For a brief moment, Gat was stunned. On their Construct’s shoulder, Dav let out a gasp.

”Where the hell did it go?” Gat asked.

“It…. The sensors say that it moved a hundred yards in only a second, and is somewhere to the right.” Dav told them. “There’re traces of Ether trail, too, meaning that-“

”There’s what!?” Ter interrupted.

“There are Ether trails, Ter.” Dav confirmed.

A few seconds of silence passed, and Gat shook his head and started towards where Dav’s scanners told them the Myrmeke was. As he did, Ter finally issued his orders.

“Approach, but don’t eliminate the Myrmeke. At all costs, it needs to remain alive.” Ter said heavily.

“What? Why? It needs to die even more if it can use Ether!” Gat said incredulously. Several grumbles of agreement came over the comms.

“Follow orders!” Ter shouted. Gat sighed and continued towards the Myrmeke.

“Do you not understand the implications of an Ether-blessed Myrmeke?” Ter eventually asked. “It’s a potential danger to the Greatest Queen; I can’t imagine a greater contribution to the cause than helping it to survive.”

“How do you know it’s Ether-blessed?” Gat asked confusedly.

“It’s because of the Ether trail. Those are only ever made by those who’re favored by the Ether.” Dav explained, “Ambient Ether clings to where an Ether-blessed's Ether sparks.”

A few others asked questions, which Dav answered. Ter seemed lost in thought. Gat followed orders and approached the Myrmeke. Dav commented that it was strange that it wasn’t moving, and Ter said that its Ether must’ve been exhausted. Gat didn’t know; Ether wasn’t something most Teryls were capable of manipulating.

When they arrived before her, they were met by a glob of acid. Dav leaped off of their shoulder in order to avoid any drops as it splashed against their Construct’s chest. An energy shield was used to scrape it off before it could do anything- not that it really mattered, as it was only a pupae. Granted, it was an impossibly talented stage five pupae, but it was a pupae nonetheless; it wouldn’t pose any threat to their Construct until it was, at minimum, of the tenth stage- and even that was only because it was abnormal beyond belief.

“How do we neutralize it non-lethally?” Gat asked, and Ter sighed.

“Wait for everyone else to get there; we’ll only be fifteen or so seconds more. We stopped pushing our Exosuits after it went down.” Ter told them.

The Myrmeke shot a second glob of acid at them, but it was gotten rid of as easily as before, sent to eat into the hardened dirt of the tunnel’s floor. After that, it stopped and seemed to give up.

“It’s going to die in about half an hour unless we tend to its wounds.” Dav commented. Ter, Mar, Ray, Yon and Tol all got there a few seconds later.

“Then we’ll tend to its wounds,” Ter told them. Everyone’s bodies tensed at the idea, and Gat could hear a few stifled complaints.

Not only did nobody want to get close to a definitely-dangerous Myrmeke, it also went against everything they stood for. Also… would their medicines even work on it?

Obviously, nobody volunteered, but that was fine; Ter seemed to expect that. He gathered all of their medical supplies together and moved it somewhat close to the Myrmeke, before announcing that he would be the one to tend to it, since it was his idea.

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Gat grimaced at the idea. If Ter died, they were probably screwed… and that was unacceptable. They needed to deal as much damage to the Myrmidons as they could before they died.

“I’ll do it,” Gat said.

“How are you meant to do that in a Construct? These are meant for normal-sized Teryls; that’s why I’ve gathered everything we’ve got to tend to the enormous bastard over there.” Ter pointed out.

“I won’t use the Construct, obviously.” Gat told them. Ter started to overrule them, but Gat was already talking again.

“Our lives are nothing but numbers now; for the fewest losses possible, we must deal the greatest amount of damage possible. Your worth is greater than mine, and I can have my Construct ward off the Myrmeke if it tries to kill me even from a short distance. Don’t go against the numbers, Ter.” Gat appealed.

∑

She watched with fear as the enormous Teryl moved towards her. Her acid was incapable of dealing damage to it, but she thought it was feasible that the rest of her body was capable of damaging it. Unfortunately, all of the other Teryls were right there; even the second enormous Teryl that hadn’t chased her. She doubted that they’d just stand around as she attacked the one approaching her… so, she could only pray that they wouldn’t kill her, for some reason.

…Or, at the very least, that the lack of struggle would make it quicker.

The approaching Teryl carried a pile of stuff in one of its hands and had discarded the weapon it’d wounded her with several times. It was a struggle to keep from wriggling away- her legs still didn’t work- or attacking when it stood next to her and reached out to place its metal Articulated Arm on her Exoskeleton.

It hunched over one of her wounds, and she was only barely able to tell that its stomach had… opened? Another, smaller Teryl fell from its insides, and reached for the things the bigger, opened Teryl was holding in its hands.

The smaller Teryl that had fallen out was even smaller than the other ones, and without a metal exoskeleton. It instead wore tight and black cloth apparel, and she found that the Teryl looked even weirder without their exoskeletons.

It was only six or so feet tall, with braided and blue-tinted black hair that fell a bit past its shoulders. It had Articulated Arms of its own, and with it so close and nothing more to do, she could tell that it had five digits at the end of its limb, compared to her three. Moreover, the limbs were short and only had a single bend in the middle, as well as a complete lack of claws or talons.

It grabbed some of the stuff from the bigger Teryl’s hand and turned to her wound. It glanced towards her upper body, which was bent so as to look at what it was doing, and it shivered slightly.

The Teryl quickly turned away, facing one of the holes in her body; it was the one that had destroyed her lungs. The Teryl filled the surface of the hole with a white gunk that molded to the insides of her wound, and hopped back into the larger Teryl. The larger Teryl moved to her other flank, where it could see the other end of her wound, and the smaller one disembarked.

It didn’t do the same thing as it had to the other side; instead, it opened a little box and dumped a small metal slug thing out, that only started to move once the small Teryl pushed a thin, rectangular metal object against its surface. After that, the metal slug crawled into the hole, and she struggled to continue remaining still.

As the metal slug moved through the wound, it sprayed a liquid something that stemmed the profuse bleeding only a few seconds afterwards. Once it reached the end of the hole, it went the other way, still spraying the coagulating liquid. Finally, it got back to the small Teryl, who pulled its blood-covered form out of the wound before filling what it could with the same white gunk as it had the other side.

By now, it had become clear that they were helping her. Why they’d caused the wounds only to mend them a little bit later was beyond her, but it was enough for her to relax a little bit.

That is, until the small Teryl stabbed her with a something through one of the cracks in her exoskeleton. She still couldn’t stand, but she did try to fall away from them- unfortunately, she was too slow. The venomous blue liquid- she assumed that was what it was- contained inside had already entered her body by the time she did.

After almost twenty seconds, in which the small and large Teryl both didn’t make any moves towards her, nothing more happened. Had the blue liquid not been venom? Now that she thought about it…why would they need to use venom on her, anyway? It must’ve been something else.

It appears to be a serum meant to help with the healing process, but its quantity is incredibly underwhelming. That they bothered with it at all is suspicious; give me a few minutes. Allow the Teryls to proceed with their doctoring. The System said, and she became very curious. The System could provide actual, direct assistance?

Slowly, the smaller Teryl started approaching again, and as the System had told her to, she let it.