Even as the beasts of the swamp defended the labyrinth with all they had, they still did not stand anywhere close to the front of true combat.
Lord Bloodskull, Master of Ten Thousand Kin, had once again been forced to the back line. He knew it would be no fun to fight against maybe half a dozen emerald-rank purity priests. They were more than two whole mortal tiers below him. Even so, when he'd once again brought together the orcish forces to destroy the human invaders, he expected more conflict.
The humans were cowardly, he knew that well. They ran and hid in their little cities the moment they could. Even so, he couldn't stand this boredom. He was eating a small fortune each day just to stay up here for no purpose.
He was just about to take another break from sitting in his favorite chair, carved from wood that seemed to glimmer a bit in the twilight, when someone unexpected entered his war tent.
The lich of nightshade entered, quickly trailed by four towering death knights. The warriors in black armor couldn't match up to the overwhelming orc, but they didn't need to. Their master was diamond-rank and could crush Bloodskull like a twig. Even so, Bloodskull didn't even stand; instead simply gestured to the lich for the undead to sit.
The lich somehow managed to roll the glowing fungi in his empty eye sockets. How someone managed it without irises was beyond the orc. Even so, the lich reached into the empty air and tugged out a large chair. It was actually closer to a throne than a chair, but still served the purpose. Unlike the gorgeous wooden chair Bloodskull sat in, the lich's chair was made of bones.
"Keeping up the aesthetic, eh?" The guttural voice of Bloodskull echoed from behind his helmet, which he had forgotten he was wearing. He quickly took it off, since the lich had only brought his guard instead of proper armor.
The lich only nodded slightly before reaching into the air again and pulling out a scroll. He laid it out on the table and began to speak.
"This contract is one I plan to put forth to all of the currently chosen candidates. It was short-sighted of me to close off the barrier, and I apologize for that."
"No need," Bloodskull replied, "I saw the face of the big lizard. Even the vampire was furious that they'd dare try to lay claim. Your actions were understandable."
"Even so, I acted out of emotion. As such, I'm here with a deal."
Bloodskull raised one thick eyebrow, "A deal? What for?"
The lich indicated the paper, but didn't give Bloodskull even a second to glance over the dense characters before he explained it.
"I appreciate the candidates' efforts to protect the region. As such, I'm going to acquiesce to the human demands for me to reopen the barrier. However, they will not be entering. You and several others will leave. Take in the magic outside, advance, and destroy any human settlement in your path."
"I can read, lich. You don't need to tell me."
The lich sighed. He always forgot the intelligence of the candidates. He remembered each of them when they were children or beasts. Barely sentient.
"There's one thing not in the contract that I need to bring up," the lich said.
Bloodskull nodded while looking over the contract. He trusted the lich enough to not screw him over, but the old wizard had a tendency to put a clause about being able to take the dead. This contract did have the same clause, but it specified the human dead.
"You must exit from our border with the Mudwood Region. Your conquest should seek one objective. That of reconquering Mudwood from the humans who control it. The reason you cannot leave the area bordering the planes is that you are not allowed to harm the holy scion. I got quite the recession from the church of purity in return for that child."
"Which one is the holy scion?" Asked Bloodskull. He knew many of their enemies from scout reports of the varied encampments, but had no idea who that was.
"Supposedly, the true blessed of their god. I checked the camp myself, and the clergy overwhelmed my awareness of any blessings mixed in. However, the church did state they were a human with pointy ears, followed by a towering beastkin who would appear human."
Bloodskull whistled through his teeth. One of the broken was following around the true blessed of purity? It would at least make the child identifiable.
"One other thing," the lich continued, "I want you to choose some of your good zinc-rankers and send them to the emerald rabbit-kin village."
"Why?"
"One other condition the church wanted was the return of a lifeform they called AZ-087. Turns out, the potential candidate you and the others have been watching came from human origins."
"How? One of Jett's bats scanned them, and they didn't just have the human bloodline, but the heroic human bloodline."
The lich conjured a pair of eyebrows from mycelium and rot magic to lift them in surprise, getting a snort from the towering orc.
"Heroic human? Anything else?"
Bloodskull shrugged, "According to Jett, it was Rainbow Dragon and Cerulean Slime. Lune also said that Asergia had somehow given them the Nightshade Rabbit bloodline."
The lich was fully engaged at this point. He pondered over what all that meant for their potential candidate.
"Send over two orcs specialized in melee combat. If the vampire's right, just those bloodlines will give them a massive step-up. Especially the rainbow dragon. Did any of you figure out which composing draconic bloodlines went into it?"
"We've seen them use the eyes of a black and red dragon, along with the tail of a white dragon. The Lord Rabbit also mentioned that apparently they were found with large scars near their shoulder blades, so I'd assume some kind of wing as well."
The lich tapped his finger as he considered what to do about that. It was much better for his old friend if their successor was also a dragon, or held some draconic blood. But this child was an abnormality. The big softy wouldn't kill them, but it would be a massive waste if one of the other dragons, native or otherwise, found the kid.
