“That…” Det started as ink-flaming boards and chunks of tavern shot for the sky. “Is not my fault.”

  And, by the lack of outward concussion blowing him from his feet—along with the elephant-sized ant body rocketing straight up from the wreckage—he might just be right about that. Black flames clung to the huge, white ant—That’s got to be the queen—as it twisted and spun in the air, legs and antennae flailing. From the sheer girth of it, it had to weigh tons, and there was no way Det’s ink-flames could have enough oomph to eject something like that.

  Which can only mean something else did…

  He got his answer a second later, when something in the air around the ant warped. Almost like it had gotten thicker, more the consistency of water than air, that something grew spikes, then closed on the ant like a prejudiced iron maiden. The white ceramic of the ant’s body—which made it look a lot like a friggin tank—did nothing to stop the spikes, arm-thick holes opening up across its body in an instant.

  Legs got sheared off. Body-segments were severed. One eye ruptured from an emerging spike, while the other collapsed beneath a pressing spear. Black ink-flames compressed inside the deadly coffin, doubling or tripling their intensity and riding the spines inside the body like ravenous freeloaders. All this, and the ant paused in midair. Hung there.

  Whatever power had swooped down on the queen now held it in place, a hundred feet above the ground.

  General Vans rose through the still-flying and burning wreckage of the tavern on a growing column of the same strangely thick air. Standing with his feet shoulder-width apart, his shield calmly resting on the ‘air’ beside him, his stare encompassed the queen until he reached a level height with it. There, he stood, gazing at the broken and brutalized mechant.

  “Quite the merry chase you took us on,” Vans said, voice somehow reaching Det over the crackling and popping of the enflamed building. “And a secret tunnel at that. That’s a level of cunning I wouldn’t have expected from a C-Rank Wordless like you.”

  Like the general considered his own words, he looked down to take in the town of Ironsalt, then raised an eyebrow when he spotted Det and the two survivors.

  “Cadet,” he said.

  “Sir,” Det said, most of his weight on one leg. “There was a second…” he scoured his mind for the word they’d used. “A second emergence here.”

  “Was there now?” Vans said, though he clearly wasn’t questioning the truth of Det’s words. “And you seem to be carrying a… no, two Wordless items you did not possess before. We need to talk about those. Later.”

  “Of course, Sir,” Det said.

  “Since you not only survived, but managed to earn those, I’ll assume it was an E-Rank emergence,” the general went on.

  “It was,” Det said. “E-Rank, that is.”

  “You seem oddly confident in that assessment,” the general said, at this point practically ignoring the queen floating in the air near him.

  To Det’s eyepatch, a circle popped up around the mechant, while the resulting description labelled it a Wordless Queen Ant, C-Rank, in red text, with a single skull beside it. As for the general, he came up as a ReSouled Bulwark, S-Rank, his text floating in green. He had three skulls beside his name.

  Having played more than a few games in his life, the meaning behind the skulls wasn’t hard to guess. A fight between him and either of those two would result in one very dead Det.

  However, as he looked at the pair floating in mid-air—basically—his eyepatch flashed, and drew his attention to the head of the Wordless Queen. More specifically, to the way her mandibles spread, a spark of energy flashing between them, like she was going to…

  “Sir!” Det called, his arm jerking up to point in the ant’s direction at the same time a thick coil of lightning was unleashed.

  General Vans didn’t even move before… the ant’s head exploded from the attack completely backfiring. Whatever the queen had tried to do, it clearly wasn’t enough to get through the general’s S-Rank power, and instead discharged directly in the queen’s own face.

  Ouch.

  “Thank you for the warning,” General Vans said, his free hand reaching out in the queen’s direction. Fingers going from spread to clenched, the queen’s body compressed to follow the motion, like it was aluminum foil in the general’s hand. One second, that was all it took, before the queen was little more than a basketball-sized sphere of white.

  In the next second, the watery shimmer around the sphere vanished, and the ball-that-was-a-Wordless-queen dropped out of the sky. It hit the ground with a whump that drove it three-quarters of its height into the dirt, likely from the sheer weight of it.

  The deed done, the general looked down at the burning building beneath him. “Interesting. These flames are yours?”

  “Yes, Sir,” Det said.

  “Will they hurt the others if I bring them up through here?”

  “I… don’t believe so,” Det said. “I don’t have a lot of experience with the fire.”

  “Hrm, better to be safe than sorry then,” the general said, before another platform rose from the burning building. On it, Captain Simmons and Jeckles stood on either side of Calisco, the stomach of her armor torn open, and dried blood covering the skin underneath.

  As soon as Simmons was clear of the flames, the perfect curl of his hair lined up his eye with Det like it was a telescope. “Oh my!” Simmons said. “Seems both of our new cadets from Radiant are going to be interesting this cycle.”

