“Shit,” Finn muttered, eyeing the floating blue notification in irritation. It was bad enough that they might have allowed the ants to spread outside the Abyss, but the fact that the notice had been issued across the entire dungeon was a problem. “That damn notice was as good as a flashing neon sign announcing that we’re still alive.”
The others looked equally bleak, glaring at the notice. “I guess the others will know we’re coming now,” Julia muttered.
Meanwhile, Kyyle had pulled up his personal interface and was tapping away at his notes. “That sucks, but the prompt did provide some useful information. I might have been on the right track before.” He gestured at the limp glass corpse beside them. “I think these are winged females. The queen must have been destroying them in waves as they dove down into the shaft – effectively killing off her competition.”
Julia stared at him. “Yeah, okay. Except how did the females get up here when the eggs are all down there? And why dive into the shaft just to die?”
Kyyle hesitated, frowning slightly. “Maybe the females all migrate? Crawl out of the lower levels and up the walls of the central shaft? As for their suicide flight, I’m guessing that’s a natural response. Like a mosquito flying toward a flame.”
Finn chewed on the inside of his cheek. “Or a massive surge of fire and air mana?”
The earth mage nodded. “That would make sense.” He paused. “Although that would also indicate that the females can possibly sense either fire or air mana – or both. My guess is air. They’d need to feed on something up here in order to fly, maybe?”
“How’s that now?” Julia asked. “I didn’t follow that logic jump.”
“Well, they can fly,” Kyyle said, waving at the corpse. “Except they’re made of glass, which isn’t terribly aerodynamic. My guess is that the wings are more cosmetic. Or are used to project air mana like the beetles we rode out here.”
Julia was now looking at him with respect in her eyes. “Okay, yeah, that makes sense. Since when did you become the ant expert?”
Kyyle shrugged and gave her a grin. “We’ve spent the better part of the last week stuck underground in a giant fire ant colony. I’ve read a ridiculous number of articles on our earthborn variants at this point. You probably don’t want to see my internet search history… it looks super weird right now.”
“Either way, it’s a start,” Finn said, patting Kyyle on the back. “Good work.”
“Thanks,” he offered in reply.
Finn turned to look down the tunnel behind him, the dark passageway heading dead west toward their target. “Now, we just need to explore again. And hope these female ants don’t pose a threat. Well, and that we don’t encounter anything worse than the fire ants, I guess,” he added reluctantly.
From the expressions painted on his companions’ faces, no one in the group expected that to be the case. Yet there was nothing for it but to keep moving forward.
Chapter 37 - Twinkling
Bilel’s Journal – Entry 138
My purpose has changed. The Seer’s temple is responsible for that.
Even now, my earliest memories are returning. The destruction of the orphanage was their doing – those degenerate zealots reduced it to ash, took me from the grounds, strapped me down, and twisted my mind with the help of a dark mage. They have taken everything from me. My family, my friends, my memories, my research. They even took the one man who had shown me the smallest kindness, the one person who pulled me out of the darkness all those years ago and offered me passion and purpose.
I will not forget again. And I will not forgive. I do not know why they did this to me, but it doesn’t matter – not now. Up until this point, my research has been focused on searching for answers to cosmic questions. It has been a pursuit of learning for learning’s sake. However, moving forward, my mission is more tangible – more concrete.
The temples and their acolytes are a plague on this world. They toy with our lives in the name of false gods – justifying the harm they inflict with their self-righteous bullshit. If I wish to help others, the best way to accomplish that is to wipe it clean of these so-called gods and all evidence of their disease. I will start by erasing the Seer’s temple from the face of this world; tear it down brick by brick if I must.
And that journey starts by continuing my research. By growing stronger. By studying my enemy and learning their weaknesses. And when the time comes, I will destroy them all.
