Chapter 38: Chapter 38

When Kai came back from doing her business it slowly became darker already. Her daughters were preparing for the night, adding more spikes here and there to the defenses and grabbing bone javelins for themselves. They got into six different groups and split up to hide in the covered part of the first hive floor.

It was pretty obvious that there was a glaive meant for every group so Kai and Anna joined the one that had none, hiding in one of the girls rooms to the side of the entrance street. The drones spread out to cover the whole hive and provide the others with input in regards to the moths whereabouts.

After that the only thing left to do was waiting and Kai couldn’t help herself but scroll over the map needlessly, tense and worried as she was.

When the sun was halfway beneath the horizon the first screech went through the forest. It was closely followed by another and then more and more as the moths announced their activity.

Kai could already tell that something was different today. Normally the moth screeches were more spread out, but today they all seemed to come from roughly the same direction.

She stood next to her first daughter, listening to the steadily approaching moths. These moments were a nightmare to her and she was left to imagine her daughters being eaten alive while she clenched and unclenched her grip around the javelin repeatedly.

Then they came like a tidal wave in the sky and 5 of them immediately descended on the corpse of the one the hive had killed the day before. There were a lot of moths and more were coming by the minute. Much to Kai’s relief however many of them just flew away and dispersed into the surroundings, seemingly unbothered by the reason they had come to the hive in the first place.

It was a mystery to her how an environment could sustain so many large predators, but then she also didn’t know much about them and how they lived.

More moths descended onto the corpse and a brutal, but undeadly fight broke out. It seemed like they were hungry and maybe even desperate to get some of the meat. 

Kai was only too happy with them fighting each other. In her opinion they could do that for the whole night.

Sadly it wasn’t meant to stay that way and a moth landed on the second hive floor. The drones close to it began to retreat stealthily and the beast started to clean its wings. 

Kai had decided not to fight over the second floor. There wasn’t anything important on the floor yet and they would have to fight the moths in the open there. Giving the things room to move was a very bad decision in her opinion, as long as you didn’t have a fetish for being sliced into pieces at least.

More moths began to land, some of them inside of the hive, forcing more and more of the drones to retreat to the covered part of the hive. None of the moths had tried to get into the personal zone of the hive yet though. 

Mostly responsible for that was likely that the personal zone, the zone they would fight over, encompassed only the first three rows of rooms and wasn’t that large due to that. Kai had practically given up on defending anything that wasn’t covered by the second floor. They didn’t have to face the enemy in an environment suitable for them as long as they stayed where they were.

With the drones not outside anymore they had also lost their way of gathering information on what the hell was going on outside. There were 2 drones guarding the entrance at the trunk that gave Kai some idea of how the situation was in the sky, but honestly that wasn’t helping her morale.

One of the moths slowly began to encroach on the entrance Kai was at and she mentally prepared herself for the fight. They were guarding the two streets into the first floor with three groups of four each and one group each was ready to break off and move to the ramp at the tree trunk. Their situation was scary enough as it was and Kai had no need for one of the bloody beasts to greet them from behind.

She looked over to the room on the other side of the street and received a nod from one of the hunters signaling that they were ready.

The moth swerved left and right slightly, opening its mouth a bit. Kai tensed up in anticipation of what would come next, assuming that the predator was searching for a scent and considering that this was the Antanoid home it was of course smelling like them. 

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The moth halted its movement abruptly and made a weird chirping sound. Its antenna twitched and it warily took a step forward. There it stopped again for a second before it started to enter the hive more confident in itself.

One of the drones jumped onto the open street, immediately attracting the attention of the moth. Now having a target the moth started to accelerate into the narrower territory, while the drone desperately tried to get away. It was actually quite spacious for Kai and her daughters, but the beast would have it hard to properly turn around.

When the moth was about to reach the room Kai and her daughters were hiding in, things sprang into motion. A few drones that had scaled the walls of the street jumped on the large animal, aiming for the wings.

The attack was so sudden that the moth wasn’t able to react properly and it stopped its run, letting out a paint cry of surprise when the first drone bit into the leathery thin skin of the wings.

Anna ran out of the room closely followed by Kai and the others, the same happening on the other side of the street. They kept their distance from the beast and the hunter of the other group knocked an arrow on her bow.

A moment later the projectile flew through the air and hit the moth into the face, eliciting another pained cry. Sadly none of the vital organs such as the eyes had been hit by the arrow.

More drones were now encroaching on the moth carefully, but were unable to get near the beast due to its panicked thrashing.

The moth started to get a grip of the situation despite being hit by another arrow and let out a low angry hiss. It started to lash out with its legs with aimed attacks instead of the random movement it had done before. This provided an opening for the drones in the moth's blind spot, while it increased the danger for the rest of the drones significantly.

Anna and the other glaive wielding girls began to slowly and carefully move close to the moth, something Kai definitely did not approve of. She was too slow to stop them however and could only watch in horror as they shortened the distance between them and the predator.

The moth noticed the larger creature of course and backed up a step in alarm. It opened its mouth to shriek and an arrow flew inside, ricocheting off of the teeth uselessly. The moth closed its mouth, shredded the projectile and lashed out at Anna. 

Kai’s heart stopped for a second, but luckily the moth missed by a good 20 cm, which was still much too close in Kai’s opinion. The moth’s legs alone were thicker than that.

Anna took a swing with the glaive and hit the leg that had nearly pounded her into a gory puddle. A bit of blood sprayed out of the leg and the moth let out a pained screech. It tried to put some weight on the limb, but discovered it was unable to hold anything with it anymore.

The other two glaive wielders utilized the moth’s distraction and gave two of the legs on the other side the same treatment before all three hurriedly retreated.

The moth’s front body crashed into the ground and smashed a drone in the process. The animal tried to get up again, but had a very hard time with only half of its limbs.

Anna arrived next to Kai breathing hard and the queen hugged her fiercely for a second. Suddenly all the drones, even the ones on the moth’s wings retreated and Kai let go of Anna.

She looked up in confusion, taking in the scene behind the gravely injured moth. Her breath caught and the only thing she could think about for a second was that she was lucky Brian tried to reduce casualties and didn’t stop mid fight to hug someone.

Multiple pairs of eyes looked back at her and a few maws were threateningly presented. Then the moths shrieked in unison and for a moment Kai’s world once more became nothing more than pain.

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