“Do we retreat, Your Highness?” asked the older knight Adon had healed back on the second level. The man’s voice was calm and measured, almost casual.

  The butterfly could feel that it wasn’t an act, either. The old man seemed to have seen much worse situations than anything present in this dungeon, and he had always walked away safely.

  “Negative, Sir Stuart,” Rosslyn replied. “Everyone, to arms! Prepare to engage, but only do so if necessary. Do not draw first blood. Remember that this is a small group, and the monsters are likely weak. We have them outnumbered and overpowered. Ants are naturally curious, and this is a group of scouts. It is entirely possible their approach right now is non-aggressive!”

  The Princess had iron in her voice and conviction in her mind as she spoke. Adon was reminded again of just how impressive Rosslyn was, completely forgetting about her place in society or her talent for magic. Just the way she behaved as, effectively, a military officer was worthy of admiration.

  She’s a heroine and a leader, Adon thought. The type of woman who, in another world, might have been described as “ride or die.” It was a type of steadfastness to be coveted.

  And the knights all around her seemed to share Adon’s assessment, as they obeyed the Princess’s orders without question.

  Swords, axes, and other weapons were drawn all around, but they were held in a lowered position, ready to be raised and smashed into enemies if the cry went up—but not taking that action prematurely.

  The ants took no apparent notice of the party’s preparations, or if they did, they did not understand the significance. Or perhaps they held their own lives to be of so little value that charging into a group of enemies who were armed to the gills made no difference to them versus charging at any random obstacle. They did not slow down or divert their course.

  As they neared the group, the first two ants clambered onto the old man who stood near the lead of the party’s right flank. Holding his weapon in his right hand, he held up a clenched fist with his left, signaling for the group to hold steady even as the ants climbed up onto his thigh, then up to his shoulder—and then down his back.

  Then the ants climbed down from him.

  Other ants did the same to the other members of Rosslyn’s group. Adon could see there was what appeared to be sniffing going on, as they leaned their heads in close to the targets and made similar body language movements to a dog trying to identify an object by scent.

  This is so weird, Adon thought.

  “Everything all right over there?” Rosslyn asked in a calm, measured tone.

  “The creatures do not yet appear to be aggressive, Your Highness,” Sir Stuart said.

  Just then, one of the ants grabbed hold of one of the shields on the ground and began tugging at it, trying to pull it away. The knight who owned it had his foot tangled in the strap at the back of the shield, and he pressed his foot down firmly, keeping the shield in place and preventing the ant from dragging it away from him.

  Another ant used its mandibles to grab for the dagger that a different knight had sheathed at his hip.

  Both objects, Adon noticed, were polished to an eye-catching sheen.

  They’re drawn to shiny things, Adon sent to the group quickly. I remember these ants mine for gold, so it seems like they want to steal anything you have that’s shiny. Maybe rub dirt on your stuff.

  “A little hard to do that in the middle of this,” grunted yet another knight—the same one who had seemed offended by Adon using slightly spicy language earlier—who was trying to hold onto a sword with a bejeweled hilt. The butterfly privately suspected this knight would be pretty resistant to smearing dirt on his weapon anyway, given that he had obviously paid extra to the craftsmen who made it, in order to have an unnecessarily ostentatious sword.

  “Try to shove them away without getting too rough,” Rosslyn said, as one of the ants began to approach her and the group around her.

  The monster touched Rosslyn with a probing antenna, and in response, she promptly sent it flying with a sharp kick to the underside of its thorax.

  “They only weigh about thirty or forty pounds,” Rosslyn called in a slightly raised voice, before she pointed at another nearby ant and pushed it away with Telekinesis, flipping the ant’s body onto its back.

  And it only takes maybe five or ten pounds of force to knock them onto their backs, if applied in the proper way, she thought.

  The knights closer to the bulk of the ants were having a harder time dissuading them, though. They were covered in the creatures at this point.

  “Back your comrades up,” Frederick ordered his knights. They were on Rosslyn’s left flank, the furthest away from the ants, so they were as yet untouched by the golden menace.

  They stepped forward, reading to assist the others who were trying to keep hold of their weapons and other shiny objects and struggle with the ants without harming them. Then there was a sudden, acrid, vinegary smell in the air—one that was all too familiar to Adon from his days in the garden.

  “Ah, fuck!” The knight with the bejeweled sword swore and swung a mana-infused fist. The ants on his body had apparently responded to his resistance by spraying their weak formic acid on him—right into his face, judging by the way the man’s eyes were twitching and repeatedly clenching shut as he tried to open them.

  Time seemed to slow down slightly as Adon watched, helpless to do anything to stop the motion.

  Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.

  Wait, no!

  The butterfly reached out with Telekinesis and tried to grab the knight’s hand, but it looked like his initial impression was right. He couldn’t do anything. Even slowing the punch down significantly was asking too much of the butterfly’s relatively weak Telekinesis.

  The fist smashed through the slender joint connecting the ant’s head and thorax, and the giant insect broke apart instantly, flying in two different directions and spewing its internal fluids in all directions—soaking the knight and the handful of those around him.

  Adon sent a quick message to Rosslyn.

