Chapter Text
It's cold. The waiting always is, a little.
Soldier never minds its chilly caress against the memory of Avernus and all its unforgiving heat. Not that the cold of the waiting forgives soldier. It doesn't not forgive soldier either. The cold is just cold, and forgiveness is not its purpose.
Soldier has a purpose. Soldier will return to that purpose, after soldier has waited.
Soldier has waited awhile. It is like that sometimes, when soldier's body must start over again. Or maybe time, swallowed up in beholding the bright far away stars of the waiting, slows to a protective crawl. And so unaware, soldier evades purpose by clinging to the fingers of the great, unknowable twinkling hand around them.
She cages soldier in this place. Soldier doesn't mind. Soldier has a purpose. Soldier was raised to be brave. Soldier was born to fight and burn.
Perhaps, in this place of waiting, no one will know if soldier is not being brave, if soldier imagines her fingers closing protectively over where soldier curls up on the cool, pale rock and waits in the dark without fighting at all.
Soldier wants to speak her name. Soldier remains silent. The fight is inevitable. Awakening in a world of fire and death, soldier reaches for the blood spattered maul surrounded by corpses of its making.
Soldier is not worthy to speak her name. She made soldier to be brave. But soldier doesn't know, anymore, if bravery can be called bravery without a choice.
*
The radiant light of her moonmote Spirit Guardians swirling around her, Shadowheart bullies through the hole Wyll carved into the sticky comb and somersaults into a narrow corridor at the nest's sweltering interior. It's every bit as unpleasant as one might imagine. The honey-slick floor clings to the metal of her boots like a lover with too much time on their hands, and she wants to be back outside with Bora the Pegasus immediately.
They'll have to see this through quickly. Very very quickly. Every moment they spend struggling against the hive's interior is bought by Lae'zel's blade. Her gith is up on top of the hive, fighting the puppeted celestial warrior chained there, leaving Shadowheart to yank Astarion through the gap her own crawl had broadened in the hexagonal comb wall.
"I despise every moment of this, if you were wondering." With a revolted huff, Astarion attempts to wipe the gobs of amber honey from his leathers and only succeeds in coating them further.
"I wasn't," she says, grateful for her helm all of a sudden. Astarion hasn't noticed yet, how his once fluffy curls absorbed the honey to make a helmet for his lack of one. His locks grasp his scalp doggedly but for one cowlick that springs defiantly from the very top of his head like a little antenna.
Better that she doesn't think of what's become of the end of her own rumpled braid. She can make Lae'zel see to it tonight, when Shadowheart finishes thoroughly screaming at her for the chain-parrying stunt that likely saved their hides from being batted out of the sky.
No time to fantasize about the stunt or the screaming right now, unfortunately. She can't stop to indulge in teasing Astarion when he figures out what's become of his hair either. Wyll and Maris, having punched their way through first, already cut quite a swath in what appears to be a second dripping wall of amber comb. The affair isn't loud compared to the wasp whirring and general din of Avernus, but the hive must sense the intruders anyway. The muffled buzzing threatens louder in their direction from every side.
Behind her, Astarion curses his sticky predicament. She hears the tell-tale clinks and clanks of digging through a bag, and a quick over the shoulder glance illustrates his explosive intent. Smart, patching their entry crawlspace with smokepowder bombs. They'll go off the moment one of those piping hot hellwasps touch them.
Best get a move on, then. Wyll and Maris are on it — they take down enough of the second wall to open their tight and honeyed hallway. Two hellwasps swarm in to fill it, and Shadowheart advances enough to rake them with her Spirit Guardians. The insect fiends, now illuminated between the antennae by radiant magic, flinch from the light and buzz with likely anger. Does the emotional range of buzzing expand enough to convey anything but anger? Unlikely.
The fight is brief and bloody work from there. Maris carves one from red glowing thorax to stinger, and Wyll charges forth at a leap to stab through gnashing mandibles, which go slack against his hand when the tip of the blade pierces out the top of its steaming skull.
A weight launches against her back — Astarion. They're out of time. She whirls toward the anticipated explosion and lets him knock her aground. Her shield comes up over the both of them just in time for the concert of smokepowder and final desperate vibrations of exploding wasps.
