Re: Butterfly (Reincarnated as a Butterfly)

Adon managed to react quickly, having already begun charging mana when he noticed that William was doing the same. Specifically, the butterfly reinforced himself with mana spread throughout his body—though the movement of energy was rushed and haphazard, and hence unlikely to negate the damage completely.

He hoped his friends were doing the same, but Adon could not know immediately. The brightness of the explosion had blinded him—perhaps even damaged his vision—so that he only knew what Telepathy and his remaining senses could tell him.

He felt the heat slam into him and was then buffeted by a series of waves of violent pressure, as the explosion struck him. Telepathy told him that these, and a subsequent series of smaller waves, threw him, William, and the spiders backward, and on the other side, the monsters were struck by a similar propulsive force and blasted in the opposite direction by the strength of it.

Adon, blind and tumbling through the air on wings bent and slapped around by different currents of heat and air kicked up by the explosion, could not get a good orientation for where he was, and he was therefore equally confused about what was happening to everyone else.

Was that the wall he had struck just now, or the ceiling, or the floor? At the same time, Goldie, Samson, and William were striking a surface opposite him.

The feeling of helplessness, as if he was in some sort of hellish storm trying to fly on broken wings, was almost unbearable. The only bright side was that his mana defense and relatively light bodyweight kept him from being instantly incinerated or smashed to pieces against a wall.

Is everyone all right?! Adon shouted telepathically.

But no answer immediately came. The spiders and William were probably too preoccupied with survival to respond, while Adon was focusing too much on his own body's reinforcement and keeping track of everyone's locations to use Telepathy for anything deeper than that.

All he knew for certain was that they were being thrown around slightly less—the turbulence was slowly calming—and that the surrounding area was hotter than any place Adon had experienced thus far throughout this entire incarnation. Even the volcanic level had not been quite this bad.

As the butterfly's back slammed against another surface where an errant gust of wind had smashed him, he felt that not only the air, but the very earth the cave was dug into, was shaking with this explosion. Against Adon's back, the cave wall—or ceiling? Floor?—moved unsteadily, like a drunken sailor.

And he suddenly felt something else, not through any of his physical sensory organs but within his mind. Telepathy told him that more were coming. More Quugaarpaks. They were not coming down the tunnel that Adon and the others had been traveling down, but somehow they were drawing nearer through what must have been parallel tunnels—or, more worryingly, they might have been rapidly making new tunnels to get closer to the source of the sudden disturbance.

The new arrivals appeared to be drawing closer from all sides, both from lateral directions as well as from above and below.

Shit! Adon thought. We don't need this right now…

He heard a sickening crack from behind him. A bone-crunching crack. With Telepathy, Adon sensed that William's mind had gone quiet. It wasn't completely gone, like he was dead, but there were no longer coherent thoughts coming in.

He must be unconscious, the butterfly decided. Just at the moment I was about to yell at him to take Goldie and Samson and run away…

Somehow, the spiders were still conscious despite what had happened to William—and despite the fact that they were definitely in close proximity to him, perhaps even still hanging on his body.

It must have been an unlucky angle for him.

The turbulent air calmed enough that Adon suddenly found himself falling—he had been plastered against the ceiling just now after all—and felt little pressure on his body from the environment around him.

"Gullark! Gullark!" The wounded monsters that had been blasted away from Adon and his group had begun bellowing. The situation was rapidly going from bad to worse.

As he fell, Adon channeled healing magic and began pushing it into his wings—they were so bent that he would have trouble flying. A normal butterfly would have had to spend time with them straightened out in order to hopefully heal them, but he could speedrun that process. He also directed some mana into his eyes, which seemed to have been burned by the blinding explosion. His body was otherwise almost untouched.

Goldie, Samson, are you guys all right?! Adon shouted telepathically in their direction.

We're fine, Samson sent weakly.

Shaken but not hurt, Goldie sent. William is not doing so well.

I can tell he's unconscious, Adon transmitted. Do you two know more?

He cracked his head on a wall, Samson replied.

I am healing my eyes now, but I can feel him bleeding from the skull, Goldie sent. After a moment, she added, He used all his strength to try and defend us, Adon. He shielded us from the explosion with his body.

The stupid explosion that he made, Adon wanted to add. But he didn't. The butterfly already felt that the situation had gotten out of hand in part due to his own poor diplomacy. It would not be right to criticize William behind his back right now, when he was unconscious.

The monsters are still alive, and backup is coming, Adon sent instead. The creatures are getting closer. We have maybe a minute before—

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The ground beneath him shook slightly, interrupting his train of thought.

Shit.

Adon? Goldie asked.

One just passed right below me, he sent. These creatures have an ability—I saw it represented in the mind of the one I was talking to—to basically swim through soil. They move through it almost like a shark through water. They need tunnels to stop in when they have to rest, and they are not very good at digging tunnels themselves because of the way they move. The way their ability works. But it looks like it did help them get here faster. They—

There was a bellowing from the wall to Adon's left, and he winced at the loud noise in close proximity to him.

