Chương 497: AF Chapter 496 – Mothers and their Swarms

Aru rose bright and on time in the cold wintry air, sending light washing across the landscape. The Illusionary Walls all wavered and vanished as Natural Renewal did its thing and existing magic expired, revealing us and everything I'd done to anything that wasn't totally blind to see a hundred-foot ziggurat mounded up where there'd been a clear skyline a minute ago. We all straightened from the Salute to Aru, looking over in time to see the nearest olthoi all burst into frenzied motion all along the shoreline.

"Nice response time," Princess Kristie murmured, watching the flying spawns turning in series to the limit of our vision and immediately start winging in our direction. There was motion all across the landscape, looking like the mutated ecology had come alive as olthoi in their hundreds and thousands began to move in waves and surges of orders given and instantly obeyed.

I flinched at the sudden buzz in the psiscape as the Psilence also faded for the moment, the conjoined mental power of the hivemind making it seem audible with the most powerful member of the species present not too far from us.

"Think she'll come?" the Mick asked, more curious than anything, watching the sight from the hundred-foot apex of the ziggurat's top and around the Altar there. To really annoy the olthoi, I'd also put up thirty-foot walls all around the Pyramid, and olthoi were notoriously bad climbers overall. Sure, they could mound up the bodies, but they weren't going to like what Walls of Fire would do to bug ladders trying to get up to here.

"We'll know if they attack. I think those brighter fliers over there are the more magically-sensitive members of the species. They should be feeling the emanations pretty quickly." Before the first of the fliers could come buzzing in over the walls, I laid my hand on the Altar and invoked the Stillflight Field.

The field of King Gravity's irked sovereignty flashed out in a bubble of Thou Shalt Not Cheat at Flying, Biyoitch, and the incoming wings of Lacerators and lesser wasp-like flying olthoi plummeted rapidly to the ground, buzzing wings unable to hold them aloft. Most of them survived the plummet, given they couldn't get much above thirty feet off the ground regardless, but they weren't going to be buzzing the wall-tops now staffed by several hundred ready missile troops ready to unload…

and who were relaxed and doing nothing of the sort. A bunch of the olthoi came racing up, and first tried to scale the flowstone Shaped into its form, lacking any kind of cracks or edges to grasp. Then they had the bright idea of chipping into the walls and digging a way through with their acidic pedipalps. After all, they were great diggers, weren't they?

The Earth Elementals inside the stone weren't amused by that, reinforcing the stone with their very presence, mending any cracks almost as they were inflicted, and then lashing out with tree-trunk rocky limbs that cracked and shattered olthoi carapaces, throwing them back from the walls, broken and bleeding. That went on for only a minute before we saw the charging hordes coming in abruptly slow down and then halt in place.

They didn't even start running over one another and piling up to form a ramp to the top of the walls there.

"Now that's impressive," the Mick admitted, watching tens of thousands of olthoi slow down and come to halts wherever they were standing or flying. Ranks upon ranks of olthoi built themselves up around us as the incoming olthoi arranged themselves tidily and did nothing else but sit and stare at us with unblinking eyes.

"Gotta love a good telepathic command structure," Kris agreed, arms folded across her flat chest as she regarded all the bugs.

"All of those things Swarm-class, I take it?" The Mick looked back and forth slowly.

"Aye, near as I can tell. An' about half are not Summons, either. Plenty o' the real things, Highness."

"Invading this place would have really, really sucked," Kris nodded.

"We have a crap ton of anti-olthoi Gear and experience, but that would have been one horrible grind… and they could either reinforce or be reinforced by the mainland, depending upon who we attacked first." I tilted my head slightly.

"She's moving." Everyone knew what 'She' I was talking about. There were at least four Matron Queens on this island, mostly younger ones waiting to be dispatched and set up their own Hives, an increasingly dangerous undertaking on Dereth because of some bipedal interference in such matters. But there was only one Mother Queen of the Olthoi, the mother of ALL the Matron Queens.

I looked to the center of the island, but the spores of mushrooms in the air made vision over a mile too fuzzy to actually see anything, and so we could do little more than wait for Her. That was okay, as she moved pretty damn fast, being almost as tall as Tim and all. The olthoi naturally made a road for her to advance on, a break in the encirclement that drew the eye. The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

She was actually visible over most of the mushrooms growing here, although the 'shrooms on the island easily reached over twenty feet high. She was coming at speed, easily over ninety miles an hour as long strides covered the ground with speed and energy. She was black with purple high-lights, half again as tall as the Lightning Matron on Marae Lassel and ten times more dangerous, doubtless capable of killing Tim in a straight-up match without much problem.

Four other Matron Queens trailed behind her, all of them in different colors and shades: purple and green, blue and red, violet and black, blue and purple. The lesser Matrons were spread between twelve and twenty feet high, the latter fully capable of establishing a major hive, but held close for some reason. The parting of the olthoi extended out ahead of her and right up to the wall. Accordingly, I un-Shaped the top fifteen feet of the wall right there, and started down from the top of the Olthoi Pyramid.

