More Bodies Than Bullets (4/6)

Once she gets close enough to see the cannons atop the walls clearly with her own eyes, the Queen closes her eyes and concentrates.

Slowly, the Queen diverts some of her mana from reviving her horde to her own body. Then, she shifts into her humanoid form; having a form with dexterous fingers is always better for performing delicate magic, after all.

Then, she raises her hand slowly, and her skin becomes so searing hot that the air around her starts to ripple in the same way the air ripples above the scorching ground in the middle of a desert. If the stone here wasn't indestructible, then it would've melted into a puddle by now.

The Queen then starts making sweeping motions with her hands, and huge whips of energy lashes out and attacks the cannons up above.

Of course, she's trying to go easy with her strikes – not wanting to waste mana on excessively powerful attacks. Hence, her first strike fails as they bounce off the anti-magic barriers over the cannons.

So, she amps up the power a little, then unleashes hell a second time, calling upon her children's collective mana to overwhelm the cannons.

The second time the Queen strikes, her attack takes out all the cannons, while not really wasting more mana than she should have.

With the cannons out of the way, she goes back to building the bridges en masse. Soon, tens of thousands of ants spill through and link themselves into bridges. With the cannons trying to repair themselves in the meantime, the humans atop the wall have to make do with holding her children off with their own spells and steel weapons.

This, of course, doesn't go very well for the humans. Soon, thousands turns into tens of thousands, then to hundreds of thousands, as the Ants pour over the walls like a great tide.

For the first time in over an hour, the queen laughs aloud as she feels her swarm start to feed again.

Before she gets to celebrate too long, the Queen frowns as she feels a familiar presence approaching.

Then, with a wave of fire, a dragon-bone war ax flies through the canyon, and the bridges of ants falls apart again after being burnt. Through the hive mind link with one of the ants that was near the warrior, she could hear that dragon slayer's voice yell, "Use this chance to get those cannons back up again! Use the time magic and get them reset!"

Knowing the dragon slayer is here, the Queen gets a little more nervous, and she's constantly on guard – ready with a mana barrier in case this new threat comes to attack her.

What she doesn't know is that the human commander had ordered the dragon slayer to NOT engage her directly, as his strength is needed to prevent the Queen's advance; plus, after the swarm's killing spree after the battle with Kalkor, the human commander knows the dragon slayer doesn't stand a chance against the Queen.

So, instead of getting himself killed, the dragon slayer is far more useful being a strategic weapon to reinforce the places that are about to fall.

… And thus, with the Ant bridges knocked down, the Queen is back to square one.

Before the Queen gets to despair too much, she looks down as she feels her remaining children dying below the surface of the fortress. After all, with her millions of Ants, she only ended up bringing a fraction of them through the underground "maze", then a portion of that up to the outermost layer of the fortress. Thus, the majority of her forces are still on the ground, beneath the floating fortress.

This whole time, the humans haven't stopped bombarding the Ants down below, and they've been dying by the thousands every few seconds.

By now, the Queen feels that most of her Ants down below are dead… and she smiles at the opportunity. With so many Ant souls ready to be reborn, the Queen decides to try out a new trick she's been thinking of.

Since she's already near the walls, she inches a little closer, then scatters hundreds of thousands of eggs into the air at a time with each swing of her hands.

So many Ants explosively spring to life that many of them are pushed off the chasm in front of the 2nd wall and fall to their deaths. Many others manage to latch onto each other in time to form dozens of bridges.

This explosion of Ants happened so quickly that the human cannons aren't able to shoot them all down in time.

Even still… the ANNOYING dragon slayer whips his ax again and destroys the bridges again.

This happens several more times before the Queen realizes she has to try something new.

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After thinking about it for a moment, the Queen orders her Ants who are still stuck in the basement maze to find their way to the cannons pointing to the bottom of the fortress and keep them disabled.

A few minutes pass, and the Queen receives confirmation that the deed is done.

Now that preparations is complete, the Queen starts pouring her Ants directly over the chasm… So many Ants pour through that they completely fill the gap up with an indistinguishable, writhing floor of flesh and chitin. Despite the human cannons firing with all their might, this isn't enough to dent the surging tide even noticeably.

The only problem is the dragon slayer, who continues to destroy huge swaths of Ants – burning away large portions of the chasm and every Ant within.

"For now," the Queen thinks, "the dragon slayer can hold my children off, but with my Ants not just building bridges, but filling up the chasms, I'm making him burn though far too much mana. At this rate, I can afford to sit back and repeat what I'm doing, since I'll win eventually at this rate."

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About an hour later, the dragon slayer must have realized the same thing the Queen had known this whole time; not wanting to waste any more mana, the dragon slayer pulls back and lets the Queen take the wall.

When the swarm is finally unhindered, her children engulf the wall… only to find that the humans atop it had already evacuated to the next wall. No doubt, the dragon slayer had been buying time earlier by letting his comrades escape.

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Fisco is standing on a balcony, anxiously overlooking the growing swarm of Ants. He touches one of dozens of Far Speak medallions resting on the edge of the balcony. "REPORT!" he orders.

"Sir!" comes a woman's voice, "They've broken though the outer defenses."

"After only an hour?" Fisco leans in heavily over the railing and orders, "We're going to have to close the world gate. Unless we want the gate to permanently close, we're going to need to take our time and close it according to procedure. We need these men to buy as much time as possible. Maybe another 2 hours. Move it NOW!"

Under other circumstances, Fisco would've liked to set up a less permanent seal over the World Gate, as the idea of never coming back to this world doesn't sit right with him.

However, creating a barrier that he's confident can hold the Queen back is unlikely. Even worse, making a barrier that strong would take weeks to build.

The only other option is to build a wall over the Gate and Time Lock it. Time Locked things are indestructible, after all – plus, it'll only take about 1 hour to finish preparing – with another hour to evacuate the people through the Gate. Once the evacuations are over with, they can finish the Time Lock spell and forever bar the Queen from entering the human's world.

Fisco then reaches into his soul and finds the thread binding his soul to Haalfrin's – their soul Contract. He touches the thread with his hand and says, "Haalfrin! What's your situation!?"

As soon as he opened up the mental link between them, he hears a guttural scream, "AAAARRRR! DIE FILTHY BUGS!!! …Oh you're on commander. Sorry about that."

"WHAT'S YOUR SITUATION!?"

"I'm holding them off at the second gate," Haalfrin answers. "This tight knit housing doesn't seem to be helping very much."

"We're about to close the world gate in another hour," Fisco notifies him, "Hold them off as long as you can, but as after an hour sharp, I want you back here. You're a good soldier, and I hope you can make it to the other side when this closes."

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Haalfrin feels his link with Fisco get cut off, and he picks up his ax again. "Come on, Dakka! You having fun yet!?"

"I feel more alive than I've ever been!" Dakka yells in his mind. "This is more fun than stomping a city! I mean, how awesome is it to slaughter an endless horde over and over again!?"

"Still," Haalfrin admits as he continues swinging Dakka around, "This IS a lot of slaughter. The Ants' are dying so quickly that they're making Death Aura faster than I can absorb it!" It's no joke to say that 10s or 100s of millions of Ants have died before even half a day passed.

The only thing that leaves Haalfrin disappointed is that since the Queen is reviving her Ants, he's unable to take their Wills.