"So they're actually trying to come through here, huh?" Lenoly puts her ear against the wall of hardened lava and listens, but can't hear anything.
"They changed to slowly scraping after the first impact." Xaggavea explains. "But my strings picked that off too."
"This place should be quite easy to defend though. Continue with your work and lay your traps. The fire giants will cover the exit of this cavern when the time comes." Looking up at the upside-down Anthera, who's hanging onto the ceiling using her four arms and appears to be asleep, the bakari girl sighs. "When they break through, don't try to fight and retreat. Anthera's poison and your web should slow them down and thin their ranks."
"Understood." Nodding, the spider girl returns to work on laying her web.
"Can I bring you something to eat?" Lenoly wonders how much more web matter Xaggavea can create even though she hasn't eaten much recently. The fire giants eat minerals mined from the volcanic rocks, so they have to care for their own food. And due to the dangers of roaming frost giants, only Nezera and Szaga can go out hunting.
"No, I'm fine. So you say Chaos-sama will be thawed out in another night or two?"
"Yes..."
"It's going to be alright, I'm sure." Anthera's voice suddenly comes from above. She has detached from the ceiling and is floating down gracefully on her spread wings. The giant eyes on them invoke anxiety in Lenoly, even though she knows they're fake.
"It'll take a while for them to come through." Xaggavea points behind herself. "At the rate they're going, it could take a fortnight."
"Just in case, be prepared for them to break it down all at once." With these words, the little bakari leaves behind the lava chamber to get the two maids something to eat after all.
On the way to the single-family room the giants freed up for the visitors to use as a base of operations - which equals a proper hall for their smaller size - Lenoly notices that the women and children look anxious. The smallest child is almost twice her height, and to people of her size, they would still be considered powerful beings. To see someone like that trembling in fear drives home just how dangerous these enemies are.
"Can you bring Xaggavea and Anthera some food? I'm going to check the thawing vat." Upon reaching the headquarters, she finds only Szaga perching on the two-story-tall stone table. Nezera may be scouting out the depths with her hearing skills to see whether there are other places the frost giants could enter from.
"... right." The gargoyle girl hangs her head and replies after a moment of silence.
"What's wrong?" Lenoly asks, but can already imagine that she's thinking about the fire giant that saved her from the rubble. He had jumped and extended his hand as a last resort to bring her to safety while sacrificing himself. Even though they're honored guests here, it wasn't an act that should have come to them naturally.
"Nothin'." Szaga quickly replies and spreads her wings to fly over to the remains of the elk she hunted a few days ago. Her behavior makes it clear that she prefers to brood over it herself, so Lenoly won't bother her anymore.
Leaving the room behind, she heads for the workshop where Asoko is lying in a giant-sized vat filled with an orange liquid resin. Her face has regained its color, and her eyes have closed now. They had remained open with a perpetual expression of surprise until not too long ago.
That a part of her can move is already more than what all the demon attempts achieved. Before, she was like a statue carved from marble, and they feared that she could break into pieces from a heavy impact. Now, she looks asleep, and maybe about to open her eyes at any time.
The fire giant overseeing the procedure is a woman one head smaller in stature than any of the other fully grown giants, possessing the attitude of a pragmatic inventor. She's considered an odd one among her people because they observe strict traditions and hierarchy, which she wholeheartedly disregards. Her name is Aslaug, and she's the one who created the thawing vat about a century ago.
When Lenoly thinks about it, it means that this fire giant with her more human appearance than that of her peers is, in fact, older than all demons here combined.
"You staring at her won't speed up the process, you know?" Aslaug comments when she sees that Lenoly has come to visit again. "How's the situation outside?"
She often shuts herself in her workshop for moons on end, coming up with all kinds of inventions that already exist among humans and demons, but are unheard of in this part of the world. One of those is a drill made from steel, with which the minerals that serve as their food could be mined faster. It was met with widespread criticism because the tribe considers the process of mining with their bare hands an important ceremony in itself.
"The main entrance collapsed." The little bakari reports the situation. None of her people deemed it important to inform her of anything, it seems. "They're trying to break through the lava vent."
"So that's what that noise was." Aslaug shrugs and returns her attention to the workbench, on which tools and piles of stone tablets are strewn around. She created a written language for her people, but it was ignored because their longevity means that oral tradition is simpler, so she's using it for herself for the time being.
"Is that all?" Lenoly wonders about how carefree this crazy inventor can be under these dire circumstances. "We're trapped in here, and they're trying to come in to finish us off."
"Didn't you say that one is the demon queen? She can save us all when she wakes up then." Shrugging without turning around, the fire giant continues her work.
