“When I said explosives, I didn’t mean these, Mithey,” Niko listened to Dachna half chastise and half thank Mithel, all while hugging her tightly, “But by Saratasha’s damn hat, I’m glad you’re a barely legal alchemist.”

“H-Hey, what? Wait, I don’t follow,” Mithel was responding while still hugging Dachna back, “Why do you smell ashy?”

“You gave us something Dachna called Firestorm grenades,” Niko trilled out, “Though, that’s probably the only reason why we’re still alive.”

Skye was nearby, plucking her bowstring repeatedly, sending arrows through the forest alongside what had quickly swelled to a group consisting of at least a dozen teams. Her aim faltered at Niko’s comment, an arrow going wide into the forest, before the hornet in the distance moved elsewhere. “You gave them what!?”

A few people looked to her at her outburst, but she paid them no mind, only darting in closer to her team and hissing low, “Firestorm grenades? Mithel?”

At that, Mithel paled, then drew her bag open and looked inside. After searching its contents she cringed, “Oh.”

“Oh?” Skye asked flatly, “What does ‘Oh’ mean?”

“I, uhhh,” Mithel sheepishly grabbed onto Dachna’s arm, half buried in the crook of his elbow while glowing bright red from embarrassment, “Those weren’t supposed to come out yet. They were doing to be an emergency supply.”

“They were, and damn good at that,” Dachna said, giving Skye a sidelong glance that Niko equated to him telling her to take it easy, “We got swarmed by a bunch of tier twos and threes, if it wasn’t for these, we’d have had to try to fight through them.”

Skye paused at that, her anger blinking out like a candle. She let out a groan, “Mithel… you know those are incredibly illegal, right?”

The gnome paused, before saying, “Like… in human lands?”

“No,” Skye groaned, “Like, everywhere. Literally. How do you not know this, I thought you were officially trained?”

“I was officially trained!” Mithel said defensively, “I just… well, my teacher played a little fast and loose with the little things.”

“Have you ever used one of them, Mithel?” Dachna cleared his throat, “They aren’t… uhh… exactly normal compared to regular bombs.”

“I had noticed they were especially irregular feeling to my essence, yes. Though, I’ve been working on perfecting the qualities of the grenade. It’s actually really interesting, something about the fireshard in the base grenade doesn’t mesh right, so I actually improved on them. I have these in here that I call–”

“Do not finish that sentence out loud, in public,” Ronald suddenly seemed to appear at her side, before sternly but quietly pleading, “And please tell me not all of these that you gave us are Firestorm.”

“No, no, just the ones that Dachna and Niko ended up with,” Mithel quickly gesticulated with her hands wildly, “I didn’t make that many of them, only a dozen.”

Niko thought that number perfectly reasonable, but given the spiritless silence that Skye and Ronald had, he guessed that was not a shared consensus.

“Those are definitely just fireball grenades,” Mithel insisted, I know where I grabbed everything from now.”

Skye turned on the spot before pulling an arrow and one of the grenades out. With suspiciously practiced motions, Niko watched her tie one of the grenades a few centimeters down past the arrowhead, before she sparked the pin and sent the arrow flying through the forest. Niko saw it hit a tree between a trio of hornets before exploding in a fireball, though far tamer and over in the blink of an eye. The insects screeched, wings ruined and hides charred, but still alive, albeit only just. Skye corrected that by sending a trio of arrows streaking into the forest, though Niko didn’t see the ultimate end of their path.

“See? Fireball.” Mithel proudly declared, “They do good work, but they’re a little lacking in potency.”

“And if we didn’t have an alchemist willing to directly make them, more expensive than they’re worth.” Dachna added, giving Mithel another hug before being willing to extricate himself from the embrace.

Niko was grinning at the sight when Mithel said, “They’re only like a small silver to make if you know what you’re doing. But, practicing alchemists waste a lot of ingredients on them, so it increases the price ten-fold.”

“I see the gate!” Someone called from the front of the group, and Niko wasn’t the only one who called out happily in response to that.

“Our group has been mostly left alone,” Ronald spoke up, “I think that’s because of you two. Good job,” Ronald clapped a hand on Dachna and Niko, the latter of the two trilling happily in response, “Running interference seems to have worked wonders.”

“That or the gigantic fireball you lot set off,” Someone nearby answered with a hearty laugh, “Thanks for the help. The hornets were nipping at our heels.”

Niko, listening to the praises of others, felt an acute sense of pride at what they’d done. If it wasn’t for them, he was certain they’d have suffered more casualties on their side.

The group picked up the pace, going from a roughly coordinated jog to a brisk run. Niko trailed the back, making sure no one fell. It’d be a special kind of tragic for someone to fall and somehow get picked off this close to the city.

