Chương 461: (454) 6.68. Are You Really Going to Take that Lying Down?

Vin stood there for a moment, clutching a magical sword in one hand and his aching head in the other. Despite the fact that the Rebel Queen was laying in two pieces before him, part of him couldn't believe that it was finally over. To his surprise, their plan to track her down and take her out while avoiding the vast majority of her gigantic army had gone off almost perfectly. Things had gotten a tad dicey for him and Alka at the end there, but still, he couldn't argue with the results.

"You just going to stare at her body for the next hour, or are you going to help me out here?" Alka asked, snapping him yet again out of his daze.

"Sorry… I think I have whatever the mental magic equivalent of a concussion is," Vin admitted, rubbing at his eyes as he dismissed the magic blade with Dimensional Sheath once more.

"I hope Frank has some sort of magic for that."

"Eh, just sleep it off. That's what I always did whenever I smacked my head."

"I can't remember if that is the thing they recommend doing, or the thing they very clearly say not to do," Vin muttered, holding his head as he walked over and started looking at the goo covering Alka from head to toe. The elite trogums had really done a phenomenal job in covering her with the stuff. One of their severed arms was even stuck to Alka's back, going to show just how adhesive and strong the goo really was.

"... I'm not sure I can get this stuff off you."

"Seriously? Come on, you don't have some magical way of cleaning me up?"

"I mean, Shia has Cleanse, but that just disinfects stuff. It won't make the goo vanish. I guess I can try this…" Casting Create Water, Vin did his best to hose Alka down, frowning as the goo repelled the water without issue. If anything, it almost looked as though it was absorbing the water and making itself even more sticky, which was not exactly ideal. After a few seconds, when Vin finally stopped spraying, a voice in his head called out to him." That will not work. You need a specific mixture to get it off."

Seeing as there was only a single trogum still alive in the room with them, Vin paused and glanced over at the trogum he'd glued onto its back. The being was laying flat, no longer trying to claw its way free. Instead, it merely stared up at the ceiling, its wide eyes unblinking as if pondering its new place in the universe.

"Why'd you stop?" Alka asked, and Vin stirred as he remembered yet again she couldn't hear their mental voices. He really needed to get checked out by Frank.

"The last trogum is telling me we need a special mixture to get you freed up," Vin relayed, walking over and looking down at the insect-like being. Other than its missing arm, which Alka had chopped off during all the fighting, it appeared to be in perfect health.

"You wouldn't happen to know where we could get this mixture, would you?"" There's a container of it over there," it said, raising an arm and gesturing over toward where the sticks had come from in the first place.

"Thanks," Vin said, spotting the containers just where the being had pointed.

"…You're not going to ask me to unglue you?"" What is the point?" it asked, surprising Vin with its depressed tone. Vin could practically feel the existential dread radiating from the trogum, the feeling so thick it almost seemed to bleed out of the trogum's very words echoing in his mind." The last Queen is dead. We are nothing without the Queen."

"Hold onto that thought for a moment," Vin said, hesitating before adding.

"… Don't go anywhere." Making his way to the containers, he grabbed one and peered inside. After discovering the one he'd grabbed was filled with more of the green goo already coating Alka, he went to the next, finding a yellow, foul-smelling liquid that he could only assume was what he was looking for. With a shrug, he dragged the container over to Alka, reaching into the container with his golem hand and splashing some of the liquid over her.

What was the point in having an indestructible prosthetic hand if he didn't use it to play around with potentially dangerous chemicals every once in a while? The yellow liquid was fast acting, and the green goo all but melted off Alka as she was freed. Once she could move again, Alka took it upon herself to dip into the container and start smearing the liquid along her joints, ensuring every last speck of the goo was gone.

While she did that, Vin moved back over to the trogum, noting how it hadn't moved so much as an inch since letting its arm flop back to the ground.

"Do you have a name?"" Guardian," it replied with the mental equivalent of a sigh." Not that I managed to live up to it."

"Wait, Guardian?!" Vin repeated, blinking as he stared down at the trogum in shock. He hadn't recognized the trogum, but that wasn't all that surprising. All the elites looked identical to one another, after all.

"Like the same Guardian we spoke with the first time we met the Rebel Queen? Were you the one who showed us where we could stay the night?" This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon." Yes. That was me,"it confirmed, continuing to stare up at the ceiling." I am… I was, one of the Queen's strongest warriors. Placed at her side to protect her from the very beginning. Now I am nothing."

Alright, getting a little worried about what this guy is going to do if I do unstick him from the floor, Vin thought, frowning as he tried to select his next words carefully. His head felt a little bit better, but thinking too hard was still painful.

"Guardian, even if your queen is no more, your people still need you. Hell, they need you now more than ever. There are hundreds, thousands of your people on Edregon, and without your queen to command them, they will have reverted back to being the focused trogums with a single care in the whole world. If you don't help them, they'll probably starve to death before long."

