Chương 499: AF Chapter 498 – The Final Queen

The Paradox Queen made a fight of it, that was for certain. The entire landscape around her hive was seething with Summons drawn from as far away as she could bring them, meaning our initial fight was against all those Summons the other hives had passed by, rounded up by her drones and sent crashing against us. Alas for her, those olthoi weren't the best at getting through hardpoints, which meant I could throw up walls around the entrances to her own hive and keep them out.

We couldn't Teleport within five miles of her hive due to the agitation of the Veil she was putting forth, but Briggs had already moved into a commanding location on the primary entrances, basically sealing them to prevent a breakout or reinforcements from without, not bothering to invade without us near. Indeed, my main tactic was to come in via Linejump from above, then plug those tunnels with a hundred meters of rock to make sure nothing got out.

While I did that, Kris and the Mick began the primary thrust into the hive itself. That… basically went nowhere. The Paradox Olthoi Queen flooded the entry points with Summons from within her hive, not bothering to risk any of her children. It was a tactic that absolutely would have worked and denied us entry by simply tossing bodies and collapsing caverns in front of us, leaving us precious few ways to go that would only set us up for a massive thrust from all angles…

except for a certain magos who could tunnel through stone with breathtaking speed, once that olthoi gel was scraped off of it. So, while a force basically ground against the mass of olthoi that were Burning down in vivus while filling the corridor with disposable corpses, the main attackers simply went around and down, down, down. The hive was immense.

It had once been called the Black Death Catacombs, the greatest olthoi hive in the Olthoi North, a source of dread that had been the death of many enslaved Isparians long ago, the most-established of all of the hives, and where the Mother Queen Herself had once laired. Before the Fall, there had been many attacks on the Hive and its defenses, facing off against waves of Summons on the way to the Paradox Queen.

She had been slain many times, brought back by virindi-born power just as often, and it had been more a test of skill and power than a true achievement… and a way to qualify to receive Olthoi Slayer Weapons, which was utterly nonsensical. You wanted such Weapons BEFORE you went after the most powerful under-Queen, not after, right? Whatever. The olthoi could dig, but not anything like I could Shape.

So it was that a truly elite crew was going down to take on a twenty-five foot tall killing machine, who just so happened to ignore Item Magic Buffs. That said, she didn't ignore alchemical slakes, so both blueshine and silverslake's protection against acid attacks would work just fine against her miasma and her spit. If you didn't have heavyfoot, you weren't in the team. She was four times our height and could throw around a normal human like a toy. If she could do that, you were dead.

You had to both be able to dodge her attacks and not be thrown around by her at the same time, or our formation would fail. There were no Archers in the team to fight her directly, because any such would be swept off their feet and killed in seconds if they attempted to set up a shooting formation, and she was fully capable of just stepping over anyone in her way to get at a line of them. If you couldn't dodge, you were hosed, and missile attackers had no way to stay out of her reach or at range from her here.

Now, them setting on Disks and setting up a gut-slamming field of fire against her brood guards and other children moving to protect her, that was something else, and the spear line was all ready to do that. There'd be no Tim or Mowen in this fight, because we couldn't bring them in. So, this was all on us. Which, of course, was why I was here, as I was capable of Revivifying anyone and everyone at this point.

Thera, Nippo, and the secondary Life Casters could handle most of the other Healing Duties, while I supported the main team. The Earth Elemental I was using to scout the way down brought us out into the lowest levels, complete with a long shelf stuffed with some very powerful olthoi, overlooking a feeding pool glowing all luminescent yellow-green with dozens of head-sized eggs scattered all around it.

The surprise of the olthoi was pretty much complete when twenty feet of tunnel flowed away and the advance team charged out into the room, backed by Vanguards buttressed by hedges of long spears. To the left, I started raising a stone wall out of the ground, ripping it up through a good six inches of resin on the floor, and raising it up, up to the ceiling sixty feet above, five feet thick… at which point I began to drive it across the room, which was a good fifty meters across from us.

The Queen's scream of fury made the air and psyscape tremble alike, but everyone was protected against both with Sound Bubbles and Protection from Vermin 20' Radius alike, and we simply got to the fighting. The reinforcements came skittering in to help, and the whole of the Brood Guard attempted to swarm us, climb up and over onto us, and found themselves dancing on a full hedge of long Spears specifically waiting for that tactic.

The packed bodies became impediments to those behind as they were impaled under their own weight, began to Burn off the Spears sticking into them, and we pushed out, out, out under the strength and weight of Gearknight and Lugian Vanguards behind their Shields. Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel. I began to Chaindart the lines of the olthoi in my free sets of three.

It wasn't an overly powerful attack, but it was constant, it was erosive, and it hurt six dozen of them at a time. Individually, it wasn't that strong, although it did discomfit them and hurt them, riming them in ice, convulsing them with lightning, and burning them with fire. They were weakened enough to make it easier to press forward, and then the first archers behind us set up and began to shoot concentrated volleys.