Buzz-shrieking is the alternative to buzz-anger. She should have guessed the other end of the range.
Astarion doesn't help her up. His stare is fixed on the waxy ground over her shoulder. He lingers long enough that it's tempting to tease him about the forward gesture when he says, "Of course, it's the light drawing them."
Strong arms help them to their feet — Maris, who nods at Astarion's conclusion. "Yes — wax is translucent, they'll see us coming through the floor."
"I think the explosion will clue them in," Shadowheart points out. They're a little late to consider subtlety.
"Put it out anyway, Shadowheart. I'd sooner be more difficult to track," Wyll says. She follows the sound of his voice to the opening battered into the second layer of comb. There he crouches, his bright and bloody robes smeared with honey and striking against the warm brown of his skin. He fades into a mere outline when she lets her spell die. In darkvision, she can mark his silhouette, then the shine of his false eye when he turns to report his scouting. "Maris, can you see well enough?"
For the slight gleam off her wings and moonlight gray eyes, Maris nod is somewhat visible. With his impeccable ability to see through any darkness, Wyll surely notes it, too. "Then we proceed quietly," he says. "Avoid light and speak softly, if you must speak."
She only notices Astarion on the move because he was standing right next to her. No longer, of course. He slips past Wyll as a graceful shadow.
"I'll speak so far as to request an answer to my question," Shadowheart says. Astarion may have been the one to take on the soft-step trial, but Shadowheart knows how to speak in secret. It has as much to do with volume as pairing her cadence and tone to the sound around her, in this case, throbbing hum of the hive. "Maris, you said that the Queen can't control the Soldier of Joy or the ones inside the nest will fall," she will have to trust that Gale and Karlach are up to the task of buying them time to escape it. "What did you mean by the ones inside?"
A low, threatened hiss slips beneath the buzzing to raise the gooseflesh under her gauntlets. An involuntary reaction — it's Astarion — and she's never heard him sound quite like that before.
"The honey raises the dead," he spits more than says, surprising her by reappearing from behind. That was a quick retreat she can hardly blame him for, even if it's tempting to threaten his shoes with bells again. "I saw the aasimar."
“Not quite," Maris says, all quiet dread. "It makes them dance for the Queen. Do not touch the honey, if you can avoid it. If it coats you completely, you will be as…they are, alive or dead.”
The curse on Astarion's voice quivers. Does she want to know exactly who they are? She has a feeling she'll find out either way. Silly of her to imagine otherwise.
“Then we can waste no more time,” Wyll says, urging them forward. Shadowheart doesn’t protest. She has no interest in finding out just how long Lae’zel — how long her wife — can hold out under the onslaught. Because if what Maris says is true, as soon as they end the Queen, the soldier of Joy will be returned unto themselves.
The soldier might not be safe company when that time comes, exactly, but Shadowheart rather doubts that the soldier will prioritize Lae’zel in such circumstances. Probably, getting free of the hive after long captivity will take precedence over further conflict.
Moving beyond the cramped corridor, which is only about as tall and thick as to accommodate one of those large wasp creatures, the hive opens up into an expansive steaming cavern. It reminds her unsettlingly of the Mind Flayer Colony. Except instead of cartilage and viscera and necrotic flesh toughened and pulled taunt into horrible ladders and nets, the waxen alcoves and stalagmites and stalactites that drip with honey are bolstered with the remains of celestials. Some remains are more whole than others. Torsos and haphazard legs in various states of decay, grasping gray arms with golden scars, feathers of every color sunk in amber in a macabre collage.
She doesn’t want to think of what writhes in the larger pieces of the bodies. Likely, the reason why this is called a nest.
Hellwasps on task fly back and forth in the massive hive, not unlike the intellect devourers of the Colony skittering about under the Netherbrain's direction. The top of the structure trembles, surely from the combat that carries on above it. Lae'zel isn't known for her light step, and given the pained shrieking that meets her ears, the celestial has no interest in quiet.
