Chrysalis

Tungstant woke from her torpor feeling just as tired as when she went into it. After her last… incident, she didn’t want to lose the time by being captured by they who would not be named, and made sure she got regular rest, but there was so much to do.

An infinite amount of work and a very finite amount of time to do it in.

She exited the rest chamber set aside for the carvers and began to make her way to the build headquarters. Traffic was heavy and it took her a while to make it through the streams of bustling ants before she arrived to find dozens of the highest level carvers huddled around the design tables.

There were a dozen of them, each hosting an intricately detailed model of different aspects of the build.

“Finally awake are you?” Cobalt huffed.

Her sibling looked exhausted, antennae drooping with fatigue.

“Yes. Not that I think the rest helped much.”

“I know what you mean.”

“Any word on the Eldest?”

“No movement. They’re still asleep and it looks like they will be for a while. The tier seven evolution seems to be taking significantly longer than the tier six.”

“Well, I suppose that’s not too surprising. It does mean that things are going to remain tense around here for a while longer.”

With the oldest, strongest and most respected ant in the Colony sleeping, totally defenceless in the fourth stratum, where the family didn’t have a strong foundation, the situation was risky. Everyone felt on edge. The scouts were working double shifts, trying to be an early warning system for the rest of the family. The carvers were doing everything they could to rebuild and fortify this mountain to make it into an impregnable fortress.

But even they could only work so fast, and whatever the Eldest had done had blown the inside of what had once been the termite mound to absolute pieces.

inner shell is seventy percent complete,” Cobalt brought her sibling up to speed, “though we need to keep the pressure up until it’s done. The estimated time to

speed

we want it done

“Damn. We definitely do.”

technique is extremely strong, but time consuming and not everyone has the skills to pull it off. Once it’s finished, though, it’d

invented that

“I did….”

you’ve never mentioned

funny. Once that’s done, we can

been working on the frame to install the gates in before she’d gone to

the gate teams? That should’ve been done two hours

“It’s Smithant.”

It was always Smithant.

she

and got the whole team re-working the enchantments from scratch. It set the completion time back

“TEN!?”

forehead in dismay. If one component of the build was delayed, then that would cause a knock-on effect, inflicting chaos in the schedule all down the line.

as effective as

may not be worth the delay! Completing the shell won’t mean much if there’s

She’ll listen to us if we demand it, but I wasn’t confident enough to make the

to build around the sanctum in which the Eldest currently rested. Later, it would likely house the Queen, or other queens, but for now, it was intended to be a bulwark to protect their Senior

done their best to fortify the mountain before the evolution had started, but proper defences took a great deal of time and effort to implement. With all the tools that could be brought to

be leery of the time required. Carvers, as a rule, hated to compromise on their craftsmanship. The corners they’d had to cut were like wedges driven

finish it,” Tungstant said, resigned. “The scouts haven’t turned anything up, so the delay shouldn’t matter. If it’s as good as she thinks, it’ll be worth the