From the edge of the battle, Reidar watched everything unfold. The churning chaos of chitin and steel was getting more and more violent, more and more gory.
The Queen thrashed through his summons, to the point that her massive bulk carved trenches through his forces and the ground alike. Her minions exploded, spat, and mauled, and his summoned creatures slashed, stabbed, and ripped. All in the middle of the cave.
The queen was surrounded by her minions. It was simply perfect.
She created the kill zone he needed and that he had been waiting for since the battle started.
He drew a breath and roared across the cavern.
"LENA! DISENGAGE!"
Lena's head snapped up as his voice reached her. Blood and ichor painted her face in streaks of war and rage. Their eyes met.
She gave one nod and broke away from the soldier ant she'd been carving apart. She understood the hunt had entered its last phase. The one that would lead with a dead queen and their victory.
Reidar then ordered the Rift-Sprite Contuberniums that were waiting for his orders.
"FLOOD HER."
The Contuberniums moved.
They didn't swarm. They didn't scatter. They remained firmly where they were and acted as one entity. Hundreds of elemental sprites turned their heads toward the queen.
The air itself surged as mana converged on their position, thickening into a visible haze that shimmered with raw power. Like a storm gathering its ultimate strength before breaking, the atmosphere grew heavy and charged.
The temperature started going up and down in erratic ways, one moment blistering heat that dried the throat, the next a sudden chill that frosted the air in their lungs.
That was because fire and water intermingled with each other, creating violent pockets of superheated steam that exploded outward only to be flash-frozen by ice sprites moments later.
The very physics of the cavern warped under the strain; reality groaned as opposing elements collided and reforged the battlefield into something entirely new.
Then they fired.
Wind sprites unleashed screaming scythes of compressed air that carved visible trails through the cavern atmosphere.
The sound alone threatened to burst Reidar and Lena's eardrums. The blades of wind struck the Queen's carapace and carved furrows through chitin that had withstood blade and claws alike.
Water sprites followed. High-pressure jets hammered into the Queen like tidal fists, each cratering her armored exoskeleton.
Ice crystals materialized in the air like deadly fractals, their jagged edges catching the flickering light of elemental fury as they hurtled forward.
Each shard found its mark in the queen's natural armor. The impact sent spiderweb cracks radiating through her once-impervious plates, and the frozen projectiles sank deep, vanishing into the dark tissue beneath.
Blood, thick and viscous, welled from the punctures, steaming as it met the ambient heat before freezing again in grotesque, weeping icicles.
The queen shuddered, frost blooming across her wounds like crystalline mold.
Fire sprites painted the world red. Balls of fire roared across the distance, their temperature so intense they left glowing trails burned into reality itself.
Spheres of magma erupted against the Queen's bulk, each one bursting like a miniature volcano against her chitin.
Molten globs splashed across her form in a searing embrace, clinging to segmented plates before solidifying into jagged obsidian crusts.
Where the magma struck, her carapace blackened, the edges curling inward like scorched parchment.
Rivers of liquid fire poured into the cracks, illuminating her insides with a hellish glow.
The magma hissed as it cooled, sealing wounds with bubbling scabs that pulsed with trapped heat.
Some droplets spattered across the cavern floor, where they spat and spat, burning through stone and leaving pits that glowed like dying stars, or killing more and more of her minions.
The Queen's armored limbs trembled even more.
Lightning wove a web from the ceiling, making her convulse. Her skeleton glowed through her skin.
The barrage continued. Wave after wave. Hundreds of attacks from creatures who stood at level eighty landed on her. The Queen became the epicenter of an elemental apocalypse, a storm given form and purpose and a target that spilled on her children and killed them.
[Soldier Vorathid Ant defeated.]
[Soldier Vorathid Ant defeated.]
[Soldier Vorathid Ant defeated.]
[Soldier Vorathid Ant defeated.]
[Soldier Vorathid Ant defeated.]
[Soldier Vorathid Ant defeated.]
[Soldier Vorathid Ant defeated.]
She screamed, or better, shrieked and roared at the same time.
Reidar realized it was an attack, both psychic and physical. Reidar's stone skin and Hive mind Echo protected him, but not as much as he wanted, though. Reidar already cast a circle of renewal at his feet, healing whatever damage the Vorathid Ant queen made.
Though the shriek might have been an attack, it was also one of pure agony and rage.
The cavern shook. Stalactites broke free and shattered on the floor below, killing more of the ants and Reidar's summons alike.
[Soldier Vorathid Ant defeated.]
[Soldier Vorathid Ant defeated.]
[Soldier Vorathid Ant defeated.]
[Soldier Vorathid Ant defeated.]
[Soldier Vorathid Ant defeated.]
[Soldier Vorathid Ant defeated.]
[Soldier Vorathid Ant defeated.]
[Soldier Vorathid Ant defeated.]
The attacks reached a critical level; the wounds on the queen accumulated too much. She lost too much ichor, and, in the end, she could not take the attacks anymore.
The Queen lashed out in her death throes. Not at the distant Contuberniums, which were unreachable, untouchable because of the wall of monsters barring her and her children's way, but she killed what she could reach.
Her scythe-like limbs carved through the spectral knights. Acid sprayed from ruptured sacs, dissolving the bone militias into puddles of ash and malice.
Her mandibles crushed bears, wolves, and panthers into paste, reducing them to motes of dissipating energy despite Reidar strengthening them using Chitinous Carapace, which increased his and his Summons' resistance up to 25%.
In the end, she killed dozens. Hundreds. Her fury was as magnificent and terrible as it was utterly futile.
The other Vorathid ants sensed their mother's peril. Their communication channels must have gone haywire, because they then threw themselves forward with suicidal abandon.
Workers exploded their acid sacs without regard for survival. Soldiers charged into blade-walls that cut them apart. They died in droves, in hundreds, in a mindless frenzy to protect their queen.
It was too late.
The Queen's left foreleg buckled. Chitin had cracked too deeply; flesh had burned too thoroughly. She tried to compensate, to shift her weight, but another volley struck, fire, stone, and lightning in tune, and her second leg gave way.
She listed. Her massive bulk tilted like a falling monument.
Her shriek reached a crescendo, a final note of rage and pain and the terrible understanding of death. Then the sound cut off as her body crashed down.