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.

fighting against a huge horde, like the one coming to kill us right now, more

front ranks of the horde with deadly fire, torching dozens of monsters

of the council shifted uncomfortably. "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

could understand, but

raise up the future generations of mage ants" Propellant told me ruefully. "We

To clear away large amounts of weak enemies they would have been indispensable. There may be a use for the mages we have, of course, but there is a lot that can be said

a quality all of

that's coming our way, I need to help with that so I can

your next evolution, Eldest?" Victoriant

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

"we may have the ability to chip away at the number of weaker monsters but tackling anything stronger is going to be beyond us for a time. If the Eldest can evolve

wanted to dump all of the hard work onto me, didn't you? She's technically correct, but that doesn't serve to soothe my

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

protested Florence, the to this point

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

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

that the hatchling training program continues to run unabated. Each new hatchling deserves the best possible

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

insistence on equal treatment for the hatchlings still makes little sense to them

for a few hours will you,

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