Chapter 11: Playing Exterminator

The night was bit rough for me. It was almost midnight and I saw everyone was asleep but me. I was up with my thoughts, thinking about the visions and what'll happen next on our journey. Deciding to go for a walk, I got out of bed and left the inn. I went around the town a bit before heading for the mountain path. The sparks from my Lightning Blade provided enough light for me to see. The battle with the bat yesterday cost me my shield so I will get a new one in the morning. I stopped a quarter ways up the trail and sat down, thinking about the two visions I had.

My dad, my wife, my son. The burning building. The castle. Visions of my past and my future. Helen said she saw a vision as well, though I don't know what she saw. I know we both knew of this Hamilton person. Why do the visions only happen to us when we faint from a near-death experience? I'm wondering if I should nearly die again just so I could see another vision, but that would severally slow our team down. I wish the visions would show me what would happen on this journey, a strange journey full of laughs and adventure with an uncertain end...

I must've finally fallen asleep because, when I opened my eyes, I was blinded by the sunlight. I decided to head back to the Inn before the rest of the team woke up. When I got there, though, not only were they awake, but they were in a panic.

"Stephan!" Andrew yelled. "Where did you go?"

"Um, I went up the mountain to clear my head, but I'm fine,"

"Do you have the Gems with you?"

"...No, why?"

"They're missing, kid," Stan said.

"What? No, they're not," I walked over to my pack. "I keep them in this pouch...here..." I shook the pouch expecting some rattling, but nothing happened. The pouch was empty! "The Gems are gone!"

"Finally caught on, didn't ya'?" Chris said.

"What happened to them?" I asked. Jennifer walked into the room holding something.

"I think I can answer that," she said holding the objects out. They were two of the Gems! "I found these being taken away by bugs. These two are the only ones I found."

"Bugs?" Andrew asked. "How much?"

"I don't know. I went to go look for more, but these were all I found,"

"Maybe if you were here, Stephan, and kept an eye on the bag, we wouldn't have lost them!" Matt accused me, poking me.

"What? What about you? You were actually here!"

"Enough," Andrew said. "The bugs took them when we were asleep. It's not anyone's fault. Jennifer, what kind of bug was it?"

"It was a large Spider," she answered. "It was disgusting to look at. I saw it was trying to head to the east."

"Tell the girls to ready their gear, we're heading out," Andrew ordered. Jennifer left and we got our gear ready as well. We decided to stock up on more supplies before heading out. Andrew bought more Health Vials than usual because of what happened yesterday and I bought a new Steel Shield. We headed out toward the east, walking past the corpse of the spider Jennifer dealt with last night.

We continued walking east looking for anything that might show were the unusually large insects went to. Conveniently enough, they were heading to our next destination: Nora. Behind the town was a large nest that looked like a mixture of an anthill, a beehive, and a spider web. A couple of us just stood there, somewhat afraid of the large bugs inside. Knowing we had to get the Gems back, we pressed onward. The only accessible entrance we could find was the anthill's. Looking down into it, the hole seemed wide enough to fit all of us at once, Stan and Matt included. So that's what we did, we all jumped in and slid down to the bottom. When we landed, we were greeted by a group of large Ants, foaming at the mouth. The smell of their pheromones coming from them made us sick to our stomachs. As they charged us, Stan shot out a fire burst at one, engulfing it in flames. Its screech was almost as bad as the bat's we dealt with yesterday and the burnt bug smell was worse than the smell it was already giving off. The rest of the group ran away out of fear of getting Burned as well. Moving forward while trying to breathe as little as possible was becoming difficult. Helen thought that, if she used her Air Whip repeatedly, it would create a wave of fresh air. It kind of worked, it mixed the smell that was already here with the air from the whip, but it kept the oncoming waves of ants away from us. Continuing farther, we noticed the ants were grouping in larger packs. We tried to fight them off, but they continued to come after us. We managed to push them back into a pathway and Stan trapped them there with fire. Continuing down a different path, we came to a large room that held a much larger ant than the rest. Seeing it could fly, we assumed this must be the Queen Ant. She was very quick and hard to hit. She used her wings to blow us all back, but Helen used some wind of her own and blew her out of the air, and then Kyra froze the wings making sure the queen will not fly again. However, she was very formidable on the ground as well. I took my Lightning Blade to her and delivered the final blow. As she fell, a door behind us opened revealing the way forward. We walked through preparing for another attack, but were instead welcomed by the smell of honey.

