Silence followed the howl of the wolves, heavy in its presence and pressing down upon Helbram’s back. His sword was drawn and shield at the ready. The strength restored to him by Alatash’s boon gave him comfort in the growing tension, though trepidation of the coming conflict sent a shiver down his spine. He could feel that same feeling radiating from his comrades, but they had been through enough that he knew such feelings would have little sway in their resolution. If anything, impatience was the most predominant emotion amongst all present. One that did not last long.
For the hive started to rumble.
It started as a distant shake, a tremble that reverberated up the cave’s ridged, throat-like depths. That grew into shrieks that accompanied a rumble shaking the ground beneath them. The Circles around Jahora’s head flared into life in response. At the same time, Elly and Merida placed their hands upon the Mage’s shoulder. The casters flared with Aether and Helbram could feel the air around them grow colder as a small bead of orange-red light formed in Jahora’s hand. More particles of power swirled around her Circles, Transposing multicolored light the same shade that gathered in her palms.
“Wait until they fill the opening,” Felix said.
The Mage nodded and continued to focus on her spell, fed by the magical power gathered by Elly and Merida.
Geroth and Romina also gathered power around them. The ground at the black wolf’s feet shook around her while winds surged around her mate. The gale condensed itself around the white wolf, distorting the very air around him, waiting.
Ether surged from Leaf’s core, its once red shade now a bright, light blue that reflected clear skies. There was always a stubborn streak behind Leaf’s abilities, a chagrin that pushed out against the world to impose just a small speck of his will upon it. That resolution would always remain, but now, in its new shade of light blue, Leaf’s Ether was without its usual struggle. It was free, and rather than having tension wind around him, the archer faced the oncoming threat with nothing but readiness. His eyes, now a shade that more suited him, reflected this, but their blue color still gave Helbram pause. In all other aspects, they looked nothing alike, but those eyes were so similar to-
He shook his head. Now was not the time for such thoughts.
The Gaunths started to emerge from the shadows of the hive. Crawlers lead their forces, covering the walls with their lanky frames at such numbers that it was difficult to make out the Brutes and Shriekers that trailed behind them. Helbram hoped that these numbers were the last, desperate charge of the fel beasts, but he knew that such fortune was never in his favor.
The creatures nearly trampled over one another in their rush, the frenzy that their hive mates had shown back at the village still clear in their erratic, jerking movements. They reached the mouth of the cave, and it was then that Jahora unleashed her spell.
Sparks trailed from the vibrating bead that left her fingertips, dancing like bits of ash in the wind as it disappeared into the tide of sickly flesh that swept towards them. The glow of its magics vanished, but returned in a burst of light, force, and flame. Fire roared through the hive’s mouth and the boom that sounded from the explosion drowned out the screams of the creatures burning within. No pause was given to examine the damage, for Geroth followed the fireball with a sharp bark.
The air around the white wolf released and sent a concussive wave ahead of him. It punched a hole in the smoke and charred corpses, creating a clear line into the cave’s depths. Romina was the first to charge, the Aether around her seeping into the dirt. A wedge of stone jut from the ground in front of her, large enough to cover both the black wolf and her mate as they shoved their weight behind it. The mass of rock slid from their efforts. Helbram and the others followed behind cut through the shaken forces. A Brute tried to intercept them, but their momentum didn’t slow as it was knocked aside from the beasts’ charge.
Screams crashed against the cave walls, but they were silenced by the crack of gunfire behind them. Orders barked by Pius and Kiki followed after, but none looked back to see the chaos behind them. They had to keep moving. The faster that this was done, the less chance that more would fall this day.
Gaunths thudded against Romina’s earthen barrier, bouncing against it with screams cut short or the snapping of bone. Right as they burst through the mass of creatures, Romina and Merida whirled around. Aether swirled around the Druid and wolf before Transposing into a surge of yellow power that gathered at the bottom of Merida’s staff. All five Circles alight, she slammed it into the ground and cracked the chitinous material at her feet. Some of the Gaunths had spun around to pursue the party during their charge, but they were too slow. A wall of stone burst from the cave floor and slammed into the ceiling with a loud crack. One Crawler was caught between stone and wall, and the resulting squelch of brackish green that followed made Helbram wince. Thuds thundered against the newly formed wall, and the sharp crack of breaking stone made all of them flinch as fissures formed along the barrier’s surface. The sounds of battle drew the creatures that thrashed against the wall away. For now, the barrier remained untouched.
Merida staggered back and swayed after the light of Aether left her, but she held a hand up when Leaf went to help her. She righted herself and moved with them into the hive’s depths, the sounds of combat growing distant behind the wall. Elly flicked her wrist and produced a small ball of light that hovered over the party as they walked down the path. The sound beneath Helbram’s boots was not the thud of dirt and stone, but rather the click of his heels against the smooth material that formed ridges along the walls. Light gleamed off its surface, and even if they moved at a light jog, the otherworldly appearance of the corridor made it feel nearly endless as they continued to delve deeper.
“This place… it hinders my magic,” Jahora said as she rode upon the back of Romina.
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“The corruption is overpowering,” Merida explained, “It will not smother our magic completely, but our spells will take longer to cast.”
Helbram pressed one of the triggers at the back of his mind. There was resistance to the effort, a tension that caused a pressure to squeeze his temples, but he felt it move, and that would have to be enough for what was to come.
They continued down the seemingly endless cavern, and Helbram could feel that corruptive presence start to press against him harder and harder as they moved. He tried to shake the feeling, but it only creeped further and further into his mind the longer their rush went on. To both his relief and dread, they stopped upon reaching a fork in their path. The cavern walls, absent of rock and thick with the slick material around them, made him feel like he was walking within the mouth of a beast, and a growing, paranoid part of him was starting to think that maybe he was. A ridiculous thought, for if it were true, they were long dead.
