CHAPTER 2: A CHILLING DISCOVERY
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As he went to leave the room he turned back to look at the paper nursery and had a devilish idea. He knew he needed to escape and by this point, the rest of the hive knew something was on the loose killing wasps or would soon figure it out, he needed a distraction and the nursery was the perfect lure. He hobbled toward the nest where the grubs were moving about and cut a piece of the papery substance off the nest, then pulled out his matches.
He tried to light one and after a few failed attempts the phosphorus tip fell off. Storing the leftover stick for later use he pulled out another one that fell to the same fate as the previous. This caused a slight panic to well up in Kallias, he only had less than 10 of the precious matches left. His new arm was making the simple process much more difficult. Striking the third match it burst into flames, careful to make sure the flame didn't go out he slowly lit the torn piece, it caught easily and started to spread fast. Placing the burning piece near the bottom of the nursery it too caught fire.
Making haste Kallias limped toward the exit, checking the way was clear before continuing back the way he came. He had been going towards the centre of the nest last time so he set his destination as the feeding room he had been in before, where he could hide out as the wasps moved around the nest.
Reaching the feeding room's entrance he walked in and saw another wasp feeding on the corpse of a wolf near to the entrance. The wasp reacted swiftly turning to face him, but Kallias was faster his right hand stabbing right through the middle of its face. It could only twitch as it died being held immobile by his right hand.
This arm keeps getting better and better he thought. Except for the matches, that was a shame he sighed bitterly in his mind. Now that he wasn't focusing on a fight his senses came back to him along with the overpowering rotten stench that filled the room. Coughing a little he managed to keep his stomach down this time. Now he just needed to wait in this disgusting room until the wasps were drawn away by his little distraction.
After what he estimated to be half an hour of listening to the wasp's movements through the walls he concluded that it was likely safe to move on and try to find an exit to this maze. Lumbering through the halls he often saw the movement of wasps in connecting passages scuttering past in the opposite direction. In those moments he froze and hugged the walls as tightly as possible hoping that the wasps wouldn't investigate the movement. Occasionally a wasp would be coming down his tunnel causing him to hide in a side tunnel. Fortunately, the wasps running around either didn't notice or care about his presence as he managed to dodge every wasp.
Another half an hour passed and he noticed a streak of light distinct from the violet white glow that surrounded the tunnels coming from a connecting passageway. Changing directions he followed the new tunnel for a short while till the tunnel opened up to a meter and half hole that looked directly into the starry night sky. Taking a pause Kallias looked in awe at the night sky with his new sight, it was one of the most beautiful sights he had ever seen. Composing himself he then stuck his head carefully out of the hole looking at the ground far far below. Dread threatened to breach his mental defences, how on earth would he be able to get down from here.
Breathing deeply he tested his right arm as a sort of makeshift pick against the sheer rock cliff face. With a not-insignificant amount of effort, he managed to make a handhold, trying his weight on it his arm slipped and a plate-sized chunk of rock came loose and fell to the bottom. The sudden change made him start to fall out of the hole, catching himself right before he fell out he pulled his body back inside. With his heartbeat in his ears the fear he felt came back in waves I can't do this, I'm not a trained rock climber I've only ever done it once in a gym. Oh god! I've found the exit but I still can't escape, am I going to die here? If only I'd awaked a flight power- his thoughts switched gears as ideas started spawning, checking his idea with his instincts he knew it was viable. Taking one last look at the night sky he turned back to the tunnel and awkwardly walked into its depths. It was time to change who was prey and predator.
It only took around 5 minutes for him to find his target, a lone wasp. He tried to sneak up on it but it noticed him and turned to attack him. It lunged at him attempting to bite him, unable to get a clear attack with its stinger in the fairly cramped tunnel. Shoving his combat knife in the path of the oncoming bite he used his right arm to stab towards its neck getting intercepted by the wasp's own front arms. This was not going as he had envisioned. Unexpectedly he spotted movement behind him with his right eye. Dodging as hard as possible to the left he saw another wasp's mandibles scrape past, missing him by the skin of his teeth. He couldn't celebrate his dodge for long as he felt a searing pain from behind right where he had been stung before, glancing down he saw a claw penetrating out where his liver used to be, he could also feel several ribs that were broken.