Maris draws closer to the edge of their waxen platform, her gloved hand grasping its edge as she squints down on the display below. Shadowheart follows, Astarion close behind her and Wyll watching their backs. Below them the center of the hive pulses an inner chamber, swaddled in hexagonal comb and swarmed with hellwasps that flit around the bridges leading to that central level. But apart from the wasps there are two robed figures that seem to stand at attention. It’s impossible to tell if those robes were once uniforms, but the celestial — or once celestial — figures are more complete than any she’s seen in this place.
Complete, yes. Alive? Not conventionally.
They stand weaponless, mirrors of each other. At this distance she can’t note much beyond their heights and pale skin. Through the layers of amber honey melded to their flesh, she can see that one has a tear mark from the left eye, the other from the right. It's a familiar facial marking. The Crier had the same beneath their white-gold mask, one streaming from each eye. Could these be the soldier’s children? The ones lost in the conflict that resulted in the punishment of the Sun Scourge?
Either way, there’s no question that these unlucky corpses are guarding the Queen of the hive.
Shadowheart puts a hand on Maris’s shoulder. It quivers under her touch, but the aasimar’s expression is jaw-clenched steel. Shadowheart agrees — they can't let this stand. She considers how to approach when they can be so easily surrounded at the center of the hive. There’s no question they will have to create their own advantage or be quickly overwhelmed by wasps.
Shadowheart doesn’t miss the tadpole, but there was something to be said for the ability to plan an attack silently. They could each of them find their way over the gap to the center. Then what when they get there? She’s fought by Wyll long enough to see the same conundrum upon his brow. His Wall of Fire could circle protectively around them, but she doubts flame would deter the fire-resistant wasps. His Hunger of Hadar often shapes the battlefield to their liking, but with the need to slow attacks on multiple sides, it needs to be part of a larger strategy.
Her Blade Barrier could serve — tall as to be inconvenient for the wasps to fly around, scathing enough to kill them for daring to attempt a pass, and a length that could barricade two sides if she's clever about placement. She gets the group's attention with a glare around, points to herself, and draws a curve to call her shot northwest.
"I can cover that side and support," she whispers. "Wyll, take the east with Hadar and target stragglers. Astarion, you're on anything that tries to come at us from above."
"If I must," Astarion drawls, masking his relief with extended syllables. She doesn't want him in melee either. Whether or not the undead are more susceptible to the infernal honey is not something she wants to find out.
"I can," Wyll says. His reluctant frown says more about how he was hoping to charge the center. But they don't have that luxury without Gale, the only other caster who can cover an area like that. Wyll must know it, too, so he concedes. "….And will."
"I'll hold the twins in the middle," Maris says, stepping comfortably into the melee position Shadowheart left for her.
"I'll be behind you," Shadowheart says, both a promise of support and advertising where any wounded should go. Her mass healing and Healing Word will reach any of them from the center, but for anything serious, best to get in the shelter of her shield at touch range.
On dramatic cue, the infernal nest shakes with a heavy chain blow that strikes from the outside. The wasps quiver too, rallying to that point to bolster the structure. She can only hope that means it didn’t hit Lae’zel. It would behoove her wife to play for time and let the celestial bully the nest by accident, but she knows better than to hope for it.
Shadowheart resists the temptation to pray for her; better to put her faith in Lae'zel and use those prayers to cut the Queen deeper.
Maris holds up her gloved hand and starts putting down fingers. A countdown. Shadowheart nods and prepares a Potion of Vaulting, no need to bother with flying to cross the distance.
Four fingers — Astarion kicks Wyll in the shin with his Displacer Boots, a gesture that has their warlock raising a brow until he reads the offer in it.
Three fingers — Shadowheart chugs her potion. The ash and smoke taste of wispweed matches their ambiance all too well.
Two fingers — Maris draws a longsword in her free hand. The other sword glows faintly at her hip, reminiscent of the moon.
One finger — a hushed Astarion starts the components for Dimension Door.
Maris finishes the countdown with a clenched fist — then following the harsh shriek of a celestial battle cry on her lips, she takes up the second blade at her hip. As she springs forward her wings unfurl in a grand show of white-gray feathers and beckoning light. The light more than the sound grabs the attention of the two controlled aasimar and the swarm of hellwasps in the vicinity. There’s no time to watch everyone fall into place, she must defend her quarter. Alchemy lends her limbs the elasticity to leap from the high ledge, across the honeyed chasm to land in the slick of it. The ground, if it can be called ground, surrounding the pulsing center of the nest offers very little space to work with, and the space that exists, well…
The honey begins to crawl up her armor.
