“I’m sorry, Corey,” she said miserably. The sprite’s usually glowing form was dull, and her guilt crept across our bond.
“Why did you guys leave?” asked Benin, stepping aside to let a bloody badger bumble past. “You can’t have been training as well. Or are you telling me Ket’s been hiding a wealth of knowledge about the best ways to hit things with hammers?”
Coll glanced at Ket, who shifted uncomfortably but didn’t reply.
“The lot of you need to start talking. Now.” My voice was hard, and both sprites flinched. I didn’t usually play the hard-ass, but they’d just endangered the tribe and our entire existence with their reckless behavior. It was unacceptable, and they needed to know I wouldn’t tolerate it.
“Bekkit taught me a new skill,” Ket burst out. “Terrestrial Body.”
“You guys can share skills?” I said, momentarily distracted from my anger. “Wait—sprites have skills?”
“Of course.” She sounded affronted. “Ris’kin has skills. Binky has skills. Why are you surprised that I do too?”
“You’ve just never mentioned it before.”
She shifted. “Well, that’s because I don’t have that many.”
My sprite’s tiny body dimmed even further. Despite the circumstances, I felt bad for being so hard on her. Her own inadequacies as a sprite were already a sore subject. Not wanting to drag it out in front of everyone, I changed the subject.
“So, Terrestrial Body…” I prompted.
“Right! It basically lets me leave your Sphere by temporarily severing our connection. But it’s for a limited time only. Without my connection to you, my essence is no longer sustained by your Sphere’s ambient mana. It drains very slowly, but if I don’t return here to regenerate…”
“All right, that makes sense. I wish you hadn’t used it without first consulting me, though. Especially after the lectures you’ve given me in the past for doing the same thing!”
She squirmed, but along with the awareness of her own hypocrisy I also sensed fury.
“Bekkit said our bond would remain,” she cried. “He said I’d still be able to talk to you. As always, he lied.”
Everyone looked at Bekkit, who said calmly, “You still haven’t answered my fiery companion’s question. Why did you leave in the first place?”
Ket fluttered her wings in discomfort, but glared defiantly at Bekkit. “We came to look for you.” Addressing me, she said, “I convinced Coll to help me find where those two had gone. He’s up to something, I know it.”
“Your mistrust, though admittedly not unearned, grows tiresome, young Ketten,” said Bekkit.
He sounded as though she’d wounded him. The sprite was still shielding his emotions from me so I couldn’t know for sure, but I wasn’t buying it.
“Oh really? And how do we know for sure you weren’t behind this entire thing?”
He sputtered. “What?!”
“Did you actually witness Bekkit and Benin training together?” I asked my sprite.
“No,” said Ket. “We turned back before we found them. It felt wrong to be away from the Sphere.”
“Good.”
She glowed a little brighter at my approval.
I rounded on the other two once more.
“I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt this time. But I need to know that I can trust you.” Benin scowled and opened his mouth to argue, but I carried on quickly. “Your presence here is appreciated, as is your help so far. But if you’re to continue accompanying us, I need to know that you’re with us.”
There was a pause. Then Bekkit declared, “I am with you. To the end.”
“Me too,” said Coll.
Benin nodded. I figured that was the best I was going to get from him for now.
Seemingly relieved that the conflict was over, Ket asked tentatively, “What happened with the scouts? Where’s Shanky? And Ris’kin?”
“They’re on their way back,” I said. “We found the badgers’ burrow—and their queen.”
“It’s called a sett,” she corrected me, back to her old self. “And that can’t be right. Badgers don’t have queens.”
“These ones do. Look.”
I brought up the blueprint for the dire badger queen. Ket’s wings fluttered anxiously as she perused it.
“It makes no sense,” she murmured. Sparks showered erratically from her as she flitted from side to side, the aerial version of pacing back and forth. Bekkit also came over to look.
“It’s not like they’re unique in that regard,” I pointed out. “The mole-rats had a queen too, remember?”
“Yes, but they’re a eusocial species anyway. Aren’t they?”
I mentally shrugged. “I only know what the Augmentary tells me. I know we fought a queen, and…” I swiped through to find it. “Yeah, a dire blesmol queen. Her blueprint mentions the ‘eusocial’ thing.”
“Interesting…” Bekkit was scanning the other blueprints. “The Augmentary describes the owlets as tiger owl ‘offspring.’ However, the dire badgers are referred to as the queen’s ‘spawn.’ I wonder if that is significant…”
“There’s something else bothering me as well.” I told them about the dire badgers’ behavior, and how it reminded me of Snagga. Bekkit shuddered at the name, as though it brought back unpleasant memories.
“If they were indeed compelled by their queen’s signal, should they not have retreated?” he said. “If the queen were under attack by Ris’kin and the scouts, and if she was near-death as you say, would not her instincts be to withdraw them from combat to defend her instead?”
“Just like Grimrock did with Snagga,” added Ket.
“To do otherwise goes against all of nature’s survival instincts.”
“Perhaps they’re not natural.”
He frowned. “Perhaps,” he conceded. “Even so, in this situation it makes no sense that they would have been urged to attack our camp instead of returning to protect their queen.”
“Unless their orders weren’t coming from the queen. Or hers were from elsewhere, even.”
We all turned to look at Coll, who was sitting cross-legged on the ground. Two of the new badgers, already bandaged and stitched by Gneil’s team of impromptu veterinarians, were exploring the warrior’s feet. One began to chew on his boot, all traces of the creature’s former animosity gone.
“Why do you say that?” I asked him.
“Well, if an army’s behavior don’t make sense, chances are they’ve either got themselves an incompetent leader, their plans are different to what you
