Valkyrie Profile:
Lenneth Novelization AU:
Disclaimer: I do not own Valkyrie Profile or any other tri-Ace properties. Please support the official release.
Chapter Twenty-Eight:
The Turgen Mines II
"Do you think maybe we shoulda been pluggin' all dese holes on previous trudges through this place? That's a lotta cracks for somefin' to pop out of," Rusty said.
"A little late for that," Barren muttered flatly.
Lucien found himself agreeing with Rusty. He'd just led the company out of the first check point a few minutes ago, and already having second thoughts. At the checkpoint all but two tunnels were blocked off. That could have either bottlenecked the wasps or the Sheriff's men or trapped the exodus fleeing Gerebellum as enemies poured in from both sides. Lucien didn't know what the right call was.
"Maybe we should have turned back," he thought.
The passage they were in now had so many crevices along the sides and even holes big enough for a grown man to pass though on the ceiling. Now with the threat of the Wasp Queen, the Turgen mountains had never felt more unsafe.
Feeling anxious, the swordsman glanced behind him. He saw Claire, Rusty, and Barren following close under the torchlight, putting him slightly at ease. But only slightly. After the sheriff had broken into the natural cave systems, the Silver Saviors and their leader had to expect the worst.
"Can we even hope for the best tonight?" Lucien answered.
He glanced behind again, quickly doing a sweep of the refugee slaves. They were mostly quiet and keeping in pace with them. Some of them looked extra tall, but he knew that was because some of the younger men were carrying the elders and children. He heard the whimpers of a few kids here and there, but they were quickly hushed by their parents. Claire noticed Lucien nervously looking around. So, she quickened pace to come up beside him.
"Hey," she said to get his attention.
"Hey," Lucien answered.
"Think we should have had Ingrid or Gloria stay up here with us?" Claire asked.
"I don't know," Lucien admitted. "With these tunnels being so extensive… I don't know how to place everyone. There's no predicting how the worst could go down in here or where it'll come from."
"Want me to go back there and bring one of them up here?" Claire asked.
Lucien silently considered it.
"Maybe…" he muttered.
Before he could elaborate more, a loud buzzing filled the passageway. Most of the company instinctively plugged their ears with their fingers at the earsplitting sound.
"Thor beard! It's them!" Rusty shouted.
Barren's breathing quickened out of fear and he swept his torch around, scanning the area frantically. Claire had to duck to avoid having her hair ignited.
"Hey, watch it!" she cried, and shoved his arm away. "Use your head!"
Many of the refugees cowered while the Silver Saviors raised their weapons with vicelike grips as they assumed defensively positions on either side of them. They held the torches up high, searching the interconnecting caves with their eyes.
A baby began crying after he was wrenched from his slumber by the buzzing. His wails pierced the air, putting fear in everyone around him.
"They'll hear us! Shut him up!" one of the other refugees hissed.
"Hush, little one, please," the mother desperately pled. She stroked her son's head and quietly rocked him. "Edgar, grab some cloth and plug his ears."
"Quiet that thing!" someone growled. "He'll give us away!"
The mother gave him a hard stare before continuing to try comforting her child. Edgar obediently ripped off some shreds from his sleeves and attempted to gently stuff them into his son's ears. The child's cries still rang out and began to unnerve the other children.
"Momma, they're going to get us. They'll hear, they'll hear," a little girl pointed at the infant.
"No, they won't. Keep moving," her mother assured.
At the head of the line, Lucien and his companions' looked for any sign of the Wasp Giants. Like most of the Silver Saviors, they were ready for a fight.
"Keep everyone moving," Lucien ordered. "Come on. Assist the elders and children if you must, but don't stop now!"
With that, they quickened pace, hoping to put as much space between them and the bloodthirsty beasts the Sheriff and her men had just unleashed. The baby continued to cry despite his mother's best efforts to calm him down, killing the morale further.
"The bugs are gonna find us! That babe's too loud!" one of the Silver Necklaces murmured.
"Just keep moving," one of the other volunteer guards said. "And be ready to start stabbing."
The man who'd growled at the couple and their baby from before approached them with a rock in his hand. He'd nearly crept up on the child when the mother noticed him and turned her boy away from him. The father noticed, too, and shoved the man away.
"Don't even try it!" he angrily told him.
"I told you to quiet the babe, if you don't…" the man's threat was cut off by one of the Silver Saviors putting their blade to his throat.
"Back, Devil. We don't spill innocent blood here," The necklace-wearing man ordered.
Before the argument could continue any further, the buzzing became louder and more intense. Everyone recoiled from the walls. Now it sounded like the Wasp Giants were crawling around very close, but just out of sight. In the back of the line, the half-dwarven cousins were doing their best to keep an eye out.
"Shit! Something just whizzed past in the dark down that way," Ingrid said.
Gloria, Bedelia, Maximillian, and Betty all turned to look. White-haired hybrid had parked herself in front of a hole in the wall big enough for a horse to pass through. Her ax was raised and ready.
"Go, I'll watch our backs," she ordered.
"But…" Gloria protested.
"Go! They'll need you!" Ingrid insisted.
"Betty, Gloria, go on. We'll follow," Maximillian said.
Betty ran past her father and Bedelia right away to warn everyone the wasps might have found them. Gloria reluctantly followed a moment later. Maximillian set his torch down. Then he and Bedelia took out their bows, notching arrows and stood back-to-back, watching the sides of the passage. Ingrid still stood her ground at the entrance of the hole where she'd spotted movement, waiting for that thing to creep through the shadows. Her hands subtly adjusted their grip on her ax.
"Come on out, Devil," Ingrid mumbled.
The caverns darkened as the group got further away from her. Maximillian and Bedelia gradually side-stepped away, keeping a close rear watch. That did not matter one bit to Ingrid. If anything, the glow of body heat was all the more visible to Ingrid's eyes with fewer warm-blooded bodies and torches around. Now, she could see several red spots through the walls, frenetically crawling around all over each other in tunnels well-off the Silver Saviors' path.
"They're hunting," Ingrid realized.
The dots searched for the offending party which had awakened their queen.
"There!" Ingrid thought.
A particularly bright red spot seemed to crawl along a wall towards the mouth of the tunnel in front of her, and sure enough, when it reached the corner it revealed itself to be a Wasp Giant. Ingrid dug her feet in. Only a faintest moment passed before the wasp let go of the wall and hovered towards her with its stinger prepared.
"One's found us!" Ingrid shouted.
The instant Ingrid raised her voice, the wasp shot forward at a much faster speed, intending to silence her. It was fast, she was faster. When it jabbed its stinger forward, Ingrid smacked the abdomen from whence the injector came with the flat of her ax, making the beast spin out and crash into the wall. It bounced off landing at her feet. Her ax came down, slicing the beast in half where the thorax connected to the abdomen. In its dying moments, the Wasp Giant tried to grab her leg with its own so it could bite her, but Ingrid raised her booted foot high and stomped it down hard, smashing the insect's head.
Up ahead, Maximillian and Bedelia heard her message and the brief entanglement.
"Wasp Giants!" Maximillian called ahead. "Get ready!"
Then he and Bedelia nodded in mutual understanding and picked up the pace to catch up. They each reached into small packs hanging from their belts, pulling one of the stink bombs prepared for this occasion. They were small round glass jars the size of a fist containing a green liquid.
Up ahead, a giant wasp burst down from one of the ceiling holes directly over the fleeing humans. It grabbed an older man, yanking him up into the hole in one swift movement. The people around him screamed as he suddenly vanished into the darkness above. While they were still reeling from that attack, a second Wasp Giant pounced out from another hole, nearly landing on someone. The refugees cried out and started to panic at the sight of giant insect among them.
The front half of the exodus broke into a panicked forward flight, pushing against those in front of them. Those blocked by it began to back away. When it turned towards them, they screamed and turned to run back south, shoving against anyone those further back. Several armed men and women struggled against the tide which swept them up, shouting for everyone to keep their head so they could protect them. In the end, the panicking mobs only made room for the beast while also dividing the group in half. One swordsman broke free of the retreating mob and ran towards the Wasp Giant.
"They're here!" he shouted.
Then he drew his blade as it began hovering above him. It flew at him while more wasps poked their head into the tunnel around the swordsman. Just as all seemed lost, someone threw a stink bomb in their direction. It smashed against the ground, flooding the tunnel with foul-smelling smoke. The flying wasp wobbled as its senses were assaulted with peppermint and coffee grinds. It was still reeling when the swordsman lunged and beheaded it. Meanwhile, several insect heads vanished back down the holes while only the most determined crawled out.
Another Wasp Giant flew out of a ceiling opening and fluttered towards the swordsman. The man roared as he swung his blade in a cross-pattern to keep the creature at bay. Then another guard who'd broken free of the panicked group crept up behind the beast and with his club knocking it out of the air. The beast fell roughly on its side before the bludgeoner smashed its cranium in. As quickly as it died, at least a dozen more of them crawled out of nearby holes into the tunnel.
The man with the club wasted no time throwing his weight shoulder-first into against of the hovering wasps, knocking the beast over before bringing his club down on its head no less than three times. Behind him the swordsman had successfully beheaded another. Then, another wasp dropped onto him from above, pinning down him facedown, and impaling him through the back with its stinger. The club fighter whirled around and saw what had happened. Before he could attempt to save the other man, he was grabbed from both sides and impaled under his arms. Then he screamed as his attackers began devouring him before their venom had fully do its job as more wasps poured into the passage.
