Re: Butterfly (Reincarnated as a Butterfly)

What do you think we do next? Adon sent as he fluttered toward Rosslyn.

I was ready to ask you the same question, she thought, smiling slightly. I think we will be fine now, regardless of next steps, though. We are together again, we have a little time to rest, and back on the upper floor, we held our own against far more ants than these. It was a mistake on the Dungeon Core's part to think that these ones would be enough to deal with us.

The spider was out there with them, too, Adon transmitted immediately.

Rosslyn frowned slightly, then shook her head and smoothed her expression out.

Well, it is still nothing that we cannot handle, she thought. Come over here and rest a while. We should both recover our strength as best we can.

I wish I could have distracted them for longer so that you could have been resting here before now, Adon sent.

I probably would not have been able to, Rosslyn thought with a touch of guilt. I needed to know you were all right. Did you hear me calling out to you in my mind?

I was too distracted by the monsters, Adon replied. It sounds like I made an all right call after all, escaping, then.

He settled on her shoulder as he finished that transmission.

"Definitely," she whispered, barely moving her lips.

Rosslyn reached up, and with the tip of a finger, delicately traced the contours of one wing. The movement was incredibly gentle and surprisingly soothing. It was the only sort of physical affection Rosslyn could show when Adon was in his base butterfly form, aside from simply letting him perch on her.

He felt a little warmth inside at the touch, even though it was light and relatively innocuous. The simple, warm gesture felt like a reminder of how far the two of them had come together.

Get some rest, Rosslyn thought. We both need to be at a hundred percent when the monsters discover us. She paused. Or as close to that as possible.

Adon had been about to correct her, to point out that they probably wouldn't have nearly enough time to completely recover, but she seemed to understand, from those last words. He decided not to bring the mood down. They had escaped for now. Let the two of them sit in that victory for however long it lasted.

The butterfly and the Princess both rested.

Rosslyn placed her head against the back wall, and a few seconds later, her breathing changed. It was subtle, at first, and then Adon was certain of what had happened.

She has really cute snores, he thought. I don't know how she fell asleep in ten seconds, leaning against a stone surface at a ninety degree angle, but… I guess Rosslyn was secretly made for this. Or not so secretly. She had mentioned before that she had trained with the Royal Army. Guess they're all warrior queens and kings here.

It reminded him of how the Princess had complimented his bravery before, more than once. She admired the courage and strength that she saw in him—qualities he hadn't even recognized as important for anything but his own survival for the longest time. And somehow his lack of social skills when dealing with other people hadn't really fazed her.

He wasn't the sort of guy, had never in his life been the sort of guy, who women fell for.

But then, the criteria in most worlds were different from the ones that Rosslyn cared about.

Maybe there was a place for him here, beside her.

Even after she had said she was romantically interested in him, he had found it almost too hard to believe. His mind had hardly accepted anything she said about it.

Now he allowed himself to believe.

Amid those sweet and comforting thoughts, Adon drifted into quiescence alongside Rosslyn. It wasn't sleep—insects like him did not truly sleep, as humans did—but it would allow him to rest and recover while remaining alert to any threats.

Becoming a butterfly was not quite the same as being a social butterfly, as Adon had envisioned, but there were times when not being human had its perks.

For an indeterminate but all too brief time, the two rested.

Adon was the one who roused himself first. His brain reacted instinctively to the presence of perceived threats, alerting him, though he did not immediately stir. He controlled the natural impulse of a butterfly, to be flighty and try to take off immediately when an enemy was detected.

That would only endanger him and Rosslyn more.

Instead, he took in the situation carefully and formulated a quick message once he had a grasp on what was happening. Ants were present in the crevasse with them, probing at the entrance and slowly creeping in a little deeper, but only a few of them—easily killed, if necessary, but it wasn't clear whether it was necessary or not.

Rosslyn was starting to stir by that point, her body reacting slightly later than his—it was more exhausted than his was, probably, as well as having a deeper sleep cycle than an insect's.

He wanted to ensure she would not do anything reflexive either.

Rosslyn, please be still for a minute, he sent. The ants are coming, but I think these are only scouts.

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Adon had observed them carefully enough that he felt he recognized the behavior of that particular class of ant.

You think I should let them return to their little splinter colony and share our location? Rosslyn thought in response.

It depends, Adon replied. We could kill them, of course. That will probably leave you with some ant pheromones on you, or the same with me—although I can avoid that by using Transformation to take on a larger shape. If I do that, some of the mass disappears when I turn back, and the scent won't have much to stick to. But there will still be a scent trail out there from where the ants were walking, and it will lead up to a very noticeable odor of dead ants. Something is going to come investigate that either way. We could leave, but that's an option whether we kill the scout ants or not.

I see where your mind is at, Rosslyn thought. These ants are pretty insignificant members of their group, and the larger strategic question is what we should think about. Whether they lay their scent trail here is not of terribly great strategic consequence, since we can simply leave in order to avoid detection.

Assuming that we want to avoid detection, Adon added.