  Looking back at the newly arrived trio, Det’s eyepatch gave him three lines of predictable text.

  For Captain Simmons, it said ReSouled Duelist, A-Rank, with a pair of skulls.

  For Jeckles, it was ReSouled Medic, B-Rank, with only a single skull.

  Calisco, she got a ReSouled Artillery—whatever that was—E-Rank. Like a soothing balm to Det’s prideful soul, she didn’t have any skulls beside her name.

  “Does he have a…?” Jeckles started.

  “He does,” General Vans interrupted. “But we have more pressing matters. “Jeckles, see to the wounded survivors.”

  “Yes, Sir,” Jeckles said, the mostly invisible platform he stood on levitating down so he and the other two could hop off.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  “Captain, I want you to do a patrol to look for signs of any other secondary emergences,” General Vans went on. “It’s rare we see this, and I don’t want any more surprises.”

  “On it,” Captain Simmons said, the wide sword at his back drawing itself from his sheath to hover in front of him. Once he had both feet on the blade—looking as natural as standing on the ground—he gave Det a sly thumbs up, then shot off into the air so fast Det almost completely lost him.

  “Cadet,” the general said to Det from where he continued to overlook the town. “Our actions within the emergence should have disabled any Wordless connected to their commanders, the Bosses within. Given that you have your own Wordless equipment now, I take it you encountered a white ant?”

  “Two of them, General,” Det said. “A small one and a big one, if that matters.”

  “It does matter,” General Vans said. “Tell me, did you defeat them yourself?”

  “I had some help, sort of,” Det said, thumbing at the ink-wolves still standing protectively around him and the survivors. Thankfully, they’d let Jeckles pass without any hassle.

  “Impressive,” General Vans said, a note of warmth in his voice. “If you remember—and it’s okay if you don’t—did killing one or both of them have any effect on the other Wordless?”

  “As soon as I killed the smaller one, the rest of the black ants stopped moving. So did the mulcher. The other, bigger, white ant still wanted a piece of me though?”

  The general’s eyebrow went up at the mention of a mulcher, but he didn’t question it at the moment. “That would make the larger Wordless what we call a Rare Spawn. In an E-Rank, secondary emergence no less. Curiouser and curiouser. And you were able to save those three? Did you see any of the other townspeople down there? Should’ve been hundreds of them.”

  “I only saw one other person,” Det said. “I… wasn’t able to help him.”

  “One other… and a mulcher, as you called it,” General Vans said, shaking his head, and the shimmering platform lowering him to the ground next to Det. “I see. We were too late. Ma’am,” he said to the mother near Det. “I’m sorry about what happened here. You’ll be coming back to Mount Avalon with us, where we’ll make sure you—and the others—are taken care of. You’ll never need to fear something like this happening again.”

  “… Avalon?” the mother said. “You’re Mistguard?”

  “We are,” Vans said. “Fresh off picking up new ReSouled—like the cadet who saved you—at a nearby pillar. We only happened to detect the distress signal in passing. Can you tell me anymore about what happened here?” He knelt on one knee next to the mother as he spoke.

  “Sir, I’m not sure now is the best time,” Jeckles said, his magic sending what had to feel like a shot of ice-water through the teenaged boy’s veins. He sat up so ramrod straight, he almost bounced.

  Det could sympathize.

  “I’ll leave that choice to her,” Vans said, his eyes never leaving the woman. “How about we start with your name?”

  “I…” she started, taking a breath and squeezing the shoulders of her daughter. In her arms, Meliza clung tightly to her mother. “My name is Nancine. This is Meliza,” she squeezed her daughter. “And that’s Ruffal.” She nodded in the boy’s direction.

  “That’s good, Nancine. Your children have been brave,” Vans said.

  “Ruffal isn’t…” Nancine started. “He’s Elly’s son. But, she got taken days ago. I don’t know if she… if she… Ruffal, I’m so sorry.” The woman couldn’t stop tears from flowing down her face while she squeezed her daughter even tighter, like she was imagining—again—what it would’ve been like to lose her. And how close she’d come.

  “Days ago?” General Vans asked. “It’s been that long? When did it start?”

  Jeckles looked at the general like he wanted to stop the man. To save the woman the trauma of reliving the experience. But, he held his tongue, instead gently coaxing Meliza to let him check her for injuries. When he glanced in Det’s direction, Det pointedly gestured to his obviously broken leg.

  If the Medic wanted something to heal, Det had just the thing.

  Jeckles rolled his eyes, but Meliza was in decent shape—all things considered—and he’d already tended to Nancine and Ruffal’s injuries, so he trudged over to Det.

  “I can tell you’re going to become a regular,” Jeckles grumbled good-naturedly, and started inspecting the break at the same time Nancine began to speak again.

