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.

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

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

hatchlings move into the soldier caste recently" Antionette informed me, "Large numbers

could understand,

and explore methods to raise up the future generations of mage ants" Propellant told me ruefully. "We didn't anticipate a need for a number

now. To clear away large amounts of weak enemies they would have been indispensable. There may be a use for the

say: Quantity, is a quality all

main objectives, we need to whittle down the horde that's coming our way, I need to help with that so I can

your next evolution, Eldest?" Victoriant asked, sounding

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

chip away at the number of weaker monsters but tackling anything stronger is going to

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

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

to this point

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

mollified, Florence settled back, though she and her fellow Brood Tender were clearly not happy. I understand it, less food coming in

the hatchling training program continues to run

do with extensively upgraded compound eyes, one of the benefits of being an

equal treatment for the hatchlings still makes little sense to them I suspect,

out for a few hours will you, Senior?"

"That's right. Crinis needs to evolve and we all need some rest. We've been pretty flat out for the last few days and I suspect it's going to