They did not have time for Mila to slowly push down the nausea. The circumstances of the day would be offering them no such luxuries, because any luxury at all would simply mean them not having to ascend a pile of nightmare corpses.

Even with the nearest gravedigger having been left a corpse itself, there was no guarantee that more were not in their immediate vicinity. Ants were famously numerous, and nobody needed their looming landmark to remind them of that.

Looming landmark and safe haven, which Mila tried to keep in the front of her mind. When that did not do anything to still her shaking shoulders or flood strength back into her arms, she just took to chanting softly instead, a refrain of “This’ll keep everyone safe,” not quite helping her state.

As that quiet fight between Mila and her revulsion was being waged, her teammates were actually getting shit done, may the many deities bless them for that. “Ropes. Lash two to your waists,” was the curt instructions given by Hughestace to the two other talls. At the same time, Rora was once more gathering moonlight in her rocking arms, feet in a firm stance as she grew heavier with her collected power.

Once Rora had gotten all she could manage, she tipped forward and dropped the moonlight, armored foot clanging down on silvery bridge to catch herself. This time, however, the bridge was at an angle up, a quick way to get a head start on their climb and an even faster way to a migraine if one thought too hard on how the smooth, slick-seeming surface could be walked up at the twenty five degree angle or whatever it happened to be.

By the time the other end of the bridge connected to Mount Dead, Naw-Naw and Aluca both had managed to get bowlines around themselves, with the human only needing a small reminder on how to tie one correctly. Falling and having whatever slip-noose contraption he had been tying initially catch him would have been bad at best.

The other ends of the ropes got portioned out, one for each person going to Rora, who in turn began to bowline them to her so that they had a smidge of slack, and the other two going to Hughestace, who thought for a moment and pulled two javelins out, tying the ends of the ropes to the midpoints of the spears with some fancy knot.

Latching onto the fact that Mila did not know the name of whatever the elf was tying helped pull her away from running mental circles over and over, but Naw-Naw’s massive hand patting her back fully knocked the pattern off its feet.

“Ya doin’ alright?” They asked, looking down. Mila did not look up to meet the gaze, instead shaking herself free of mental cobwebs and seeing the mountain before her. The grand obstacle with a goal. A peak to aim for.

Mila rolled her shoulders and cracked her neck, craning up as it was. “You know what? Yeah. Yeah, I am alright. Just goin’ for a little climb, no big deal.” Because, despite what she and everyone would be climbing over, that part was almost certainly was going to be the safest part of… whatever the fuck they were going to do.

Gnoll and kobold walked up to the others, having taken position on the moonlight bridge-turned-ramp. Naw-Naw’s ropes fell slack as they closed the distance, and Mila’s eye ridges went up as Hughestace passed both javelins to her. “You’re on anchor duty,” was his instruction, and that was enough for Mila, who began her surveying.

Each ant corpse was bigger than her, and jumbled up and on top of each other. There was something rattling in her mind about coefficients of friction and stable angles of incline, but that was probably all wrong and a distraction. The ants’ exoskeletons, even in death, were rigid and a mix of smooth planes and textured sections. All the legs would potentially be good foot- and handholds, but mandibles might be sharp all on their own, and things could still shift.

Naw-Naw and Aluca were poor climbers, to give a generous estimation of things. She would be free-climbing ahead of them and finding whatever sturdy place to lodge these javelins, for the potential of them falling. Rora’s climbing was slow but approaching unstoppable force, so attaching them to her made sense too. Good thinking on everyone else’s parts, when she was busy worrying about long dead things.

The weapons-turned-pitons were quite a bit longer than she was tall, but Mila tried to wind her left arm around them, the points far above her head. It was an awkward kind of cradle but it would have to do, and Mila shuffled forward to lead the group towards mountain.

“Everyone be careful where you put hands and feet,” she needlessly reminded all as she got to the end of the moonlight, judging where to start. She really did not want to start. Did not want to be here at all.

The only small mercy that came to mind was that the wide eyes of the ants were as dark and non-reflective in death as they were in life, so she did not have to deal with her reflection a thousand times over in the nearest corpse’s lack of gaze.

