Deadtired

I had barely settled on which spell to use as we slipped out of a narrow corridor and into a slightly larger cave. The walls here were entirely unworked, and the space opened up to one side. It was quite pretty, for a naturally forming cave. There were large formations of dull, unpolished crystals on the walls, and a small pond of faintly gurgling water. A natural spring?

"Spaces like these are common," Belt said before I could ask.

"Oh? You mean underground access to water?"

"Yeah. When we run into one that's this calm, we sometimes excavate a route over to it. It's a nice way of getting some water to fill your gourd up along the way," the dwarf said. He tapped a small waterskin on his hip, which I decided not to point out wasn't a gourd.

"So what you're saying is that these... spring up on occasion? Oh hoh!"

Belt made the kind of face that I'd expect to see on someone who just discovered they'd stepped on some fresh excrement. It was glorious. "You've got something wrong with you, undead ma-"

Something large, green, and hungry leapt out from behind a rocky outgrowth. It was entirely silent even as it raised a pair of scythe-arms high and then swung them down towards Belt's neck.

I pointed at it. "Thunderwave."

I had still been thinking about what spell to use while walking about. Thunderwave was a fantastic choice, if I did say so myself. It was a spell that hit in an irregular cone, a rush of sonourous energy that could pop eardrums and shatter stone.

I, of course, aimed a little high, and the cone smashed into the ambushing mantis with a hard wallop that I could only-just hear over the thunderous noise now echoing through the cavern and the tunnel system around us. I had no doubt that the dwarves we'd left behind would hear it too.

Belt, of course, screamed while slamming his gloved hands over his ears. "What is wrong with y-" he began before bits of mantis rained down around him.

He turned and finally noticed the monster that had been about to turn him into lunch.

It was crushed against the far wall, very much dead. Unfortunately it had cracked a few crystals along the wall, and probably stained that nice little pond in the room's centre. But that would pass with time.

"Mem thinks she recognizes her," Mem said with a gesture to the corpse. "It's one of Mem's sisters."

"All mantises are your sisters, idiot," Rem snapped.

"Mem recognizes who this is," Mem corrected herself. "It's Oof."

"Oh, her," Rem said. She tilted her head left and right, inspecting the body. "Yes, that's that stupid moron Oof," she agreed.

"Was she special in any way?" Alex asked. "A friend, perhaps?"

"Oof was very clumsy," Mem said. Coming from Mem, that likely meant something. "She was also kind of mean."

Belt worked his jaw, then snapped his fingers next to his ears with a frown. "I've gone deaf. Entirely deaf. Orbital, say something, I can't hear."

"Then why would I bother saying something if you know you won't hear it?" Orbital asked.

"I'm not that deaf," Belt snapped. "There's a ringing in my ears."

"That'll likely pass, probably," I said. "I suspect that the Mantis Queen and her dear daughters will have heard that attack. We should consider being ready for a nice reception as we continue."

* * *

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Chapter Twenty-Six — Mantis Man

Chapter Twenty-Six — Mantis Man

It didn't take too long to find the start of what I supposed was the Mantis Queen's actual territory. The space was cavernous, in the sense that it was like a cavern, not so much that it was large.

We hadn't run into any more of the mantis siblings, but we did find an increasing number of signs that they were around. Bones, for example, littered the darkened corners of the cave system.

"Shame shame shame," Cinder said as she knelt next to a corpse. Or part of a corpse. "This one was a cultivator."

"Oh?" I asked as I wandered over. I was rather well-versed when it came to reading skeletons and other undead, of course. A perk of the job and the unlifestyle, I supposed. I glanced down at the body, inspecting it a little closer.

A leg and an arm were outright missing, and I couldn't tell if they had been taken pre-or-post mortem, but the rest of the body was relatively intact. Judging by the pelvis, this had been a male.

Cinder pointed to the skeleton's legs, then the hands. "See, the breaks?"

"Ah, there's growth around the shin and the knuckles look somewhat deformed," I noted.