"... she isn't who everybody thinks she is." Suddenly, as if a dam broke inside her, the little bakari lays bare the secret she has been keeping all this time. If any of the demon maids learned about that, their worlds would be shattered.
"Hm?" Spinning around on her swiveling chair, Aslaug instantly finds interest in the topic. "Then who is she?"
"It's... hard to explain." For some reason, Lenoly feels that it would be alright to tell this outcast about the fact that Asoko, while being Chaos in both appearance and personality, is not the same person that performed all the feats she's known for.
Chaos was the one who uncovered the plot to kill the demon queen and warned her about it. She was the one who fought the professors at the academy twice on her own and survived both times with only being banished to a faraway place. She was the active one while Asoko was confined to a dungeon in the Khurut Sultanate for a long time.
"I don't really get how there can be two of the same person, but it sounds like this Asoko here was the one whom all of you are following." Aslaug points at the girl in the vat. "She was the one who fought against Rimfryst, no?"
"Yes, but..." While Asoko might have been the one to fight Rimfryst, she wasn't the one Lenoly first met at the academy.
"Then she's a legitimate Chaos, too. Whatever that means." Shrugging once again, the fire giant says flippantly and turns back to her work. "Don't brood over such things. Their actions in life, not circumstances of their birth, decide a person's position in the world."
She goes quiet after that and returns to filling empty stone tablets with notes about her inventions by scorching their surfaces with her slender fingers.
The bakari girl looks at Asoko and ponders the meaning of those last words. Both Chaos and her other half have their strengths and weaknesses, their successes and shortcomings. And the one she first made love with was the latter, whom she journeyed across continents with to reach the demon castle together. In actuality, she spent more time with Asoko than with Chaos.
Does that mean the others would accept it if she told them?
The sound of a heavy crash that shakes the very mountain wakes Lenoly from her sleep. She had gone to sleep and decided to tell them the next morning, but it would seem that fate has something else in store for her.
There are no proper doors in the fire giants' cave dwellings, so she can see from her bed under a stone chair that there are members of the tribe running past the doorway hastily. Scared voices echo through the caverns, and a child is crying somewhere.
"They're breaking through on the next one." Flann suddenly appears by the little bakari's bedside and says in a tone that implies she has no stake in this; even though the content of her message is alarming, she doesn't look the part at all.
Lenoly jumps up and runs towards the lava chamber; she was wearing her clothes in bed in case of an emergency, and it paid off. Along the way, she meets up with Szaga, who comes from the direction of the collapsed entry. She most likely visited the place that has now been turned into a memorial site for the fallen.
Just as Szaga wants to say something, the cave shakes under another earth-shattering impact. She takes up into the air and flies ahead, while Lenoly scrambles to catch up to her. They round the corner and find fire giants clumped up with stone spears, standing around the opening of the lava chamber anxiously.
"They've broken through!" One in the front announces in a despaired tone.
"Don't falter! We can easily hold them here!" Hakon is also among them, although it's hard to tell him apart from the others when looking from below.
"Where are Xaggavea and Anthera?" Lenoly asks at the top of her lungs to be heard, but her voice is still drowned out by the murmur of the giants.
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When nobody answers, she makes her way through the defenders by running between their legs. The very front is defended by the champion Hakon, who has placed down a tower shield made from a stone slab, to act as a makeshift barrier.
Squeezing past it without anybody paying attention to her, she reaches the inside of the lava chamber and covers her mouth and nose with a cloth. The temperature in it has dropped significantly, and she sees why; the wall of cooled and hardened lava has been shattered, and there's cold air streaming in from outside.
Xaggavea's webs are still intact, but there's no sign of either of the two demon maids. They must have completed their jobs and left already. The spider girl couldn't say here with Anthera's poison, and the latter has no reason to remain after having done her job of spreading it. But shouldn't they have come here as soon as they heard the commotion?
Lenoly is just about to turn around and leave again, as the longer she remains in here, the more likely for her to inhale some poison, but a rumbling sound stops her. It seems to be coming closer, and she stares at the entrance intently. Are the frost giants charging?
But instead of icy figures squeezing in through the opening, a torrent of water rushes in. They must have melted snow from the mountainside and somehow guided it in here.
The poisoned air inside the lava chamber is pushed deeper into the cave, as the water displaces it. She quickly runs away from the approaching water and squeezes past the giants on her way out. However, at the sight of the water, they also lose heart, and even Hakon can't maintain troop cohesion. Scrambling to get away, they nearly trample Lenoly underfoot, but Szaga quickly swoops down and picks her up.
