by Simon Archer
That’s when I felt it beneath my feet. The rumble of the earth, low and angry, like a steadily building wave that would soon grow large enough to destroy the very shores where it was cast. It was coming, and it was uncaring in its destruction because the earth did what it wanted.
Which was also when another thought occurred to me. I had gotten two hearts on the way here, one from the spider and one from the golem. The first had quelled the rage of the queen. Would the second quell the earth’s indifference?
I wasn’t quite sure, but I quickly pulled the Heart of Stone Golem from my inventory, anyway. The moment it was out, Mab’s lips twisted into an amused smirk.
“You are smarter than you look.” At first, I wasn’t sure I’d heard her speak because the sound of it just rolled over my senses, setting my hair on end and giving rise to gooseflesh across my body. “No wonder Rhapsody has chosen you.” She reached out and plucked the Heart from my hand. “And to send you to me is bold beyond reason.” She held the Heart up in one hand and stared at intently. “I could kill you where you stand. You would be cast into the endless pit, and yet the hunger of the earth would not be sated even when watered with your blood. Still...”
“I’d rather you didn’t do that,” I said as I met her eyes. I wasn’t quite sure what she meant about Rhapsody sending me to her since this seemed like it had been optional, but then again, the one thing I’d always liked about Terra Forma was how it always felt like you were the most important person in it and that your choices had meaning. Maybe this world operated the same way? After all, it had seemed to do so thus far.
“Your opinion has been noted.” Her eyes flicked back to me equal measures of indifference and amusement in them. “So, what would you have me do?” At her words, the ground beneath my feet rumbled angrily, and the frozen wind swept across the plateau.
“Whatever you would like,” I said with a nod before I bowed my head to her. “You are the Keeper of the Darkness, and your will is absolute. I will trust your judgment.”
“You would ask me to choose your fate, oh servant of Rhapsody?” She seemed pleased by the idea, though. “Very well.” She pressed her lips to the Heart of the Stone Golem, leaving behind the frosty imprint of her kiss on its surface. Then, as frost started to spread across it, she slammed the Heart of the Stone Golem into my forehead.
Pain unlike any I had ever felt before exploded through my body, and as I collapsed backward in a broken cloud of blood and hit the ground, the last thing I saw as I faded into darkness was Mab’s smiling face.
“Until we meet again, Garrett.” Her grin turned predatory. “It won’t be as long as you think.”
18
You have been granted the title ‘of the Cold and Dark.’ Using this title will give you access to the elemental magic lines of Ice and Earth. Would you like to use this title?
That message was the first thing I saw when I woke up outside where I’d first found the hidden entrance to the Dungeon Challenge. My ants were all standing guard around me, even the three that had ventured through the portal with me.
My head ached, and as I reached up to touch my forehead, I realized it felt different. Colder and harder somehow. Still, I wasn’t dead, which was good, so I pulled myself into a sitting position, and since we weren’t being attacked, I turned my attention back to the message. I’d had lots of titles when I’d played Terra Forma, and most of them had granted special powers. Hell, some of them could even be leveled up to increase their strength.
I smiled brightly and accepted the title. Instantly a harsh sapphire light flared around me before fading into my body, and as it did, I saw another pair of messages.
You have been granted the power Elemental Power: Ice. You will now be able to infuse your magic with Ice. You have been granted increased resistance to Cold. Your body will be able to resist the power of Ice magic.
You have been granted the power Elemental Power: Earth. You will now be able to infuse your magic with the power of Earth. You have been granted increased resistance to Earth. Your body will be able to resist the power of Earth magic.
There didn’t seem to be any specific skills associated with either of those powers, and if it worked like how it did in Terra Forma, I wouldn’t be able to learn traditional spells since I, personally, didn’t actually have either mastery. Instead, I’d have to weave together my own spells, and they might or might not work.
Fortunately, I’d had both ice and earth titles before, and while they had all been a little bit different in terms of strength and limitations, I was sure I could make it work.
Satisfied, I turned my attention to the flashing exclamation point in the upper corner of my vision and when I opened it a golden glow momentarily flared around my body and another message appeared in front of me.
You have completed a Dungeon Challenge. All your stats have been increased by five. The strength of your skills has been increased by two.
Pattern: Stone Golem has been learned. Would you like to create a Stone Golem?
Pattern: Ice Spider has been learned. Would you like to create an Ice Spider?
Bonus: You have completed your first Dungeon Challenge. You have gained an additional six stat points to distribute.
I blinked in astonishment. Not only had I gotten the title from the dungeon and learned a new skill along the way, but I’d gotten a pretty sweet reward in terms of stats and skills. Admittedly, I’d been annoyed about not being able to extract either the Stone Golem’s or the Ice Spider’s patterns, but evidently, the Challenge had just been saving them until I was done.
Wasting no time, I distributed my points, dumping four into Strength and two into Agility before I summoned both of my new creatures, and a few moments later, Rocky and Widow were born.
Rocky, the Stone Golem, looked like one would expect. A bunch of brown-green rocks roughly stacked on top of each other to look like a giant man about the size of a small mountain and had glowing emerald eyes. Still, it was his abilities that intrigued me more than his appearance since he had something called stance swap.