Maximillian and Bedelia had just joined Betty and Gloria at the back of the line when the wasps attacked. One's head poked out from a nearby hole, and the two archers fired into its compound eyes. The beast vanished back down the hole from which it came, but there were still more coming.
"Bombs!" Bedelia ordered.
She and Maximillian hurled their bombs against opposite walls, bathing the room in a thick lemongrass smell which made everyone begin coughing and the wasps retreat again. Behind Bedelia, Maximillian pitched another bomb down another hole, deterring the wasps coming up from that way.
Gloria backpedaled to avoid the sharp jaws of one wasp which descended from above. She grabbed it by the head and swung it against the floor before grabbing its stinger and stabbing the offending insect giant through one of its compound eyes with its own venom. Then, Gloria heard a rumbling and looked up to see the incoming panicking mob.
"Don't panic!" she cried. "We have this under… Rrf!"
Glora's plea was cut off as she slammed into by a mass of bodies. Farther back, Bedelia, Betty, and Maximillian watched Gloria vanish into the incoming tide. With only a second to act, Betty grabbed Bedelia and pulled her aside, flattening the elderly women and herself against the wall. They watched the flood of people ran past, but could not see Maximillian or Gloria.
"Dad! Dad! Where are you?" Betty called.
"Max! Gloria!" Bedelia joined it.
"Over here," they heard Maximillian answer.
Both women looked across the way and spotted Maximillian against the opposite wall with the parents of the crying infant. The child was still crying, and that unfortunately drew attention. From a hole in the ceiling, another wasp descended. It'd heard the child and crawled down towards it, cutting jaws clicking hungrily. Maximillian saw it and uttered a curse as he reached for his bow, but was slammed into by someone else in the dark. He grunted painfully as he was pressed against the stone wall, hard, before stumbling and falling into the crowd.
"Dad!" Betty screamed.
The wasp was nearly upon the baby before the parents saw the beast. The mother pulled her child away, attempting to flee. The father, seeing no alternative, grabbed a rock, the only weapon he could find in the confusion, and hurled himself at the creature. He succeeded in striking the wasp in the head, dinting its exoskeleton and making it flinch. The wasp retaliated by grabbing him with its front legs and biting down into his throat. Blood strayed everywhere as it dragged him upwards and through the hole it had first come.
"Ulf!" Gloria grunted painfully as she was pressed into one of the walls. She didn't even notice the droplets of crimson raining down on her from above.
Ingrid heard the incoming crowd coming back up the tunnel ans looked up from the Wasp Giant she had just felled. There were at least a dozen more curled up lifelessly around her, but that did not seem to the matter to the fleeing refugees.
"Shit, shit shit!" Ingrid cried.
She knew she'd be trampled if she remained in the main tunnel, and so she took out a stink bomb and hurled it down the tunnel in front of her. Once she saw it break open and unleash its payload, she dove in.
Lucien and the others turned as soon as the screams began.
"What's going on?" Lucien called.
Among the shouts, they could just make out something about wasps. Lucien and Barren exchanged looks and began rushing back with intention to assist. They were then the forward panicked rush began and practically ran both men over as they pushed into backward runs.
"Hey, hold up!" Lucien bellowed as he was swept along.
"WASPS! BIG WASPS!" the crowd shouted as they surged forward.
"Whoa, whoa! Slow it up! Calm down!" Barren cried as he fought against the bodies pushing against him.
"Maintain the line! Do not panic!" Claire shouted.
But she was ignored too as the sea of people swallowed her.
"Urk! Ooff!" she grunted in pain as she bounced around like a pigskin. She nearly fell at least once. With the one good breath she could get as she was rattled about, she shouted,
"LUCIEN!"
"Luci…" she tried again, but was cut short by being bumped from behind.
She stumbled and began to fall. In that horrible split-second her body left the ground altogether, Claire was certain she would be trampled. Then she was snatched up around her body by a strong pair of arms and pulled close to the person's chest. Claire was too stunned to comprehend anything before she was suddenly pressed face-first against the wall, just outside the panicking crowd with another body pressed up beside hers'. She looked up and saw her rescuer was none other than Lucien.
"You alright?" he asked with concern.
She nodded.
"Good," Lucien flashed a toothy smile.
He turned, looking for Barren and Rusty. It was difficult to see, but he found them after a moment. Both men had their backs flat against the wall across the way along with any refugees and other Silver Saviors who'd kept their heads. Barren was trying to tell those who were panicking to stop, but he pushed aside every time.
"Barren! Rusty!" Lucien shouted.
The other two men heard and looked towards him.
"Take Claire and the others and go! Get them out!"
"What?!" Claire protested.
"But what about you?" Barren demanded.
"I'll slow the wasps up and then catch up whenever I can!" Lucien hollered back.
"Sure thing, Boss!" Rusty replied.
The stocky silver-necklace wearing rebel had no desire to stick around, anyway. As soon as the last of the mob ran past, those who'd kept their heads stepped away the walls. Lucien quickly did a head count to see who remained, counting thirteen people, including himself. With him still were Claire, Barren, Rusty, a fifth silver necklace-wearer named Erik, and eight civilians.
"Alright. Get going," Lucien told him. "I'll catch up quickly enough. Just put distance between here and yourselves."
Barren motioned for them to follow.
"Come on. If we're lucky, we'll catch up with the others before they get themselves killed," he said.
The small group followed him in a run. Only Claire lingered with Lucien. The scarlet swordsman turned to run back with his sword drawn, intending to make a one-man stand.
"Alone, really?" Claire demanded.
"Yes, really!" he answered over his shoulder "I pushed for a final use of this route. This is as much my fault as it is The Iron Lady's! Go! Take the stink bombs and protect them. I'll be along in a bit."
As he sprinted back up the tunnel, Claire was left trying to decide what to do.
As he ran, Lucien grabbed a torch which had been dropped on the way. He went around a shallow curve and was greeted with a grim sight. Under the light of discarded torches, he was able to see the tunnel's walls, ceiling and floor was freshly stained red and heard the screams of those who were dragged off into the unknown like prey animals. The passage ahead was flooded with about a dozen or so wasps feasting on the corpses of Lucien's comrades and slave trade refugees. Lucien's courage almost took leave of him as he beheld the slaughter.
His mind reeled as he took in the scene, "Why… why didn't the repellants work this time? They've always been able to turn them aside before."
He had stopped before he was close enough to be noticed and begun slide one of his booted feet back as he prepared to retreat. The only thing that stopped him was the sound of clashing metal further back in the chamber.
"Some still live and fight. We haven't lost them all yet," that realization spurred him into standing firm.
When the first wasp noticed him and started towards him, Lucien set the torch down and gripped the hilt of his blade in both hands firmly.
"Come on, then," he gruffly belted out his challenge. "None of us have all night."
More wasps heard and turned toward him as had been his intention. If they were focused on him, that was another moment they weren't going back to hunt those they had cut off.
The first Wasp Giant was close now. It crawled onto the wall to jump him from above. Lucien recognized its strategy and prepared himself to move quickly. As soon as the wasp jumped from the wall to sting him, he leapt forward into the roll, ending up on his knees behind it. He turned and leapt onto its back, driving his blade through the back of its head. The wasp fell dead under Lucien, who then heard more crawling on the wall and ceiling behind him.
He didn't stop to look, he acted. The swordsman yanked his blade free and turned, swinging in a wide arc, successfully parrying a pair of reaching insect legs and a stinger. While the one which had tried to grab him was stunned, he thrust up where its head connected to the thorax, decapitating it. Lucien now focused on the other, which was turned partially away so it could try stinging him. It arched its abdomen towards Lucien, who swung, lobbing the poisoned object off its rear. The Wasp Giant convulsed and fell from the wall, before scurrying away from him.
Two more clamored over the wounded, dying insect giant like it was nothing while another two crawled along the walls as they hungrily approached towards Lucien. He raised his sword, readying himself for whatever end was in store for him.
"Duck!" he recognized Claire's voice behind him.
"Huh?" he dared only the quickly look.
He saw her with one arm drawn back over her head to throw something. He vaguely made out three spherical glass stink bombs all clutched in her hand before he dropped to a knee. The three objects sailed over his head and broke right against one of the wasp's faces, releasing the combined strength of clove, coffee grinds, and basil overwhelming the olfactory nerves of the insect giants. They all recoiled from it, but only three retreated down nearby tunnels. The fourth endured it, shaking as though caught in sharp, freezing winds. Lucien remained in the center of its vision as he backed away, nauseously retching at the unpleasant combinations of scents.
The wasp skittered forward, coming at Lucien in a straight line. The swordsman took another step back, coughing slightly again as he raised his sword upright. Then the wasp jumped onto the left wall and lunged, jaws first. The warrior in red arched his sword defensively, but fell into the insect's trap. It clamped down on his blade and pulled back.
"Uh?" Lucien yelped as he barely held on.