Still, Niko couldn’t help but look over his shoulder at the swarm, and wonder why they hadn’t come on en masse. Were they actually worried that there was more Firestorm? Niko wasn’t certain how much they actually feared losing members of their hive, so he supposed that they might be less willing to throw themselves into the grinder.

But, then, at the same time, that would only get worse if they were allowed into the city. So, what was the benefit of letting them go?

The cynical side of Niko said that they didn’t think of the city as that much of a threat, but Niko sternly refused to believe that was the case. Gathering them all in one location was a possibility, but that still wouldn’t explain why they were being allowed to leave.

Just as Niko was considering that more, he felt his feathers ripple like someone had just walked over his grave. Swinging his head around, Niko couldn’t see anything that would make him feel that way. The group was all together, closely packed, and Niko could see others converging on their location with his enhanced vision. It would be even more dangerous for an attack to occur here, so what–

Then he felt the essence in the air churn, and Niko instinctively remembered the assassin hornet. He drew in a deep breath and poured as much essence as he could into his Call, bolstering and disrupting friend and foe separately. With a long, ear-splitting shriek, Niko began sweeping his head back and forth over their heads.

A nearby tree shook violently all of a sudden, and Niko confirmed that they weren’t being allowed to leave at all.

The Massacre Hornets had set a trap.

“Above!” Ronald bellowed out, body flushing with essence as he surged his defensive shield upwards, the pale white effervescent glow of the construct illuminating the canopy. Fast reacting teams all around, including newcomers, responded just as quickly. But not everyone did, and not everyone had a shield to hold over their heads.

Instantly, the forest in the region exploded with buzzing, and Niko snapped his Call out repeatedly as he disrupted attacks near him. The assassin hornets further from him, however, were far less affected. Niko felt his chest tighten up as he watched a hornet skewer a man from behind, stinging him once before darting upwards. Wind whipped through the trees as the scene repeated itself, another woman caught a stinger to the thigh, while another still batted a stinger away, only to get several deep cuts from mandibles and sweeping legs. Niko ducked a strike towards him, one of the assassins had soundlessly come after the source of interference in the area.

When it swept down a second time, Niko refocused his cry upon it and forced it to falter in its approach. Before Niko did anything else though, an arrow punched through its head, sending it to the forest floor. “Niko! Keep doing what you’re doing!” Skye called out to him, “I’ll cover you!”

Dachna moved to the outer edge of the group, shouting, “To us! Keep together!” Punctuating his words was a second chain, though it was far less resplendent than before. Niko knew that Dachna hadn’t had enough time to regain hardly any essence.

The surprise attack the hornets had planned was still effective, in spite of the resistance they faced around Niko’s group. In the initial attack, Niko had only seen a handful of the attacks, but he quickly realized that several more people had been struck. In a few seconds, the group went from moving forwards, to hunkering down, bringing their wounded and fallen in towards the center. Ronald had encouraged them to do so, shouting, “Their venom is paralytic! The fallen are still alive, don’t let the hornets take them away!”

“Close in, headquarters is responding! We only need to hold out!” He shouted again, “Shields on the outside! Ranged in the middle, melee protect the wounded!” Niko was listening to him as Ronald suddenly pointed at him, “That means you, Niko! You and the other beasts, move to the center, on the double!”

Niko started at that, but realized that he was definitely going to be more useful protecting wounded where the hornets would have to come to him to try to reclaim them. Niko belted out his own Call once more, though the continuous feeling of his essence reserves steadily increasing and declining was beginning to make him feel nauseous. Still, he kept at it, especially as the other groups dragged their wounded over. Beside him, Sasha, Thokk, and several other melee fighters and beasts, new and familiar, fended off the hornets that came for their wounded.

The hornets' attack intensified as a second kind of winged-combatant joined the fray. They were tier two, but bulkier, and several of them were covered in scars all across their hides. They plunged headlong into combat, catching off guard the adventurers whom had just adjusted to the skirmishing style of the assassins. The larger hornets fended off strikes, angling their carapace as they could and hitting back with sharp legs and threatened counter attacks with mandibles that Niko knew could shear through flesh with ease. Two groups still remained outside of the defensive position, and the hornets swarmed them even harder.

“Fire up!” Skye’s voice called out, as she knocked three arrows, each with a grenade attached. In a heartbeat she let loose the volley, each one stabbing into the trees overhead, exploding into balls of flame that battered the hornets near them and sent them falling to the ground, destabilized. The first group wasted no time in attacking, then pulled their fallen into the encirclement before the hornets could remobilize.

With coordination that Niko found terrifying, the hornet’s formation immediately began revolving around the second group, intent on claiming even more people. Throughout the battle, many hornets had been taken down, but Niko had seen just as many people held in the insectoid embrace of the hornets as they flew away. He didn’t want to think about their fates, but a part of him wondered if they’d be better off dead.

“Everyone GET DOWN!” Dachna shouted, before pulling out the final Firestorm grenade he had in his overcoat. With as much strength as he could, the rogue threw the projectile into the air, high above where the second group was.

