The group finally struck the ground, and everyone sprang into action in different directions.

  Adon simply deactivated mental magic while keeping Telepathy going. This would decrease the drain on his mana pool, leaving him some leeway to adapt to unforeseen circumstances.

  The knights all formed a tight, protective ring around Rosslyn, who swayed slightly on her feet as she landed, the mana enforcement of her legs that she had used to break her fall slightly weakened by the amount of energy she had expended burning ants to death.

  Meanwhile, the two brothers on whom the party’s fate suddenly rested did not waste any time upon landing. The Dessians sprinted toward the cliffside along which the ants were descending. Thanks to Rosslyn’s temporary measure of roasting all the ants closest to them that were climbing down the wall, the golden creatures were fairly far behind the main group—that is, the ants that were not already falling through the air, alive or dead.

  As William and Frederick reached the cliff face, the first of the ants to fall or jump after the party smashed against the ground. Their bodies burst and broke apart into bits of gold and dark-colored guts, like the monsters were nothing more solid than walking bags of innards.

  So, blunt force definitely does kill them, Adon observed. Not that I doubted it, but good. The rest of the plan should be functional, then.

  The young lords had, if anything, even stronger sentiments about Adon’s plan than he did—though not unambiguous feelings.

  “This had better fucking work, Adon,” grumbled William as both brothers, enveloped in thick clouds of lightning mana, pressed their hands against the wall. “I don’t even understand what we are meant to be doing, but…”

  Not taking any further time to question the plan, William and Frederick pushed their lightning mana into the wall and shot electricity up the side of the cliff. It moved invisibly, traveling as it did through the solid stone rather than along the surface—or simply floating around the brothers’ body in an ostentatious way as it usually did. But Adon could tell things were happening.

  The brothers’ auras diminished visibly, so he knew that they were giving it all they had, sending out many miniature forks of lightning under the surface, to electrify as much of the cliff face at once as possible.

  There was a short pause, during which the hundreds of ants progressed down the side of the cliff.

  Then, a miracle! The giant insects’ feet suddenly began separating from the surface, and their bodies tumbled away from the wall en masse. Where before, they had found purchase, now the creatures’ limbs pinwheeled through empty air, their bodies helplessly falling where their clumsier or more reckless colleagues had gone before.

  It was a simple solution, as well as an elegant one. Electric current running through the cliff created a magnetic field. Gold was diamagnetic—meaning that it weakly repelled magnetic fields. Or was repelled by the magnetic field. Not by much, but by just enough that the ants were no longer in contact with the surface and had no easy way of regaining purchase.

  So they simply dropped.

  As the current reached higher on the wall, more and more ants separated from the cliff and fell toward certain doom. Hundreds of them. Significantly more than Rosslyn had affected with her impressive but inefficient wall-baking stunt.

  Still, Adon could feel that running the current through the stone was taking a lot out of the brothers.

  Even if he had not been able to see the mana leaving their bodies, the sweat was pouring down visibly enough even for people who did not have Mana Perception to see what was happening. This usage of their mana, despite being much less flashy than their usual lightning bolts, appeared to be at least equally taxing.

  No, it’s a lot more of a drain, Adon thought. It’s a fair bit more efficient than the Princess’s plan was, but I’m still emptying these guys out. They’re not going to be in any shape to do anything in a few minutes.

  And despite the brothers’ continued efforts and the loss of many ants as their bodies went kersplat at the bottom of the cliff, there were more of the creatures coming.

  Adon could see them at the top of the cliff, gathering and looking down at what was happening below. Waiting for the moment when it stopped being immediately lethal to descend. They would wait out the brothers’ electrical current, Adon assessed.

  Because ants were implacable like that. Nothing you could do would faze them.

  Even if those at the top had not been completely unfazed by the deaths of so many of their cohort, Adon could sense that some of the ants that hit the ground were not immediately dying. Those that lived longer were those few that got lucky and struck right on top of the bodies of other ants. They were having a relatively soft landing.

  Sure, they still died—just a minute or so later, when they’d had a little more time to succumb to their injuries—but a soft surface of ant flesh and gore was layering itself over the narrow ground at the bottom of the cliff.

  The ants at the top, observing what was happening, had enough collective intelligence to take advantage of that.

  Soon ants would be able to hazard falling without much chance of dying, because as a result of the current downpour of ants, the bodies of their comrades would have formed a thick cushion for them to land on. And these creatures were selfless and persistent enough that this would become a very serious problem sometime in the next several minutes, even if the brothers did not run dry on mana soon.

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  That was why the next part of Adon’s plan was so crucial. This had been the obvious piece, as Adon knew from experience some of the weaknesses of insects. One of them being relatively sensitive eyes, not as adaptive to sudden changes as those of humans.

  Rosslyn, you’re up, Adon sent.

  The Princess had already been gathering mana of a pure white tint, even as she stood there drenched in her own sweat, watching the Dessians work.

  Now she spoke up, startling everyone in earshot. The whole group had been staring, fascinated, at the rain of ants.

