The Hive, Part 4

Before I get to the actual story, I just wanted to let any of my readers in the Phoenix Metro area that I'll be at the GameStop at the Albertson's shopping center at the corner of 51st Ave. and Cactus in Glendale for the midnight release. Just look for the tall guy in the olive shirt marked with a guild tabard.



The tunnels were oddly empty: only a few workers and scattered scarabs kept up the endless drudgery of…whatever it is silithid workers do. Refresh the resin? The occasional wasp hummed past throwing out screeched criticism and further instructions.

At last V and Earendel traced the hive’s vacancy to its source: a sizeable gathering near what she guessed to be the royalty’s quarters. She couldn’t make out anything specific, but a very loud discussion or audience seemed to be taking place, and judging from the quality of the echoes that reached them, it was occurring in a very large chamber.

V and the spider crouched in a hatchery as close as they dared get to the throng of interested bugs; these egg sacs appeared quite young, and the room was still dark and empty of future ‘food’. The draenei leaned against the wall contemplating possible plans. There was no way the timing of this event could be coincidental. If they could find a way to get close enough to eavesdrop, they might pick up some clue as to Blaze’s whereabouts. They had one remaining invisibility potion, and there was no way she could still smell like ‘draenei’ after a night swimming in silithid entrails. She grimaced at the still-disgusting memory and pushed it away.

She peaked into the passage. No, it just wouldn’t work. Too many bugs milled about—invisible or not, they’d run into her. Hm… She looked up at the ribbed ceiling. No way her hooves could grip that. She cocked her head and looked at Earendel. “Could you climb that?” V was becoming steadily more adept at reading him, and she could almost hear his response: Well, duh.

She sat back again. What good would it do if Earendel could get close enough, though? He couldn’t speak the language. Could he maybe memorize a few phrases to repeat to her? Not good enough. She ground her teeth, and then noticed that the spider was trying to get her attention. “What is it? You have an idea?” He chirped, but she didn’t understand. “What? Come on, help me out here.” She could have sworn he growled at her.

After several minutes of frustration, the spider finally managed to get through. “Earendel…you can’t be serious. You really think we could do it? I mean, you’d let me try?” He just looked at her expectantly. “Okay, I’ll give it a shot.” V closed her eyes and prepared the age-old hunter’s spell. She really didn’t expect it to work—Eyes of the Beast wasn’t a particularly complicated incantation, but it required absolute trust between caster and companion, and she’d never even heard of it being attempted on a beast bound to another hunter. Her consciousness reached out and touched the arachnid’s mind. He shied away initially, but with her gentle prodding, he managed to consciously force the mental barrier down. She opened her eyes and lost the link at the sight of several images of herself, plus of the wall behind the spider. “I didn’t know you had eyes on the back of your head!” The spider made a sound suspiciously like a snicker.

A few more attempts, and they seemed to have the technique down. It was an eerie sensation, very different from seeing the world from Saskia’s two-eyed, bipedal, vertebrate anatomy. Earendel was still quite anxious, but utterly determined to do whatever it took to find Blaze. Vulpecula tossed him a small piece of meat soaked in the potion, and took a deep breath.

She let Earendel take primary control as he navigated his way up the slick surface, and scuttled up the tunnel. Sticky, hooked feet gripped the ceiling, and V felt a little nauseous watching the sea of turquoise and brown shells beneath her. The sounds of whatever held the silithids’ attention grew louder. The tunnel eventually opened up into the largest cavern she’d seen in the hive. Earendel stopped at the mouth and locked his feet into the resin, and Vulpecula took a stronger grip on his senses to observe.

The scene was astonishing. In the center of the chamber stood the largest Nerubian she’d ever heard of. Thick armor plated its sides—whether it was crafted or part of his person, she wasn’t sure—and vicious horns adorned its head. Massive spiked feet bit into the floor, and his knees towered over the comparatively fragile heads of his arachnid attendants. An actual, in-the-flesh Spider Lord.

Across the chamber sat a perhaps even more astonishing sight: the creature was bipedal, but there was nothing humanoid about the spectacular claws adorning its over-sized arms, nor in the spiked, chitinous black shoulders. Evil red eyes glowed in its very insectoid face. An entourage accompanied this creature as well: bizarre wasp-women hummed at his sides, but with sythe-like blades in place of hands. V could almost imagine a humanoid face behind their veils, but shuddered at the thought that a set of mandibles was more likely. Multiple silithid queens arrayed the chamber’s walls, each with her accompanying supplementary clutchmothers.