The wasp yanked him up higher as it turned its body to the side, angling its stinger at him. Lucien had only just realized he'd been had when the wasp released Lucien's blade. He nearly stumbled, but kept his footing. The swordsman looked up at his enemy as it began clawing at its own face, and realized a crossbow bolt was sticking out of one of its compound eyes. He didn't need to look back to know Claire had had saved him.
The wasp wildly leapt from the wall and hovered, practically bouncing off the sides of the tunnel in its disoriented state. It saw Lucien and tried attacking him. Its clumsy, pain-induced flight ricocheting off the walls, and it practically skewered itself on his blade. Its momentum carried it forward, allowing it to plunge its venom-coated natural-harpoon forward only for it to bounce off Lucien's chest-plate.
Lucien moved his sword to follow the insect's motion, allowing the beast to simply slide off the steel. With the beast dead, he and Claire met gazes. The buzzing grew louder again, so Claire took out another of the stink bombs, and tossed it. The glass broke against the floor, filling the passageway with fresh repellent, which spread down the side tunnels as well. From where they stood, Lucien and Claire could hear the wasps sputter and begin to retreat.
With the way clear for the moment, Lucien looked as far back as he could. He could still hear the people trapped back there, including his comrades. Every fiber of Lucien's being wanted to keep going. He would have been perfectly willingly to cut down every wasp in their path if not for the person standing next to him. Lucien focused on Claire's brilliant red hair, which was radiant even in the dim light. She'd made it clear she would not leave his side, but it'd be too dangerous to push forward with her wearing no armor.
"No," Lucien decided. "It'd be too dangerous even if she were wearing a full plated suit."
He was yet again the sole protector of a woman he was very fond of in the middle of a dark, dangerous place. Lucien's imagination conjured an image of Claire being torn to pieces by Wasp Giants, leaving only a mess of bones and internal organs in their wake.
"If I'm not careful, I could lead her to death, just like I did Pla… No, not this time," Lucien vowed.
He had a duty to her, and then he remembered his duty to the other half of their party heading north, fleeing to escape becoming a part of this carnage as they were led by Barren. They were also counting on him. Reluctantly, Lucien had made up his mind, and pointed his sword northward.
"Come on," Lucien said. "Barren will be needing our help, especially if everyone meets again up ahead. Can't very well expect him and Rusty to manage them all."
"Huh?" Claire was astonished by his decision. "But… what about them?"
Lucien paused as the temptation to go back returned. He refused to give the way back another look, though.
"We have to believe Bedelia and the rest can get them out," he said. "They have protectors, too. Ingrid and Gloria count for a lot. If worse comes to worse, the girls can uncover the entrance again and lead them back to Gerebellum."
Even as he said that, Lucien could still hear sounds of a struggle going on. Beside him, Claire could tell he saw this as a failure on his part. She suspected she was why he wasn't pursuing this any further and considered encouraging him to go, but a look down at the darkness ahead made her own courage waver.
"Yes, let's go," she surrendered, feeling terrible about it.
"We won't rush," Lucien said. "We'll take it steady at first and make a stand if the bugs catch up again. Come on. We still have a job to do."
Claire held up her reloaded crossbow, nodding.
"Lead on, Scarlet Swordsmen," she said.
They shared forced, weak smiles and then took off at a jog after Barren's group.
"Everyone through! Do not break formation!" Agatha shouted. "Archers, keep up the pressure!"
She stood just inside a large manmade square cavern in the Turgen Mines beside a mineshaft from which her men retreated. The room had served as a nexus through which many mineshafts intersected. There were dusty, crooked, rusted-over old minecart tracks crisscrossing along the floor off into several old mining veins.
As her men poured into the chamber, Agatha noted with a sense of looming dread they had last around a third of their number so far. Some fled through first while their comrades covered them, backing up as they swung their weapons to keep the Wasp Giants fended off. The archers stood behind the ranks of fighting men, unloading bolts into the air, downing many a wasp. Then half of them would retreat to another position further back while the rest remained to cover them.
Upon joining the sheriff in the nexus chamber, they turned forming ranks and rows to cover those who had stayed back to let them retreat. Archers lined on either side of the shaft entrance, shooting any wasps that tried to get past the retreating Deputies. Geo Mage Louie was again in the back, having retreated first with Agatha. He silently chanted another spell.
"Come on! Come o…" Agatha was cut off when a wasp that managed to slip past her Deputies.
She cursed, raising her sword defensively as it doubled back to attack her. She took out a throwing dagger, but kept it hidden under her forearm while she waited until it got closer. Just as it bobbed around in an arc before going in for the kill, Agatha flung the dagger right into one of its eyes. The wasp jerked to the side, grabbing at its face with its legs, but in its pain, it wasn't mindful of its surroundings and flew straight into the wall beside where the sheriff stood. It flopped onto the ground, giving Agatha her chance to plunge her sword into its abdomen. The thing jerked, but then curled up, twitching. As Agatha wiped the insect viscus from her blade, one of her righthand Deputies approached.
"That's everyone, Sheriff!" he breathlessly told her. We…"
A wasp dove for him, and he turned taking a sweeping swing at it, which made it retreat higher into the air. An arrow struck one of the beast's legs and it flew away altogether. The Deputy looked at Agatha again.
"Orders, Milady?" he asked.
Agatha looked towards the lines of Deputies, and cupped her hand around her mouth.
"Louie, now would be as good a time as any!" she hollered.
"Almost," the earth wizard muttered far too quietly for her to hear.
"More are coming!" one of the Deputies shouted.
"Maintain formation!" Agatha ordered.
She positioned herself in front, pointing her sword at the incoming Wasp Giants.
"Fight! Do not let them get past you!" she ordered.
The wasps swarmed the law men and the fighting began with renewed intensity. They came in quickly, barely giving Agatha's forces time to react. Agatha swung at the net Wasp Giant to come at her, chopping off the ends of two of its limbs. The insect retreated higher into the air, but was replaced by another.
In the back, Louie opened his eyes with the spell finally ready. He raised both hands into the air as his body glowed with purple energy and an enormous magical circle formed on the ground around him. This was no mere Fire Lance or even Earth Grave, but Great Magic.
"Everyone grab ahold of something!" Louie instructed.
A purple orb the size of a fist appeared between his palms.
"Gravity Blessing!" he shouted.
On that command, the orb flew past Agatha and her men into the tunnel the wasps swarmed through. It stopped about thirty feet in, and it expanded to the size of a wagon. In the same instance, all felt its gravitational pull as it began sucking everything in like a black hole. The wasps were first to be snared, and several were gobbled up by the crushing gravity immediately. Others struggled against the pull and attached themselves to the walls to save themselves. Many wasps became like a funnel cloud around it as they were crushed together.
In the chamber ahead, Agatha and her Deputies had to grab anything they could from rocks to outcroppings in the wall and even old machinery. Others who weren't so lucky found themselves pulled into the air and then the tunnel. Rocks and old mining equipment were also yanked towards the well, and in some instances, knocked Deputies loose from where they clung, sending them hurling towards the gravity well to join the Wasp Giants being crushed together.
Around her, Agatha could only watch as men flew past, screaming. The unlucky ones went right in while others were slammed into other objects and were killed or knocked unconscious. One especially unfortunate man smacked against the corner of the tunnel mouth. Agatha heard his spine break before he was yanked into the darkness. Their screams of panic became shrieks of agony in the dark passageway before they were absorbed by the spell, as many were stung by the panicking insects when they joined the packed funnel around the spell.
"What is it?" one man shouted desperately as he grabbed a column for dear life. "By the gods, how do you stop it?"
Behind them, Louie the Geo Mage was already casting another spell to counteract the literal black hole he had unleashed upon the mountain interior.
"Stone Barrier!" he chanted.
Then all at once, a section of floor in front of the tunnel broke free from the surrounding stone and lifted up about halfway, partially blocking the gravitational pull. Agatha and her Deputies still had to cling to whatever objects they were able to hold onto while they waited out the spell's duration, which took several more minutes. In all this, Agatha noticed the influx of wasps had ceased.
The spell began to wind down, and the sheriff and her men were able to relax their grips. They first slumped a moment, and then stood somewhat shakily. Agatha regarded the half-blocked cave entrance. She still heard buzzing coming from within, but couldn't tell if the Wasp Giants were still deadset on coming after them. She hoped the Gravity Blessing had dissuaded them. She only knew that all the mineshafts interconnected at several points to assure there was always more than one exit in event of a cave-in.
"I am taking no chances," she thought.
She turned to her remaining men.
"Reform the lines!" she ordered. "We will continue our retreat, acting in formation. On the double!"
The Deputies were swift to reform the lines and followed Agatha towards the exit.
"Alright, men. Come on. Bolger, select men as rear guard and follow us. Archers, eyes sharp! We're leaving, now!" she ordered.
"What?" Louie rasped.
The Geo Mage ran over her with surprising speed for his frame.
"But Milady, what about the mission?" he asked. "We had just broken through. We didn't all risk our lives to come in here for nothing."
An angry scowl broke through Agatha's usual veneer of coolness which sent a shiver down the Geo Mage's back.
"We need to regroup first!" she answered. "We did not anticipate there would still be a hive of Wasp Giants this large remaining in the Turgen Mountains. We lost the miners and now half my men. We will return once we've sorted this crisis-in-the-making! Now move, we will need you to seal off as much of the mountain as possible! I won't have the wasps descending on Gerebellum. I won't have it!"