Setting that wonderfully disturbing tidbit aside along with her divine hesitations, Shadowheart calls out to Selune, strength flowing through their connection to will a wall of gleaming silver blades. The fiends buzzing toward Maris die on impact — and others learning that lesson, work to go around….
Where they meet the grasping darkness of Wyll’s Hunger of Hadar, which may not protect an entire field but can surely stymie a quarter. Better still, it gives the things hope of passage. They get stuck inside, easy prey for the Eldritch Blasts that will knock them back into it as soon as they're on the cusp of escape. Beside Wyll at the top of the throbbing central mass of comb, gunked up feathers, and grisly viscera, Astarion aims high with his many-targeted arrows, dosed with a paralytic that has wasps dropping…
Well, like flies.
She kind of wishes her father were here. He'd giggle in that warm, almost familiar way if she turned around and said just that. Her friends learned through their acquaintance exactly who to blame when her quips send groans throughout the camp.
It's the two figures that groan now. Without their vanguard of wasps, they surge forward with more grace than she would attribute a zombie. And that is what they seem to be, though their bodies do not rot. Did the honey protect them from that, or did their divine heritage? This close the heartbreaking resemblance to the Crier is undeniable, in the tear tracks and dark red feathers stuck fast to their filthy clothing. If that resemblance is more than skin deep, she can rather easily guess why the pair had met their death while ignoring orders to retreat.
But now they advance as the Queen's last defense, and Maris meets them with the sharp of her dual longswords. Though the twins wield no weapons, sharp or otherwise, the honey flying from the heavy-swinging attempts to land unarmed strikes has a certain threat to it. She has no idea what it takes for the sweet to seize control, just hopes Maris is as resistant to compelling powers as their Tav. He often made bad decisions in combat, sure. At least they were his own bad decisions.
She hopes the same for herself, but with better choices. As the healer, she usually plants her feet so anyone with an injury can find her easily. But staying still gives the ominous amber time to climb. The box step Wyll taught her after a few bottles of wine one night comes back, and she keeps her feet moving that way.
Her own situation is protected, for now. Ten feet or so behind Maris, she observes the combat. It's not much of a fight, yet. Despite the two-on-one clash, the controlled twins are outclassed by Maris. The hellwasps are many in number but no match for their spells or Astarion's bow.
If this was the fight, she wouldn't be worried about Lae'zel outside. Or maybe she'd think they should have left more forces out with her. But no, this is just them knocking politely on the door of the hive.
So it's not much of a surprise when the Queen comes to answer personally.
Shadowheart’s not exactly sure what she’s expecting. Maybe a hideously large yellowjacket with hair curlers and a robe, annoyed to be interrupted. Then all twenty pissed off feet of her explode the central chamber in dramatic emergence.
This is a problem for a few reasons, not least of all that it launches both Wyll and Astarion from their protected position on top of the nest’s throbbing core and toward her blade wall. With a muttered curse to the Lady of Sorrows — who deserves her curses — Shadowheart lets her concentration lapse. If two of her idiots are going to land in the middle of a swarm, better they not pass through her spell first. She sends a Mass Healing Word to bolster them against the coming onslaught, both with the healing itself and the protection of her Hellrider Gauntlets that it triggers, and closes in on the battle herself. Battered as the zombie twins are now, Maris still can’t hold against them and the Queen while avoiding the honey's slow, disturbingly sentient climb.
Especially as the sight of their leader seems to send the twins and the surrounding bugs into an all out scrabbling frenzy.
No, it’s not the sight of her. It’s her aura. Shadowheart can feel her powerfully beckoning magic through the honey heating up beneath her feet. The Queen Wasp's shriek resonates through the nest, and with her roar, the empowered swarm roars up like a wave in a storm. Like that, they crash down upon Astarion and Wyll, who hold for now. Briefly, she sees them on their feet, fighting back to back there in brutal melee.
