Chrysalis

So... I mean.. It’s a little odd...

I was a human before after all. I may not have lived what people would call a ... normal life ... but hey, I went to school, a bit, I saw people, I ate human food.

Now I have a giant ant Queen staring down at me and insisting that she and my many siblings are my family now.

...

For some reason I’m surprisingly ok with that.

I had a pet ant colony as a human, I kept them contained and fed them, watched the colony grow and cleaned out their spaces for them. In some ways they were the most constant members of my household, I certainly saw them every day, which wasn’t really true of anyone else.

Perhaps that is why I don’t really mind being an ant.

If I’m going to be a member of this family then I have to do my best to save them!

I start thinking out loud.

"Ok then, Queen, I don’t think we are uh, strong enough to survive the wave. If our nest is invaded from the outside as well as the inside, we could be completely wiped out!"

The Queen looks concerned and taps me with her antennae, urging me to continue.

"I think we need to move the colony! We have to get somewhere ... else. Somewhere safer".

"Do you know where we should go child?"

Err.... No?

We live in the Dungeon, and from what I’m told the entire place is going to become a death zone for up to a week!

I don’t even know that the surface will be safe from the impending danger!

...

be safer than

that would be suicide, but with my Tunnel Map I can clearly see where the entrance I first encountered the humans

...

I get the colony to relocate to the surface there’s definitely a chance that we all get killed

we stay down here, will the outcome be any

we have to take a

run circles inside my head. My resolution firms as I see her commitment to waiting

new tunnel to

slowly digests this bombshell, taking time to think

Then she responds.

is the ’surface’?" she

...

course, how could she possibly know

upwards, that bypasses the existing Dungeon passages and if we can

enough that she

I wait nervously for her to puzzle out exactly what this means

surprise

will do as you suggest child. Where should

At least the first hurdle has been cleared! If the Queen has agreed to my plan then I might have a chance of getting the workers to cooperate. I’m not exactly sure how the pecking order works in a monstrous ant colony. In a normal ant colony on earth, the Queen doesn’t actually ’rule’ over the

workers run the colony on a kind of democracy system. For example, if one worker finds a good place to move the nest, they’ll lay down a trail and start moving the brood. If other ants find the trail, they will go and check it out and if they agree with the first ants opinion, they will join in, eventually when enough workers have agreed on a course of action, it will happen. It isn’t always so smooth of course, sometimes the workers don’t

and she is far from a helpless creature at the mercy of the workers. If anything, she is probably closer to what most humans think an ant Queen is like on earth, in charge, making

workforce, it’s clear that they can understand my pheromone language

these thoughts out of my head

battlefield first, the Biomass is too valuable to the colony for us to abandon it. Once that is done I’ll start digging the tunnel, if you can

spoke to Formo, I’ve already noticed the brightness of the forest has diminished. The mana is continuing to recede, just as the Sophos had predicted. The forest is going to grow even dimmer, perhaps even fading

the head with her antennae before retreating back to the security of the

workers are doing just that, continued to comb over the battlefield and collect the spoils of war. As more times goes by the number of ants

If the workforce becomes stronger then we will have a greater chance to

my family now and every one of these ants is my sibling. I didn’t have any brothers or sisters that I knew of in my last life, going from