Infinity Legends

Chapter 41: The Buried Hive

The silence was palpable in the air as the two gunslingers measured each other, standing twenty steps apart, hands hovering over their holstered pistols. The audience, too, had fallen silent in respect to the competitors’ deep concentration. The red sun painted the desert sands and cast the shadows of the dueling gunmen onto the rustic village buildings.

At last, the silence was broken by the tolling of the church bells, and in the blink of an eye two plasma shots were fired. One of the gunslingers dropped dead with a hole in his chest. The other dropped dead with a hole between his eyes.

As nearby players dragged the corpses out of the street, a referee stepped in and announced: “Technical tie. Score for heartshot: 8 points. Score for headshot: 10 points. Jake Nebula wins the round!”

Some of the crowd cheered, some of the crowd booed, and somewhere nearby the respawned Jake Nebula congratulated his respawned opponent for a close match. On the edges of the wild-west themed town, so properly chosen to host the unofficial but widely popular gunslinging tournament, Serry muttered to the rest of the party:

“This is bullshit.”

Arlak pinched Serry, then nodded to an oblivious Gurm.

“Pointless!” Serry was quick to rectify. “I meant this is pointless.”

“I don’t know,” Takol shrugged. “That shot seemed pretty on point to me. Hehe. Got it? Because you said pointless? It was… on point?”

“Yes, Takol, we got it,” Kramen shook his head. “But Serry’s right. This is pointless. We will never find a gunslinger to join the team here.”

“Sure we will!” Gurm said, then spun around and tugged on a space cowboy’s pink leather vest. “Hey, friend, you wanna join our FSL team?”

“Sure!” the cowboy said, then unhooked his twin pistols from his belt. “Watch this!” he spun the weapons on his fingers. One of then flew off. The other fired a round of burning plasma onto the cowboy’s boot.

“Yeah, we’ll pass,” Serry shot a merciful blast of ice on the man’s foot, then turned to the others. “What I’m saying is the skills tested in this competition have nothing to do with FSL. These guys are fast on the trigger, sure, but they’re shooting one target right in front of them. In FSL you need to shoot dozens all around.”

“She does have a point,” Arlak nodded. “These losers wouldn’t last a second against us.”

“Can’t believe I’m saying this,” Serry looked at the huge hairy alien, “but the Star Ranger gets my meaning.”

“Right, okay,” Takol started pacing, which, Kramen knew, meant he was coming up with an argument. “Maybe the competition isn’t a great test, but it has gathered all of the best gunslingers in the galaxy in the same place. It’s still quite an opportunity!”

“I agree!” Gurm nodded beneath her dark hood. “Plus, I want to see the matches! It’s fun!”

“Hum,” Kramen muttered, chewing on his cheeks. “I think I know how we’ll find our gunslinger. We’re going on a little underground adventure.”

“So… I can’t watch the matches?” Gurm asked.

“Trust me,” Kramen winked at the sage, “this will be far more interesting.”

***

The desert town where the competition took place was merely a blot on the distance now. From time to time, the group would hear the bell tolling, followed by one or two shots and then cheering. As they moved along the sandy expanse, the sounds from town became weaker until all the noise around them was the rustling of sand on the wind.

After almost twenty minutes of walking, they had finally come to a breach on the ground, a hole big enough for a person to easily walk in and surrounded by rocks that stopped the sand from flooding the little pass.

“What is this place?” Gurm asked as the five players pushed into the breach.

“The entrance to an underground insect hive,” Kramen answered, leading the group down the breach.

“Sand Hoots,” Takol apparently knew the place too. “Extremely aggressive and protective of their eggs. Expect a lot of the little critters.”

“I think I see where you’re going with this,” Arlak laughed deviously. “I missed playing with you, kid. This is gonna be one for the books.”

“I’m not so sure, sis,” Gurm said as they reached a dead-end. The rocky walls grew narrower until they were completely closed off by a layer of translucent brown material. Gurm knocked her purple fingers twice on the strange surface, verifying it was, indeed, as solid as it looked.

“Hey,” Serry joined the other mage in studying the barrier. “This kind of looks like my ice structures. Just brown. It’s some sort of… resin?”

“That would make sense,” Kramen nodded. “These insects are known for their extremely resistant secretions. They used it for building their nests, coating their cocoons, capturing prey and even for defending the hive. It’s contained as a liquid within the Sand Hoots’ abdomens, but almost instantly solidifies when exposed to ambient conditions.”

“I think I can use my powers to melt down the resin,” Serry said. “Or weaken it enough for Takol’s lasers to burn through.”

“I can try and use basic dark-matter warps, too,” Gurm said. “Weaken the structure’s physical integrity.”

“Okay, guys, these bugs have given me a lot of trouble in the past,” Takol said. “Do we really need something from these guys?”

“Yes, we do,” Kramen said.

