Only the bees were really letting Zane have it now. He was in a hellish new world of ugly sound; storms of buzzing crashed and screeched against each other, bearing down on him, pulling back, bearing down again. They shattered each other, over and over, and drowned him in the fragments.

  The sound was getting through to his head, his skull—it was pretty much impossible to block it out. It was quite hard to think.

  But he didn’t need to.

  He felt what was right, bit down, and acted. He could sense the weight of the moment—it was another one of these critical points. The point a fight would turn.

  He swapped out his weapons. Hammers burst to his working left hand. And he sent a flare roaring at the swarm.

  They were still stuck on his right arm, massed so thick it was like he was wearing a black-green gauntlet—which meant he managed to get a good meaty shot right in the thick of them. THWACK-BOOM!

  Instantly they started to scatter, hurtling every which way, but he chased them with another blast—THWACK-BOOM!

  Warning!

  Health under 75%

  He didn’t mind that so much. What mattered was he’d gotten them off him.

  They were swirling a loose sphere now, sizing this new version of him back up. Now the bulk of them were warier. He’d shown he could put a dent in them.

  It bought him a little time—it’d be good to shake out the numbness in his arm a bit. That, and he needed a new plan. He thought about it, breathing heavily; fiery blood throbbed up his arm, his head, trying to force its way back through numbed-out chunks of muscle.

  He thought about just blasting them, and seeing who could outlast who. He did like the sound of it. He was in hammer form now. He’d have Wish Upon a Star in his back pocket, if it came to that.

  Sounded pretty good to him.

  The only thing was this was quite a big cavern. The kind you'd never see on Earth—it was too grand. You could fit whole civilizations in here. It went on and on into the deep dark… the bees were spread pretty darn wide.

  It was much better than having the bees out in the open. But he figured he could only cover half the place in an all-out blast.

  It was a gamble. He frowned.

  He’d have to figure out how to make it work, he felt.

  He took a look across the cavern.

  “Birds,” he muttered.

  If there was one thing worse than birds, it was a million birds. This was turning out to be rather the opposite of that last fight with that Ghol fellow. He could imagine how much of a nightmare it’d be if this was open space. He gave Reina a word of thanks. He shook out his right arm some more. The blood was bringing feeling back in. He felt his Asura State burning away some of the venom; that dead-weight feeling was melting away. Soon it’d be good to use.

  And not a moment too soon.

  The bees seemed to be regrouping, clustering up again—forming battle lines. No time to waste.

  He went forward with Plan B and started heartily blasting.

  Hammers slashed through the air, trailing molten sunlight—and exploded in glorious Solar Flares. A string of golden suns self-destructed in the middle of the cavern, lighting up nooks and crannies for thousands of miles. Sending radiation crashing all over.

  CRUNCH-CRUNCH-CRUNCH! went the bees.

  As he forged through, whipping them back around, feeling his right arm getting near full function again, he felt better and better about the whole thing.

  There was something quite satisfying about that crunch. His radiation softened up the bees nicely—made them very brittle. So when his hammers came through, they one-shot them in thousands, crunched right through.

  It was always a pleasure sticking it to birds. That was the one good thing about fighting them. They could be quite annoying. It did make beating them that much more satisfying.

  He was taking out thousands of them in a blast.

  Only it wasn’t doing all that much. The more he racked, wrecked more there seemed to be; more and more plugged the gaps and descended on him, stinging away. He was pretty sure he was taking out maybe 5% of them every blast—if that.

  That was the trouble. They had a peculiar kind of defense, these bees. They had much more, and much less Health than they should. Normal creatures took a lot more damage when you hit their vitals. But this swarm only had one vital point—otherwise, he’d have to slog through the lot of them to kill them all.

  It’d be like having to break every bone, slice every tendon and muscle in a normal animal’s body to kill them. It made the fight a whole lot harder—unless you knew what you were looking for.

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  That bit he was still figuring out.

  Slowly, though, he was making a dent with his sloggy way. And though line after line of the monsters battered him, it wasn’t that all-out rush. With how hot his Asura was running, he could shrug it off pretty easily.

  The bees were starting to feel the heat—he could tell. If they’d been restless before, they were skittish now.

  They swirled and jittered and whined, and he could feel a primitive worry flaring in those tiny minds, spreading through that great mass as he took out more and more of it…

  Then he felt a new ripple go through the beast. It came to a resolve.

  He frowned.

  A ring of bees drifted in—and their stripes began to brighten. They glowed in that strange radioactive way—like they were charging up. The buzzing grew more violent, higher-pitched, and the bees began to vibrate, like grenades about to blow…

  …Not good.

  Then they dive-bombed him.

  He’d pretty much expected it by then—his hammers were already swerving out to meet them. He caught the bulk of them up-close, and managed to wipe out a good third of the rush in an instant.

  BOOM-CRUNCH!

  But a few hundred still managed to get behind them, and there they dive-bombed him, drilling into his back, his shoulders, sinking stingers into his skin.

  Then a constellation of tiny explosions wracked his backside; inkwells sank into his backside. And a huge numbing sensation stabbed through him, little spreading circles of deadening feeling—it was damn near ten times as bad as any time prior.

