The queen’s antennae twitched again, angling toward Finn’s location. It seemed he now had her undivided attention. So, mission accomplished, he supposed. Although, he suspected he wasn’t going to enjoy acting as their group’s tank.
As Finn looked on, another two globs of molten metal drifted out of the pool, each about the size of a basketball. The queen set the two blobs to spinning, the material lengthening into hardened metal cylinders – the tips sharpening down to a fine point. Then the spears launched toward Finn.
He dove to the side, one of the flaming projectiles missing him entirely and carving into the wall behind him. However, he didn’t quite manage to avoid the second. The spear sliced through the molten armor along his shoulder, just barely piercing his skin but tearing apart his armor and sending fragments flying away from the impact. Then the second projectile joined the first in the wall.
Finn let out a hissing breath, blood leaking down his arm.
Yet the fight wasn’t over. Just as quickly, the queen yanked the spears from the wall and floor. The flames flared again, the metal shifting in midair to form two flat, circular blades, a jagged ridge forming along each disc – much like Finn’s own sawblades. They curved toward his position and spun up to speed. Finn stepped swiftly across the room to put himself in front of one of the eggs that sat along the floor. Just before the queen’s blades struck him, he sidestepped, and they slammed into the egg, carving it clean in two.
The queen thrashed in her pool, clearly angered by the destruction of one of her young. Yet Finn didn’t have time to focus on that. His fingers were already moving. Except this time, his focus was on the pool of magma. There was a giant pool of preheated metal sitting right there – no need to waste his own resources. He’d use the queen’s own trick against her.
Two blobs of magma drifted out of the nearby pool and sped toward Finn – this pair of spheres under his control. He promptly flattened out the metal, squeezing his palms together, and forming two makeshift shields. Just in time, too, since the queen abruptly reversed the angle of her sawblades and sent them spinning back toward him. Metal crashed against metal, the fiery weapons merging into a chaotic, molten mass before slamming into the ground with a dull thunk.
“Julia is in position. Start casting Imbue Fire,” Daniel shouted from his perch above Finn’s shoulder.
“The next mini-blast?” Finn panted back.
“73 seconds,” was the only response.
His plan required precise timing, and Daniel flitted away almost instantly to go speak with Julia. The AI had pieced together a rough schedule, including the duration before the next mini-blast, estimated travel times, and their various spellcasting speeds. He’d indicated that the margin of error was about 5-10 seconds.
Finn spared a glance toward the ceiling. He could see that Julia was now perched on a small stone ledge against the back wall. His other hand was already moving as he cast Imbue Fire on her shield. He needed to get it up to speed before her attack. Kyyle had also been busy, shifting his focus to reinforcing the barrier to withstand the next mini-blast.
In the meantime, the queen hadn’t relented in her assault. Two more spears were forming in the air, the points angling toward Finn’s position. He started sprinting along the edge of the cave, weaving between the eggs and trying to buy himself some time even as he tossed a sawblade into the air. The fingers of his right hand blurred through the gestures of Imbue Fire, as his left channeled mana into Julia’s shield.
Just a few more seconds, Finn thought frantically. The spin was slow to ramp up. He could only use heat rank 1 for fear of drawing the queen’s attention to Julia. He needed to keep the temperature relatively low.
His focus snapped back to the queen’s spears as they launched forward at the same time as Finn’s sawblade. His projectile slammed into the first spear, carving it in two. The pieces soon clattered against the metal-coated floor. Finn shifted the arc of his blade and managed to carve off all but a hand-sized length of the second spear, leaving only the tip. The flames winked out, signaling that the queen had lost her channel, and Finn let out a sigh of relief…
… relief that was short-lived.
Flames erupted around that falling spear-tip, and it rocketed forward again, far too fast, and far too close for Finn to do anything but stare, his eyes widening as he realized he couldn’t avoid the attack. The spear-tip slammed into Finn’s thigh, burying itself deep in the muscle. He let out a scream of pain, dropping to his knees as he felt the molten metal searing his flesh from the inside out.
