The trek towards the forest was uneventful. The birds who stayed behind had already left after getting their fill. These leftovers were scrawny and weak compared to the army that the Lightbringer had led away. They would be the first to fall in the event of an attack, a sacrifice made intentionally by the birds. The arch was the home of their ruler. Only those who were strong could make a nest near the base of the metal monument. The farther from the arch, the weaker and smaller the birds became.
Lillian approached the final sentry that had flown down as she neared the perimeter of the bird's territory with a core held out before her. Dovetail gleefully swallowed the core and returned to the sky, tweeting a shrill tune as she allowed her to move past unobstructed. Lillian silently celebrated that the dove had accepted her bribe. The tensions between her and the birds had never been higher, but she wanted to avoid a slaughter unless she was left with no other choice. She couldn’t beat them all in an honest fight, but a poisoner rarely fights honestly.
Lillian was slow in making it out of the encampment and into the brush. The habits ingrained in her by her teacher demanded that she use caution as she traveled. She doubted the sentries would allow her back in without a much larger bribe, but that was a problem for future Lillian.
She had a rough idea of the bird's territory after gauging the time the birds spent hunting each day. They only operated within a mile or so from the arch and had a strong presence along the river. Fishing was safer when compared to hunting around the trees. The predators in the woods were much more dangerous for the birds. Their territory was reaching deeper into the remains of downtown every day, but the city had been over-hunted.
Lillian traced her path back to the hornet battlefield and gazed up at the trees. The hornets were long gone; their corpses had been eaten weeks ago. Far above in the branches, she could make out the paper and mud hive that used to house them. She needed a shelter, and if her survival training had taught her anything, it was that a safe shelter was of paramount importance. She scanned the maze of branches above before plotting out the path of least resistance and starting her climb.
A stinger dug into the bark and chipped away a swath of the thick outer shell. A second and third swing quietly followed, leaving a notch in the wood, which gave her a place to put her foot to begin scaling one of the more crooked behemoths. The bark was scarred heavily by the ruts left by the snails, allowing her to speed up her climb as she carved a trail upwards. Time flew by as she made it to a low-hanging branch and pulled herself onto it to rest. Low was relative, as she was over two hundred feet in the air. Her eye swept the surroundings with vigilance as her heart rate began to steady. She didn’t see anything to worry about, but that didn’t assuage her fears. The trees were always a dangerous place and usually housed the stealthier beasts. Snakes and spiders were her daytime concerns, but she was betting on the wasps having cleared out the nearby area. She could only hope that another predator hadn't found out that the rulers of this swath of trees had fallen.
The second half of the journey was less demanding on her body, but it put her mind to the test. The mess of branches and vines crossed and tangled with each other, creating a maze of green and brown that blocked her view of the nest. She only knew where the nest was based on her original position on the ground, which was fading from view. The dizzying heights made her gasp each time she looked down and reoriented herself. She continued to press on against the protests of her temperamental stomach. Food was important, but shelter was a higher priority. She could go days without a meal, but sleeping in the open at night in the woods would be a death sentence.
Every twenty feet, she made sure to scan her surroundings before scaling farther up the branches. She had seen some ants moving on a tree in the distance, but there were no connecting branches between her tree and that one. The sun was beginning to set when Lillian finally made it to the apartment building-sized wasp nest. She watched the area for signs of life for a quarter of an hour before making her way to the entrance. Positioning herself above the opening, she beat on the walls below before steadying herself. She could hear something skitter from within the nest as her body tensed. The long, hairy legs of a spider exited the opening as she plunged downward with all her body weight. The brown horror was run through as her spear pierced through it into the branch below. The skewered arachnid curled its legs inward and died.
Lillian celebrated her successful ambush too soon, as her body was tackled to the branch and a second spider dug its fangs into her back. The familiar burn of venom coursed through her body as her heart pumped the poison through her veins. Paralysis locked her body in place. The larger female spider wrapped her in a cocoon and dragged her to its web deep inside the hive. The venom inside Lillian would dissolve her and allow the widow to consume her at her leisure.