  He whirled around, roaring, and blasted out Solar Flare. But there was no point.

  The bees had fallen dead on the spot.

  They’d detonated all their life-force to poison him.

  The next wave dive-bombed him. He growled, lashing out his hammers, caught a meaty chunk, and saw them go up in a wall of golden fire.

  The rest got their stings in, though, and he clenched his teeth.

  This was quite annoying.

  It wasn’t the damage that got him. It was the numbing. Already large swathes of his back felt a lot tougher to move, losing connection.

  A few had gotten at his face, and swelling up. He was having more trouble seeing; his view was closing up a bit, blurring. It was even starting to make the Astral Plane feel fuzzier.

  He redoubled his efforts, loading more into his blasts, but the bees had lost all sense of caution. They seemed

  Now Zane was quite confident in his vitality. He was pretty confident it’d take a lot more than this thing was capable of to bring him to a knee, damage-wise.

  But they didn’t need to do that. They only needed to paralyze him, and they were willing to burn to do it.

  He was pretty sure they’d already pumped him with several times the dose they’d given to those paralyzed Goldback Gorillas. He was definitely starting to feel it.

  At this rate, he wouldn’t even get a chance to use Wish Upon a Star—by the time it finished loading, he’d be frozen stiff. Then, once he could hardly move, they would do their worst.

  It was, in Zane’s opinion, a rather cowardly plan. But that was birds for you.

  Each time they dive-bombed him it felt like an extra moon’s worth of weight got strapped on his arms. His skin was blotching up all over, some parts darkening to a sickly black, swelling up.

  The more those tiny pinpoints stuck him through, the more he felt dead zones growing all over him….

  He didn’t want to admit it—but it was sort of working. Even his thoughts felt woozier and woozier; his vision got blurrier and blurrier, and he stumbled a little, feeling slightly drunk, unwieldy.

  Then Zane frowned, skin tightening, and decided—no.

  He would not go out to a bunch of birds poking him. It was too dumb to be allowed. It was high time he got this figured out.

  Then a thought had struck him through the haze. He was focusing on the wrong thing—really he just needed to get at the queen. This other stuff didn't matter.

  Hm.

  His eyes flashed.

  The next time a fleet came suicide bombing at him he took it all—didn’t even try wiping out that chunk.

  It meant he took a lot more grief this time.

  Stingers blasted into him all over—but he just gritted his teeth and ignored it.

  Warning!

  Health under 50%

  Instead, he chucked out two blasts, pretty much at random, to the outer fringes of the hive. He just made sure to get a wide range on them.

  He didn’t expect much. And sure enough, he didn’t get much of a reaction—he caught a few bees, maybe. The rest floated out of the way.

  Amusement rippled through the hive. A chittering sound floated over, like they thought he’d gone silly. With how much drug they’d pumped in him it was a pretty reasonable guess, he supposed.

  He was already prepping his next batch. His eyes were flickering to the other side of the cave. By now he couldn’t see all that well, but he still had a decent sense of direction. He’d put out feelers there next, he decided.

  The next wave dive-bombed him. Again he lashed out, completely ignoring them, making sure to catch a wide swathe. BOOM!

  But this time he got a reaction.

  A ripple spread across the hive. Bees turned toward the blast, others swarmed to the top-left—blocking away a chunk as they zipped away.

  His face was quite puffed up by now, his skin stretched painfully tight. But he still couldn't help but smile just a little.

  It was a little like playing Battleship.

  He must’ve gotten quite close, too, just by accident. Now he knew what general chunk the queen was in. If he gave it a very good blast he might even catch it.

  But he’d already spent his fuel in those blasts, and it was no use.

  In blinks they were all dispersed. The moment was gone.

  But now he had all he needed.

  Zane took a deep breath. And cocked his whole body back—forcing new blood through his muscles—and loaded a one-two punch.

  It was all or nothing.

  He gave it all to his hammer.

  Instantly a Flare’s worth of essence loaded on. Then two—and pretty soon the bees grew alarmed; it was clear he meant business with this one. His Asura was spiking. His heart rate, his aura—it all roared into the world.

  He let loose the first hammer.

  He lumped out a wide, swerving blast—and detonated it right in the heart of the cavern. Tongues of brilliant flame seared every which way.

  But he whiffed.

  Most of the bees had scattered. But he wasn’t really expecting to hit the queen there; he didn’t need to. He just needed to get close.

  Close enough to give them a good scare. It was quite a big blast, after all.

  Sure enough—a good chunk of them swerved together, making a shield as they fled, like bodyguards.

  Got you, thought Zane woozily.

  He bellowed, and his Asura hit its true peak.

  He’d just spent a great deal of essence. But it wasn’t everything.

  He’d saved his best for last. He called—and a deep dam of power burst open within him. His second hammer roared out. And Wish Upon a Star burst into being, a revelation of heat, of raw essence, so bright it lit up every inch of the cavern—so bright there was nowhere to hide.

  Then he let it loose—right at that chunky bee-clump.