Sharky charged straight at the nearest of the Hive, catching him in a crunching tackle before anyone else could react. His shoulder drove into the Hive's midriff and bore him to the ground. The Hive’s head slammed into it and bounced. With one hand grasping the Hive's neck, Sharky raised a burly fist and drove it down through the swarming wasps. The Hive went limp as it connected, and as it did, the wasps fell away, just as stunned as the one they resided in was.

Barely had Sharky done so that the rest of the Hive were on the move, reacting as one, moving as one. There was a definite pattern to the way they moved. A number of them set up a screen to intercept the rest of Sharky's crew, and to trap me behind them, while three moved in on Sharky, preparing to deal with him alone while the rest of their fellows kept his crew away.

It left me alone and cut off, nearby to Mother and surrounded by angry Hive. Not the best of positions to be in. Far from it in fact.

As it turned out, I hadn't been alone in preparing for the trip to visit the Hive. Sharky and his crew had as well, except they had been preparing for the worst.

A low growl came from the wolven, a rumble that originated deep in his chest and echoed through the chamber. It had edges to it, of raised hackles and imminent violence. The wolven rolled back his lips, revealing terrible incisors, even as he unsheathed razor sharp ivory claws. It was enough to give even the Hive pause. The wolven's thick fur gave him some measure of protection against the sting of the wasps, while they had no protection against those claws and fangs, ones that were deadly if used.

Behind him, the others of Sharky's crew gathered together, pulling items out of their coats. Two of them held bottles in which some form of liquid sloshed about. These they hurled to the ground in front of the wolven, at the point where the Hive were converging on Sharky. Pools of liquid spread out across the floor from the broken bottles. The other two had boxes of matches in hand. They each took out a match and began to strike them. The matches flared and were thrown into the liquid.

In an instant it caught alight, sending pale flames licking into the air.

Fire is one of the few things that worry the Hive. Then again it worries me as well, and more so after the incident with the Worms. The buzz of angry wasps intensified at the sight of it and the Hive backed away from the flames.

I took advantage of the distraction and slipped away from Mother, before the Hive turned on me. The precariousness of where I was spooked me. I had to get away. No other thoughts crossed my mind but that. I made my way back around the Hive and the flames, to a place of relative safety. Relative only given our situation.

Sharky got back up to his feet. He cracked his knuckles as he sauntered over to the rest of his crew.

While the flames were keeping the Hive away from us, for the moment, it was only a short term measure. It would not solve our problems. Indeed, it had only served to further anger the Hive. There was, as I saw it, only one way in which to solve the problem.

And I had given up the perfect position from which to do it.

"I need a distraction," I told Sharky.

The big man nodded. "Right youse are. Come on lads!"

With a roar, Sharky began to advance on the Hive, alongside the wolven. The rest of his crew followed on behind him. The stepped around the flames and continued their advance. The Hive responded in kind and both packs closed in on each other. The snarling wolven leapt, his spring far beyond that which a mere human could manage. His pounce carried him into the Hive, with slashing claws and snarls. It marked the start of a general melee.

I left them to it and dashed aside, seeking to skirt around them and make my way back to where Mother sat.

The Hives instincts kicked in, with one of their number splitting off from the melee, makings its determined way towards me to respond to any danger posed to Mother. My hand slipped out of my pocket, the brass knuckles wrapped around them. I had no other option but to take my licks and so I charged at the Hive. As I neared, I swung as hard as I could, aiming into the swirling cloud of wasps, towards where I hoped the head of the Hive was. Sharp pain lanced into my exposed flesh of my hand as the wasps attacked me, reacting to the attack. At least one darted out and stuck at my cheek. The pain stabbed through me, a burning sensation that I had to just grit through and endure.

I felt rather than saw my fist glance off the head of the Hive. Unable to see properly, my strike had not quite connected right. The Hive did stagger back a few steps under it but did not go down. And so I slugged it again. This time I managed a solid blow, right on the point of the chin. It folded up at the knees and went down. The wasps stopped their attacks and fell as well, raining down around the prone form of their host.

I shook my hand. Welts were appearing across it already, red and sore. The pain, while substantial, wasn't yet to the stage of being debilitating. Too many more stings though and it would reach problematic levels. Now, if I had been allergic to them, then that would have been trouble.

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I needed to finish the fight quick, before it got really out of hand. Vaulting the fallen body, I rushed towards where Mother sat. Another of the Hive tried to break from the melee to reach me, only to be jerked back into it as Sharky's large hand collared it and hauled on it.

I slipped the brass knuckles off and returned them to my pocket, replacing them with the revolver. I levelled the piece in her direction as I slid to a halt in front of her.

"Call them off, now," I barked.

The buzz of the wasps reached a fever pitch at the threat and the lights dropped into an even darker red, verging on black. The Hive actively tried to break away from the melee, all of them at once, to come to Mother's aid. Sharky and his crew tackled them, trying to trip them up and delay them but there were more Hive than them, and so a few leaked away.