Lillian's heart pounded loudly as she forced herself to use the breathing technique she had copied from Genius. The lungs in her chest were barely breathing on their own at this point. The mana in the air trickled into her at first before growing into a stream, then a river. The flood of mana flushed the venom into her veins.
I can do this. This isn’t any different than cultivating in the clearing.
The breathing technique forced the paralytic venom to spread out into her muscles. The raging heat in her shoulder cooled substantially as the rest of her body shared the burden. The mana injection was like having a drink of cold water on a hot day as the paralysis faded and her limbs filled with strength once more.
Lillian grasped the hidden stinger in her thigh pouch and cut her way to freedom. The eight-legged horror was at the entrance of the hive, as if it was mourning the death of the other spider. Her struggle to escape did not go unnoticed as the widow turned to her, malice glowing in its beady black eyes. The arachnid skittered its way into the depths of the nest after her. Lillian freed her other arm from the cocoon as the arachnid lunged at her, intent on injecting her again with another dose of venom that would put her down for good. Lillian kept her stinger steady with both hands as the spider lunged at her. She used the spider's momentum against it as the blade entered its mouth. The panicking spider’s sharp teeth tore into her wrist as it thrashed.
The spider wanted to back off now. It bucked with Lillian’s arm still inside its maw. The jolt of movement pulled her lower body free from the cocoon. The spider tried to flee, but Lillian wrapped her legs around the widow’s thorax and trapped half of its legs in a triangle as she ripped her arm free from its jaws and plunged the stinger into its head.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Ichor stained the web as the spider struggled to bite her. The arachnid was completely unprepared for her to shrug off its venom, and that was the only reason she was able to pull off a reversal. Lillian batted away the flailing upper limbs and stuck the stinger deep into the back of its head. The monster's joints stiffened, and it curled up onto itself like the first spider had when it died. Any other day, Lillian would have believed that the widow had truly died, but this spider was too crafty. Lillian pulled out a second stinger and forced it into the spider's abdomen, where she knew the core would be. There were some benefits to having cooked the various beasts for the birds, and one of them was a working knowledge of spider anatomy. The hairy demon had been playing dead. It reared back and tried to thrash at her, but it was a step too slow as she grasped the core and tore it from the spider's body. The spider fell lifelessly to the ground as the core left its body. She plucked her daggers out of the monstrous spider, made her way to the first kill, and repeated the process.
The victim of her sneak attack wasn’t playing dead and had truly perished. She dug the core out and popped it straight into her mouth, collapsing in a heap as the sudden influx of mana reached her pierced back and shredded arm. Her bloody wounds would take more time to heal even with an abundance of mana, but they scabbed over quickly enough. After settling her wounds, Lillian mentally prepared herself for another fight as she made her way back into the dark entrance.
Lillian’s hand felt along the inside of the hive as she made her way into the massive nest. The crows had invaded the hive during their attack, leaving destruction in their wake. There were large holes torn in the top of the nest that allowed the dying light to filter through unimpeded.
The dark antechamber opened into an expansive main hall that held a precious gift: the nest was chock full of glistening golden honey. Thousands of the hexagonal pods that checkered the walls were filled to the brim. The golden glow reflected in Lillian’s eye as she dropped her guard and ogled the nectar.
Hornets don't make honey! Lillian would have pulled her hair out if it had grown long enough to grip. I don’t care anymore! The beenets left me such a nice gift. It would be wrong not to use it.
Lillian examined the rows at the entrance to the chamber near the web and found a pod that the spiders had been working on. Their fangs had left many puncture holes in the translucent wall, but they were unable to get the leverage they needed to pry the covering open. Her fingers curled inside the bite marks as she ripped open a hole. Opposable thumbs were a blessing after all. The familiar, sweet smell hit her as the golden liquid ran down the barrier and onto the pods below.
