Benjamin Vryce

Getting started proved more difficult than he had imagined. They had lost two of the wolf mounts, and now had more than seventy fighting hive to figure out how to utilize. They talked for a few hours brainstorming and strategizing. When the final decision was made, only Stomper seemed to be happy.

Benjamin rode on Ice’s back. The pairs matching armor making them look like a natural fit for each other. Jade rode on Honor’s back behind him, her skin tight leather armor looked good against the white wolf’s fur and matched the black carapace armor he wore almost perfectly. What didn’t match up well was their attitudes, they both looked unhappy at having to pair with the other.

The blue king flew above and in front of them. Scouting out the trail, and looking for danger. Everyone else was left back at the Hive camp. They were to continue the hunts for big prey, and keep the Hive fed and reproducing as long as possible. The plan was that if they were needed, Benjamin could summon them to himself. However, if they arrived at a reasonable setup location, the wolves would return to lead them all to the new camp.

Grace had wanted to go; she even raised her voice a few times. In the end however, Stomper had persuaded everyone that this was the best course of action. Benjamin and Jade, being the only two who couldn’t be dismissed or called back, they had to be the ones to ride the wolves. Also, with speed being the goal, the fewer who went along, the faster the party would move.

So here they were, riding at Honor’s top speed. Following behind the blue king as he blazed the trail. There were quite a few different types of bugs, pill bugs being the most prevalent but far from the only type around. There were also quite a few lizards and amphibian looking creatures. Benjamin swore he saw a bearded frog with maroon skin as they sped along.

Thankfully, the blue king’s presence kept most of the creatures back. The scarred blue king wore his golden armor and was highly visible from where he flew. A lot of the local creatures were big, strong beasts, but the Hive monarchs had ruled this world for millennia. Even though the blue king was only slightly larger than Benjamin, car sized beetles rushed to clear the way as he passed by them.

“…and that’s basically how it works,” Jade finished her explanation on how her essence pistol and force shield worked. As they rode, Benjamin had asked her questions about them.

He was beginning to wonder what else could be done with essence. He had made changes to his body, and could bring creatures into existence with the use of it. The pistol could gather it together and fire it off as well. If that had been all he had seen he wouldn’t have thought more into it, but he had seen Jade create her force shield without a pattern. He knew that he had to be able to manipulate the essence directly.

Having heard Jade explain how she used her pistol and activated her shield; he rolled the thoughts around in his mind. He wasn’t going to be getting any more creations added to his soul, not for a long time, if ever. Currently, Grace was the only one in their party who had ranged abilities. Stomper was already well trained with his axe, and the wolves and monarchs didn’t have hands.

That just left him, he had survived until now on brute force alone, but each enemy was growing more powerful. The red queen had completely outclassed him in melee skills, and Ice would have killed him if not for Grace. Even watching Tok use those javelins and rocks to such devastating effect, had really driven home how useful a ranged ability was.

He wasn’t sure what to do about it though, there were no ranged weapons here for him to use, unless he made them himself. That’s when the idea came to him, that perhaps he could use essence as a projectile. Jade was already doing it, and if she could figure it out then he should be able to as well. Except it was proving harder than he thought.

She was using the pattern to draw energy, before letting it out with the trigger. As far as the shield went, she had admitted that had been a complete accident. It seemed simple in concept, but he hadn’t been able to repeat it yet. Maybe if he could make a pattern of his own to draw power in with.

He would have to think on it. As things stood, he would be better suited gathering rocks to throw. Actually, he really hoped he didn’t have to do that. It was effective for the ogre, but he was also at least twice as strong as Benjamin. For the same reason, no thrown weapon would really suit him. He needed either a bow or some way to weaponize his essence.

“So, Stomper was showing me how to shield and fire…” Jade was still talking, he had mostly tuned her out but would occasionally make an interested grunt.

His mind was still preoccupied with creating his own pattern. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the aged copper acorn. The apple sized nut fit into his palm perfectly, and was warm to the touch. He peered at it with essence enhanced eyes, and noticed for the first time that it was syphoning his essence.

How had that happened? He flashed into his void space, and looked at his core. Sure enough, there was a small channel funneling essence vapor to the metallic nut. The pull was minimal, but it looked constant. Had it been drawing in essence ever since he touched the dire boar’s core back in the Erlking’s forest?

Looking into the acorn, he found something somewhere in between his core and a creation core. The essence vapor it pulled in from his core was gathering into a cloud, before slowly condensing into liquid. Looking deeply into its center, he thought he could make out what looked like a solid essence core. What was going on here, had he created a creation core by accident, or was this something different.

As an experiment, he tried to funnel some liquid essence into the aged copper acorn. It went in, but like the last time he had tried forcing essence into the nut, it only accepted so much before it was at its limit. He watched as it began to slowly condense what he had added. Could he add a spin to the essence, make it condense further and faster? Could he draw this essence out like from a creation core, or was it being used for something else, he had so many questions now.

“…Vice! Are you even listening to me?” Jade’s shout penetrated Benjamin’s concentration.