Apparently, the golem could exist in one of three stances, Defensive, Offensive, and Neutral, and depending on which stance he was in, his stats changed accordingly. Defensive allocated everything to Defense, Offensive to, well, offense, and Neutral split them down the middle. That meant he could probably function well in battles when something crazy happened since he could stance swap to deal with it.
Widow, the ice spider, on the other hand, looked like a green version of the massive ice spider I’d fought earlier which came as no surprise. She didn’t have a very high offense or defense either aside from when it came to Ice-type attacks, and I was about to write her off as not very useful when I spied an interesting ability called Ice Web.
Not only could it bind a target to the ground for a few seconds, but it also had a chance to add a slow effect to the target. Now that could be useful.
Satisfied with my two new acquisitions, I waited a few more moments until my Aura had regenerated. Then I began to make my way through the rest of the colony.
I wasn’t quite sure how long it took for us to make our way to the boss room because the trek was an endless series of ant battles, and I made sure I wiped out each and every ant along the way to maximize my experience. To be honest, as my army grew, and I summoned more soldiers, golems, and spiders, I didn’t have much time to think about what we were doing because I was too busy playing commander. I sort of shifted my focus from directly engaging in combat to micromanaging my army to make sure they took down the enemies with maximum efficiency.
Better still, as we moved down into the depths of the colony, waves upon waves of delicious experience encased in ant-coated shells swept into me, so that by the time I reached the boss room, I was nearly level twenty and had almost forty minions at my command.
“Well,” I said as I looked back at my army, “this is it.” I nodded toward the giant doorway in front of me.
Even without the overlay i
ndicating the boss in the room ahead with a giant skull, I would have known the creature was within. I could feel the boss’s power emanating from the dark cavern in a way I’d never been able to in the game. It rippled along my skin, and while I should have been scared, I just wasn’t because this power was a pale shadow compared to what I’d experienced from Mab.
Still, I hadn’t fought Mab, and I’d be fighting the boss inside, and I had no idea what level she would be. For all I knew, she was level forty, but I somehow doubted it. I had killed every last ant I could find and did a couple more sweeps to root out any hidden rooms both inside and outside the colony, and thanks to Scout’s ability, we’d found a few more groups of ants outside.
That meant unless I was supposed to be a higher level than I had been when I’d come in, I should be powerful enough to fight the boss. That said, I knew this wasn’t Terra Forma and didn’t have to follow any specific rules, and because of that, I was determined to do this correctly.
I took a deep breath and centered myself as my Aura finally regenerated back to full. I now had three Sentinels and two Stone Golems, all of which could act as tanks. That made my plan relatively simple.
“Okay, guys,” I said, looking at the Sentinels. “Hank and Pym, you two are on the boss. I want Hank to pull its attention, and when your health drops to around half, swap to Pym.” I turned my attention to the third Sentinel. “Goliath, if there are other monsters in there with the boss, I want you to get them on you.” They twitched their antennae in response, clearly understanding, so I looked to my two golems, Rocky and Balboa. “Rocky, you will assist Goliath. If he gets to half health, I want you to take his place.”
The big golem nodded once, and there was a glimmer of understanding in his pebble eyes while Balboa shuffled in a way that clearly said, “What about me, boss?”
“Balboa, I want you to switch to your offensive stance and focus on taking down any ants in the room. That’s your only priority unless one of the other tanks goes down. Then stance switch and step in. Understand?”
Instead of responding with words, the golem’s entire body rippled with energy as his skin changed color. Before his rocky exterior had been brown, but now it appeared red, which meant he was in his offensive stance. While it had happened quickly since we were out of combat, I knew from experience that an active combat stance switch would take a long time. Still, I couldn’t ignore the fact that having his brute strength on my side would be positive, and after all, I had other tanking units.
Satisfied, I turned to the Spider Squad, a group of six spiders led by Widow stood clustered in the corner. “Okay, guys, your job is simple. Focus on reducing the boss’s mobility. I don’t want you to do anything else. Even if it seems like the boss is stuck and you could assist, don’t. The last thing I want is for one of you guys to go down because you got too close to an area-of-effect attack or for the boss to move and make it so that we have to chase it around.”
After that, I split the remaining ants into two groups. I put all the high levels on the boss to focus it down while the rest were set to work on any other minions in the room. If there weren’t any minions or they finished them before the boss went down, they could just go to the boss, after all.
“And before you ask, yeah, I’m pretty sure there’s gonna be minions because my gut tells me that through that cavern is the Ant Queen.” I held my hands up in surrender. “I know, I know, it’s a terrible guess, but you have to trust me on this.”
That was also why I was so concerned about mobility that I’d keep all six spiders on her. In Terra Forma, Ant Queens had the nasty habit of flying all over and raining down death from above, and I wanted to avoid that if possible.
“So, anyone have any objections?” When none of the ants, spiders, or golems said anything, I continued, “No? Okay, good. Let’s do this.”
