Webs & Wards (Beesong Chronicles Book 2) Read online

  Webs & Wards

  Benjamin Medrano

  Contents

  The Story So Far

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Epilogue

  Queen’s Move Preview

  Webs & Wards by Benjamin Medrano

  © 2020 Benjamin Medrano. All rights reserved.

  Contact the author at [email protected]

  Visit the author’s website at benjaminmedrano.com

  Sign up for the author’s mailing list at http://eepurl.com/cGPT-b

  Cover Art by Domina Art

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This was only possible because of my wife and my Patrons.

  Thank you all.

  The Story So Far

  When Yonra, god of chaos, won the millennial games of the gods, his request startled the other deities in its simplicity. He requested that a new species be created from the giant bees that roamed the world. Though suspicious, the other deities agreed, and named the new species the apis.

  Across the world a fraction of the giant beehives turned into apis, no matter where their members were located. This led to the death of several unfortunate adventuring groups, but also stranded a number of apis in high places, such as one apis who was stuck in a giant rose over sixty feet off the ground. Without a way down, the confused apis waited for rescue, one which wasn’t coming, with how few apis could now fly.

  Back in the small town of Seldrim, the elven mage Cora woke in the temple after dying in a new apis hive, to her incredible frustration. In order to regain some of the funds lost in her resurrection, the elf chose to team up with Brianna and Stella to search for herbs in the Flower Forest. Somewhat to their shock, they encountered the apis when a giant wasp attacked her, and both combatants crashed to the ground.

  The adventurers saved the apis’s life, and to repay them she used her innate abilities to gather the items they needed from the plants, during which time they grew to like her, and named the apis Joy due to her enthusiastic, upbeat personality. They parted a short time later, only for Joy to receive terrible news back at her hive.

  Joy returned only to be exiled by her queen, in part because she was too old for a worker, and also as they were hoping she could found a new hive elsewhere, which was why they gave her an item which the apis prized above all others, pure royal jelly. If she could reach level twenty, the jelly would allow her to evolve into an apis queen, with a full century of life ahead of her rather than the mere six months remaining to her. Joy was saddened, but accepted the queen’s decision.

  Cora and her friends were surprised when Joy came to town, but after her brief explanation, they chose to welcome her company and began teaching her about the world, as well as helping her change jobs to that of a Rogue. They decided to go on a simple scouting mission to see if goblins had invaded the region again, but that was when everything went awry.

  After defeating the goblins, Joy found what appeared to be an ancient teleporter which they believed led to a treasury, so they took it, only to find themselves stranded on the other side, deep underground. Their attempt to escape was further complicated when they realized that they’d been transported into the dangerous Blackstone Mines, and that the mines had been infested by motini, gullible rodent-folk who often worshipped demons as gods.

  They chose to attempt to rescue some of the captives the motini had taken, and Joy proved instrumental to doing so, as she freed the prisoners as the others brought down part of a cavern on the motini. A powerful demon named Alethus arrived, however, and he caught Joy. As he questioned her, Cora attempted to save Joy, and Alethus poisoned her with a spell, which distracted Joy long enough to almost stab him in the eye, which caused him to throw her away in a panic.

  The group fled, injured and bleeding, but all of their escape routes were blocked, so they went to the dangerous back of the mines ahead of pursuit, hoping to find an exit. Alethus pursued, fascinated by the skill Joy had shown and confident they were moving into a dead end, where the only exit was into a lair of flower minks, which would destroy the low-level adventurers with ease. Joy noticed another exit, and convinced the others to take it while she lured Alethus toward the flower minks, confident that like when she was a giant bee, the minks wouldn’t like the taste of apis.

  Alethus fell for Joy’s provocations, believing the minks must be gone if she was in their nest without being attacked, and he stepped into the open. When the minks attacked, Alethus was seriously injured despite being much higher level than they were, and he was forced to teleport to safety, allowing Joy to catch up with the others.

  On reaching her friends, Joy found out that Cora was dying, and if she died so soon after her previous death, it was essentially certain to be permanent. The others had no way of saving her in time, so Joy didn’t even hesitate when she realized that she could rescue the elf. She offered her pure royal jelly, which acted as a powerful antitoxin, without explaining what it was to the others. While they realized that it was what allowed her to evolve into a queen, the others were ignorant of her limited lifespan, and they promised to repay Joy for it.

  And now our story continues.

  Prologue

  “Lightning Arc!” Nathaniel exclaimed, his voice echoing loudly in the tunnel, and a bright spark launched from his hand at the chittering mass of motini ahead of Isolde.