As she walked, her Deputies filed in behind her, making for a swift retreat. Louie followed along, somewhere in the middle of the pack. He constantly looked back, keeping an eye on the caves behind them, but the wasps were not coming after them again. At least not yet, anyway.
Deeper in the mines, surviving wasps were still in a state of confusion, crawling all over each other and some even rolling about to get to right themselves. The rest had been scared off by the Gravity Blessing and had indeed taken to other passages in the mountain to hunt for food. They were still hundreds more roaming the halls, splitting up as they came to various holes in smaller groups. They were still both hungry and angry after being awakened by their queen, and the humans would make for good eating.
"Prepare yourselves. We are close enough I can guide us to the fiend once inside. We go into battle. Now."
Then, Lenneth floated through the mountain's outer wall, taking both herself and her einherjar through, exiting out the other side into a low chamber filled with columns. She had not yet phased them back into physical form when they were bit a discordant symphony of harsh humming, screams, cries, shouts, loud crashing and thumping, and the clashing of metal.
"That buzzing…!" Belenus murmured. "The Wasp Giants. Awake and swarming after all these years."
Jelanda's face twisted into a wide-eyed look of horror as she took them in, nearly drawing her fingers to her ears. She stopped herself for reasons she didn't understand.
"Some of those screams sound like children," she murmured.
Beside her, Lawfer and Nanami looked no less horrified.
"It's like there's a war going on in this mountain!" Llewelyn loudly commented, unable to contain his unease. "And it sounds like it's coming from everywhere!"
Arngrim looked at Lenneth at the head, and said, "Call it, Valkyrie."
Lenneth gave them a sideways look that betrayed no emotion.
"The situation is already much grimmer than I had imagined," she told them. "Come, Dark Warriors. Battle awaits."
Then, she took flight again, bringing them with her as she flew towards the sounds of panic and fighting. They phased through the columns littering the chamber, which would have made it impassible for anyone still in their mortal body, and then through the wall on the other side. After a moment, they exited into another chamber. There was a big pool of water beneath them and a platform on the other side of the chamber well above the tarn. The wall and ceiling were just littered with holes, almost like a honeycomb.
Lenneth hovered over to the platform before finally phasing herself and her team back into corporeal form, setting down on it. Now, not only were the screams and sounds of struggle closer and more distinct now, but so was the aura of the reigning beast of darkness. Lenneth blocked it all out while she studied the aura of the dark beast. Her einherjar all looked grim as their listened to the sound of human panic and slaughter. They fanned out into a combat formation, with Arngrim, Lawfer, and Belenus flanking Lenneth on either side with the support troops in the back. They scanned their surroundings, anticipating that they'd be attacked at any moment.
Then the wails of the infant boy cut through the air, grabbing their attentions. Even Lenneth's focus was broken. She looked where boy's wails had come from, discerning his location from the echoes. Nanami gasped when she heard the child's wails. Llewelyn, Jelanda, Lawfer, and Belenus's breaths similarly hitched. Arngrim was silent, but there was also horror in his eyes.
"What a moment…" Nanami uttered a quiet, horrified voice. "Is that a baby?"
"What is a child that young doing down here?" Belenus demanded in a heavy, low voice.
"Lady Valkyrie," Lawfer prompted. "They need our help."
Lenneth looked between the aura of the master beast and the infant's cries with almost frantic movements as she tried quickly to decide what to do.
"If we slay the reigning beast, the Wasp Giants will be without their commander and become aimless," she said more to herself than them. "Their efforts will no longer be coordinated and their attacks on would lose their precision."
"Lady Valkyrie!" was Lawfer's shocked response.
The Valkyrie glanced at her team, though she hadn't really needed to. Before even taking one look into their eyes, she knew their hearts went out for those who had entered the underground of the Turgen Mountains that night. It may have been more pragmatic to remove the core threat before trying to deal with the underlings it commanded, but she knew there was only one thing she could do. If she led her einherjar to the Wasp Queen right now, their full focus would not be on the battle, but on the innocent people they weren't saving. Or at least, that was how Lenneth chose to justify her next decision.
"You are right, of course," she said. "Those people will not survive in these caves long with those Wasp Giants swarming. Come."
"Watch out, girls! They be comin' from above again!"
Neither Ingrid nor Gloria answered, but Bedelia knew they'd heard her. The elderly archer aimed up into the holes in the ceiling, waiting for one of the insect giants to show themselves in the dwindling torchlight. Bedelia was positioned in the middle of a defensive formation she and her granddaughters formed. She supported from the middle and the half-dwarves guarded the front and rear. Next to Bedelia was Maximillian, sitting limply against the wall. He was wounded, having at least some broken ribs, several bangs and cuts, and a twisted ankle. His purple bandanna was now being used as a bandage to seal a cut on the side of his head. Betty was by her wounded father's side. She had holstered one of her knives and stuck the other into the cave floor while she frantically worked to ignite a fresh torch.
"Come on, come on," she desperately grunted while working the steel and flint.
Maximillian clutched his side, trying to stifle groans of pain. His body seized and then relaxed. As he controlled the pain, he looked around at those desperately fighting Wasp Giants on his behalf. He glanced at Bedelia standing beside them. The old grandmotherly woman with her gray hair in a bun was currently aiming upwards. He'd given her his quiver as well, hoping she'd have enough.
Bedelia notched two arrows and shot with precision into the two separate holes in the ceiling. Then a moment later, two wasps, each deeply punctured by her bolts, fell out and curled up beside them, causing Betty to cry out when they plopped onto the floor beside her.
"Steady," Bedelia scolded her.
Then she fired another arrow, this right through the compound eyes of a wasp that tried creeping up behind Gloria while she smacked three wasps at once by grabbing a fourth by the stinger and swinging its body like a club. Then blonde half-dwarf tossed the unconscious insect into a fifth. At the other end, Ingrid swung her ax into the wall, seemingly striking prematurely at the trio of wasps coming at her from the air. She had actually struck the wall in just the right place to cause a chunk of come loose and fall on the insect giants, pinning them underneath. Before they could escape, Ingrid chopped all their heads off with one swing.
Maximillian looked at his daughter as she went back to trying to light the torch.
"Go. You all need to go," he forced out.
"Nu-huh," Betty shook her head vigorously.
"Betty…!" he began to protest.
"I said, 'No'!" Betty shouted back. "Damn it, Dad!"
Then with one frustrated motion of her hands, she grinded the flint against the steel hard enough to create a whole mess of sparks which reignited the torch. Father and daughter looked down in surprise.
"Nicely done," Maximillian strained out.
"Save your strength," Betty sternly answered him.
Then she quickly stuffed her flint and steel back into her pack and took out a pair of stink bombs when she withdrew her hand again.
"Alright, everyone, I'm using more stinkers," Betty announced. She looked right at her father, adding, "Be ready to run once we help you up."
"Wait, which way we goin'?" Ingrid asked.
Bedelia fired three arrows into one wasp, felling it, and then turned to answer.
"Back south," she stated.
"But what about Lucien and the others?" Gloria asked. She currently held her cutlass straight up, impaling a wasp through the head with it. It had already curled up, dead. "Won't they be needing our help?"
"So will those souls who got trapped behind the swam with us," Bedelia replied. "The other group's got Lucien, Claire, and Barren t' look after 'em. Those others have some volunteers guards but that's it."
Maximillian then spoke up again.
"She's right. You need to go after them while there are still some to save," he said. "And you have to hurry. I'll only slow you…"
"Shut up, Dad," Betty protested firmly. "You're gonna live and you're gonna like it."
"Betty…" Maximillian protested, though he knew it was useless.
His daughter looked up and down the tunnel, gauging the wasps. There weren't too many concentrated around them at the moment.
"These two should be enough. After I toss these, I've still got eight," Betty thought uneasily.
"I'm throwing them now," she announced.
Gloria pinched her nose shut while Ingrid pulled some handkerchiefs from her pockets, stuffing them into her nostrils so she could hold her ax with both hands. The wasps weren't the only ones with a keen sense of smell who disliked the stink bombs. When Betty pitched one past each half-dwarven girl, they both flinched. A pair of distinct crunches sounded off a release of scents into the cave. The wasps' ranks thinned out.
The small group sprang into action, knowing they hadn't a moment to spare. Ingrid shot forward, leading the uphill charge. Betty crouched next to her father, first lifting his arm and wrapping it around her shoulder before pushing up with her legs, making herself and him stand. Maximillian gritted his teeth painfully.
"Sorry, sorry, sorry," she empathetically told him.
She then ran forward as best she could bearing Maximillian after the half-dwarves with Bedelia bringing up the rear. Gloria grabbed the second quiver of arrows and carried them for Bedelia, who ran with a bolt already notched and ready to fire. The going wasn't as fast as any of them would have liked, but they were moving.
Ahead of them, three wasps remained who split into a triangle formation with two hovering in the air over the third crawling on the ground towards the small band. Ingrid ran at her full sped roaring a challenge as she met her enemy. Then right before meeting them, Ingrid swung her ax straight downwards from above, slamming its head against the ground and used it to propel herself into the air. She flew over the grounded wasp and right between the hovering pair above, turning herself in a full horizontal rotation with her ax extended. She first sliced the abdomen of the wasp to the left in half before catching the other behind, slicing through its thorax diagonally. Ingrid then rolled into her landing behind the grounded wasp, which stopped when its nestmates dropped dead around to it.
