Welcome to Gaia! ::

+ 2 Soldier
(Luk 31, Lvl 45)

“Is that it?” whispered Raemos, staring in awed horror at the buzzing, cavernous mass of blighted plants and terrible insects.

“Yup.” said Selza, readying her mace, “Thats it. It's a crap ton of bugs, and it's even got a mama bug.”

Talon was silent, but Raemos could feel the man's wispy magic building around him, charging the air with shadows that danced in the corner of Raemos's gaze. His own magic was ready – it always was ready to kill.

“It has a queen?” Raemos asked, searching for a larger shape among the hoarde of insects.

“Yep, saw it when we found this place the first time... Big ol' bug.” said Selza, “So. What to you say to smashing a few?” she said, thumping her mace into her hand, her face cracked by an eager grin.

“I think it requires preparation.” said Raemos, watching the literal cloud of bugs, “Sir, if you'll allow me to soften up our target...?”

“Of course.” said Talon, “Set up your spells, Assistant Corporal.”

Raemos nodded. “Lafahz Gaom!” he said, as quietly as he could so as not to alert the insects too soon, setting the miasma at the swarm to foul their wings. “Ugvulm!” Flame magic came at his incantation, dancing as embers in the air as the insects struggled against the clinging darkness. “Shoush Skedush!” he said, gesturing the wind to blow towards the Vispiri. It carried the embers with it, gleaming bright and feral at the gust.

The wind was now at their backs, an advantage they needed when dealing with so many large, vicious bugs. Said bugs now knew they were there, and they chittered and shrieked as the embers bore holes into their carapaces and the wind blew them back.

Talon took the initiative to let his smokey, hazy magic drift into the wind, wrapping around the insects and putting out both the embers and the beast's lives. A loud, angry hum came from the hive and hundreds of faceted eyes looked towards them, filled with unthinking hate and malice.

“Now we smash them.” said Raemos, smugly, smirking at Selza.

“All right!” whooped Selza, charging into the fray with her usual recklessness. RInsect parts began to fly, crushed by Selza's mace and torn asunder by Talon's magic.

Raemos's magic joined in seeping beneath the bugs and into Selza's shadow, lurking untilRaemos shaped it into a pair of crushing hands. He clapped, one, twice, and then again, squishing the insects between two planes of solid, shadowy force.

Selza laughed wildly as she became covered with ooze. “Ain't this just the best?” she crowed, crushing bug after bug, “It's like that time, with the Yvazhi! They just keep coming!”

“I don't think that's a good thing!” said Talon, sending a whorl of shadows to slice up a phalanx that had been heading for his sister, “We do want there to be an end to them!”

“Aww! C'mon! It's more fun this way!” She kicked one of the Vispiri in the head, slamming her mace down, “Got another... Hey, anybody keeping count? I bet I can mash more than the two of you.”

“I've lost count.” said Raemos, slamming his magic into the hive itself, laying it – and the wriggling larvae and food stores inside – bare to the air. “Let us say” he said, summoning up the embers to cook the larvae to death – not burn away, of course: they were a source of protein and the town needed whatever they could get for the winter, “Whoever kills the queen...” he engulfed a Vispiri soldier in his magic and crushed it until he let it drop to the ground, a crumpled mass. “Will be bought one of the drinks the tavernkeeper keeps in the back.”

“You mean that stash that he thinks we don't know about?” said Selza, barely dodging a stinger before tearing it out of the intruding Vispiri with a well-aimed mace hit.

“The very same.” said Raemos.

“That's pricy as hell, I bet!” she replied, stomping on a few of the Vispiri workers, who skittered and ran, squealing.

“Hence why it goes to whoever kills the queen.” said Talon, “And if it is not me, I shall pay for it myself.”

The swarm was angered, now, and charged against the wind. It was not hard to hold them back – the wind helped – but a few managed to get through. The bigger, tougher ones, that would be a true threat to the mages. Talon drew his simple blade to deal with the insects that swarmed him, stinging through his clothing.

“Speaking of the big one, where in Oblivion is she?” asked Selza, frustrated, as she swiped at the boiling cloud of large insects, “I don't see her.”

Raemos couldn't help either sibling: had his own troubles to deal with. He swatted the vispiri from the air with a bolt of shadowy magic as their stingers skidded against his defensive warding spells and looked into the main cloud.

“I think she's here!” he shouted, “Watch out, Selza!”

The Queen was a massive Vispiri, surrounded by a retinue of large, angry insects that loomed from the remains of the hive and towered over Selza's head.

“There you are!” she taunted, as they attacked her. Talon's magic surged forth in a deadly cloud, dispatching the followers swiftly, rending their wings and their heads from their bulbous bodies. The Queen, though, brushed away the encroaching magic and attacked with a high-pitched, chittering scream, stabbing Selza in the leg with her stinger.

“s**t!” exclaimed the bezerker, her leg swelling horribly as the monstrous beast came upon her. It's mandibles clicked evilly, and Selza shouted back, half pain and half defiance as it made to bite her.

Raemos shoved his magic out, hitting the Vispiri queen with a ball of force to it's cruel, triangular face. “Get away from her, fiend!” he yelled, ignoring the irony in calling the beast – as it attacked an Oblivionite – fiend. Raemos tried to envelop it with his sticky magic to crush it, but it was to no avail. It shook off the tendrils of shadow and came at him with the remainder of its swarm, angered and intent on his death.

He tried to shove them back with a wall of his magic, but they were too tenacious and were soon upon him. Barbed stingers pieced his magical barriers and his uniform, piercing the flesh below with poisoned pain. He tried to crush them with hands of shadow, but no matter how many he crushed, there were still more, stabbing at him with their stingers until he, desperately, surrounded himself with a suffocating gelatinous shadowy ooze that they could not piece through.

Talon brought his magic around, slaying the smaller ones until they no longer buzzed in frustration outside of his sphere of glutinous protection. The queen, though, was unphazed by the death of her subjects or the shield around him. Her stinger pierced the wall of magic, scraping him as her mantibles viciously tore away at the magic. He knew he could not let their serrated, knife-like edges reach him. He gathered his magic to him and, when she came in for the newly-exposed kill, he shoved out with it, pushing the queen back with a column of fluid force. She fluttered, stunned, and lay on the ground as she regained her insectoid senses...

Except she never would.

Selza, limping, came up behind the queen and, with a solid blow, crushed the queen's head into pump. Panting, bleeding, and looking paler than usual, she turned to her brother, grinning. “Hey Talon. Guess what. You're buying me a drink...”

Raemos caught her as she half collapsed. “Well.” he said, relieved and aching, “That was... Interesting.”

“Fun.” said Selza weakly, “You mean fun.”

“I'm sure he does not...” said Talon, concerned, “I will take inventory. Please take her to the infirmary...”

Raemos was already on his way.

(1343/1200)