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.

have so few mages? When fighting against a huge horde, like the one coming to kill us right now, more mage ants

entrances falling in to reveal teams of mage ants who blasted the front ranks of the horde with deadly fire,

the hatchlings move into the soldier caste recently" Antionette informed me, "Large numbers of scouts and soldiers have been born.

I could understand, but

future generations of mage ants" Propellant told me ruefully. "We didn't anticipate a need for a number of

enemies they would have been indispensable. There may be a use for the mages we have, of course, but there

say: Quantity, is a quality all of its own. That's practically the ants

our way, I need to help with that so I can reach my second objective, which is to

next evolution, Eldest?" Victoriant asked, sounding

If we're going to battle

away at the number of weaker monsters but tackling anything stronger is going to be beyond us for a time. If the Eldest can

of the hard work onto me, didn't you? She's technically

egg laying to a high extent in the lead up to this crisis?" I asked the gathered council, "If we don't survive the upcoming

the to this point silent Brood Tender, "without food the

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

fellow Brood Tender were clearly not happy. I understand it, less food coming in means less brood. What else

continues to run unabated. Each new hatchling deserves the best possible start

them at the same time, something you can only do with

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

be ready to move out for a few hours will you,

rest. We've been pretty flat out for the last few days and I suspect