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 be

see it in my mind's eye already. Tunnel entrances falling in to reveal teams of mage ants who blasted the front ranks of the horde with deadly fire, torching dozens of monsters with flamethrower like magic before retreating through the tunnels which collapsed behind them, leaving decimated and crispy ranks of enemies

Antionette informed me, "Large numbers of scouts and soldiers have been born. Our more specialised castes have had slower recruitment rates for

I could understand,

up the future generations of mage ants" Propellant told me ruefully. "We

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 can be said

is a quality all of its own.

coming our way, I need to help

to your next evolution, Eldest?" Victoriant

six more levels. If we're going to battle against creatures as strong

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

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

in the lead up to this crisis?" I asked the gathered council,

down food gathering entirely, surely?" protested 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

her fellow Brood Tender were clearly not happy. I understand it, less food coming

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

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

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

a

been pretty flat out for the last few days and I suspect it's