrow inflicted on the queen. He cast a concentrated wind blade at the queen. The same one he’d used on the Cthulhu Spawn.

  “Ventus!”

  The stunned queen’s front legs snapped, and the two remaining legs on her left side gave out. She stumbled and fell onto her side as Mace dashed forward. With a leap, he was atop her thorax. Just as he was about to plunge the enchanted dagger into her body, his head fuzzed a bit and he heard a clear thought.

  “Whyyyy?”

  The queen had gone still beneath him. Her struggling legs had stopped moving as she lay on her back with her multiple eyes focused on Mace. The dagger pulsed in his hand, demanding to be fed. But Mace just tightened his grip and spoke to the queen.

  “Did you just speak to me?” he asked aloud.

  “You killed my children. Destroyed my home. Why?”

  Mace was confused. This was a dungeon boss. Her ‘children’ were mobs. Dungeon mobs were almost always hostile. He shook his head.

  “We came here to clear this dungeon. We assumed you and your children were hostile.”

  The queen’s mandibles clacked together in what Mace took to be anger.

  “We only kill for food. Or to defend ourselves. We grow. It hurts. Need more and more food. Now all dead.” The sorrow in her tone calmed the bloodlust Mace had been feeling.

  Looking up, he saw Shari about to launch another arrow. He held up a hand, stopping her.

  “We did not know. If I leave you in peace, will you promise not to harm me or my people?”

  The queen’s mandibles clicked again. “Too late. My children dead. I am… damaged.” Mace looked at her body, now pierced by several arrows, burned and broken. “I cannot make more children. Kill me.”

  “Shit.” Mace felt badly for the ant queen. She was clearly an intelligent NPC. “Maybe we can heal you?” he asked hopefully.

  “Heal?” The concept was clearly foreign to her. He took out a health potion and held it up.

  “Drink this. It might help.” He poured the potion into her mouth, wary of the mandibles in case she decided to attack.

  After a moment, the burn marks on her body began to fade. Mace hopped off her body and waited as her broken legs healed and she righted herself.

  “Feels… strange. This is heal?” she asked. Mace nodded. “Thank you, drow.”

  She looked around at the corpses of her colony and chittered to herself.

  Mace bowed his head slightly. She was a queen, after all. “I am sorry about your children. We thought you were enemies.”

  He motioned to his friends, whom he noticed were now climbing down a rope held by Brahm. He watched to make sure the ladies made it down safely. Then Brahm lifted Snuffles, tucked him under one arm and stepped over the edge.

  The two of them disappeared into the pile of ant bodies at the bottom. A moment later Snuffles came flying up out of the pile, followed by the minotaur as he pulled himself free.

  The queen looked at her now-flooded home. Mace sheepishly dismissed the ice that was blocking the stream and causing the flood.

  After a few moments, the water level in the hole stopped rising. The queen watched for a while until the water level began to recede slowly.

  “I will return to my home when it is safe. Maybe some of my eggs will survive.”

  And with that, she seemed to forget about Mace. He shuddered as she stepped to the closest worker ant corpse and bit into its rear segment. The chitin broke apart under the strength of her mandibles, revealing the meat underneath. Which she promptly began shoving into her mouth. The potion hadn’t been strong enough to heal her completely.
Mace watched her health bar increase as she ate.

  Shari and the others arrived, all but Brahm making faces at the queen’s indelicate eating habits. Shari asked, “What’s the deal?”

  Mace whispered. “They weren’t hostile. We attacked neutral NPCs. She’s intelligent, and asked me why we killed her children.” To which all of them looked confused, then ashamed.

  Lila was the first to speak, apparently the least bothered by their actions. “Does this mean we don’t get the loot?” she looked longingly toward the waterfall.

  Mace turned to find the queen biting into a second corpse. He shook his head. “She’s in no position to stop you. Go ahead. And Shari, if you think there might be any good crafting ingredients, we can loot the others…”

  Shari stepped behind Brahm so that the queen couldn’t see her and bent to loot the closest soldier ant.

  “Chitin that might be good for armor. Some copper. And roasted ant meat. The meat gives a Strength buff.”

  “Okay, go ahead and loot” Mace saw Lila was already halfway to the pond and shook his head.

  As the queen consumed her children’s corpses to restore herself and the water slowly drained from her nest, they looted several hundred of the ant corpses. The workers rarely gave anything but meat, while the soldiers dropped similar items to the first. Every fiftieth or so soldier also dropped an uncommon or rare quality item, mostly weapons.

  They worked their way toward the pond as they looted, almost as curious as Lila about what was under the water. When they reached the edge, whatever had been glittering at the bottom was already gone and Lila was walking up out of the water.

  Mace chuckled. “That didn’t take long. What did you find?”

  The halfling grinned and hopped up and down. She quickly emptied the items out of her bag onto the ground. As she did so, she cried out in pain and curled into a fetal position on the floor.