There was a pause in her movements as she tried to hold onto that thought as a silver lining without slipping into imagining it too vividly. When that failed, all she could do was mutter, “Fuck me,” and get to work.

She threw herself at the wall, leaping a few feet to snag her free hand in the crook of a corpse’s leg and pull herself up, boots finding careful purchase on a smooth bit of abdomen before seeking out a place on a different body’s head.

She almost missed, in those exploratory movements at the start of the ascent, Rora’s response. “Not sure it’s the time or place, Mila,” was delivered with the barest sliver of a smile in her voice, and all Mila could do was snort and shake her head.

Not the time and place for anything romantic, and not much the time and place for existing, but the joke drained what nerves remained after Naw-Naw’s simple act of just asking if she was ok.

Yeah, she was ok. And yeah, this was sure as shit an awful job. But it was a job, and they would be heading back home as soon as they were done here. Just got to put her head down and put in the work, do the job, save the day, get the girl. Framed like that, felt almost like hero shit.

Mila was pretty sure she did not jive with hero shit, but the idea buoyed her up anyway, and she began to scamper her way up. Once she found a perch that was sturdy enough to hold her, a pretty easy requirement to meet apparently, then she just had to grab on to the next highest bit and pull up.

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The javelins slowed her, and it did not feel quite how she was used to climbing - her tail blade shifted her center of balance and slowed the small twitches that typically helped her achieve perfect balance. Even with that, though, just reach-pull-footing-repeat had her zipping up.

It was only when her cargo’s lines pulled that Mila realized she had outpaced the others, and she took a moment to look back down, to check on their progress.

Hughestace was free climbing without issue as well, but instead of just shooting ahead, he was there right above their two least athletic members, guiding them on where to put their feet and hands. Aluca and Naw-Naw were doing their best to listen and obey, but were a concerning mix of too anxious about holds that were clearly solid and too confident about places that were not. Shortly below them was Rora, whose ramp had evaporated on her starting her climb. She was at the bottom of the order, but sat attached to the overall mountain like a boulder, even with all the armor she sported. She had put away her blade though, which made sense. It was heavy as all hell, and Mila hardly knew how she carried it normally.

The chef and the nerd struggling was a firm reminder of Mila’s actual task though, and immediately set her to eying the nooks and crannies nearby that she could lodge a spear into. The first one she planted right next to her perch, threading it into the entangled legs of three different ant corpses. She gave it a firm tug to ensure it was secure, and then moved on to the next.

For that she scuttled up a few bodies and wedged it into a crevice, deeper into the mountain. In doing so, she took a few moments to really peer into the pile of the dead. For as spindly as a single ant corpse was, curled up in death, they were packed in pretty tightly and even with her eyes better suited to the dark than most, Mila could not see that far into the spaces between ants there.

It meant their climbing was that much more secure, no empty spots inside, but also meant there were thousands of corpses here. Tens of thousands? A lot. A lot of fucking corpses. And that was just those ants that had died ‘peaceful’ deaths.

Mila waited for the others to catch up to her but turned away from doing mental math on how many ant corpses were in the jar, having decided that there was no prize worth winning at the end of that. Instead she decided to play sentry, looking down for more ants - the gravedigger ants had to be climbing up this pile to place the dead, after all.

Yet on their slope, at least, no ant moved.

The first gravedigger stopped by about as Rora reached even with Mila, and although the pink kobold watched it like a hawk, tail still but whole self ready for… something, it only scrabbled up some ten feet of elevation before putting its corpse down, turning around, and heading off to get back to work.

Confirmation that the pheromone stuff and smelling like the dead ants had some validity was great news. Once the ant had vanished back into the trees, Mila voiced just that. “Ant didn’t even bat an eyelash at us. We might actually be in the clear for the time being.”

Aluca particularly deflated at that news, having been too focused on his own climbing to notice the bug stop by, but the film of uncertainty over the group was removed just like that, not noticed until it was gone.