That moment of hesitation cost it as Gloria's cutlass came down, skewering it right through the middle of its head. She pressed her foot against its body to pull her blade free.
"Let's go," she said.
By now, Ingrid had gotten up. As soon as the others were moving again, she turned and continued leading the way.
"Did we lose them?"
"I don't know, but I can still hear them."
"Where are we?"
It was then the rear half of the refugee company took in their surroundings. They had come to a stop in a fairly wide section of tunnel with plenty of elbow room. There were fourteen of them and six silver necklace-wearing bodyguards. That was all who had survived this far or hadn't accidently fled down another passage. The refugees leaned against one wall. The Silver Saviors backed up against the other, somehow looking even worse off after being dragged unwillingly along by the mob. Roughly twenty-seven civilians and thirteen silver necklace-wearing guards there had been among those forced to flee back south, and many had been lost in the chaos. They were all splattered in drying dark crimson.
The mother and her infant boy were among them, dotted with the father's blood. The baby had quieted down, but he was still unhappy and fussy even as the mother bounced him around a little bit, cooing quietly to keep him from crying and screaming again. One of other refugees looked at the tot uneasily.
"If he starts crying again, they'll find us for sure," he said.
"What of it?" the mother asked.
She hugged her child tighter, remembering what the last man who spoke like that tried to do.
"We should keep moving," the man said.
The mother relaxed at the reasonable suggestion. She hadn't had a good look at the man who tried to bash her baby's head with a rock, but she sincerely hoped he was among the casualties.
"Hold up," a big, bearded man said. He was carrying an elderly woman on his back. "Let's so slow down here for just a moment. I've been carryin' Granny Meg for hours, and I need a breather if you expect me to sprint off again."
He stooped, letting Meg step off his back, and then leaned tiredly against the wall while she did the same beside him. A skittish-looking young man looked around, and asked,
"Wait, so who's in charge? Mr. Lucien and Miss Bedelia ain't about."
The refugees looked among themselves, and then across at the silver necklaces. As soon as the winded and kinda bruised Silver Saviors noticed, a dark-haired woman among them scoffed.
"Oh, sure, now ye wanna listen," her voice seemed to bristle with her demeanor. "Where was this when we was tryna protect ye earlia? Drug us right along for the ride, ye did. Now me arm hurts like Hel's had a go at it."
"Alright, Bev, stifle it," another Silver Savior told her. "They just got scarred. No good can come of us turning on each other here."
"Yeah, they got scared. All over us," Bev answered.
She gave them a hard look across the way. Their faces were still full of fear and now a bit of embarrassment, which caused her own to soften a bit.
"Oh, well, whatever," Bev shrugged. She sighed and pointed even further back. "To answer yer question, yeah, we still on the path. Somehow. 'Member dat?"
Everyone looked further back. Even in the limited torchlight they saw a section of tunnel with a low enough ceiling they'd either have to crawl and walk bent over through.
"Looks like that low passage we all had to crouch to go through earlier, alright," one of them said. "We really stayed on Mr. Lucien's path?"
"Somehow," Bev deadpanned. She shook her head. "Alright, if no one's got no suggestions, we best be takin' our leave before those big bugs finds us. We can unblock the entrance an' least get outta the mountain."
"But how, dem half-dwarves ain't wit us," ten-year-old girl asked.
Bev answered, "We's done it wit'out…"
Her next words died in her throat as the buzzing suddenly got louder again and was accompanied a series of clicks. Everyone's mouths clamped shut, but to no avail as the baby started to cry again. His mother quickly set about trying to quiet him to some success. The other refugees were visibly shaken. They couldn't see past where the torches' light ended, and it was impossible to tell how close the wasps were.
"They'll hear us," someone hissed.
"They already did if they're that close," Bev stated. "Everyone get behind us."
The refugee slaves quickly moved back to let remaining six Silver Saviors form a line in front of them. One torch-bearing swordsman raised the flame up higher, but it only reached so far. He tapped a man with a big pack next to him.
"Give me one of the spares," he ordered.
Without question, the other man reached into his pack and pulled out a fresh torch. The first fellow sheathed his sword, taking the second torch and lighting it. Then he walked a bit ahead, holding both lights out as far as he could. Then he hurled the half-spent one forward as straight as he could. As it sailed through the descending tunnel, it allowed a brief look at the surroundings it passed. Then five wasps crawling on the walls of ceiling flickered in its light as it sailed past them.
The whole group recoiled.
"They found us again!" Bev shouted.
She pointed to the three Silver Saviors in the line.
"You three. Get them outta here! We'll hold 'em off!" she ordered.
"Right!" the oldest of the three shouted.
The designated trio ran past the refugees to take the lead.
"Come on, you lot!" one shouted.
The exodus followed behind the trio of guards as best they could in their tired states. A man carrying a torch took front position and bent to go through the low tunnel when he was greeted with the insectoid face of a Wasp Giant. He gasped and jerked back, bumping into those behind him.
"They've boxed us in!" he shouted.
Bev and her men heard that and exchanged grimly resigned looks. Death had come for them.
Cries and gasps rang out from among the group as the wasp crawled out of the low space with two more in-tow. They took to the air while more poured through the low tunnel. Everyone was forced to back up to Bev. Wasp Giants in front, Wasp Giants behind, and all closing in.
The mother held her baby close, wrapping him up tight in her arms in a futile attempt to protect him. It was over and they all knew it. The hovering wasps dove, stingers forward. Then a ferocious roar rang out as a large figure flew down from somewhere above, slicing up the wasps as it descended. The other wasps retreated towards the ceiling in surprise.
"By the gods!" an old man cried.
The large person landed near the entrance of the low passage.
"Huh…?" Bev stuttered as she looked over at her shoulder, trying to see what happened.
"A monster?" the little girl asked as she beheld the hulking form.
"Some kind of monster," a deep, guttural voice came from the figure.
Then he stood up, fully showing himself in the light. A large, scarred man with scratched and dinted battle armor stood easily a head over the next-tallest person there. He bore an absurdly large sword, which he held up with one hand despite it being the length of his tall form and as wide as his massive shoulders. Arngrim smiled cockily at the awed group.
"Heck of a night, huh?" he greeted.
"Wha…?" one of the guards gaped at him. "How did he get in here?"
Bev still stared at the stranger, forgetting the wasps circling around on her side of the group.
"Bev, watch it!"
"Huh?" she turned as one attacked.
Her mind locked up, causing her body to do the same. Then the wasp was suddenly knocked away and another figure dropped down from above in front of her. Bev was still dazed as she took in the back of a headful of silver hair in a long braid, and… feathers protruding from the sides of the helmet the person wore. Bev had just realized what she was beholding when the rest of Lenneth's team materialized into the room. Lawfer, Nanami, and Llewelyn joined Arngrim protecting south side of the crowd while Jelanda and Belenus joined Lenneth on the other. Their sudden appearance caused the Wasp Giants to draw back again in confusion.
The company of rebels and fleeing slaves mumbled among themselves in astonishment looking around at the newcomers.
"Look, momma! The Valkyrie! She's here to save us!" the little girl excitedly exclaimed.
Lenneth looked back at the company of humans.
"Humans, do not move unless I give you permission, and especially do not interfere," she sternly ordered.
Her reply was uncertain stares she had no time for as she focused on the insect menace.
"Jelanda! Nanami! Llewelyn!" The Valkyrie ordered.
"Yes, Milady!" the three ranged fighters answered.
Magic circles appeared on the ground below each magi as they unleashed the magic they had prepared. Llewelyn's body glowed gold as he tapped into his inner strength. The wasps sensed the power of their opponents and swarmed in from all directions.
"HRMPH!" Arngrim grunted as he held his blade up defensively.
Lawfer drew back his halberd upright and to the side, eyes narrowed and focused. Lenneth and Belenus did the same on the other end. When the wasps closed in to stop the magi and archer, the Valkyrie and warrior einherjar moved to block them.
The runaway slaves and even their Silver Saviors guards found themselves stricken with fear at the sight as they clustered together behind their strange new protectors, watching them begin to engage the enemy. Bev almost ran to join in, but she remembered they had been ordered not to by the Valkyrie.
In the same moment, the three ranged fighters unleashed their attacks.
"LAYER STORM!" Llewelyn shouted as he fired multiple golden energy bolts at once.
"ICICLE EDGE!" Jelanda chanted, unleashing several ice lances through the air.
"PRISMATIC MISSILE!" Nanami intoned, shooting a volley of rainbow-colored blasts from the Holy Wand.
The spectacle was almost blinding to the human company, who shielded their eyes. Then it was over as quickly as it had happened. At least twenty Wasp Giants lied dead around the chamber while others fluttered about aimlessly from the effects of Prismatic Missile. Meanwhile, more Wasp Giants arrived. The confused wasps went into a frenzy, turning on their own. They viciously grabbed, bit, and stung them. The assault om the humans was halted by this sudden civil war.
"That shall befuddle them but a moment," Lenneth said. Then she looked at Bev. "Which way, mortal?"
"Huh?" was Bev's confused reply.
"Which way do you flee?" the Valkyrie repeated.
