I started to speed up when I saw them in the distance before thinking better of it and slowing back down. They stopped as Rose shot down a wasp, giving me enough time to catch up. Will noticed me while Rose harvested a shard.
“Ethan! I didn’t expect to see you here. Got tired of waiting?” I tried my best to match his energy, missing the mark entirely.
“Yeah I, ah, thought you could use a hand.” Well at least I sounded sort of confident, fake it till you make it, right? Rose jumped in
“Hey Ethan, get any shards on your way over?”
“Uh, yeah, I fought one on my way over.” I grabbed my backpack and pulled out a shard, carefully handing it over. Rose snatched it up, and then looked at it with a frown.
“Another spear, I swear that’s all we're getting. I wish we needed these, we nearly have an orb of them.”
“Really? How many have you gotten?” Will jumped in.
“Like seven, eight now. I think it's the only thing we’ve gotten other than the first wasp. I think the curse gods got us.” I felt the answer to the question I had been asking myself click into place. I hadn’t thought it was a viable option before, but now…
“Maybe I could use them? I mean, I tried to make my shield spiked, but the armor shard didn’t want to. If I grabbed a spear aspect maybe I could combine them?” I realized my idea was dumb as I said it, two aspects were nice, but I needed an attunement. Will answered before I could backtrack, grinning.
“That sounds awesome, and we only need like two more, right?” Will's excitement reassured me I was making a good choice. I smiled, remembering something.
“Actually I think we only need one, I have another spear aspect at the shrine.” I said, before turning to Rose, confidence falling again. “Of course, if you want to keep the shards thats fi-” she interrupted me before I could finish
“Nah, it's fine, I owe you a few shards, you give me any cape aspect you find and I’ll call it even.”
“Oh, alright then.”
“Yeah! Now let's go get that last shard.” Will cheered, and we started going a bit further. We stopped after around thirty feet. I looked around unsure why, immediately regretting it when the vertigo hit. I sat down for a moment, and Will joined me on the ground. He pointed past me and gave a quick explanation.
“We’ve been farming over here for a while cause it's been consistent.” I looked where he was pointing. There was a misshapen beige ball, a hexagonal hole on it facing the branch, though I couldn't make out the inside from this angle.
“Is that a wasp nest?” I asked, hoping I was wrong, but knowing I wasn’t. Will grinned.
“Yup, every now and then a wasp crawls out, then we backtrack so that it flies over the branch and Rose snipes it. Pretty cool, right?”
“Uh, yeah… what if they get annoyed and a bunch of them come out?”
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
“I don’t think that can happen, I’m pretty sure that they come out as soon as they are created by whatever’s in there, and we haven’t bothered getting closer to it.” Well I couldn’t fault him for that logic, even if the nest wasn’t on an entirely different branch I wouldn’t dare to get closer. After a bit Rose joined us on the ground. We all sat there watching the nest for a couple minutes until it began to shake a little. The others quickly got up, and I followed suit as a wasp head poked out of the nest and quickly locked onto our group as Rose manifested her avatar with a motion like pulling something down. We ran along the branch, and I had to manifest my avatar to override my fear of falling off. Rose called for us to stop and I followed Will behind her while she lined up her shot. The arrow flew true and the wasp fell to the branch as it dissolved. We walked over, Rose grabbed her arrow, and then we returned to the nest to rinse and repeat.
It was twenty minutes later on our fourth wasp that we got a shard, and to all of our dismay it was bright green poison attuned shard, the one wasp drop none of us needed.
“At least we can trade it right? Will offered, and we agreed, though as usual Rose definitely had more energy than I did. We fought another six wasps before we got another shard, finally another cape shard. We had a little celebration on the branch before we remembered what had resulted from our last celebration. We quickly relaxed, but the damage was done, and the next shard we got was another poison. By then Rose had pulled an entire book from one of her pockets and was reading while me and Will took turns watching the hive. Around four we decided next wasp would be the last for the day, we were all tired and bored, and we’d gone through dozens of wasps. The wasp didn’t produce a shard, and we made our way down the branch. By now I felt much less uncomfortable walking down the branch, though I still wasn’t willing to get near the edge. The trunk was in sight when Rose stopped us.
“Wasp, looks bigger than usual too.” I turned and sure enough a tier two wasp was coming our way. I manifested my avatar while rose took a shot, striking it in the eye as usual. It stuttered mid air, but kept moving toward us. Rose shot again, but the arrow went past as it jolted left. It was unclear if the dodge was intentional, but it worked and now it was in firing range. I had my shield out by then and the lance struck it, pushing me back a hair. I froze up for a moment, remembering last time I had faced a wasp this size. Puckett I wasn’t alone this time, and Will's sword/dagger went into its undamaged eye, and it fell to the ground dead and undissolved. He pulled an off white shard from it as I regained control of my body, and he and Rose cheered. I joined them a moment later, pretending I hadn’t just frozen up. Will complimented me on how I’d taken the blow so easily, and I felt myself relaxing a bit as I complimented him on taking down the wasp. By the time we got back to the trunk I was feeling much better. We all sat down and relaxed, and I shared some of the snacks I had brought, earning thanks from both of them. While me and Will finished our granola bars Rose sorted out the shards we had found. There were three cape aspect, four poison, and nine spear. Rose repocketed the poison and cape shards, and then looked at me expectantly. I wasn’t sure what she wanted until she spoke up.
“You were using the spear shards, right?”
“Oh yeah, sorry.” Feeling silly I started putting the spear shards in my backpack, and Will gave me a quick hand. We relaxed a bit longer before starting the trek down the trunk, and it was just as Sergio as I remembered. After a few minutes my legs were burning, and I decided to manifest my avatar. Immediately my legs stopped burning, and I didn’t feel nearly as terrified to be there. Will and Rose followed suit soon after. All of our avatars had run out by the time we reached the bottom, but my legs didn’t burn nearly as bad as last time. Since I wasn’t planning on delving any more today, it was worth it.
“So, should we go to the shrine?” Will asked, and I paused.
“Uh, I wasn’t planning on it, why?”
“Well we have all the shards for your next tier, so I thought you could just tier up.”
“Oh yeah, but I don’t know if I’m at a hundred sync yet.”
“Alright that's fair. It couldn’t hurt to check though, right?” Rose jumped into the conversation.
“Yeah, plus even if it's not ready we could at least grab the last shard and make the orb.” Now both of them were looking at me excitedly and I didn’t have a choice.
“Okay, I guess we're going to the shrine then.” and with that we started the short walk to the shrine. I turned back as I reached the door, receiving thumbs up from both Will and Rose. it was too late to turn back now. I stepped into the shrine.