Chrysalis

Big ‘ol chunk of mass, surrounded by many more, smaller chunks of mass. Huge amounts of toing and froing. It has to be the queen’s chamber. There’s no way the termites would allow egg production to cease, not even during a crisis. Especially during a crisis.

How is a social insect supposed to overcome its challenges? With overwhelming numbers! I didn’t come here with a half of a million of my own siblings because I love their company!

Although I do…

[Can you sense it Crinis?]

[I can’t… this whole area is shielded.]

My shadowy companion of death and darkness sounds frustrated, unusual for her, but I can understand it. For someone who started off completely blind, Crinis has evolved to the point where she’s possibly the most visually acute of us all. She can’t see light, but she can see mana, and shadows, and use both to ‘see’ through walls and deep into solid rock. Not being able to look at something right in front of her face must be a weird sensation.

[It’s fine,] I assure her, [this is it. We just need to dig our way through. You three keep them off of me and I’ll take care of the rest.]

Zen of digging, activate!

Not that I want to actually relax here, that would be profoundly unwise, but I do need to get my dig on in a serious way. I aim myself in the direction I need to dig and begin to pump my mandibles with furious energy, ripping into the stone. Haha! Making good progress here. At this point in my journey, I can cut through regular stone like it's butter. I’m just too strong and too heavily mutated to be resisted when it comes to digging!

THUNK!

Ouch! That is to say… unless you go ahead and heavily reinforce the rock. That one chomp has set my entire face to wobbling. What the heck did they do to this stone?

wall to clear some space and get a good view before I set

what it is that they did. It’s not condensed rock, that’d ping my gravity sense due to how much heavier it is. They’ve done something else entirely… this is a different type of rock from the stuff surrounding it. It’s chock full of mana, I can tell that much. In fact, it’s likely to be a

termites and are bound to succumb if I take too long. The sound of skittering legs and gnashing mandibles is almost deafening

into my mandibles, vastly increasing their cutting power,

CRUNCH!

did it! A little bit! My mandibles have managed to rip two long grooves out of the mysterious stuff, but I haven't been able to rip through it like I would have liked. I could get through it like this, but I don’t have the time to waste. I

VOID CHOMP COMBO!

the last bite slams shut, my vision nearly blanks out for a long moment. Thankfully I have a half million ants close by and

are you all

tell her.

I created and feel my pets following along close behind. What I see spread out before

busy. The chamber itself is large, over a hundred metres across and completely lined with that strange stone. Opposite from us I can see a weird sort of observation chamber shielded behind a shimmering pane of glass.

is the

massive, their abdomens swollen to over twenty metres in length. A constant stream of termites rush into the chamber, delivering ton after ton of precious Biomass farmed in the caverns below

that? I can see

freakin’ queue of workers waiting to grab the next clutch and let me tell you, those lines are moving fast. Forget about one every three seconds, this is more like three

must be millions of termites packed into this nest! Just how many workers do they have tending

has to be a lot to maintain the kind of production

their control, which it most likely would have. This colony of termites would have been a plague on the fourth stratum. With the start

[Master!]

[Oh, shoot!]