Their knight, moonlight dancing across shining armor, plodded forth directly towards the front incoming hostile, which left Mila to do some quick math. Three people to protect, two enemies left to her, and only the one her present, as larger-than-normal that the ‘her’ might be.

It did not math well, for a conventional fight. Naw-Naw, Aluca, and Hughestace were not tightly clustered and did not have time to organize and bunch up, and the oncoming threats were about sixty degrees off of each other, so the only way to impose herself between her friends and whatever was coming was to be right on top of them. That would force her to fight purely defensively and be unable to use her tail, plus push all of them toward Rora’s imminent blade-swinging.

That was giving a few too many advantages away for free.

Thankfully, Mila also had the long-standing belief that convention was for chumps. And her instruction manual, The Domain of Dragons’ Death, implicitly agreed with that, given that nothing within its pages was conventional at all. Loud, distracting, flashy, and aggressive were all hallmarks of what Mila had managed to scrape out of the tome, and she needed some of that, probably.

Her right foot slid out and her left arm came up high, pulled back, and her eyes focused on the direction of the attacker that was coming in at the shallowest angle to the road, guessing that they would be visible a few moments before the other.

Three rapid, shallow breaths, not-quite-hyperventilating to flood a last bit of oxygen into her blood before she breathed deep and held it. The moment of waiting drove its own blades into her nerves and tail and throat, but was gone just as quickly at the flash of movement, a dark red, that caught Mila’s eyes, enough to activate her.

The pink kobold’s body and arm snapped forward, hurling her machete forward with a cartwheeling thwip that went unheard as Mila roared, forcing false vocal folds to squeeze tight and hating all of it. Dysphoria clawed at her mind, the gravelly vocalization tearing deep, but none of that could matter now - the roar had been vital. So sayeth the book.

Mila was already moving, trusting her throw to hit even if it did not maim whatever she had thrown it at, turning on the balls of her feet and launching forward. She passed her remaining blade to her left hand even as she processed what her eyes had seen, and the crawling revulsion at how she had twisted her voice was washed over with glacial water. It was not alleviated as the second emerged from the tree line.

It was low to the ground and yet still stood some four feet tall, taller than Mila and built from her nightmares, or damned near close to it. Enough that it almost caused her to stumble, even as its massive head swung to orient on her, massive blades attached to its face shifting in anticipation.

They were fucking ants, reimagined by H. R. Giger into angular monstrosities of ridges and bumps and unnaturally natural biomechanical nonsense, all the while shouting ‘bless the square-cube law’s heart’ at the top of their nonexistent lungs. It, or she because Mila was pretty sure eusocial ant drones were all female and these did not have ‘people’ vibes, was all head and abdomen, mandibles ready to shear a kobold in half and a tapered tip to the back that gave Mila strong ‘venomous’ vibes.

Mila fucking hated bugs. In both worlds. All worlds, even.

Scienceland had seen her, through a series of unfortunate accidents, go from a cousin “accidentally” snapping her arm to being unknowingly swarmed by hundreds of ants. Mila, at the time a young child and pumped full of painkillers, had not felt the waves of insectile assault until she was already chock full of bite wounds and venom, a festering pain that lasted weeks and left her with a vile allergy to insects.

Fantasyland Mila had never been a fan of bugs, but a job had seen her fall through what should have been solid footing and into a vile pit of larval beetles that had taken her scales as a personal challenge keeping them from their meal beneath. She had gotten out and the pit had been torched, but it had been an agonizing experience and had scarred her scales for over a year.

And apparently today was round three for the gestalt Mila.

Thin, spindly legs propelled the bulky reddish monster at Mila and with it came a sweet, orangey scent that tried and failed to mask the lemony stuff. As it rushed, it raised itself up higher and twisted itself inward, doing an unwieldy job of also bringing its rear to bear against her.

For all her bone-deep hatred of bugs, Mila did not let it freeze her up. She continued to close before slipping to her left, angling to turn it away from the others. She also made sure to loudly announce, “Stingers!” Because the actual stinger was not obvious at a glance, either retractable or very thin or something.

A train leaving station A and a different train leaving station B, heading towards each other and wanting to rend each other limb from limb, meant that Mila and the current ant were upon each other immediately, the latter correcting for Mila having tried to move past it. The ant, thankfully, was honest in its movements and slowed and threw its mandibles wide before rocking forward, chitin blades slamming together in bone-cleaving force as they caught nothing but air above Mila’s shoulder.

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She had dropped low, halting her running and pushing back against mushy footing, which not only brought her down below the heavy swing but also let her tail whip past her shoulder. Her flexible metal tail blade slammed up and into one of the massive compound eyes of the ant, further back from the tip of the whip than optimal, but instead of obliterating the thing’s head, of which its eyes and mandibles were most of, the blow just rocked its noggin back, the big dome eye only cracked and oozing.