The lich didn't truly like the candidates, as each meant the loss of a friend. But he still didn't want them to die pointless deaths. If they took on the work of ruling the nightshade district, then they should remain.
He snapped his fingers. Of course. There were two other candidates he'd have to ask, but he had nothing if not time.
The lich stood up and stretched before putting the bone throne back into his inventory with a slight touch.
"Well then, sign the contract, and get the kin ready. If all goes well, I'll open the barrier for you in about a week."
Bloodskull dug out one of his finely crafted obsidian daggers and cut his finger. The blood didn't drip from his thumb; instead flowing and twisting through the air to create his signature on the page. The moment the name Bloodskull was written in neat but bold handwriting, the blood simply stopped flowing.
The lich picked up the paper, rolled it back into a scroll, and ignited it in dark flames. They both felt the bond created by the contract tug very slightly on their souls. It wasn't even enough to take up a title slot, but their refined senses picked it up immediately.
The lich turned around with a nod and left the tent, his death guard following right behind.
Bloodskull sat in his chair for another moment before deciding to get some atu berry wine. The slight poison of the brew was an acquired taste, but he liked it.
Anthei, the Hero of the Colony, stared down at her latest kill as it dissolved into essence smoke.
The oversized rodent was almost as large as she was, and that was no easy feat. She shook out her upper right fist to get the dissolving blood off her shiny carapace. The spikes on her hands would need a more thorough wash after all of this.
She stared angrily at the monster. Her lesser siblings couldn't have fought the beast. Even so, she couldn't help but blame the council for causing the colony to end up in this predicament in the first place. After all, they'd made the deal with the daemons. Not her.
Monsters weren't even good for biomass. They couldn't be fed to a queen to hatch new workers, nor could they be broken apart and used to improve the colony's weapons. The most she could do was loot it, which she did.
[You have looted: Supreme Thunder Rayt]
[You have gained…]
She didn't bother to read the rest. Why would she? All of the items she got went back into the colony's treasury anyway. Her siblings could use most of it for a better use than she could anyway. She could also feel from the weight of her inventory that the monster hadn't dropped an affinity, which was disappointing.
Even though she didn't really like the idea of getting a hair or tooth affinity, she was hoping to pick up another couple of leg affinities to push hers to the fourth level.
She turned back into the dense tunnel network, still in her humanoid form. Her true form was much too large to fit in these outer tunnels. The simple problem of rank.
Before she could take three steps, however, the air rippled in front of her.
Spatial magic? How? She saw the carefully placed runes suddenly ignite with cerulean energy before sputtering out. She immediately went on guard.
Stepping from the ripple in the very fabric of the colony stepped a humanoid figure of bone and mycelium. The lich of nightshade. She didn't lower her guard.
The lich was soon followed by four death knights, who stationed themselves at either end of the large tunnel, warning the giant ants away with their mere presence and the aura of undeath.
"What do you want, lich?" She asked, her tone hostile and her fists ready to strike. She couldn't win against the diamond-rank undead, not in ten thousand years, but she'd do her best. Her siblings relied on her.
The lich tsked at her obvious hostility. He reached into the air and pulled out a scroll, which he quickly unfurled.
"I want to solve one of the colony's problems, in return for a favor."
"Solve one of our problems?" She was skeptical to the extreme.
"Yes, solve the most prevalent problem. The sudden appearance of slimes."
Her eyes widened in an exaggerated expression, though the lich knew it wasn't on purpose. Going from carapace to skin required a lot of training.
"You want to solve the slime problem for us?" Then her eyes narrowed, "What would you want in exchange?"
"Nothing much, just a brief service."
"Brief." Even though she knew the lich wasn't going to kill her, if he'd wanted to, he could have done so easily; she was still wary of the ancient undead.
"Yes. I want you to help a child truly work on something they have."
"What kind of child? I'm not helping to raise some other colony's kid or, god forbid, a termite, am I?"
The lich shook his head, "No, no such thing. Do you know where the slimes came from?"
The question knocked her off balance for a moment, but she eventually replied, "No. They have some source, somewhere north of the goldarch nest, but besides that, I have no idea. Nor do the queens."
Before the lich could explain, his gaze suddenly sharpened. Before she could even see him move, she heard something suddenly burst into essence smoke behind her.
She turned around in a fraction of a second, only to see small whisps of primarily blue essence smoke rising into the stagnant tunnel air. She turned around only to find the lich staring at her intently.
"Why did I just kill a ruby-rank monster? Why did it spawn here?"
He'd killed a ruby rank monster? But the amount of smoke was only about right for a lesser nickel or maybe a very weak regular tin-rank monster. Even so, she couldn't help but believe him.
She shrugged her upper two shoulders, her pitch-black eyes staring unerringly at the lich.
He growled, a sound that shouldn't come from a throat without flesh. It sounded like a scream of the damned and the sound of scraping bone against bone. It sent shivers down her carapace.
