104 – The First Extermination
It would be just sticky enough to apply. Unsure of how quickly the Doorman of this hive would react, Zelsys made sure to dig out the entire vial’s contents so she could quickly apply and ignite it.
It wasn’t much, but she hoped it would be enough. With a short breath of Fog and a brief sprint, she ran up to the Doorman and smeared the glob of CP-T along the seam between its arm plates, the compound dense enough for all of it to transfer to the pitted surface with naught but a thin layer of grease left on her fingers. It covered barely half the length of the seam, but it would have to be enough. The chitinous barrier began to stir just as she finished applying the Compound, and without any access to a conventional ignition source, Zel had no choice but to use an electric arc.
A breath of Fog, an electric arc between the fingers of her clean hand to so as not to set herself ablaze. The arc flickered across the top of the line for a few seconds and all the while the chitinous wall retreated, millimeter by millimeter. Then, all at once, the whole line of gel caught fire.
It was a flash of light and a wave of heat that made her step back, followed by the stench of burning chitin and the Doorman’s pained screeching. In seconds, Compound P-T burned a hole big enough to see the creature’s twisted head through, its mandibles twitching as it struggled against the weight of its own body.
Zelsys waited for it to retreated far enough into the hive to free up the passageway, using the time afforded to start the Breath Engine and place herself into a combat-ready stance, keeping her right hand free whilst she gripped a locust mandible in the left, with the other one slipped into her belt.
The plates finally parted, hemolymph running down their edges as Compound P-T continued to burn, the Ignis crystals suspended within it melting inward whilst the gel burned away at the exterior. When Zelsys finally stepped past the ponderous creature that was the Doorman, it exhaled that self-same knockout gas the other one had, yet Zelsys felt… Almost nothing.
Instead of a wooziness that dulled the mind and weakened the body, there was only a brief wave of numb heat that washed over her before the effects of Fog combined with the stench inside the hive overpowered it. The hive was one large chamber, containing basins of some liquid to the left and five cocoons lined up against the right wall - two of which had already ruptured. There were seven locust drones tending to these cocoons, their stomachs distended and bulging with the same yellowish liquid as was contained in the basins. Some type of protein slurry, perhaps.
They didn’t seem to even notice her entry, until the Doorman’s exhalation reached them. By the time they did, Zelsys already leapt onto the creature’s back and began ripping out its breathing tubes, one after the other. With the chitinous tubes ripped free and the wounds bleeding down the Doorman’s respiratory system, she left it to drown in its own hemolymph and moved onto the others. It was too slow to be a threat.
A stomach-bursting kick that sent a drone flying into another, spraying the sickly-sweet smelling contents of its gut all over. A slash to cut the throat of a second, an uppercut to decapitate a third. These drones were engorged, they were slow and clumsy. But they were a good distraction - good enough for one of the cocoons to burst whilst Zelsys slaughtered them.
Good enough to give the newborn Warrior to set its sights on her and charge ahead, its fresh chitin stretching to a sickening degree with every movement. With but a step to the side and a yank on the arm of a drone she had in reach, Zelsys made the Warrior charge through it and right into the shuddering Doorman’s back.
The drone’s hemolymph sprayed into gaped-open breathing tubes, the Warrior’s chitin plates flexing under the strain like an inflated waterskin. The Doorman didn’t budge - it was dying where it stood, but still it stood. With surprising speed and agility, the Warrior stepped back and whipped around on its heel, twisting its leg into a spiraled aberration as it tried to use the momentum to deliver a devastating right hook.
It sailed right over Zel’s head just as she dove in low, and the Warrior barely stopped itself with its other foot before the strain overwhelmed the tensile strength of its chitin. Zelsys had already dived in, slashing into the stretched-thin material with the mandible. She let go of it the moment she felt it pierce the outer layer, rising to her feet as she took the other mandible into her right hand and brought it down on the Warrior’s back, dragging down as far as it would go before the bunched-up chitin stopped it. Simultaneously, she wrapped her left arm around the Warrior’s left, crushing it into immobility with a Stormsurge-fuelled flex. Even she couldn’t open her grapple now, so almighty was the current coursing through her bicep.
She only managed a half-meter gash down the Warrior’s back, but that was enough to justify letting go of the mandible. With the exhalation of a full lung, she plunged her open hand into the wound.
“Heartbreaker!” she exclaimed, feeling the ephemeral force guide her arm down and to the right, and she crushed the Warrior’s heart the moment it was in her grip. It struggled for a few seconds more, then fell limp in her grasp, just as its left arm burst under her grip. It took some effort to wrench her bicep out of its cramped state, and by then even the fourth cocoon had hatched.
It didn’t bother her. Not one bit. Her grin flashing and an unconscious chuckle rumbling from her throat, she charged at it much in the same way Halxian had charged at her - a savage beast, low to the ground and arms held out with grasping fingers.