"Blegh!" Gel spluttered for what had to be the fifth time in as many minutes. "This is why I don't eat old corpse. The taste is just… it’s just vile! And it lingers. There has to be something else in this cavern we can eat. Are there any ants nearby? What happened to all of those mushrooms?"
"Most of it burned up." Sean said, gesturing at the relatively singed cavern all around them as they headed back over towards the ant queen. "And how does it linger? Don't you dissolve everything you eat? How could the taste still be sticking around?"
"I wish I knew." Gel reached down with the whiplike appendage that now rose up from Sean's shoulder plates. The slime grabbed a handful of dirt and tossed it down the proverbial chest-hatch.
A second later, the slime shuddered with such intensity that Sean's bones rattled.
"Okay, that didn't work." Gel complained. "I forgot how much I can't stand plain dirt… and I can still taste it!"
"If you knew you didn't like old corpses, then why did you eat Mumbles' body?"
"Because he was still moving around! How was I supposed to know everything inside had gotten all rotten. His body was literally healing itself just a few minutes ago!"
"That's fair…" Sean acceded, stopping a few dozen yards from where the ant matriarch had finally stopped digging. "But he also clearly hadn't been amongst the living for a while. If you don't like the taste, why not just stop eating the undead?"
"We both know I won't do that."
Sean chuckled at his friend's stubborn tenacity before changing the subject. The ant queen's face had disappeared back into the hole, and her whole body was trembling with effort. It looked like she was trying to pull something up, and the gelaton had to admit he was curious to see what it was.
"You think the paladin was serious about knowing somewhere 'worth our time' out near his city?"
"He seemed to be. Feathers almost always looks serious, though. Something about that bird face, I think. Doesn't exactly get expressive."
"Think we should trust him? We'll need to go out that way to pick up our new weapon when it's done anyway."
They had left the makeshift light hammer with the paladin before the owlen had gone back up the tunnels towards the caravan. Gel had grumbled a bit, but the weapon’s formerly blinding radiance had dimmed to little more than a dim glow after it had been bashed against the inmortu’s so many times. Sean admittedly hadn't noticed the change during their battle, there were simply too many things going on. But the light hammer’s glow had faded down to what a nearly dead phone’s screen might, so there had been little point in keeping it. They could even handle the bar directly now, though it was uncomfortable to do so.
Saren had apparently promised to recharge the weapon once the crafting process was complete, but knowing the end result would need continual upkeep was a bit of a backhand to Sean’s excitement for it. That came as a surprise, as the gelaton had been expecting the paladin to try and renegotiate their earlier terms after coming to their rescue at such a pivotal moment. In light of that, Sean had been prepared to all but wash their proverbial slate clean – minus a few provisions, of course.
Without the paladin's magic and prayers, the light hammer, and the melee combat assistance of the fennekians, there was no telling how that battle might have ended. They had been holding their own, but it had been anything but on equal terms. Sean couldn’t regenerate at all, much less as fast as the inmortu had. If the trio hadn’t shown up when they did, or if they had taken a bad blow at the wrong time, escape might not even have been an option. Especially this far down.
According to Gel however, the owlen hadn't even broached the subject. Saren had just solemnly thanked them for their assistance in finally bringing the hulking nightmare down, exchanged a few more words with the slime, and then gone back to caring for the injured pair of "snacks" - as Gel insisted on referring to them. Once the worst of their wounds had been tended, the trio had left without another word. Though both fennekians had still clapped their right fists to their chest and nodded towards him. Sean had done the same, and that had been that.
"If we can–” Gel said, continuing their earlier conversation. “--then we get something supposedly worth the trip. If we can't, then I'll get to figure out what Feathers tastes like.”
“Haven't had bird yet." Gel said, as if pondering whether he liked that idea and its subsequent outcome better. “I think we can trust him, though. He seems sincere enough. Why would he lie?"
"To lead us into a trap? Hand us over to his superiors or cleanse the world of our ‘filth’?" Sean guessed, raising his hands to add air-quotes to the idea – though even he had to admit the possibility seemed slight. If nothing else, the owlen was clearly a bird of honor.
Wait, is it owl-man of honor? Man bird? Birdman? I wonder if he has a cousin named Harvey?
"I'm more interested in what she's about to dig up." Gel said, gesturing at the queen. "She sat that whole battle out. I hope she doesn't think I'm about to forget that. I thought she was going for help, or at least do something that might help out."
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Sean had figured much the same, but what was he going to say to a nearly two-story tall, spined ant? Not to mention a matriarch with some weird ability to shout directly into his mind. The less he had to deal with that, the better. Besides, it wasn't like they could scold her.
"Hey! What's with you ducking out of the fight, up there?!" Gel roared at the queen through the same psychic connection she had established with them earlier, though Sean could tell the slime was translating the message for his benefit. "I hope you're pulling us up some victory meat for our feast, seeing as we just saved your sorry chitin all by ourselves!"