The two leaders were screaming at each other. Vulpecula struggled to keep up with the translation: their speech was far more complicated than anything the simple drones used.

“Incompetent FOOLS!” the Spider Lord roared. “Do you have any idea how severely these talks may have been compromised? We must know what they know—how dare you prevent us from interrogating the prisoner?”

“Do you not trust your allies?” the Qiraji retorted. “You think we are such fools to have not tried that? He speaks nothing but elf gibberish.” Back in the hatchery, V raised her eyebrow at this.

The Nerubian snarled. “And you believe him? If your minions have not the skill, let us have him!”

“We have given you enough already! Free reign of this hive, your own burrows to do with as you please, our precious time that ought to be used against the Enemy. And still you overstep your boundaries.”

“Only because we must. How long would it have taken your”—V couldn’t translate the descriptive term used—“scouts to even find them had mine not? Who was it that tracked them through the tunnels? Who was it that sacrificed his skin to wound one? Hah, it took one of my drones to even capture one! And now you toss this resource away as nothing but hatchling food.”

The Qiraji took a threatening step forward. “Do you dare question our ways? In our own soil? Tread carefully, eight-legs.”

The Spider seemed far beyond the point of ‘treading carefully’. “Why have we even bothered with your kind? We travel long to reach your territory, to offer our help, and you seem too”—again, V couldn’t translate the word—“to appreciate our gift.”

Gift?

“You overestimate yourself, Nerubian, and you ask too much in return for your paltry bauble.” He turned his back on the Spider, infuriating him further. “Begone. We will continue discussions tomorrow.”

The Spider Lord clacked his mandibles and started to leave, when the Qiraji stopped him with a final statement. “And do not attempt to touch the prisoner. He is our concern, not yours.”

The massive Nerubian did not deign to acknowledge the insect’s statement, and stormed from the cavern, drones in tow. Only after the spiders had fully departed did the insect leadership file out as well.

---

V held her place—or rather, Earendel’s place—at the tunnel mouth as the silithid onlookers dispersed. Wait there a moment, she whispered mentally. Once most had filtered back into the complex, she tentatively climbed out onto the chamber floor. A sort of dais stood in the cavern’s center, circular and several feet in height, perhaps as wide across as she was tall. She had taken it to be decorative, some sort of ceremonial structure. Once the light bugs had left the chamber, though, a green glow became evident at its center. Earendel edged closer.

It was difficult to make out in the spider’s strange multi-faceted vision, but it appeared to be some sort of crystal, perhaps half the width of her fist, maybe two fingers in length. It hovered above the dais, shimmering. Her curiosity satisfied, she pulled Earendel back, and returned full control. The spider scuttled back to the hatchery, as Vulpecula mulled over the crystal’s implications. The Qiraji may have dismissed this gift’s power, but she did not. And leaving such a magical artifact in the hands of the insects troubled her.

---

Blaze winced at the spider-lord’s rank breath. The elf was still pinned to the wall with silithid paste, the armored behemoth’s cold, empty eyes mere feet from his own. Its screeched Common was like cracking ice, or steel rasped on rock. “SPEAK, TWO-LEGS!”

Blaze maintained his facade of fearful confusion, and answered anxiously in Thalassian. “Nahara-sher? Thel’more dan serar te fon! Dah te s—“

“ARRGG!!” The Nerubian lord whirled away, and paced a few steps before turning back to look at him. “Iiii…know…you speak thisss…tongue…You havvvve…fooled…them…BUT YOU CANNOT FOOL ME!” He thrust his grotesque visage towards the elf, and continued in a near-whisper. “We…have more…efffffective methods of exxxtracting information, two-legs…better than our...graciousss hosts.”

*whiiir-clk!* A senior silithid stood in the entryway, back arched in anger. The Nerubian’s jaws snapped irritably before turning back to Blaze. The silithid arched its back further and repeated the order. The Nerubian growled low, but the insect was undeterred. With one last snarl, the spider lord reluctantly turned and stepped towards the tunnel. At the last moment he whirled and leapt; his massive clawed forelimb CRUNCHED into the wall inches from Blazes’s head. “You think yourrrr…friend will save you…We know of the blue-bloods…weakling hatch-mates of the Eredar…How long do you thhhink she will last…without you? Iffff she hasn’t…left already.” The arachnid’s jaws twisted into an approximation of a smile. “Perhapsss…you should keep betterrrr…company.”

