In the short time since the spores had first been planted, they had twisted together, forming a monstrous three headed voidbloom. A trio of tight buds protruded from a stalk, writhing and twisting as it grew.

  Trees in the tile blackened, shriveling and dying as the blight drained them of essence. Roots swam through the earth like eels, spreading blackness and decay as they took hold.

  A voidling emerged from a broodcells around the base of the bloom, shaking off strands of larval juices as it steadied itself. It scanned the carpet of roots surrounding the bloom, then spotted the humans.

  Long and broad, the voidling waddled forward, heading toward Laryn’s band. A swollen belly swayed beneath the creature’s bulk. It reached the edge of the root carpet marking out the void lord’s arena, and walked unsteadily onto the ground.

  With a loud slurp, a small glob the size of a head dropped from a cloaca beneath the voidling. It twitched, then unfolded a set of legs. The small creature shook itself, goo dripping from it as it unfolded a set of wings. It took to the sky, buzzing aggressively toward the humans.

  Laryn sliced it in two, and voidling spawn dropped to the ground at his feet.

  “Is that the voidlord?” Gaten whispered.

  “I don’t think so…” Laryn said.

  The creature chittered, and behind it two more similar beasts clawed their way through opaque membranes, bursting into the light.

  These two joined the first. They all clicked, and then the three voidlings began dropping more spawn to the earth.

  Plop, plop, plop, the sticky creatures landed, shook themselves out, and took to the air.

  “All my days,” Laryn muttered.

  “They’re not going to stop!” Ollen yelled.

  A dozen small, flying voidlings hummed as they dove for the humans. Clubs, sharp sticks, and a hammer beat at the bugs, knocking them down, but the voidlings produced spawn faster than the humans could kill them.

  “We need to kill the… uh… the mothers to stop the swarm!” Laryn ordered.

  Together they charged forward, batting at the growing cloud of swarming voidlings. A man screamed beside Laryn as a swarmling broke through the defense, stabbing his arm with a long proboscis. A sharp sliver protruded from the man’s skin. He ripped it out as Laryn sliced the bug in half, then smashed another swarmling with his hammer.

  The swarm grew. They were never going to be able to fight the queens, not while being bombarded from all directions.

  A pair of the gigantic bugs divebombed Laryn, sharp, needle-like snouts like dart tips aimed at his head. He sidestepped and swung his sword, knocking one to the ground and dodging the other. It sailed straight into Jarik’s calf.

  The man gasped and staggered, beating at the insect with the butt of his quarter staff. The brood-queens stopped dropping swarmlings to the ground, their sacs depleted and saggy. Unburdened, they joined the fray, snapping and slashing with claws and mandibles.

  A club cracked in half against the hard carapace of a queen.

  Laryn sliced a grasping claw from a limb, as the creature snapped at Gaten.

  Through the swarming voidlings, between the brood-queens legs, Laryn spotted the void lord, watching the fight.

  This one looked nothing like the one Laryn had killed. It did not have large, armored body segments. It looked more like the voidling they had just killed in Annar; long, ropey muscles, limbs like tentacles, curling and looping as it gripped and walked.

  Vand fell, tripping on a root as he tried to dodge a brood-queen’s swipe. Swarmlings dove on him, sharp snouts ripping through his hardened leather armor. Ollen and Fenric jumped to his aid, fighting to help him up.

  Laryn landed a strike on the brood-queen’s head, staggering it, but a stouping swarmling lashed at his face as it passed. A spine caught his scalp, a glancing blow but it threw off Laryn’s follow through and the queen recovered.

  From the voidbloom another brood-queen emerged from a larval cell, chittering to its siblings. It waddled forward, dropping swarmlings as it readied to join the fight.

  “Come on,” Laryn shouted, realizing what they needed to do. “We can’t beat them like this!” He ran through the buzzing swarmlings, punching one out of the air. A half dozen of the creatures followed, flying after him.

  The void lord darted across the roots of the intermingled voidblooms, fast and smooth like quicksilver, angling to cut Laryn off.

  Laryn brought up his sword and lopped a flailing tentacle off the voidlord. He leaped onto the mat of roots, rolling beneath a powerful swipe, and danced away from the voidlord as it tried to position itself to protect the blooms.

  The edges of the rooted area curled up into the air, blocking off Thatch and Gaten, who’d been following him. The new brood-queen screeched as she became entangled in the arena wall.

  “Go help them!” Laryn shouted as Thatch and Gaten hacked at the roots of the arena. They backed off, just in time. Massive sepals slid up around the roots, curving over the arena and forming a dome overhead.

