The passageway smelled like spring.

Rain the previous night had drenched the ground, grass-soaked water trickling down into the newborn tunnel and causing select parts of the passage to cave and collapse. Richard Fiermann grunted as he held out his hands, plying the earth aside to make room for the thousands of wasps further behind. Meanwhile, a squad of Light and Cloud practitioners corralled the buzzing hoard with illusions of light and barriers of air.

“Finished yet?” one of the Light practitioners asked, her voice carried on the wind.

“Not quite,” Richard replied, trodding forward. The ground squelched underneath his boots before he gave the ground a sharp stomp, firming it up for the others’ passage. The Godorans really waited until the last minute on these tunnels, he thought, sighing. They’re lacking even basic support beams.

He pulled with his hands again, splitting the tunnel’s collapsed interior in two. He took in a deep breath, then bellowed, “All clear!”

“Take cover in 5,” a wind elementalist called back, her voice snaking into his ear.

Richard pulled apart the tunnel wall and kicked out with a boot, splitting it apart. He pressed his body into the crevice, then sealed the passage behind him. A few moments later, harsh buzzing whooshed through the passage, vibrations from the wasps’ cacophonic crossing shaking the earth.

He tore into the walls again and forced his way out, coming face-to-face with the Cloud-affinity elementalists weaving a wave of wind to span the tunnel. They followed the buzzing wasps until they encountered another part of the tunnel where the ceiling had caved in.

The Light practitioners directed the wasps onto the left half of the tunnel, the wind elementalists forming a wind barrier to keep them penned while Richard slipped around the perimeter. I could swear that all the region’s wet sank into this valley, he grumbled to himself, wondering how many more sections of the tunnel would delay them. We’re already at least half an hour behind schedule.

“I think something’s coming,” their Regret practitioner called out, frowning. Without missing a beat, the squad slipped into a wasp-point formation. Richard widened the tunnel while forming earthen bulwarks for the practitioners to hide behind, the wasps following ultraviolet paths toward the ceiling and walls.

As they all ducked behind the earthen barrier, all eyes were on the sergeant. Sergeant Zim had an impressive fourteen seconds of scenario time, but for the past few seconds he’d remained silent, his face screwed up in concentration.

“Sergeant, what’s the plan?” Richard asked, shaking the man’s shoulder.

“Fiermann, let me think!” the man yelled back. Richard’s eyes widened as he recoiled backward, giving the man space. “It’s the SPU. They’ve found the tunnel.”

Damn. Richard grit his teeth, his eyes fixating on the ceiling. The tunnels are pretty deep underground: I thought we’d at least have another few hours before ours was discovered; that’s all we needed. Thankfully, their squad knew just how life liked to fuck with a solid plan; they had contingencies.

“Fiermann, duck and cover,” Zim commanded, the officer dropping to the floor. Others followed suit, getting on their elbows and thighs. Richard pushed into the earth with his hands, splaying his fingers wide. He rolled an earth focus he kept nestled in his cheek out onto his tongue, then closed his eyes, every ounce of his concentration fixated on the tunnel floor. He then bit into the focus, shattering it to gain a burst of energy as he lifted and slammed his hands into the earth. With a sudden heave, the floor rotated as though spun on an axis, sending everyone below the surface.

The wet earth pressed up against everyone, inhibiting movement, though there was enough oxygen in the cavity to keep them conscious for a while. Richard knew it wouldn’t be enough to simply flip below the surface: He needed to take them deeper. He removed his hands from the now-ceiling and turned over, shimmying his body in the narrow cavity. Just as he held out his hand to tear downward at the earth, the sergeant’s voice rang out.

“We surrender!” he stated crisply, voice dripping with determination. All the same, Richard could see the man’s hands shaking.

Surrender!?

An oily blackness began to seep into the ground, oozing over Richard like frigid syrup. He recognized it immediately: Death energy so dense as to become corporeal, sinking into the earth and clinging to the living. He gave the sergeant a hollow look as his entire body froze, his eyes barely even able to move, his face numb.

The buzzing above stopped all at once, the wasps defeated before they could even engage. Practitioners shouldn’t be able to disable them–not to mention their wasps–with such impunity, but Richard considered himself fairly quick on the uptake: He knew what kind of a person would leave the sergeant requesting surrender.

“In the name of Selejo’s Crowned Prime, we accept your surrender,” a woman called out, her voice amplified so as to be ear-splitting even through the earth.

Suddenly, Richard could move, his lungs filling with thin, but precious air.

“Get us back above ground,” the sergeant murmured, his head bumping into the ceiling. “That’s our only option.”

Richard had another earth focus, but wasn’t going to waste it on flipping the floor again. He instead shimmied back around and began to claw at the ceiling, tearing it apart with his hands until he could once more breathe freely.

The tunnel was dark, only barely illuminated by the light of the moon shining from a new hole in the ceiling...but in the darkness Richard saw something even darker, a writhing black cloak of deepest violet armoring a youthful man, his eyes like dim, violet beacons. To his right was his companion, a woman in a black combat uniform, her eyes aglow with flecks of blue and green.

Richard knew that their mission was doomed. Thankfully, the sergeant had probably already informed their superiors about their squad’s failure over quantum channel. Kyeila’s forces could then close off their tunnel’s connection point and erase traces of its existence, containing the damage with only a minimal loss of wasps and men.