Cinder made an affirmative sound, then showed one of her hands. She casually pulled back the guard that she wore over the top of her hand and over her knuckles. Her hands were relatively smooth, but her knuckles had calluses over them that were impossible to disguise. "Cultivators at the lower tiers of their cultivation will often have signs of the stress they go through. As you make breakthroughs, your body improves, removing some of these defects and making you a more powerful person, but some remain. At a guess, this was a cultivator still in the early stages of their development."

I nodded. So, the equivalent of the corpse of a lower-levelled monk. Those always made for fantastic zombies when they still had the musculature. As far as raising skeletons went, none were better than the skeleton of a barbarian, of course. I suspect it has something to do with all of the iron in their diet.

"Interesting. Do you want me to raise them? A one-armed, one legged skeleton would be of little use, but their soul might just have enough left in them to answer a few questions."

Cinder shook her head. "Let them rest," she said as she stood. "Just know that there are threats here capable of challenging a weaker cultivator. This isn't anything we didn't know. Yes yes?"

I nodded along, then gestured to the far end of the cave where it curved a little. "Shall we keep moving?"

There were more bodies as we went. Humans, but also the occasional dwarven skeleton, and plenty of animals. "Those are goats," Belt said. "From the surface of the mountain. They grow like weeds up there."

Well, at least we had an idea of the local's diets. Those in our group with exposed noses started to complain about the stench, and Mem was quick to explain that these tunnels were where the mantises went to defecate when such needs arose. There were a few spaces where natural spring water came out of the walls, and it would carry such matters away with time.

"I hear something ahead," Alex said with ears twitching.

We rounded a corner and came face to face with a mantis. It was short, only about half as tall as Rem, which meant that it only came up to my lower waist at best. The mantis had a pair of buckets tied to its back on a small wooden beam, both were filled with water.

"I-intruders!" it squeaked.

"Hello!" Mem said with a friendly wave from the back of our group. "Mem doesn't recognize you."

The mantis paused on seeing Mem, and even relaxed a little as its eyes shifted and took in Rem. Perhaps it suspected that we weren't intruders after all, not if our group had some of their siblings in it.

Rem scoffed. "That's a disgusting boy, just eat it and let's move on."

"N-no no," the mantis boy said with a wave of his much smaller scythes. "Don't eat me! I'm working. I'm working for the Great and All Powerful Mother. Without me, her Cultivator Stew would remain unwatered and dry!"

"Cultivator stew?" I asked.

The mantis boy stared at me for a moment, uncertain. "It is the stew that mother and the chosen sisters eat."

"Cultivator stew is delicious," Rem said. "It tastes like cultivator."

"Is one of the main ingredients cultivators?" Alex asked.

"Yeah," Rem said. "That's what gives it the taste of cultivator."

"Is your mother in at the moment?" I asked the mantis. "I would very much like to meet with her."

The mantis hesitated. "The Great and All Powerful Queen Mother is in her throne room, as always. We have guests from the Jade Throne as well. Are you with them?"

"No, not at all," I replied. "If that's all, we'll be on our way."

"This is insane," Belt muttered. "We should turn back, before we're added to that stew. I don't want to end my life as a spice or some added meat."

Alex patted the dwarf on the back. "Don't worry, I'm sure it won't come to that."

The young mantis boy scurried to the side, tucking himself against a wall as we passed on by. The caves actually became somewhat cleaner past that. There were more mantises as well. Those who were smaller than Rem and Mem were often doing menial labour of one sort or another. Pushing wet rags across the floor, or handling brooms with more frustration than skill.

They eyed us, but didn't bother us.

Then we were deeper in the Mantis Queen's lair and... well, it seemed as though the Mantis Queen herself had never truly invested in any sort of security apparatus. There were no guards, there were no checkpoints or chokepoints.

The caves grew into large caverns, lit by magical lamps and simple torches fitted into brackets on the walls. The floor was levelled, with several steps here and there which made the floor height vary quite a bit, but that was all. The walls were sometimes craggy stone, sometimes smoothed out, and other times covered in careful brickwork.

And, of course, there were even more mantises about. Some seemed as old as Rem and Mem, but while they often stared at us, sometimes with undisguised hunger, they never stepped up to do anything.

That was, until we reached the far end of this main chamber.