  A beam of light shone through an oculus at the apex of the dome, illuminating the buds of the void bloom. They shifted, orienting themselves toward the light, but did not reflect any of it into the dome.

  The voidlord attacked, diving at Laryn. He stood his ground; stone stance, slashing at the creature and taking chunks out of its tentacle arms. The tentacle portions landed on the ground and continued writhing, lashing out at Laryn.

  He summoned up his water dart and fired it into the mouth of the voidling. The hit knocked it back, but didn’t have the affect he’d hoped for. The creature brushed off the attack, and came back in for more, flailing and battering at Laryn from every direction.

  Laryn did his best on the uneven footing, dodging and blocking strikes, but every time he cut a portion of the creature off, it fell to the ground and rooted there, growing into another obstacle for him to avoid.

  Shouts echoed faintly from outside the arena. Joyous shouts of victory? Desperate cries of dying men? He did not know.

  His sword flashed, but he knew it was the wrong weapon for the job. He needed a crushing tool, or fire.

  “Adi!” he called out, trying to block a blow that knocked him down to his knees. He rose, slashing the blade around in a modified flame stance as he beat at the creature with the flat of the sword. Cutting pieces off of it only seemed to make things worse.

  “I need fire!” he said.

  “Voidlings are so interesting,” Adi said. “Their characteristics seem to change depending on the kinds of essence the voidbloom is absorbing from claimed hex tiles. This one is heavily life based.”

  “Okay great,” Laryn said, stabbing his sword forward into the mass of the voidling. The blade cut through layers of flesh and muscle, but the creature just healed as quickly as Laryn could stab. “That’s good, it means that fire is it’s weakness!”

  “But you’ve got mostly water tiles,” Adi said. “And there aren’t any fire tiles around here that I know of, and that’s the only way to get fire…”

  “What about air?” Laryn gasped. “Right now I need something new! Life is strong against water and this creature seems to enjoy being stabbed.” Sweat dripped from his brow, and the voidling pushed Laryn back further. It lashed out at him with thin, whip like appendages that left thin cuts on his skin wherever they landed.

  “Oh, hey, that’s a good idea,” Adi said. “When Widan left with the others, they crossed over some air tiles to the north, across the river. There might not be enough, but…”

  “Do it,” Laryn ordered. “Try it!”

  The map appeared in front of Laryn’s vision, causing him to miss a strike from the voidling that sent him spinning to the ground. “Can’t you do it for me?” he demanded.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “I can’t claim them!” she shouted. “But, I think I can preload a command… There! Approve that!”

  Laryn approved the selection as he rolled under another blow. His legs trembled as the voidling surged toward him, clacking with glee.

  Kingdom core information flashed across his vision as he fought. “I can’t read that!” he shouted to Adi. “Did it work!”

  “It worked!” she cried. “You have an Air magic affinity point now!”

  The cooldown for the elemental dart ability expired. The voidlord lunged, springing into the air. Laryn drew upon the air, and it formed into a hard wedge, which he blasted straight into the belly of the creature.

  The air dart ripped a hole through the void lord, sending it flipping backward. Exoskeleton cracked. Laryn reached the voidlord as it struck the ground, and he hacked at the hole with his sword, splitting the creature into multiple parts. Black ichor spilled out across the ground, and the thrashing limbs scattered around the arena flopped over, dead.

  Laryn wiped his forehead, sucking air into his lungs.

  “Thank you, Adi.”

  “Wow, I can’t believe that worked! I am so smart!”

  “Yeah,” Laryn said. “I can’t believe how weak my water attack was against it. Shouldn’t it have been stronger, since I had two magic points there?”

  “Generally yes,” Adi said. “But since this creature was strongly life based, your added capability was outweighed by it’s strength. If you had been using earth magic, that thing probably wouldn’t have even noticed, since life is super strong against earth.”

  “But if I had fire magic,” Laryn said, “I could have destroyed it easily, since life is super weak against fire.”

  “True,” Adi said. “But you don’t. And I don’t know of any fire tiles in the area.”

  Laryn clambered up the thick stalk of the void bloom. The sepals of the arena cracked and decayed, sending showers of fine dust into the air. He sliced the buds free, letting them fall to the ground as the arena collapsed around him.

  He emerged from the dying husk of the void bloom onto a battle field. The brood-queens and their swarmlings all lay dead on the ground, strewn about. Among the voidling corpses lay nearly a dozen dead bodies.