Chapter Thirty - Quaint Queen

I winced when the Mantis Queen turned her attention onto the human next to her and clamped her mandibles around his head. The cultivator flinched as well, but it was far too little, far too late, his life energy was being slurped up by the Queen already.

"You know, your employee retention rates are going to be abysmal if you continuously eat your hardest workers," I pointed out.

The Mantis Queen hissed, which of course sent little giblets of the cultivator flying all over. "You are powerful," she admitted. "But this is my home!"

She might have had a point.

There was a saying once, a very long time ago now, about never fighting a wizard in their tower. It was a rather sensible kind of saying, the sort that I believe came about because of a harrowing and likely very costly experience for someone.

A powerful caster was at their most powerful within their home, and while I had been toying with the Mantis queen thus far, there was the real possibility that she was, in fact, a stronger enemy than I was giving her credit for.

Underestimating a foe was a terrible sin.

"Do you know what day it is?" I asked.

The Mantis Queen stared. "Is this more of your painful word playing?"

"It's Sunmonday!" I cackled. "Oh, wait, no! Let me start over. Hey there, you look a little hungry, would you like somefiend to eat?"

The Mantis Queen hissed all the harder, even as a second rent in reality was opened and a tiny fiend was flung out of the void towards the Mantis Queen. She smacked it aside with a scythe-arm and squirmed unhappily. "Why must you be so... you?!"

"It's who I'm best at being," I said. A slight glance around me to take in the situation showed that things were... actually, not all that bad. Cinder was looking a little singed, which really only suited her. Her foes were mostly incapacitated or were not prime material for a new batch of undead.

My attention was pulled back for a moment as the Mantis Queen screeched. Not a magical attack, just a frustrated scream. "Why are you not taking this seriously?!"

Mem and Rem, for all of their bickering, were proving to be pretty decent at fighting together. Well, Rem was doing the fighting, Mem was tossing things at their wayward sisters and tugging Rem back and away from some attacks. The other mantises in the room were in a rough state. In fact, most of them were subdued on the ground, entirely unable to fight anymore. Viscous little things.

Alex was daintily hopping around, doing as a maid ought and keeping things clean and ensuring that everyone on our side was well, and the dwarven lads were... near the back, taking turns kicking some impudent young cultivator who looked like he had tried to sneak up on them. Good for the lot of them!

The Mantis Queen herself was... more or less intact. She had brushed past a few blows that should have injured her, and they did leave their mark, but it seemed like eating her second in command had done much to revitalise her.

"Are you certain?" I asked.

The Queen's eyes did the mantis-y equivalent of narrowing. "Certain of what, filthy undead?"

"Are you certain you want me to take this seriously?"

"Yes!" she snapped.

I shrugged my boney shoulders. "Very well, then. It's the least I can do. You will Wish otherwise, however." I raised a hand, and snapped my fingers.

The room went surprisingly quiet.

Cultivators pulled back, some lowering their weapons, and the mantises hissed with aggression, but they were no longer being spurred on to attack.

I cleared my throat. "Everyone, please surrender," I said. "Not that you have very much of a choice."

I noticed Belt at the back touching the side of his head. "What... what were we here for?" he asked.

"The mantises," Orbital next to him said with the confidence of the uninformed. "We're obviously here to clear out the mantis infestation."

Yes, I supposed that was a perfectly sensible explanation for why they were here. There was a spot in the centre of the room where the Mantis Queen should have been. A conspicuous void. Honestly, were she not using so much of my own power to bolster herself, she wouldn't have been as open to this sort of attack.

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Not that I cared to explain such a thing to someone who no longer existed.

"Well! It seems like things are well in hand here!" I said as I placed both hands on hips. I released all of my summons, keeping only the plants who were too handy... rooty? No that didn't work. Anyway, the plants were too useful to let go of just yet! "Dear cultivators, please have a seat, Alex will be with you shortly to tie you up. Alex, dear, bring the dead off to the side. I'll raise them in a moment."

Alex bowed, then set off to do just that. Soon the remaining, living cultivators were strung up by long lengths of ribbon that they couldn't seem to fight their way out of. Alex was very creative with that ribbon.

Cinder wandered over while brushing down her dress and trying to compose herself. "It seems like our work here is done done?" she asked, but her brows were knit together. "I... something feels off about this?"

"Oh, don't worry overly much about it," I said. "The mantis problem plaguing your sect will now be taken care of, won't it?"

"Mem's happy," Mem said as she moved over. "And Mem is a little sad too. She's going to miss Mom."

"Mom?" Rem asked. "We didn't fight any sister called Mom, we fought Bif, Bap, Bip, and Bop." she gestured to the mantises they'd fought who were in a heap on the far end of the room. I could practically imagine the little canaries spinning around their heads.

"No, Mem means Mom... Mem thinks? Mem has to have come from somewhere, right?"

"From the nest, obviously," Rem said before she dismissed her sister. She glanced down at her butler's uniform, all torn up and in quite a state, then tugged at a rip with the end of a scythe. It made it worse. "Alex is going to be very annoying."

I tapped my chin as I considered the repercussions of this. Would it come around to bite me? Possibly. But then again, I didn't expect it to be anything I couldn't handle. "Cinder, you'll be most familiar with the cultivators, what do you think we ought to do with them?"

"Hmm hmm, strip them of their equipment and gear first. Some may have valuables that they might try to use to escape. After that... with the threat of the mantises subdued... will there be more of them?"

"I doubt it," I replied.

"In that case, we could use the living cultivators as hostages. The dead... their respective sects might want to keep the bodies for burial."

"Well, that won't do. I'll allow the Ashen Forest to keep the living, but I'll need some assistants to carry the loot around."

"Loot?" Belt asked.

"Of course! There's a small treasure trove of valuables here," I said. I did love me a bit of looting. "Mem!"

"Yes?" Mem asked as she perked up.

"You're in charge of informing the local mantises that they are now under... new management. I wonder... do you think it would be better to surrender the mantises to the Ashen Forest, to have them decide their own fate with a new leader, or should we relocate the lot of them to the old Hungering Inferno sect? The Limpet could use an army of auxiliaries, I think."

"Mem... thinks that the best option is whichever would allow her sisters to pick whether they have to fight or not."

Rem scoffed. "Every mantis is meant to fight, it's what we're good at!"

Mem shook her head. She clearly disagreed, and maybe she was serving as a decent example of such disagreement. "Well, I suppose the Limpet will be surprised then! Mem, seeing as how you have no other responsibilities at the moment, I'm promoting you to... Officer cadet. Work hard and your entire race won't go extinct."

Mem stared, then straightened up to give me a sloppy salute. "Sir yes Mem!"

She was enthusiastic, at least.

"Now, let's discuss the disposition of our... guests," I continued, turning to address the bound cultivators with a grandiose wave of my skeletal hand. "Cinder, ensure their bindings are secure, but leave them comfortable enough. Hospitality, even in capture, is a virtue, wouldn't you say?"

All I earned for my good grace were some glares and one of them spat between my loafers. Ah, youth, always so uncouth.

"Now now, just think of it as a mandatory sabbatical! If your sects care about you, then they'll be eager to pay off your ransoms."

The Limpet would need that money to keep her little kingdom going!

***