The Third Portal: Chapter Eleven

The ant that had been dragging me suddenly changed its course. It turned, shoving me to the side, then rushed out. The other grave tending ants rushed out as well, and I started to move, but Dusk whistled that I should clean myself first. 

“Right,” I agreed. 

I didn’t have time for a full shower, but I cast a series of quick, ungated spells to eliminate the scent lingering over me, then spritzed myself with the citrusy scent, before sprinting up the tunnel alongside the other ants. 

I could make an educated guess about what exactly had set them off. The report from the Candleseer guild had claimed that both the ants that had been docile and the ones that had attacked them had been identical save for their mana, but they were also both just ants. I wasn’t well versed in ant identification, and I doubted anyone from the guild had been either. I was betting that I was going to run into the desolants. 

I rushed up the tunnel, suddenly wishing that they didn’t create such a massive distance between the entryway to their colony and their graveyard. 

I rushed past their waste-holding chambers, and then came to the same general intersection that I’d gone through before, when the ant dragging me about had looped the long way through the hive, rather than bringing me in front of these chambers. Currently, those chambers were being flooded with the telluric ants. They formed remarkably orderly lines as they flowed inward, to what I assumed would be some form of safety or natural wards. 

Coming down from the other side, having invaded from the entrance, was a cluster of desolants, trying to push in and get closer to those tantalizing secret chambers. A line of the strongest telluric ants was forming a barcade of forged walls, cast defensive spells, and launched weak earthen attacks to try and stop the invading desolants from entering the same chambers. On the other side, the desolants attacked with an absurd ferocity. They released assorted elemental attacks, chomped heavily with their mandibles, and seemingly always went for the kill. Even as telluric ants fell, their brethren used them as barriers to hold off the desolants. 

Visually, the desolants seemed… Well, to be perfectly honest, they seemed remarkably similar to the telluric based ants that were swarming around me. Their carapace might be ever so slightly longer and leaner, compared to the slightly more rotund telluric ants, but even that could simply be selection bias. 

Their mana and internal structure, on the other hand, was remarkably different. Each of the ants were third gate, with solid feeling power, and they ranged from early to peak third gate, and their natural mana blend seemed to be an overlap of desolation, life, and physical mana. 

Every single one of them had condensed a beast core, but interestingly, their cores were markedly different from one another. The desolant that was constantly pouring a stream of fire from its mandibles had condensed a core that seemed to primarily hold solar and desolation energy. The one that was firing off arcs of lightning had made theirs out of desolation and telluric. The one attacking with force rays? Desolation and physical energy. 

Each of them seemed to be specialized in their own unique sort of destruction. Lovely. 

I Foxstepped close to the defenders before immediately pulling myself into Dusk. The instant my spirit recovered, I began layering my spells on. Enhance Forging flowed with Briarthreads, Pinpoint Boneshards began spiralling out into a defensive pattern, Foxarmor molded space and time around me to slow attacks, and I even channeled power into Markus. The old hunter’s ghost ripped forth from his gourd, and using Fungal Entwinement, I began conjuring spirit lantern fungi around me. 

Next to me, Dusk and Dawn began their own battle preparations. Dusk slammed her hands together, conjuring globes of swirling snowstorms across from needles of sand, while also creating some sort of rippling reality bubble around herself. Dawn’s dominion flowed into her, and into me, channeling through us both and improving our casting. 

The moment I stepped into the fight, I drew a wisp of soul mana out and used it to flare Tortoise Time at its maximum power. 

The world seemed to freeze in place around me, and I easily slipped to the side of a ball of fire currently making its way towards my head. As I dodged, Markus bellowed in my head, and each of the desolants lit up in my vision. 

“Bully! Desolants! Some of the most dangerous foes I’ve faced!” 

“You know what these are?” I muttered as I flexed my hand out, drew on my ninelight morels, and began casting Fungal Locks.

First one ant was coated with the conjured fungus, then a second, and before I knew it, I’d covered all six of them. I let the drain of soul mana into Tortoise Time stop and then lashed out at the nearest desolant with an arc of blademoss, interrupting the spell it was firing at me.

“Of course I do! I helped render them extinct in Mossford!” Markus shouted into my ear. “I’m quite proud of it! Mounted countless heads on my wall!” 

That made me want to avoid hurting them more than anything, if I was honest, but I was too caught up in the battle to hold back more than I already was. I spun and used briars and boneshards to knock askew the daggers of ice that one of them started spitting at me, then threw my hands out and released waves of mist from the mistshrooms and larkspur. 

The mist seemed to disorient the ants for a moment until the lightning wielding ant started firing off windblades to clear it. It wasn’t the most effective, but it got the job done, and I kept pouring more mist into the tunnel to counter it while using slashes of briars, bones, and blademoss to turn aside strikes that would hit the telluric ants or myself. 

Sweat was starting to drip down my forehead from the effort of keeping up the continual effort, though, so I tried something else and began cycling mantle dragon’s breath. I was good, but holding off this many opponents alone was a lot. And where in the blazes had Dusk gone?!

“What can you tell me about them?!” I demanded. 

“They’re an invasive species, native to one of the unclaimed island south of that newfangled united Elohi, where they’re kept in check by destruciton-wasps and void-roaches. The whole island chain is locked away by some serious, occultist level wards, but there have been various escapees into the unclaimed lands, smugglers looking for a great paycheck, and power obsessed madmen who have brought them out. If any one of the three gets near humanity, it’s considered a class b threat by the hunter’s bureau!” 

