The city of Barton had defenders. It had both the city watch and the Sorenson armed forces. While Velk was one of many subservient regions to the Kingdom of Flynnette, it maintained a standing army of its own. That army was spread around the region and garrisoned where it would do the most good—at the borders. Velk was at peace with all its neighbors but formal declarations of war were often done after the invasion began. Nomadic tribes, mercenary bands, marauders, and even migrating monsters were all threats to be vigilant for in addition to greedy neighbors.
Sadly, Barton was near no borders. The only soldiers stationed at the castle were those either in training or overseeing the training. The best and highest level men and women of Velk were elsewhere. This was why the response to an attack on the castle was rather slapdash. Some of the soldiers called upon to fight the wasps had fewer than four levels in their soldier classes. Those with more levels were in a better place but they were mostly trained for fighting men and men-shaped opponents. Flying wasps and their ability to build a countless layers of extremely dense envelope were a bad matchup for the few armed personnel in Barton.
The city watch fared much better. While their classes were more suited to discovering and stopping criminals, they had a wide variety of guard levels on hand, letting them field overall stronger combatants. They also mobilized quickly to respond to the attack on the castle. When they arrived, they discovered walls of wasp-made envelope blocking off passages of the castle. Fire mages were enlisted to burn the odd material but soon found the things were shockingly resistant to the flames. The few walls they were able to breach opened to reveal dozens of angry wasps who then poured out and began attacking the guards. One of the fire mages nearly died after the first wall was breached and a pocket full of wasps was discovered between the layers of envelope.
By far, the most problematic part of the whole situation was that the castle keep was constructed with heavy stone and built with the intention of repelling foes. There were only a handful of entrances to seal, thus trapping people inside and would-be rescuers outside. Watch Captain Hudson considered this problem as he waited outside the keep entrance with several guardsmen.
“We must make faster progress. The testimony of nobles who fled by spell paint a dire picture. If we can’t move faster, they’ll all die,” the watch captain said through gritted teeth. His fists clenched in impotent rage and he feared the worst had already come to pass.
“Sir, we have three woodsmen with enchanted axes and cutting skills on their way. They should be here within the hour,” a young guardswoman said. She snapped to attention as soon as the watch captain looked her way and paled when she saw the scowl on his face.
The old captain took a deep breath, sighed, and brought a hand up to stroke his beard. There was nothing more than his men could do but attempt to break down the barriers preventing entrance while conserving their strength to battle the wasps. He would remedy this problem for the future but, for now, he had to put his trust in the brave men and women trapped within the castle keep. They were on their own for at least a little while longer.
Inside the keep, the fighting continued and Brivaria let out a pained gasp as she struck the wall of the chamber. The transformed girl fell from the spot where she impacted the wall to land on something soft. The arm that took the brunt of the impact hadn’t shattered, largely thanks to how resilient her demonic body was, but she couldn’t move her fingers. Her other hand grabbed at what was beneath her and it came away slick with a viscous fluid, sticky and clear. Brivaria realized she’d landed on the body of the nest keeper whose head was sticking through the main entrance of the ballroom.
She looked from the accidental wound her claws had created by casually slicing into the creature’s body to the fighting in the central area. A new man had joined the fray. He was shirtless with gray trousers. While he was human-shaped, his appearance gave even the angel pause. He bore a crimson body that was both translucent and glowed from within. It was as though someone had placed the flame of a candle inside a ruby. While he did not move so very quickly, his punches were incredibly strong and the winged girl saw a phantasmal stinger emerge as he fought. He was another opponent with a connection to insects.
Giselle had seen Brivaria get knocked out of the air. She’d also watched as the mysterious attacker prepared to leap after her. The red fist-fighter was stopped by Trixie. The golden sunchaser barked and the man was forced to face the dog. Giselle switched her attention from the wasp rider to the red man as she saw him charge the hound. As inhuman as the man’s appearance was, Giselle could see the shock as Trixie evaded his strike, impossibly fast for a normal canine animal. Giselle introduced her mace to his stomach with a satisfying crunch.
Dax had also seen Brivaria get knocked out of the air by the red warrior. The bodyguard kept his eyes on both foes, waiting to see what would happen. Giselle landed a solid blow on the red man’s stomach with her mace but it wasn’t a decisive blow. The man took the hit and retaliated with a fist that projected a magic stinger. It went into the deer girl and she screamed in pain. Dax had the sense that the iveskan woman and dog would die if they fought that man alone. When the wasp rider turned to flee, Dax let him do so… but not before hurling one final dagger at the retreating rider which landed squarely between his shoulder blades causing him to slump forward on his mount.
When the wasp rider fled, Brivaria thought that might mean the nest keepers would do the same but they remained in place. Giselle and Trixie were in terrible danger the longer they fought that red man. She had to help them, but she had to deal with the nest keeper she was sitting on first. Healing Touch was active and her mana was falling as it worked to restore her broken arm. Meanwhile, she found the back of the nest keeper’s head.