There’s no need to move stealthily anymore. Shadowheart turns her Spirit Guardians back on, flinging her fierce moonmotes wide to punish the horde and, with any hope, lure the fallen celestial clerics from fighting Maris. When that doesn’t happen — she can guess why, when their honeyed hands scrabble to tear out clumps of her wing feathers to patch the nest — Shadowheart has little choice but to challenge the Hellwasp Queen herself.
Shadowheart would be afraid of her immense bulk — at least three times her height and width — but she's stood her ground against worse. Hells, it's less common to fight things properly their size. So she jabs with her spear, meeting the thick armor coating the wasp wings. They might as well be shields. But no shield can protect her from the Spirit Guardians for all she wails on Shadowheart in vicious counterpoint.
Shadowheart raises her own shield. The one that used to belong to Mother Superior. Whoever will have the better defense will win this fight. The better defense and the better back up.
Her back up killed Viconia DeVir. Compared to Mother Unsuperior, A few bugs don't stand a chance, hellish or otherwise.
She doesn’t see the twins fall. But she does see Maris posture mightily with her wings splayed wide and whirl around to attack one of the Hellwasp Queen’s furred limbs.
“Shadowheart, hurry!” Wyll says, a note of desperation in his buzz-muffled voice. She doesn’t want to know what might put that fear into the man who says this isn’t good when he starts bleeding out. With her empowered leap, she springs up to jab her spear into one of those bulbous red eyes that reflect her. The Queen howls, injured but not fallen. Maris advances in the face of her flinch, twin blades slashing at the thick chitinous armor.
A familiar arrow impacts her shield with a vicious thunk and, turning around, she sees the source of Wyll’s concern. The bugs are no longer attacking Astarion but guarding him from Wyll’s attempts to get near. The Queen gestures in Astarion's direction, and his bow glows the furious red of fire.
Great. Wonderful. The Queen Hellwasp has enchanted his arrows. Maybe she should have taken that moment to fix Astarion’s hair after all, if his honey hat contributed to this particular manipulation. She doesn’t quite think so. It can’t be that simple. After all, the shambling twins that Maris is so reluctant to cut into don’t use their skilled weapons. Is the Queen concentrating on her control of him, facilitated by the honey?
Either way, killing her should end it. A little harder to do with her damage dealers occupied: Astarion with shooting at her, Maris with engaging the twins — who had shambled back on their feet — in melee, and Wyll Blade-of-Avernus-ing his way through the fiendish wasps to help Astarion where she could not with her too holy touch. There's also the matter of the rest of the hive closing in on their combat.
The nest quails again with a heavy blow from the outside, forcing her to evade heavy gobs of honey and bricks of comb that tumble down. A good reminder that Lae’zel doesn’t have time for her hesitation.
The motes of her spirit guardians chew down the Queen and slow the horde, but it’s not enough. She needs a faster sort of violence than even the radiance-empowered thrusts of her spear can't achieve with enough speed.
If not light, she still has plenty of shadow to offer. She recalls every moment of the shadowlands, feeling closer to the Dark Lady and closer to who she always thought she wanted to be. She recalls grieving the loss of that dream. Now she grieves the pain that will follow her the rest of her life and all the years she and her parents lost to the dark.
That grief is power, when she doesn't let it claim her.
She drops her spear. In that hand, the one that once held the word, she gathers her storm of grief. It won’t wither her. She trusts herself to push that desiccating agony outward. When she touches the black and pulsing orange of the insect's searing thorax, and it cracks under her hands. Her moonmotes expedite the desiccation, cutting into the darkness of Blight and crumbling the wailing Queen to ash.
The children of the Crier fall like abandoned puppets, rescued from the amber only by Maris' quick hands. She gathers them one over each shoulder and whirls around to check on Astarion and Wyll.
Shadowheart is one step ahead of her, pushing her healing into the both of them with a word. To little surprise, it helps Wyll more than the understandably rattled Astarion. Life Transference will work better on the vampire, as soon as she can afford to cast it.
“Oh dear,” Astarion says, aiming for casual and missing by a mile. “Let me just get that arrow out of you....”
