Chrysalis

“We’re under attack!” Victor roared!

The generals looked confused. They were fighting a wave… of course they were under attack!

“Not like that!” she groused. “There’s trouble inside the fortress!”

Messengers had gone missing. Reports weren’t coming back. Entire hospitals had gone dark. Several shifts hadn’t reported to the front over the last hour. It all pointed to one thing.

“There’s an enemy inside the nest,” Victor declared, a grim light gleaming in her eyes. “We need to rally the troops and find out what’s going on. If we can reach the Eldest and bring them into the battle, then there’s no opponent we can’t beat.”

The hundreds of ants clustered around her in the command post appeared shaken, but determined. How the fortress could have been infiltrated without the Colony knowing, it was almost unthinkable. Through the layers of fortified walls, the enchantments, the endless patrols, the hundreds and thousands of ants, the mages on constant alert!

But that didn’t matter now. No matter how’d they’d gotten in, if Victor said they were under attack, then they were.

“Quickly, to me!” she ordered.

The ants rallied bravely and rushed from the chamber, forming into ranks as naturally as breathing.

“Send runners to the walls, let them know what’s happening. They need to hold at all costs!”

Several scouts dashed away.

In the corridors, they found Advant, leading a charge of her own.

“Sister, what’s going on?” demanded the big soldier. “There’s something very wrong inside the nest!”

grinding together. “Come with me, we need to get a

scouts returned from

they reported. “The three of them are spread around the fortress and are

can give us some breathing room, we can right the situation inside the nest and then get

sounds good, but we need to move fast,” Advant agreed. “I’ll take these

“Sounds good.”

soldier had the ranks organised and set off toward the central

more than capable, of dealing with whatever she found. Soon, the troops from the walls began to trickle in. A few hundred at first, but then in their thousands. Weary, injured, and still recovering from their heroics on the walls, they were more than a little confused at being pulled from

and moving was no small task, but it was exactly this kind of situation that Victor

I want an assessment checkpoint set up for every ant to

shockingly short amount of time, she had divided the fighting fit ants into four columns and had them

the Colony, going back to before their rebirth as Formica Sapiens, to construct their

carvers had decided that having a single shaft that gave access to the entire nest was too risky, and had instead broken it into segments. Although each segment was close to the previous one,

central shaft as possible was the first priority on

she called, leading her troops from the front and straight down into the

in the air, they’d already been here and gone ahead. She had to

veritable heart of the fortress, filled with ants rushing up and down, now it was deserted. Victor saw nothing but a blank tunnel ahead of her, whilst behind, thousands of troops marched in her

nest, whoever had done this, they

incident and exited, moving down the wide tunnel that led to the next segment of the shaft. When they reached it, Victor knew immediately

Inside was simply… darkness.

on themselves before they dissipated like

monsters of the second stratum? That made

plunged directly into the abyss, vanishing at the edge of the pool. Victor was hesitant. The Eldest was further down, and if she could connect with the troops fighting in the depths,