The nest keeper was a long, bulbous creature vaguely shaped like a wasp. It had 16 legs rather than six which carted its massive bulk around. The head was a combination of the folding and unfolding comb that birthed the aether wasps as well as the yawning maw filled with corrosive slime that dissolved prey. The large body could store enough nutrients to survive for well over a year without being fed and would happily inflate in size even further as its drones hollowed out space underground for it to grow.
The most vulnerable part of the nest keeper was the back of its head—an eyeless, black banana-shaped appendage which held the tri-comb. Brivaria could see it expanding and contracting as it disgorged wasps on the other side of the door. She lifted the clawed fingers of one hand and admired the glow of her deadly withering magic briefly before driving them into the nest keeper’s brain. The creature beneath her spasmed and thrashed, silently screaming in pain as the demon girl on its back cut its brain apart. Again and again, Brivaria’s black claws raked the vulnerable flesh of the beast while its health drained away.
Giselle’s own health fought to restore her body. Without her Battle Instinct skill, Giselle would have surely died in seconds to the strange man. She was caught entirely off-guard by the phantom stinger that pierced her and screamed as her body felt as though it had caught fire. Searing, white-hot agony radiated from the wound before the System closed it using her precious health. Golden Recovery soothed the pain but it still left her gasping for air.
Dax and Trixie were the only reason she had survived that first blow. Every time the mysterious red foe tried to attack Giselle, to finish the deer girl off, the dog barked and he found himself facing Trixie instead. As strong as he was, he was not fast enough to lay a finger on the golden hound. She was a blur of movement. Not that Dax gave him the time to try overlong. The warrior closed into melee and fought viciously. His swords made deep cuts in the red man’s skin. Strange and translucent as it was, it still bled.
When Giselle rejoined the fight, it looked as though the trio would take down the man with no casualties. Their victory was spoiled as a swarm of aether wasps poured into the chamber from one of the opposite corridors. Apparently the guests in the ballroom were no longer the most desirable targets for the swarm or the man who’d run away decided to perform one final act of retribution on the group. Either way, the wasps could not be ignored.
Dax turned and began cutting down each creature that came at him. The red-skinned warrior tried to take advantage of the situation but turning his back on the golden sunchaser proved a very dangerous decision. Trixie gave what looked to Giselle like a light push only to send the man tumbling across the stone floor. Sadly the golden had no defense against the wasps so Giselle took a position in front of the dog and began fending off the bugs.
“Stupid, gods damned adventurers,” the red man said. His rumbling voice was barely louder than the buzz of the wasps. “I’m going to tear you limb from limb. They won’t even recognize your bodies when I’m done with you. You will…” His words cut off as he suddenly realized there was a light shining from behind him. He turned around to look into Brivaria’s black eyes and the shining blue sapphires within them as her demonic claws reached for his heart.
If the red warrior had a defensive skill, it failed to be of any use in the face of the transformed girl’s claws. They cut through his flesh with ease. Only an expenditure of stamina to dodge backward saved him from having his chest torn open. Fast as he was, the black razors still left deep gouges in his flesh. His eyes lacked pupils but Brivaria could still see the surprise register on his face as he took in her now completely unharmed state.
“You attacked my friends. You attacked my dog!” The man had no time to reply before she was on him. Even as she pressed the attack, stinging wasps landed on her back and wings. They were quickly sliced apart by the bladed tip of her demonic tail. It was every bit as deadly as her claws and infused with killing magic to ensure nothing it cut lived long. Yet, as strong and quick as the tail was, it couldn’t kill them fast enough to prevent the stings.
The angel’s assault was swift and brutal not only because she was angry but also because it had to be. Every sting was lost health that she couldn’t replenish in the middle of combat. She didn’t have the health pool needed to survive the swarm for long nor the time to channel her healing skill mid-combat. Worse, she didn’t have a good way of dealing with the bugs. Trixie lacked the mana for another ear-shattering bark, not that Brivaria could command the dog to do that. She knew Giselle had no skills to fight the swarm and assumed that Dax would have used any he possessed long before now.
By necessity, their fight was gruesome. The warrior tried to use his stinger attack on Brivaria but she’d seen it and wasn’t going to be fooled by its extended reach. He also tried to block her claws with one of his fists, trusting his superior strength to break the black talons. It was a poor choice and his endurance attribute wasn’t high enough to prevent the angel’s claws from cutting through flesh, bone, and sinew. He fought with one arm after that, not that the fight lasted much longer.
The translucent man wasn’t a tough opponent. In fact, he didn’t have or wasn’t using many combat skills. His attributes were higher than Brivaria’s and he definitely had a skill giving him far more strength than should have been possible but he wasn’t a combatant. The more they fought, the more it showed. The floor was piled high with dead wasps and eventually he stepped into one particularly large and slippery pile. His legs went out from under him and Brivaria pounced. His attempt to rise was foiled as she slammed him back down and then drove her claws into his chest. She was raising a bloody claw to strike again and finish him when a man screamed from behind her.
“Demon!” came a battle cry along with a searing pain across one of her wings and backside. As Brivaria was violently catapulted off the red warrior’s body, that little part of her brain that seemed to come up with useless thoughts at the worst times chose to consider the fact that the number of people attacking her from behind in the past two weeks was far, far too high.
