Lily
Lily paced the length of her office, running her fingers through her hair so frequently it floated in a static cloud around her head. She was starting to panic, now the meeting with the syndicate’s leadership had opened her eyes to, at least consider, they might be at fault for Undercity’s problems.
“Honey, settle down.” Her consort, Halikor said, from where he stood in the doorway. He was holding a tray, containing a tea set, and steaming pot of water. Clearly hoping to settle her down after her meeting with the queen. “Come here and sit down. Have a cup of calming moss tea and tell me what’s got you so worked up.”
“Gaahhh,” she growled in frustration as she stalked the floor, snatching a cup from the tray after Halikor poured tea in it. She kept pacing but had to slow down to prevent the hot liquid from spilling onto the floor. As she continued to stride, she looked at the cup in her hands. The bioluminescent moss lost its glow once it dried out. When reintroduced to moisture, however, it began to glow again. Causing the tea to glow softly in the cup. The moss itself didn’t add much to the beverage, the flavor coming from the other ingredients, but it was near tasteless, so people added it to many dishes, just for the soft glow it let off for a while once rehydrated.
“Please,” the hulking bugbear man said, seating himself in one of the office’s plush chairs. “Have a seat honey and tell me what the queen said that has you so worked up.” It had been a few months since the meeting with Owl Two and the syndicate. Just like he’d said, a flood of immigrants had poured in through the tunnel to the mushroom forest. They’d been guarded by an entire battalion of yokai, who had refused to leave until the refugees had been accepted into the city.
There were hundreds of them, all looking terribly small and underfed. Many were missing most of their teeth, had thin hair, and skin that looked like it had never seen the sun. Whatever the White Flame had done to get them here hadn’t allowed them the opportunity to regain their health. That caused even more problems, because they were stretching the city’s medical supplies to the breaking point. Saying nothing of how much food, clothing and all the housing required to take care of so many unexpected people flooding into their home.
“I’ve been thinking about our decision to split from the syndicate.” Lily said at last, dropping into her chair and setting the tea on the hardwood desk. “A lot of Owl Two’s points were valid. He didn’t do anything to harm us. He only refused to offer aid we didn’t ask for… If we hadn’t kicked out all the hobs, or thought about the next generation, before all the goblins got too old…” she trailed off, taking a sip of her tea. Halikor took that opportunity to speak.
“He didn’t just refuse to help us, love.” He said softly, but firmly. “He effectively gave Brie and Guts death sentences, by turning off their nanites. And by refusing to council us on the ramifications of the sexual inhibitors long term, he effectively killed all the smart goblins in the city. Not to mention what he…” The shaggy bugbear bit back what he’d been going to say next, but Lily already knew what he was thinking.
“As angry as I’ve been at him all these years, I can’t ignore the facts any longer. He would never hurt the White Flame’s child. It was an accident, and we all know it. I’m ashamed it took ten years to admit out loud, but…” she took another sip of her tea, to fill the silence that followed her admission.
“So, what has you so worked up?” He asked, changing the subject.
“I had several long talks with ambassador Jeffreys, before the queen finally had him executed.” Lily said, running her fingers through her hair again. “The kingdom is seriously getting fed up with us, love.” She said, looking at her consort. A man she’d grown to love deeply over the last decade. A man whose presence in her life now concerned her. Not because she didn’t love him anymore, but because the White Flame was becoming active again. She worried what his reaction would be when he returned to find his child hadn’t survived birth, and his wives had both forsaken him. No formal divorce, but a betrayal far more real. They’d both found new lovers in the years he was away, and far worse, left his organization entirely, and actively hindered its growth.
“What’s new about that? They’ve been threatening us for years now.” Halikor asked with an unconcerned shrug.