"No time,” Wyll says, ripping it out himself. It forces Shadowheart to send another Healing Word his way to stem the bleeding. He's right, though. There's no time to do more. Before she can even say as much, her stomach drops as rapidly as the nest itself. The lurch sends them tumbling. Cursing, she puts up her shield against the debris and gestures for Maris to get under it. Astarion and Wyll are too far from her protection, but their quick-thinking rogue shoves the injured Wyll under a wasp corpse just in time.
They brace for an impact that doesn't come; Karlach and Gale caught them.
Shadowheart hefts the rubble from her shield with a grunt. "Let's bee-gone from here."
"Ugh," Astarion complains, both about her words and likely about the disembodied antenna he pulls from his hair. "You're unbelievable."
"Bee-lievable," Wyll echoes.
"Ugh."
Ignoring Astarion's dramatics, Shadowheart bullies forward to get one of Wyll's arms over hers. Until she can see to it properly, better that he not try to move alone.
"They're wasps," Maris says with confusion.
Shadowheart lets it be (bee). It's not funny if she has to explain herself. Though maybe she'll say it later to give Astarion the distraction of telling her that it wasn't funny in the first place.
*
Joy awakens naked and sticky with their hand wrapped around a mortal's throat. The mortal can't breathe but somehow soldier does not think that has much to do with them being green. Their eyes are a little green too. Green-brown with yellow rings that stand out more prominently for the hypoxia in the slot of their spiky helmet.
Why soldier is dangling a mortal over the edge of — this place, wherever it is, isn't a question they can answer. Realizing that they're doing so is almost enough to make Joy drop the precious life right out of the ashen sky. Holding on tighter with panic is also a mistake. The mortal chokes, a soundless song of agony, and strikes out with their armored legs.
It's more surprising that the kick actually knocks Joy backward into more hot and sticky substance. The mortal falls on top of them on their hands and knees, sucking the putrid air of Avernus desperately until victory overtakes the battle desperation in their blazing eyes.
"It is not the Queen I most want dead," the mortal, no, the warrior rasps in Common from their abused throat as they come to a stand. "But it shall suffice for this day's work."
Joy nods with what soldier hopes is an air of understanding. Soldier understands so little about their current situation that they would like it known, at least, that common is familiar to their ear. Not as familiar as they would like. Their time on the material plane feels so long ago: an era suspended in amber, lived out by another person.
She had liked it there, helping struggling mortals find joy on the material plane. She had a name there, too. But she is a protector. She had wanted so badly to find the roots of her people's suffering and why there were so few of them helping on the prime material. Why all the children of her brethren had to wait at the facility on Mount Celestia for parents who would never come for them. Why the soldiers only ever visited for shelter in pregnancy, and why they looked so empty when they did.
And so she became the soldier of Joy.
The suffering drowned Joy, eventually. But Joy could never be gone forever. Not even on account of…
Hellwasps. That's right.
Eir and Mer.
They had been so brave, like so many of Joy's children. They were gone now, like so many of Joy's children.
Joy remembers. The fiends were working together that day. The garrison forces had overextended, and the retreat order was too late, far too late. There was so much death, too much death. Enough death to fell their wards and expose the camp entire.
Joy’s children, clerics of Illmater, did not stay behind the wall. Joy was supposed to retreat with the soldiers. But soldier could do no such thing with their children standing their ground, pushing out waves of healing to buy precious seconds for their encampment. They healed the soldiers of the retreat, and the soldiers held the line. The wards made a flickering return.
It was too late, they were surrounded. Joy took Mer and tried to fly. The hellwasps tried to sting soldier from the sky and failed. A cannon shot from one of those infernal machines succeeded. They both fell to their death, and only one of them returned. Sun Scourge had Eir over their shoulder and tried to carve a path through the maw demons and their larger bloodmaw leaders. Joy did not see exactly what transpired, a small mercy.
When they returned from the waiting, their broken child in their arms, Sun's death eruption took them there once more.
It would have been a mercy, if soldier had not returned in time to watch the wasps carry their bodies away.
Joy unleashed their wings and followed. Sun defended their pursuit, buying soldier enough time to take off in the horde.
When Sun erupted again, soldier was out of range. Soldier was disobeying. But even if it was just their bodies, Joy would not let the wasps have their children for their foul nest. And so the swarm ended up taking soldier, too. Last they remember, they were carving their way inside…but the honey was too much. The honey got caught in their feathers and —
Joy nearly tumbles for the nest’s heavy lurch forward. Pain screams through Joy’s limbs as the weight of the entire nest pulls on the chains loped around their wrists and ankles. Desperately, soldier struggles to loose them with no avail.
