Chrysalis

The surrounding crowds, pressed together in the square, recoil with horror as Crinis makes her presence known. The fact that she snatched up the mysterious ants rather than start munching on the helpless crowd isn't enough to completely mollify their fears. Screams and indignant cries rise as they push to create distance from me, while the kid who threw the stupid ball looks on with wide eyes before being dragged away by who I presume is his mother.

Whelp, time for me to get out of here.

"Let's get the heck out of here!" I shout to my siblings before speaking to Beyn over the mental link. [We need to leave this area. Let things calm down a bit before we come back.]

The priest readily agrees, and our convoy makes directly for the nearest wall as the crowd scrambles to make room for us to pass by. A few guards brandish their spears at us, but the ants ignore them, climbing straight up the wall and using their bodies to shove the guards to one side to create space for those behind to head straight over. Each of the ant-robed humans is picked up by a large soldier and carried over whilst clutched in mandibles. You'd think they'd be a little afraid at being gripped in the crushing jaws of powerful monsters, but instead they look almost radiantly happy. These people are just as far gone as the damned priest. There's no hope for them anymore.

I maintain my grip on the still struggling ant as Crinis holds aloft the other nineteen. It makes crawling up the wall rather difficult, the individual ants are relatively small, but holding twenty of them is no joke in terms of weight! Up and over and once more in the clear as the uproar behind us continues. Being surrounded by my fellow insects rather than the panicked citizens of this city is such a relief. Back amongst my own kind!

Those ants who'd taken apart the gates were already on their way out of the city, wasting no time in their quest to return the precious artifacts back to the nest. If we can unlock the secrets of this magic, the future of the Colony will truly know no limits! A solid contingent of soldiers and scouts go with them, guarding the precious cargo. For the rest of the ants present, the work is clear. We may have seized the gates inside the square, but there are no guarantees that there aren't more besides those that we were told of.

"Do you think all of the gates will have that distinctive mana gathering array?" Coolant asks from nearby.

Struggling to contain my wiggling captives, I take a moment to reply.

"I'm not sure," I admit, "since there's no Dungeon veins in here, the mana is much thinner than it is out in the tunnels, so it would make sense they'd need such arrays to power the gates. But we don't know enough to assume that would be the case."

The mage nods her head.

"We'll just have to manually search then."

"Wouldn't hurt to send out the mages to test the mana density around the place anyway. Never know what they might turn up."

concentration of mana is almost enough to cause me problems. Only by using my external mana manipulation to pull energy toward myself am I able

is gradually being restored, judging by the diminishing level of noise coming over the parapet. As much I want to run to the fort in support of the Queen, the situation here just isn't stable enough that I can be confident the city

gripped in my mandibles, "I presume you're the little

goes limp in my grip. I wait a moment to see what will happen, but to my surprise, she doesn't

"are you not

has similarly gone slack. I can sense that they are still alive, it appears as though this is

I watch all of the captives closely as I continue my line of questioning, "let's say that after I was captured by the golgari and vanished from the Colony that the council got together and decided that having me running around doing dangerous stuff was a bit of a pain, but not something

very idea of the council trying to tell me what to do. Laughable!

they stay safe. Why not provide some guards?' or something along those lines. Only they immediately realise that I would say no. I do not need or want a group of guards following me around, I would more likely have to protect them

grip the still

the idea there and then, like sensible ants, they thought they'd go a step further. 'If the Eldest doesn't want to be protected, but at the same

sense of martyrdom now, as

put into a motion a plan,

Twitch.

So, Operation Silent Shield commences, they recruit twenty promising young hatchlings, ones who are dedicated to a fault, willing to serve in any way and give them the best training, full core evolutions and

Twitch.

For your last evolution, you all chose some sort of advanced gland that masks your presence, from all sources. Or does it work on perception? Perhaps the Vestibule was working correctly the whole time and I filtered it out without

she stubbornly refuses to say

suppose it doesn't matter. Even if you hadn't leapt out when you did, I would have tracked

letting me know. They basically used up a second council worth of resources, special cores and

let them go

sure, Master?]

ants were