  “Everyone, we still need to retreat!” Rosslyn yelled. “We are heavily outnumbered, and the current method Lords William and Frederick are using cannot be sustained for long. I will blind them when I count down to one. When I reach one, all of you must close your eyes for several seconds. Then we will rush together into that tunnel!” She pointed to one of the larger tunnels at ground level. It wasn’t the tunnel between levels that they had come in through, as far as Adon knew.

  They were desperate, though. They needed to get out of sight—or they would probably end up torn limb from limb by a horde of angry ants.

  Any old port in a storm, Adon thought.

  The Princess said her brief light magic incantation, though over the sounds of everything else happening—the ant bodies shattering on the ground, the electricity flowing, the hundreds of limbs pinwheeling energetically through the air—Adon could not actually hear what was said.

  He could hear it in her mind, though.

  Divine Sword, First Form, Radiant Light.

  Light exploded out of her body, and Adon had to jerk his body to turn away as completely as he could, as the blinding light shot up into the air above them.

  The nature of Adon’s eyes was that they lacked eyelids, and he had not had the time to turn into a different species that did have them. But he at least turned his back as much as he could, so that the blinding white light Rosslyn produced was almost entirely in his blind spot.

  Only Adon’s Simple Eyes, which he used to detect light and the position of the sun, were partially blinded by the magical energy. Then he was being carried along, on Rosslyn’s shoulder, toward the tunnel where the group was to hide.

  Well done, Adon! Goldie sent, her telepathic voice a little distant, as Frederick was on the other side of the crowd of knights that surrounded Rosslyn. I knew that our experiences with the ants in the garden would help you, though I still do not understand how you crafted such a brilliant strategy!

  Way to use your science knowledge, bro! Samson added, echoing his mother’s praise.

  We are not out of the woods yet, but we would be in a much worse situation if you had not managed this reversal, Rosslyn thought. Her eyes were focused forward, though. Her mind was still honed in on the solution to the problem, on the next steps. She was not the type to hand out congratulations or rest before matters were truly settled.

  “Your Highness, will the ants not be able to find us?” muttered one of the knights as they advanced toward the mouth of the tunnel she had designated. “From the smell that the, ah, mystic butterfly mentioned? It still sticks to those who were involved in killing the ants directly earlier, correct?”

  “I suppose that is true…” Rosslyn said slowly, trailing off and thinking.

  Adon wanted to cut the knight who was speaking off immediately. The man wanted to suggest something that would be logical on the surface, but ultimately deleterious to the group: splitting up.

  It wasn’t even a selfish or unreasonable idea. The knight who had spoken up was genuinely worried that the knights with metaphorical ant blood on their hands—really just formic acid from killing ants—would draw other monsters toward them and endanger the Princess. The man was only moments away from mentioning the idea of hiding in two separate caves.

  But Adon knew that would damage group cohesion—make those few knights feel they were being sacrificed—to no benefit. So he shut it down.

  We don’t need to worry about that, he sent brusquely to the knight, Rosslyn, and the handful of people closest who he guessed had heard the exchanges. The ants do hunt by smell, but take in the smells around you, and what do you notice? He paused a moment to let the rhetorical question sit, then continued, Everything around smells like dead ants now! They have no way of detecting us, because we killed so many of them that this whole valley is sprayed in a thick cologne of ant guts.

  And the ants had no apparent method of turning off the smell their bodies emitted when they died a violent death. Either that, or they lacked the intelligence to recognize that their death smell was not helpful when it was just smeared all over every surface of a place instead of sticking mainly to an enemy. Probably both.

  “Thank you for that wisdom, honorable butterfly,” the knight said, bowing his head and speaking with a surprising note of genuine deference.

  “I am relieved to hear that as well,” Rosslyn breathed.

  Seriously, you are a life saver, Adon, she thought, her eyes landing on him with an intense look. You might have truly saved the lives of those knights. If they would have endangered the rest of the group with their presence, we really might have had to consider sending them away. You are incredible in a pinch like this.

  Instead of splitting, the full group retreated into the tunnel successfully. Those in the lead pushed forward, away from the entrance, aiming to get further in and more distant from where they would have much chance of being detected by ants if possible.

  The party stepped forward, into darkness—into the unknown—without generating any light. Though it would have allowed them to navigate more easily, it could also be a beacon to help the enemy find them. So they moved forward until the tunnel entrance began to shrink into the background when people turned around.

  Adon became conscious of the one major flaw in the plan he had devised—at least, the one flaw that he had not really had the chance to think about and try to account for before now, in his rush to simply get them away from the ants.

  This large tunnel—and any large tunnel they found other than the one joining the levels—had probably been created by monsters.

  Whatever had dug these tunnels, whether ant or otherwise, it was unlikely that it would be friendly. And if the size of this tunnel was any indication, it might be quite large as well. The ants were not the only monsters in this level.

  Tentatively, as he was a little afraid of what he might find, Adon reached out with Telepathy, pushing into the darkness beyond what they could see ahead of them.

  Ten feet, twenty feet, thirty feet. The butterfly’s telepathic reach extended further and further until he made contact with something. Something living, that felt more intelligent than any ant could be.