Monster in the Tunnels (2/2)
Because the Arkin are able to turn into flying weapons, they're able to rip apart the Ant nets the bugs are using to scale the side of the fortress with relative ease.
Everything looks like it's going well, until Haalfrin suddenly receives an sudden report. "Sir! There are Ants in the basement maze!"
"Hmm…," Haalfrin nods while he thinks about how this happened last time the Queen invaded too. She had stuck her arm through a cannon hole and summoned her children inside the basement.
"Alright," Haalfrin orders, "Find the origin point where the Ants are coming from. The Queen must be there. Once she's there, focus all our attacks on her and leave everything else."
"But Commander!" the soldier adds urgently, "The Queen is already inside the maze!"
"WHAT!?"
Haalfrin then starts receiving report after report of a powerful Ant who is marching through the basement maze – wrecking havoc in an unstoppable fury…
How did the Queen get inside!?
Realizing that since the basement maze was deemed to be the most secure place in the Threshold, most of their supplies are kept there. Since Fisco is being watched by the emperor now and supplies are scarce, Haalfrin knows he needs to go down into the basement with his forces and keep her from pillaging the place.
Plus, since Haalfrin knows that the more of the Ants below they kill that the more Ants the Queen will have to summon, he orders his forces to leave the Ants below the fortress alone and instead converge on the maze.
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What comes next is a one sided slaughter. Whenever the Ants try to spread out in the maze, the Arkin manage to cut them off and incinerate them.
This goes on for several hours… until something suddenly changes.
Haalfrin himself is feeling a little sick as memories of the 6 year long bloodbath are coming back to him. Just like back then, he's running through the maze and killing helpless Ants. He's even sure to be on the move to avoid the Queen.
However, as he runs upon another line of unsuspecting, cornered Ants, the Ant in front suddenly turns to him, and a huge blast of mana roars out of its mouth and slams into his chest. He flies down the hall and hits the wall so hard that his spine cracks, and his brain smacks against his skull.
After a sickening crack, Commander Haalfrin slumps to the ground unconscious with serious burn wounds and a hole in his gut.
"COMMANDER!!" some of the soldiers yelp in shock.
"GET HIM OUT OF HERE!" one of the captains screams at his men. "I'LL-" He's incinerated before he can finish what he was saying.
How?! Didn't the reports say that the Queen was on the other side of the maze?
Wait, the reports? Why isn't anyone reporting?
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Seeing her enemy ripe for eating, the Queen clicks her mandibles in satisfaction. Part of her wants to savor the triumph by slowly eating him, but it would be a tragic waste for something to go wrong and for her to lose her prey after so much effort.
Indeed, a lot of effort went into making her plan.
The first part of her plan was to lull her enemy into a false sense of security – let them think she's desperate by pretending she was trying the same attack strategy on the castle.
However, when she stuck her arm through the cannon hole and summoned some of her children, she had designated one of the Ants as "Captain" Ants using her Advanced Dra ability.
Since the Queen has always been seen trying to hold back, a Captain Ant going all out should fool the enemy into thinking the Captain Ant is, in fact, her.
Once the enemy was tricked into thinking she had found some strange way into the valuable basement maze, they all but left her forces outside the fortress alone, minus a token harassment force to pester them on the way up the walls.
With most of the pointy ears out of the way, the Queen climbed up the walls unhindered. Then, she entered the maze like the rest of her children.
From then on, the Queen wandered about – aimlessly dropping eggs onto the ground and secretly using her scattered Captain Ants to shield them from the incinerating explosions the pointy ears keep setting off in the halls.
Then, it was only a matter of time where she had to wander around until she found the dragon slayer. Since she's not acting like the Queen at all, he shouldn't be going out of his way to run away from her, after all.
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…And this brings us back to the present.
Now, Haalfrin is knocked unconscious against the wall, and the Queen is running towards him so that she can quickly finish him off.
The Arkin try blocking the Queen's way, but she blasts right past them – practically ignoring them.
Just at the last second, some of the Wills who didn't have time to evolve into Arkin possess Haalfrin's clothing, and they pull him away as fast as they can.
The Queen may be powerful, but she can't run very fast. So, realizing her prey is about to get away, the Queen decides to spring her second trap.
Immediately, voices scream in Haalfrin's mind; there are reports of Ants springing to life all over the basement maze… but Haalfrin isn't conscious to hear any of it.
Disorganized and surrounded, it only takes a few minutes for every last Arkin in the basement maze to be eradicated.
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This whole time, Haalfrin's body is flying frantically through the maze – most of the time failing to dodge the patrols.
The only reason they even make it somewhat far is because several of the previously unsummoned Arkin show up to clear the way.