“That’s what the queen said when I went to her.” Lily said with a frown, wondering why she was the only one who was worried about the problem. “The issue now, is we’ve pushed them further than they can allow and still maintain face.” She said patiently, trying to get her point across to at least one person. “We set up shop in their backyard, Halikor. They were able to overlook that, but then we stole their greatest ally, the moon elves. When we showed them the dryad and oakkin. Not only did we take their allies away, but the moon elves and the wood elves decided to grow their new forest on the plains outside the valley Owl Two claimed as Syndicate territory.
The kingdom is huge, but the king knows as well as we do, the elves won’t stop with a small forest. Hellebore is more reasonable than Unyielding oak, but he won’t stop the forest’s growth for human boarders. Neither will he hold back the elf’s wrath if someone comes to take down their trees.” Lily stood up as she talked, going back to pacing.
“On top of all that, now we are expanding our reach even further, with the trade caravans. By not charging the villages and towns we visit, the taxes the king demands, we are able to sell at a lower price than the kingdom’s people. What’s worse, for them anyway, is that our products are so much better than there’s are, thanks to the electricity Owl Two has given us.”
“So, greed is going to force their hand?” Halikor asked, again seemingly unconcerned. “So what? They would have been wiped out without us and the moon elves saving them from the locusts. The moon elves, who are now firmly on our side I might add.”
“Wrong,” Lily said, banging the table with her fist. “The queen said the same thing. ‘Who cares if they want to attack us, the damned android and his monsters are between us and them.’ But do you really expect Owl Two to fight against a foe just to save us? As for the elves, they are bound to the dryad and oakkin. Both of whom are as loyal to the White Flame as Staz or the android himself.” Lily stared the father of her children in the eye as she continued, dropping the final bombshell.
“The worst part of it all, is another ship came down recently. One that wasn’t on the list Owl Two gave us.” She said quietly, nodding at the worried look that came over his face. “A ship filled with humans who, if the ambassador is to be believed, doesn’t like any race other than humans. They came looking for the locusts and heard rumors Owl Two brought the White Flame’s dormant queen back here. They’ve been pushing the king to bring us to heel, to force us to fall into line. And, technologically speaking, they are even more advanced than the moon elves. They wear heavy armor, carry powerful guns, and don’t mind killing anyone who stands in their way.”
Lily didn’t know if Halikor really understood the implications of what she was saying or not, but it terrified her. The Mountain’s embrace kingdom was a human kingdom. A human kingdom who held a hatred for goblins, even before they’d moved into their backyard. Now, combined with an entire crew of technologically advanced humans who hated all non-humans… Even if they didn’t attack right away, in a decade or two, when the tech level of the kingdom had been raised by the new invaders, they’d come for Undercity.
“What did the queen say when you told her all this?” Halikor asked, finally seeming to grasp how serious the situation was.
“She didn’t care at all,” Lily said slumping into her chair with defeat. “She just pointed out the elves wouldn’t leave their forest, and Owl Two wouldn’t abandon his valley. Then, she reminded me how good our defenses are in these caves. How anyone wanting to attack the city would have to cross the river, just like we did… She’s so lost to hatred towards Owl Two, she won’t listen to reason. I think finding out all her power wasn’t actually hers, being granted to her by the White Flame. It could all be taken at any time. Even her ability to think clearly without the unrelenting drive to reproduce, really got to her… Hunter will never forgive him for shoving that in her face.”
“Can you really blame her? That crazy human strolled into our city and demanded obedience, in exchange for our lives. Of course, we would accept, who wants to die? But now we are finally seeing the price for that help. The entire goblin race only functions because of his technology. Something he could take away at any time. Wouldn’t you be angry to realize your entire race was completely controlled by someone else?” Lily sighed, not really being able to disagree.
“I won’t argue with you,” she said after thinking about it for a while. “I don’t even think you’re wrong… I’m just trying to look at things from the android’s perspective. For the first time in nearly ten years, I might add.” She leaned forward, resting her chin on her hands as she spoke. “As immoral and hard to understand as he is, Owl two does what is best for his lord. The only thing the White Flame asked us for were troops, now the valley is filled to the brim with soldiers. Between the hobgoblins, hobats and batlins who joined them, and all the yokai he’s been breeding for a decade. Not to mention all the natural births over the years. The syndicate doesn’t lack for manpower.
