Chapter 165: 165 – True Allegiance

To Zel’s surprise she found her blade stopped dead by the crossguard of a strange sword-spear hybrid hewn from blackstone. It wasn’t its wielder's strength that stopped her, but the simple fact the weapon was standing on the ground. She could’ve killed him right then and there, but there was sapience in his body language. He was covered in chitin head to toe, his eyes were covered by characteristic bug domes, but this up close, she could see the completely normal human eyes behind the translucent chitin. The red control parasite on his nape was motionless, as if it had died and been subsumed into little more than a chitin plate.

Hearing two mutant deer approaching from the side, Zelsys looked off towards them, readying herself to eliminate the threat. Before she made a move, a miasma of blue-tinged pheromones spread out from the spear-wielding Locust Noble, seemingly prompting the mutant animals to stop and lie down. 

“What are you waiting for?” the Locust Noble said in lightly accented Ikesian, his voice recognizable as young, filled with directionless anger and regret. “Do your job. Exterminate me.”

Tok. Tok. The clacking of a rod against the ground, from the same direction as the deer. She looked away just far enough to see who it was, maintaining focus on the cross-spear wielder to make sure he wouldn’t try anything funny. It was, as expected, a Locust Noble, distinguishable from the others by the visibly weathered chitin, the slightly hunched gait, and the black-stone staff in his hand. Most egregious of all was the complete absence of a visible control parasite. 

The main reason she didn’t just raise her arm-cannon and blast him away was the fact he pointed the staff at her, and a pale-green arc of lightning sprung forth. It gouged a nasty, albeit small burn into her skin before she absorbed the bulk of the jolt, much to the locust’s terror. His beady, black eyes stared as he struggled to remain upright, leaning on a pillar while his body spasmed uncontrollably under the strain of his own magic. 

“W-w-who…” he stuttered out in utterly normal Grekurian. “That was meant to fry you!”

“You’re twenty watts, I’m a lightning bolt,” the beast-slayer said, receiving no response.

Breathing heavily, his mandibles clicking together, he stared her down. Then, he waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. “Just… Do your job, exterminator.”

It was strange. The moment he realized he hadn’t killed her, all the hostility vanished from the locust. He just… Stood there, waiting to die. 

Thump. Thump. Thump. Crack. The door would fall sooner rather than later.

The standoff was interrupted when Zefaris rushed around a pillar in her combat-ready stance, pointing it at the staff-wielding locust, then at the spear-wielder, then at the deer, her eye dilating to the full extent as she struggled to make sense of the scene. 

Something was very clearly different about these two, at least as clear as Zel’s trust of her gut could make it. The beast-slayer looked at the staff-wielder, pointing her arm-cannon at him as she made an observation, “You’re different from the others. No control parasites. Why?”

Visibly surprised, the lightning user looked up at her, his mandibles opening and closing a few times as he visibly struggled to word his explanation. 

“I… We… We were exiled. Sent to the Orchid Mantis,” he said, still breathing heavily. “He read our fortunes, set us free. We work with the subcore, maintaining this floor, trapping dangerous loyalists down here. Got caught in the cogworks, weren’t supposed to be in this chamber. The Parasite mistook us for loyalists.”

“There are rebel locusts here?” Zefaris cut in, audibly surprised. 

Both of the Traitor Locusts nodded, the Spear-wielder stammering out that, “We li-live in the cogworks. The Dungeon provides all we need for doing the work that golems would do. P-please, we can help you reach the Core!”

The beast-slayers exchanged looks and decided to take the risk of letting these two live. Still, they wouldn’t risk letting their guard down. They ushered the two bugmen to walk in front of them as they made their way out of the forest of pillars and towards the door. Zel kept her arm-cannon pointed at the Caster’s head, and Zef did the same with Pentacle and the Spearman. They didn’t put up resistance, the Spearman looking over his shoulder once or twice while they walked.

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Still, the impacts against the door resounded. Thump. Thump. Crack. Thump.

The door was a gaudy mix of bright-red glyph and cyan cracks, the combination having mostly drowned out the original matte-black colour. For a minute, they waited, watching the cracks widen and spread. A minute became two, then three. 

“Any clue about-” Zelsys began an impatient question, but the Caster interrupted with an instant answer.

“Door’s jammed,” he sighed. “The loyalists somehow severed the door’s signal conduits and jammed the mechanism with black-stone rods right after the Parasite overrode the proximity open command. Delta has to break it down. Were it connected, he could’ve just made it crumble.”

Raising an eyebrow, Zelsys inquired further, “How do you know all that?”

Instead of the Caster, the Spearman answered this time. 

Thump. Thump. Thump.

“We were down there trying to fix the conduit. The loyalists mistook us for their saboteur friends. Safer to follow along and disappear later than try to fight,” he said.

Thump. Crack.

Thump. Crack.

Thump. Crash.

One moment, the door was there. The next, it was reduced to matte-black, inert gravel, spilling out around their feet. 

In the intermediary chamber stood a towering humanoid golem wrought of black stone; its body covered head to toe in glowing cyan lines, all converging in a cyclopic eye in the center of its chest. It had no head, yet stood taller than the Sister but shorter than the Black Swordsman. 

The eye instantly locked to the two beast-slayers, slowly strayed to the bugmen, then snapped back to the two women. 

“You may lower your weapons. My subordinates are not aligned with the Parasite, despite their forms,” Delta thundered, its voice calm and collected, but almost human.

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