Elijah crouched low, his body only inches from the cracked earth as he stared into the ravine and witnessed the ongoing battle. Tens of thousands of spiders, newly hatched but still deadly, fought against just as many wasp larvae. Some fighters were ripped to pieces by their enemies, but another spider-woman perched above it all, watching as impassively as Elijah did.

The fight itself was brutal. Primal. Savage in every single way imaginable. And yet, she did not intervene on behalf of her children.

Not even when one of the wasp larvae managed to climb onto a spider’s back, rear its bulbous head, and shoot a probiscis from its gaping mouth and into the spider’s body. It died only a second later.

The spider wavered briefly, and then leaped back into battle. This time, it didn’t attack the wasp larvae, though. Instead, it killed one of its fellow spiders.

The same scene repeated itself throughout the battle until the last of the spiders tried to escape. Their flight was quickly cut off by their fellows, and they were either slaughtered or forced to join the traitors’ ranks.

But what Elijah saw with his eyes was nothing compared to what he sensed with Soul of the Wild. If those arachnids’ actions weren’t evidence enough that something horrifying was going on, then what he felt with his spell certainly bridged that gap to true terror.

The injection was comprised of both genetic material as well as ethera, and Elijah watched in horror as it overwhelmed the spider’s entire nervous system and infected its brain.

The wasps were in control.

Elijah wasn’t certain if the larvae persisted or if they effectively killed themselves to take the reins, but that didn’t really matter all that much. What mattered was that the spiders weren’t just fighting for their lives. They were battling against a body-snatchers situation.

And losing.

In fact, it seemed that the entire ravine had been set up to facilitate it. Sure, the animals he saw trapped in the resin meant that it was a trap for food. And the spiders, after being taken by the wasp larvae, wasted no time in feeding upon them. But the primary purpose was to give the wasps plenty of fodder.

Elijah focused on the spider-woman, and he saw the same thing he’d witnessed with the first. She was her own creature. She could clearly think for herself. But there was something inside of her that forced her to obey.

To sacrifice her children to the wasps.

Was it mind control? Something biological? Or was it something simpler and less magical in nature? Elijah had no idea. But when he looked at the spider-woman, he felt a note of revulsion that came at least as much from what he’d witnessed as from his instincts.

But he didn’t intend to let any of them live.

Without further hesitation, he summoned Lurking Swarm. Dozens of crystalline spiders appeared in his awareness, though they were hidden even more thoroughly than he was. He leaped onto the spider-woman’s back, and his conjured minions followed suit. In seconds, they’d inflicted dozens upon dozens of afflictions upon her. Despite her obvious resistance to his venom, her defenses were quickly overwhelmed, and Elijah leaped free.

Using Cloud Step to keep from plummeting into the resin, he shifted out of Shape of the Scourge and resumed his human form. The second he could, he let loose with Lightning Domain, all while leaping from one cushion of air to the next. The controlled spiders and any remaining wasp larvae succumbed to the arcing currents of electricity, dying in seconds.

It wasn’t a hunt. Rather, it was an execution, and one that Elijah supported without hesitation. Even as he killed her controlled children, the spider-woman fell victim to his ongoing afflictions. She tried to hit him with blobs of webs, but with Soul of the Wild coupled with his powerful senses, Elijah had no issues dodging.

Meanwhile, her body liquified from the inside.

To hasten her demise, he cast Nature’s Claim. In only a second, the spores he conjured exploded into mushrooms that, in turn, erupted from her thorax in a shower of ichor.

She fell from the wall to which she’d clung, hitting the resin after only a second.

And then, there was silence.

Elijah used the last charge of Cloud Step to leap to the edge of the ravine. The phase spiders he’d conjured with Lurking Swarm dissipated into motes of ethera, but Elijah didn’t look back before moving on.

He’d lost count of how many such trap-ravines he’d sundered. Dozens, at the very least. Some of the spider-women were obviously higher leveled than others, and as such, they had proven to be much deadlier foes. However, none of them were capable of standing up to Elijah, especially when he had the benefit of ambush on his side. None of them had been as close as the first, though.

Such was the advantage of knowing what was coming.

In any case, the necessity of killing the spider-women and their grotesque children had slowed his pace considerably. Instead of covering a hundred or more miles every night, he was lucky to travel half of that. Still, he didn’t second-guess his choice to destroy them.

NovelBin is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

His instincts demanded action, and they were supported by Elijah’s own disgust. He didn’t hesitate to give in.

Even so, he’d slowly made progress over the past few days, and gradually, he’d drawn closer to the Primal Realm. Judging by the density of the local ethera, he knew it wouldn’t be much longer before he arrived. However, given what he’d seen so far, he had no idea what to expect.

After all, if this was supposed to be the dragon Primal Realm, then why had he only fought wasps and their enslaved spiders?

The question plagued his mind as, day after day, he continued on. Along the way, he mostly kept to his previously established pattern, traveling at night and retreating into the Hollow Depths at night. However, on a couple of occasions, he was forced by circumstance – usually that there weren’t any available entrances to the Hollow Depths – to make his way under the light of the sun.

That was enlightening.