Us on the other hand? He gave us an entire city, heck an entire underground kingdom we learned after exploring a bit. The place is beyond big… and the only thing he asked us for? To have troops ready for him when he came back, because he was going to need them to help keep us safe… and we don’t even have a standing army of our own. Hell, even our trade caravans are guarded by syndicate members. Now that I know Owl Two controls everything like he does, I’m actually surprised he didn’t shut us down the moment we turned our backs on his lord. Instead, he left us alone to dig our own graves.”
It was hard for Lily to say everything she just had. Extremely hard, but she needed to be honest with herself. She’d made a promise with Owl Two, before she lost the baby. To do everything she could to support the White Flame, her husband, while he was gone. After losing the child to an accident she’d suffered while sparring, something Staz told her not to do, she’d completely lost all motivation to do anything. Until she met Halikor.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
“What will you do?” The man who’d pulled her from suicidal depression asked, looking at her with confident, supportive eyes. Eyes she hoped would always look at her with love and acceptance, no matter what she had to do.
“I’m going to see Owl Two,” she said at last. “Andessa and Tupelo have gone to get the car already. As soon as they get here, we’re going up to the valley.” She looked at his face for any sign of disappointment, but thankfully, she didn’t find any. “I think it’s too late for our two sides to come together again, even if the White Flame came back, things have just gone too far now. But I need to know what is going on up there. Owl Two let me overhear a conversation he was having with some of the younger generation. Things aren’t going well for the White Flame.” She never called Ronin her husband in front of her consort. Since she’d parted ways with his syndicate, she didn’t really consider herself his wife either. Only using the title for her political benefit.
“Now, with the threat of war from the human kingdom. I just have a feeling; things are going to get bad again. The Undercity isn’t ready for that. With all the original goblin’s dead, and most of the bugbears having put up their war hammers in favor of crafters tools, how will we defend ourselves if the worst happens?”
“My lady,” Tupelo said, from outside the open office door. “The car is here, shall I come back later?” He asked, clearly having overheard some of the conversation.
“No, Tupelo.” It was Halikor who spoke, rising to his feet and enveloping Lily in a hug. “Be safe out there and come home soon. Me and the kids will miss you while you’re gone.” The tenderness and care in his voice nearly made Lily tear up, but she pushed it down. Returning his hug before untangling herself from him.
“I’ll come home as soon as I can.” She promised, following Tupelo into the street, where a small car was parked, electric engine running. The streets seemed emptier than they should have at this time of day, Lily looked around with a frown. Wondering where everyone was, she almost asked Tupelo about it, but was brought out of her thoughts when he spoke.
“Would you like the passenger or the rear seat my lady?” The elf asked politely. Lily smiled at him, knowing how tight a fit the car was for bugbears, having been designed for humans. She would normally be seated in the rear seat, due to her station, but it wouldn’t be very comfortable for her.
“I would like to feel the wind through my fur, I think.” She said at last, with a smile for the human sized elf. “So, I will sit in the passenger seat if you don’t mind taking the back?”
“Of course, my lady.” He said with a nod, climbing in. The small cars designed for speed were terribly uncomfortable. Unfortunately, she was in a hurry, so that was exactly what she’d asked them to get. Sure, they’d hate every minute of the ride, but at least they wouldn’t be trapped inside the car for the two days it would take to do the journey on foot.
Climbing in after him, Lily nodded her head to Andessa, who was driving. Before doing her best to get comfortable as the car shot off at speed towards the path leading to the surface. She didn’t know if what she was doing was right or not, but she knew she had to try something. The feeling of imminent disaster she’d been feeling since the meeting just wouldn’t let her go.
