Saintess Summons Skeletons

“Tough motherfucker,” Sonia spat, flying up to the dead ant, “Now imagine getting swarmed by twenty of those.”

“Let’s not,” Sofia immediately said, washing away the sticky goo on Pestle and Pareth with pressured splashes of summoned blood. “Hmmmm?!”

“Something up?” Sonia asked, watching Sofia suddenly freeze.

“My aura is reacting to the ant.”

“Your aura… Bones?”

“Yes. The bark! It’s… It’s not quite bone, but it’s apparently close enough that I can influence it a little…”

“Does that mean you can summon one of those?!”

“I’m not sure but… It’s worth a shot! Bookie!”

“Ewwwww…” Bookie recoiled as he appeared in Sofia’s arms and noticed what she wanted to feed him.

“Do you not want to try it?” Sofia asked, surprised by his reaction.

“It looks yucky…” Bookie complained, “but I’ll do it for you… What do I erase, Sofia?” he asked, looking up at her.

“We haven’t been using the fire salamanders much,” Sofia answered after a second of reflection.

“Hmmhmm,” Bookie nodded and his book form flew off of Sofia’s waist with much less enthusiasm than usual. It hovered above the dead ant for a bit, pacing back and forth, before opening and absorbing the entire thing in one go. “Uweugh… I’m sure this is what chewing wet dirt feels like…” Bookie complained.

“Sorry about that… Is the page going to work at least?”

“I think so?”

Sofia grabbed Bookie’s book form, giving it a gentle pat and caress before opening it and looking for the new page.

“Ant ant ant… Oh, there it is. Cheap! What the hell? The grayskins were one million mana a piece but this absolute monster of a living tree is only a tenth of that?! Dirt cheap! Holy cheap! And it gives twenty percent health! That’s the same as the pearled snake for a third of the cost!!!”

“I- I think I know why…” Bookie interjected, “I think it forgot its spells…”

“That’s it?” Sofia reacted with a sigh, “You had me worried for a second here. It’s still a big, sturdy, flying skeleton with dangerous pincers, what’s not to love? If we can just get ten of those, we’d have an insane front line for our army, allowing Pareth to be on the offensive more often, instead of struggling with the guardian Kidjikkiks!”

“Not looking forward to killing nine more of those,” Sonia commented, “Probably will have to happen anyway, but still not a fun time ahead.”

“Not to mention that to get a page with ten of them I’d need to have them all dead in the same place,” Sofia added, “But it’d certainly be a huge help going forward. Imagine ten of those protecting us at all times.”

“Certainly enticing. I’m not getting much out of it, though, personally. Could use a pair of those pincers and some bark to bring back.”

“You can have the next one we kill if you want,” Sofia suggested, “What now? We move? Night probably comes soon.”

Sonia looked around, “We can try to find a decent root knot and have you build a sneaky bone shelter in there, maybe. I’m positive this should be enough to keep the mosquitoes away again, but the danger is getting trapped there if an ant finds us. Any patrolling one will be checking the mess we’ve made here for sure, might bring this area a lot of attention.”

“On the other hand, if we go up while fighting the mosquitoes, it’ll be hard to even notice if we alarm the ants,” Sofia added, “The root network looks quite vast, maybe we can move to the other side to place the shelter down and hope they don’t search that far.”

“Let’s. We have to be quick.”

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Pestle and Crowie flew ahead to scout for a suitable shelter location, their small size allowing them to fly through the tangle of roots much faster, while the others followed from far behind.

It was surprisingly easy to find a good spot where the roots were so tangled that they formed almost fully sealed alcoves. Pestle found one wide enough for everyone to comfortably stand in, and Sofia only had to seal one hole with a bone construct to create a fully enclosed shelter to spend the night in.

“And now we wait,” Sonia said as she sat down, “at least the night here should operate under the same rules, so we don’t have to worry about anything new.”

“Only about getting discovered by a contingent of mad ants,” Sofia laughed, “Speaking of which, can everyone make some space? Let’s see what the ant skeleton is worth while we’re here.”