Blaze, face blocked from the silithid’s view by the spider-lord’s bulk, allowed his mask to fade into a wicked grin. He whispered, so softly breath scarcely left his lips, “Perhaps you don’t know them as well as you think you do.”

The Nerubian displayed no surprise, but merely snarled before truly turning away and exiting the chamber. The poor, utterly confused elven captive had re-instated himself long before the silithid looked at Blaze again.

---

Despite the looming threat of the hatching egg sacs, Blaze finally succumbed to exhaustion and fell asleep. He dreamed of golden oozes, hunger in the sockets of their eyeless skulls. Endless tunnels opened below him, evil jaws snapping from every shadow. The ceiling above his head crumbled; dirt spilled on his shoulders, covered his boots, his legs. He couldn’t move, and the earth around him began to rumble, crack, scream—

His eyes snapped open, just as a screeching tank tumbled past the entrance, its abdomen ending prematurely at a jagged wound.

“Ered’KARI!” Vulpecula leapt after it, snarling. That was a word he hadn’t heard her use often, and she had refused to translate it. She reappeared in the doorway a moment later, panting and furious. When she saw him, her expression melted into one of relief, and she dashed across the room to him. “Blaze!” She glanced back; Earendel was standing watch. “Blaze, are you alright?”

He couldn’t have wiped the grin off his face if he’d tried. “Eh, the service has been lacking and the accommodations are deplorable. Last time I spend a vacation here.” She pulled a dagger from her boot and started working at the rigid goo. “Hey, I thought I was supposed to be the one rescuing the damsel in distress.”

She looked nervously back at the tunnel. “Heh, you may get your chance yet. Any idea where your weapons are?”

“No, they took them before I woke up. Careful!” The resin split under her knife, and he pulled one arm free.

She smiled. “Oh hush, don’t you trust me?”

“Well, o—look out!” With a squelch, one of the egg sacs burst. The fat white larva dropped to the floor and stretched the tooth-lined opening that served it as a mouth. The commotion must have ‘woken’ it up. Three successive arrows punctured its rubbery skin, and it stilled. V got back to work, and a few minutes later, Blaze was free, disgustedly picking bits of green gunk from the joints in his armor.

The draenei looked around the room at the remaining trapped creatures. “We can’t just leave them here.”

Blaze was still inspecting his person for hidden damage, missing gear. “There’s no way we could get them to the surface alive.” He paused. “But a fighting death is better than being larva-food, and it could help cover our escape.” He pulled the crossbow from her back. “Free them. I’ll take care of the egg sacs.”

Minutes later, the last pterrordax screeched out into the hive as Blaze snapped the forelimb from one of the dead silithids outside. The blade was longer than his arm, and would serve as an adequate weapon. An angry scuffle up the tunnel signified that the bugs had met their ‘distraction’. V and Earendel took off at a run in the other direction; Blaze followed. Dead insects lined the passage here as well. “Been busy?”

“Got impatient.”

---

V didn’t dare head back for the abandoned tunnels; the insects would likely swarm them. Instead, she and Earendel had selected a chamber within Nerubian ‘territory’, one that hadn’t yet been fully transformed to the spiders’ decorative tastes—she suspected the insects weren’t precisely welcome to nose around back here. She smirked thinking of the Spider Lord’s reaction whenever he found out Blaze had escaped on the silithids’ watch.

Finally in relative safety, they collapsed. It took a few minutes to satisfy Earendel that the elf was unharmed and had missed him, but then Blaze walked over to Vulpecula and took her in his arms. “You are amazing.” Her cheeks blushed indigo and he kissed her.

---

V filled him in on what he’d missed since they’d split up while he stretched and had something to eat. He was relieved to hear Saskia had merely left; when she hadn’t been at the draenei’s side, he had feared the worst.

His body had not taken kindly to the imprisonment, even less so to the sudden burst of activity afterwards. Vulpecula insisted on removing his chestpiece to loosen some of the knots with her hands. “So,” he winced. Her fingers felt good on his back, but the muscles still protested. “Since we haven’t aimed for the surface, I assume we’re going after the crystal?”

“Mmhm.”

“You realize that’s crazy, right?”

“Oh yes.”

“Just can’t bear to leave without collecting a souvenir?”

