“Is that wasp gold?” Nat had spent the past five minutes filming the crowd of wasps; she said she wanted it as additional footage for background during newscasts, but Serenity didn’t care; it gave him time to watch for interesting patterns and refresh the spells he’d infused; they’d degraded even though he hadn’t used them. Now she was focusing on something Serenity couldn’t see; it wasn’t like he could see color, after all.

“Which wasp?” Serenity didn’t bother looking at the wasps as he asked.

“The big one. I can’t tell if the whole thing is gold or only the back half. Not the black part, the rest.”

Serenity shrugged. “No idea, does it matter?”

“No one’s mentioned a gold wasp before. It could be something different.”

“They’re yellowjackets,” Lancaster pitched in. “If it’s yellow or more of a gold color, we can find out after it’s dead. Really, I’m glad these are the same wasps we've been seeing; we only need to worry about the stinger.”

“About that interview? You said you’d answer the question after we moved on.” Made stepped in front of Serenity.

“Yeah, I did, didn’t I? I’ll answer it and some others once this is taken care of; I don’t want to be distracted from the wasps. I don’t think they’re going to come this way, but better safe than sorry.” Serenity had forgotten about the question he’d promised to answer. He thought it was the long form of “what Path should I choose”, so at least it would be easy to answer.

Made looked grumpy, but didn’t say more.

“Same plan as last time? Only this time Serenity, Nat, and I take out as many of the small wasps as possible on the way in?” Raz was clearly tired of waiting for everyone else.

“Yeah,” Serenity agreed, “I’ll try to damage the wings on the big one, after I cast what I have at the small stuff. It’s too bad I can really only store three spells.”

“Why don’t we start combat with one of your spells? It won’t have to be stored, then, and you can take as long as you need to cast it.” Serenity started to answer Rissa’s question, only to realize that there really wasn’t a reason not to do as she suggested. The wasps weren’t moving in closer and he had the mana.

“Good idea. I’ll go for a Quickness spell, I think; it’ll help you avoid being hit and make it easier to hit them because it’ll look like they’re moving slower.” Serenity didn’t realize that he was giving the impression that it was an improvement in mental processing speed rather than the Time spell that it actually was; Rissa would know as soon as she saw him cast it, but the others wouldn’t realize it until they had another spell to compare against it. In some cases, that would be years away.

The Quickness spell went off without a hitch and Serenity started shooting Fire Arrows at the largest wasps’s wings. When the first one bounced off, he realized that the plan needed some quick revisions and swapped to the three person-sized wasps. The arrows worked on those wings, but he’d still only managed to damage one wing before the swarms of relatively tiny, hand-sized wasps came into range for his stored spells.

Serenity started with the basic fireball. It worked better than he’d expected; it covered a wide area, and all of the wasps caught in it fell to the ground. It still wasn’t nearly enough to deal with the swarms that were coming.

Serenity decided to use his second spherical spell quickly and save the one with the open center for later; right now, they were closely bunched and he could use it without endangering his allies. He aimed for the densest part of the cloud he could see. The Lightning Ball left an empty hole behind. Between the two attacks, Serenity guessed he’d probably taken care of about half of the incoming small wasps.

It was more than he’d expected, but it wasn’t nearly enough.

Serenity could tell that Raz and Nat were also attacking; Raz’s attacks were smaller than Serenity’s, but equally effective for the area they covered. Nat’s spells didn’t take anything out, but it was still clear where she was hitting, because giant groups were slowing down and falling out of sync with their neighbors.

Serenity noticed that when she clipped the car-sized wasp, it slowed down and seemed almost confused for a moment. “Try to include the giant one, Nat! It works against that one too!”

Rissa’s crossbow bolts had shredded a wing on a second wasp and she was targeting the third wasp when the largest wasp came into range for the melee group. Somehow, Made had managed to get ahead of the others, and she swung her sword as hard as she could at the wasp. Serenity thought she’d missed until he heard a CLANG and saw her stagger. The wasp swung around and Serenity realized why she’d hit something - the wasp had attempted to sting her and moved its stinger into the path of her sword, but her blow had altered the trajectory of the attack enough to make it miss.

It wasn’t until he saw Made try to swing again that he realized that one of the two partial blades on her sword had broken in half.

Well, at least the sword had served some use; it’d prevented her from being hit by the wasp’s stinger. That was more use than Serenity had expected when he saw the “sword”.

