BECMI Chapter 248 – Schider’s List

Sama and Briggs studied the cavern alongside me. My old Seal Focuses were still present, although I’d had to carefully clean them off to be on the safe side after years of neglect out here in the wild.“That is an impressive amount of bugs,” Briggs rumbled in agreement with my previous assessment. “There are bugs literally everywhere! I can’t move my eyes without seeing some over-sized arthropod. What are they eating to grow so numerous, and how are their numbers being kept in check?” he wondered aloud.

It stood to reason that if this place could grow so many bugs so big and so dense, it had an immense food supply, up to and including one another. If so, it should have just been expanding, and expanding, and expanding, waves of insect swarms pushing out to eat everything in the way, because the bugs certainly weren’t going to stop.

I just pointed at the Pyramid dimly visible in the distance. “I can see a betathaumic field in there, and can feel Immortal power at work now that he couldn’t before. There’s something Immortal inside that place, and it’s both feeding upon and reinforcing the cycle of death here.”

“There’s something in the upper ultrasonics I can barely hear, mistress,” Duum spoke up softly from above us where he was hanging in the air, wings furled but ready to move. His long hairy ears were slowly moving this way and that as they poked beyond his Hat, chasing sounds and skitters, whispers of movement about us. We’d been noticed, of course, but the bugs were approaching only slowly, instincts warning them about us… but hunger likely driving them regardless.

They were bugs. They ate and they mated, and not too much else.

We’d chewed through the entry cave and the remains of a tribe of goblins that had taken up residence in front of us, convinced they’d found a great food source. Their skeletons were scattered and disassembled all about, brittle and dry underfoot, stripped of all flesh. Sama had reported a lot of tiny bite marks on them, as well as some larger ones that had snipped bones open like twigs to get at the marrow inside.

Definitely not the perfect food source for the gobbers. Once the bugs inside caught the scent of food outside, the smaller ones had swarmed through the gap and eaten the goblins alive.

Then they’d pulled back inside, as if something wouldn’t let them rove into the tunnels beyond, afraid they might attract attention.

“I’ve got good ears, but not ranging that high,” Sama admitted, giving Duum a nod of acknowledgment. “Something the bugs can probably feel?”

“It’s just vibrations, and bugs are very sensitive to vibrations. It might be the force that keeps them here.” I considered that. “Duum, ear to the stone. Is it in the stones? These two should be able to feel it if it is.”

Duum swiftly turned his head and planted a hairy ear to the wall, still covered with traces of webs not yet eaten away by other bugs. He actually lifted his head away and then put it back, clearly puzzled. “No, mistress,” he finally said. “It is not sounding through the stone at all…”

“Because it would travel much farther through stone than the air, drawing more things here and stirring up more attention,” Sama nodded slowly. “That also means it is magical, because sound doesn’t work that way.”

“I concur.” I watched as Sama pulled a Mask set with thick spectacles out of her vest and popped it on her face. The lenses spun for a second as she looked towards the Pyramid in the distance, cutting through the obfuscation of drifting and flying things, webs, and the like.

“Huh. Drider-like critters, sure enough, but all white. What was the lore behind driders? Those who failed the test of Lolth, back then? These do not look like failures…”

“Immortals love creating their own pet races and changing those of other races to match what they want. These in turn create a stable pool of mortal servants that enable them to operate on the mortal plane without raising questions. I couldn’t get close enough to the place to determine how many there are, but this cavern system occludes nearly a thirty-mile horizontal radius from and other Divs. It’s . There could easily be thousands of the things down here, and on multiple levels within a ten-mile strata going down.

“Also, up above is a pit into an area of the Bleakland Underdark controlled by trolls. It’s kind of a sewage pit, where they throw all their refuse and crap down into a big hole, fed by a small stream. I imagine that would supply a lot of new biomass over time, and at least some water is coming in constantly. I believe cracks through the rocks let in other water sources, enough to supply whatever is lost through air currents.”

“So, the current question is… do we take out whatever is in the center of this place, or do we use this place as an easy grinding location for our lower-levels?” Briggs considered aloud.

We both looked at Sama, who just frowned. “Entropic Immortal, right?” Sama asked me.

“I cannot be certain without getting closer, but my best guess agrees,” I answered.

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“They’ve taken great steps to remain secret, and will not approve of any kind of a long-term presence here. The simple fact you found them and know about this place is insufferable, they will try to kill you. If they have the elven mindset and know about your prior incursions here, they will likely respond quickly and with force, trying to kill us. If they can’t kill everyone who knows, then killing anyone who comes is the next step to remaining concealed,” Sama considered thoughtfully.

“You’re thinking some of those schiders there are going to be pretty impressive in combat, then.” I certainly did.

“They look like spider-elf centaurs. We know there’s a pegasus/elf centaur people who live in the Delphan Empire, another unscrupulous wizard’s experiment. They have full elven intelligence and spellcasting abilities. I think we would find much the same here,” Sama agreed.