  Those knights who were near the dead ant are marked, he transmitted. Can we try to avoid everyone else getting marked?

  “All but those who were just sprayed with insect fluids, back away from the ones covered in insect spatter!” Rosslyn yelled. “To that small group of knights who were just exposed, you have my permission to exterminate every ant you can! The rest of us will try to keep the others from fleeing without killing them.”

  Adon could read her train of thought, and it was a natural and logical one.

  We need to keep the ants from escaping and summoning backup, and the best way to do that is to have the knights already exposed to their chemical warfare perform this duty. Hopefully the rest of us will not pick up the stench of dead ant. The more people who have that odor, the more likely the rest of the colony will find us.

  The smell already permeated the air—something akin to rotting coconuts.

  “Secure our escape route,” William barked, making eye contact with two of the men closest to him.

  They bowed their heads and moved immediately to obey.

  William, Frederick, Rosslyn, and the rest of their entourage spent the next several minutes flipping ants onto their backs, except for the knights who had been unlucky enough to get sprayed with dead bug juice. Those knights did have the compensation of getting to finally vent their frustration with the monsters of the level, though.

  With daggers, axes, swords, hammers, and simple armored limbs, they smashed into the ants all around them, turning what had been an annoying but peaceful situation into an utter bloodbath. Some of the ants, sensing the tide of the situation turning, attempted to leave, and they were fast—faster than any non-magical human, Adon observed—but not quite quick enough to escape the knights, who were mana-enhanced, more intelligent, and more organized.

  In a few minutes, the ants that had surrounded those who had been marked with the ants’ weak acid were all dead. The air was full of the smell of rotten coconut, foul and nauseating. The knights seemed to ignore this. Or perhaps it motivated them to do their jobs more quickly. They spent less than a minute briskly crushing the heads of those ants that the others had flipped onto their backs.

  Adon had the sense that some of the ants would have figured out how to flip back over eventually, if given time. Sadly, that was not a luxury any of them were afforded.

  He watched impassively as the knights ended them—only to notice that Rosslyn was staring at him out of the corner of her eye.

  She quickly averted her gaze once he tilted his body slightly in her direction, indicating he had noticed her. But her thoughts told him exactly what she had been worried about when she glanced over at him.

  It still does not bother you, seeing other insects slain? went Rosslyn’s inner voice. I know that they are monsters, but—well, it would be understandable if you wished to avert your gauge. Killing humanoids is not something I relish.

  I have killed many more ants than these, Rosslyn, Adon sent. Don’t you remember how I reacted to you burning a whole army of ants to death in front of me, back when I still lived in the garden? Back when we hardly knew each other at all…

  Oh, that is right… Rosslyn raised her hand as if to smack her forehead, but she stopped short, leaving her hand hanging in the air a few inches in front of her face.

  “What is that?” she said aloud.

  The ground beneath them had begun to shake slightly.

  Adon reached out with Telepathy, stretching his psychic senses to their furthest distance extremities, and he recognized what was happening. A hundred feet down, uncounted feet were moving.

  Deep underground, lots of ants moving, he sent quickly. Hundreds. Coming to investigate us; it couldn’t be anything else.

  “Orderly retreat!” Rosslyn yelled.

  Of course, now she gives that order, thought the prissy knight, as Adon was now mentally labeling the man with the jewel-hilted sword.

  The group began falling back toward the cliff—which still, to Adon at least, felt like the wrong distance away, further than it should be—only, now, that distance actually mattered.

  The knights were in the odd position of trying to be quick while also continuing to maneuver carefully. Every false step led to a partially collapsed bit of the ground—and a comrade forced to waste a moment to yank on the blunderer’s arm, to keep them from tumbling into a pit that would lead to the seething masses of bugs beneath their feet.

  Adon felt the urgency and wanted to rush them, because he could feel the mass of presences getting closer, even if whatever mental protection they had kept him from really getting into the ants’ heads.

  “Once we reach the valley, try to make your way back toward the entrance tunnel,” Rosslyn said, projecting her voice without being especially loud. “We can hide out in there for some time. Even if the monsters try to follow, the tunnel opening will create a tight chokepoint that we can use to destroy monsters far out of proportion to our numbers.”

  Adon did not recall the tunnel between levels having been particularly narrow this time, but then again, it was definitely more winnable than a confrontation on open ground. In Rosslyn’s mind, he could also hear her coming up with battle plans, ways to try to face the ants more effectively whether out here or inside the tunnel between the levels.

  She thinks almost as quickly as me when I’m using mental magic, he thought. He had only rarely seen this Rosslyn—so decisive and resourceful, she was almost unstoppable—but he found it entrancing every time.

  As they got within twenty feet of the cliff, Adon felt the ants boiling up from beneath them, almost ready to explode out of the ground.

  Then, as the knights crossed into the last ten feet, the ants did burst forth from within the soil.

  Streaming forth from a dozen different holes, the beginning of a flood of hundreds of ants poured onto the ground and flowed toward the unfortunate party of knights.

  They reached the cliff’s edge, and barely a single thought was given to climbing down. It would obviously be far too slow.

  “Jump!” Rosslyn shouted. “Mana into the legs!”

  Every human took a great leap forward, and the mystic beasts came along for the ride.