Elves Invasion

82

She smelled it first—just a hint of smoke teased out from the pulpy smell of the wood, and then suddenly there was so much smoke she was choking on it. Her eyes streamed as she coughed and sputtered, her body bent double as she hung in her chains. The heat rose, and Ava knew three full seconds of terror.

Gift me, Isaac called out in mindspeak.

The heat began to build until Ava was shrieking. A hurricane wheel of her own began to form over the creaking redwoods until a boom sounded out and light shot up from Ava’s smoke willstone.

It’s nearly time, Ava, Mia called. When the Hive has committed all its forces to fighting my soldiers in the center, send yours out of the grove on all sides to surround us.

I understand, Ava replied. Ava could feel Mia’s exultation in the throes of battle with her army, but her body was weak, and she was burning more than she should. Mia. There’s something you need to know about the bomb.

You can’t convince me not to use it, Mia replied.

I know. That’s why I had Erye dismantle it.

Ava felt Mia’s dismay, and then she Gifted her army and sent the screaming horde of men, women, and Woven onto the battlefield.

Brick jerked to a halt when he heard the boom. He saw a third beam of light shoot into the bruised sky and knew that Ava’s army had taken the field. Dread consumed him. They wouldn’t last long if he didn’t kill the Queen.

Brick could feel echoes of agony and ecstasy from the rest of Ava’s claimed as they hurled themselves into battle, and his feet turned on their own and started running. Feeling Ava’s power in him, Brick reached Hearing Hall in moments.

He ran through the forest of columns, a petrified echo of the redwoods surrounding Ava, and went to the door that opened into nothing. He tied the climbing ropes together and used them to ease himself down into the darkness. When he reached the end of his rope he let himself drop.

His magelight blazed out as he fell. When he finally hit the floor, he picked himself up and started running again.

Ava exulted.

She bounded across the field with her fearless Pride. She soared through the air with her fierce raptors. She swarmed across the ground with her frozen-souled insects. She led the charge with Isaac onto the field, thundering toward the struggling and dying Walltop soldiers, delirious with mad joy, and almost went back on her word. As Isaac tore into the leading edge of Warrior Sisters with his battalion of queens, Ava felt herself sliding toward taking all of him.

There was a part of him that wanted it, too. He wanted to know what it was to burn on the pyre. It was for this reason alone she resisted, even when he wouldn’t have. She couldn’t let Isaac burn.

Warrior Sisters cracked their cat-o-nine-tails whips, and when they couldn’t use their whips they fought with their bare hands. Their movements were blindingly fast and brutal. They did not fight with punches and kicks, but rather they grabbed on to an opponent’s limb and tried to rip it off or they’d fly up as high as they could, let go of their struggling victim, and let gravity do the killing for them. They attacked in concert with their Sisters, but they were as brutal with one another as they were with their victims. If one was losing a fight, the others did not waste their efforts on a lost cause. If one was winning, others joined her to end it quickly.

Workers swarmed, and they were felling Mia’s uninoculated soldiers by the dozens. Their swollen bodies hardly looked human, and the sight of them angered Ava. She contacted Tristan, who was engaged in an aerial battle with the Warrior Sisters.

Tristan—fly into the city, she ordered. Gather rebels with crossbows. Shoot the swarms from raptorback.

I’m supposed to stay over you and protect you, he argued.

Get that pesticide. Kill the swarms. My fire will protect me.

Ava wrapped her hands around her iron chains and held on as the logs beneath her turned to crumbling red coals. She called out to Breakfast for more wood and his team piled her pyre ever higher. She drew the heat into her crucible of a body and changed it faster and faster until all of her claimed were overflowing with power. Ava’s army basked in her mounting strength, throwing themselves at the Warrior Sisters in frenzy, while Mia’s army began to falter.

Mia! How can I help you?

I’m dying, Ava, and when I die it won’t be quietly. You must take my claimed from me or they’ll die with me.

I don’t know how.

I’ll give you everything I am. Everything but one part—the worst of me. That I’ll take with me to my grave.

Ava’s vision scoped out from her pyre, pulled up into the air, swirled over the battlefield, and spiraled down into Mia’s.

Clawing agony assaulted her. A thousand regrets rained down on her head. Every memory Mia ever had, every mistake she ever made, every willstone she ever claimed, every love, and every hate she harbored in her heart transferred from Mia to Ava in an instant.

All but one. Mia kept Erye for herself.

Watching as if from a great height, Ava saw Mia lying atop her smoldering pyre, the fire nearly extinguished. Her skin was black with soot and streaked red with blood.

Come, Erye. Carry me to our grave, Mia called.

Brick was lost.

He blundered through row after row of womb combs, his blood chilling at the thought of the horrors they unleashed. Desperate now, Brick ran toward what he hoped was the back wall. His feet made a squelching sound and seemed to stick. He was standing in wax.