***
Finn peered around the corner of the tunnel, making certain to keep his body concealed behind the stone wall. He hoped that the earth mana would hide his presence from whatever lived in the massive chasm that lingered just a few yards away. The group now stood near the edge of the main shaft, having had a relatively peaceful journey after they managed to escape the fire ant colony. Now they faced just a tiny problem – they needed to somehow traverse the central shaft of the Abyss.
It must be nighttime above ground, Finn thought.
Sunlight no longer reflected off the thick columns of glass that crisscrossed the chasm. Instead, a dim gloom hovered across the massive circular enclosure. Wind whistled among the pillars, and the screech of grinding glass echoed through the underground shaft. Finn could only assume the sound was due to the shifts of ambient earth mana, the giant columns growing, twisting, and moving at random.
His brow furrowed as his eyes began to adjust to the gloom, Finn having only dismissed Daniel’s bright form a few seconds ago. He could make out clouds of twinkling yellow lights drifting among the columns. Although he couldn’t see what was creating the lights from this distance, they vaguely reminded Finn of earthborn fireflies – the flicker intermittent as though the clouds were made up of hundreds of smaller creatures. He had never witnessed swarms of bugs this dense in the real world though. The lights were so tightly packed that they created glittering yellow smears of colors against the dark backdrop.
Ignoring the flickering clouds for a moment, he peered at the glass columns. A gigantic pillar rested near the mouth of the tunnel exit, stretching outward across the central shaft before fading away into darkness. Its surface was at least six feet wide, and the glass created a flat shelf along its top. With his regular vision, Finn couldn’t be certain that the column stretched all the way across the chasm – the circular enclosure looked just shy of a mile across – but it certainly seemed promising. A bridge maybe.
Finn almost turned to address the others, but hesitated…
A dark shadow suddenly swooped from one of the glass columns that loomed above the tunnel entrance, its silhouette barely visible. The blur dove toward a cloud of the yellow lights, the colors scattering in all directions as the creature struck. A moment later, the swarm recovered and regrouped. For its part, the shadow creature arced back toward another column, its form pitching forward hard as it struck the glass before locking itself in place, the movement letting out a shrill scraping sound.
Finn cocked his head as he heard that singular sound repeated – not once, but dozens of times. His eyes widened as he realized he had mistaken the creatures landing upon the glass columns for the scratch of ambient earth mana.
Even now, he saw more dark blurs swooping toward the lights, the flickering clouds dancing and spinning across the chasm in a dizzying display of color – dividing and regrouping in streams of yellow light. It would have looked beautiful, but for the very real risk those movements represented. He’d been right about the clouds. They must be composed of some type of living creature – creatures that were currently being hunted by the shadowy predators along the columns.
“Anything?” Kyyle whispered from behind him.
“Yeah, I think we have some company,” Finn replied softly.
“Of course,” Julia quipped from farther back in the tunnel, his daughter watching their rear apprehensively. “Because we were starting to get lonely after killing off the ants, right?”
Finn grimaced. He could certainly sympathize with her frustration, alth
ough it did little to address their current predicament. They needed to get across that shaft – the vault marker hovering on the other side.
“Let me check with my sight,” he murmured. “Maybe it’s not as bad as it looks…”
He braced a hand against the wall, squeezing his eyes shut, and activating his Mana Sight. Suddenly, the darkened shaft was brightly illuminated – an enormous cylinder of dark-green walls crisscrossed with similarly colored columns. First, Finn checked their possible path through the chasm. The column of glass resting against the entrance to their tunnel did appear to stretch across the entirety of the shaft – a stroke of fortune.
Good, we have a possible way across, he thought.
His attention shifted to the clouds of flickering yellow lights. In his sight, they no longer twinkled. Instead, they appeared as bright collections of yellow air mana that stood out harshly against the green backdrop. Whatever made up those clouds seemed highly attuned to air magic.
Finn’s focus lifted to the glass pillars, looking for their shadowy new friends.
