The swarm pressed on through the Dirt Tunnels as the defenders finish reorienting themselves. The Sticky Honey Traps hadn’t made much of a dent, but soon the shades approached some of the new defenses the fair folk had set up. Belissar held his breath as the shades reached the first one…
As the ant shades marched on, they left a trail of Hunger across the tunnels, disabling the traps they passed and preventing Belissar from changing those parts of the room. But as they did, a ward appeared on the ground beneath them, one containing two concentric circles filled with symbols. The ant that had stepped on it also corrupted it, breaking the outer circle with a black spot of Hunger.
After which the ward exploded, taking the ant and all the other shades nearby with it.
Wardmaster Varilold had explained earlier that the wardens didn’t have enough time to set up a comprehensive ward defense for all of his defensive rooms, so they had focused their efforts on quick and simple designs. The simplest of which was this: a mana-storing ward with an intentionally fragile containment formation. If anything disrupted the outer formation, such as the Hunger corrupting a portion of it, the ward would immediately discharge all of its stored mana.
Back in the Orchard, watching through the observation wards, Wardmaster Varilold frowned and shook her head.
“I don’t like using those. They’re dangerous even to the warden setting them up, and it builds bad habits to intentionally weaken containment formations.”
Belissar had a smile on his face though.
“They seem to work well, though?”
The wardmaster chuckled.
The explosion did partially collapse the tunnel, but the shades easily cleared the piles of dirt and pressed on. There were more exploding wards and these took their toll…but each time a ward blocked the tunnel the swarm slowed until they could tunnel through. This led to a single file line of vanguard ants that naturally moved ahead of the main body as the first to tunnel through each obstruction, mitigating the effects of later blasts.
With the fair folk’s help and advice, Belissar had planned for that, though. The swarm eventually reached one long and straight tunnel. The ants went marching in a line, but no wards exploded and no sticky honey traps sprayed them. But as the first ant neared the halfway point, the wriggling wisps of Hunger it had for antennae began to twitch. Suddenly, the ant began scrambling and speeding around the tunnel, its mandibles clacking. It swung its abdomen and launched globs of black fire around, confirming that these shades were likely fire-resistant after all. It twisted and writhed about until it fell on its back, its legs all swinging about as fast as it could move them until it finally died.
Belissar had placed a number of beeswax candles in this hallway and used toxic bee wax to fuel them for the purification. The Royal Pixie Guard had advised him to create small alcoves along the walls to hide them in, then used their magic to hide the heat and the fire so that the shades wouldn’t notice as the tunnel filled with toxic smoke.
Belissar turned to the queens assembled nearby.
“Fourth of the Fifth, be careful if you send sprayers to attack them in the tunnels. They have ranged attacks it seems.”
The Fourth of the Fifth danced a salute and conferred with the other queens. They decided the digging bees would try one quick attack to determine how the ants would respond, but then would immediately retreat and join the main bee army.
That required the ants to get through the toxic tunnel, however. The next ant did not respond to the death of the first and so went through the same exact process. The third one, however, began reacting slightly earlier than the first two, though it also died. Each subsequent ant reacted earlier than the last, and soon ants that were not yet on the verge of death began to scramble about looking for the source. They climbed the walls and the roofs and sprayed their fire globs everywhere, but they didn’t manage to find the alcoves. Rather, they seemed to attack parts of the tunnel at random.
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At first, their numbers were too low. One ant happened to stumble into an alcove. It took a face full of smoke and dropped from the wall, but not before letting out a screech. The other ants nearby all turned and charged towards the alcove. One managed to approach from the bottom and so made it inside without inhaling the smoke directly. It bit down on the candle and thrashed about. The ant then died from all the toxic wax covering its mouth, but it had succeeded in coating the candle in Hunger and putting it out.
Still, losing one candle didn’t clear the tunnel and ants continued to die. But more and more ants kept pouring into the tunnel and joining the others in combing the walls. It wasn’t long before the ants were regularly locating and putting out the candles. Even then, it took time for the smoke to clear, but the ants were piling on top of each other. Their bodies of Hunger seemed to prevent the smoke from reaching the ones inside, so the swarm pushed onward. The second half of the tunnel also featured exploding wards, slowing them down even further, but they continued to press forward. The tunnel cost them many shades, but it was overcome in the end.