I suppose I am as ready to fight as I am likely to be in another hour or two, Rosslyn agreed a little uneasily. Adon sensed that the assessment wasn't completely true, or at least Rosslyn was not entirely confident about it.

Sorry to suggest we rush into a fight, Adon sent. You are our heavy hitter. If you need more time to recover, you should take it.

No, we have taken more than enough time, Rosslyn thought firmly. Adon could hear the underlying regret in her mind—the concern for her father and the people of Claustria, the idea that perhaps her slow progress through the dungeon would help doom her people to a fate like that of Stalenton's residents.

You can't think like that, Adon started sending.

Then the air filled with an oddly oily and slightly sweet smell.

The scouts had started to spray their pheromones.

This feels familiar, Adon thought to himself. The smells aren't the same—it's a lot like how I'd imagine two different armies would have two different kinds of codes—but I feel like I can interpret what they're doing.

The butterfly suspected that the scouts were laying down the sort of scent trail that would be appropriate if Rosslyn and Adon were food or prey. If the bugs were simply identifying this area as dangerous, that would lead the rest of the ant army to stay away, which was clearly counter to what they had wanted at their last encounter with the intruders—and what the Dungeon Core wanted from them.

It wasn't too late to destroy the two ants, but as Adon considered arguing the point, he felt an increasingly resolute cast to Rosslyn's mind. It seemed as if being called upon to consider her options had led her to choose the most decisive course she could. She wanted a fight with the ants now, the sooner the better. It was wartime, so perhaps her attitude was really commendable from a national security standpoint. They might get back sooner if they fought the ants right away.

But Adon was more worried about Rosslyn at the moment than he was about Claustria. He could tell she wasn't at full strength yet.

The ants continued spraying their chemical gas for a minute and then began backtracking out of the crevasse. Adon watched them closely and waited until they had disappeared back through the opening—and he knew Rosslyn had decided, by not moving, not to kill them just yet—before he said something.

We can move from this spot and just find another branch from the main part of the cavern, Adon sent. The ants will come back here, in force—maybe all of the surviving ones—but if we're not here, they'll have just wasted their energy.

"The pheromones will stick to me, Adon," Rosslyn replied calmly. "I would have to walk through the scent trails to get away. I might already have that smell stuck to my clothing." She wrinkled her nose and sniffed herself, then winced and shook her head. "Aside from that practical problem, I think a confrontation sooner rather than later is for the best anyway. We can kill them all in one fell swoop."

Rosslyn's strategy presented itself on the surface of her mind as she spoke—along with some self-consciousness about her body odor. Even if she hadn't been thinking of what she wanted to do, Adon might have guessed. It wasn't a complex plan, and there were only so many ways that one could kill a large number of enemies at once without being overwhelmed.

I guess we've already made our decision now, Adon transmitted uneasily.

We will be all right, Rosslyn thought.

I think I'm supposed to be telling you that, Adon thought but did not send. Rosslyn was very accustomed to being strong for other people, he recognized. She was less used to having someone ready to share the burden with her.

We'll fight them together, Adon sent instead. I know your magic is more powerful than anything I can do, so I'll just stand ready in case you run low on mana.

The Princess's shoulder slumped slightly, as a tension that neither the butterfly nor she had realized she was holding seeped out of her body.

"That is a relief," she said sincerely, giving him a small smile. "That was the one thing I was worried would happen. If we can just get through these bugs, it does not seem as if the Dungeon Core has more to throw at us on this level. We have only seen the insects and some pieces of dead things here so far. If there were stronger monsters available to fight us than the ants, the enemy would surely have used them by now."

I agree, Adon replied.

He felt a bit more comfortable with the plan as they settled in for their wait.

They were not waiting for long.

A few minutes after their discussion had come to its conclusion, a rush of ant monsters marched swiftly into the cavern just outside the entrance to the crevasse. Adon could see the golden gleam of them, mixed with the violet light of the crystals, even from where he stood on Rosslyn's shoulder in the depth of the crevasse.

Telepathy told him that the ants gathered outside represented either all, or nearly all, of the ants that they had encountered on this level before. He still could not read their intentions or communicate with them, but he retained that sense of their presences.

Maybe I'd be able to do more if we could lure the spider in and kill him, Adon thought, though of course, he and Rosslyn could not wait for that to happen.

The first movement of the ants back into the crevasse was a probing action.

Just a handful of the monsters stepped into the gap of the entrance, their movements furtive and hesitant.

Adon could tell that either the scouts had communicated more than simply, "Food here" with their pheromone trails, or these monster ants had more sophisticated ways of communicating than laying down chemical smells alone.

The handful of ants moved further into the crevasse, advancing through the violet light until they reached within twenty feet of Rosslyn and Adon. Then they quickly turned back around.

As they left, Adon smelled a new odor from them.

This pheromone's smell reminded him a lot of barbecue. What that was meant to communicate, he thought he had a fairly good idea.

His translation: Time to secure the food. Come and get it.

As more ants entered, Adon hoped that he and Rosslyn knew what they were doing.