I went down five levels and stepped out on the archway there, waiting calmly as the Mother Queen came racing up, a vision of dread and terror that had inspired nightmares on Dereth for generations, ever since the idiot Haebraen Court had captured Her and brought Her here from Her distant homeworld. In doing so, they inspired the entire race of olthoi to come boring through subspace after Her, overrunning the Empire and world in their frenzy to get to their Queen.

Asheron had subdued Her on Her homeworld, he had driven Her away on Dereth, and Elysa Strathelar had, with the old mage's help, taken one of Her eyes after the Queen had killed Elysa's husband Thorsten, the first High King of Dereth. Elysa was here, with her son and grand-daughter, as was Lady Vundanewall, the Olthoi Hunter, who would not have missed this for the world.

Both of them were standing together by the edge of the dip in the Wall, watching the one being they hated and feared most in the world come charging up on them. The Mother Queen charged right up to the wall, her scissoring pincers coming down to rest on the stone. Her remaining eye looked ahead long and hard as her daughters raced up behind her, joining her and staring at what was ahead of her. A great Gate, swirling fifty feet high where would normally be the northern face of one of my Pyramids.

It extended across time and space, and from it radiated a presence and feeling that could not be imitated. Home. It was a Gate to the homeworld of the olthoi! Multiple limbs clattered upon the stone, potent acids emanating from them hissing on the flowstone there. Hisses and chittering sounded in the air, reverberated from the thoraxes and limbs scratching of thousands of olthoi echoing their ruler's excitement and wariness.

The narrow head turned left and right, fixing upon Elysa standing upon the wall not fifty feet away, certainly within reach… and looking right back at Her, without her Bow in hand. That she was recognized was apparent instantly by the hiss from the Mother Queen, all the daughters turning to gaze at her and examine the biped who had half-blinded their invincible mother.

The Mother Queen then turned Her gaze to me, sitting there atop the Gate that led back to her homeworld, and recognized who was responsible for this. The rest of the Wall in front of Her flowed out of Her path completely, receding like water into the stone beneath her rock-crushing tarsals. She paused a moment then, Her long serrated tail swishing dangerously.

Then she stepped forward, advancing up the shallow ramp of stone, past the first ranks of the ziggurat, pausing before the Gate and staring at it, her four arms whispering over one another as Her tail waved back and forth in agitation. At last she looked at me sitting there above her, yet not exactly out of reach, especially with the opening in the wall behind me open to Her children.

Her chittering was incredibly loud and piercing, plus backed by a lot of alien force as her telepathy erupted out and 'down' so we could understand it. There was a lot of flinching and curses as the heart of the hivemind spoke in everyone's minds at once.

"WHY?" She demanded to know. I looked back down into that one eye.

"By the Truth of Heaven, it will take far more blood, sweat, and regrets to kill you and your children, than it will to return you to a place you should never have been taken from in the first place.

"We are not the Empyreans who took you from your home. Return home, Mother Queen, and all debts between us are settled." Pettiness was not part of Her psyche, nor resentment. There was acknowledging danger and threats, but not the holding of grudges as we did.

Although there was the flaring of Truth, the pronouncing of which sent Her a step back, and Her daughters too, as alien meanings and impossibly higher, profound meanings were, for the space of a single Syllable, flaring and brighter in minds that had never dwelt on matters higher than their own survival and that of the swarm. She stared at me, inscrutable thoughts swimming through Her mind, the air humming with the force of tens of thousands of olthoi minds literally abuzz with alien sensations.

"I give you the culmination of your Hope, to return to the world that is yours, and the Valor to believe and do what needs to be done, Queen Mother.

"The Gate is one-way, and open as long as a free-willed Matron Queen strides this island. It will admit only your people, we cannot follow you beyond through it.

"Go home, Mother Queen. It is what should have been done for you long ago." The Mother Queen trembled head to toe, arching her back and all four of her deadly limbs spreading wide in a lethal display of primal might. Her hiss seemed very gentle in comparison, but it rang in the air with the clangor of bronzed bells, echoing and re-echoing as the entire swarm took it up behind her. She stepped aside, up onto the first tier of the Pyramid with little effort.

Behind her, all four of her daughters raced forward, and behind them came the olthoi. There was no waiting, no hesitation. The Matron Queens raced into the swirl of the Gate, and it opened wide, showing a world beyond covered in blackness and luminescent yellow clouds, mushrooms towering as high as a full forest, with gleaming purple-black soil and bio-luminescent vegetation in countless colors not found on Dereth. Behind them came the Olthoi Horde.

It was a flowing river of racing insects, led by the warrior breeds zipping along on six limbs. There was territory that would have to be reclaimed; squatters to evict or kill for food; and Hives to be-retaken, established, or dug anew. All would be done, for their Matrons were there, and they were going home.