Lost in Translation: A Collaborative Story

Part 4: Emily

Sia moved her bow so the arrow was pointing straight at the incoming creature. The light of Ali'zarin's wand did not reach it just yet, and the unknown was worse than the most terrifying monster could have been.

Mizim readied his sword, stepping past both Sia and Ali'zarin to be their first line of defense. While normally, Sia would protest, just this once she didn't mind letting him take the point.

She had already experienced dying once, and she didn't fancy doing that again.

Then again, so did Mizim. Clearly, his experience was not as impactful as her own was if he was still willing to step in the path where danger inevitably laid.

Finally, the creature had crawled out of the tunnel, the spiders all bowing before it.

...Seems like the bees were a little less extinct than they had thought.

Queen Bee, the one reason they have ventured so far outside of the beaten path, why they have decided to take on the horde of spiders.

...Belatedly, it had occurred to Sia that perhaps they shouldn't have fought the spiders, if they had intended on asking the Queen Bee a favour.

Ali'zarin lowered his wand – honestly, Sia still couldn't believe that he had one and didn't think to tell them about it sooner – and Sia followed his lead, putting the arrow back in her quiver.

Mizim didn't lower his sword, but he was Mizim, so that was only to be expected.

Ali'zarin bowed, one hand pressed to his heart, speaking in a language Sia couldn't recognize.

Then again, that wasn't an awfully hard thing to do. She only knew, what, one language? One and a half, if you counted the dialect her family used back home. Most languages were ones she didn't speak.

The Queen Bee seemed to have given him a look, sweeping her gaze over Sia and Mizim, before turning her attention to her fallen spiders.

They didn't remain fallen for much longer. Actually, now that Sia paid closer attention, they didn't appear to be dead in the first place. Just... hibernating. Well, the ones Ali'zarin felled with his magic wand, at least. The ones she shot through with an arrow were most definitely dead, and so were the ones Mizim had a go at.

But even those started rising at Queen Bee's command, something golden and sparkling leaving traces all over their exoskeletons.

The Nectar; Exactly what they wanted.

Exactly what they needed, if Sia and Mizim wanted to rejoin the land of the living permanently. There was only so much an Arcanist could do to keep a soul attached to a body and manage to stop it from decaying.

And oh, Fates, how had she not realized Ali'zarin was an Arcanist? Because the excuse which essentially boiled down to "oh no I just stumbled upon your moving corpses in the forest moments before you woke up, it was totally someone else that actually reanimated you two" was totally believable.

Then again, Sia had been a little too preoccupied with trying to come to terms with 1. having died, 2. having been revived and, most importantly, 3. having to delay their mission to go on a side quest for bloody magical honey.

Nectar, whatever. A bodily substance produced by an essentially mythical creature they weren't even sure they would find.

...But of course they would have found it. Ali'zarin must have known it was here, if he could even speak its language.

Fates, Sia really couldn't get over the fact he was an Arcanist! An Arcanist; Of all the stupidly insane things to be...

She had to very quickly get over it however, when the Queen Bee finally decided to turn her attention towards them.