The wasps grew even more pervasive, swarming in enormous groups that swept across the land like locusts. They attacked anything they found, even stripping the land of any vegetation stubborn enough to take root in such a hostile environment. There was no effort at conservation. Just greed and consumption.

Elijah found it sickening, and more than once, he was forced to resist the urge to summon an Eternal Plague to destroy them all.

But resist, he did.

He had other responsibilities. Killing the wasps would accomplish nothing. And what’s more, for the first time ever, he felt certain that he simply lacked the ability to make good on his desire for destruction.

There were too many, and they were strong enough to give him pause.

A few days later, Elijah saw the first variation in the swarms. The impalers – which was what he’d taken to calling the spear-wasps – were still the most numerous. The breeders were there as well. But as he traveled along, he saw three other types of wasps.

The first were the binders, which shot globs of resin at their prey, binding them in place. The second were the spine-wasps, who were capable of generating arrow-like projectiles that they shot at their victims. Those were particularly dangerous, because their combination of speed and aerial superiority meant that they would be incredibly difficult to pin down. Couple their evasive natures with ranged attacks that came with potent venom, and they were a deadly threat.

But most troubling were the mind-needles.

Those wasps were no bigger than an Asian giant hornet, which meant they were only a few inches long. However, what they lacked in size, they made up for with terrifying abilities. Elijah had watched one descend upon a camel, bore into its brain, and take complete control of the animal.

The mind-controlled camel had then shambled stiffly toward the other hornets in the swam, standing completely still while they tore it to shreds.

Could one of those creatures do the same to him?

Probably not.

But the prospect still gave him nightmares.

Thankfully, so long as Elijah kept to his schedule, moving at night so as to avoid their pheromones, they had no idea he was even there. Still, he was certain to keep multiple branches of his mind focused on his surroundings. He had no intention of falling into another trap or letting one of those mind-needles bore into his brain.

Lapses in concentration were a lot less frequent when he was confronted with the consequences, and on a daily basis.

Fortunately, Elijah kept his head on a proverbial swivel, and slowly, he resumed the same attitude he’d been forced to adopt in the Chimeric Forge. Back then, he’d known that danger was around every turn, but since he’d conquered it, he’d developed some bad habits. Most of those stemmed from making his way through the natural world, where he was rarely attacked by beasts.

But so close to a Primal Realm, the rules were different.

The wasps were both natural and unnatural. The first, because they were clearly not monsters. He could feel that much. But on the other hand, they weren’t true beasts, either. They came from the Primal Realm. Without that source, they never would have existed. Not on Earth, at least.

It was a fine and complex distinction, but one Elijah could feel right down to his bones.

Further complicating it was the fact that there was some personal enmity mixed into his feelings. He wasn’t certain how the wasps related to dragons, but he could infer that it was not an amicable relationship. They were enemies, and as such, his every thought pushed him to destroy them utterly.

He ignored those thoughts in favor of keeping control of his emotions and actions. His instincts informed his actions. He refused to let them control him, except in short bursts. But with the evolution of his mind and his increased dedication to monitoring his surroundings, he had only a little difficulty keeping a handle on it all.

And yet, it was always there. He couldn’t ignore it. He could only mitigate its influence.

Then, as if the world wanted to shatter that illusion of control, he saw something truly horrifying.

It was a wasp.

But like the spider-woman, it was partly humanoid. Like someone had somehow fused an elven man with a wasp. The abdomen was nearly identical to any other wasp, though the stinger was more like a dagger than a spear. However, instead of an insectile thorax, the creature possessed the torso of a muscular man. Very little of his white skin was visible, with much of his chest covered by dense, rust-red, armor-like chitin.

His angular, elf-like face was entirely exposed, though.

And that meant that there was nothing to cover the creature’s haughty expression. Elijah immediately wanted to kill the thing, and in the most painful way possible. Thankfully, he caught himself before he made a move, because the creature was far from alone.

Not only was it surrounded by a veritable army of other wasps, ranging from the mind-needles to the impalers, and everything in between, but there were also hundreds of spider-women there as well.

And each and every one of those spider-women wore silvery collars.

Finally, the wasp-man, which Elijah assumed was a vespiran, was only one of many. Though he was clearly the leader of his people, which, unlike the spiders, included representatives of both genders. Each one wore their arrogance like a mask.

As Elijah watched the procession, he came to the inevitable conclusion that the spider-women were effectively slaves. Most of the time, their enslavement wasn’t overt or obvious, but their demeanors spoke the truth to anyone with eyes. They were clearly subservient, and the collars solidified that impression.

Elijah could almost pity them, if it wasn’t for the hatred in his heart.

He watched for nearly an hour as the procession marched on. Fortunately, sunrise was still a few hours off, so he was in no danger of discovery. By the time they disappeared into the night, he felt anger, instinctive and hot, twisting around disgust and screaming at him to fall upon them with the wrath of a true dragon.

With no small degree of effort, he turned away. He wasn’t there to kill meaningless manifestations of the Primal Realm. He needed to find the entrance first, then figure out how to conquer it. Until then, he would stay on task, regardless of what his instincts told him to do.