Bev pointed back south, towards the low section of cave behind her. Lenneth then leaned to look past her, hollering through the crowd:
"Arngrim Lawfer, cut them a path and through the low passage! Llewelyn, suppressing fire! Nanami's, Wind's Breath! You three guards back there, protect her!"
"Right!" Arngrim and Lawfer replied and sprang forward.
As Nanami began casting, Llewelyn followed the other two men, turning around constantly and as he continued to fire on every wasp he could. The three Silver Saviors on that side took up position around Nanami, as instructed.
Three wasps were on Arngrim right away, but he blocked their stingers and jaws with the flat of his blade. Without flinching, he arced Dáinsleif around a second time, bisecting all three at the same time before darting toward the low passage. Three more insects heads poked out from it, but didn't see Dáinsleif coming before he'd slain them all. Two more tried to crawl through, but Arngrim's booted foot came down, smashing one insect head while his sword came down on the other.
Behind him, a wasp landed sideways on Lawfer's shoulders bearing him down to his knees. The knight didn't hesitate, he backfisted the thing right in the face, stuffing its jaws with his iron-gauntleted forearm while he grabbed its stinger with his other hand, keeping it from sticking him. Then, gripping the thing at both ends, he dragged it off his back and then swung it around in a full circle, causing it to take the full brunt of at least two other venom-filled needles for him. Lawfer shoved the dying wasp into the other two and then grabbed his halberd. He swung smacking his new attackers out of the air with the body.
Back with the crowd, Nanami activated her next spell. Her robes fluttered as though there was a wind passing through the cave. She moved the Holy Wand around in circles as it began to generate a stronger and stronger gust. She did it one final time before pointing the wand straight ahead.
"WIND'S BREATH!"
As the incantation passed her lips, a powerful wind burst from the end of her wand, blasting through the back end of the chamber and smashing every wasp against the walls. Lawfer dug his heels in and braced his halberd against the ground to stop himself from being blown away. Llewelyn dove to the side and flattered himself against the wall. Arngrim was also already up against the wall. Nanami focused the spell through the low passage, and blew all the wasps on that side, dead or alive, through. With the way clear and the wind dying, Arngrim motioned for the civilians to follow.
"Come on!" he shouted.
"Right!" Lawfer answered.
He ran over to Arngrim's side, and both men ducked going through first. Behind them Llewelyn and Nanami followed them through, with the refugees coming after.
Lenneth, Belenus, Jelanda, and Bev's men backed up, acting as rear guard. Over ten wasps closed in around them. From the back, Jelanda activated her next spell.
"Fire Lance!"
A good half-dozen fireballs flew, managing to hit four of the Wasp Giants, and clipped two others, startling them into freezing up. Lenneth took advantage and fired a pair of incasing blasts at the stunned wasps, trapping them in crystal before she and the other warriors charged in to deal with the rest. The Valkyrie rushed one wasp, slashing specifically at its stinger, breaking it in two. The insect tried to retreat higher into the air, but Lenneth was able to follow with her sword pointed straight, stabbing the beast up to the hilt.
On the ground, a wasp tried to grab Belenus to sting him, but he was too quick with his blade, swinging up from below in an arc, amputating three of its legs. Then Bev thrust her sword through the side of its head, finishing it off. Then the two stood back-to-back, fending off their next foes.
Lenneth had just finished off another giant insect when she felt something shift in the mountain. The goddess understood almost immediately what was happening. The queen had left its nest and was coming up to deal with things personally.
"The sound of battle must be aggravating it. This is… good, actually," Lenneth realized. "Instead of meeting the beast in its lair, we may confront it on our terms."
She glanced back at the crowd of innocents already stooping under the low roof.
"This was the correct decision, after all," she decided.
Arngrim and Lawfer exited out from under the low roof into a larger tunnel. There were no Wasp Giants to greet them. They were all still climbing all over each other to get disentangled several yards ahead thanks to Nanami's spell. Arngrim held his sword upright, close to his right shoulder as he took point.
"Call 'em through," he said.
Lawfer nodded and then bent down to poke his head into the low overhang.
"Come on through," he called. "Llewelyn, Nanami, hurry."
The knight took point next to Arngrim. Their enhanced vision allowed them to see the wasps getting their footing, but many finding their wings damaged. Several of them skittered away through nearby cave openings while some of the uninjured ones mounted their newly disabled nestmates, and began killing them.
Lawfer grimaced in disgust as he watched. Arngrim's expression was frozen in a focused glare. He could still hear the hum of wings echoing everywhere, though neither man could tell if it was distant or if fresh, uninjured reinforcements were on the way. Lawfer instinctively glanced back when he heard someone come up behind him. It was Llewelyn and Nanami and he could hear more on the way.
Lawfer and Arngrim began moving forward, keeping careful watch of their surroundings as they did. Llewelyn and Nanami weren't far behind. The archer turned himself around in a full rotation as he scanned the walls and ceiling for any unpleasant surprises. Beside him, Nanami's head swiveled as she walked with her hands together preparing another enchantment, ivory Holy Wand still clasped tightly.
Llewelyn instinctively crouched down, looking over the civilians were they came through. He also noted the silver-beaded necklaces of their guardians. He straightened and partially turned towards Lawfer and Arngrim behind.
"Hey, these guys are those… Silver… Protectors? Right?"
"Yes," Lawfer answered. "And I imagine these people they were attempting to take through the mountains were to be sold on the slave market before being liberated. They picked a very bad night to try this on."
"No shit," Arngrim bluntly answered.
Within a moment, nearly half of the refugees were out in the open. Meanwhile, back on the other side, the last runaway had just bent down to go through. Lenneth turned to Bev and gestured for her to retreat as well. The dark-haired woman nodded and then reached into her pockets, producing a small corked round glass jar of green liquid. She tossed it to Lenneth. The Valkyrie looked at her quizzically when she caught it.
"They hate it," Bev said and then ducked to go through with her two men.
With the human company all retreating, Lenneth, Belenus, and Jelanda were left as the last obstacle keeping the Wasp Giants from following. Fifteen or even more of the buzzing menaces approached. The goddess regarded the bottle in her hand.
"Are they through?" Lenneth asked.
Jelanda crouched and looked, "Yes, Lady Valkyrie."
"In that case," Lenneth said.
She threw the stink bomb where it broke against the floor right under the first approaching wasps. A fog filled the room as the glass shattered. It caused the wasps to momentarily retreat while Lenneth phased herself and her einherjar backwards through the low section of cave, rematerializing on the other side. One of the guards with Bev raised his sword reflexively when the three just appeared beside him.
"Steady!" Belenus chided the man, holding an arm up to halt him.
Lenneth crouched and looked down the little space, already seeing more wasps about to enter despite the unpleasant stench of the homemade stink bomb.
"Keep going," The Valkyrie ordered the others. "I shall slow them up."
Then she held up a fist sparkling with icy energy. The passage was absolutely full of giant hungry insects with a taste for meat. Lenneth unleashed several incasing shots in a line clean across, forming a solid wall of ice crystal around the wasps, utterly blocking the tunnel. The Valkyrie then turned around, pointing forward with her sword.
She issued her next order, "Every sword arm, forward! We shall cut a path through! Civilians, stand aside!"
"Right!" Belenus and Bev answered.
Bev clapped one of the other Silver Saviors on the shoulder.
"You heard the battle-goddess, men! Onward!" she shouted.
"Jelanda," Lenneth sharply called.
"Yes, Lady Valkyrie!"
"When my crystals break, keep them at bay!" Lenneth commanded with a gesture back.
"Of course!" Jelanda answered.
As the refugees parted to let them pass, Lenneth led all the remaining warriors over to where they joined Arngrim, Lawfer, Llewelyn, and Nanami.
"Nanami," Lenneth said as she passed the girl. "Erect a barrier along the sides of this passage. Block these side caves."
"Yes! Er, yes, Lady Valkyrie!" Nanami awkwardly replied.
While the mages prepared spells, Lenneth led the warriors forward, towards the remaining wasps ahead. Arngrim, Lawfer, Belenus were next after her, followed by Llewelyn and the others. They broke into a run and charged the insect opponents in front of them.
When the sides clashed, Lenneth seemed to disappear in front of the group just to reappear behind the line of wasps, slashing them from behind. Then the second wave came in. One wasp came up behind Lenneth, but she whirled around, incasing it into crystal before flying up, drawing some of the wasps away from the group as they chased her.
On the ground below, one of the wasps tried to tackle Belenus, who sidestepped the attack. It flew between him and Bev, who stabbed it from sides. They pulled their blades free as it fell onto the cave floor, curled up.
"Nicely done," Belenus congratulated.
"Thanks. Yer not bad, either, for being so… fancy?" Bev awkwardly replied.
Belenus raised a questioning brow, but then grinned.
"Yes, I suppose I never quite shed the lordly airs, did I?" he said easily.
Then he jumped in surprise as the left half of a wasp plopped onto the ground in front of him. Arngrim stomped past.
"Less socializing, fancypants," the large warrior reprimanded. "And more cuttin'!"
Above them, Lenneth engaged the insect beasts near the ceiling. She dropped below one wasp's attempt to sting her before flying back up, ramming it from below and skewering it on the stalactites. She slowly descended from the dead insect, making a full rotation, counting seven more wasps nearby.