"What is the point? Without a Queen, we cannot grow. We are now the last of our kind. When we die, there will be no more trogums." Vin had to bite back a comment about how there were now five fragments that had been wiped out by the trogums' very own hands. How each of those fragments could have potentially held a race that was now entirely extinct because of them. He knew that wouldn't be fair, however. The trogums had about as much say in what they had been doing as a person's own hand did.

They were forced to follow the Rebel Queen's orders. Going against her was literally impossible.

"If you are now the last of your kind, isn't that even more of a reason for you to stop acting like this and start trying to save as many of your people as you can?" Vin argued.

"Do you think your queen would want you to just roll over and die? Or would she want you to get up and take care of your people unable to take care of themselves? Maybe there's a way you all can get a new queen somehow, I don't know. Edregon is a big, crazy place. It might be impossible, but it might not. All I do know is that if you give up right here and now, that slim chance of potentially finding a way to survive and live on officially becomes zero." Slowly, Guardian blinked.

Its wide eyes that took up nearly a third of its entire head holding closed for a moment before it opened them and looked at Vin rather than the ceiling. Its antennae shivered and shifted, pointing toward the outer tunnels before moving back toward Vin.

"Yes… Yes, you are correct. This new world we were dragged to is vast and unknown. Filled with countless magics and people we have no records of. It is too soon to lay down and die. It is too soon to give up. Even if my Queen is dead, I will save all that I can! I will protect my people!" Guardian tried to jump to his feet at the end of his heartfelt speech, only to remain glued to the floor, unable to go anywhere.

As it scrabbled around, once again looking like a bug desperately trying to free itself from a glue trap, Vin sighed.

"Alka… If you're done with that stuff, mind bringing it over here? I think I accidentally just ruined a pretty powerful moment."

"I only caught half of that conversation," Alka said, bringing the half-empty container over and dumping its contents all over Guardian without a moment's hesitation. As the being sputtered and coughed, she turned to look at him.

"Not a bad speech. You been practicing?"

"No. I just said what I thought it needed to hear," Vin admitted, taking a step back as Guardian finally freed itself from his sticky trap and got to its feet. Not wanting to make his head hurt any worse by bending down, Vin cast Mage Hand and picked up one of its fallen spears, floating it over and handing it off to the trogum. He was pretty confident it wasn't going to try to attack them anymore. Trogums were a lot of things, but 'tricksters' weren't one of them.

Other than perhaps their late queen, the rest were incredibly straightforward." Could you remove this stone you created?

"Guardian asked, tapping at the wall with the tip of its spear." I can hear trogums struggling on the other side, but I cannot reach them."

"Ah, right. Sorry about that," Vin said, casting Stone Shape and pulling away the barrier. The scene in the tunnel outside the Rebel Queen's chambers was pretty much exactly what he expected it would be. Dozens of trogums were sitting on the ground or standing off to the side, looking entirely engrossed in all sorts of random tasks. One of them was softly tapping against the wall, nodding its head along with the noise it made with each tap.

Two of them were facing one another, alternating which one was patting the other on the head as they traded off again and again. One was even sitting in the blood of a dozen other trogums Alka had carved her way through to reach the Rebel Queen's chambers. It was pressing its hands into the green blood and using it to paint basic shapes on the walls, entirely unbothered to be painting with the corpses of its fallen kind.

Vin made a mental note to make sure that one never ended up coming into contact with The One That Paints In Red. Even if trogum blood was a different color, the last thing they needed was for the one friendly trogum they knew to discover a new medium for its art." I will find those that remain of the elite trogums and tell them what you told me," Guardian said, its wide eyes taking in the calm chaos contained within the tunnel."

There are not many of us left, but we should be able to sustain at least a small fraction of the trogums."

"When you do, head over to the dwarves in the south west. The people you were about to attack before you were blocked by a giant, impregnable wall," Vin said.

"Their leader already agreed to help get you settled on a neighboring fragment to them. Also… I feel like I should have asked this first, but there's no hard feelings between us, right? I mean… for killing your queen and all."" No. It is only natural for one's species to fight to survive,"Guardian said, turning to fix its wide eyes on them." If anything, I am appreciative that you are giving us a chance to continue living. Our Queen would not have been so merciful."

"Yeah. No kidding," Vin said, doing his best not to think about the fallen village on the surface of this fragment.

"Well, with that done, we're going to take our leave. If you ever need anything, I'd recommend going to those same dwarves for help. They're a friendly sort."" We will do that," Guardian said, planting its spear on the ground as it turned to take in the mess of trogums crowding the tunnel." You are welcome to return in the future, but for now, leaving would be best. I believe myself and the other elite trogums will have our many hands full for the foreseeable future."