Upping The Ante

8. Whoops

So caught up in the strange energy of the moment, it takes a moment before I even realise what it is I’ve done.

Uh… Whoops?

I mean, he hit me on the head with his stupid mace! What exactly did he think was going to happen? I’ve been living a violent life in the Dungeon. Some things are just becoming instinct, you know? If you whack me on the head with your stupid mace, then you can’t really blame me for retaliating, right? It’s self-defence!

The priest also takes a moment to process these events. He looks down at his now severed limb before a new expression gradually takes over his face. He falls backward clutching at his arm and screaming loudly in horror.

This triggers the stunned crowd, who had been locked in place with shock, to erupt with fear, people climbing over each other as they attempt to run for the door.

Oh boy…

This is not what I intended. Why the hell did we have to dig up into a freakin’ human building anyway!

Did they think the Dungeon delivered some free XP as an offering? You seriously expected me to just stand there and get killed? Even if I were to let you bash my head in with that ornate mace for half an hour, it wouldn’t have been able to damage my Diamond Carapace in the first place. All I’d get is a headache!

Since it has come to this, I have to try and limit the damage. My plan was to have the colony hide somewhere on the surface so we could ride out the worst of the wave in relative safety. If we manage to draw a human army down on our heads, we may as well go back down into the Dungeon and try our luck. If these humans run away and bring back soldiers, we’ll be in a real pickle!

Think, Anthony. You have to fix this.

Out of desperation, I do the only thing I can think of to stop the people from running away.

I channel my gravitational magic and form the Gravity Domain.

I mean, it would stop them moving, right?

With my increasing skill and familiarity with the spell, I can form it far more quickly than before. In only a matter of seconds, the powerful energy erupts from me, encompassing the church building. Thankfully I had enough presence of mind to dial back the strength of the gravity.

The moment the spell is complete, the humans find themselves unable to keep their feet. Younger children immediately fall to the floor, completely powerless to resist the force pulling them down. The adults are better able to cope, but even they find themselves without the capacity to walk.

The priest himself is too busy shrieking and gripping his arm, holding it before his disbelieving face. He doesn’t even seem to notice he’s been forced onto the floor by my spell.

In some ways, I’m impressed.

I only leave the domain in place for a few seconds before I shut it off. In those few seconds, the frantic escape of the congregation has been halted, almost everyone has been forced to the floor, unmoving.

I try my best to stare them down a little. It isn’t easy to communicate ‘Don’t move or I’ll turn it back on again!’ with an ant stare, but I do my best.

They appear to get it to some extent. Fear twists their faces as they have now realised this isn’t some religious experience, but the enemy of their kind. Monsters from the Dungeon, emerging when they least expected it, in possibly the last place they expected.

Seeing the terror and tears of the children is quite a blow to me. It wasn’t that long ago I was a human myself. I’m not that scary, am I?

I mean… a giant ant that can apparently control the force of gravity would be pretty damn scary when you think about it.

With the crowd momentarily subdued, I decide to try and work out exactly where we are. I need to know a little more about this situation before either bringing the colony up to the surface or retreating down and coming up with another plan.

Moving down the aisle toward the large double doors at the rear of the church, I hesitate before pushing them open with my mandibles and taking in the surface of this world for the first time.

A brilliant sunset meets my eyes, the alien sky dyed with intense reds and pinks. Lovely. Not much scenery to appreciate in the tunnel after all, causing this sight to hit perhaps a little harder than I would have thought.

Focus! No time to get caught up in a sunset. Shaking myself slightly, I take a look at the surroundings. The church appears to be situated on a hill, a cobbled path leading directly up to the doors. Spread before me is a sleepy town, smoke curling from chimneys that poke proudly out of slatted roofs. In the distance are farming fields spread like a carpet that press up against a walled city.

Checking my Tunnel Map, I estimate the previous Dungeon entrance I’d located seems like it would be smack bang in the middle of that city.

So… things could have been worse, I suppose.

In fact, if I carefully focus my eyes, I think there’s a fire in that city? Against the darkening skies, I’m fairly sure a plume of black smoke is rising from somewhere inside the walls. Some sort of situation is happening over there. I don’t especially want to wish harm on anyone, but this could be a chance for the colony to slip away without notice!

After turning back to eyeball the congregation, I scurry around the side of the church and take a peek around the corner. The church isn’t as large as I originally thought. A sturdy stone building with a high vaulted ceiling to be sure, but it isn’t exactly a cathedral.

Constructed on the edge of this town, high on a hill overlooking simple homes of the people, many of whom possibly work farming the surrounding fields. On the rear side of the church, down the hill and over a few open paddocks, a lush wood is spread, thick foliage creating a beckoning darkness across the forest floor.

Just the sort of place a colony could go and get lost in.

I might be able to salvage this after all!

I head back inside where many members of the congregation have begun to offer prayers of a much different sort to the statue. Hoping for salvation and survival rather than whatever the heck they thought was coming their way before.

The priest is still clutching his arm, almost completely inert. I think the shock’s hit him pretty bad. Poor guy. I can’t help feeling a twinge of guilt. I mean, I did bite his arm off…

I head back to the hole in the floor and stick my back zone through so I can talk to the queen.

It’s a little weird, the pheromone conversation. We ‘listen’ with our antennae, but we ‘talk’ with our Pheromone Gland positioned in the rear zone.

“Could you come up here and heal a person? I injured him, but I think it would be bad for us if he died.”

I can tell the queen is a little surprised, but she agrees with my suggestion and begins to chomp and push her way up through the floor, buckling the flat stones and forcing the wooden pews to scrape and scratch as she forces her bulk through.

If I’d thought the humans were fervently wishing for salvation before, their efforts are redoubled with the emergence of the queen. She fills the room with her majesty and abdomen, forcing the people to push themselves back against the walls, openly weeping in terror at this manifestation of the Dungeon’s evil.

The queen doesn’t seem much fussed. She channels Mana through her antennae and then touches the priest on the arm. The light flares as it passes into his flesh and the wound rapidly closes over, the bleeding slowing to almost nothing in a matter of seconds.

I think with this, his life will be preserved. At the very least he won’t bleed to death.

With no way to communicate to reassure the people, I decide it’s best to just hustle the colony out of there. Giving instructions to the queen and the workers, we gather up the larvae and pupae before marching out of the church toward the forest.

The eyes of the congregation are almost popping out of their head as rows of monster ants pour out of the hole in the centre of their church, marching past, totally ignoring them. I myself head down into the escape tunnel to help and am shocked when a fat grub wiggles toward me, flopping about on the ground with glee.

Are you that energetic grub I saved from the brood chamber! I shouldn’t be shocked you survived, I suppose. You do seem to have an unusual amount of spunk.

With that, Tiny, the colony and myself carry everything we possess past the disbelieving and hopeful faces of the people, out the front of the church, across the field and into the welcoming arms of the forest.

All the while, the burning gaze of the priest follows me.