* * *
Ronin
Ronin took his first step into the hive, the sound of Elyria’s proclamations about him being a fool still ringing in his ears. To some extent, he agreed with her. There was no real reason he had to go back into one of the deathtraps he’d almost died in before. No reason at all, except for his own confidence.
After the last time, he’d started to fear he wasn’t cut out for this life. That he was a failure, who would only drag his people into death with him, if he kept going. It had taken him a while to put the pieces together. That his growing since of unhappiness was related to his failure in the hive last time, and his need to be saved by Leo Dawson. A man who was the personification of what leadership was in Ronin’s mind.
Yet, the closer they had gotten to the hive, the more anxious Ronin felt. Until the point where he considered going back. Come to think of it, they’d abandoned a harvesting session just before they hit the hive last time too. Sure, there had been good reasons for that, but Ronin had noticed the intense relief he’d felt as they climbed back down the tree. Not having noticed at the time, Ronin didn’t know what to do about his anxiety, which only frustrated him more. Now that he’d noticed this weakness in himself, however, he had to snuff it out.
“You good to go, Jaya?” He asked his companion. She was the only other person in their group who had an armored suit, so she was the only person who would enter the hive with him. Since Elyria refused to let him go alone. He waited for her to answer with a thumbs up, a gesture that was getting smoother every time. Nodding his understanding, Ronin opened fire with his gatling gun.
Just like last time, the hive exploded with the angry thumping buzz of thousands of swarming wasps. Unlike last time, however, Ronin wasn’t hiding in a small alcove. He was standing right out in the open. With only his armored suit between himself and the helicopter sized wasps and their giant stingers.
He wasn’t going in unprepared this time. He’d asked Stone to go get several more hoppers filled with the .25 diameter pellets the gatling gun used. He also had his kanabo, in case it came to melee, but he was confident this time would go more smoothly than last time. For a while, he was right. As the wasps built themselves up into a proper tornado of angry bodies, he and Jaya shot them down by the dozen. The air powered machine guns chewing through their soft bodies with ease.
Things went well for nearly a minute, until the wasps finally spotted the ones responsible for their deaths. After that, the battle changed. As one wasp after another made attack runs on them. Ronin had been right; the armored plates were a match for the stingers. Unfortunately, he hadn’t taken the wasps’ momentum into account. A foolish mistake, considering what happened last time a wasp hit him at full speed.
“Aahhggg,” Ronin grunted when the first wasp slammed into him with its stinger. He rocked on his feet, but it was the stinger that had broken in the clash. The wasp spiraling out of control behind him. He held up to the second assault ok as well, though it did rock him a little further back. By the fifth hit, he tipped over backwards, unable to maintain his footing under the constant bombardment.
He was able to see through the swarming bodies, that Jaya had also been knocked to the ground. The silent soldier was doing her best to climb to her feet, but she couldn’t regain her footing due to the constant attacks. Ronin, after trying to get up and failing, decided it was a waste of effort, and instead fired the gatling gun from his prone position. Jaya, seeing this, followed suit. The bodies rained down again, only this time they fell on top of the armor suited invaders.
His hopper having run dry, Ronin forced himself into a seated position to reload. He was so surrounded by bodies at this point that they acted something like a bulwark, between himself and the now frantically swarming wasps. They were pulling the bodies of their fallen away to clear the path, but that would take time. Time Ronin wasn’t going to give them. Slapping on the fresh hopper, Ronin lifted his weapon and continued to fire as fast as the gun was able.
He continued to be hit with falling bodies, and the occasional stinger strike knocked the wind from his lungs, but the fight was already as good as over. Even if they ran out of bullets, the armored pair would still be able to win this fight barehanded. Assuming the damage didn’t mount up and the armor continued to hold. It amazed Ronin just how much of a difference the right equipment could make on a battlefield. A handful of these suits would have changed the way the locust war was fought. The locusts’ giant talons could have pierced the suit’s armor, but from the safety of the wall, these gatling guns would have ended the war in a matter of days.
