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.

allow them to perform their role, making them terrifyingly capable. The sudden disappearance of their colleague had an even greater effect on the rest of the research, their

as it been since your team leader

stammered a

have you been

trembled so violently Propellant was worried her exo-skeleton was about to

days and twenty-two hours,"

Propellant clacked her mandibles.

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

much smaller ants consulted amongst themselves for a moment before a pair stepped forward, one carver and

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

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

you think?" she

one of the strange claws on her foreleg

at that," the ant sighed, "but it's held up in our tests so far. Only problem is, we haven't been able to try it on as large a surface area

the room and tried to ignore the battles going on elsewhere in the chamber. Damn waves made it so hard to concentrate. It really was precise work. 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