Chrysalis

They'd done it. After so much time and effort had been expended, they’d finally done it. The mage caste had put themselves through the ringer during the siege, they had battered their minds against the invaders until they bordered on shattering. It had been a painful regime of brutal mental warfare seemingly without end. What had made things even more difficult for the brainy caste of spell-slingers were the critical research tasks draining their numbers. The Colony had decided that the gates and Dungeon vein removal projects were so critical, so vital to the future success of their kind, that even the threat of imminent destruction was not enough to curtail the development of these techniques.

Progress on the gates remained painfully slow. It was clear that without higher levelled specialists in both enchantment and the as yet unseen space magic would be required to make significant headway there. On the other hand, the teams assigned to reverse-engineering the methods witnessed in the city of Rylleh had achieved a breakthrough.

As jubilant as she was, Propellant couldn't help but look askance at the team of mages and carvers who had worked together to make this possible. She studied the complex, almost wavy, interlocking series of walls in front of her once more.

"And you're sure this is going to work?" she asked them.

One of the mages stepped forward, her antennae waving furiously.

"Of course it's going to work you old bat! What the heck do you think we've been doing down here while y- HRCK!"

With extreme speed, a team of previously stealthed ants leapt from the ceiling of the chamber and tackled the mage to the ground mid-rant. Before anyone could think to intervene, the new arrivals had swarmed over the downed ant, expertly knocking her out with a precision bite to cut off circulation to her brain before the shadows enfolded them once more. In less than a second they were gone once more, taking the furious mage with them. The only sign of their presence was an ominously lingering pheromone message that hung in the air long after they were gone.

"Sleep well…" was all it said.

down her carapace at the display. The sleep monitors took their work deadly seriously. They were clearly starting to manage their evolutions and skills in a direction to better allow them to perform their role, making them terrifyingly capable. The sudden

it been since your

days," stammered

you been awake?"

violently Propellant was

for two days and twenty-two hours," another team member

Propellant clacked her mandibles.

through this quick then. So, someone else this time, preferably someone not driven near delirious from lack of rest. Are you sure this is going

themselves for a moment before

our calculations, there is a strong chance of success," the mage spoke with crisp words, "although we were unable to derive the exact method used in Rylleh, we believe that this is as close as we can get to an

more up Coolant's alley. She herself was firmly in the 'blow stuff up and think about it later' school of magic. Whichever cursed fool on the surface had introduced the concept to the mage caste, it had spread like wildfire and split her siblings right

you think?"

of the strange claws on

problem is, we haven't been able to try it on as

The team had erected no fewer than ten separate walls in a space less than a foot wide, each one folding back on the others in pattern so complex it could pass for a magic construct. It was only possible to create such razor thin walls and shape them in such a