Adon was still staring at the sunlit sky, almost paralyzed as he waited for the creature to poke its head back in, when he heard movement from his other side.

He turned his head, and he saw that the two adult voles had risen from where they stood guarding their children. They approached Adon now, hissing and moving with menacing postures.

Adon didn’t need Telepathy to know what they were thinking: Get out of here, asshole! Go deal with your problems alone. Don’t drag us into them!

The caterpillar tried to make his posture as non-threatening as possible, which wasn’t hard, because he was a bit afraid in this situation. Not of the voles, per se, but if he started a fight with them, he might provoke the swarm outside to come into the tunnel and investigate. Assuming it wasn’t already inclined to do so.

Well, I shouldn’t expect anything different. It was almost a miracle that they were willing to live and let live while this place wasn’t actively being invaded. Perhaps it also had something to do with him distracting the python earlier.

But if they had felt obligated by some debt to host him here before, that no longer applied once their children were threatened. It made sense to him.

He wasn’t certain that leaving them here would do the voles any good, but he had no way of communicating that to the voles themselves, certainly not before they reached him and began trying to tear him to pieces or something. Their claws moved almost as if they were itching to rip into him.

Adon slowly moved toward the entrance to the tunnel, trying to keep his back to the wall so he could look back and forth from the entrance to the vole parents. Thankfully, at a certain point, they stopped following him.

Good luck, he thought. He deactivated Telepathy, seeing that he was no longer going to be interacting with these mammals, and he stepped forward, drawing a bit closer to the light.

A shape moved across it, and Adon ducked back. But the flying insect was gone as quickly as it had landed.

These things are fast! For the first time, he found himself wishing he had bought Fossorial Limbs. Then he would be able to dig a new tunnel and escape from here that way. He could try getting them now, but then he would be immobilized with pain for a while as his body changed. He had a feeling these insects weren’t going to give him that time.

Nothing else I can do but try to run or fight, he thought.

He stepped forward and poked his head out of the tunnel. Immediately a red shape darted at him from just above the entrance, and he threw himself backward, just barely evading the insect. It landed facing into the entrance, which Adon realized meant it had thrown itself at him back end first.

I have a bad feeling these things have stingers.

The creature was looking into the tunnel now, in any case, and more were buzzing nearby. Adon could hear them. That must have emboldened this one. It didn’t try to flee like the first one had—perhaps to report back to its colony.

Looks like running is off the table…

Adon finally Identified his enemy.

Red Slayer Spider Wasp (Worker)

That name sounded ominous to him. As he watched, the Red Slayer stepped into the tunnel. And two more filled the space in the tunnel entrance that the first had left behind.

It was time to act. Adon didn’t let himself hesitate. He fired a spine right into the face of the wasp that was already inside the tunnel, at near point blank range. It buried itself deeply in the worker’s head. Then the creature’s body twitched a couple of times before it slumped to the ground, unmoving.

Well, now I know I can kill them, Adon thought. Now the question is how many of those things I have to deal with.

The next two wasps stepped inside the tunnel then. One walked onto the ceiling, while the other moved along the floor.

Adon took careful aim with one of the spines lining his back and shot the wasp on the ceiling straight through its center of mass. It fell, wriggling and writhing, toward the tunnel floor, but then the wasp already on the ground was flinging itself toward Adon.

They’re quick! he thought again. Shit!

He had to throw himself to the side, out of the path of its stinger, before he had room to counter attack. As he was midair, he shot two spines at the fast-moving wasp that had attacked him.

It pivoted midair to dodge the first one, but the second one drove right through its body and nailed it to the tunnel wall. It wriggled, trying to tear itself free and get at Adon.

What do I do? he wondered.

Two more wasps were already hovering by the entrance to the tunnel, he could see.

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His mind flashed between different plans for fighting.

As he considered options, he stepped onto the wall and maneuvered over to the wasp that was stuck to the wall. He had to be careful to avoid its stinger as it frantically tried to work itself free from the earth it had been pinned to and stab him. Finally, he got behind it, and with a single chomp, he severed the head from the body.

Maybe I could try to gum up the entrance to the tunnel with webbing.

He turned his head and saw the next two wasps already floating through the entrance. There were more behind them.

No! Nonononono…

He could already see himself cornered inside this tiny space, covered in wasps being stung over and over until he stopped moving.

I have to show them that this isn’t a fight they can win.

Adon began shooting spines as quickly as he could, but it didn’t go as he’d hoped. The slender creatures dodged some and continued to move forward even when pierced through by others, until they got into melee range. The thin needle-like spines didn’t seem to slow them down much as they tried to impale Adon with their spear-like stingers.

