Chrysalis

It took hours to interrogate this Queen and the flow of new information left me staggering. Despite my pounding headache I pushed forward with all of my strength! Who knew what could happen in the future? This old lady might fall over from a heart attack, every ounce of knowledge must be extracted this very second!

By the end the two of us were tired beyond words. Not quite willing to trust the words of this ant killer up front I asked every question several times in different ways, attempting to catch her off guard. It's true that when communicating using mind magic, at least so far in my limited experience, it is possible to sense on a surface level the thoughts and feelings behind a persons' communication. However the quality of the connection clearly plays a part.

Formo's mind and honesty rang through like a clear bell tone as he spoke, no duplicity was hidden at all within his connection. The mind magic woven by the Queen is far from as clear, words and intentions becoming muddled or lost in translation, making me far more wary.

For her part the Queen seems to have answered everything faithfully to the best of her ability, it will impossible to know if there are any mistruths mixed in until I get the chance to ask these questions of another individual.

Even with this being the case I've been able to learn so much.

For the starters the Queen's own situation. This ruler is quite respected and admired amongst her people (so she says) and has been Queen of this small kingdom of Liria for decades, over thirty years of peace and prosperity.

Supposedly there has been a coup brewing beneath the surface, something about profit, corrupt merchants, outside forces and exploitation, I didn't really listen to this bit that carefully. The Queen got wind of the situation and attempted to bait the plotters out into the open but underestimated their strength, eventually her loyalists were defeated and she was forced to flee the city with her personal guard, moving out of the city at night before running into the colony.

I was fairly shocked at this point, this person is either not nearly as wise as they claim or just plain unlucky!

From there she told me about the class based leveling system of the surface races, what knowledge she had on the other races that inhabit the surface, she'd never heard of elves unfortunately, and some history of the kingdom

Apparently this kingdom is fairly young, less than two hundred years old. After being infested with monsters for a tremendously long time, only in relatively recent history had this area been purged (her words) and the monsters either defeated or driven into the Dungeon. So apparently this region is still considered underdeveloped and somewhat backward, a remote frontier of the surface world.

In fact, if we were to go south for a few days we would pass into lands that hadn't seen human occupation for thousands of years. Even now the people of this country battled to keep the monsters pushed back and occasionally they mounted campaigns to further push back the border.

strong monsters somewhere on the surface! I was beginning to think my surface cousins were completely

the most in my mind is, what am

being sat on by

himself right on his back. Is that Crinis and Vibrant? The two little creatures are positioned curiously near the captains face. Vibrant appears to be attempting to snip him on the nose with her mandibles whilst Crinis is repeatedly slapping

heck did these two climb

mucking around you two!"] I say to both of

noticed my arrival. Crinis pulls the tentacles back into the main body and manages to give the impression of guilty silence despite being

a mental sigh I collect Crinis onto my back and make sure that Tiny

What to do?

to think it through Anthony! What are the

and the Guard, forget any of this ever happened and move on with my

…

far removed from my former humanity that I'm quite that comfortable with cold blooded human killing. Taking my revenge on the soldiers for the damage done to

reprisals if we were to kill a Queen loved by

idea honestly appeals to me quite a bit, I get to wash my hands of these humans and the colony can go back about its business. The problem is that no matter how benevolent the Queen may seem, or how much she may promise not to seek reprisals against us in the future, I would have to relocate the colony completely, possibly back down in the Dungeon even, in order

one is better

third option is my least favourite and involves trying to keep the Queen and captain

stabbing at

it at first but the more I think about how to move next

you want to do next?]

city back. I refuse to hand the throne over to those motivated by greed and self-interest. I will attempt to rally the