Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 80829 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 404(@200wpm)___ 323(@250wpm)___ 269(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80829 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 404(@200wpm)___ 323(@250wpm)___ 269(@300wpm)
The entire nest buzzed like a tornado spinning into life. Another wasp shot through the fissure, and I cleaved it in half, my sword cutting through the segmented thorax like it was butter.
“Sir?”
Elias’ eyes snapped open. Leo hovered in his view. Elias sat up.
“We found Jackson,” the XO said.
Two wasps tried to squeeze through the gap at the same time and got stuck one on top of the other. I twisted the sword into a spike, skewered the top one, because it was closer and let its dead weight push the second wasp down. It struggled, pinned to the ground, and I hacked at it.
The buzzing was deafening now. The walls of the fissure vibrated as the enraged hive mobilized for an all-out assault. Next to me Bear barked her head off, flinging spit into the air. She wasn’t just a dog, she was a guild K9, trained to alert when the breach monsters came near. The monsters were here, and she was alerting everyone.
I grabbed the body of the top wasp, pulled it out of the fissure, and hurled it over the edge.
“He’s been detained by the authorities in Japan.”
It took Elias a moment to process that tidbit. “On what pretext?”
“They claim he entered a luxury restaurant, ordered a high-quality cut of Wagyu beef, washed it down with Yamazaki Single Malt 55-Year-Old Whisky, which retails for four hundred thousand dollars a bottle, and walked out without paying.”
“They’re saying he dined and dashed?”
Leo smiled. Technically, it was a smile, but it looked more like a predator baring his teeth.
Bodies clogged the fissure, drenched in hemolymph. I stabbed and hacked into the pileup, yanking chunks of the insects out.
Seven wasps.
Eight.
Twelve.
“Jackson? The vegetarian who drinks one beer a year and only under duress?”
“Yes, sir. Our Jackson.”
Elias hid a growl. It was a retaliation for Yosuke.
Two years ago, a star void ronin, a top-tier Talent, had a falling out with the largest guild in Japan and quit. They blacklisted him. No other guild in the country would hire him. The idea was that the pressure of unemployment would force him to crawl back home. Yosuke called their bluff. Cold Chaos welcomed him into the fold eighteen months ago. He was enroute to Elmwood now from another gate and was due to arrive tomorrow.
Publicly, Hikari no Ryu said nothing. Privately, the guild wielded a lot of power in Japan, and they were pissed. Elias thought that they reached an understanding regarding this issue. Apparently, he was mistaken. It didn’t matter. Elias had never regretted the decision, and he wasn’t about to start now.
“Have they made any demands?” he asked.
“No. Most likely they will hold him and wait for us to come to them.”
Guild politics were convoluted and cutthroat. It didn’t matter which continent. Elias had dealt with worse nonsense stateside plenty of times. But there was an unspoken rule all guilds followed – healers were exempt from all of the political bullshit. They were off limits. You didn’t poach them, you didn’t threaten them, and you didn’t retaliate against them. They chose who they worked for, and if you got a good one, you did everything you could to keep them.
Someone in Japan had just crossed a very dangerous line.
“How would you like to proceed?” Leo asked.
“I’ll make some calls.”
The nest lay silent.
Bear was still barking.
“Quiet.”
The shepherd clamped her mouth shut. I listened for the buzzing.
Nothing.
“Stay, Bear. Stay. Stay!”
Bear sat down.
“Good. Wait right here. Don’t follow me. Wait.”
I’d killed twelve smaller wasps, probably workers, and five larger wasps, probably guards. Back home wasp colonies had a queen. She was usually larger than the workers and the guards, and if that held true here, she was trapped within the nest. I had no idea what this fight would look like or how much room we would have to maneuver. And, if she looked like her workers and guards, her legs would be almost pure chitin, rock hard and rigid. Bear’s jaws wouldn’t do much damage, and the last thing I wanted was her rushing in there and getting herself killed.
I slipped into the fissure, moving slowly and quietly. It was about ten feet deep. Beyond that, the passage widened into another cave chamber steeped in gloom and dappled with pools of pale light coming from above. I flexed. One hundred and twelve yards to the other wall. A lot of open space, and the floor was unnaturally clear. The wasps must’ve removed all of the debris that originally littered the chamber. Once I exited the fissure, I would be exposed.
A step.
Another.
A whisper of something large shifting its weight on the right, just outside the passageway. I had expected the wasp to strike from above, but it sounded like it was on the ground instead.
I stopped, poised on my toes. My fingers trembled. Fear filled me. I was overflowing with it.