Why are many of the Ants suddenly able to manifest such great power? How were the Ants able to spring from the ground, despite the Queen not being there?
None of the Arkin really know; they just know that they and the commander are in big trouble.
"Captain!" one of the Arkin calls to his officer, "Where should we go!? We don't have the master key!" Only Kaalhyme, Kalastros, and Haalfrin even have the basement map memorized, but none of those people are available now either.
"Just keep running!" the captain orders back. "If we hold still, our commander dies!"
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Haalfrin's escorts all try, in vain, to find the exit. Instead, after 10 minutes, they come across one of the cannon holes.
"Captain!" one of the Arkin calls out, "I can sense several of the stronger Ants! We're trapped!"
The captain looks around anxiously, until he looks at the cannon hole. "Shove the commander through the cannon hole!" he orders.
"He's too big!"
The Ant Queen may have been able to fit her entire body through except her head, but Haalfrin is also a lot denser, stronger, taller… and he has a larger skull than the Queen. In every way, getting him through the cannon hole is a silly idea.
"I don't care if you have to break his arms and crack his skull!" the captain barks back, "Get him through it NOW!"
Immediately, all of the Arkin except one goes to the door to defend it, while the remaining one dislocates all of Haalfrin's limbs at the shoulders and hips. Fearing he'd break the commander's neck otherwise, he decides to put him through head first instead of feet first.
"Wish I were a doctor," the soldier grumbles. If he had advanced knowledge of human anatomy, he'd be able to know exactly the brain's shape so that he could place a mana shield over it.
Alas, the soldier is left to guess.
Concentrating hard, the soldier crushes Haalfrin's skull on the sides, then moves his arms up as he inserts him into the cannon hole.
After a bit of wriggling, Commander Haalfrin is through the hole, though he unexpectedly stops at the chest area. His pecks are too big.
Realizing what has to be done, the soldier also dislocates some of the man's ribs as he inserts him further through the hole.
At long last, Commander Haalfrin is completely through the hole. If it weren't for the Wills inside his clothing, he'd have fallen a thousand feet to his death.
Once Haalfrin is through the gate, his Wills fly him away from the angry Ants clamoring below.
The last thing the Arkin see before the Ants break in and devour them all is their captain being flown away above the clamoring Ants.
Whether he flies to safety or not remains to be seen.
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Bare feet walk along the sticky, red ground. Unlike the last time a battle happened in the basement maze, there is Arkin blood mixed with Rehkin.
"Tch," the Queen hisses. The more the thinks about it, the more annoyed she gets at how close she was to killing the last human here.
The only thing that consoles the Ant monarch's spirit is when she closes her eyes and feels her children feasting on the pointy-ears' flesh.
"10,002,933,832,219"
"10,002,933,841,212"
"10,002,933,859,399"
"…"
Yeah. The pointy ears give a lot of mana.
Remembering how useful her pendent has been, as well as the fact that she found it by looting a body, she orders all of her children to bring everything the pointy ears had on them to her.
For the next several hours, the Queen personally sifts through it all.
A lot of the things here seem to be the elixirs she sometimes saw the humans and pointy ears drinking. Sure that they'll be useful somehow, the Queen has them stashed away.
Other than the elixirs, the Queen also finds a lot of strange, enchanted equipment. She'd grown so used to reading magical auras that she has a rough idea of what of this stuff does.
The only thing that gives her pause is a large, multi-colored stone one of her children had pried from the hands of some elderly-looking pointy-ear.
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After Haalfrin is taken away, he's left in some forlorn, forgotten cave for several minutes before some Arkin start materializing.
Since the Arkin are already dead, they do passively regenerate their bodies when their physical forms are destroyed. Thus, it only took a few minutes after Haalfrin is left alone for the Arkin who first "died" to recondense their forms.
Given the bad turn the battle took, none of these Arkin are surprised to see their commander's form bloodied and broken. "Hurry!" one of them exclaims. "Heal the commander! You'll stop the bleeding, and I'll hold his bones in place…
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After several hours of intense medical care, Haalfrin's eyes barely flicker open. Every inch of his body is in pain, and his head is pounding uncomfortably. His eyes focus after several seconds, and he sees a pointy-eared old man standing over him.
"I'm sorry, Haalfrin," the old man bows his head apologetically.
Normally, Haalfrin would've scolded his old master for acting subserviently – bowing his head in the same manner a subordinate would. However, in the years since his master had ascended as an Arkin and come to visit him, they'd already gone through those arguments. In the end, old Kalastros insists on treating him respectfully, since he's now the Commander of the Threshold.
"…Master, why… were you apologizing?"
"I was researching the Master Key some more when I fell a few hours ago," Master Kalastros explains. "The Ants got it."
"…Sh#t."