The only mercy was that the queen seemed to lose control of the fragment once it fully entered his thigh. Perhaps when it was embedded completely, his own body’s mana interfered with her spell? Although he was struggling to focus on that right now.
“45 seconds,” Daniel shouted across the room.
Finn blinked hard, trying to concentrate despite the pain. He saw that he had lost 25% of his health from that one blow and was now afflicted with a movement debuff. He couldn’t let that distract him, though. His eyes shifted to the far wall. He could see that Julia was ready, her shield now a blur. Kyyle stood on the other side of the room. The barricade was as ready as it was going to be, layers of stone reinforcing the sloped barrier.
They were both waiting for his signal.
Finn met Julia’s eyes. “Go,” he mouthed.
“Kyyle! I need a Stone Coffin,” Finn shouted, struggling back to his feet, and favoring his injured leg. He glanced across the room, briefly meeting the earth mage’s eyes. “You need to buy me some time. Whatever it takes.” He received a curt nod in response.
There just went their margin of error.
Finn grimaced. This was it. They were all in now.
His fingers were a blur, and arcane words tumbled from his lips.
A moment later, Finn felt the effects of his Haste take hold, a raging inferno now burning through his veins. The heat crackled and crawled through his body until it felt like he was being consumed by the fire. At the same time, he dropped the pouch that Kyyle had given him on the ground, fire crystals spilling out along the mixture of broken rock and metal.
The world around him slowed to a crawl. He saw Julia leap from her perch, her shield raised high. She fell toward the queen’s back – toward the spot that Daniel had marked at the base of the creature’s head. The spot Finn had pointed out during the first mini-blast.
He could see liquid stone drifting up out of the floor around him, the metallic coating broken apart by the queen’s own attacks. The substance curled in front of Finn like molasses, pooling and congealing as it began to form a solid surface, leaving a swiftly closing hole through which he could still view the chamber. At the same time, he could feel the earth beneath him dissolving, sucking him down into the protective coffin.
As the hole began to close, he saw Julia strike. Her shield cut into the queen’s chitin, slicing and carving into the creature’s armor. However, her blows weren’t hard and frantic. They were precise – almost tentative. She needed to cut through the thick layers of metal and underlying chitin, but without going too deep. As they had discovered over the last week stuck in this hellhole… the ants didn’t seem to have any nerve endings in their armored shell.
They couldn’t afford to let the queen notice Julia.
Finn’s eyes darted to the side, noting Daniel’s flaming form racing toward him, leaving a trail of flame in his wake.
Then the stone closed, and the cave disappeared.
Finn stood inside the stone prison – the enclosure lit by Daniel’s flaming body. The AI had barely managed to get inside before the protective barrier closed.
He squeezed his eyes closed.
“Mashhad.”
The world bloomed into color. Immediately, he ignored the thickening layers of earth mana in front of him. Kyyle was still adding more and more stone on top of him even as he sunk farther into the floor. Finn’s attention was on the queen’s glowing orange body. This was the m
oment of truth. Would she turn to Julia or maintain her focus on Finn – a bright pinpoint of heat as he maintained Haste?
Two more orange-and-red globes erupted from the pit beside the queen, rolling and flattening ever-so-slowly in the air. They tilted until the spear points homed in on Finn’s location, buried beneath the stone.
Perfect.
Finn’s eyes shifted to the lake of magma beside the queen. He needed to build his weapon now. He knew he didn’t have long left, even with the time-slowing effect of his Haste. He began casting Imbue Fire, pulling two gigantic spheres of molten metal from the lake and keeping the heat rank low – relying in part on the ambient heat of the metal and the lake itself. As they floated into the air, Finn merged the orbs, smashing his hands together to form a single gargantuan metal sphere approximately five feet wide.
At the same time, he saw Julia pause, her green shield hesitating as Finn’s massive molten globe drifted past her, rising farther and farther into the air as he ratcheted up the heat. Then he saw her hurl something… faint green fragments flew toward the sphere, embedding themselves in the surface.
