Chrysalis

Bella retreated from the Queen’s chamber, an inexplicable excitement building in her thorax. The evolution of the Queen was a subject of particular import to Bella and her partner Elligant. The two Core Shaper members of the council had struggled ever since they had evolved into their current forms and responsibilities to get a handle on their purpose, to forge ahead on their path, and they’d been making great strides.

Bella followed the winding tunnels of the nest this way and that, climbing over and around other ants going about their tasks until she made her way into the crafting research and development area. Here it was that those chambers put aside for the mage ants, the carvers and the core shapers to experiment and develop their skills were situated. Bella charged into the room designated for the shapers to use, almost nocking Ellie over in her haste.

"Bella! What the heck?" Ellie bellowed, disentangling herself from her exuberant partner.

Chastened, Bella pulled back slightly and straightened her antennae out as she collected her thoughts. The chamber was much as she had left it before, one side dominated by small indents they had carved into the dirt to hold the cores that were delivered to their chambers every day. Rows of the small, basic cores sorted into monster type and organised by evolutionary level, settled in neat lines that were each labelled via pheromones were the pride of the Carver department. It had taken a lot of agitation from the pair of them to get even this many cores from the soldiers who farmed them in the nest below.

Ellie and Bella had originally wanted every core collected by the colony to come through their claws, that they might practice their skills as much as possible in order to advance through the tiers, but it had been deemed both unreasonable and unnecessary. It was fair enough, seeing as the Core Shapers couldn’t possibly work through that many cores in a single day and there couldn’t be any delay in dispersing the cores to the hatchlings who needed them desperately in order to fuel their evolutions.

Even so, they had arranged to be delivered a number of cores each day that they could manage, along with their four assistants. With these cores they strained their minds as hard as possible to push their Core Shaping skills to the limit, pushing until their heads were near exploding and they collapsed in a heap, at which point the core would be put in a corner with the others which had been manipulated and collected at the end of the day for delivery.

It all came down to cores! There just wasn’t enough of them!

Since the Elder insisted on fuelling the evolution of as many hatchlings as possible, the colony consumed a ferocious number of cores and farming efforts had expanded to try and meet the ravenous demand. Other than providing water to the farm chambers in order to give the monsters a source of mana infused water, there was yet to be a development in the methods used to increase the speed and likelihood for a monster to develop a core and this was shaping up as a key challenge facing the expansion of the colony.

project that the Core Shapers had bent their

The Queen is getting ready to evolve!" Bella

wiggled her antennae in excitement, her mind instantly

sleep" Elligant gushed, "when she tells

were carved into another wall in the chamber. This was the collective knowledge that the colony had amassed so far about monster types and evolution. The most key information was obviously that which referred to their own species. The Queen’s evolution should be a rare and unique one, which would give them the opportunity to record an evolution pathway that wouldn’t often be seen. The only evolution that would be more tantalising would be the Eldest, since that particular member of the colony walked down a path of evolution that no other ant had, and in all

the Queen’s evolution might take, their four assistants continued their diligent work drawing from the collection of cores to be manipulated, carrying them back to

strength for another attempt. This was their day, each and every day, and they loved it. To the Core Shapers of the colony,

main project going?" Bella enquired of Ellie, getting back onto their actual

Ellie shook her head.

is still our lack of skill

beyond the four assistants who remained crumbled in the dirt. In their station a single core sat

could be reconstituted by members of the colony to assist in work and much of their theory

Shapers had very quickly abandoned that avenue of thought. They would never have the kind of resources to spare that the Eldest had lavished on those pets, they didn’t

to fulfil some sort of need without having to be strengthened

capacity of a pet. Activating the Core Shaping skill, she took in the rush of information contained within and