“Cover!” Ronald bellowed, before strengthening his shield as much as he possibly could. Niko took a sharp breath, dropping his ever dwindling supply of essence into his Call and directing it at the second group with as much sense of emboldening as he could manage. Niko was falling to his knees from exertion when the explosion rocked the trees. A fireball completely unlike that of Skye’s previous attack swallowed the canopy, the heat blasted against Niko’s face like an open furnace. The hornets screeched overhead, the closest ones to the blast immediately combusted into vibrant red and orange flames. Beside him, Sasha and Thokk hit the ground, and they weren’t the only ones cowering before the sudden explosion and heat wave.

For several seconds, the flames persisted and howled, and Niko knew that tens of hornets had to have been caught in the blast. When the noise dimmed, he realized that the fire was rapidly petering out overhead. Black smoke flooded the air, and many hornets littered the ground or fled through the air. On the far side, the remaining hornets raged harder still, attacking the main group with a fevered abandon. Yet, where the fireball had been, no hornet moved close.

“Come on! Now!” Ronald shouted, “Get moving!”

The second group seemed to wake up from their stupor at that, dragging themselves and their comrades with panicked energy into the safety the defensive position provided.

“I can help,” Thokk said, “Tell your people that the earth will be moving shortly, do not panic.”

“What? Uh, yes, I’ll do that,” Niko almost hadn’t realized that the Hind Bear was even speaking to him at first, but he quickly relayed the information to Skye.

When the earth around them shook, everyone was able to keep their footing as they sank, slowly, a half meter into the earth. All around them, pillars of earth rose to encircle their formation. As they did so, several more geomancers began to chip in, including Russel. The Silver Grier formed archways between the pillars, forcing the hornets to navigate an ever more hostile airspace to get in at them. Spikes began forming all along the arches and pillars, many made from ice. Mithel handed out emergency fireball grenades, specifically telling the people that the objects they were handed were only ‘Fireball’ grenades, while insisting that the last thing they’d seen was just a fireball grenade. A big fireball grenade.

Considering the fact that it had potentially saved several people, no one batted an eye at the insistent gnome.

The hornet’s assault stalled after the defensive position formed, until they seemed unwilling to brave what had become murder-funnels. They launched probing strikes, all while several of the assassin hornets worked to excavate the archways, competing directly with the geomancers and leaving themselves open to counter attack. The guild members wouldn’t be able to hold up forever, essence reserves were their limiting factor, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t hold up on their own for a significant amount of time.

“Reinforcements are almost here!” Ronald shouted, much to the relief of the besieged group. Niko held onto his remaining essence, taking the valuable time to allow his body to restore what was lost. Unlike others, he could at least tap into a greater reservoir, but he was still limited on what his body could store. He suspected that the blessings he was given gave him an extra reserve in his soul, somehow, allowing him to have much greater longevity in fights.

Thus, when Niko got to his feet doggedly, Sasha only looked at him with a mixture of shock and dismay, “How are you not tired yet?”

“Birds are best,” Niko shrugged while pretending to not pay attention to the flat glare the cat levered towards him.

All at once, dozens of projectiles ripped through the air, avoiding their defensive position and carving into the hornets. Niko could see essence empowering the attacks, turning even mundane arrows into true threats for the tier two and three hornets. Still, the tank-hornets managed to weather the first wave, only an unlucky few falling. They backed away, though, sensing the same thing that Niko was.

A second volley followed the first, chasing after the retreating line of hornets, chased by a third. Niko saw the heavily armored frontline greet them, adventurers clad in heavy armor, some such that Niko couldn’t see a lick of skin on many of them. “Strike team! We’ll cover your exit, the support team is coming in behind us!”

“Damn good to see you!” Ronald called out with a hearty, but exhausted laugh, “But what took you so damn long!?”

The man at the front laughed even as the rest of the Vanguard moved around the group, forming a slow moving, but stable lineup, “There were other groups that had gotten split up. You all did good, drew a lot of pressure off of them.”

Niko could see the group relax fractionally, even more so when the support team moved in close. Clad in a mixture between battle robes and more uniform garb, the many individuals that came in were a welcome sight.

“Alright, get everyone moving, we’ll match your pace,” The Vanguard speaker said, to which Ronald nodded.

“Same formation as before, moving to the gate! Watch the trees, keep the Vanguard in sight at all times, and guard the wounded!” Ronald belted out, and Niko moved alongside the others as the many teams began to work in concert with one another. It wasn’t nearly what Niko could call organized, but everyone was moving under the same banner, and while they’d lost people, Niko could also see many wounded. Every wounded member they had was one more that didn’t get carried off to the hive’s massacre grounds.

The path back to the city at that point was almost too easy, but from the sounds in the forest, the Massacre Hornets were far from finished with their attack…