Chrysalis

With the human Queen locked between my jaws there is little the soldiers can do to prevent me from giving her a fatal haircut if I so choose.

The power is in my hands/claws!

Unfortunately for these soldiers the rage in my heart is burning furiously after witnessing the damage they've done to my family. I have no idea how many ants have been destroyed by these invaders, the Queen herself has been wounded by their blades.

I demand vengeance!

The soldiers are talking amongst themselves now, faces tight with worry as they try to work out how to deal with this situation. I don't want to give them enough time to formulate a plan. If they decided to threaten the ant queen then we might end up in a stand-off instead of this situation where I have the clear advantage.

I step forward aggressively, the human Queen swaying in the grasp of my mandibles, her feet dragging on the ground as she tries to keep her feet under her. When the soldiers see me treating their royalty so poorly they react angrily, clutching at their weapons and yelling at me in their language.

In response I flex my mandibles around her neck menacingly. In an attempt to communicate my demands I use one of my antennae to point several times at the ground.

Put your weapons down!

The soldiers look back and forth between themselves, confused by my gesture. I don't think they expect to be able to engage in any sort of dialogue with a monster and I don't really blame them. I get the impression that intelligent monsters do exist but the feeling I have is that those monsters wouldn't want to play nice with any creatures on the surface. From what I've seen of monsters so far I can only imagine they put that higher intelligence to the task of inventing ways to kill people more efficiently.

Clearly in this situation they don't know what to do.

several times to the ground with

Put your weapons down!

but for the life of the person I hold between my mandibles. They know

forth for a few seconds before the soldier who had been battling Tiny shouts at the others and then lies

….

That

over to them and take their weapons and shields

down we can reduce them as a threat by removing their equipment, this

eventually notice that Tiny hasn't moved. Focusing my attention on him I realise that he's still standing still, looking at

are those?] he

Oh boy.

the pointy metal things, like what that guy stabbed you with, and their big metal boards which he used to block your

thoughts ticking over in his mind with excruciating slowness. Come on

Then he slowly bends down towards the nervous soldier and grasps the sword between two of his thick fingers, glancing back

is the sword! Good job Tiny!] I praise

knows what he's doing he manages to go to each soldier and take their sword, bringing them back to me one by one before he tries to work out what the shield is. When he eventually figures it out he collects them one by one again, bringing them to me and completing his small pile of equipment in front

takes almost ten minutes for him to get it all

job Tiny] I say