The hunter’s bureau hadn’t existed in over two centuries, since it was reformed into the modern Wildwatch, so that was less than helpful. The fact there were two other species of terrifyingly dangerous and powerful bug species wasn’t exactly comforting. They sounded better than slaughter spirits, but not by a whole lot. Those thoughts were pulled aside as repeated volleys of attacks broke through the mist, a well aimed fireball destroying my roughly forged mistshroom and larkspur. The complex action caused my grip to loosen on my Mantle Dragonfyre, forcing me to start it over as the mana was wasted. 

“Sapience?” I grunted, flexing both of my hands out and using a flicker of soul mana to empower Briarthreads as well as Enhance forging. I began battering aside attacks, sending my bones against the fireballs. 

“They’re also pirates!” Markus explained cheerfully, trying to manifest. “They frequently raid the colonies of other ants to steal food, larvae for their workforce, and any hoarded valuables. In their natural habitat, they raid the roaches and wasps.” 

I grabbed the Ghost Tether and tried to get him to hold on a moment longer so he could answer my questions, but it was like wrestling an eel. 

“How. Sapient. Are. They?” I grunted as I dodged to the side of a force mandible. It still bit into my shoulder, leaving a thin and long cut as I wasn’t quite fast enough. I gritted my teeth and knock the next blow out of the way. 

“Soldiers are non-sapient. Their queen – or queens, if this is a thrice-cursed supercolony – is somewhat more intelligent, but still below human intellect. Which means even you can’t oppose me slaughtering the buggers! Hah!” 

With that, Markus materialized fully, burning mana to create an ectoplasmic shell and crossbow. He began firing off bolts while his dominion enchanted them, swirling out to empower the strikes, and I groaned, feeding him a steady pull of death mana through the tether.

“Myrmekes can be good prey too, and they have the best treasures!” Markus ghost shouted. “Let’s slaughter this hive after we win!”

I groaned and did my best to ignore Markus’ comments, reminding myself that he was old and dead. But his earlier comment had some merit. If the desolants had been sapient, I would have objected strongly to killing them, but they weren’t. I wasn’t a perfect vegetarian. I would say an apology to their spirits, and I’d feel bad about this, but Desolants also stole young from these far more normal and benign telluric ants. myrmekes, apparently. 

I ducked behind one of the barriers for a moment, using the opportunity to catch my breath. That was when I caught the motion of where Dusk was. Desolants had taken the circuitous route around the hive, and were trying to flood up the tunnel from the opposite end. Dusk was there with her own group of myrmekes, defending the gap with blasts of snow, lances of sand, her classic shockwaves, and endless hands of earth.

I stepped back out into the breach as Mantle Dragonfire completed its third cycle, and shifted my style. Before, I’d been playing the defensive game, trying to wear the desolants down, give the myrmekes time to escape, but the tunnel was filled with only third gate soldier ants. They were laying down wardlines and natural enchantments. More than that, Dusk might need my help. 

So I cut loose. 

I exploded forward with all the force my enhanced body had and drove my fist into the ant that was opening its mandibles to release a force attack. As I did, I channeled power through the array of my newest spell. If I messed this up, I’d take a leg wound, so I just had to make sure I didn’t mess it up. 

There was a flare of colorless gray light as the magic injected itself into the Desolant’s mana-garden. My spirit split and flared as my Curse of the Wilds spell rived into place, and I couldn’t help but grin.

The desolant I’d struck froze and seemed to frantically be working to force the thorns out of its spirit, so I thrust my palm out, squeezing and finishing the third cycle of Mantle Dragonfire. 

Red and brown light thundered down the tunnel, aimed at the strongest of the ants, the peak third gate who specialized in lightning. 

Maybe if it hadn’t been covered in powerful layers of forged fungi that draining energy from their carapaces and beast cores since the start of the fight, the ant’s thick shell would have been able to take the strike or been fast enough to get out of the way. Maybe if its powers were slightly more defensive in nature, like the myrmekes, it could have used a spell to defend itself. 

But it couldn’t.

The bar of compressed mana split the ant in half, and the tunnel filled with an even more rancid olive oil scent than the entirety of the cemetery. 

The other five ants didn’t seem bothered in the slightest. One ducked and began rummaging through its dead companion’s body until it pulled out the beastcore, while the other four began pouring spells down on me. The one I’d hit with the curse had regained control of its mana again, annoyingly, forcing me to spin out of the way of its conjured extra jaws. 

I dropped to the ground, cycling a new Mantle Dragonfire, and released a carpet of Stonesprout. It raced up from the ground with twisting sharp blades, stabbing into their carapaces, then swept both my hands up and sliced with blademoss, overcharging the spell and aiming for them. My bones flew out in conjunction with Markus’ spectral arrows, and I lobbed a firebomb potion down the hall. 

It erupted, killing two more of the ants, and then I raced forward again, slamming another with a Curse of the Wilds, flaring Tortoise Time to dodge attacks, and unleashing a one-cycle dragon breath. The spell was weak, though, the fire ant caught it with a burning arc of its own fire. It spent a lot of power in the action, but my mana was also starting to gutter low.

I drew more power from my plants and unleashed waves of Briarthreads, blademoss, and mist all together, while cycling another Mantle Dragonfire.

The desolants turned and fled back up the tunnel.