Adon could sense two close by, one that had passed right beneath him just then and was circling back around, and the other that was in the wall to the left, moving in small circular patterns in that area as well.

I think they have to keep moving when they are in the ground, Adon added. I don't think they can just stop and stand still.

Plus, I don't think they know where I am, he realized. The one that had passed beneath him before came by again, but it passed by a different spot five feet behind him.

It was likely that they could get a general idea of where objects were underground—or at least Adon imagined they probably had some ability to do that—but they certainly could not locate something as lightweight as a butterfly or a spider.

That won't keep William safe, though…

He kept this thought private for now. It would be useless to vocalize it.

The Quugaarpak that had bellowed before answered the one in the wall.

"Gawarl meydo! Polurgle!"

The words were sheer nonsense to Adon, but he could feel the intent vibrating through the air. The wounded beasts wanted their revenge on those intruders who had maimed them. As Adon's vision began to come back, he could see why.

The Quugaarpaks that had been caught in the explosion were still alive, but they lay in tatters in the distance. One was lodged into a wall, unmoving and clearly unconscious. Another was on the opposite side of the tunnel and had a stalagmite piercing through its abdomen. The third, which Adon believed was the one he had been talking to earlier, lay in the middle of the tunnel ahead of the butterfly and his group. That was the one that was bellowing.

All of the monsters had been touched by fire and had their thick fur scorched partially or completely off, and the Quugaarpak that bellowed did so lying in what Adon gradually recognized was a pool of its own blood. Adon guessed that the explosion had burned its flesh as well as its fur, and that coupled with the friction of the ground had been severely damaging. Judging from the volume of blood, the monster he had viewed as a potential friend might be dying.

The Quugaarpak in the wall bellowed a reply to what the one on the ground had wailed.

It was incomprehensible to Adon, of course, even more so due to being muffled through a wall, but Telepathy gave him a clear idea of the emotional sense of what was being said.

The monster thought that whatever its wounded comrade had requested was unthinkable.

"Gawarl meydo! Polurgle! Morenkidu!"

The words from the Quugaarpak bleeding on the floor were as foreign as those of the other, but there was a sentiment to them that was unmistakable. Resolve. Determination. And something more vicious.

Spite. The Quugaarpak that lay, perhaps terminally wounded, wanted revenge.

Adon used Telepathy to peer into its thoughts, and he saw a vision of the ground around them shaking and becoming unstable, followed by the tunnel collapsing. He understood immediately why the Quugaarpak in the wall had rejected this idea.

The dying Quugaarpak wanted its allies to collapse the tunnel and bury Adon, his allies, and the other Quugaarpaks with them—a move that would be fatal to all concerned. The one in the wall was thinking that maybe it could be possible to save the wounded—and the other Quugaarpak was insisting on not trying, on killing everything instead, just to make absolutely certain that they got rid of the enemy.

There was a bellow from the wall to Adon's left again, and it had the air of finality. There was syllabic complexity to the bellow, and it went on for over thirty seconds. By the end, it felt almost like a song.

The Quugaarpak that lay on the ground made a wailing, sing-song response of its own. The words and the sound were broken and weak—as the body was weak—but the volume was enough. Adon could tell the monsters that dwelled in the walls and the floor and the ceiling had received the sound, had understood the message.

There were more of them now, a dozen or more, scattered around in all directions: in the ceiling, the floor, and the walls.

I don't like this, Adon thought.

His wings popped back into their usual positions. He would only need a few seconds more before he could fly away from where he had dropped.

Get ready to run! Adon sent to Goldie and Samson.

The walls and ceiling began to shake. The ground beneath Adon shook as well. Adon was next to weightless, as a butterfly, but he feared that he might be sucked underground before he could take off.

Come on, he thought. Come on…

He felt his wings solidify and lock into their position, hopefully even stronger than before. Adon flapped once, felt the ground begin to give way beneath him, and thrust his wings even more forcefully, shooting up off the soil as the surface cracked and fell away.

Then he zipped backward, toward the spiders and William.

Goldie and Samson were standing on what Adon recognized as William's still-unconscious form.

Oh, he looks terrible, Adon thought.

A huge rock fell to the ground in front of him, and he jerked to the side and curved around it.

Shit, worry about yourself! he told himself.

The tunnel was not long for this world anymore. The Quugaarpaks were done playing around. A wall nearby him crumbled, and Adon sensed rather than saw other chunks of ceiling collapsing behind him as he shot toward the others.

Run! Adon sent.

We cannot leave William, Goldie replied instantly. He took the explosion for us…

There was a guilt in her words that surprised Adon slightly.

Get away from him anyway, Adon shot back. You can't fly. I can! The ground is about to collapse beneath you!

It was true. He could sense the destruction spreading, drawing closer and closer to the spiders and William. The ground shook and cracked, the walls began to crumble, and the ceiling lost pieces of itself nearer to them with every passing second.

Adon pushed more mana into his wings and flew faster, trying to reach his friends and William before they were buried alive.

This was going to be a close thing.