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.

horde, like the one coming to kill us right now, more mage ants would

teams of mage ants who blasted the front ranks of the horde with deadly fire, torching

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

I could understand,

have been doing 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 need for a number of mages at this stage and wanted to

have loved to have more mages right now. 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

is a quality all of its

our way, I need to help with that so

close to your next evolution, Eldest?"

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

anything stronger is going to

onto me, didn't you? She's technically correct, but

think we can agree that 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 upcoming

Florence, the to this point silent Brood Tender, "without food the larvae will

suggesting 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 prepare

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

also need to keep enough senior workers here to ensure that the hatchling training program continues to run unabated. Each new hatchling deserves the best possible start we can give them, don't

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

sense

a few hours

nodded. "That's right. Crinis needs to evolve and we all need some rest. We've been pretty flat out for