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.

we have so few mages? When fighting against a huge horde, like the one coming to

it in my mind's eye already. Tunnel entrances falling in to reveal teams of mage ants who blasted the front ranks of the horde with deadly fire, torching dozens of monsters with flamethrower like magic before

into the soldier caste recently" Antionette informed me, "Large numbers of scouts and soldiers have

I could understand, but

our best to map out the skill paths from scratch and explore methods to raise up the future generations of mage ants" Propellant told me ruefully. "We didn't anticipate a

have loved to have more mages right now. To clear away large amounts of weak enemies they would have been indispensable.

quality all of its

way, I need to help with that so I can reach

to your next evolution, Eldest?" Victoriant asked, sounding oddly

am" I affirmed with a dip of my antennae, "I only need six more levels. If we're going to battle against

anything stronger is going to be beyond us for a time. If the Eldest can evolve then that task will

onto me, didn't you? She's technically correct, but that doesn't serve to soothe my

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

protested Florence, the to this point silent

suggesting that we cease food gathering operations completely" Sloan assured her, "but rather that we divert

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

ensure that the hatchling training program continues to run unabated. Each new hatchling deserves the best possible start we can give them,

time, something you can only do with extensively upgraded compound eyes, one of

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

be ready to move out for a few

all need some rest. We've been pretty flat out for the last few days and I suspect it's going to