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 mage

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

members 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.

could understand,

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 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

a quality all of its

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

next evolution, Eldest?"

am" I affirmed with a dip of my antennae, "I only need six more levels. If we're going to

number of weaker monsters but tackling anything stronger is going to be beyond us for a time. If the Eldest can evolve then that task

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

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

food gathering entirely, surely?" protested Florence, the to this point silent Brood Tender, "without food the larvae will

assured her, "but rather that we divert a significant portion of

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

to ensure that the hatchling training program continues to

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

treatment for the hatchlings still makes little sense to them I suspect, thankfully by virtue of being old they have to listen to

for a few hours will you, Senior?" Sloan asked

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