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

with deadly fire, torching dozens of monsters with flamethrower like magic

members of the council shifted uncomfortably. "We've had most of the hatchlings move into the soldier caste recently" Antionette informed me, "Large numbers

could

and I 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

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 can be said for

they say: Quantity, is a quality all of its own. That's practically the

the horde that's coming our way, I need to help with that so I can reach my second objective,

close to your next evolution,

to battle against creatures as strong as those coming our way, we're going to need every little

the number of weaker monsters but tackling anything stronger is going to be beyond us

me, didn't you? She's technically correct, but that doesn't serve

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 battle then

shouldn't shut down food gathering entirely, surely?" protested Florence, the to

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

mollified, Florence settled back, though 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 Tender going

to ensure that the hatchling training program continues to run unabated. Each new

eyeballed each of them at the same time, something you can only do with extensively

equal treatment for the hatchlings still makes little sense

be ready to move out for a few hours will you, Senior?"

rest. We've been pretty flat out for the last few days and I suspect it's going to be hectic for a week or so after