The walls were completely coated in the stuff making whoever bumped into it stuck. Whenever Helen used her whip to attack the Bees, her whip would get stuck in the honey. At one point, Matt shot a fire bolt out of his sword which sent all the honey aflame, burning the hive as well. Yelling and running, we fled to escape the flames as the hive was falling around us. Kyra and Helen kept using their magic to try and slow the fire down. We managed to make it to the room were the Queen Bee was waiting. Alongside her were two other large bees. They charged at us and used their stingers to pierce our armor. We knew the first thing we had to do was take out their wings. Helen blew the bees against the wall and Jennifer and I used our magic to burn their wings. Kyra froze the bees soon afterward and Stan lit them up. The Queen was attacking Andrew and Sobie and they were clearly at a disadvantage since they couldn't fly. Andrew gave his axe a good throw and embedded it into the Queen Bee. Now fighting with an axe stuck in her, she was flying around awkwardly. She tried her best to ram us with her stinger and managed to get it through Andrew. She brought him to the wall and got stuck there, making Andrew get stuck between the bee and the honey-coated wall. Andrew slashed at her with his sword cutting her nearly in half. With the bee dead, he took the stinger out of him and his axe out of the queen. I ran up to help him, but he said he was fine. He pulled out a Health Vial and drank it. He was still in some pain, but not enough to cause him grief. With the next door open, we moved on to the Spider's Web.

The entire place was made of webs making us get stuck to floor. If we moved, we ended up bringing nearly the entire web with us. Using any sort of Fire or Lightning magic would set the entire web into flames. Walking as carefully and as best as we could, we moved further into the web, though the spiders we fought had us out beat and outmatched. We could only attack them when they came nearby, but that wasn't very often. They usually webs out as us causing out feet, hands, or entire bodies to be completely stuck. With battle wounds and web coverings, we fought as hard as we could to get to the spider's leader. When we reached her, she spoke to us,

"Well, you sure took your time getting here,"

"A Black Widow," Andrew said. "Be very careful. Their poison is very lethal."

"Where are the Gems you took from us?" I asked.

"Took from you?" the Widow replied. "You took them from Exitilus. His goal was to get them before you, but you were proving to be a bigger threat then he though. So he told us to get them back and we gave them to him."

"Exitilus has all the Gems we collected?" Helen exclaimed.

"We spent a long time trying to get those!" Jennifer yelled.

"Yeah, you saved him the trouble of having to go get them himself. We thank you for that."

"You're not welcome!" Matt yelled out as he tried to jump at the Widow, but the webs just brought him back down and cut the silk.

"Foolish human," she said. "It'll be much easier for Exitilus if I get rid of all of you now!" She ran up to Matt and tried to bite him, but he slashed with his sword, cutting her, but not leaving much of a mark. Helen shot an Air Blast out, but the spider was not affected. Kyra then shot out an Ice Shard, but the spider just moved out of the way. We couldn't move fast and the spider used that to her advantage. She climbed up the wall and onto the ceiling. She dropped down behind us, but we couldn't turn completely to face her. Chris shot out his gems to make them do the fighting, but they hardly did anything. Whenever the spider came close to one of use, we did everything we could to fend her off. After trying to get close but failed several times, she ran back up the ceiling. Looking down at us, she opened her mouth and venom came rushing out. I pulled my shield up to protect me while Stan and Matt used their Fire Magic to fend it off, but the poison still scattered and landed on a few of us. The venom was acting fast and Jennifer, Andrew, Chris, Lacey, and Sobie were quickly draining. Andrew tried to get to his bag, but the Black Widow shot out a large web trapping all of us. As the Widow came closer, Andrew yelled out,

"Stan... Burn this place!"