The shades were now bunched up as the tunnels angled downward in a steep incline. Once they reached the end, a ward lit up with brown light. A stone wall rose from the ground in front of the shades as well as a second back at the start of the incline. Belissar then manually triggered sticky honey traps hidden in holes in the roof leading to a dead-end tunnels just long enough that the traps wouldn’t trigger automatically.
For wax was not the only thing the toxic bees had made. Toxic honey sprayed out of the traps, along with the usual maddening honey, sedating honey, and all other kinds of honey with harmful effects. The honey poured onto the top of the incline and flowed down, pooling against the stone wall at the end. The ants within the two walls were trapped in poisonous honey.
The ward was soon corrupted after that and the two stone walls broke apart. The swarm seemed to ignore their fallen and began marching over the honey as it spread out and flowed down the incline…until it reached a line of flame radish set across the bottom of the incline. The mana honey immediately burst into flames that rushed back up the incline. Soon, that entire portion of tunnel was filled with fire and smoke…though the ants were ultimately not bothered by the heat. They were far more bothered by the toxins from the honey now mixed into the smoke, however.
Many more shades met their end, and yet the swarm pressed onward. It was then that Fourth of the Fifth made her move. The ants pushed through the smoke into a relatively open cavern. A squad of digging sprayers hovered above and opened up with their sprays. Ant shades screeched as they were doused with sprayer venom. Weakened already by the toxic smoke, they did not survive for much longer.
Those that came up behind them heard their screech, though, and began firing globs of fire before they even came out of the smoke. These were not particularly well-aimed, so the bees were able to dodge with ease. As time passed, though, more and more ant-shades came out of the tunnel and added to the barrage. The bees fell back while they could still dodge.
The queens, karnuq, and fair folk immediately began discussing the situation. The First of the Second summarized.
“Shades spray fire, like sprayers. Will be like spiky shade. Didn’t see if have special attack.”
The Firstborn’s antennae twitched.
“Will be hard for soldiers, lancers to dive. Sprayers, archers, and hive of fallen will have to fight.”
Chief Rohsuak rubbed her chin.
“I might be able to help with that, especially if the Third of the Sixth helps me, and give our forces a fire coat. I don’t think I’ll be able to keep it up for long, though, so it’d have to be for a single engagement.”
Wardmaster Varilold spoke up.
“We can help with that as well. Tower Keeper, we can begin preparing now if you approve? Also, it may be best to move the Bog in front of the Fairy Grove. With how much fire they’re spreading, I don’t know if we can harass them sufficiently in a forest.”
Belissar nodded back at her.
“Yes, please, I’ll ask the Third of the Sixth to help however you need. I’ll move the room now, too.”
Belissar then furrowed his brow.
“The Flower Meadow can burn too…should we have the bee army fight them in the Bog then?”
Wardmaster Varilold, Captain Karpakynne, and Chief Rohsuak also glanced at one another and adopted thoughtful expressions. The wardmaster soon nodded.
“I think that would be best, especially when considering the second wave. It’ll give us room to retreat if necessary.”
Belissar took a deep breath.
With that, Belissar adjusted the rooms. Meanwhile, karnuq, elves, pixies, and bees all set off the make preparations. All the allied forces assembled in the Bog as best they could. The karnuq were immense grateful to discover the pixies knew a water-walking enchantment they put to immediate use.
Meanwhile, the swarm continued on through the Dirt Tunnels. Unfortunately, the toxic hive was still growing, so no further traps could use their honey. Maddening honey and wax was plentiful and the wardens filled the tunnels with exploding wards while pixie magic hid tunnels and sent the swarm down every dead end, but the swarm could not be stopped outright by those measures alone. Slowly and with an increasing body count, but inexorably, the shades moved forward.
Before long, the swarm would reach the end of the tunnels…