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.

like the one coming

of the horde with deadly fire,

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 had

could understand, but

generations of mage ants" Propellant told me ruefully. "We didn't anticipate a need for a number of mages at this stage

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

all of its own. That's practically

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

to your next evolution, Eldest?" Victoriant asked,

with a 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,

monsters but tackling anything stronger is going to be beyond

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

don't need to prioritise food gathering or egg laying to a high extent in the lead up to this crisis?" I

food gathering entirely, surely?" protested Florence, the to this point

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

Tender were clearly not happy. I understand it, less food coming in means

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,

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

makes little sense to them I suspect, thankfully by virtue of being old they have to listen to me.

move out for a few hours will you, Senior?" Sloan

for the last few days and I suspect it's going to be hectic for a week or so