“Be still,” the mortal warrior growls. The warrior has a new weapon in their hand, a hammer of steel and jagged red stone.
Joy remembers common better than most. But they had been fighting moments before. Does this mortal know that killing Joy will not solve this problem?
It matters little either way. The warrior deserves to fell soldier, if they wish to do so. Hoping to sped the process, soldier tilts their head to offer their mercy point.
The warrior with fierce amber eyes sounds a muffled snarl through the metal of their helmet and swings the hammer mightily down not on their neck but on the chains that bind their legs. Through surprise Joy wonders at the strength to shatter them in one blow. But with one down, the nest pulls more heavily on their arms. Joy grits their teeth, but the warrior isn’t done. One by one, this incredible chainbreaking mortal ruins the infernal cage that held them for who knows how long.
“…Thank —” Joy tries. Their throat is scratchy. It matters not, anyway, what with the entire nest tumbling down. Fear gags Joy’s gratitude when the mortal drops right off the edge, arms spread wide with intention. Moments later, they rise back into view on a Pegasus, a hand outstretched to Joy.
Joy splays their wings wide — they need no mount to fly — but touch the warrior anyway. They push a rush of healing to edge the pain from the creases of those eyes. It can’t have been easy to fight them so long, and they don’t want to think of the state of the mortal’s neck.
The warrior tosses their head and urges the Pegasus onward with a foreign cry. Joy dives. When they do, it becomes clear why they had the time to do so at all.
The soldier of Joy knows strange, and this sight might just be the strangest. A purple creature with a tentacled face and a high necked robe hovers alone in front of the gargantuan nest, which is dangerously tilted in their direction. If it comes down, it will crush them instantly. A human in mage robes circles them on Pegasus back, encanting walls of stone to support the weight threatening to bear down on them.
If the nest begins to roll, it will be a problem. Based on how the warrior flies searchingly around the nest, soldier suspects people must be inside. The bodies of soldier’s children are inside. Whoever slew the Queen and earned their eternal regard must also be inside.
The nest lurches and the tentacled being cries out.
“Just a little bit longer, Karlach,” Joy hears the mage shout. “Lae’zel, any sign of them?”
The warrior, who must be Lae'zel, barks an angry song of words that Joy cannot parse beyond the emotion behind them.
“I’m guessing that means no," the mage translates.
The hellwasp nest has fallen but Joy will not allow it to crush the ones inside. Pulling their wings tight to their back, they dive for one of the fallen chains that had lashed around the nest. It burns their hands. All of them burns, thanks to the honey, but they will not falter now. Seizing the loose end in hand, they fly upward, a pain-song on their lips for the terrible weight.
Even if they do this, even if they recover their bodies, their children are still dead. But it is what their children would do. It is what the protector who had a name would do, too.
Joy beats their wings, flying against the weight of the nest. Even when they can fly no farther holding the chain, they keep straining.
“There they are, I see them!” A song of recognition from the mage. Their people have emerged safely.
Joy can’t hear the new voices over the din. All soldier sees is an ashen sky.
Whatever unseen force the tentacled creature employed to hold up the nest falters. The conjured stone crumbles. The weight of the nest rolls along the chain, nearly crushing Joy with it. Does it matter, if their heart has been crushed already?
They let go of the chain and fall with no strength to fly. But before they hit the damp brimstone hard, skidding and rolling, collecting debris on their naked, honey clad form, they see them.
Eir and Mer, their children. Their broken bodies with Maris and not the hive. How long has soldier failed them? Does Olatunde yet live? Does Arjun?
Soldier must stand, soldier must collect their bodies, soldier must bring them back for their siblings to mourn. Must protect the remaining children…must tell Sun Scourge that it wasn’t their fault…must embrace the Crying Scourge and mourn the loves they never got to claim…
Joy lays sinking in the sticky brimstone and watches the wretched hellwasp nest roll into the bubbling Styx. Soldier will do all of those things. Just as soon as they can stand up.