“And they obviously have some means or methods of controlling these bugs. That is a terrifyingly powerful combat force if unleashed. There’s more than enough raw insectile power here to conquer whole surface realms. Delpha is probably the only force that could muster enough power to take it on straight-up without literally being run over, and they’d need a LOT of wizards to do the job,” Briggs pointed out.

“Which begs the question of why they didn’t do that…” I murmured.

“Well, if we assume it’s so important that they have an Entropic Immortal here to watch over it, it’s like Immortals of other Spheres don’t know about it. The blackout around it has to be maintained by something, likely subtle Immortal power…”

“And a lot of it, multiple Immortals.” Briggs lifted his head slightly. “It’s an army for multiple Immortals to use when they feel it is the time…”

“And the schiders there are the caretakers for the army, making sure it’s up to snuff and ready to go when called upon.” I shook my head as I flicked up a bunch of and sent them streaking out in flashes of black and crimson, smacking into approaching bugs and blasting them open. By dint of scattering the dead among various species, I slowed their advance as the bugs simply starting fighting over the dead instead of approaching us further.

“Mmm,” Sama nodded along. “Big secret project means big reveal if its existence is leaked. As long as mortals don’t know about it, other Immortals could just collapse the place, infect it with spores that prey on bugs, or use other means to just wipe the whole thing out.

“Redirect the water, easiest way. The whole place will dry up, and the bugs will have to move or die. Even they need water. And there aren’t that many ways out. Plug those holes, and the whole thing turns into an internal feeding frenzy until there are none left. And that’s if they don’t just decide to flatten the place and fill it in to match the divination blackout in a moment of ironic humor,” Briggs grunted. “Alternatively, it’s underground and would contain a blast. Set off a nuke and just pulp the place.”

“Odds that this place is fed and empowered by that nuke you disintegrated in the other timeline?” Sama asked of me.

I focused on the thaumic spectrum and upper electromagnetic, frowning. “It’s… possible? I made a point of to the location of where that cavern was here, just to make sure, but it ended up being an orc holding well to the south and west of here, and all signs of technology were removed or destroyed. Without the betathauma radiation, things weren’t growing rampantly or mutating, either.” Not to mention the lack of artificial sunlight, water pumps, and decent air circulation...

“Is the magical buzzing affecting the betathauma?” Sama went on, crossing her arms and considering the problem.

“That’s such stupidly inappropriate physics, that’s probably what is going on,” I had to admit, and she beamed at me. “Sound interacting with radiation through magic confluence. Some sort of betathaumic carrier, conveying the radiation in a specific pattern and form throughout the entire cavern. I haven’t seen any really massive mutations except for size… but size on insects is a lot all by itself. I assume a mutant would be killed by its own kind before it could reproduce, unless it was saved. Such might become special pets of the schiders, however?”

“That’s a good guess. Likely sterile, too, or can’t breed with the other insects,” Briggs agreed with my supposition. “And above and beyond that is magical templates getting randomly applied, which I’m sure the Immortals would never do.”

I could only smirk at that. “Again, not something I encountered. This is just where I tested and improved my skills in personal combat. The fringes have the smaller bugs, and they increase in size as you head toward the center, likely soaking in more betathauma that allows them to grow further.”

“You think they shrink if they don’t get it?” Briggs suddenly spoke up thoughtfully. “Bugs have to molt regularly as they grow, form new carapaces. I can see them shrinking if they aren’t artificially triggered…”

“That would be a control factor they could use for their Army of Final Doom and Destruction,” Sama reasoned out evenly. “Most of them would simply start losing power and likely die if they shrink down and have to molt their heavier carapace. So it wouldn’t be an army that overruns the world and needs Immortal intervention to stop. It would have a shelf life.”

“That means that they could make the argument that such an army is useful as a weapon of Immortal displeasure, and the other Spheres should keep it around to use it as such.” The very idea was absolutely loathsome, and I couldn’t keep that out of my voice.

“And they might even have a hidden nuke they could detonate to destroy it, so the breeding grounds could never really be out of control!” Sama went on enthusiastically, but her eyes were as hard as sapphires.

“We kill it hard,” Briggs stated flatly, ending any humorous byplay on our part. “Then we wipe out these bugs before they boil over, if that is what it takes. If that involves killing an Entropic Immortal’s pet race of spider-elves, I have the feeling that one Aural examination and look at their racial philosophy will puff my Pillow of Restful Slumber at night.

“Edge, I’ll task you with mapping this place out, especially its peripheries. Sama and I can’t do it without wading through bugs.

“Bury at least twelve different locations in the stone with Seal Focuses, and I’d prefer twenty. We will use them as insertion points for the selected kill teams, and basically sally forth from them randomly for fighting experience.

“Before we do that, I want that source of betathaumic radiation, and the bomb it may be, taken offline.”

I straightened up, and saluted properly. “Yessir, Warlord, sir!”

I wasn’t a Zanzyran. I could totally salute one of the two strongest melee combatants on the planet.