I gripped my mandibles in each hand and took a deep breath before making my way down the dark cavern ahead.
As I moved forward, the tunnel seemed to grow taller and wider, expanding outward so that by the time I’d gone about a hundred yards, it was almost twice as large. There was also more glowing moss. Its light threw shadows across the ground as I moved, which made the fact that there was no sound other than my footsteps in the dirt even eerier than it should have been. I put it out of my mind and made my way forward. After all, it wasn’t like there was music in the background, and I’d killed pretty much every living creature in the colony. What was there to make sound?
A few minutes later, we finally reached the chamber, and sure enough, I could see the boss within. She was at the far end of an immense cavern almost three hundred feet across and was shrouded in shadow so I couldn’t make out much detail, but I knew it was her because a ridiculously powerful Aura seemed to drift off of her in a hazy fog of death and despair.
Between her and us were scores of ants, so many that it seemed like nearly all the space of the cavern was filled with Minders, Soldiers, and Sentinels. Not good odds, but at the same time, the boss hadn’t engaged us the second we had walked in, so we had that going for us, which was nice.
“I wonder if we can start dragging monsters back and weed them out that way?” I wasn’t sure, but I assumed it was worth a try because my army didn’t feel quite big enough anymore. I’d expected a few dozen ants max, but this? This was insane.
Taking a deep breath, I moved to step back into the tunnel, but as I did, the Queen turned and looked right at me with two ruby red, multi-faceted eyes. I felt her gaze travel over me in an instant, and then before I could even breathe, she sauntered forward, all swishing hips and lithe movements.
My eyes widened in shock at the sight of her because she looked nothing like the vast majority of Ant Queens I’d faced in the game. Usually, they were a giant ant of some kind, or in the case of the Black Tower boss, were more like an ant-based centaur where its lower half was that of an ant and the top half that of a woman.
This boss, though, looked like a lady in more ways than one and reminded me of the insect goddess Darmaea I’d encountered during the Sea of Misery event. She stood about five and a half feet tall and was naked as the day is long. Her polished black chitin skin shone in the light of the luminescent moss, and snow white hair fell from her scalp. In fact, if I could ignore the unnatural sheen of her skin, the only thing that even made her look like a bug were the two large multi-hued dragonfly wings sprouting from her back, the cute, twitching antennae that sprang from her forehead, and those eyes, of course.
Otherwise, she looked so humanoid, I’d have almost just thought it was a costume.
“Hello, hero,” she said in a voice that reminded me of an especially bubbly cheerleader. “To what do I owe the pleasure?” She raised one slender arm toward me and beckoned me forward. “Do you wish to mate with me?” Her hand swept out across all the ants. “Because I’m willing to bet that we could make an endless amount of children.”
“Is that an actual offer?” I asked, and my question was met by an amused titter.
“It could most definitely be.” Her lips turned into a heated smile as she strode through the army of ants, and I watched as they parted for her. “But I don’t think we’re quite compatible in that way.” She put a taloned finger to her lips. “I suspect we’d just fuck and fuck and fuck, and then there would be no babies.” She pouted. “And I need babies, hero. I need them so very much.”
“I’m honestly not sure where you’re going with this,” I said as she finally reached me, and I could feel the heat wafting off her. “Are we gonna fuck or fight?”
She smirked then. “I am not sure.” She leaned in then, so close that I could smell her, like sex, sin, and cinnamon all mixed together. “Which would you prefer?” The question hit my skin like a hot, needy breath and made a shiver of nearly uncontrollable desire run through me. “Well?”
I’ll be honest, I almost didn’t see it, and, even more honestly, I suspected that she was more surprised than I was when I caught her by the wrist a
s she tried to drive a dagger through my chest. She was doubly surprised when I used her own momentum to rip the weapon from her hand and drive it into her heart, or where her heart would have been if she’d been human, anyway.
“The Lannisters send their regards,” I said as her eyes went wide open in shock, and I leaned in and smiled at her.
Then as she staggered backward a half a step, bloody ichor pouring from the wound, I gave the hilt of that dagger an Aura-infused kick that sent the blade punching out her back in a spray of blood and chitin shards. As her lifeless body hit the ground in a heap, and all hell broke loose, I spun on my heel and ran back down the tunnel with an army of pissed-off children ants after me.
“Tanks, hold them here,” I said after I’d made it to a narrow enough portion of the cave that we could force them to come at us in manageable numbers. Yay for bottlenecks.
I won’t say the battle was easy because it wasn’t. In fact, it was anything but because we had to beat our way through scores of ants with almost no time to rest. My Aura was taking a serious hit from it all even with my Extraction ability.
Still, we prevailed because, well, my tactics were better than theirs. My spiders kept their Sentinels and Minders pinned down while we drew the Soldiers into a cone of death that ripped them to pieces. I almost didn’t believe it when it was done. My clothes were stained and grimy with ant ichor, and my body felt like it weighed a million pounds. I was hungry and thirsty and a million other things.
But most of all?
Most of all, I was excited because when I saw all the messages that flashed across my vision when the last ant died, I almost let out a whoop of joy.
