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.

least there are somewhat strong monsters somewhere on the surface! I

in my chamber and wander off to try and digest what I've learned. The question that sticks out the most in my mind is, what am I supposed to do now? I've got the apparently

on

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 him

heck did these

I

arrival. Crinis pulls the tentacles back into the main body and manages to give the impression of guilty

doesn't seem at all fussed and simply climbs back onto my head happily. With a mental sigh I collect Crinis onto my back and make sure that Tiny knows not to kill

What to do?

through

the Queen and the Guard, forget any of

…

former humanity that I'm quite that comfortable with cold blooded human killing. Taking my revenge on the soldiers for the

the possibility of reprisals if we were to kill a Queen loved

about its business. The problem is that no matter how benevolent the Queen may seem, or how much she may

one is better but still not

is my least favourite and involves trying to keep the Queen and captain with the colony semi long term. We don't kill them,

plan. I leave myself open to mind stabbing at any

had to say. I had disregarded it at first but the

you want to

for a moment before responding firmly. [I want my city back. I refuse to hand the throne over to those motivated by greed and self-interest. I will attempt to rally the people around my banner and wage a campaign