Takol massaged his temples. “Christ… Okay! What we’ll do, I’ll run in first, round up all the eggs, we’ll kind of blast the bugs with AoE. I will use intimidating grenades to scatter them so we don’t have to fight a whole bunch of them at once. When my grenade is done I’ll need Serry to come in and use her powers too so we can keep’em scattered, not fight too many. When that’s done Gurm’ll need to run in, do the same thing. We’ll need dark-matter intervention on our mages so they can AE so we can, of course, bring them down fast. If we don’t we’re in trouble. What do you think, Kramen, can you give me a number crunch real quick?”

“Give me a sec…” Kramen pondered. “I’m coming up with 32.33, repeating, of course, percentage of survival.”

“It’s a lot better than we usually do,” Serry shrugged.

“Alright, chums, let’s do this!” Arlak screamed from behind the group. “LEEROOOOOOOOY JEEEEEENKINS!”

Still screaming, Arlak charged and crushed into the resin with his shoulder, the translucent barrier immediately shattering as the massive alien disappeared into the dark cavern beyond.

The other four members of the group watched awestruck, then looked at each other.

“Oh, my God!” Kramen said. “He just ran in!”

“Save him!” Gurm ran after the mad tank.

“Stick to the plan!” Takol ran in after the mage.

“Let’s go! Let’s go!” Serry follow suit.

Kramen, alone outside, sighed.

Of course that was bound to happen.

***

After shattering the resin barrier, Arlak had mere seconds to slow down before his feet went from the dusty desert soil to a slope of slippery stone angling further underground. The brute tried to maintain balance, but it was too late. As Arlak rolled downwards, trying but failing to slow down, the faint red sunlight coming from the breached entrance grew fainter, until it was completely gone.

After long seconds of flipping over his own head, Arlak came to a stop on a dark moisty chamber, landing on his side in a puddle of stinking muck. He grunted, disoriented by the convoluted arrival. Behind him, the screams of Gurm, Takol and Serry indicated they too had fallen in the same natural trap in their attempt to save Arlak.

But save Arlak from what, exactly? There did not seem to be any danger, after all.

Once Arlak pushed himself up, the fur on his arm still soaked in an unidentifiable substance, he hurried to light up a flashlight, just in time to see Gurm arrive and use her powers to smoothly float rather than crash-land like Arlak had. Knowing Takol and Serry would come quickly after, Gurm wasted no time turning around and slowing their own slide.

“Good, we’re all here now!” Arlak grunted, unclear if sarcastically or not.

All the others joined Arlak in igniting flashlights, except for Gurm. The girl was talented, but still had to learn a few basic lessons, starting with what to always have in your inventory. As the three beams illuminated the chamber around them, each of the explorers gawked at the domed ceiling of the massive room in which they were. Pillars and stalactites of the same resin from before filled the chamber and the walls were covered in small tunnel entrances the size of basketballs. Probably the fabled bug’s mode of transportation inside their hive.

“Hey, what’s that on your arm?” Serry asked, pointing her light at Arlak.

Arlak stared down at his limb, just then realizing it no longer felt moist from the puddle, but was now coated on solid sleeve of brown resin. The tank illuminated the floor where he landed, finding the remains of a crushed bug.

“Aw, no!” Arlak muttered. “Get it off! Get it off!”

The massive alien tried shaking the solidified crust off, but it remained there, paralyzing his wrist and fingers. The next attempt was to use his free hand to rip out the resin, but that had the same null effect. For a brief moment, Arlak tried using his sabretooth fangs to chew through the sleeve, then resorted to brute strength and started hammering the ground in the hopes of shattering the crust.

Each blow he landed in the ground seemed to make the entire cavern shake, and with every thundering strike they could also hear the sound of resin cracking.

“Stop!” Takol yelled, holding back Arlak’s arm mid swing.

Arlak stared holes at him, but obeyed.

“Look!” Takol casted light on the ground Arlak had been hammering. A murky brown, translucent ground covered in cracks. “It’s resin. And it’s breaking. I knew I remembered a longer drop. They sealed off this chamber, but it continues down!”

“Nobody move…” Gurm said, the spreading cracks causing slight tremors beneath her boots. “This thing’s about to give.”

“Then how do I get rid of this?” Arlak waved his petrified fist.

“I have an idea,” Takol pointed his rifle at Arlak’s hand.

“Don’t think about it!” Arlak hid his hand. “You’re not shooting my f*****g… erm, freaking… hand.”

“Then maybe I can help,” Serry said. “Maybe freezing the resin will weaken it.”

“Or make it harder,” Arlak shook his head. “Well, it’s worth a shot, I suppose.”

Serry then started pacing towards the larger alien, the weight of a feather on her every step, each slight movement making the floor creak and c***k.

“Careful,” Gurm reminded Serry.

Serry was being careful. But that would not matter.

With a long, echoing scream, Kramen flew down the rocky slide, collapsing face first into the crumbly surface.

The impact made the floor quickly disintegrate, and gravity did the rest.