Chapter 38: Not New Friends

No breeze reached us this high up, and the air was a little cool, a little humid.  Beyond our balcony, the entire space was as dark as possible.

Marci’s voice came out flat, like the cavern itself drained the resonance away, “It’s like we’re inside a giant coffin, everything is so dark.”

“Being an elf,” said Bentley, pushing his hood back, “I’m surprised you can’t see in the dark.  Most can in RPGs.”

“It’s this space.”  She seemed to curl inwardly for a moment, before resting her hand on the railing.  “No sky overhead, no stars nor moon, we are buried deep underground.  Under a mountain.”

I touched her back, “We won’t be staying long.  Let’s see what those little creatures are up to.  I aimed my flashlight down, but the beam spread out in the darkness, barely illuminating the ground.  “It’s too far down, the beams won’t reach.”  Even though it couldn’t help, I leaned forward over the railing trying to see my flashlight’s illumination.

Marci rested her hand on mine for a moment, before saying, “Let’s merge the beams.  Aim at the same point.  It should increase the visibility.”

“Where shall we aim?”

“Let’s go with that hill we saw earlier.  Then we can simply follow the trail of, ah, ant-people.  See what they’re doing.”

On my left, Bent stood straight, holding onto the rail and looking down without leaning, “Ant-people?  That’s really what we’re going with?”

“You have a better term?” asked Marci.

“Yeah!  How about insectapeople?”

“No.”

“Roboant?”

“Not better.”

The wizard tried to match is beam to ours, saying, “Homo antian.  That’s it.”

“Kind of works, I guess.”  Marci’s beam passed mine, briefly creating a brighter space.”

I flipped my hand over, giving hers a little squeeze, “Wait, can you move it back?”

Bent continued, “And if they’re just one of a bushy tree, we can call these ones Homo antian antian.”

“Seriously,” Marci laughed, “stop while you’re ahead.”

“Antsocial?”

Marci brought her beam up, shining it on Bent’s face.  “Doesn’t really cover the monster part but would make a solid social media platform for ants.”

He snapped his fingers, “Oh, I got it!  Anti-social!”

Reaching over, I took hold of Marci’s flashlight, lightly pushing it toward the ground, “Guys!  Can we focus here?”  I matched my light with hers, “And . . . focus your beams on that little hill.”

Bent said in a low voice, “He said focus twice.”

I used my leader voice, saying, “Seriously, we don’t know how much time we have before they break that door down.”

“Sorry.”

“Sorry.”

With Bent’s beam joining ours, the hill became much more visible.  The floor was rugged, dark brown in places, grey stones in others.  A footpath had been beaten into it by the little guys.

“Looks like the ant-people,” I sighed at the name sticking, “are continuing up and along the path they’d made.  Let’s slowly pan along the trail to see where they’re going.”

We did, and were out of sync a bit, one beam getting ahead of the others, one trailing, but soon worked it out and moved the light along the trail.  A line of the little ones following a path, with a much larger one walking slightly off the track, on their left.  The path wound around larger stones, and even a pool with still water, then up the hill.  Following the trail, we soon came to a fairly steep incline, made out of slightly different rock, rougher and more reddish-brown than the rest of the cavern.

“Wait,” said Marci, “that’s not natural.  Follow the trail up.”

Our beams went out of convergence briefly as one of us went too fast, then refocused as the rest of us caught up.  Rising out of the greyish cavern rock, as if trying to escape, was a tower of reddish bricks, smoke billowing from its top.

Marci said, “There!  That’s the exhaust tower.  See, it’s forty meters high, probably meeting the minimum regulations for this planet, and that ramp leads up it.  The hill’s a different color because the ants built it.  That’s fresh dirt.”

“Ants?” asked Bent.

“Easier to say than ant-people, less syllables.”

“That works.”

“Guys!”

“Look!” said Marci.  “That ant waking up the ramp.  It’s carrying something in both hands.”

The little guy followed the ramp up to the top of the tower, placed its hands over the opening, and released them.  I couldn’t quite see what it dropped into the shaft, but it worried me.  “Is he – it, I mean – dumping dirt into the pipe?”

“I think so.  And the next one is carrying a stone.  They’re filling it up.  Oh!”

“Why would they do that?  They don’t like light?”