He looked up to see what she wanted, wondering if they were being attacked. He needed to be more mindful of going into his head, he thought, not for the first time. Ice was here though, she would have alerted him to danger.

“What is it Jade, sorry I got distracted for a moment.” He said, trying to figure out what she wanted, and if there was a threat nearby.

“Grace, I wanna know about you and Grace.” She said with clear exasperation in her expression. “She’s like real cute, and actually legal. I asked her and she’s twenty, here I thought you were robbing the cradle with some kid but, like anyway, what’s going on between you two?”

Benjamin just stared at her. Grace was twenty huh, he hadn’t known. Truthfully, he had been afraid she was younger and hadn’t wanted to ask. It was part of the reason he hadn’t gotten closer to her, well a small part. It was largely overshadowed by the whole ‘I’m turning into a monster, she’s a goblin, I’m stuck in a strange world with magic thing.’ He had been dealing with for the last few, how long had it even been? Weeks, months? He wasn’t even sure anymore.

“I honestly don’t know,” he said, “We haven’t known each other that long and there has been a lot of other things going on. How about you Jade? I’ve seen the sideways glances you give to Stomper when you thought no one was looking, what’s going on between you two?”

He meant to tease her and redirect the conversation, to his surprise, she turned red and looked away. She was quiet after that, not wanting to talk anymore. Benjamin pondered on that, was there something really going on between the two? He would have to keep his eyes out.

Not having to deal with attacks, thanks to the blue king, and not having to listen to Jade anymore, he wasn’t sure why, on that one. Benjamin was free to turn his attention back to the aged copper acorn. He wanted to see if he could pull the essence out for his own uses, and if so, he planned to try to spin and compress the essence forming a core inside the acorn.

* * *

Grace

She watched the human souls ride away dejectedly. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Jade, although she didn’t really, or that she didn’t understand how strong Benjamin was. She just wanted to be close to him, he had been asleep for so long and he had just woken up. Grace wanted to be next to him for longer than a few hours before he left again.

“Cheer up, clan sister.” Stomper said, coming up and putting a hand on her shoulder. “The chief needs us now, we have to keep hunting, and keep the Hive fed.” He said, trying to reassure her.

She looked at him with a weak smile, she knew he meant well. He was great with tactics and battles, but he didn’t really understand how love worked.

“Grace Knows, but she thanks her clan brother. She wonders if you would like to go hunting? Those salamanders won’t kill themselves after all.” she tried to make a joke, like Benjamin would do.

Surprisingly it cheered her up, and made Stomper laugh. He clapped her on the shoulder again, harder this time, and nodded.

“Spoken like a true hunter Grace, I’ll gather the red queen and we shall be off. I think we should bring some of the hive with us. The top five of both the reds and blues, they need to get familiar with fighting together before we go into battle for real.”

She nodded her head in return, she wasn’t interested in large battles. Her training growing up had been largely focused on hunting and tracking the game in the forest. As well as how to find edible plants, make fires, skin and tan her kills. All the things one does alone. Stomper on the other hand had been one of the clan’s few soldiers, and been groomed by the old chief. He knew better then any of them how to get fighters ready for battle.

They went together to the ramshackle hive, and found the red queen. She was watching over the small number of females the factions each had. This was a bit of a mystery to the companions, why so few of the hive were female. It looked like there was one female for every hundred males, the ratio was a little further skewed towards more females at the moment, but that was only because they had killed all the male soldiers.

After explaining what he wanted to the red queen, Stomper asked Grace and the Hive monarch to help him pick out ten strong soldiers. Grace didn’t understand how Stomper communicated so well with others who couldn’t speak. He always brushed it off when someone brought it up, but she knew it was a gift specific to him.

He went with red queen to inspect the red soldiers, while Grace went over to check on the remaining blues. There were a lot fewer to choose from here, only fourteen in total. It was a shame really, but Grace had been responsible in part for the small numbers. She had killed those lost to the feeding frenzy when Benjamin broke into their Hive.

She wondered if they would have gotten their minds back if they had been given an opportunity to eat more. When she had asked Benjamin and later Stomper about it though, they both told her that they had degraded too far. They were to weak minded, closer to animals then people. She didn’t know what that meant for the little blues running around with the red hatchlings.

Would they be just as weak, or would constant food and training be enough to get them up to size. She didn’t know, she just hoped that they wouldn’t die out like her people had. Shaking herself to be rid of the negative thoughts, she just picked the five biggest blues. As they moved forward however, she paused.

One of the smaller ones had caught her eye, he hadn’t come forward with the others. instead, he was playing with the hatchlings. The longer she watched, the clearer it became, he was actually separating red and blue hatchlings that were fighting. What was more, he was feeding bits of food to the ones who played well together.

Grace was intrigued by this; she hadn’t seen any of the others interacting with the young ones. Not even the females, who, after laying the eggs seemed to be done with them. Was this normal behavior that she had just missed, or was there something different with this little blue?

She called it over to her, it was the smallest of the adult blues, standing at about her height. She would bring this one too, there might be potential here. She would have to talk to Stomper about it.