Lillian stuck a fingerful of the honey into her mouth and felt the tension leave her shoulders as the sweet prize fought off her hunger pangs. The honey hardened not long after, and the spillage ceased. If she could defend this place, she would have enough food to last years. Honey was notorious for lasting forever if the product was in an airtight container. Lillian doubted that this mana-enriched honey could even go bad.
The exploration of the hive was cut short as the final rays of light faded. Lillian didn’t expect any other threats after dispatching the pair of spiders, but she wasn’t willing to risk getting caught in the dark by a wandering critter. Before finding a place to rest, she dragged both spider carcasses deeper into the hive. The memory of the forest floor below was still fresh in her mind. Dead things seemed to attract all kinds of scavengers that she wanted to avoid.
With the manual labor out of the way, she returned to the main chamber to look for a safe place to sleep.
The ground on the far side of the entrance held the answer she was looking for. Under her feet were a section of pods that housed infant hornets, who still slumbered behind the translucent walls. They would die on their own without the workers to tend to them. With a quick set of thrusts with the stinger, she was able to create a handhold, which she used to rip open the barrier and pull the larvae out. Lillian half expected the small bug to put up a fight. It put up no resistance as the stinger punctured a hole into its head. She took on the task of searching for a core, but the larvae didn't have one. Do the cores only form as they metamorphose into adults? Lillian had been watching the wildlife ever since her arrival, and they did not seem to cultivate. Genius did use a form of breathing technique naturally, but the little prince did not temper himself as far as she could tell. The beasts seemed to grow in strength from eating.
With the dirty work out of the way, she entered the larvae’s dwelling and gathered the paper sarcophagus that it had been wrapped in. She raided the nursery for paper repeatedly before finding a larger cell in the upper rows that she intended to make her bed in. She filled the cell with the paper bedding before pulling the broken pieces of wall back into place and sealing it with a small smattering of honey. The golden liquid filled the gaps she had made and separated her from the outside air. The hexagonal cell reminded Lillian of the space-saving accommodations they had in coffin hotels that had sprung up in most metropolitan cities during the last twenty years. The rooms were the size of a twin bed, with a roof low enough to touch while lying down flat. The paper remnants were the closest thing to a blanket she had found so far.
Darkness spread through the hive as the night claimed the sky. The blackness receded as the central pillar that supported the nest began releasing a warm, milky glow. The impressive creation of the hornets took moonlight and spread it along the framework of each hexagonal cell. Lillian was awestruck by the ethereal beauty of the nest. The graceful moonlight illuminated the work of the thousands of hornets that had built the hive around her. The cool light allowed Lillian to get a better idea of how massive the building was. The sprawling wall of hexagons wrapped in every direction, and the lowest layers of hexagons housed the larvae eggs. The middle held the delicious hornet honey, while the top held larger pods that seemed able to act as storage of some kind. On the farthest wall from her, she could make out an entrance to another room that had been occupied by the queen.
Lillian’s inner greed demon begged for her to climb up to the upper hexagons and explore what the hornets had left behind. She squashed those emotions and snuggled herself into the paper bed she had made instead. Her wounds were still fresh, and any rough movements would reopen them. The training she had received had instilled a fear of the dark.
As she prepared for sleep, the actions she had taken to get where she was flashed through her mind. She was usually much more careful than she had been acting today. Diving into fights and exploring dangerous trees alone were actions that Renaxxus had drilled out of her. His teachings seemed to fade from her mind whenever she was using mana.
The girl tried to trace down the source of her recklessness but came up empty as sleep took her. The night was quiet, with no snoring birds interrupting her sleep.
Lillian's heart ached whenever she thought of the hatchling. The bond they had forged was too new and too fragile. Would he even care about her the next time they met? Would she even recognize him at that time?
