His ankle was sore, but he had taken worst hits and injuries in his adventures before. After they were done here, he would address it. For the time being, they needed to finish the task at hand.

“It is just a scratch. Come on, we need to deal with that nest before more wake up.”

He walks back with the red tiefling to the nest. All was still. Seems their strategy of luring the guards away worked well to keep the rest from being alerted to their attack. With any luck, the nest would be mostly full of larva and not full grown insects. 

Zarius turns his attention to Zeras for a moment. "I can set it ablaze, be ready to take out anything that tries to escape." 

The tiefling moves around to the back of the nest wrapped around the tree. Doing a bit of searching, he manages to make out a weak spot in the center mass of the structure that would suit as the best location to start the blaze. He breathes and waits a moment for Zeras to position himself before he lights his hand in a black-blue flame.^[1]

Starting at the base of the nest and tree, he starts to burn the delicate, paper-like material that the nest is made of. Despite the humidity of the Lantern Light Wood, the nest catches fire quickly and begins to be consumed in the unnatural flame. 

From deep in the nest, something starts to stir as the smoke billows and fills the chambers of the nest. 

---

[1] Art of the Burning Fist

A slight buzzing noise appears in the night. Very faint at the beginning of the blaze, yet it slowly becomes more evident as the nest starts to burn even fiercer in the night. As the nest burns away from the fire, the buzzing noise increases in pitch and produces a ever slight yet unmistakable vibration. The vibration and noise comes in pulsating intervals. At first, very subtle yet as the blaze consumes the nest, the vibration and noise appear to be synchronized in relation to the blaze. The rage of the flames become more fierce as time passes in the slightly chilly night. As the nest crumbles bit by bit, it starts to reveal a large insect. Large in terms of the originally large wasp monsters. It’s carapace more ornately beautiful as well as the width of it displaying the pure body it has to offer in terms of strength and power. On its head, a small marking appeared. 

The large wasp appears to be starting to wake up from its slumber, the eyes slowly opening while its limb begin to stretch or an activity similar to such. It is a tad difficult to take in the whole view of such a monster in the heat of the moment. Before it completely wakes, Zeras casts clone self and motions it to be a few meters away from the face of the wasp. Rapidly thinking of the next plan of action. “My clone will not distract such a beast for long. I believe we at least need to pincer it and we can act in the heat of the moment. Not much of a plan, but there’s not much time”. As soon as he finished the sentence, his feet swiftly brought him to the opposite side of the insect. Ready to start this body.

The buzzing noise was certainly disconcerting. Zarius slowly backs away from the nest as the flames consume the highly flammable material. It becomes pretty clear that the nest is far from unoccupied as the form of a massive wasp queen is revealed beneath the crumbling shell of the nest. 

She is a truly impressive creature, if not terrifying to any who have a fear of insects. Zarius wasn't a fan of insects of other creepy crawlies, but he also wasn't afraid of them. He was a cat person. At the very least, he liked Caedes' spider fine, but Charlotte was more like a cat or dog than the wasps were. 

This bug though? Nah, this bug had to go. Something of this size could certainly carry off an innocent civilian and tear their limbs off one by one. What's more, if this was a queen then the chances of her making more drones was very likely.

Honestly, they probably lucked out on the timing of this whole situation. If they had shown up a week or a month later who knows how many more wasps they would have had to deal with. Just these few had torn up the forest pretty badly. A whole swarm would have been a threat to all of Moonglade. 

Zeras creates his clone and Zarius nods in acknowledgement of the young fighter's plan. It was sensible enough for confronting a giant wasp monster.

He positions himself on the opposite side of the queen and races up the side of a tree with a large branch overhanging the awakening queen.^[1] They had to keep her grounded, otherwise they would be at a severe disadvantage. Getting through the wasp's thick chitin wouldn't be easy. Luckily Zarius knew all too well about the effectiveness of an ooze's acid and he just so happened to have some on hand.

Jumping off the branch and landing on the queen's back as she stretches her wings, he pops the cork on another glass vial filled with a little green jelly.^[2] He drips some of its contents out onto where the wings connect to the thorax of the giant insect and the substance quickly eats away at the organic tissues. 

The queen retaliates by trying to fling the tiefling off her back with jerking movements and spinning about. She slams her back into the side of the tree, pinning him between her hard exoskeleton and the tree's trunk. The tiefling grunts and struggles to push her massive weight off of him before he's crushed. 

---

[1] Spider Silk Boots
[2] Oozeling

Positioning himself on the opposite side of his partner, preparing his mind as well as body for this fight. This is shaping up to become a rough fight between two skilled fighters and one truly strong insect or it should be called a monster in terms of appearance at the very least. 

Starting off the plan, Zeras immediately sprints towards the queen. The monstrous size of the queen cuts off all ideas of a quick fight. Rather than immediately rush at any suspected weak points, it would be in their best interest to probe for such weaknesses. Grappling around the chitin and other plating around the body of the beast, checking all crevices for any parts which could be relatively easily ripped out. Fast, light, and short punches thrown upon many different parts. One by one they sound out with a small clinking noise, the rebound slightly hurts his fists. 

A few moments later, the queen begins to become agitated as it starts to flail around more. Not in any random capacity, but rather is attempting to shoo something off its back. It would be difficult not to notice such a obvious movement, wondering what exactly was occurring on its back. Quickly shifting his eyes a slight ways towards its back, taking in the view of a tiefling riding this monstrous sized wasp queen while its in a sense, bucking around, was amusing. Zarius was pouring a weird jelly appearance item on its back where the wings connected to it. The tissue connecting the wings to the body was dissolving in front of his eyes. 

Dashing over towards Zarius. Grasping a line of sight towards the other tiefling, stuck in between the queen and a large tree, talk about a rock and a hard place. Right before the queen slams into him, Zeras finally reaches at their position. Taking hold of Zarius and pulls him out of the precarious situation as fast as possible. Just in time, it would seem. As the monster crashes right into the tree. From its back, the wings are barely hanging onto it. Where it appears as if it could fall right off. 

Taking advantage of its slightly stunned state, Zeras dashes over to one of its legs in hopes of disabling it. It’s flight capabilities is basically over, but it still has its ground movements available to it.

Thanks to Zeras, Zarius is pulled free from being crushed by the giant queen wasp. 

"Thank you." He huffs in response before dodging out of the way of one of the insect's legs. 

The queen was beyond agitated. Between the melting of its wings and the onslaught of strikes from Zeras trying to discern its weak points, the bug was wide awake now and angered. It stomps about and throws its head about with its sharp, vice-like mandibles snapping at the two annoyances running about the smoldering remains of its nest. 

Zeras' hit lands true and the queen's leg buckles under her weight, making her struggle to regain her balance and rise back up. The queen reassesses the situation and surges forward to try and avoid being surrounded by the two much faster tieflings. 

Zarius ducks under the queen, he risks being singed by the remaining embers in favor of avoiding her jaws. That of course did put him in a bad position as now he was facing down the stinger at the end of her abdomen. The queen tries to rise up and strike at him with the stinger to which Zarius uses his knuckle-knives to black the piercing attack.^[1]

Narrowly avoiding the deadly hit, the tiefling then jumps up and slams his fire wreathed fists into its underside.^[2] The hit reverberates through the tough natural armor of the creature and its more vulnerable internal organs take enough damage to cause the queen to cough up some liquid.^[3]

---

[1] Knuckle Knife
[2] Art of the Burning Fist
[3] Resonating Strike