What to do, what to do. I can’t just kill off the drones and force the queens into hibernation anymore. I started to unconsciously stroke my jaw as I pondered. It will be hard to feed a mass of ravenous disease, especially when I need a decent amount of food. I looked over at a swarm of locusts, even though the queens have sentience that doesn’t mean that all of it does. I’ll just put them into hibernation until I come up with something else. Seemingly reading my gaze the locusts began to fall out of the sky. Not yet you fools, I’m not transporting a whole army of comatose insects. The locusts quickly got back up when one of the queens flashed her fangs at them. I took brief control of the biggest queen and showed her how to activate the runestone. With a slight snap a small tunnel opened up and the queens cautiously turned to me before slowly walking through. A sentient plague, you see something new every day. I rubbed my hands together before turning on my heels, time to eat.

With a rare full stomach and happy heart, I began to get my affairs sorted out. I took the form of a man, kicked in my door, and escorted the two cultists out before locating a ball of ferrets hiding in my rafters, which I gave some food to, and kicked them out as well. Beats me how they found my hut but I’m not in the mood to entertain guests, especially ones that took a few of my precious bottles of alcohol. I quickly located the last cultist half-frozen around ten feet from the cabin. With a burst of magic, he jolted awake, and I tossed him into the path of the others. I pinched the bridge of my nose in annoyance as I looked at massive overlapping trails of footprints. The spatial defense ward activated and kept them around without letting them leave.

I’m supposed to be an expert in rune craft, and I can’t even get one little ward stone to work properly. It’s supposed to make people avoid my territory, not trap them in it. Know what, it’s not a big problem, I’ll deal with it later. I located the pestilence hiding in a tunnel system connected to an underground river. Which is not going around and devouring the flora and fauna, so I count that as a win. I called up the queens and made it very clear that they were not to wreak havoc or spread without my command. A group of sprites quickly converged on my position as I walked back home. The little guys sensed the sweets I had on me after raiding the kitchen and storage room of the facility after it collapsed. I carefully opened a small bag of what looked like caramel and let the franticly buzzing sprites have their fill.

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After a second even the hidebehind showed up for a taste. I was not aware that they had a sweet tooth. My eye narrowed when a certain crow landed on my shoulder and snatched one, does everything have a sweet tooth here? When the hidebehind began to look expectantly at me for seconds I chased them away. The sweets were meant for the sprites, not a walking bush and overgrown crow. When the spirits seemed satisfied, I hid away the treats and went to check in on the spirit realm. I had whittled the pests down tremendously but even rabbits can only look on in horror at their ability to reproduce. It only takes two to have a problem, annoying bastards.

Unfortunately, they were back, and the traps I had placed to prevent their return were chock-full of bodies. But fortunately for me, I just so happened to be in possession of a certain plague. With a single command, a small troop of insects and the smaller queen charged into battle. It's nice having subordinates do the annoying tasks for you. Talking about subordinates, I need to up my security around here. Just wards can only do so much. Thankfully I have a wealth of options to choose from golems, pseudo spirits, regular spirits, and much more. I could even mutate the local wildlife slightly, well, more than it already is. An option mixing these may be the best method. All of them have their own weaknesses and flaws together they cover a large portion of them.

Though I was careful to not reveal any traces of myself my little raid may still put a target on me, and in extent, my territory. I ventured to the stream in search of clay, I could use mud but that tends to restrict future development. I have heard talk of recent advancements made to the practice of golem making but I am clueless as to what said advancements are. The old school methods, however, I’m an expert. I used to try to keep up with advancements and new schools of magic but a while ago it started to seem like they were taking two steps back for every one forward. Especially in my expertise. I’ve even heard mention of necromancy being forbidden by a few fairy councils.

I’ve never really been one to seek people out so I’m often in the dark for quite a few things. And after the Killing Fields, I returned to the Bleak realm to lick my wounds, so I’m even more uninformed. How the years fly by, it's hard to believe that Killing Fields are over, it feels like it was almost a week ago that the Clash of Realms ended. Now that I think of it I have been in a lot of conflicts, because before that was when the abyss first became a problem, and before that was when that lich, Keken I think he called himself, started to eye my territory. And even before that was when I first breached the shade dimension. Not to mention all the skirmishes in between. I’m getting old.