Eat steam!
I blast all of them in the face with a searing wave of steam as I wind my mandibles back and unleash a mighty Doom Chomp!
SNAP!
My mandibles pierce and crunch, but the lack of notifications tells me my attempt hasn’t been as successful as it was with the previous wave of foes. These armoured guys are hard nuts to crack! Especially when the ranks are packed together like this. The extended mandibles of dark light that manifest when I use the Skill help to extend my reach, certainly, but they also spread the impact out across a half dozen Legionaries. When they all work together to absorb the blow, it becomes even harder to break through their defence.
I throw away the residual Fire and Water Mana so I can start cooking up the Lava Mana combined with a little Earth Mana. Hopefully, I can make something good happen with this combo, I have a few good ideas.
“ROOOOAAAAAAR!”
The colossus of metal and muscle that is Tiny continues to be a pain for the Legion as he sends his devastating fists over the heads of the colony members, smacking the enemy in the face over and over again with his electrified punches.
Crinis has retreated to the shadows once more now that she isn’t needed to shore up that faltering section of the line, but I get a feeling we’re going to need her again fairly soon. With the two forces confronting each other at this range, I know Invidia is working double time on the defensive end. I can feel the spells flying over my head with my Mana Sense, an endless flurry of magic that could cause incalculable damage to either side should one group of mages get on top.
Even with all our numbers, the colony is being suppressed in this area as more and more of the Legion mages find their range and pile on the offense. With Invidia throwing his enormous ability behind the mage ants, the line is holding for the time being.
All I can do is keep battling away here in the front lines, using my body to protect my family as best I can.
At this point, the battle has devolved into an endless tug of war as the two fronts smack into each other endlessly, shoving, stabbing, and biting to break the other.
I’m using every trick I have in the book: charging, biting, blasting with acid and lava. The fatigue is setting in, even for me. The effort is unrelenting and neither side is prepared to back down.
As the minutes grind past, it starts to become clear that the colony is being pushed back. The line is just too wide, and I can’t cover the whole thing at once. Wherever I and my pets aren’t, the Legion gains ground, wounding our soldiers, cutting them down and advancing one step at a time. Even deploying Crinis isn’t enough to stem the tide.
Can that wave start already?
146. The Siege, Part 24
“Something isn’t right,” Sloan muttered.
Coolant looked askance at her sister as the two of them continued to hang outside the second gate facing the golgari invasion. She could tell the general wasn’t discussing with her but thinking out loud, so she remained silent and waited.
“They’ve formed up, but they aren’t approaching us, why is that?”
One of the two ants most central to the colony’s planning of this siege was more than a little unsettled when she saw something so out of her expectations. The force from the Empire of Stone had behaved almost exactly as expected right up until they started demanding honour duels.
With the bizarre rituals of their people disposed with, Sloan anticipated the golgari would return to assaulting the gate. They were here to exterminate her family, were they not? How was that going to be achieved if they didn’t attack? They were on the clock, after all.
The entire strategy Sloan and Victor had hammered out centred on the concept of their enemies working within a limited time frame. If the wave started before they finished their task, they would be forced to retreat. They couldn’t possibly hope to stand against both the colony and a raging Dungeon filled with desperate monsters. Surely!
Yet before her eyes, something inexplicable was taking place. Once their leader had been collected and returned to his troops behind the first gate, the golgari had forced the gate open wider and formed ranks, their soldiers imposing in their sheer size and mass. Not wanting to be caught unprepared, the colony deployed their own troops, along with the human volunteers, and prepared for the confrontation.
Except it hadn’t come.
According to her understanding of the situation, it should have begun immediately, yet here they were, several minutes later, still waiting for the enemy to take a forward step.
“Perhaps they’re waiting for their leader to awaken? They seem quite rigid in their authority structures,” Coolant suggested.
Sloan shook her antennae.
“They are an organised semi-military force who pride themselves on martial Skills. I refuse to believe they don’t have a second in command willing to issue orders to complete the mission. It would be insane to arrange the command structure in any other way. This is something else…”
The general stared, her twin compound eyes focused on the unmoving ranks of the golgari as if trying to penetrate their thoughts.
“Do you think their ranks look thin?” she asked.
Taken by surprise by the change in topic, Coolant could only go still as she tried to assess the ‘thickness’ of the enemy soldiers.
“They seem well-fed to me?” she said.
“And why didn’t they open the gate all the way? Do you see the way it isn’t fully open? They could probably fit an extra six soldiers to each rank through that gap if they pushed it open all the way. It doesn’t make sense to create a choke point for their own troops. It only makes it take longer to bring their soldiers to bear against ours. This only makes sense if there’s something they don’t want us to see. Something they’re hiding out of our line of sight.”
That made a lot more sense to the mage. She was instantly more alert, scanning the distance with her mind as well as her eyes.
“You think there is some sort of super weapon back there? Something we haven’t seen and can’t predict?”
This was one of the council’s greatest fears. They were young as a people and it was certain that those races and groups who’d existed for hundreds, if not thousands of years would have innumerable pieces of wisdom that the colony just hadn’t had the time to experience. They couldn’t prepare for the unknown, only acknowledge that it existed.
“…No,” Sloan said, her eyes still scanning the distance.
Coolant was confused.
“Then what?” she said.
“…I think we’ve been betrayed.”
So saying, the general Dashed back within the nest as if a hundred golgari soldiers were at her back.
Within the nest…
The Queen clacked her mandibles to dispel her irritation despite it being a fruitless endeavour. Her conversation with the human, Enid, had been enlightening and helped explain the exasperating behaviours of her children, but it did little to alleviate the frustration of being treated like a grub.
Out of deference for the concern of her children, she agreed to remain within the nest to protect the brood in the event of a breach, a role that kept her out of the fighting altogether. If the battle came to the brood chambers, then it was already lost, she understood that much just from having the plans explained to her by one of the soldiers who stood guard.
Still, she had agreed, only to find how chafed she felt not being able to fight alongside her children. It was as if her carapace were being scratched from the inside. A constant, maddening sensation that just wouldn’t go away, no matter how she scratched at it.