He managed to dodge around the stinger tips and rip the nearest two wasps in half with his mandibles and the silk cutters on his backside respectively. His incredible strength made that relatively easy. Their bodies broke apart like bits of papier-mâché and careened to the ground in shuddering pieces.

Adon didn’t have time to glory in his victory, though. He couldn’t even eat the bodies.

More wasps were floating through the entrance and filling in the front of the tunnel even as he slew their comrades. He beat a quick retreat toward the voles just to keep from being mobbed.

Sorry, but we have to fight together if we want a chance of living through this, guys!

The mammals hissed weakly at him from behind, but Adon ignored them completely now.

A dozen wasps had occupied the front part of the tunnel, and he could hear more outside. The buzzing as the creatures flitted around was maddening and made it hard to think. Adon tried to focus as he considered whether to use more spines to try and put them down one by one or charge a Mana ball and try to blow them all away. He would run out of spines eventually at this rate, but Mana was an even more precious resource, considering the cost each time he used the Mana ball.

The fact that the wasps were constantly moving would make it hard to aim either attack, but at least they didn’t have much room to maneuver.

Probably best to do both, he decided after a split second. Even if I might cave the whole place in with my Mana ball.

He began charging Mana while selecting a target for his spines, but the group of wasps suddenly threw themselves into melee range as if the first movement of Mana was the signal to intensify their invasion. Adon peppered the whole area in front of him with spines, but with their thin, almost hourglass-shaped bodies, the wasps again avoided many of his projectiles without having to noticeably change trajectory.

As the creatures drew close enough to attack him as a group, Adon leaped behind the voles.

I’m so sorry, he thought.

A moment later, he heard a horrendous screeching as the wasps landed on the voles and began stinging their soft, vulnerable flesh. Adon could hear the voles also ripping into the wasps, but they were being stung far too often. He knew the parents were far too big and slow to dodge effectively in the confined space, and he could hear the sounds of the stinger spear points plunging into mammal tissue over and over.

As Adon heard this, he remained standing behind the largest vole, charging his Mana ball and waiting for the first wasp to climb over it. If they were really after him specifically and not just out looking for food, he would give them a warm welcome.

Thank you for buying me this time.

Then he heard the buzz of more wasp reinforcements coming in. He peeked out from behind the voles and saw that even as they were noticeably slowing down—clearly beginning to succumb to the wasp venom—another dozen wasps were entering.

Adon’s heart sank.

I don’t know if I can win this, he thought. I can’t try to hold still and use Color Change. In this dark tunnel, they’re relying on touch and not sight to locate their prey anyway. It’s too late to trap them with silk. I would just be sticking them right next to my body. I can’t aim my venom spines unless I go back around to the other side of the voles… and give up using them as shields.

As he considered his options, he could hear the sound of young voles whimpering. Some of the wasps that had been in the vanguard and were no longer occupied with the barely-moving parents had begun pulling the juveniles away and moving them toward the cave entrance.

Even as he felt guilty about sacrificing the voles to save himself, Adon hoped this might be the end of the battle with the wasps.

Maybe they’ll be satisfied with the voles. It’s not like there’s a lot of meat on my body.

Still, he continued charging his Mana ball. Somehow, he knew that it was only a matter of time before the wasps would pull all of the voles’ bodies aside and get to him.

As the attack finished charging, and Adon saw the wasps were beginning to tug on the larger voles’ bodies, he launched his first strike, aiming through the vole right in front of him, trying to take them by surprise.

He blasted a glowing hole through the vole’s body. He could not see the results, but he heard wasp bodies sizzling against the Mana ball as it tore a hole through their massed forms. Finally, he heard the sound of the Mana ball extinguishing itself against one of the rear earthen walls of the voles’ tunnel.

It didn’t start a cave-in after all. Though perhaps that was too bad. He was at a big disadvantage now. Cornered, with no one to distract the wasps from their next prey. Him.

Adon immediately began charging the attack again, though he knew there was no chance it would be ready before the closest wasps could be upon him.

He pushed some of his Mana that he wasn’t using on charging this next attack into his exoskeleton. That should keep him relatively safe from the stingers until he could fire another blast. He hoped.

Sure enough, while he was still early in the process of charging another blast, one of the red slayers poked its head through the hole Adon had burned in the body of the vole. Two more heads popped up over the vole’s back. Then another three.

Adon knew, from the sound of buzzing coming from the entrance and the sights before his eyes, that the fight was far from over. They weren’t running from the scary magic caterpillar. If anything, he might have made the colony angry.

Then the creatures began throwing themselves forward from the vole onto him.