All the while, the stone wall reaching to the ceiling flowed out and across the room, narrowing that gap of reinforcing olthoi down. Tsu Nippo put down his first Wall of Fire thirty feet in front of our lines, right in the middle of at least two layers of packed olthoi, and they began to cook in the raging heat of the flames. Twenty feet past it, Thera's Wall went up, and doubled the fun on the olthoi.

Olthoi disintegrating in vivic fire were falling down over our packed ranks, while my Darts zipped through six dozen at a time and dumped Kickers into olthoi as Toppling knocked them off their feet. Arrows followed in their wake, concentrated fire punching through heads and thoraxes, and Brood Guards and Sentinels slowly dropped, usually hanging on three or four Spear-points as they did so, Banefire turning the color of their acidic blood as it blazed through them and they fell apart with magical speed.

The single biggest killers were Briggs and Kris, with the Mick helping out, and Lady Vundanewall's crack team of Olthoi Hunter shooters hitting above their weight in what would probably be their last big battle against the foe they'd fought for two generations and more now. Endure was slamming into the spidery forms of the olthoi with terrific force, smashing the massive bugs back, shattering chitin carapaces, and then bouncing among them to wreak further havoc and send them flying wildly around.

Kris was just sitting in place and unleashing a constant stream of Sharding attacks into the clambering, scuttling horde trying to get on top of the Spears. Sometimes the arc of Mote-circled force cut through two or three as it sliced on by and past the creatures. Quaver was humming, Endure was Beating, and the Trembling Song began to rise in defiance of the scuttling and hissing horde of fanatic bugs trying to stop us.

"Tremble, as you skitter. Tremble, as you gather. You know no fear for your eggs and queen, but rather Despair and doom and your ending soon. Mutant things wrought by things of aether Left behind by the hives and whether You seek it or not, this last room. Is where it ends! Tremble, we scream to the swarm! Tremble, we shout to the hive! TREMBLE, we rage at the queen! TREMBLE, YOU'LL NOT LEAVE HERE ALIVE!

"TREMBLE, WE COME!" The Sublime Chord thrummed in harmony, tearing the Heartsong through the hivemind's telepathic chorus. The hivemind reeled, and even the Queen shuddered against the force of Kris' killing desire. The Beat of Endure was a clock, ticking down as it stilled pumping hearts and olthoi crunched mercilessly under its hurtling mass. The room was over half-closed off.

The incoming reinforcements couldn't make it in, and this time I blew the Fastcast Wall of Fire across the opening and along the side there, Holy Kickers feeding Banefire that ate at all the weakest spots as silver-gold flames raged high and hard and cooked the bugs before them. They could not stand in the path of the Wall that was coming across. Shaped stone didn't have a lot of muscle behind it, and couldn't actually displace a living being trying to resist it, flowing around rather than through it.

But cooking olthoi found it very hard to stay in the path of the stone that was coming across, and dead carcasses were no impediment to me. The hissing shriek as the Paradox Queen finally advanced into the fight, seeing what was going on and trying to stop it, echoed off the walls outside the Sound Bubbles we had up. She was marked and spotted, and Briggs went to meet her. There'd be no silly wrestling this time.

Briggs was on his Disk, risen up over the Vanguards holding the front line against hacking pedipalps, grasping claws, and stabbing pincers. Olthoi who came in reach of him were chopped through or shattered, limbs flying off in sprays of igniting acidic blood as steely chitin broke, while hissing Shardings lashed past on all sides of him, clearing out even more olthoi as Kris backed him up. Briggs didn't use his Shield Wall all that much, but an Olthoi Queen was definitely an exception.

It was now out and he was throwing as she waded through her stacked-up spawn towards our line. If I was pinging her with Chaindart Kickers to annoy the piss out of her, well, it was what it was. Further at the back, an Archer line turned all their firing on her, while the Mick and Kris also moved up to join the fun on their own Disks. Endure flew out like a bullet, ricocheted between the Queen and one of her lunging, hard-to-kill Paradox Sentinels, and was back in Briggs' hand.

She barely staggered at the impact, Health Qi fracturing off and preventing any real injuries. One step, two… And then she fell over in surprise, right on top of Gros and Kopf, about a dozen Spears, and right in front of Briggs. The Impervious adamantium Chain that had opportunistically tightened around her legs and now bound them tight snaked around the great cleaving pedipalps now driven into the ground to brace her fall.

They began to tighten, winching them back and higher and taking them out of the fight, at the same time the length of her tail was wrapped tight to her lower body, also taking the whipping thing out of the fight. She now had left her secondary claws in front, her jaws, and that was about it, while she was bent over and taking it. A Hammer and two Swords hit her, Pierce/Bludgeon Vulnerability VII and Imperil VII went off from Lenses, and the beat-down began.

She was big and she was strong, but the adamantium wasn't going to break, and it was out of her arc of attacks. Her kids could try to beat on the Chain, but the stuff was blueshined and impervious to acid, and had a Hardness of about 80. They had no chance whatsoever of being able to break it. Zeks chortled on my finger as he quietly used torque and leverage to his advantage, while the Paradox Queen writhed and struggled to get free and out of her awkward position, and simply couldn't break loose.