The human needed his break, and Hughestace called it for all of them save Mila. Mila instead got back to work, extracting both javelins and starting up once again, quickly passing the others before once more hitting the end of the range of her leashed anchors. She put them in place once more and then found a place to half-crouch, waiting for the others to finish their break and move far enough to need her to reanchor.

By the third hop up, Mila was hardly even noticing that she was clambering up corpses. They were still there, she was still careful of the mandibles, it just was not something worth note at that point. What was of note was them getting up to about the trees’ canopy line.

The climb continued for a bit longer but was tapering to an end quickly, and Aluca voiced, “We should stop here. Set up camp, if we can get another, uh,” before gesturing at Rora.

“A bridge to nowhere?” Rora asked, nodding along with the thought. That kicked off a communal effort to find the sturdiest spot for Rora to stand, and once the pair of bowed heads was decided upon, getting everyone off to the side a bit so they would be able to ascend up to the side of the bridge and hop on there.

General repositioning taken care of, Rora once again collected silver in her arms before dashing the orb against the chitin underneath her feet. This time, the magical plane spread forth perfectly level, some ten feet wide and not quite making it to the nearest tree’s putrefying leaves.

Rora headed onto it and the others followed. Mila was the last and, just in case, kept the anchors planted at the base of the bridge. It was far narrower than Mila was comfortable with camping out on, but it was either this or eating and talking on the bodies. Even if they were not bothering her like they had before, that was too far for her, and the others seemed to silently agree.

No, instead she skated towards the others, who had formed a line as Hughestace pulled whatever from technically-not-nowhere and washed their hands, for which Mila was thankful. Once everyone was washed and had drained and then refilled their water skins off the magically conjured water, they sat in a tight circle, Naw-Naw producing some assorted nuts and passing the bag around.

Eating a walnut with fangs felt goofy but had its own fun, head tilted to the side as Mila brought her back teeth to bear on her snack, one nut at a time, crunching them with a vigor.

“So,” she said between nibbles. “How do we kill all these ants?’

“The question of the hour,” was the human man’s grim contribution, as nothing else followed. Instead, they all sat for a beat, then three.

“They’re still bugs, they have to eat and drink and breath and all that, right?” Rora gave anyone else the opportunity to interject with the news that no, none of that was needed, but they had not seen evidence that would suggest it was unnecessary for the big bastards.

“If they need that, we can… drown them? Poison them? They’re in tunnels, right?”

A solid baseline, but Mila waggled her hand. “Poison might work, but drowning them is unlikely to do the trick. We’d need a lot of water to flood tunnels that big, and they’re smart in their own way. Tunnels would not flood fast enough to catch them unawares.” Aluca nodded in agreement, doing the general math. “Even a big, true flood wouldn’t stop them. They can build a big ball of themselves as a raft.”

“Too wet to set it all on fire,” caused Hughestace to catch some glances. Was not too often an aquatic fellow softly suggested pyromania for solving your problems.

“I only have the ingredients for one fireball kind of spell, too.”

“Can’t reckon that we could make some moonlight lenses to fry ants with sunlight either, huh,” was Mila’s related thought, not that lasering individual ants would really help.

“Reckon we coul’ fill their tunnels wit’ bad air they don’t notice in time?”

“Or those smells, that they use? Is that something we could use?”

Ideas continued to get thrown out, and it was clarified that technically they only had to kill the ant queen, although nobody managed to come up with a silver bullet that found and killed the ant queen without getting through all the others.

Actually going in was dismissed immediately, because they were not morons. Mila and Rora might have grown up underground, but that just made their insistence that you did not carelessly attack someone else’s subterranean home all the stronger. Even if the ants hopefully were not employing all the grisly tools a kobold town typically had.

More ideas got lobbed forward, in the hopes of sparking thoughts and the perfect, foolproof plan, but no such piece of perfection decided to show itself.

“So our best bets seem to be disrupting their pheromones so they fight or starve, poisoning their air, or poisoning their food,” Mila listed, ticking them off her fingers. Three things to refine from was not too bad, she supposed.

“Down to the details, then,” Rora affirmed, voice steely and definitely not distracting. The soft, silvery radiance lighting her from below did not help. “So if we’re poisoning their food, what’s the poison?”