"But... that's not gonna end well,"

"Just do it!" Stan lifted his Wand and Matt did the same with his sword. Flames soon engulfed our web but quickly spread all over the nest. The Widow yelled in pain as she was burning. When we could stand up again, Kyra told Helen to use her whip to help her blow the fire away while she used her ice do douse it. When the fire disappeared, we had all received plenty of burn marks, but at least every bug was defeated. We helped those with the poison on them out of the nest of insects and down to Nora's Inn. We sat the poisoned down on the beds. Kyra stood over Andrew while tending to her burns, Helen looked after Chris, Matt watched Lacey, and Stan took care of Sobie. I decided to stay with Jennifer. When night fell, I decided to leave Jennifer alone and go sleep. As I was getting up, Jennifer grabbed my arm.

"Stephan..." I sat back down. "I saw her. Nichole. She's fine. She looks great, but she looked...upset."

"Why?" I asked.

"I don't know..." She loosened her grip on my arm. "I don't think... Migue's a terrible name. But... were you and I... really married?"

"It looked like it," I laughed a little. "We were in a castle, too. But I don't know where it was."

"A castle?" Jennifer asked, acting somewhat silly. "Well, as long as you're married to me. I always wanted to be a queen!"

"You... should rest," I said, taking her hand off my arm. "I think the poison's getting to your brain."

"Yeah...probably..." Jennifer rolled over and went to sleep. I left to the boy's room in the inn. I ran into Kyra as she left.

"Andrew will be fine," she told me. "But he wants to tell you something."

"Are you alright, Kyra? You should do something about those burns."

"So should you," and she left. I walked up to Andrew.

"Hey, Stephan," he said. "You doing okay?"

"Yeah," I answered.

"How's everyone else?"

"They're doing fine," I paused for a minute. "I think Jennifer said she likes me."

"Really?" Andrew laughed a bit.

"Yeah, she said she saw Nichole and then she talked about the vision I had earlier. The one with the castle and Migue. She acted like she always wanted to live in a castle and she said she'll like it if I'm the one married to her."

"Eh, I've heard of lots of little girls wanting to be princess when they grow up, but I thought Jennifer would be past that by now," he laughed. I laughed with him.

"It's nice to see this poison isn't taking a big toll on you, Andrew,"

"Kyra said the same thing," he said. "You know what? I think she likes me, which is fine with me, 'cause I like her, too."

"You should tell her that,"

"And you should tell Jennifer how you feel," I just stuttered a bit then Andrew laughed. "Heh, I supposed we'll tell them when we're ready. For now we should get some sleep."

"Hey, Andrew," I said. "What are we going to do about the Gems? Right now, we only have Gora's and Eora's. Nora said his was taken as well."

"I suppose we'll have to work harder on getting the rest," he answered. "Our next destination is Oora, which is on the other side of Moneo. You still want to go there?"

"Yeah," I answered.

"Then we set out tomorrow,"

"But what about the poison and the burns everyone has. Some of us have both,"

"The longer we wait, the more time Exitilus has to get the rest of the Gems. Who knows how much he has now," I nodded and headed to my bed. But I thought I'd ask him something else.

"Hey, Andrew, do you think Migue's a good name?"

"Whatever you want to name your child, you name him that. Just as long as Jennifer agrees," he answered.

"She does... apparently. What would your name your child?"

"Eh... I haven't thought about it yet," he said. "But I know they'll have my orange hair."

"Yeah, or Kyra's light yellow hair," I said. We laughed at the thought of how our future could be and I got into bed. Tomorrow, we'll be restarting our adventure almost from square one.

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