He picked them out a moment later, the creatures glowing with a soft yellow-and-orange light. They clustered together along teardrop-shaped formations that extended downward from the glass columns. As Finn’s gaze swept the shaft, he realized that there were dozens of those formations sprinkled throughout the chasm. The structure almost reminded him of a beehive.
Or nests for the female fire ants, Finn realized, suddenly recognizing the creatures’ shape from the outlines that Daniel had created during their escape from the fire ant queen’s chamber. He felt a weight sink in his stomach.
“Damn it,” he muttered, dropping the sight and retreating into the hallway.
“That good, huh?” Kyyle offered, before peeking around the corner himself.
Finn rubbed at his eyes. “There must be hundreds of those flying glass-like ants that attacked us while we were escaping perched all over the columns. Female fire ants – assuming Kyyle’s guess is right. They seem to be eating those yellow clouds, probably clusters of bugs or something, like fireflies.”
“Shit,” Julia echoed. “How did we miss that during our fall?”
Finn shrugged. “They might be nocturnal. Or we might have been moving pretty damn fast, and our focus was on not getting crushed to a pulp,” he added in a dry tone.
“Okay, fair enough,” his daughter replied with a sigh.
“Well, it may not be so bad,” Kyyle offered slowly. “We still aren’t sure what types of mana the females can see – either fire or air mana most likely. And they didn’t really attack us before. We were just in the way. What sort of mana are those clouds putting off?”
Finn looked up, cocking his head. “Air mana – they practically glow with it.”
Kyyle nodded. “So, we could test it. Maybe send out Daniel and see if they can also sense fire mana?”
“Not a bad plan. Worst case, we have to fight them here in the tunnel – which is better than out in the open. And we can always retreat if we need to…” Finn trailed off, seeing both Kyyle and Julia nodding along. It seemed they had an agreement. Without another word, the earth mage moved farther down the tunnel to start building fortifications, narrowing the rock walls to create a chokepoint.
“Daniel,” Finn said curtly, and the AI soon flashed into existence beside him.
“Yes, sir?” Daniel replied.
“Uh… so we need you to fly out into the central shaft and sort of hover there for about 60 seconds. Can you do that?” Finn asked, trying to be circumspect about their goal.
The AI pulsed weakly. “Am I the bait… again?”
“Well, not exactly. We don’t think the creatures out there will be able to see you. So more like a test subject?” Finn offered.
If Daniel had had a face, Finn imagined he would be staring at him with an incredulous expression right now. He could practically feel the AI’s hesitation.
“I promise nothing will happen to you,” Finn urged. “And we really need your help.”
Daniel let out a frustrated sigh. “Fine. Fine. I’ll go save everyone again,” he replied bitterly before darting off around the corner. “Scan this, highlight this, fly into a death canyon…” the AI muttered as he flew off.
Julia chuckled from behind Finn. “He does have a point. Daniel has sort of been the MVP of our little road trip out of hell.”
“I’ll be sure to give him a gold star if we get out of here,” Finn replied sarcastically.
Then he shifted his attention back to the chasm, activating his sight again so that he could stay behind the protective rock wall. He could see Daniel’s brightly glowing form dart out across the expanse – briefly envious of his ability to fly. That would have made several parts of their journey a hell of a lot more pleasant.
He watched anxiously to see if anything approached the AI, Finn’s eyes focusing on the female ants that clustered on their teardrop-shaped nests. Yet, as a full minute passed, they didn’t seem to make any move toward the AI. One of the yellow clouds of flickering bugs drifted closer to Daniel, but that was the only reaction to his presence.
The AI soon swept back into the cave as Finn deactivated his sight. “I’m sure everyone will be relieved to hear that I wasn’t attacked,” Daniel announced.
“Overjoyed,” Finn grunted. In fact, he was relieved. That meant they might be able to make it across the chasm after all.
Kyyle seemed to be reading his mind. “So, nothing responded to the fire mana?”
“Not really,” Finn said. “Which means Julia should be good since she gives off no mana signature. Although, you and I will have some ambient air mana by default. We might be able to mask that if I cast Imbue Fire on two of the metal spheres and have them circle us slowly as we try to cross the chasm.”
