Only two left now. I downstepped to Darts, my mana down a hundred points, and four Shard Slots empty of the seven I had available.

I didn’t have to vivisize anything, the mists here instantly turning the dead into gentle unwhite bonfires. I pounded the last two down with shot after shot of Darts, Holy Banefire doing what it needed to do over three more volleys before they both stopped moving. The vivic mists swirled about them and promptly set their cracked and broken forms alight with misting unwhite fires.

I stayed right where I was, eyes focused on that membrane door. Death pheromones shouldn’t be a problem, but the screams might be.

Down in Meditation, on one knee, focused without being focused, a razor edge of concentration and open harmony, with the vivus around being quite helpful about supplying the mana I needed.

Fourteen minutes of Mana Renewal crept by before I could get up with confidence, watching my spell durations and wincing, but knowing I could recast them all if needed.

I trotted back the way the olthoi had come, stepping past the dissolving bodies, and slowly and carefully re-entered the hallway once more, now misting all around, cool fogs drooping off the ceiling as the resinous goo was eaten away.

The Summon spot was empty, and the center of a hearty Burn.

Since the alarm had already come from the one direction, I decided to head that way. If something came in behind me, well, that was why I had Levitate ready to go, and could stay aloft indefinitely if I had to. Unless I was swarmed by the flying Needlers, I should be fine.

Those spidery Eviscerators might be able to climb along the resin on the walls, it was hard to tell. I hadn’t taken the time to heft their exoskeletons and see how heavy they were... and, well, magic would laugh at that. The Needlers were obviously using magic to stay aloft, wall-crawling was a step down from that stuff.

I blew the nictitating membrane open and stepped through, wand poised.

Small square room, covered with olthoi gunk. I V-Darted each wall once with triple Darts, including the ceiling, and the chamber was Burning heartily as I inched out into the hallway to the room beyond.

This room was as festooned with gunk as all the others, but I recognized the design of the archways and cul-de-sacs behind them. Only two feeding stations around the room, and the wear lines on the ground all seemed to lead towards the far side... where a large and wide passageway had been carved right through the worked stone, leading upwards.

A faint breeze seemed to be coming from that direction, too.

There were exactly two olthoi there, about the same size as the workers, pinged as Olthoi Guards. They were a slightly brighter blue, and were stationed near the ramp-like tunnel leading up and out... and was I detecting a hint of reflected sunlight there?!

I didn’t waste much mana on them, pounding them over and down and keeping the trip-lock on them as they crawled out, shrieking the alarm loudly, trying to get to me. I spent only Lead on them, 5d4+10 of crushing damage popping to 5d4+32, and very low mana cost with my Mana Conversion being where it was.

It took me four salvos to kill them both, while I shifted left inside the room in case something decided to come out of the hallway behind me, actually closing the distance to them as they tried to scramble at me.

Once they were deceased, I had to fight the urge to go racing towards what felt a great deal like the way out of here. Instead, I first blew apart the feeding stations and shot both dead olthoi with V-Darts, and proceeded to ignite the room. When the feeding bowls Burned down enough to harvest the gemstones congealed in the bottom of them, I kicked them over, collected my bounty, and shot them a few more times for emphasis.

The Crystal scarabs seemed to be very common, and I had no idea why. There was no sign of the lesser ones in the mess I slowly Sifted through and filtered out, nor any more normal components. Did the Crystal scarabs make all other components moot, a universal component? That would be wonderful if true, I could stop carrying this heavy satchel and just carry a bandolier of Crystal scarabs or something.

Well, I’d find out in the future, I guess.

---

Once the room was mostly on fire, I slowly and warily trudged up the ramp. I wasn’t expecting trouble, or it would have come when the Guards called out.

The first thing I acknowledged was that the temperature was cold. With acidic reactions generating heat inside them, the bugs probably weren’t affected much.

There was snow on the ground. I looked around, and blanched.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

There was an invasive mix of toadstools and mushroom growing among the native trees, although who knew how well they were doing with the winter season. Dying, growing again, dying, growing on the corpses of their own... and possibly of the plants they were infecting and killing.

I was on a hillside of sorts. The entire area I’d been in excavated out from inside a hill?

I turned around, and grimaced again.