It was something he needed to keep in the back of his head, as he started to lead his own war bands again. He had to consider what his enemy was capable of, and what he could do to counter them.
“Let’s head deeper inside,” he said after a few minutes of the mindless killing. His thoughts had wandered again, since the battle was almost too easy now, and they’d cleared a large chunk of the swarm while he’d been thinking. Taking inventory, Ronin realized they were both down to their last hopper, but that was fine. The wasps didn’t hold anything in reserve. If the swarm was thinning, that meant they were almost all dead. That would only leave the queen and her guards deeper inside the hive. Knowledge that filled Ronin with anticipation.
“Wait here,” he said, motioning Jaya to step back once they’d reached the queen’s chamber. “I want to do this on my own.” The queen was larger than Ronin could adequately put into words. Bigger than a pre fall bomber jet, easily. The six guards, flying around her on the other hand, weren’t much bigger than normal wasps. Unlike normal wasps, they were covered in thick armor that put them on equal footing with a ladybug and had larger wings to support the added weight.
Ronin tried to duck as the first guard flew at him, having to dodge not only the stinger, but also the huge crab like claws the guards had. It was almost unfair, just how much stronger the guards were to normal wasps. Unfortunately, Ronin’s dodge didn’t go as smoothly as he’d hoped. The suit just wasn’t quick enough to respond to this level of combat. He was grabbed up in the claws, but the suit weighed too much for the wasp to carry him away with it, and they both crashed to the ground in a tangle of limbs.
Ronin heard the chitin creaking as the wasp did its best to crush him. He grinned widely when he realized it simply wasn’t strong enough. Bringing back his fist, he punched the wasp in the head. One hit took down the wasp, splattering his view port with gore, to the point he’d effectively blinded himself. Withdrawing his fist, Ronin tried to wipe the gunk from his vision, only succeeding in smearing it around as another guard grabbed him from behind.
The attack slammed him face first into the waxy paper floor. The soft material helped to cushion his fall and wipe some of the gore from his vision as he gripped the giant claw in both hands and pulled. He’d only meant to force it open, but he’d actually ripped the claw in half with that move. Swinging his arm around, he tried to finish the guard off, but it had already flown away, creating distance between them.
After another dive attack, which resulted in another broken claw, the guards kept their distance from Ronin, circling around, but unwilling to get too close. This created a stalemate because Ronin wanted to finish this battle by hand. The stalemate lasted until he gave up on the guards and advanced on the queen. That forced them into action, even knowing they couldn’t harm the intruder.
Ronin didn’t even slow down his pace after that. He just advanced slowly, stumbling, or falling from time to time as the guards attacked him. Each time they did, however, they left themselves open to a counterattack. Ronin didn’t get them every time, he was still slow and lacked grace in the suit, but when he got his hands on a guard, that guard died.
It didn’t take too long for the guards to all go down, and for Ronin to reach the queen. She was gigantic, but didn’t move very fast, and in less time than it had taken to dispatch her guards, Ronin slammed an armored fist through her skull.
“Bravo,” Elyria said. The elf hovered just outside Ronin’s reach and was slowly clapping her hands with exaggerated motions. “You killed your way through the hive, and even bested the queen and her guards in mortal combat… You put yourself, and our entire world, at risk just to prove you could do it. Do you feel better about yourself now?” She asked, still clearly unhappy about his decision to enter the hive with only Jaya as backup.
Ronin didn’t get angry or annoyed at the question or the tone. She had a point. They’d discussed this after the battle with the color force some time ago. How it wouldn’t have been such a close call if they’d used the weapons at their disposal from the start. Yet, he’d needed the boost to his confidence defeating the hive nearly single-handedly, brought him. So, when he finally answered, he did so with a huge smile on his face.
“Yes, I do.”