"We need to get out of here." The bakari girl says while keeping her mouth covered with a cloth. She begins to feel sluggish, and her body doesn't obey her commands as quickly as it normally would; the poison has gotten into her system and is beginning to act.
Xaggavea and Anthera's trap was rendered completely useless by this enemy stratagem, and they most likely didn't even know about its existence. In turn, it's coming back to bite them now, as the poison travels with the air that's being pushed out, and it begins to fill the interior of the cave system in which the giants live.
One silver lining is the fact that it doesn't seem to affect them, but that's what they thought from the beginning. After all, fire giants don't have bodies like other life forms. They did consider that frost giants could be the same, although they do seem to breathe and eat organic matter.
Lenoly directs Szaga towards Aslaug's workshop. While it is higher ground than the lava chamber that's being steadily filled with water, which will soon overflow and spill into the corridor leading towards the tribe's living quarters, they don't know how much the frost giants have dammed up. As a last resort, they'll have to seal the door and lock themselves inside with the gargoyle girl's earth magic.
"Wha's their plan?" Szaga asks once they leave the most dangerous area where the poison most likely spread and breathes heavily. She must have been holding her breath all this time.
"I think they want to flood this whole place." Lenoly replies and looks behind herself. The fire giant defenders are running off to their homes, while the leadership seems to be going to convene in the communal room for an emergency meeting. Only Hakon remains with his tower shield, acting as a lookout and the first line of defense if they do come in with the water.
"What happened?" Aslaug doesn't waste any time on greeting them and asks without seeming to care about hearing an answer.
"The frost giants broke the lava chamber barrier and are guiding water inside. At this rate, the caves will be flooded." Knowing that the giant inventor is carefree beyond help, the little bakari still puts on an alarmed expression.
"No, that's highly unlikely." The former replies and points at the ground. "Volcanic rock is porous. Before this whole cave can flood, the water will start seeping in."
"Huh?"
"Don't 'huh' me, I just explained it to you, didn't I?"
"Are you sure?" Now Lenoly is skeptical. If that was the case, why would the fire giants be so afraid?
"It seems nobody else knows about this simple fact..." Shaking her head, Aslaug walks over to a barrel that matches her size - a multi-story stone tank for normal-sized people. "I'm the only one here who ever uses water. That's how I found out."
She pours a stone cup filled to the brim with it on the ground, and it almost instantly seeps in. The cup is the size of a barrel for Lenoly, so it was a considerable amount.
"The water is most likely streaming in really fast, so the lava chamber getting filled up is highly likely. But once it spreads out and flows into the other rooms, there can't be enough water to flood it all." Placing the cup on the edge of the barrel, the inventor finishes her explanation and sits back down at her workbench. "We're quite high up, so it'll just seep deeper and deeper down."
The frost giants most likely don't know that this won't work and will keep pouring water in through the entry until whatever they dammed up in preparation will be exhausted. Then what?
"Oh, but since the volcano cooled down, this might be problematic." Aslaug motions to turn around, but suddenly looks up and tilts her head with one flaming eyebrow lifted in a thoughtful expression. Then she shrugs. "Well, not like it's so cold in here that the water could freeze."
"What do you mean? What will happen when the water freezes?" Impatient about her unconcerned attitude, Lenoly presses the issue.
"Have you never tried freezing a sealed container of water filled to the brim before?" She looks at the little demon with a surprised expression. "The weakest part on the container breaks, because water expands when it freezes."
"Wha?" Szaga stares at the giant with an incredulous face.
"Ugh, it's always such a pain to talk to those of lesser intellect." Rolling her eyes, Aslaug returns to her work and makes it clear that she doesn't want to continue this conversation.
Lenoly and Szaga exchange a glance before they quickly make their way to the communal room to warn the fire giants about what they just heard.
"From Aslaug?" One of the elders sneers when the little bakari reports to them what she heard from the inventor.
"Don't listen to her. She isn't right in the head from cooping herself up in that so-called workshop of hers all this time."
"She has never contributed to the tribe in a meaningful way before."
Aslaug's reception isn't the best, and under the current circumstances, she will only be looked upon even less favorably than usual. That's why Lenoly already sent Szaga ahead to seal the lava chamber with her magic. She knows it's only a stopgap measure because if the frost giants can break down a wall as thick as the one that had been erected to seal the vent before, they will be able to do it with whatever the gargoyle girl can do in haste.