Orrrr maybe we can. Sean mentally amended, looking up at the massive creature. He set his hands to his hips and glared as if he were somehow staring down at her despite being nowhere near tall enough to do so. We’ve taken on everything else today. What’s one more?
The matriarch’s shrill screeching entered his mind an instant later, and this time Sean got to feel Gel’s freshly crimson body ripple throughout his entire body in response as she spoke. The ant queen’s insectoid voice sounded harsh even to him, and Sean tried not to wince. It was easier than he expected, not having any facial muscles.
“Did you piss her off?” The gelaton asked, as the queen ripped its head out of the ground with a ferocious screech that was not just mentally audible. “Are we about to– woah.”
A swarm of ants followed the ant queen up out of the earth she had dug into. They crawled over one another in their haste to make it out first, washing over the dirt like a brown tide of exceedingly angry acid-spitting pebbles.
Only they were each roughly the size of cats instead of humans or cars. Still far outstripping any of their Earth-based counterparts, but not on a scale that inspired fear in him. Not anymore, at least. In fact…
“Aw, they’re kinda cute.” Sean said, though he still took a few steps back as the ant wave washed up the legs of their matriarch and began climbing her. “Even more so when they’re not coming at us.”
“Are they about to eat her?” Sean asked, when Gel remained quiet. The ant queen hadn’t stopped shrieking at them the entire time, so he figured the slime was busy.
“Huh? Oh, no. They’re not. At least, I don’t think so. Sorry, she’s a bit hard to drown out.” A minute or so later the screeching stopped, and Gel continued, sounding a bit surprised. “Well, looks like we have more friends coming along than we thought we did!”
“Oh yeah? She wants to stick with us now, does she?” Sean eyed the queen, trying to figure out how they were going to hunt anything with a two-story tall behemoth bug stomping through the sands behind them. What are we going to feed her? Or her kids?
“Huh? Oh, no. She’s staying here.”
“... but you just said–”
“She’s staying here for now.” Gel clarified, cutting him off. “She has a hive to rebuild, after all. But she is very, very grateful for all of our support. She even granted us a boon! Well, the ant-equivalent of a boon anyway. A boon? Nevermind. Point is, she’s given us a favor and I’ve already taken the liberty of calling it in. We’re–”
“--bringing the ants with us when we go to knock down Bancroft.” Sean finished for his friend, barking out a short, soundless laugh. “Alright, did not see that one coming – but I like it.”
“Right!? We’ll have our own little army. Well, big army. Once they grow up a bit.”
“How long is all that going to take?” Sean watched what looked like hundreds, possibly thousands of cat-sized ants crawl up their mother as they continued to stream through the hole she had made.
“No idea.” Gel admitted brightly. “Ants don’t really measure time like we do, you see. But she did promise to help us once we’re ready and the hive is back up. Provided we do just one, tiny little favor for her in return.”
“One tiny favor, huh?” Sean drawled, crossing his arms and wondering what his friend had gotten them into now. He glanced around the burnt cavern, with its clear signs of battle and slew of formerly infected ant corpses. “Let me guess. She wants us to–”
“Cleanse the caverns!” Gel shouted, his obvious excitement not allowing him to let Sean take the moment away. “There’s a bunch of spores left, and she doesn’t want her brood to get infected again. So if we clear it all out of these tunnels for them, then we’ll have a nice horde of acid-spitting monsters on our side! Ready to serve us on our quest for vengeance!”
“Don’t you mean justice?”
“Oh, no. Definitely vengeance. There’s some justice in there, I don’t want to diminish that, but it’s almost entirely vengeance.”
“Fair enough. Well, shall we get started then? I’m thinking we start with–”
Sean’s statement was interrupted by what sounded like a monastery-sized gong going off inside his head. If muscles were what were still keeping him up, then he might have fallen to his knees. Instead, his vision blurred, and the very bones making up the gelaton’s entire body tensed like taut cords.
“Uhh… start with what?” Gel’s suddenly concerned voice came through distantly, as if the slime were shouting from the other side of the canyon. “Sean? … Hello? You still with me here?”
Before Sean could respond, a new voice bellowed into his mind with a force that felt like the thunderclap of stars. Even so, it was a voice Sean recognized. One he could never forget. One the undead had heard in his very first moments in this new world. The voice of the one who had first summoned him here, and whose words were laced with a power that felt like it bent the very air around them.
“RETURN!” Bancroft shouted into Sean’s very existence, and it was all the gelaton could do not to fall to his knees in supplication at the sound. He didn’t recognize the word itself, just its meaning. A meaning that was being made forcibly evident.
“I AM CALLING YOU BACK, MY SERVANT!”
The gong sounded again, collapsing over him like a sundered castle wall. Sean’s hands shot to either side of his skull, certain that he would find only shards there so great was the cacophony.
“RETURN!”
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Sean and Gel will return in Rise of a Monster: Second Course!