The earth mage nodded. “Seems like a good plan.”
“So, we’re really going to do this?” Julia asked with a frown. She seemed to be recalling their last visit to the main shaft – the fall that had almost killed them. Not that Finn blamed her. He wasn’t in a hurry to repeat that experience.
“I guess so,” Finn replied evenly, pulling two of the crude metal orbs from his bag. He’d begun to prefer raw metal to his daggers as his mana regeneration increased, and he became more proficient at reshaping the metal in the middle of combat. His duel with the fire ant queen had shown him just how powerful that flexibility could be.
“We’ve got less than a mile between us and the other side of the shaft,” Finn said, glancing up at his teammates and noting their tense posture – both were checking and rechecking their gear. “I say we take this at a jog and try to get across as fast as possible. I’ll keep my orbs up and burning. We also need to watch out for a surge of ambient earth mana.”
Finn’s eyes darted to Kyyle. “If the columns start shifting, we’re probably going to be relying on you to build us a bridge across – if not to the other side, then to another column. Can you work with the glass?”
The earth mage tilted his head. “Yeah, but it’s going to be brittle and won’t withstand a beating. You might give it a few extra seconds before putting your full weight on it.”
“Understood,” Finn said with a curt nod. “If we need to retreat and are less than halfway, we head back this way. However, once we pass the halfway point—”
“We keep moving forward,” Julia finished for him. “Definitely not our first batshit, crazy dash for safety,” she offered with a grin, earning her a chuckle from Kyyle.
“Fair enough. We ready?” Finn asked, eyeing them carefully.
They both nodded.
“Okay… on three,” Finn said, his fingers already beginning to move as he cast Imbue Fire. “One… two… three!”
The group raced out from around the corner and started across the glass column in a single-file line, Julia taking the lead – her retracted lance and shield in hand – while the other two brought up the rear. The pair of metal spheres were awash in flame, and Finn brought them each up
to heat rank 2. They began to orbit slowly around Kyyle and himself – their flames giving off waves of heat and helping to light the gloomy chasm.
They pressed forward at a steady jog, keeping close together. Finn spared a glance down and immediately regretted that decision. All that lingered below them was murky darkness, the ground no longer visible at night. Although, he knew firsthand exactly how far it was to the bottom and how painful it would be to make that fall – a trip he desperately didn’t want to repeat.
This almost feels too easy, Finn thought as they neared the halfway point.
The females hadn’t tried to attack them, and the clusters of flickering lights drifted around them in spiraling azure clouds. At this range, Finn could finally confirm that the clouds were comprised of small insects. His guess at fireflies had been close. Each one was no larger than his pinky, its abdomen occasionally flaring with yellow light. The sight had been impressive from the mouth of the tunnel, but from out here – suspended over the shaft and surrounded by the dense clouds – it was spectacular, like they were racing across an ocean of swimming lights.
Then Finn’s brow furrowed as he watched the twinkling clouds…
Up close, they looked a bit too thick, at least compared to what he had observed back in the tunnel. The clusters of bugs seemed to squeeze in toward them, as though drawn to the group somehow.
A shadow abruptly swooped down through a nearby cloud of insects, the female diving only a few short yards away from Finn and scooping several of the flashing creatures into her mouth. He could feel the wind as she sliced through the pack, the smaller insects breaking apart and curling around the column as the larger ant struck.
Then another female dove toward the bugs – closer this time.
He heard a sizzle and pop as some of the insects collided with the flaming sphere beside him. The sound was followed by another. And then another. Smoke curled away from both his orb and Kyyle’s, the bugs now starting to fly directly toward the superheated metal spheres. Finn watched with a growing sense of dread, noticing the clouds continue to thicken as more fireflies joined the swarm. The combined light was now bright enough to illuminate most of the shaft around them, likely creating a glowing beacon of air mana.
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