Richard knew that the so-called “gecko strategy” made sense; all the same, nobody wanted to be a shed tail, especially when faced by a peak practitioner...and the Skai’aren himself.

His head remained above the hole, frozen in place not by the hand of the decemancer but by primal fear. Richard flinched when a pair of hands pushed into his butt from below, hoisting him to the surface. He caught himself by steadying his feet in the muddy ground, naturally twisting into a half-bow as he regained his balance.

The peak practitioner woman’s lips moved rapidly as she silently passed messages back to the Skai’aren until he finally sighed and nodded his head, giving the woman an appreciative look. Finally, the man spoke, his voice calm and unaffected by the scene around him: “It’ll be sufficient to use the bone wyrm; she doesn’t need to send an earth elementalist.”

Just as the Skai’aren finished speaking, something blocked the hole to the surface, blotting out the moonlight. Richard’s eyes needed a moment to adjust before they realized what they were seeing: a patchwork skull. Its contours were draconic, but instead of being one smooth piece of bone, it instead was a composite of articulated bone pieces that had locked together, a slight reddish-pink tint illuminating them from within.

The small bones began to shift, seeming to almost liquefy as their structure collapsed, the shards pooling into the tunnel before reforming into what seemed to be a long snake headed by a drill. Without warning, the construct’s head flared violet and began to rotate and surge forward through the passageway, soon disappearing out of sight.

The Skai’aren considered its departure with apparent disinterest, his attention seized by the wasps frozen in the air around him, barely visible except for the glint of moonlight on their fragile wings.

Suddenly, one of them began to flap its wings again, though its body remained stationary, unable to propel itself forward. The wingbeats soon stopped, the Skai’aren walking toward the frozen wasp and pinching it between two fingers, holding it up to the moonlight.

—

“You’re saying I should try getting stung now?” Ian sighed, giving the little insect an appraising look.

“You said you’ve never been stung before. It’s best to make sure you won’t need to also deal with an allergic reaction if you’re rendered unconscious amongst the swarm.”

And I know the general wants to know what kind of venom they’re using. Ever since he’d healed Zuliman and repaired his own heart, the general seemed eager to put his unconventional yet potent Death mending to the test. He recognized the danger the venom posed, of course: slow-acting poisons were the downfall of unwary Regret practitioners. They needed to test the venom now rather than in the thick of battle.

Lips pressing into a line, Ian brought the wasp downward onto his arm, pressing lightly on its thorax so the stinger jabbed into his skin. As the wasp venom began to circulate, Ian almost laughed at the surprised gaze of the Kyeilan earth elementalist. His reaction to self-harm seemed to be stronger than to the arrival of the bone wyrm, though Ian had to admit, the man’s shock put him on edge. So far the venom seemed to be a numbing component, but Ian knew that couldn’t be all there was: The wasps were the Kyeilans’ decades-long war project.

After about twenty seconds, he began to feel lightheaded and the world started to fade into white, as though he were staring at a bright window. Deciding that he’d had enough, Ian started to work against the venom, treating it like ginger as he focused on stimulating each cell the venom touched to entrap the potent payload. It’s easy when ginger makes everything it touches have gray vitality, but the wasp venom is perhaps even easier to track: the cells it touches are now beginning to die.

In short succession, the vitality of countless bodily tissues began to blacken. Ian had only given himself a small prick of venom, so the effects weren’t overly pronounced, but the level of devastation was far greater than he expected. He genuinely needed to actively intervene, shifting and isolating trapped venom particles up and into the cavity of his mouth, the growing bundle of Death accumulating rapidly. When he felt the last of the venom vesicles leave his organs, Ian turned and spat the mixture of dead cells and venom onto the mud floor.

“That was terrible,” Ian exclaimed, giving Por’sha a serious look. “Delayed onset necrosis after initial numbing, partial blinding, and slight paralysis. If you were stung by one of these and didn’t receive healing within fifteen or so seconds, you’d probably die.”

Por’sha blinked, then swallowed. “I’ve informed the general.” As the ranking officer in their duo, the guardian volunteered for the responsibility of sending information to Var’dun’a over quantum channel. “She says to capture as many wasps as possible. Don’t kill them.”

Ian nodded. He turned his head to see the rest of the Kyeilan squad arrayed over the tunnel’s enlarged breadth, their heads bowed in deference. Ian sighed, then pushed the thorax of the wasp down again to reinfect himself with venom, testing to see if he had either a reaction to being stung a second time or if the venom reacted differently on a subsequent sting.

The venom began to circulate just as before, the symptoms identical. It made sense: if the Kyeilans relied on a delayed poison to mess with Regret practitioners, multiple stings speeding up or altering the onset of venom would be undesirable. Ian figured additional stings would simply mean more serious effects, such as full blindness followed by more severe necrosis.

“Where does this tunnel end?” Por’sha asked, addressing the captives in non-native Luxish, her words slightly accented.

The enemy kept their gazes downward, unwilling to speak.

Por’sha chuckled. “We’ll find out regardless.” She then spoke only to Ian, saying, “The general’s sending a team of earth elementalists to trace the tunnel’s path to its terminus. Our task is to follow the tunnel to its source before the Kyeilans collapse it off.”

Ian gestured left into the dark tunnel. “If you’re ready, we can follow the wyrm.”

“What should we do with the Kyeilans?” Por’sha wondered audibly, her voice soft.

Ian snorted. “We’ll just take them with.”