  The motini looked like three-foot tall marmots, if marmots wore poor-quality armor and wielded crude spears. They’d formed a spear wall in the tunnel, and their eyes glittered in the light with both zeal and terror. Terror that should have been far stronger than it was.

  The spark hit a single motini, despite his attempt to recoil out of the way, and burst into terrible, bright arcs of lightning that incinerated the motini before he could even scream, just as they reached out to touch all the motini around him, destroying nine of the creatures almost instantly. Their weapons fell to the ground smoking, and the remaining motini recoiled, chittering in horror as they wavered.

  Andrea raised her bow, taking aim as she murmured. “Explosive Shot.”

  The arrow lanced into the motini on the left, striking home before they could react. Their armor may as well have been air for all the good it did them, and the motini crumpled. Then it exploded in a brilliant ball of flames that destroyed another
third of the motini, and that broke their morale, even through their zealotry.

  “Run away!” a motini wailed, turning tail and fleeing, and the others around it ran as well.

  “Better than when you deal with them,” Nathaniel muttered, and Isolde Hammerhand snorted.

  “You think that’s going to last? Motini are natural zealots. Some of them are going to try to stop us,” Isolde said, adjusting her gauntlets as she moved down the tunnel. As she walked, she glanced back at Tina. “Are you planning to help, Tina?”

  “I’m retired, and unless one of you does something terribly stupid, there isn’t a need for it,” Tina replied waspishly, the elderly Priestess glaring at Isolde. “Or if there’s someone more dangerous in here, I suppose. But I’m not wasting my mana when there isn’t a need for it. You could destroy all of these motini yourself, if they’d have the manners to stand still.”

  Isolde snorted and looked back at the path ahead of them while she spoke sourly. “That’s the attitude that got the demon a dagger in the eye, from what I heard. I don’t want any of you following his example… damned level forty nearly getting killed by a level ten adventurer. It’s insane.”

  “Luck and hubris. They really don’t mix well,” Andrea said, shrugging. Then her eyes narrowed. “We’re almost there, aren’t we?”

  “We are, so be on your guard. I doubt they’ll try to drop the tunnel on us, but that’d hurt even us,” Isolde said, glancing at the ceiling warily.

  The tunnel ahead of them wasn’t in the best shape, with fallen and cracked stone everywhere, and rubble surrounded the exit along with dozens of wooden spars, forming a makeshift wall that led into a much larger cavern, one which was partially illuminated by a blue-white radiance. Spears and bows could be seen over the edge of the wall, and a crude gate had been closed in their path.

  “Repel the unbelievers! For our benevolent lord! For dinner!” a thready motini voice cried out from in front of them, just on the other side of the gate.

  “For dinner!” the other motini chorused, and Isolde couldn’t help a dark chuckle at their ignorant fervor.

  “Juggernaut Charge,” Isolde said, and felt strength surge through her, her skin hardening as she lunged forward fast enough that the motini wouldn’t be able to react in time. She hit the wall like a trebuchet’s boulder, and it exploded outward, sending stone and screaming motini flying across the broad cavern, its ceiling held up by huge stone pillars.

  There were the usual ramshackle buildings of motini in the cavern as well, but Isolde wasn’t done, not with dozens of motini staggering back from the gap she’d torn through their defenses. She took a couple of quick steps forward and grinned.

  “Rising Impact!” Isolde bellowed, punching the ground hard, and the entire cavern seemed to shake as the motini within a dozen paces were thrown into the air, along with boulders and wood. As they began to fall, Isolde proceeded to the next stage of her attack combination. “Dragon Sweep!”

  As Isolde spun in a sweeping kick, mana rushed down into her leg. Fire erupted into the air in the shape of a dragon which roared as it spun around her, consuming all the motini in its path and leaving little but ashes in its wake. Of the four dozen motini who’d been standing nearby, only four were still alive, and for an instant those four seemed paralyzed with shock, their whiskers quivering.

  Then they screamed and ran, and the motini in the distance fled as well.

  “Told you that you could wipe out all of them yourself,” Tina said, walking through the gap calmly, and wrinkled her nose as Andrea shot a fleeing motini in the back. “Do you really have to do that?”

  “They’re a plague, and we’re going to have to clear out the mines anyway,” Andrea retorted, her eyes narrowing a little. “What, do you think that we could just leave them?”

  “Possibly,” Tina said, obviously arguing for the sake of being contrary.

  “No wonder you retired,” Nathan said, his gaze fixed on the cave entrance off to the left, silver-blue light radiating from it, and he swallowed hard, then asked, “Guildmaster, do you think that it… it’s gone?”