The ant did not scream or anything, that would be too reasonable. Instead, it reared up and jabbed its abdomen forward, letting Mila know that the answer to the stinger question was very much ‘retractable’, albeit still thin, the smooth needle coming low and forcing the kobold into a scuttle further to the side.

A javelin came at it from the other side but hit at an angle across its back and skipped off the bug’s carapace, not slowing or distracting it from its current focus. Mila’s machete hitting it at the first joint of its front leg actually caught though, and only slowed the chop a smidge before tearing through the limb and suddenly setting the bug to listing to the side.

She did not have the time to press the advantage, though - the squeal of insect against lunar-empowered steel was a harsh reminder that it was not mostly-single combat between Mila and the one ant. Reminder enough to focus on the drum of the third ant’s feet as it tried to catch Mila from the side.

Hurling herself back almost sent her tumbling into the mud ass over teakettle, but even with the weapon attached, her tail helped keep her balanced, swinging around to just barely get her to catch her footing. Not about to let the movement go to waste otherwise, Mila kept her tail moving, and this time she avoided all the head tidbits, swiping the tail whip forward and through two of the third ant’s legs.

This one was busy smelling of burnt tires and now oozed yellow goop, blood maybe, from its wounds. Neither seemed to slow it down too much as it jammed its shortened legs quite unhygienically into the ground and hefted itself about, mouth lashing out and pushing Mila back.

As she hopped further back, the presence of the first ant and how she was having to move further and further away from it, started to loom in her mind, the only thing overshadowing the rising tide of pink in her vision. She need not have worried though, because its shortened leg did not prevent it from half-scrambling over its ally, also now feeling a bit more frantic in its movements.

The two giant ants jostling each other to get at her helped, preventing either from properly lunging or stabbing at Mila. It was not enough to make it trivial - she had already performed a cardinal sin once by just yeeting a weapon, she was not about to perform a second by looking away from her opponents without damn good reason. But it helped, as did the odd javelin that came in, seeking to land in their thorax.

Two controlled steps back and a swing of hand or tail became the name of the game and she alternated which ant she struck at to try to keep them tangled up still. Three cycles of it saw each ant lose enough of a leg that it became unusable, which hindered them less than Mila would like. Four more and a bit of reangling so Mila did not walk herself back into the woods, however, and another leg off each was sundered free, the same side as the previously lopped off legs. That was the trick, it seemed, as both ants noticeably slowed, struggling to stay balanced as they moved and tried to snap their mandibles around her.

Not about to offer herself up on a silver platter, Mila finally made short work of the back legs, this time using her tail blade to snikt through the second joint in one go. That sent both to the ground, still gnashing and trying to drag themselves at her, but otherwise out of commission for the moment.

That gave Mila the opportunity to actually move away, scampering back and to the side just in case, and check on Rora. The golden woman had a few flecks of mud spattered up to her head but was otherwise pristine, sword menacing the one-mandibled beast before her. That ant did not have the frenetic aggression that Mila’s even now still showed, but it had not helped it, apparently.

One leg was missing along its left side, separated mid-segment, and the same side’s mandible had been shattered. Mila was moving forward when it took a step back, and for a moment, within the haze of her anger at these goddamn bugs, Mila wondered if ants even could retreat.

Instead of that, the insect shifted its back legs and rubbed them against its abdomen, releasing a shrill sound that stung the ears. After the short burst it tried to move its stinger in position to menace Rora, but that was apparently what she had been waiting for, as she just circled right with one large, premeditated step, lofted her blade, and brought it down.

The steel was guided home by the big round eyes of the bug, ensuring that Rora could not miss the monster’s neck even if she tried. And for all that their chitin was tough, their joints were weak points in their armor, just meat and yellow goop. When facing a righteous kobold swinging her body weight in sharpened metal bar form-factor, there was little contest in what won out, and the ant’s head thumped down, shortly followed by its body.

Mila swept her eyes about, noting Hughestace turning to watch the trees and Naw-Naw fiddling with both a spiced biscuit and an orb of dried and smoked meats. But Aluca, fingers tapping against his array of pockets, demanded attention. “We need to go. Retrieve weapons, retreat, now.”

Even the blood pumping in Mila’s ears could not argue against that and she turned and ran, retrieving her blade and one of Hughestace’s spears as she ran over to return it to the elf, who had gone in the other direction to get the two others.

Even as Rora approached them, the two hobbled ants tried to drag themselves towards Mila, not seeing or not noticing their death approach. That did not much matter to Mila in the moment, and their slowly fading struggle in the dirt was ended without ceremony, because they had bigger fish to fry. They knew their threat, apparently, and Mila had some firm guesses that ‘three giant ants cooperating’ was not the entirety of the issue.

Worse still, Mila was sure as shit that there were no giant ants living anywhere near here, normally. And that was quite the unpleasant taste in her mouth, she had to say.