Chrysalis

Chapter 1198

“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!”

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

scouts returned from the walls,

three of them are spread around the

troops to fall back and join us here. If the guardians can give us some breathing room, we can right the situation inside the nest and then get back to the defence before things are too far

need to move fast,” Advant agreed. “I’ll take these ants and go ahead, you gather up everyone

“Sounds good.”

had the ranks organised

from the walls began to trickle in. A few

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

everyone who is too injured to fight into the central planning chamber and establish an emergency hospital there. I want an assessment checkpoint set

the fighting fit ants into four columns and had them advancing towards

been common design practice for the Colony, going back to before their rebirth as Formica Sapiens, to construct their nests with a main, vertical shaft connecting all levels in

design of this fortress, that had changed. The 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,

the central shaft as possible was the first priority

her troops from the

trails left behind by Advant and her troops were thick in the air, they’d

rushing up and down, now it was deserted. Victor saw nothing but a blank

whoever had done this, they would

to the next segment of the shaft. When they reached it, Victor knew immediately that something was very wrong. Instead of the huge, arterial path that

Inside was simply… darkness.

or tendrils into the air that curled in on themselves before they dissipated like smoke, or fell back down to merge

by monsters of the

at the edge of the pool. Victor was hesitant. The Eldest was further down,

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