Chrysalis

You know, I always considered buying wings. Ants have wings, after all. You might be thinking to yourself, “What!? No they don’t!”, but it’s true. Male ants and young queens have wings. You can see them crawling about outside the nest after rain during mating season, or even just generally if you’re lucky. They don’t have a lot to do, these young royals. Eating and sleeping is pretty much all they’re good for.

Until they eventually take flight.

Little ants, flying all over the place, looking for other young royals from other colonies of the same species to mate with. The males then go die in a ditch (rough life) while the queens rip their wings off with their own mandibles and then go start a new colony, because they’re hardcore.

So it’s not like ants fly a great deal, but they can! I’ve thought about it now and again; it’d be quite cool to be airborne, zipping about like a dragonfly. But there are a few problems that have prevented me from making the purchase.

Overall, it’s quite expensive. The wings themselves don’t cost much, but I’m sure you can imagine the difference in musculature between an ant that can fly and one that can’t. Incidentally, young queens liquify their own flying muscles to feed the first batch of workers. That’s dedication.

Adding all that bulk, adjusting the carapace to accommodate the new appendages, tying it all together, it’s an absolute pain in the area zoned for commercial enterprise.

But now….

Heh.

Heheheheheheh.

GWEHEHEHEHEHEH.

If I want to soar through the air,

they need to get closer to evolution, I take a little time apart

then, brains,

careful with the energy saturating my gravity mana gland, I bring some forth with my main mind and begin to manipulate it. I’m still not ready to use the construct to generate it yet, no need to complicate the process more than it

constructs chipping in to assist with the work. The

lot of energy. Like, a lot. Then there’s the issue of complexity. I continue to weave the mana in and out of itself in an endless pattern that rolls deeper and deeper within itself. That’s right, for this one, I have to start with an intricate outer shell, and then go in. Even the omni-elemental construct

of multiple layers of that same energy type is fiddly, putting it mildly. I imagine it’s something akin to keyhole surgery, slipping my control through ever narrowing gaps to

the complicated stuff is done, it’s time to pump

of power becomes a raging torrent. Within the spellform, the beating heart of the well begins to pound and my antennae begin to burn, sensing the rising

once it's past a certain point. I tie it off once I judge I’ve fed it enough, and the well is complete, hovering in the

senses, and I’m excited when I realise that my antennae are by far the best detectors, my mutation paying dividends. I can sense the energy with my mana sense, obviously, but that doesn’t give me much of a clue as to how strong

what this puppy can

it into position above my body. As I draw it

I’m

mass can hold me down? No chance! This ant was born