“Indeed. I thought it would go nicely with the slate-gray dress. You know, the one with silver thread and emeralds on the hem?” She leaned forward on her knees to put her weight into the grip on his shoulders. “I’m sure the druids wouldn’t mind. After all, you got your bug leg; why don’t I get to go home with something?”

Blaze set his commandeered blade aside and reached his hand back to take hold of her arm. He twisted and pulled her into his lap; she laughed and wrapped her arms around his neck. Her hair spilled over her shoulders, smooth on his exposed skin. He stroked one of her curved horns with the back of his finger. “Can’t we just stay here for awhile?”

She tilted her head, concerned. “If you need to rest, we can spare some time.”

He shook his head, chuckling. “No, I’m fine, and the faster we move, the better chance we have of catching them off-guard. And I, for one, am looking forward to getting out of here and finding a bath.”

Her eyes sparkled. “I’m looking forward to you finding a bath too.”

“Very funny.”

Brushing her lips on his hand, she climbed out of his lap, and helped him strap his armor back on. Blaze hoisted the metal chestpiece off the floor, and frowned at the effort it took. Most of the weakness should have worked its way out of his system by now.

-

Blaze shook his head, trying to clear the last of the cobwebs as they packed up and made ready to leave, but they hung on obstinately. He tried to ignore it, and focused on fastening the straps on V’s pack. The unpleasant weakness in his fingers seemed to be getting worse rather than better, and he had an unsettling suspicion why. He bent to retrieve his makeshift weapon, and nearly dropped it. His hands were shaking. Damn it, not now. Keep it together.

“Are you alright?” He cringed; V had noticed.

“Yes…yes, I’m fine.”

Now she was worried. “Blaze, what’s wrong?”

He looked up at her, ready to lie again, but one glance at her concerned face told him it was of no use. Frustrated for words, he turned his head away and continued clearing away the evidence of their brief camp.

She knelt beside him, and touched her hand to his forehead. He didn’t shy at the gentle contact, but still couldn’t bring himself to meet her eyes. “It’s the addiction, isn’t it?” He paused for a moment, unmoving, and then slowly nodded.

He had never liked to talk about the subject with her, embarrassed of the weakness. His ‘enslavement’ to magic had weighed heavily on him since the Sunwell’s destruction—it was one of the reasons he had sought out the more arcane-cautious Farstriders and trained as a hunter. That most of his people so blatantly flaunted the matter disgusted him: the wasteful enchantments in the shops and gardens of Silvermoon, sorcerers gleefully draining demonic crystals…he preferred to avoid the Blood Knight training grounds all together. He loved the city, and the surrounding woods: their splendor, their beauty, their comfort and familiarity. But it was like a home infested with gem-encrusted cockroaches, the inhabitants too dazzled by the blight to even attempt to crush it. Though she’d never said anything, V’s innocence and decency made it seem all the worse by comparison. He’d dealt with that dilemma by just ignoring it, hiding the dependence as much as possible. Under the current circumstances though, ‘as much as possible’ was quickly diminishing.

His jaw clenched, and he continued to stare pointedly at the wall. “My crystals were in the bags they took. You know I—I keep bloodthistle in a pouch on my belt, just in case…but they took the belt with my scabbard and sword.”

“The silithids don’t draw on magic, do they? So you can’t tap them.” He closed his eyes and shook his head. “Could you draw what you need from me?”

Blaze felt pain just hearing her suggest that. V was just too caring, too sweet—he wouldn’t let her bear the burden of his mistakes. “No, I won’t. And anyway, it would leave you too drained.” He bowed his head, and ran a hand through his hair. “There’s just nothing here, no outside force I can draw on.” He climbed to his feet, calling on his training to steady his hungry nerves. “Come on…I’ll be fine.”

“Wait.” Vulpecula took his hand, tugged him gently to sit back down in front of her. He did so, confused. She breathed deeply and placed her hands on either side of his head. A relaxing warmth began to seep into his scalp. It suddenly intensified and he gasped. V had used the Gift on him before, for healing, but never when he had been so starved for just the energy. The Light infused his body in a pleasant wave, and faded. V removed her hands and he blinked. “Wow.”

She smiled and nodded, then got to her feet and lent him a hand to stand up. The pain had vanished. Well, more accurately, it had subsided to a level he was accustomed to handling. He felt his face flush, and V kissed him on the cheek. “None of that,” she chided softly. “Now come on, we’ve got a crystal to steal.”