The whole top of the hill looked like it had blown up and fallen back down somehow, something erupting out of nowhere to lift the entire hilltop, shattering stone, earth, and plant life violently before settling back down.

But... there were no standing buildings atop the hill, at all. If there was rubble there, I couldn’t see it with the shrooms and brush in the way.

There was what looked like old buildings down the hill, just a scattering of them and small houses running down towards the river and what might have once been cultivated orchards, judging by how they were arranged in rows.

Nothing human moving within sight. Not much at all moving, really. Even the birds and wildlife seemed reluctant to be about, which was par for the course for wintertime.

I shot the nearest stand of shrooms with a volley of V-Darts, and somehow was not surprised in the slightest when the things went up like tinder.

I looked at the many, many stands of mushrooms in sight, and shook my head.

Someone had a lot of work to do here, and she was probably looking back at me in the mirror.

But none of that work was going to matter if I didn’t clear this place.

It had to be a nest, and that meant a queen or other egg-layer. And if that held true for insects, she was going to be bigger and tougher than all of her children by a fair margin.

With very little hesitation, I gave a last look around, and turned and walked back down into the nest.

Nobody was going to do this for me, and I knew bugs. There was no reasoning with them, they just bred and expanded. They had to die, and I was going to kill them all.

------

The room was still empty. I went into what I was calling my Aurora Stance to regain mana, standing on that edge between focused readiness to leap into action, and relaxed acceptance and openness to the universe and its energies.

Energies that weren’t much liking the shit around me, but were happy with the vivus gathering around my feet as the unnatural ecology of this place went away.

My mana ticked slowly back up as I waited for it all to top out, and still nothing came. I guess as long as the membrane doors didn’t open, everything was fine?

I’d have to exploit that, I would.

When I was full up, I decided that recasting my Resist Energy was wise, just in case, and added two more minutes of Aurora Stance to get that Slot back as well.

Then I shot open the membrane door that was denying the vivus flowing around, obviously being slightly higher on the order of life, and watched it Burn away.

Nothing right behind the door, and vivus should have disposed of the death pheromones. I followed the curve around, listening to the skritching and scrabbling of the grown olthoi, and stopped.

There was a small square room here. Some kind of tripod stand had existed here, but it had been blown to shreds, and not even the olthoi ooze was growing over the hissing remnants of it. The walls were all cracked, and embedded with hundreds of broken, burned-out blue stones.

Most importantly, I could count at least forty skulls among the many, many skeletons infused into those walls, bones jutting out wildly, fused and merged into the stone, broken and shattered at the same time.

It made my hackles rise, as the place was simmering with the afterburn of violent magical death.

This room effectively cut the other half of the olthoi’s chambers off from the half I’d been in.

I had no idea what had happened, but those were human bones, there were a lot of them, and there didn’t seem to be much clothing on any of them, even rags.

I... couldn’t hazard anything, and neither could Mira. So, I defaulted to what I normally did, starting with the spurting line of erratic energies burning off the remnants of those stands.

V-Darts away!

Those energies caught like gasoline, spurting into full-out flares of vivus, making me wonder what the fuck they had been connected to in order to do that. With very little hesitation, I started shooting every skull and intact ribcage I could see.

The blue crystals sparked and lit up when the vivic fire touched them, before flaring up inside and spontaneously cracking and falling apart to shiny dust. I noted its existence, but wasn’t going to take the time to clean it all up and collect it right now, although I was sure it would be useful.

Oh, Hell with it. My nerves were getting to me, so I Cast the Levitate on myself, so it would be active if I needed it. As long as this didn’t take more than fifty minutes, I was fine.

The hallway continued around, curving to the left, once again festooned with olthoi resin, even thicker and glowing brighter than that without. I edged around the turn, pausing as I caught sight of massive mushrooms, bigger than those growing outside, growing in this area like trees in the darkness.

And there was a skritching sound of mandibles rubbing pedipalps to the left, just out of sight.

I inhaled deeply, turned the corner, acquired the olthoi Worker there, and before it could register me, I spat out, “Zojak Quareth!”

The Iron spell was enough to flatten it, and it died with only a startled shriek. I spun around at movement just past the second tree, another Worker stepping out in surprise, seeing me as a dark blur, and starting into motion.

Two Darts, and it went down awkwardly, while I concentrated on dealing with any new surprises, which had appeared very quickly!