Good job, Finn thought to himself. Despite everything going on, Julia had managed to throw a bag full of the ant mandibles onto the metal globe. Gingerly, with just faint twitches of his fingers, Finn tugged those materials downward until they rested at the bottom end of the sphere. He was going to need them in a moment.
“25 seconds,” Daniel said softly, his form pulsing tentatively.
The queen’s spears stabbed into the ground, breaking through the stone, and penetrating the rock in slow motion. Finn saw one stab just beside his head, lancing through the back of the coffin. The other went wide, just barely missing his abdomen. He had stopped sinking. The earth mage had to keep him close enough for Finn to maintain his control range. The distances were crucial. And so Kyyle was forced to add more stone, thickening the coffin. He also began to construct small walls on the surface in front of Finn’s ever-growing rock fortress.
He didn’t flinch or stop casting as the spears smashed through the rock around him, putting his faith in Kyyle to ward off the attacks.
The globe of molten metal lifted farther into the air, until it loomed at the edge of Finn’s control range, far above the queen’s head. Before it began to cool, he lengthened the metal, rolling it out as though it were dough between his palms. He needed to form a rough cylinder. Once that was done, he began the detail work, carving away at the metal gingerly like a sculptor.
It needed a sharp tip lined with the mandibles… Flutes along the shaft… And it had to be done quickly before the metal cooled.
A notice flashed in his peripheral vision, and Finn winced. His mana was getting low. He glanced down at the fire crystals at his feet. Reluctantly, he slowed the movements of one hand, barely able to keep his creation suspended with a single channel focused along the top part of the cylinder. Then he stomped with his injured leg, ignoring the pain as his boot crushed some of the gems littering the floor.
Fire bloomed inside the small room, and Finn channeled it inside himself with his free hand. He let out a hiss of pain as he felt the flames sear his skin, and his blood began to simmer in his veins. Yet his mana jumped up even as his health plummeted. He glanced at the UI in the corner of his vision. He could risk more.
He stomped again, triggering another rush of flame.
That second absorption nearly killed him, the fire racing across his skin before entering his veins in a torrent. His hair and clothing began to burn. As smoke filled the coffin, Finn let out a coughing gasp. More spears rocketed into the earth – the metal rods glowing bright orange in Finn’s vision. But Kyyle had been prepared. The layers of rock were too dense now for even the superheated metal to penetrate.
Finn never stopped casting. He couldn’t stop. He needed to finish his work.
“10 seconds until the next mini-blast,” Daniel said quietly, his voice sounding far away. Finn only knew pain, and color, and the work.
His attention was only on the thing he was building, recasting Imbue Fire, and bringing his second channel back online. He needed to prepare to strike. He twisted the fingers of his right hand even as he ratcheted up the heat ranks with his left – it was okay to draw the queen’s attention to the weapon now. There wasn’t much time left. The cylinder hung vertically, the top part of the shaft almost turning to liquid under the heat of Finn’s spell. He twitched the fingers of his other hand, focusing on the middle portion of the cylinder as he urged it to start spinning.
The column of dense metal slowly began to rotate, gradually picking up speed.
“5 seconds.”
Finn could see that Julia was retreating now. Her form was only visible due to the circle of green that denoted her shield. She leaped from the queen’s back and raced toward where Kyyle stood beside his glowing green barricade. Finn shifted his attention toward his feet, and he saw a massive cloud of yellow energy pooling far below – just beginning to jet upward through a series of winding passages as it made its way toward the chamber.
“3 seconds,” Daniel said.
Finn urged his creation to spin faster, the cylinder nothing more than a brightly glowing red-and-orange blur now. The queen couldn’t help but notice the cluster of fire mana, her massive head tilting toward the sight, the glowing column hovering far above her. She was starting to form more discs of metal – shields that would protect her from what was coming. But it was too late now…
“2 seconds.