While still impaled he turned his right arm and attempted to hit the second wasp in the head. He managed to strike the wasp across the eyes, damaging them severely. Upon receiving a hit the wasp ripped its claw from Kallias's body taking chunks of liver with it. He ducked avoiding the now erratically attacking wasp, letting it strike the first wasp. Using this distraction Kallias struck with both the knife and right arm against the first wasps unprotected neck, this time ending the attack with its decapitation. Leaving it to flinch on the ground he turned to the blinded wasp. Stepping away from its wild swinging arms he waited for the perfect moment, running through its head with his right arm.
The wasps now dead Kallias took a quick damage report. It looked like his liver was well and truly done for, before it just had a hole through it but now at least 2/3rds of the liver were gone or in tatters. His last 2 ribs on his right side looked to be broken, not good, but he would have to make do. Now he needed to do what he came for. Grabbing the first wasp he started to extract it's four wings, once that was done he removed the thin t-shirt he wore. Grabbing the first pair of wings he let his instincts guide him as he firmly held them to his spine between his shoulder blades like previously he felt the wings connect but this time they felt incomplete. To fix this feeling he attached the second pair just slightly below the first.
Flexing his new wings he looked at them from the corner of his eye in astonishment, he knew that with these wings while he couldn't fly and lift himself from the ground like a flight power, but he could descend extremely slowly and move around in the sky with great mobility. This discovery made his power even greater instead of only healing and replacing parts he could add more onto himself, with this he felt nothing was impossible. Grabbing his shirt he cut open a flap in the back and after a few frustrating moments trying to get his wings through the hole he got it on, now his back was even colder. Looking down at the corpses of the wasps he felt another idea coming on if it worked it would be priceless. He then started to extract the wasp's stinger and attached poison sack, pulling out the plastic bag in his pocket he put it inside saving it for later when messing around wouldn't mean death.
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Carrying the bag with him in his left arm the stinger poked out of the top and swayed as he limped to the exit he found before. Peering over the edge he had faith in his ability and new wings but couldn't help but feel nervous if he failed here it was all over. He wasn't able to fully stretch his wings in the tunnel so he hung himself over the edge and began to beat his wings, generating the buzzing he had heard from the wasps earlier, he wasn't going to be able to stealth well while using his wings, that was for sure.
Pushing away from the edge he took a leap of faith and found himself hovering a small ways away from the edge. He noticed that while I looked and felt like he was hovering he was, in fact, descending at a very slow rate. Slowly he tested his manoeuvrability in the skies finding that he was very acrobatic and could take sharp turns, but couldn't fly backwards, he avoided descending knowing that he needed as much airtime as possible and once his altitude was gone he wouldn't get much if any of it back. Wasting no more time he looked for the north star knowing that if headed in the opposite direction he would be going out of the Wastelands.
As he travelled he was left with the sights of the beautiful night sky and the white hellscape below. After an hour he was reaching less than 10 meters away from the tallest snow-covered trees, as the trees were sparsely populated he estimated he had around 20 more minutes of flight time if he dodged the odd tree that popped up in front of him. As he was inspecting the few trees he caught the sound of buzzing in the distance. Turning his head he recognised the silhouette of several wasps flying towards him. Whether they were hunting him down or not he chose to abandon the flight time he had left diving towards the snow. He needed to hide but the few trees were not going to help him so he resolved himself to dig into the freezing ground burying his body under a meter of snow.
The cold was a thousand times worse than flying without a jacket or walking around in the cold nest. The snow and ice soaked through his pants causing the last part of his body with any warmth to succumb to the cold, despite this it was still the warmest part and his left hand was buried in its pocket. Shivering uncontrollably the snow pressed down on him shifting from a stinging pain to a painful burn that increased with every passing moment. As it got worse he decided to sacrifice his torso to protect his face cutting the t-shirt away and pulling it over his face to protect it as much as possible from the cold. 5 minutes passed and the pain was nearing unbearable levels, in desperation, he tried to discreetly look out through the snow, distressingly the wasps were still in the area forcing him to wait longer.