  “It all started almost a week ago,” she said. “Maybe longer, but that’s when we started to notice people were missing. Miners, at first. Not coming home from shifts. We’re not a big community, but it’s not uncommon for people to stay out late—or sleep in the woods—after a big find. Celebrating, you know?”

  “And there was a ‘big find’ recently?” Vans probed.

  “A huge one,” Nancine said. “Sezzle, that’s my… was my husband… he said it was a whole cavern of ironsalt pillars. More than he’d ever seen.”

  “Pillars?” Calisco asked, the first thing she’d said since Det had been reunited with the others. Sadly, the peace of her staying quiet had come to an end. At least it was a question he kind of wanted to ask himself.

  “Ironsalt usually comes in veins or pillars,” Nancine said, the mundane nature of the topic giving her a distraction from more difficult subjects. “For the pillars, it mixes with other rock, such as through slowly running water over time, which we need to dissolve to extract it. While it may not sound as pure as veins, the pillars tend to provide a lot more ironsalt, because the pillars are simply bigger.

  “A cavern like my husband described, it would’ve held more than five years of our annual quota. And the pillars are much easier to harvest. It was a windfall.”

  “Until people started going missing,” Vans said, and Nancine nodded slowly.

  “Like I said, at first, we thought people were just staying late to work, or staying out to celebrate. It took us two whole days to realize three of the mine workers were nowhere to be found. Like they’d just dropped off the side of the pillar.

  “So, a search party was sent looking for them…”

  “I take it that didn’t go well,” Vans said.

  Nancine shuddered at the memory. “Only Buvac made it back out. Injured something bad. Talking of monsters in the mines. Giant ants. Of course, nobody quite believed him. Not until the ants came out.”

  “A dungeon burst,” Vans said, the words coming out like they tasted bad. “What happened after that?”

  “We grabbed any weapons we could find. Mostly shovels and picks,” Nancine said. “They didn’t work. We couldn’t even dent the ants’ shells. Worse, they didn’t outright kill us. Instead, they took the injured into the mine. I don’t know what they were doing in there, but the screaming… it reached every corner of the pillar.”

  Det’s mind went to the mulcher he’d seen. Unfortunately, he knew exactly what the ants had been doing to people.

  “But, you didn’t get taken into the mine,” Vans said.

  “No,” Nancine said. “Once we realized how bad things were going, we ran. We hid. Sezzle went to call for help, but I took Meliza, and we tucked ourselves into a corner in our basement. My husband didn’t come back, but we had food and water, and the stairs down were too small for the ants from the mines. I thought we’d be safe there. And, we were, for a while.

  “Even as we heard their feet on the floorboards above us. The screams of our neighbours as they got taken. The first night was the worst. The people who didn’t hide well enough…”

  Nancine took a deep breath, though none of the others said anything, letting the woman continue at her own pace.

  “After about two days, maybe three, it’s hard to keep it all straight, the screaming stopped. No more ants were coming into town looking for survivors. We… I… thought they’d given up on finding any more of us. Maybe moved on, or something? I don’t know where I thought they would’ve gone, but, I told Meliza to stay in the basement while I went to find somebody else.

  “There had to be other survivors. I left the basement, quick and quiet. It was bad out there. Town was wrecked. Blood… oh the blood. It was everywhere. No bodies, though. I remember thinking that. And remembering the screams from the mine. It was so far away, I figured I was safe.

  “I came here, to the Salt Spot, to see if I could find anybody. It was where we always gathered when there was an emergency. I even found a few people here. The mayor, for one. He’d survived too. As soon as I saw him, I thought to myself, ‘we have a chance’. He could get us out of this.

  “Then the floor opened up beneath his feet and swallowed him in a second. Smaller ants came next, rising over the edge like some kind of tide from hell, red eyes glowing and their face… things… clapping in front of them.

  “Gloina—the mayor’s assistant—she didn’t fall into the hole with the mayor, but she was still too close. One of the ants bit her foot off, the face-blades cutting through the ankle with a single snap. Then they pulled her over the edge. Elly—Ruffal’s mother—she…” Nancine stumbled over the words, her face turning to the boy who was staring at her. Tears ran from both their cheeks, and Nancine shook her head.

  “Elly, she fought. Fought hard. Saw her smash a chair over one of those ants’ heads. It wasn’t enough. They pulled her down next. I… I didn’t see any more than that. I was running again. Fast as my feet would carry me, with the screams out of the Salt Spot chasing me down the street.

  “The ants came next. I tried hiding again. Barred the entrance into the basement, but the ants got through finally. Just… this morning, I guess? Got through and took us. I fought too. Like Elly did. I didn’t do any better.

  “Thought… that was it. We were dead. Until you came,” she turned and looked at Det, tears lining streaks through the dirt on her face. “You saved us. Saved my little girl. Thank you.”