“1 second.”
Finn saw the air mana erupt upward. A dozen columns of yellow speared into the chamber and mixed with the ambient heat in slow motion, a cascade of color that began to create a superhot mass of air. The queen paused in building her shield – a moment of hesitation that was about to cost her dearly.
“Fire!” Daniel shouted.
Finn launched his weapon. The massive spinning cylinder of metal rocketed downward at an incredible speed, propelled by the heat rank 4 metal at the top end of the rod and the natural acceleration of gravity. The super dense metal spear crashed through the queen’s shields without even pausing before striking the glowing blue point dead-on, guided by a few gentle nudges from Finn’s fingers.
The combination of the rotation, diamond-studded tip, and the flutes that Finn had carved in the side, created an enormous, superheated drill bit.
The drill carved into the panels of dark armor that Julia had already weakened, burrowing through the pre-cut metal with barely any resistance before sliding into the queen’s flesh. He saw that massive orange rod slam home along the queen’s brainstem, then keep going, the combination of weight and velocity too much for even her enormous strength.
Her body swayed in place, and she slowly stumbled, unable to keep herself upright.
Then the queen fell to the side, her gargantuan torso smashing into the metal floor of the chamber and causing the stone coffin around Finn to tremble. Only a moment later, the entire room went still, lit by an almost-blinding whirlwind of flame and wind. The heat was so intense that it melted the drill bit in place, locking it securely within the queen’s neck. There was no surviving that…
“You… you did it, sir,” Daniel said, his voice filled with disbelief.
“We did it,” Finn croaked as his spell abruptly ended, his mana and stamina finally bottoming out and leaving him trapped in the stone prison, the only light the flickering orange orb that made up Daniel’s body. “We did it…”
Chapter 35 - Fleeting
Bilel’s Journal – Entry 136
Several days have passed since my last entry. Even now, I scrawl these notes not from the safety of my laboratory, but from an abandoned building on the edges of Lahab.
My passage back to the city was rocky at best. Out of an abundance of caution, I cast an illusion on myself before entering the waypoint. And it was a stroke of luck that I did! Acolytes were waiting on the other end in Lahab, their robes easily visible throughout the crowd. They were even p
assing out pictures of me – although, it seems they weren’t expecting me to be able to manipulate water mana.
Alarmed, I continued onward to the Mage Guild. There I observed more acolytes standing with the guards at the gate. It seems that the temple’s influence over the guild may be far more pervasive than I expected. Not to be deterred, I spent a day investigating the outer perimeter of the wall ringing the guild hall. I believe I have identified a portion that may allow me to pass inside undetected.
I have resolved to enter tonight. While I’m not certain I can trust the guild leadership, Renquist has more than proven his loyalty over the years. I have faith that I can find refuge with the librarians and reveal what the temple has done to me and my family. When the other mages see the proof with their own eyes, there will be no way to refute it.
***
The barrier of stone rippled and liquified before breaking apart, even as the floor below lifted him back to the surface. Streamers of rock soon slid to the side, a wave of oppressive heat making it abundantly clear where he was.
As though Finn could forget.
“Good, you’re in one piece,” Kyyle said, his face hovering above Finn. He offered a hand and helped Finn out of the makeshift coffin.
“I wouldn’t say that exactly,” Finn croaked, his throat raw. He winced as he put pressure on his injured leg, using Kyyle’s help to settle against a nearby egg. The material was hot – too hot actually – but Finn didn’t have much choice.
“Shit, is there something lodged inside?” Kyyle asked, peering at Finn’s bloody thigh.
“Yeah, one of the queen’s projectiles. I cut it in half, but she still managed to recast on the spear tip at the last second,” he grunted, looking down at his leg. There was jagged seared flesh where the missile had entered, and dried blood stained his thigh and pants. While his natural health regeneration had taken care of his other injuries, his leg couldn’t heal until he removed the shrapnel. And there was only one way that sucker was coming out.
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