Relief over finding the hive quickly gave way to fear as he hurried down the ever-narrowing passageway. The smell of honey grew so strong it made him dizzy. He saw evidence that others had recently come this way in the wax. He followed the footprints left by Ava’s coven to a bottleneck. He climbed through, his heart in his throat, and saw the Queen. She was writhing on her velvet throne, her body twisted and racked with pain.

Brick hefted his crossbow, aiming it directly between her bulbous, rainbow eyes, and then lowered it. He forced himself to raise the muzzle of his weapon again. His hands shook as he watched her spasm and clutch at her pillow in mute agony. The healer in him wavered, and the one precious second he’d been granted passed him by.

Rough hands grabbed him and wrestled him to the floor, knocking his crossbow out of reach. Brick saw male torsos under their insectoid heads. The drones had squat bodies that were thick and square as bricks. Bristling hairs stuck up from their shoulders and backs. As they tried to rip off his arms and legs, Brick noticed their stunted wings would never fly.

He felt his limbs straining as they were pushed into unnatural positions, but they didn’t break. Still full of Ava’s power, Brick fought back. He reached past the waving tubes in their mouths, grabbed ahold of their hairy, ovoid heads, and started wrenching them around. He rolled, and they rolled with him, pouncing on top of him in a pack and swarming over him.

The knot of them crashed through a wax wall and Brick felt warm, sticky honey flowing over him. He jumped up to his feet, only to be knocked back again. More drones joined the fight as the sticky, b****y ball of them pushed through another wall. Brick scrambled to get his feet under him and noticed that he was being pushed back and uphill, away from the Queen’s chamber.

He threw himself against them, pushing and shoving and trying to make his way back as they formed a blockade to steadily inch him out of the hive. He dug in his feet, only to feel them sliding back in the wax. He killed one after another desperately, trying to get back to the Queen.

He tasted fresh air and felt earth under him as the pile rolled. The drones had evicted him from the hive.

Only two wheels of clouds darkened the sky. Only two beams of light pierced their centers. Tasting victory, the Hive surged forward, throwing themselves against their foes with reckless abandon.

Ava was torn. Half of her hung from her iron-and-diamond shackles. Half of her gasped for breath on a pile of ash.

Hang on, said one half of her to the other. Survive this battle, and we can heal you. Brick can save you.

The part of her left in ashes spoke for the last time.

I have seen myself as many things. I have been the hero and I have been the villain. I may never be a hero again, but at least I can make my final act a heroic one.

I summon Erye to me. He doesn’t want to come, so I force him. He fights me, his limbs stiff, but my will is stronger. He picks me up in a gruesome parody of a bride and groom, and carries me into the redwood grove. He can feel how hot my skin is, and he knows what it means. He is not the first mechanic I’ve marched to his own death.

As we near the exit of the hive, we pass by a pile of drones fighting one of Ava’s claimed. The one who can heal me. For a fleeting moment the thought of salvation shines a light in my dark mind. Brick could cure me. Take all this pain away. I don’t have to die, but the war would go on, and many others would die in my place.

I don’t give Erye the order to stop. We pass by my last chance at life and I grow hotter until my body bursts into flames. I smile. I choose this for all of them. I choose this for Isaac.

Erye carries me into the mouth of the hive. Drones step up to stop us, but we have become a blowtorch that scares them away. Erye would scream in agony if I would let him. But I won’t.

Wax melts as we pass. The walls and ceilings drip and sizzle. We make our way to the Queen’s chamber as the hive dissolves around us. Erye carries me to the Queen and lays me down beside her. In death I will become the bomb that was denied me.

I think of Isaac. I’m grateful that my final thought is of love.

Time to die.

Half of Ava ended. The other half took refuge in her coven.

She saw Brick. The fireball of Mia’s passing was heading right for him. It emerged from the hive and roared toward him. Ava jumped Brick away before the fire could consume him.

She saw Isaac. He staggered, his heart skipping, when he heard the explosion. He knew Mia was dead. He looked up into the sky and saw the Hive break ranks just when it was about to be victorious.

She saw Tristan. He wheeled his raptor and aimed his crossbow at a dark clump of Workers, but the tight swarm suddenly dispersed and flew off in every direction before he could fire.

She saw Joyce. Joyce felt her lion slow. She cut off one more Warrior Sister’s head, and then turned to see what her lion was looking at. The enemy was running away.

She saw Caleb and Alpha. They stood back to back, fighting a ring of Warrior Sisters who surrounded them. Without warning, the Warrior Sisters dropped their whips and leapt into the sky.

She saw Leto. His left leg was broken. It stuck out awkwardly. He hauled himself up onto his right knee as he watched the retreat, Joyceble to rejoice. Too many dead Walltop soldiers were scattered around him for this win to feel like victory.