She was suddenly struck by the idea that she was more important than most of the queens of the colony. She was the hero, the reason they kept the truly dangerous beasts near the roots of the mother tree, or those from the deep wells from rising. One or two of the queens weren't as important as she was.
Even though it was a strange thought from an ant, it was one she'd been having more frequently as she matured and advanced.
"It- it wasn't my choice." She said, quietly. She could hide the shame in her voice, but not the stutter of fear, or her expression.
"Whose was it, then? And what happened?"
"The council of queens. They decided to let the daemons in through the deep-sea tunnels. Set up disruption arrays beside the barrier." Even as her instincts told her not to, she spilled the beans.
The lich sighed, then pulled out the contract again and altered it. Instead of saying he'd fix the slime problem, it now said he'd tell them how to fight the slimes. She blanched at it, but knew it was a term she couldn't get better than.
Opening the barrier to one of the forces, daemons or humans, was deeply frowned upon by the other candidates, and especially by the lich.
He told her a location, somewhere near the emerald rabbit-kin village. Then he vanished into the air, burning the contract as it weighed on her soul.
She knew a couple of her queens would likely die for this, but even if the lich was to wipe out the entire council, the colony would still survive. They had spare grubs and larvae for queen rearing. Even if it was harder to find a drone for the young queens in this space, it was still substantially better than letting the colony die. Or letting her die.
Mukurric, Guardian of Death, was resting atop her pyramid as normal.
She didn't get many visitors outside of the rare natural mummy arisen by the desert sand around her. Even so, she preferred it that way.
She was still getting news from the naga and sand kobolds she kept under her service, and she was glad she had cooped up out here in the desert. This entire situation with the humans sounded simply exhausting.
Before she could get another thought out, the air trembled at her side.
Her claws extended from her paws, the fur on the back of her neck standing on edge.
Then, the lich of nightshade appeared beside her. The fungus in his eyes seemed to do some kind of dance at the sheer and inescapable power of the raw death magic held in this artificial desert.
He stood on a platform of air as he faced her. Her whiskers trembled just a little, but it was enough to let the lich know she was scared of him.
She spoke, "Ancient one, I'm honored by your presence." She lowered her head to the imposing power of the ancient necromancer, not as old as the ancestor, not even as old as the labyrinths, but still millennia older than she.
He grimaced at the title, his fungal eyes flattening a bit. He didn't like to be reminded of his age, which was part of why she always brought it up, though she never let that show.
"What can I do for you on this scorching day?" She asked.
"It's always scorching, Kurri, you live in the desert."
"One of my eyes told me that it's rather hot in the forest and marsh, too. Candidates riled up, humans entering in droves, and some kind of monster terrorizing the ants, and now the grove?"
"The grove?" The lich asked. Immediately, the lights behind his eyes winked out for a second. It was unnerving seeing the round fungi in the skeleton without their characteristic shine. But he was soon back, cursing up a storm.
"Two of the bastards."
"I'm surprised you didn't already know. Did the ents not reach out?"
"They did not. Considering the number of Krelli's offspring on the battlefield, however, I think the dryads reached out to a candidate. They made the right choice of whom to pick, but I still would have liked them to let me know. It's just another problem the child will have to fix."
"The child?" She asked, confused.
The lich looked at her for a long moment before speaking, "The child living in the emerald rabbit-kin village. I assumed you already knew, considering their bloodline."
"Which bloodline?"
"Rainbow dragon."
She gasped, bringing a paw to her mouth, "A mere child, burdened with being an abomination to dragonkind? Do frosty or minty know?"
"Ferostopol is too busy fighting a couple of sea serpents that recently emerged from a rift. Mlenolops is still trying to make a stronger version of the atu berry poison, and doesn't seem interested in the child."
"And… him?"
"He knows. The child is, unfortunately, the only current potential candidate for his seat."
"Really? Are the kin truly that thin on the surface?"
"Goli hasn't moved, so Ferostopol and Mlenolops felt no need to reproduce."
Mukurric chuckled, "That big spider is a lazy asshole, if you ask me."
"I don't disagree."
"But what does the child have to do with me? They're the reason you came all the way here, right?"
"I can't just check on the least insufferable dragon in the region?"
She scoffed, "Even your fungi cannot stand the aura of the item forever. You do not come without purpose."
He grinned, "You're still sharp."
"I don't have to be sharp. Now, what do you want? I have a nap to return to."
The lich sighed and pulled an enormous crimson diamond from his robe. She'd sensed it the moment he appeared.
"I want you to train the child. Send over an avatar and teach them how to use their draconic blood and some magic. In return, I'll give you this."
"And what is it?"
"A hell diamond, taken from one of the dragon lords of Shenmouy, and housing a curse from the deceased dragon's fury at failing to become a dracolich."
She snatched the diamond from his hand. They both knew he could have stopped her, but a child of Hydra was nothing if not good to her word.
"In that case, I will return. Send your avatar to the child within the week."
And with that, the lich waved farewell to the massive earth dragon and warped space to return to his tower, leaving the dragon with yet another cursed item to add to her hoard.