  “The chamber’s exposed, and there was a demon. I don’t see any other reason for someone like that to come here,” Isolde said flatly, starting toward the chamber, her gaze flitting back and forth to watch for danger. “If it is… it’ll be bad.”

  “How bad? Since, you know, there aren’t any low-level adventurers here to panic?” Andrea asked, a note of tension in her voice. “I know the seal is supposed to be important, but nothing more than that.”

  “The creatures Tarngard sealed were all so powerful that they couldn’t kill them. They could fight and slow them down, but not kill them,” Isolde grated, shivering at some of her memories. “I’ve heard of a few of them, and even saw a few lower-level types. I once saw a sand maw destroy over a thousand soldiers, and it took fifty level forty adventurers to kill it, including me. I nearly died in that fight, and a quarter of us did die. It was only level thirty-five… and all the sealed creatures I’ve heard of are over level sixty.”

  “Oh, shit. If that’s the case… whatever’s sealed could destroy the entire kingdom, couldn’t it?” Nathan asked, his voice taut, now.

  “It could,” Isolde agreed, her lips pressing together tightly. “If the seal is gone… we’re going to have to send a message to Irador. These seals were always broken into multiple parts, so Silverhoof will want to reinforce defenses around the others, while trying to figure out how to retrieve it.”

  “We’ll know soon enough,” Tina said, sounding much more focused than she had before.

  Isolde nodded, glancing around the chamber idly. It was amazing how much damage the low-level adventurers had done, and she could see where the motini had been trying to excavate parts of the cavern that’d been buried. Her attention focused on the cave as they approached, though, and its light drowned out the lantern Tina was carrying.

  Stepping around the corner, Isolde stopped dead and grimaced. “Hellfire and brimstone. Looks like we’re going to need that message.”

  The cavern before her was filled with luminous titansteel crystals, all around an upraised pillar where the seal piece was supposed to be floating.

  The seal was gone, and with it, Isolde’s worst fears were realized.

  * * *

  “So, you figured out how Yonra won the game?” Fayliss asked, her eyes narrowing slightly as she looked at Besalk.

  “That’s right, and it’s so incredibly simple that I’m kicking myself for not realizing before,” Besalk said, sighing heavily as he took a sip from his cup, the glowing liquid within doing a good deal to help him relax.

  “How’d he do it, then?” Xinra asked, frowning as she folded her arms. “The chances of him having a deific flush were incredibly low, and it beggars belief that he’d get it by accident.”

  “It wasn’t an accident, but it was by chance,” Besalk corrected, looking at them, as well as Assyran levelly. The deity of justice simply smiled in return, sitting in his chair calmly as Besalk spoke. “Assyran knows how it was done, I’m certain. It’s part of his purview.”

  The gathering of deities was small, only the four of them together in one of the gardens they favored for their meetings. All around them was a lush garden and landscape, unimaginable in the mortal world due to its beauty. But that was the benefit of being gods; they could create things that no mortal could imagine, with few limits when they worked together.

  “Assyran, is that true?” Xinra asked sharply, looking at the deity with narrowed eyes.

  “Yes, of course. It didn’t break any of the rules, and I wasn’t going to give away his secret. It’s up to all of you to lay down the rules. I simply enforce them,” Assyran replied, his smile unchanging.

  “Before you ask again, what Yonra did was very simple. He gave himself terrible luck at every game before this one, at least for the last seven gatherings,” Besalk said, and Fayliss blinked incredulously.

  “What? How could giving himse
lf terrible luck help at all?” Fayliss asked, pursing her lips as she considered the idea.

  “He was tilting the scales. Nature prefers a balance when it comes to things like fortune, and he was consistently weighing down one side,” Assyran said calmly, looking around the table. “As he said, eventually his luck had to turn, even with him weighing down that side. When it did… it balanced out. It wasn’t necessarily going to this time, or the next time, or even the time after that, but when he won, he was going to win impressively.”

  Xinra swore softly, the goddess of strategy obviously upset by the information. Fayliss could understand, as she knew the goddess took pride in carefully calculating the odds of success to give herself an advantage. Anything like Assyran had described had to offend the woman on a fundamental level.

  “Which unfortunately means we need to lay down some new rules,” Besalk said, looking at them in frustration. “It may not be improving the luck of anyone at the table, but if everyone was doing that, it’d utterly ruin the games. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I can’t abide that.”

  “Agreed,” Xinra said instantly and scowled as she added, “What about his creations, though? The apis—”