Sofia summoned the ant skeleton which took up most of the space in the root alcove. It looked almost the exact same as when it was alive, with the exception of the glowing veins along the bark carapace that now shone with a golden light instead of the leyline’s white-ish cyan.

“Seems like the real thing,” Sonia commented, back pressed against the wall.

“Should be even sturdier with all the buffs,” Sofia added, “too bad it doesn’t get the spells. How smart do you think it is, Bookie?”

“I’m… not sure. It’s really different from the others… A bit like the forgotten skeleton,” he struggled to explain.

“Like the one from the hidden moon? Weird. I can’t identify it right now, do you think you can check the stats?”

“Hmm,” Bookie nodded, “Mr. Scribe is very very helpful. I think I can do it!”

It took Bookie a few minutes to figure things out, but eventually the ant’s status made its way to everyone’s interface.

Solar Leyline Worker Ant:

Health: 152 000 000

Stamina: 152 000 000

Mana: 0

No lifetime? Is it because it’s on the leyline right now? Racial trait?

“No wonder they’re so hard to kill,” Sonia commented, “but no mana? I knew they tapped into the leyline’s but I didn’t expect it to be to that degree.”

“Maybe this one still knows its spells, even, but can’t use them because it lost connection to the leyline?” Sofia guessed, touching the strange ant head of the skeleton, which hadn’t changed much except for the new holes in place of its eyes, one of the rare parts the exoskeleton did not cover up.

“Pesle has guess!” the fairy interjected out of nowhere, “Think king ant is give spell! This ant is Sofia ant now, not king ant, then spell is kill. Think if king ant is Sofia ant spell is return!”

Sonia nodded along, “You might be onto something, insect monsters tend to be weird like that.”

“It’s fine even if it doesn’t have spells, honestly. Just look at it. My only gripe is that nobody would be able to tell at a glance that it’s a skeleton.”

“It can just use the bone exoskeleton!” Bookie said, “Two exoskeletons!”

“And a regular one,” Sofia added, “Couldn’t really feel it before but there are actual bones under the bone-bark. Just that the bark is interfering with my aura unless I’m directly touching it.”

“Huh… Well, we can spend the night trying to find any weak spot it might have, your skeleton is coming in pretty handy. But we might want to start staying quiet, if I’ve been following the time correctly, night starts in a minute or two at most.”

As expected, the mosquitoes were out prowling around soon after, but none seemed to even notice the hiding spot, and no ant came to bother them either. Just to be safe, instead of going out right away when the mosquitoes left, Sofia created a small opening and sent some crows out.

Since Sofia could barely sense them at all, Bookie did the reporting, “No ants nearby… But several above. They didn’t notice our crows so far, I think.”

“Good, nice to know they’re no longer disappearing when they go too far. How many exactly above, how spread out?”

“It’s hard to tell from just the movements… I think maybe eight to ten ants, but very spread apart, and all moving around at about the same height on the roots,” Bookie answered with some hesitation.

“Sounds like they’re waiting for us,” Sonia deduced, “If we go up like this and we’re spotted at any point, we’ll be surrounded.”

“Lure them down and kill them one by one?” Sofia asked.

“Decent plan.”

“I want to try the new summon, to see how the real ants react to mine. Could have an interesting result, since they look almost the same,” Sofia added.

“Then let’s do that. We’ll have to lure the ants down in a way that won’t make them likely to run away and alert the others, suggestions?”

“Too risky to use the skeleton for that before we know how they’ll react to it,” Sofia started, ”Since they’re deaf, noise isn’t an option…”

“Ah! I- I think we won’t have to lure!” Bookie blurted out, “It’s chasing! It’s chasing! One of the crows is trying to escape, what- what do I do?!”

“Only one ant?” Sofia asked to be sure.

“Probably! The other crows haven’t moved,” Bookie answered hurriedly.

“Get that crow down here!” Sofia ordered right away, removing the bone sealing the alcove’s exit, “Let’s fight!”