Not that such a notion gave him any sense of comfort.
Felix stared down each of the paths, his eyes alight with gray power. “I’m not picking up a trail. Leaf, are you faring any better?”
The archer peered ahead of them, the power of his Core suffused throughout the entirety of his body. He chipped small pieces of chitin from the walls and threw them down each path, his eyes closed and head tilted to listen to the way the sound echoed down them. He then took in a deep breath through his nose, and his eyes opened. He pointed down the path to their right.
“There.”
The archer’s voice was followed by distant screeches, ones that echoed in from the paths that he rejected. The sounds were barely a gasp,but they all knew it was only a matter of time before the remnants of the hive would start to descend upon them.
“Can you put up more walls?” Helbram asked.
Merida frowned. “I could, but the effort to do so is taxing and there will be no distractions to draw any of the Gaunths away from it. It would be a temporary measure, at best.”
The warrior pressed his lip thin. The coming conflict with the Countess would no doubt involve more than just the leader of the hive herself, and they could not afford to have even more of their number swarming behind them.
Geroth and Romina shared a look between one another. The white wolf huffed and tapped his snout against Merida’s shoulder. She looked at him, confused at first, but her eyes widened as the wolves’ intent became clear.
“You can’t mean to-”
Geroth cut her off with a soft bark.
The grain of the Druid’s staff creaked under her strained grip. “Ok.” She placed her head against his. “We will be done with this soon, just hold on until then.”
Though Helbram could not read the beasts’ intent as well as Leaf or Merida, what the wolves planned to do was clear as they posted up in front of the other paths. The sounds of the Gaunths were getting louder now. There was no time to say anything else.
As they ran down the tunnel to the Countess, Helbram spared a glance back. Emerald and topaz light burned within the distant darkness, shimmering like gems even as the screaming of fel beasts crashed into them. He clenched his jaw and continued to press on.
This tunnel was not as long as the previous one, for after only a few minutes of running did they see the distant glow that marked its end. Helbram and Felix took point when they emerged, but the sight that greeted them gave them pause.
A round, nearly spherical cavern opened up around them. It’s height dwarfed even the tower back at Geldervale, and the ridged, rib-like build up of chitin that lined the walls wrapped around the entirety of the space. Eggs dotted the walls, embedded into its slick surface in raised surfaces that Helbram could only equate to sockets. Most were half the size of him, but there were a few toward the back and slotted into the ground that were at least a head taller than he was, as well as a few thinner eggs even taller than than. What was to hatch from them was obvious, and their numbers were countless. Only a few may have twitched with signs of emerging life, but the sight alone had dread digging into his heart.
At the center of the cavern was a thick mass of roots, wrapped and twisted upon another to such a degree it looked as if the tree it belonged to had done nothing but grow straight downwards. The broken ends of roots that strayed away from this massive column told the tale of why that was, and the green light that pulsed down their length revealed what tree it belonged to. An opaque sack of flesh was attached to the bottom of the roots, engorged and dripping with a thick, translucent liquid exuding a musk that brought the beginnings of a gag to Helbram’s throat even from far away.
The light from the roots pulsed into the growth like it was being drank from. The power of the Tree was not converted, but rather absorbed to fuel the generation of the sickly green aura that pulsed within the sack. An ovipositor protruded from one end, its tube-like shape swollen from the egg that had not been pushed all the way through its length. At the other end, it looked like a large chunk had been ripped from the mass flesh, like whatever was connected to it had torn itself from off. What that could have been was also easy to guess, but the mystery did not last for long. A tail whipped around from behind the column of roots, its length covered in chitinous spines and the tip a pointed, hooked blade that dug into the wood.
The rest of the Countess followed after it.
She was at least two and a half times the size of Helbram in both height and width, and rather than the thin claws of their lowest caste, hers were much more like a Brute’s. They were practically blades at her fingertips, and these too dug into the roots she climbed upon. There were little bare spots of pale, yellowed skin, and instead her body was covered from head to malformed toe in interlocking plates of chitin thicker than even the ones the Brute’s possessed. Her mouth was in the shape of a cone just like the rest of her species, and the beady eyes that were at its base were only just a bit larger than the ones of her children. Except, what was behind those eyes wasn’t the static nothing that the Gaunth’s usually held.
No, something squirmed beneath.
The Countess shuffled along the column, her movements both quick and producing little sound. A combination that brought shivers all along Helbram’s limbs. Her mouth pulsed open for the briefest of moments to let out a strangled chirp. It was a soft sound, one that barely brushed against the eggs around them, but the ones that were already trembling before stilled upon its utterance. Silence followed, broken the next breath by the crack of shells.
The leader of the Hive snapped her head to them right after, the movement jerky, like a puppet that had been yanked too hard in one direction. The parasite was in control, and that was only confirmed further when the Countess opened her mouth. Petaled lips parted to reveal the writhing mass of darkness that sat where a mangled maw should be. Threads of inky, black tendrils splotched against each lip and throbbed irregularly to make them twitch out of sync. The mass tore itself open at the center and the scream that parted from its ripped from shook the cavern walls. No corrupted Aether poured from the Countess’s lips, but the sound itself stabbed into Helbram’s ears like nails. Fear tore its way into his heart, verging on becoming a paralyzing panic, but just at the cusp of collapse, he steadied himself by rapping his sword against his shield.
“Get ready!” He shouted.
And then the Countless leapt.
Author's Note: Shorter chapter here since I want the next one to focus on the battle itself. That one is a DOOZY, but its gonna have to wait till next week while I get Arc 6 off of the ground on Patreon.
Till next update! Have a wonderful time!
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