There, a single mantis stood in our path. They were half a head shorter than either Rem or Mem, but they made up for it by having a presence to them that either lacked. This mantis was muscular in a way that our two companions were not. Their arms and legs bulged with barely contained power, and their body was covered in small scars. One of their scythes was broken at the tip, though it looked no less threatening for it.

"Rem, Mem," the mantis said. "And the Harold. The Mother sent you out to kill this one, not to bring it back alive."

I noticed Mem shrinking back, and even Rem looked a little nervous.

"I'm afraid there might have been a fundamental misunderstanding," I said casually. "Though you do have the right of it with my name. I am Harold, who might you be?"

"I'm Man," the mantis said.

Rem leaned forwards. "Man is the only boy mantis that mom has never eaten."

Man the mantis, whose name I wholeheartedly approved of, looked between us all. "Wait... Rem, did you bring enemies into the Mother's home?"

"No," Rem said with a huff. "They brought themselves. Rem has nothing to do with where the stupid skeleton and his stupider maid go."

"Hello," Alex said with a short bow. "I suppose this makes us guests in your home. Could you please inform the lady of the mansion of our arrival?"

Man glared, then rose up, ready to fight. "You will not pass!" he hissed.

I had several options here. My first instinct was to create a Wall of Force in a quadrosphere around our backs, leaving only the entrance into the next part of the cave open. Alex could handle the mantis, and the wall would prevent anything coming in from behind.

But that would leave all of these mantises free to cause all sorts of problems, and frankly, I wasn't very keen on that.

So I chose another option. A first level enchantment rather than a fifth, because the simple answer, while occasionally less amusing, was always the correct answer.

"Sleep," I said and cast.

Across the cavern, mantises slumped to the floor.

The mantis ahead of us froze, then tried to fight the sleep.

He failed and came crashing down. "There you go! Now, onto that mother of yours."

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Chapter Twenty-Seven — Mother of Many

Chapter Twenty-Seven — Mother of Many

Passing Man and entering into the space he guarded was like walking out of a latrine and into a palace.

A very gaudy, poorly decorated mess of a palace, but a palace all the same. "Mem is not supposed to be here," Mem muttered nervously as she came up behind the group. She was walking while hunched over, eyes darting this way and that to inspect the room around us.

The corridor that Man guarded was wide and tall, with enough space within for the soft patter of our footfalls to echo. The walls were carved stone, notably a very pale marble-like rock that I hadn't noticed in the tunnels leading up to here. Paintings hung on the walls between archways lit up by metal cages filled with glowing magical stones.

A few chandeliers with equally magical candles with spells tied to them to make their burning last ages were positioned evenly across the corridor as well, providing a brighter, warmer light than the blue glow of the stones above.

I paused to inspect one of the paintings. It was quite large, taller than I was, though not quite so wide. Oil on canvas, within a wooden frame gilded with gold-leaf. The painting was of a large mantis covered in purple robes with golden trim. She wore a crown upon her head and was staring past the viewer. Somehow, the image managed to convey a certain sense of dignity to the mantis. "I presume that this is the spitting image of your mother?" I asked.

Rem hissed. "That's the Mantis Queen," she said. She started to sketch a rough bow towards the image, then aborted it halfway.

"It's Mom," Mem confirmed.

I hummed as I eyed the painting. It wasn't crafted by mantis hands, that was for certain. I'd seen better, but this was at least done by a professional painter. A glance at the others revealed slight variations in technique, styles, and even the number of shades and colours on the artist's pallet. "Where did she find the artists to paint these?" I asked.

"They are sent from the humans," Rem said. "Mother likes having her image painted. And she says that artists taste best."

"So, she has an appreciation for fine arts, and fine artists! Oh-hoh!" I chuckled to myself before continuing on. "Say, Orbital, Belt, you must be familiar with the styles of masonry in the region, this stone seems different than what I've noticed so far."

Belt and Orbital both eyed the walls. "That's white marble," Belt said with a hum. "You won't find it in this mountain chain. Go west and south a ways and there might be some. Near the mountains the humans call the Path to Heavens."

"Ah, yes, I recall visiting those quite recently. I must admit I didn't spend an overly long time studying the rocks in the region," I said.