Leaving behind the gathering, the little bakari returns to their room to find Xaggavea, Anthera and Nezera already gathered there. They're also debating how best to protect the thawing vat until Asoko can move again. It seems the former two had returned to their nests after completing their jobs and fell asleep from exhaustion. They only woke up after the second impact sound and didn't go all the way to the chamber before finding out what happened.
"Szaga should seal the workshop entryway." Nezera argues, a rare instance when she raises her voice beyond the volume of a normal conversation.
"Then how are we getting out?" Xaggavea brings up this valid concern.
"When Chaos-sama is back, she can wipe out the frost giants single-handedly." The bat maid replies with an irresponsible statement. There's no guarantee that she's able to fight the moment she wakes up, and even then she might not be able to defeat them on their own.
"If only there were a way to move the vat." Anthera says in her usual air-headed tone and the other two glare at her for saying something useless.
"There is no point in bringing that up!" They flare up at her in unison.
"The caverns won't be fully flooded." Lenoly makes her presence known. "But the situation may be even worse."
She explains that the whole cave could come down on them when the water freezes and expands. If the ground below cracks and hollows, the support for the ceiling would weaken. And if the frost giants have a way to freeze it very quickly, it could happen within moments.
"But frost giants don't have magic. There should be no way they can do that." Xaggavea crosses her arms and taps a pair of her arachnid body's legs impatiently.
"Didn't they say their god Rimfryst has joined them?" Anthera mentions without thinking much, and everybody's hearts sink when they remember their encounter with Zylos in the infirmary. The moth girl wasn't there, so she doesn't know the sheer presence the god of frost exuded.
And he was involved in killing Queen Pelomyx, an existence among the demons that has always been placed on equal standing with the gods. None of the maids could even hope to stand up to him, and in their last encounter Chaos was frozen by his power as well. If they had to face him, they knew they couldn't come out alive.
"Then we should take Chaos-sama out of the vat and leave while we can." The spider girl is referring to the volcanic glass window in the communal room as their escape route. It's the only other place they could leave this volcano from, but they would have to smash it. And outside is a steep drop - the reason why the frost giants didn't attack from that angle even though its existence is clearly visible from afar.
"The thawing process isn't finished yet. We can't just take her out." Lenoly was in the workshop earlier and saw that no movements were coming from Asoko.
"It's better than everybody dying and leaving her at the mercy of the frost giants, or even Rimfryst." Even though her tone and phrasing may be a little too grave, Xaggavea is right.
There are three options in this matter. The first is to seal off the workshop doorway, leave the fire giants to fend for themselves, and hide until Asoko wakes up, then hope that they can either fight their way out or escape from Zylos who might be waiting outside. The second is to help the fire giants in the defense and try to weather the enemy assault - also until Asoko awakens and joins the fray - hoping that Zylos won't be among their ranks. Lastly, run with her body now, even though the thawing process isn't finished, and live to find another way to bring her back.
To Lenoly, none of those sound like they have great prospects of success. It comes down to making the best choice from three almost equally bad options.
"The sound of water stopped!" Nezera's ears twitch, and she turns towards the door. Szaga flies in at almost the same moment, wearing an expression that suggests her job is done. She lands on the ground and looks at everybody with an eyebrow raised.
"Huh, wha's wrong?" Her initial thought is that they were staring at her, but when they quickly get up and run past her, she looks bewildered. "Hey, wha's goin' on?"
"Szaga's wall still stands." The bat girl says while flying through the air; if the frost giants had broken it down, she would have heard it.
They soon reach where Hakon is standing guard and look past him down the corridor, which leads to the sealed lava chamber, lying just around a corner.
"There's still some standing water." Lenoly points forward, where a pool has formed on the ground. The water isn't seeping into the ground as quickly as it looked with the amount Aslaug spilled, but that's because there's a lot more here.
Some fire giants are peeking out of their rooms at the commotion. There are no movements in the darkness ahead of them, and Nezera isn't picking anything up.
"I don't hear anything on the other side." Landing next to them, she reports with an uneasy expression. This silence can't mean anything good.
"He is coming." Flann suddenly appears in the middle of the maids and mutters in her usual tone.
"Argh, stop doin' tha'!" Szaga shouts as she stumbles back in surprise.
"Who?" Lenoly has an idea, but still asks just to be sure. She wonders why Flann always appears shortly before something big happens, but never offers any advice or help. Furthermore, she only reports the inevitable.
Before the blonde mage can respond, the pool of water freezes in an instant. The earth beneath their feet rumbles, and cracks form in every direction, running up the walls. In some parts, the ground erupts into short geyser-like bursts of dust and rock, as the ice expands explosively.
"Zylos is here." She says, although there was already no question as to who could be responsible for such powerful magic.