“Come on,” she said, “it’s obvious.  No?  The exhaust fumes are noxious.  This is their home.  They therefore decided to stop the fumes by blocking off the pipe.”

“Holy shit.  How’d they know to do that?”

“It’s probably similar to blocking off a dangerous passage or one that fills with water.  Or maybe there are some passages here with H2S – hydrogen sulfide, very deadly – in them.  Or maybe they retain some of their former human intelligence.  Impossible to say without observation and testing.”

“We are not going to be able to fix that pipe.  It’s clogged now.”

“We could, I don’t know,” said Bent, “rupture the pipe earlier in the exhaust stream.  Or tap into it, build another chimney.”

“Which they would simply fill up again.”  Marci said, “And if they figure out it was us, they’d consider us threatening and mobilize to eradicate the danger.  Besides, the diesel won’t last more than a week or so.  There’s no real reason to fix it unless you want seven days of hot showers and pasta.”

“Hot food and cleanliness.”  Bent said, “What the hotel provides might be worth fighting ants for, honestly.”

We both looked at him at the same time.

“Ok, yeah, I guess we can do without.”

“While it makes sense they’d prevent obnoxious fumes from polluting their home,” I asked, “why are they trying to get into the hotel?”

Marci backed up from the railing to look at both of us in turn, “I think Fred is right.  They heard us and now think food is in here.  The first ant was marking the doorway to be explored later.  The big one came along to open up the passageway, but then we talked to it.  If they really are a eusocial species, and they really look like they are, then they would eat anything that is not them.  We are on the menu and we told them where we are.”

“Fuck.”

“I wonder . . .” said Bentley, staring off into the cavern.  “What if the necromancy, the altars, were keeping them out of the hotel?”

“Like . . . a general feeling of dread?”

He shrugged, “I don’t know.  That or an active defense from the zombies.  Or maybe those other creatures, the paralyzing ones, preyed on them.  Maybe we should rebuild the altars.”

Marci shone her flashlight onto him, “Not a chance!”

“Bent!  No, no, that’s not,” I shuddered, imagining all those corpses protecting us, the ones who took bites out of Fred working for us, “a place we want to go.”

“We may not have a choice,” he said, pointing down.  “What if this is just a fraction of a much larger nest?  They’ll pour into here, eat us and make the hotel their new home.”

“Bent,” Marci asked in a small voice.  “Did you figure out how they built the altars?”

He stiffened, “No.  But the info must be here somewhere.”

“How long do you think it would take to rebuild the altars?”

“No,” I said, “we’re not doing that.  I don’t want any of us to become game monsters.  The necromancers, they were just part of a quest for us.  The bad guys.  We don’t want to go down that route or the game will turn us into some adventure’s quest.  And we have important work to do.”

“Yeah, true.  Alright,” he nodded.  “I’m just throwing ideas out.”

“Hey,” said Marci, turning back to the rail and looking down, “bring your flashlights back.  Focus under the exhaust tower.”

We did.  A bunch of the creatures, both little and a few big ones, were gathering on the ground around the tower.  They all paused at once, twitched, then began running toward the hotel entrance.

“I think we’re about to have trouble.  They must have messaged for reinforcements.”

“Damn.”

Marci touched my shoulder, “I know you had plans to explore this dungeon, but we should leave.  We don’t know how many there are, and they will bring reinforcements.  We can’t deal with too many creatures.  If they break in, they’ll block our only exit out of here.”

Thinking of more and more of these creatures descending upon us, with their ability to communicate, we were going to be in real trouble all too soon.  “Yeah, Marci, I think you’re right.  We need to get out of here.”

“And,” said Bent, “we only have one and a half healing potions.  If we’re not going to try the altars, I think we should leave, too.”

“Forget the altars.  We’re going to give up this dungeon before they get inside.  I wish we could have learned more, but our safety has to come first.  Maybe we can come back when we’re a higher level and better prepared.”

Bent took one last look, then headed for the stairway down.

Marci took hold of my hand, smiled at me, and we headed over that way.  Then she pulled on me, stopping both of us, concern in her voice, “Wait.  Listen.”

Several loud cracks coming from deeper in the cavern.

“That’s . . . gunfire.  Echoing off the walls.  They’ve broken in!”

“God, I hope the guns work.”

We ran for the stairs.