32 Swarm

Lucan, Silent and Lisel walked through the collapsed buildings. Shifting any rubble that looked light. The houses they passed were destroyed. After going trough 15 homes they found 2 copper pieces, a spool of blue thread and a candle with maybe 10 minutes of burn time left. Pretty much nothing.

The green house made up the majority of the part of the city they were searching. The glass was intact, foggy and dirty. Lucan cracked the front door and let Little brown scurry inside. They gave the mouse 10 minutes to look around. Aside from plants and insects, little brown hadn't come across anything.

The three entered the greenhouse. The plants and foliage remained untouched. The large species were overgrown and blocking the small plants from the light. The plants that survived all thrived in dim lighting, Lisel and Lucan followed Silent around from plant to plant. They followed her instructions on how to remove the plants without damaging them. They also followed her rule of see 2 pick 1, see 5 pick 3. They collected plants but left plenty for them to regrow from.

Halfway through the green house the group discovered a large cage stretching towards the ceiling. Inside the strong mesh enclosure was a barren tree. Its trunk stood 50 feet tall with empty branches extending outwards. There was nothing else inside.

Lisel found a small hole the size of a fist in the mesh. The hole was made from the outside in.

All three suddenly raised their guard and hesitated to make any sudden movements. While slowly staring around themselves for 15 minutes before they started forward again. 4 hours passed as they moved through most of the greenhouse and had collected a good amount of ingredients.

They stood before a large tree with dark blue leaves. It was eerily quiet. No insects could be heard like in the rest of the greenhouse. The tree was void of bark and a sturdy almost metallic wood stood ridged and strong. The lowest branches were 15 feet up and the tree bore no fruit. They had no intentions of uprooting the large tree. Since there was nothing, they could gain from it, they decided to turn back.

They walked slower and doubled checked that they didn't miss anything.

"Do either of you feel like we are being watched?" Silent asked.

"No." Lisel said.

"What is it?" Lucan asked.

Silent shrugged. "Ever since we turned away from that tree, I felt like we have been watched."

"Do you want to go back?" Lucan asked.

"We should check it out." Lisel said before Silent could answer.

They turned around and cautiously headed back to the tree.

"What?!" Lisel exclaimed.

Lucan pushed past her to see the sturdy tree, with no blue leaves. Each branch was as bare as inside the mesh enclosure. The group backed up to each other and maintained high alert.

20 minutes passed without anything happening.

"I guess it doesn't want to show itself." Lucan said stepping towards the exit.

The moment he stepped out a swarm of dark blue overcame him. His exposed flesh was cut, scrapped and repeatedly bitten while his equipment's durability started to fall. He embraced his shadow form and slid out of the blue swarm as a formless shadow, reappearing on the other side of a large bush. Lucan turned towards the swarm and used intimidate. A single blue creature fell from the swarm frozen in fear. Lucan clicked his tongue at his own stupidity.

Lisel pulled out a staff and was starting to chant a spell.

"No don't!" Silent yelled, stopping Lisel from casting. The blue swarm had surrounded them and was making their health fall but Silent Night reached into her bag and pulled out a handful of Bloodgrass they had gather earlier. She threw it out in front of her.

The swarm calmed and started to flutter towards the red grass.

"Quick give me the bloodgrass you picked earlier." She said to Lucan and Lisel. "I can pay you back later."

Lisel tossed all the blood grass she had onto Silent's pile. "I wouldn't have been able to collect this much without your instructions. Consider it payment."

Lucan nodded and added his as well.

The swarm of blue land on the large pile of bloodgrass and started to eat.

"Amazing." Silent said. When the creatures came to a stop, they could see that they were dark blue butterflies. A swarm that numbered over 1,000. They had mistaken the carnivorous butterflies resting on the tree as leaves earlier.

"Yes, they are beautiful."

"Good thinking with the grass." Lucan added.

Silent motioned to Lucan's wounds. "If they eat flesh, I figured they would have needed to eat something in here to stay alive. The bloodgrass was the only thing that came to mind."

The small mound of bloodgrass was eaten surprisingly fast. The butterflies were relaxed and slower after eating. They no longer attacked and slowly flew around Silent. A few landed on her shoulder and head.