His body was on fire, the cold burned like he was thrown in a furnace. He tried to distract himself from his suffering by chanting a song in his head he'd long ago learned in school 99 bottles of Snapple on the wall. Take one down, pass it around, 98 bottles of Snapple on the wall... he repeated it like a mantra until he got down to 1 bottle and tried his luck again, looking through the snow he found no wasps around. Scrambling as fast as he could he pulled himself from the snow. Reviewing what he had done he admonished his stupidity, he thought himself safe in the snow, being semi-immortal. He had neglected that he could still get injured and that frostbite existed, he wasn't able to see any damage or blackening yet but he could tell he was severely frostbitten all over his upper body as his ability was sealing off large swaths of his skin. Fortunately, this meant most of his muscles and joints were saved though it was painful to move and his joints were stiff. Another small ray of positivity was that his face was saved from the worst of the damage due to his t-shirt, he made up his mind to keep the t-shirt tied to his face and suffer more effect to his torso, it was worth it to protect his face.
He had learned a valuable lesson right now, but the cost was extreme. Shelving his misery he once again aligned himself with the stars and shambled at a slow pace towards eventual safety. 2 hours into his zombie-like shuffle his pants and shirt felt almost like leather armour losing considerable flexibility after getting frozen stiff by the cold environment. Kallias was woken from his daze like walk when he heard a loud howl not too far away from his position, then another from behind, and another to the left, more followed coming from all around him. Fuck me! he cursed, of course, its wolves.
Scanning around he saw that 5 hulking black direwolves surrounded him, this was bad, really bad. Remembering back to his training he stood his ground and lifted his arms up to make himself look bigger, at the same time he tried to make as much noise as possible. Which was hard considering he still was without a tongue to shape the sounds, making it sound like a loud guttural gurgle. It seemed to have some effect on the approaching wolves as they stopped coming forward. Seconds past by and they remained in a stalemate until one brave wolf tried to attack Kallias from behind. Catching its movement with his right eye he punished the attempt by stabbing it in the snout causing it to yelp and run away. The rest of the wolves responded by growling and starting to back away. Kallias didn't drop his guard for at least 5 minutes after they left, standing there expecting another ambush.
The encounter with the wolves over he was never more grateful for academy training, it was simple, prove yourself a bigger threat that what it was worth to attack, but it was very effective. It helped that being a relatively skinny teenager meant he wasn't worth much as food. Flashing back through the day he thought All this stress can't be healthy for me, dear god it's only been less than a day and I almost lost my life how many times? Oh god, I've lost count.
Deciding to make sure that he would be able to defend himself if he ever did get attacked by the pack again he pulled the plastic bag off of his shoulder. He grabbed his knife and cracked a line down the underside of his right arm's forearm. His instincts were silent now, unable to guide him in his experiment. Pulling the poison sac and attached stinger out of the plastic bag they were thankfully unharmed. Putting the poison sac in the gap it merged into the arm, to cover up the new weakness he placed the stinger over the crack sealing it as it merged with his arm. Now his forearm looked like it had one of the blades that the assassin classes used running down its length. Unlike their blades, he couldn't retract his and it stuck 15cm over his wrist, which wasn't much comparing it to his claws but it was pretty inflexible. While his power helped integrate the parts this addition didn't feel anywhere close to as natural as the other parts felt, he was able to will a drop to excrete from the end of the new stinger. Satisfied with his new weapon he started walking south again.
Shuffling through the icy wasteland he reached a grove of trees that he recognised from the initial flight over, a small jolt of joy shot through his system, he was close to the campsite now. A few more hours walking and he should make it back just after dawn by his estimates.
Entering the forest it immediately became harder to see as the starlight struggled to make its way through the snow-covered canopy. Stumbling through the forest, every now and then tripping on a hidden root Kallias made his way through the forest checking the north star for his bearing when he could see it. He put his hand on a small boulder to rest for a bit and jumped back as he felt a soft fur. Wheeling in place, knife drawn, he looked at the furry boulder, it was a direwolf. With further inspection he concluded it was dead, its skull caved in. He wondered if it was a wolf he had seen before, taking in his surroundings he saw 4 more similar mounds, deducing that they were likely the same pack he had seen before. What on earth happened here he wondered. The tense silence was broken by a whimper followed by the bounding body of a small dark-coloured bear running towards a small hill. On second viewing the hill was also furry, he had mistaken it as it was also covered in ice tricking his perception. Putting 2 and 2 together he stared at the bear cub in horror.