Chapter 99 - Not the Scared Girl

  Before I launched the attack I spent a few more minutes Animating additional troops. If I wanted to make absolutely sure we finished the job, that meant having all the troops necessary to make it happen. I already had six juggernauts and four fire skeletons, but that was only thirty points.

  With Animate Dead now at tier seven, I had sixty-four points to play with! That meant I could bring up another eleven tier three undead, which I quickly did. It tapped out most of the remaining raw materials—there were only so many undead, and a lot of the bodies my minions had gathered were missing pieces. Hope in particular had mostly grabbed skulls and brought them to me, so I was missing a lot of bones.

  Still, there were enough, and that’s what mattered. By the time I was done, I had fourteen juggernauts and seven fire skeletons. I sent four of the tanks and two fire skeletons to the rear, behind Sue. Their job would be to make sure we didn’t get ambushed. More accurately, they were there so I’d know it when we got ambushed, anyway. I’d feel it when they came under attack, and I could move to support them, or send other troops.

  The remaining skeletons made up a vanguard which I set up in front of Sue. The dinosaur was our mobile artillery platform. Sue could blast Fireballs often enough to be a serious player on the battlefield even without the big, nasty teeth, powerful tail, and stompy feet.

  About as ready as I could get us, I sent the army into the nest, intending to take the same route we’d exited by. I was surprised, though—the ants had filled in the hole! They’d blocked it off.

  I made sure my undead were out of blast range, then turned to my dino. “Sue, if you’d do the honors?”

  Sue roared, then spat a burst of fire at where the hole had been. It exploded against the soil, blasting chunks of dirt in all directions. That made a gap, but it wasn’t enough—the ants had truly done a number on this entrance. It was almost enough to make me consider using their main tunnel, the one on the top of the big anthill nearby, but I worried. That entrance looked like it had a fairly big vertical drop, and while the ants could cling to the dirt walls, my undead couldn’t.

  I had Sue fire at the hole again, punching a little deeper into the mess. It took five Fireballs before we broke through the feet of packed earth the ants had shoved in there to bar our path.

  The way was clear. I sent the skeletons in ahead, following right behind. Sue and Hope were with me, and then the rear guard last. One after another, we slipped under the dirt, tracking back down into the depths I’d just escaped. Before, I’d been on a timer. Kara’s injuries needed treatment, fast, and there wasn’t time to screw around. I’d made a beeline for the exit.

  This time was the opposite. This time, I went down there intending to stay as long as it took to wipe this mess out, and we took our time, exploring any side passages my skeletons could pass through.

  We met resistance almost right away, but between Sue’s Fireballs and the wave of powerful undead I’d brought along, we repulsed their waves of attack without too much difficulty. I didn’t even lose a single juggernaut, although I spent more time casting Heal Undead than I did anything else.

  Contagion was my other key spell. Once cast, it spread like wildfire among each wave of attackers. I could see the impact as each ant was infected, one after another. They staggered from the initial damage, and then crumpled a little more with each sequential pulse of damage over time.

  The upper caverns were some of the worst. That’s where they stored ‘recently captured’ food. Some of it was animal, but the most common large animal around these parts was probably still humans, and ants were as happy eating us as they were anything else, apparently, because there were a lot of dead people stored there, pieced up and stacked in chunks. The smell was horrific, and I needed brain bleach for the visuals, but I clenched my jaw and kept going.

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  Every horrible thing I saw was simply more fuel to the fire burning inside me. This place had to be destroyed.

  We pressed deeper into the complex. Either they’d run out of tier one ants, or they were saving them for later, because we were suddenly facing nothing but tier two and three adversaries. My undead were running into trouble now, and I struggled to keep up with the damage they were taking. It was time to push ahead a little bit myself, I realized. Time to see how far I could push myself.

  I darted forward, slipping between two of my juggernauts, and advanced on the ants with sword and shield. My first sword swing blew a tier three ant apart with a single blow—the raw power I had at tier five Strength shocked me! Another ant dove at me, mandibles clacking, but I sidestepped the blow like it was standing still, my Agility giving me speed the ants simply couldn’t match.

  A dozen tier two ants stood their ground ahead of me. I stepped up to them, a whirlwind of destruction. Two died in seconds. The remainder attacked as a unit, two of them managing to get past my guard and land hits, but I ignored the wounds and cut those down as well. A Drain killed another, restoring my health at the same time.

  By then, the juggernauts had joined the fray as well. They stormed through the remaining ants, shattering the advance and killing them all.

  We pressed on, ever deeper. There were more side tunnels now, and as much as I wanted to clear all of them out, I realized my main focus would be better served driving deeper. The queen and her eggs—they were the real target. Everything else would probably die without her. That meant getting back to the egg chamber at the bottom.

  Of course, the ants probably knew we were headed that way as well. I’d already seen they were smarter than their tiny brethren. These ants had enough smarts to hold off on attacking me while their queen was in danger, and then to relaunch their attacks once she was safe. They had to know where I was headed, which meant I was walking into a trap.

  Bad news for them. Putting me in a trap was a very good way to get yourself killed at this point.

  Each encounter just made me more certain of my new powers. When the mall undead attacked the fort, I’d given ground immediately. With my new Intellect and the experience of using all these powers, I now saw that had been a mistake. Maybe the zombies would have won through anyway, but the fort would have been a tough nut for them to crack, even with my powers and skills weaker at the time.

  I just wasn’t the scared girl I’d been when all of this started. Even then, I’d fought without hesitation, but I’d been weak, fragile, and vulnerable. Now, though? Nothing short of a tier five monster was even a vague threat for me anymore. Even a dozen tier twos couldn’t frighten me. Hell, if I faced off against a hundred tier one zombies, I had every confidence it’d be me who came out on top.

  It wasn’t like I was invulnerable or anything. I was still mortal, and the ants kept reminding me of that by getting bites past my shield and armor. But my Agility made me almost impossible to hit unless they swarmed me, my Stamina made me hard to kill even when they did get a lucky shot in, and my Drain Life spells healed me faster than they could dish out damage.

  We kept spiraling deeper into the dirt. Once, ants attacked from the rear, and I lost a juggernaut before I could get there to reinforce my rear guard. Once I killed the remainder of the attacking ants, I realized I had four points of Animate Dead handy again, so I used them to raise two of the tier two ants as Zombie Ants.

  I had to laugh out loud at that one.

  The zombie ants joined the rear guard to help keep our backsides secure, and I shifted back to the lead spot in our formation.

  Then all at once, I knew we were getting close. My NightVision had worked brilliantly for me since we entered. It wasn’t a perfect see in the dark spell at this rank, but with the faint light from bursts of Sue’s Fireballs or the flames from the fire skeletons, I had more than enough to see by. The whole trip had been like walking around just before dusk. I could see why Kara liked this skill!

  Now there was a dim light coming from up ahead, though. I knew that light. We’d almost reached the egg chamber. If they were going to plant an ambush somewhere, this would be it, for sure. I had my wall of juggernauts take the lead again, ready to reinforce them with my magic, to Heal or Drain as needed.

  My first rank of undead stepped into the egg chamber, the soft light of the eggs making the cavern seem as bright as daylight with my NightVision active. I hadn’t been wrong—the place swarmed with ants. There were at least a hundred of the things in there, maybe more, all mixed ranks.

  Past the army of insects, though, was my real target. The heart of this whole place, the being who absolutely needed to die, if I was going to put an end to their attacks on humans—the ant queen.

  She reared back, clattering her mandibles together. It was a signal. As a single wave, the ants rushed forward.