"We should leave her." Lisel said to Lucan. She saw the weird look he gave her. "It will be easier for her to tame them alone." Lisel explained. The fear in Silent's eyes was replaced with excitement.

"I will be fine." She said to Lucan before turning to Lisel. "How do you tame a pet?"

"Oh, did you not do any research?" Lucan teased.

"Just try to make a connection with them. They have already gone from hostile to curious. Your chances are good but every pet is different. You have to discover it for yourself. Find us outside when you're done."

Lucan gave Silent a thumbs up before following Lisel out of the greenhouse.

Since Silent could be anywhere from 5 minutes to a few hours Lucan decided to work on creating variant spells. It was a piece of advice Glen the head magical researcher of Avalon gave him. In his spare time, he had been trying without any success. He focused his efforts on shadow bolt, trying to alter its form into an arrow.

Each time, the spell would backfire, exploded in his hand and do a bit of damage to him. After the tenth time watching Lucan blow himself up Lisel couldn't stay quiet.

"What are you doing?"

"Oh, just trying to make a variant spell. What are you doing? Indulging in my good looks."

Lisel scowled and shook her head. "Don't flatter yourself. I am just curious why the weakest one here keeps blowing himself up."

"If the dang shadow bolt would stay in the shape of an arrow, I wouldn't be the one taking damage. Unless you can help me correct the spell formula, I don't think you will be able to assist me in creating a variant spell."

"Who wants to assist you? And just because I don't know magic formulas doesn't mean I don't know something you don't."

Lucan stopped his casting and turned to her excitedly. "What do you know?"

Lisel smiled. "I know you aren't polite." She said with a laugh.

Lucan grumbled and got back to work. "Geez, it's just a joke. The Queen of Shadows is also a spell weaver and she sells her variant spells.���

"Oh really?"

"From the looks of it, you aren't making a variant. You are making a new spell. Her variants are usually 2 or 3 spells combined together for a unique effect. You could try using an illusion to make your shadow bolt look like an arrow, but it wouldn't gain the normal armor piercing chance like other spell arrows. If you did that, it would probably be a variant spell."

"Ah, thank you wise and beautiful sage of magic. I will try that straight away."

Lisel ignored his flattery and turned her attention back to the potatoes she was peeling for dinner.

Lucan followed her suggestion and was starting to show some results when Silent walked out of the greenhouse with a smile from ear to ear. Lucan did his best to not become intoxicated by it.

"Success?" He asked.

She nodded excitedly. "There are no more butterflies in the greenhouse."

"You tamed them all? You have thousands of butterflies now?" Lucan asked, shocked.

"Yes and no. I tamed the swarm but when I made them my pet I chose for them to drop back to level one. So there is only 100 now."

"That is the better decision." Lisel added. "They will have a better growth potential at your side."

"They better. They took up 2 of my 3 pet slots. But they are defiantly worth it. The best part is they are invulnerable to magic damage. A giant fireball can't wipe out the swarm this way."

"That's good. Be careful though. Breath attacks, although magical, don't count as magic. I learned that one the hard way. And be mindful of spells like meteor. It does both magical and physical damage." Lisel said.

"That is good to know. A breath attack would be deadly to my swarm."

"How long is their death timer?" Lucan asked. "Adrestia is 12 hours."

"Most pets are 12 hours, but the swarm takes up 2 spots so…" Lisel said, turning to Silent Night.

"It is a bit different. Even at high levels the butterflies have very little health. Each one has a death timer of 12 hours. But there is a catch, if the swarm's numbers drop below 25%, I will resurrect one every minute until they reach 50% of their full numbers. It starts with the butterflies that have been dead the longest. It's a skill with a weeklong cooldown."

"Good to have, hopefully it won't come to that." Lucan said. "The others are starting to return towards the center of town.

"We should start heading back too." Lisel said. Lucan and Silent turned up the street, following her. All the while Silent was telling Lucan everything she had learned about the carnivorous butterflies. They seemed like a pretty cool pet. Lucan was a touch jealous even if it was just butterflies.