"Very well," she said.
She began to glow as she drew out more power. Three of the wasps jerked back in alarm, uncertain of what was happening while the other four attacked. Lenneth channeled the energy into her sword, solidifying it around the blade, creating an energy blade around it that was twice the length. Then she slashed to the right, slicing up both wasps in one slash before spinning fully around catching the other two on the next swing. The other wasps then attacked. Lenneth smirked with a sense of superiority, still having plenty of energy to maintain her sword's augmentation. She raised it, and felt a volt of dark energy spike behind her. The queen was getting closer.
In her surprise, Lenneth almost did not react in time and had to drop lower to avoid a coordinated attack from two of the wasps. The third wasp followed her down. The Valkyrie yelped as the wasp flew right into her personal space, legs and mouth wide open to grab her. Lenneth instinctively kicked out her with legs, shoving off of the beast to put distance between herself and it. Above her, all three gave chase while Lenneth flew through the winding tunnels to get herself into a move defensible position.
"Confusticate and be-bother it all!" the battle-goddess swore. "If I'd the faintest notion the queen was so near…"
Down below in the darkness, the cave systems were suddenly cleared of regular Wasp Giants as their queen passed through. The tunnels were a tight squeeze for the massive insect, but she wasn't about to let that stop her because the intrusive, troublesome noise hadn't stopped. She had been rudely awakened and so sent out her children to clean house before having them go out to teach the humans of the city a lesson they'd not soon forget about trespassing.
But the noise wasn't stopping. The loud intruders weren't dying anywhere near fast enough for her tastes. So, the perturbed insect queen scurried through tunnels too small for her to open her wings. Her children vanished down any holes they could to get out of her way.
Good. They should be scared of her, she fleetingly thought. She was going to give all dwelled in the mountains a reminder of what happened when she was unhappy. She zeroed in on the group still heading north, as they were the nearest to her. Those who'd turned tail and been forced to run back south would have to wait. Even if they escaped to Gerebellum, her children would follow them. There would be no refuge for any of them.
"See anything ahead?"
"Uh…" the person in front paused, bringing the entire group to a halt.
Bedelia narrowed her eyes at Ingrid for stopping.
"Fool child!" she scolded as she swung her bow, smacking her granddaughter's behind with it. "Ye can't stop now!"
"Eep!" Ingrid yelped as she jumped.
She turned and looked back at Bedelia with a pout.
"What was that for?" she shrilly demanded.
"We still deep in bug country and yer just standin' about like a ninny!" Bedelia scolded.
"I stopped because of THAT," Ingrid stepped aside, allowing them to see the scene ahead.
They all paused to take it in. Maximillian still leaned on Betty's shoulders to stand, but he was as alert as the rest, and just as surprised.
"Whoa, what happened here?" Betty asked.
With some caution, they entered the chamber. The low passage was ahead. Scattered around were multitudes of dead wasps. Gloria looked over the insect carcasses littering the ground. Many of them had the expected sword wounds through either their head or abdomen, or they just lied in pieces strewn everywhere. Others had much stranger wounds. Gloria and Ingrid's night vision gave them a better view of the carnage, but it was no less confusing to them just because they could see it better.
"This was one burned to death, somehow," Gloria commented on a charred wasp body.
She lowered the torch she carried so the humans could see before moving it over another insect carcass.
"Hey, this one was impaled by… a lance?" she questioned.
It had a large round hole clean through the front of its face and out the third segment of its body. The wasp's body shimmered under the torchlight, and it took them a moment to realize the wasp was soaked in water. In fact, so was the cave floor. It was then they noticed bits of ice scattered around.
Bedelia crouched down and picked one up, turning it over in her hand. It was about the size of an arrowhead. Her aged eyes then moved from the ice chunk to the wasp's wound.
"Wait, I know what did this," the old ex-assassin said.
Then she dropped the ice and straightened up quickly. She grabbed an arrow from the quiver attached to her back and notched.
"I'd know this spell anywhere," she proclaimed. "Icicle Edge! This is magecraft. We've got mages in these halls now."
"But we didn't bring any ma…" Ingrid trailed off.
They all seemed to realize what that meant.
"You think the sheriff somehow got to 'em?" Maximillian asked.
"Can't see how. They should be busy with the Wasp Giants, too," Gloria asserted.
"All the same, be on yer guard," Bedelia cautioned.
She gestured to the low passage ahead.
"Ingrid, have a looksy, well ya?" she asked.
Ay," the white-haired girl answered.
She walked over, keeping to the side of the low opening while everyone else moved along, off to its other side. As soon as the whole group had gathered around the edges of the low pass, Ingrid got down on hands and knees to see. There was no one waiting on the other end. Just more dead wasps, and hunks of what looked like ice crystals melting in the crawl space. Ingrid scanned the next area as best she could from a limited vantage their side of the dip. Nothing, but… She focused on the faint sound of something she couldn't quite make out up ahead.
"I hear something, but ain't too close," she said. "I think we're good to go through, though."
"Alright, then, get on through, all o' ye," Bedelia pointed sternly. "I'll cover ya. Gloria help poor Max if Betty needs ye."
"Yes, Grandmother," Gloria answered.
The blonde half-dwarf had just started toward Maximillian and Betty when she and both Ingrid both stopped. They turned to look at something no one else could see.
The others all looked around in alarm, but couldn't see or hear anything out of the ordinary.
"What? What?" Betty asked, clutching one of her knives tightly.
"We're leaving," Gloria announced. "That queen's coming up. I can't tell who she's going after, but I'm not waiting around for it to be us. Ingrid, go through, now."
Bedelia stayed put, letting the others go first. She kept watch with her bowstring pulled not quite taut. She began backing up towards the low passage once the others were all already crawling through. She paused with her back to the passage a moment, listening. She still heard nothing, and so stooped to go through herself, not letting go of the bow and arrow for anything.
"Okay, twenty in total," Barren quietly murmured as he finished the head count.
He stood in front of the company, which was grouped around him. A short while ago, he, Rusty, the third man Erik, and the eight civilians caught up to the survivors of the panicked flight forward. Nine they were still. Two Silver Saviors and seven civilians. Honestly, Barren was surprised to see this many remaining and still on the correct path. Their stopping point was less of a surprise, since the way forward from this point was treacherous.
The chamber they were all gathered in was large and better lit than many other parts of the mountain in part to a large hole in the ceiling allowing moonlight to shine through. The human company still kept their torches lit. The large cavern had only a partial floor on the south side, where they currently stood. The north side which Barren had his back to was a pit. Only a narrow pass along the east wall connected to a ledge on the other side where another cave entrance awaited. The connecting bit of outcropping rock had little solid footing, but did have a series of climbing pitons hammered into the wall over it, connected by a rope which had been run through each of their rings and tied to sturdy columns at both ends with just enough slack to get a good grip. This precarious path was what made it no surprise for Barren they had caught up.
"Twenty of us in all," Barren announced. "Okay, listen up, everyone. I think everyone still remembers this part."
In the name of keeping morale up, he put on his best confident smirk for the crowd.
"Right, this is where we had to shimmy across. Saw me life flash before me eyes last time," a bearded man answered.
"It wasn't that bad," Barren deflected. "Come on, we do this all the time and not lost anyone yet."
Rusty looked down to avoid eye contact while turning his lips inward, practically chomping on them to stop himself from scoffing at that blatant lie.
"Right, Rusty?" Barren prompted him.
"Uh, right, yeah," Rusty answered unconvincingly. "Ye all got 'cross last time 'n' there were a lot more o' ye."
Barren answered back with a look which spoke of annoyance and a desire to slap the man across the back of the head. Barren instead addressed the crowd again, motioning for them to follow him over to the rope to get started. He stopped at the edge of the pit next to the first climbing piton. The torch bearers held up their flames, casting a bigger canopy of light which bathed Barren under their swaying glow.
"See this?" he said.
He tested the rope, giving it a good tug, but the spike remained firmly in place.
"Safe and secure," Barren urged. "Same deal as before. Just hold on tight and don't look down. We'll send Rusty across first with a tinderbox to go fetch the cache of torches on the other side, and we'll be good to go."
He pretended not to notice the daunted looks of the refugees. They had already received quite a scare from the wasp attack and they were not in good spirits. The worst part was, Barren could tell he was not getting their morale up.
"Let's go," he repeated.
"Is there really no other way?" one of the elders asked. "With just a few of us only able to go across at a time, the bugs'll be sure to catch up. Anyone caught halfway across would be good as dead."
"You're also as good as dead standing still," said a stern, but youthful voice from behind the crowd.
"Lucien!" Rusty let out a rejoicing cry.
Everyone turned as the scarlet swordsman and Claire approached.
"By the gods, you made it!" Barren exclaimed.
He pushed through the crowd and then ran up to meet the pair, putting a hand on both their shoulders as he looked them over, amazed to see them both mostly uninjured and in one piece.
"How did you make it past all those wasps?" Barren asked.
"They mostly stayed south," Lucien answered. "Then they all just cleared out a moment ago. I have no idea how long that will last, though."
Claire, out of caution and paranoia, looked behind them with a worried frown.
"I've never seen them just all run away like," she said. "It couldn't have just been my stink bombs, either. One or two always just tolerated the stench and attacked, anyway."