Serenity didn’t have time to watch the battle against the big wasps; the smaller ones were swarming towards the small group up front. Serenity ran for them; he didn’t have to be there to use the empty-cylinder spell, but it was his last spell and he needed to switch to melee anyway. As he ran, he pulled out his throwing axe and tossed it at the giant wasp’s wings; if a fire arrow didn’t work and a crossbow didn’t work, maybe an axe that drank magic would work.

The axe reached the wasp right before he did and tore straight through the wing. The wasp lurched and both Lancaster and Russ hit it before it recovered. Lancaster’s blade cut only a shallow scratch, but Russ’s bit deep into the wasp.

“What’s your sword made of, Russ?” Serenity shouted as he got close to the others. The first small wasps were arriving, but he needed to wait for the mass of them. Serenity only had one spell left before he’d have to spend minutes casting, and minutes wasn’t a possibility in combat. He watched the situation as he called his throwing axe back to his hand.

“It’s a soul blade,” Russ called back. “I need to show you how to make one, but there hasn’t been time.” Russ sounded calm and collected, almost as though he found fighting a swarm of giant wasps to be less stressful than his dayjob.

If Russ’s dayjob was dealing with things like the Shard of Decay, that might not be unreasonable. Serenity could recall many times in Vengeance’s life when a relatively straightforward fight was welcome, but he tried to concentrate on the moment and not be caught up in the past.

Serenity could use his throwing axe, but Lancaster needed to either move to the person-sized wasps or figure out a way to hurt the gigantic one. What else was sort of similar to a soulblade?

Serenity had heard of them, but he’d never seen the need; he’d always used items he bought or won, rather than trying to form his own. He could have a range of magical effects that he couldn’t necessarily produce on his own simply by buying them; earning the currency was far more efficient than trying to learn that particular technique. That didn’t help them now, though.

Well, it didn’t hurt to try. “Lancaster! You said you had a new damaging attack with your sword, try that!” If that worked, it might mean that the giant wasp was vulnerable only to attacks with a magical component that were under the control of the user. That would explain everything, at least, but it would also mean that fire-and-forget spells like most magebolts wouldn’t work; they’d bounce, like his fire arrows did.

The wasps were getting heavy; Serenity couldn’t keep up with the ones attacking him and one managed to get through and sting his hand. Serenity expected a sharp pain, but all he felt was a minor scrape; he took a glance at his hand and didn’t see any damage.

Maybe it just hadn’t had a good angle or maybe it had glanced off his toughened skin; it didn’t matter. They were thick enough that it was time. Serenity Evoked his last infused spell and a wall of superheated flame surrounded the small group, catching most of the nearby wasps. He’d have to trust Raz and Nat to handle the rest; it was time to take care of the big guys.

“It worked!” Lancaster’s shout pulled Serenity’s attention back to the extra-large wasp. One of its legs was severed. It wouldn’t make a quick difference, but every little bit counted. More importantly, it was one more person who could fight the largest wasp.

One more test would tell him if his guess was right. “Raz! I need a single spell on the big guy! I just need to know if it does damage or bounces, then you need to stay on the swarms!”

A magebolt whistled by Serenity; that was an unusual basic attack. Most people didn’t start with the Arcane affinity. Raz must have really worked towards it. “No effect!”

Nat could chill it and slow it down. Serenity guessed there was one more question “Nat! Your spells, do you have to concentrate on them?”

“If I want to move them yea-ack!” Nat sounded anything but calm as she dove away from a mid-sized wasp that had headed for her instead of being attracted to the main fight in the middle. The fight was a mess.

Serenity decided he needed to ignore the small ones and let Raz and Nat handle them; he had three people - Lancaster, Russ, and himself - on the big guy, but only Rissa was doing anything to the three medium-sized ones, and now that they were spread out, she was having very little luck hitting them.

Serenity wasn’t counting Made. He glanced over to her to see that she was jumping up and down and waving her broken sword at the largest monster, but all she was achieving was distracting it. That was as much as he could expect from her.

It was a good thing Rissa had been taking out the medium-sized critters’ wings and he’d managed that one hit on the giant one. They were all flying around like they were drunk; so far, it looked like only the small ones had stung anyone. Serenity hoped no one was allergic, but at this point there wasn’t anything to do about that. He should have thought of that before entering the dungeon.

Clearly, being undead for an untold period of time made one forget small things that the living had to deal with. Oops.