I pointed the revolver right at Mother, my finger curling around the trigger. "Do it," I growled. I was growing desperate, and desperate people were prone to rash actions. Mother understood that. She may have thought I was bluffing, but that was a risk that she couldn't take, just in case.

She held up her hand and the Hive stopped in its tracks. They back away, though the wasps still swirled around them in angry clouds.

That Mother had brought my bluff came as a huge source of relief. I could not have carried through with my threat if she hadn't backed down. It just wasn't my style to simply gun down an unarmed woman, whether she led the Hive or not. You start down that path and there is no turning back. It would make me little better than the thugs and criminals that I ran across all of the time in my line of work, the type quick to solve their problems with violence, an option that, more often than not, just served to make problems worse.

"I am sorry that it had to come to this," I told her. "We could have settled this peacefully but you forced our hand."

"You were the ones that came into our home," she pointed out. "You refused to leave when asked. No forcing of hands happened here."

"A man's life hangs in the balance. I do not have time to argue about this." I gestured with the revolver again. "Now, are you going to help us or not?"

Mother's head angled to one side as she considered the choice, staring at the stubby nose of the revolver. Despite the threat, she remained remarkably calm. I had to admire that about her, even while knowing that I would not be so composed if the roles were reversed. "A word broken under duress is not the same as one broken by free will. I will tell you what you want to know."

I gave her a nod of understanding. They had backed down before I had, which was always welcome. I eased my finger off the trigger and lowered the revolver, but only slightly. I still needed to maintain the implied threat, just in case. "Tell me about the man that you took."

Mother settled back down in her chair. "We were approached, a few weeks back, by a man who wished to hire our services. At first, we considered him one of you. Something did not sit easy about him for there was something inside of him that marked him as different. We could sense it and we did not like it for he was far more dangerous than he seemed. A darkness rested within him. He asked us to undertake a simple job, simply to find a man, to capture him and turn over what he had, a box and a key. We almost refused. He paid well though, and we had the feeling that refusal would not end well for us, even if he was but one man. He said no such things, nor even implied it. It was just something about him, a feeling we had."

"It didn't go quite as you planned, did it?" I asked. Behind me I could hear Sharky and his crew, a low level muttering and cursing. They were tending to the wasp stings they had taken, removing any stingers that had lodged into their flesh and applying unguent to the welts to ease the pain. Much as I wished to join them and do likewise, it would have to wait until the conversation with Mother was finished. I tried to set the pain aside as best I could, to ignore it. It didn't prove easy.

"When does it ever?" Mother asked. "We found the man, as asked, but he no longer had the box on him when we managed to grab him. He had passed off the box to strangers when we lost him in the mists. The key he still had. We turned the key over to the one who had hired us. He was not particularly happy with what had happened but had us keep the man we had taken."

"Where is he now?" I demanded.

"A week ago, the man returned, this time with company, an elf of the upper city and an ogre. They took him away. We were glad to be done with the whole business. The elf still swore us to secrecy. When Them Above speak, you listen and obey."

That certainly explained Mother's reluctance to speak to us. Crossing the will of one of Them Above was a sure-fire way to end up in some form of disaster. And they weren't exactly subtle about it either. They wanted people to know that crossing them was not tolerated.

"Dats bad, really bad," Sharky grunted, voicing agreement with my own sentiments.

"Any chance that you would know where they took him?" I asked. I had been so close to finding Hanes, only to have that dashed. If I couldn't get some idea of what had happened to him, I might never find him, not now he was in the custody of one of Them Above. Just the thought of crossing them sent a chill running through my body.

"They did not wish us to know," Mother replied. The way in which she said it, though, led me to believe that it wasn't the it wasn't the end of the matter. She knew something.

"You do, though don't you?"

"Yes. We arranged to have them followed. Discreetly. It was felt that we needed leverage should they attempt anything towards us, to silence us. They did not take him far. To Heathpool. There is a residence there, Thirteen End Way, in which he is being held."

"Thank you."

"If they are to ask, I never told you."

"I understand." I stowed away my revolver and made to turn towards Sharky.

"One moment," Mother said. I looked across to her. "You would not have fired upon me, would you." A statement, not a question.

"No."

"It is as we thought. We can tell these things."

"Then why did you give up the information?"

"We needed a reason to do so. This way we can say we were forced into it."

I allowed myself a smile. She had wanted to tell us. All the fighting and stings had been unnecessary, really. There would have been a way to get it from her. We just had to find it. We had chosen the hard way. "Thank you," I said to her.

I walked across to Sharky. Despite his thicker skin, the big man bore a number of welts as well from the wasp stings to which he was applying unguent.

"If dere be elvses mixed up in dis, dat makes things different," he told me. "We helped youse here, as wese promised. Wese can't afford to me be gettin' mixed up with da elvses though."

"I understand. You did what you said you would," I replied. "I can take it from here."

Yeah, just me alone going up against the Worm and one of Them Above. That was going to end well.