"What does that mean, though?" someone from the group asked.
"It means we get moving," Lucien answered. "Excuse me."
Barren stepped aside, letting Lucien take center stage before the small crowd. Claire fully turned around, watching their rear. She didn't like this. While Lucien addressed the others, she focused one listening for any familiar buzzing. She didn't hear any standing up, so she got down on her knees and hands, putting her ear to the cold stone floor.
"I understand your reservations about crossing this pit again, but we went over this on the first trip," Lucien told the crowd. "We've searched, and this is the only access to the tunnel which'll take us to our contact on the south edge of the Camille Highlands."
"What about that passage over there?" a woman asked.
They all looked towards a cave in the western wall. It was a wide, gaping hole reaching nearly end to end. It was generous to even say there was a western wall in that chamber.
"That is just a steep slope that'll drop you into the mines," Lucien answered. He directed their attention back to the ropes on the other side. "You did this just fine last time, and after this, you will never have to again. If anything happens, I'll be going last. I'll protect you from anything which comes up from the tunnels back there. Now you have to get moving."
He turned to Rusty.
"Buddy," Lucien addressed him.
Rusty looked uneasily.
"Hey, buddy, ol' pal," he answered, thinking he wouldn't like what he said next.
Lucien nodded to the rope, and said, "Like Barren said. Test the rope and pitons, and cross first. Then get some of those torches from the cache. On the double."
"Yes, sir," Rusty deflated as he answered.
While Rusty grabbed the robe to begin shimmying across, Lucien looked over the small group.
"This is everyone that's left?" he asked.
"Yeah," one of the other Silver Saviors answered. "Everyone else got gobbled, took a wrong turn, or in the case of one woman…"
He trailed off and looked toward the pit.
Lucien cleared his uncomfortably, and said, "I see."
Claire, meanwhile, was just about to stop listening for sounds through the stone when she heard a scratching within the rocks. She wrinkled her brow as she listened.
Scritch, scritch, scritch, bang!
"What is that?" Claire breathed.
It sounded like it was coming from underneath them. Then the scratching turned into a rumbling sound like something burrowing through the rock and earth.
"So just mind your footi…" Lucien stopped as the rumbling became audible to everyone in the room.
"Whoa!" Rusty cried as he withdrew his foot from taking that first step and backed away from the edge.
The rumbling noise turned into a physical shaking of the floor. Everyone stumbled while Claire sat up and turned towards them.
"It's right under us!" she shouted.
"What is?" Lucien asked.
Then a loud "BANG!" erupted from the pit below and then they all watched rocks fly up from the pit into the opposite wall. Everyone began backing away from the edge, fearfully murmuring and whispering among themselves.
"What was that?" one asked.
"How should I know?" another hissed.
"Quiet, all of you," Lucien quietly but firmly ordered.
Then Lucien pushed his way to the front of the group, stepping closer to the pit's edge. He stopped still a decent distance from it. Only Erik, Rusty, and Barren hadn't retreated they all just listened. Behind him, Claire had just pushed through as well, and was holding her crossfire levelly, aiming towards the pit. She had a hard time swallowing with a chest that felt so tight, she just might suffocate.
More scratching sounds came up from the pit. Lucien and the others exchanged alarmed glances as they silently confirmed what needed to be done, and readied their weapons. Then the loudest buzzing yet pierced the air from below. Lucien had only been able to put a hand to one of his ears when something flew into view. Screams rang out from the crowd as they beheld the Wasp Queen hovering, dark but outlined against the starry night sky. When Rusty got a look at what it was, he whimpered and hid behind Barren, who also stared up at it. She was the size of an elephant, suspended in two massive dark wings which made a sound like a modern helicopter. Her three-segmented body was massive, yellow, and hairless with six legs curled up underneath it.
"The Wasp Queen? She's awakened!"
As though taking that as her cue, she came down, slamming onto the hard stone surface close enough Lucien had to jump away, landing on his back to avoid being crushed. The impact generated a gust of air which caused several of the torches to go out. The civilians backed up closer to the exit slowly and quietly, too stricken with fear to break into another panicked flight. The warriors marked by the necklaces they wore stood in a quarter circle in front of the queen, from the center of the east side of the chamber.
"Holy shit…" Rusty moaned.
Barren was also thralled with fear, gripping with his sword with white knuckles. Claire pointed her bow at the giantess without really aiming at any particular place. The crossbow shook in her grip. The queen's exoskeleton looked thick enough to put the finest armor to shame.
The giantess lowered her gaze to Lucien, who was still too caught up in his terror-induced reverie to move. He was nearest to her and she could tell he was healthy and strong. He'd be a fine appetizer.
"You first," she decided.
Then she moved in on her prey, jerking her head back in preparation to lunge down to pick him up in her cutting jaws.
"Oh, shit," Lucien swore.
He grabbed his sword, holding it defensively where he lay instead of trying to escape her.
In the brief moment they had before the queen would strike him, the spell of fear holding Lucien's comrades in place broke as they realized they were about to watch their leader and friend be devoured. Barren bellowed aggressively as he charged forward, following closely by the others, who issued their own battle-cries. Claire aimed the bow properly at one of queen's eyes.
As Claire fired the bolt, she shouted, "Eat this!"
In the same moment the bolt was fired, the queen's antennae twitched, generated blue bolts of energy which dissolved the arrow. Claire hadn't even realized what happened before the Barren and the other men attacked the queen together. Rusty and Erik came in from the side while Barren and the other two charged her head-on, specifically placing themselves in front of Lucien. Lucien took the opportunity to climb to his feet.
"Impertinent things," the queen angrily thought.
Just as Rusty and Erik reached her, she swung her body into them, violently bouncing them away.
"Oof! Ulf!" Rusty yelped and grunted as he was skipped over the ground like a stone over water.
Erik flew before hitting the ground hard with a sickening crack. He let out a quick but shrill cry as he bounced into the air again and fell into the pit. Then the queen flicked one of her front legs at the men charging her head on. Barren ducked while the two other men were clotheslined and sent flying backwards towards the civilians. Lucien instinctively dodged a bodily collusion.
Now Barren was alone before the queen. Her head jerked down to bite into the dark-haired man, but his sword flew fast and sure, cutting into the soft tissues just inside her mouth. The Wasp Queen recoiled, but almost immediately lowered her head and jumped forward to butt him. Barren dodged towards the left, just missing the massive faceplate. So, the queen bucked her head to the side, hitting Barren dead-on and sending him flying and then rolling and skidding across the hard cave floor hole on the west wall.
"Barren!" Lucien and Claire both cried out.
Lucien had only the time to feebly reach out to Barren before him rolled into the shaft entrance and was enveloped by the dark. In the horrible moment Barren realized he was going over edge of that steep slope and was about to slide all the way down to the mines, he panicked. Barren let out a strained, hoarse cry as he desperately crawled at the cave floor as he began to fall. He failed to get a grip, succeeding only in slicing open his hands and breaking off all his fingernails as his own weight and momentum dragged him over the side. As he began to slide down feet-first on his stomach, his helpless screams echoed up into the cavern.
Lucien was dumbstruck under his own powerlessness. He'd just lost someone else. At first, he felt only a gaping, empty hole in his chest. When he faced the wasp giantess again, a burning fury filled that void in his heart. The Wasp Queen seemed to have waited for them out of a sadistic delight in watching their grief. While Lucien glared at her with rage, he began to shake as it boiled over.
Claire looked around. Rusty and the two other men were all out cold on the floor and the refugees cowered in the back. She realized it was left just her and Lucien left as their protectors. She looked at the scarlet swordsman front of her with his back turned.
"Lucien, we have to go," Claire urged. "The queen's too big to follow us back."
Lucien didn't seem to hear her as he faced off with the massive beast in front of him. Claire looked at incredulously.
"Lucien, what are you doing?" Claire demanded.
Something had broken in Lucien's mind, and he stared upon the Wasp Queen with an unwavering, twitching glare as near psychotic fury boiled up.
"Lucien!" That last shrill shout pierced through at last.
He slowly turned to look back at Claire.
"Claire, get them out of here any way you can," he ordered.
"Wait?" she cried back in disbelief.
"Go!" Lucien shouted.
Before she could refuse, he was changing the wasp giantess.
"You fool!" Claire cried.
The Wasp Queen almost quivered in anticipation as Lucien charged her screaming like a madman. Oh, how to watch his righteous rage become despair, fear, and finally agony. She lunged forward to meet him.
Then both were suddenly blocked by something as hard as stone. The Wasp Queen backed up, uncertain of what she had just run into, but her dizzied vision could tell it shimmered in the moonlight. Lucien had run right into it and bounced off, landing roughly on his back again. His cheek and lip both bled from the impact. Lucien shook his head, getting reorientated as he looked at the new obstruction. It was…
"A crystal pillar?" his voice was low and heavy as he spoke.
Then he became aware of a presence that was suddenly beside him, visible in the corner of his eye. He looked up and saw a woman with long white skirts, battle-armor, and a helmet with three plumes on either side. Then he saw her face, a fair visage so familiar to him as she stared icily at the Wasp Queen. Her long braid whipped around in the breeze filtering down from the hole in the ceiling.
Lucien breathed a single word as he stared at her,
"Platina?"
