Chrysalis

"With your permission Eldest, I will leave the council and begin to organise a workforce to prepare our initial fortifications" Tungstant said.

I waved an antennae in approval and the small, dextrous ant climbed up the wall and out the roof of the chamber in a moment.

"Alright then. Pitfall traps, tunnels to attack, I like all of these ideas. What else have we got? How is our magic firepower coming along?" I asked.

The two mages in the room, Propellant and Coolant, shifted on their feet as they became the centre of attention for the council. The mage caste hadn't had a lot of time to build up their raw magic handling skills, and were without the benefit of my own extensive spending on brain power when it came to evolutions. Having said that, they were no slouches in the brain game and were able to choose their own elemental gland on evolution. So there had to be some juice there.

"The number of mage ants we have to work with is still limited" Coolant hedged.

There were over a thousand ants in the colony at this time, there were like a hundred new ants being born every day. How few mages could there be?

"How many are we talking about?" I asked.

"Five" Coolant said flatly.

"Five?!" I sputtered.

"Oh, seven including Coolant and I" Propellant offered helpfully.

Holy moly.

a huge horde, like the one

horde with deadly fire, torching dozens of monsters with flamethrower like magic before retreating through the tunnels which collapsed behind them, leaving

"We've had most of the hatchlings move into the soldier caste recently" Antionette informed me, "Large numbers of scouts and soldiers have been born. Our more specialised castes have had slower recruitment

I could understand, but

up the future generations of mage ants" Propellant told me ruefully. "We didn't anticipate a need for a number of mages at this stage and wanted

they would have been indispensable. There may be

Quantity, is a quality all of its own. That's practically

We have two main objectives, we need to whittle down the horde that's coming our way, I need to help with that so I can reach my second objective, which is

to your next evolution, Eldest?" Victoriant

"I only need six more levels. If we're going to battle against creatures as strong as those

of weaker monsters but tackling anything stronger is going to be beyond

work onto me, didn't

extent in the lead up to this crisis?" I asked the gathered council, "If we don't survive the upcoming battle then the

gathering entirely, surely?" protested Florence, the to

that we cease food gathering operations completely" Sloan assured her, "but rather that we divert a significant portion of the soldiers

clearly not happy. I understand it, less food coming in means less brood. What else is a

hatchling training program continues to run unabated. Each new

something you can only do with extensively upgraded compound eyes, one of the benefits of being an insect

in agreement, more to appease me than anything else. My insistence on equal treatment for the hatchlings still makes little sense to them I suspect, thankfully by virtue of being old they have to listen to me. Hooray for strict respect for the

ready to move out for a few hours will you,

We've been pretty flat out for the last few days and I suspect it's going to be hectic for a week