Chrysalis

It turned out, monsters from the fifth didn't much like it when you took their slime away. An hour after first deploying the ‘Wuffers’, as the ants had begun to call them, much to the annoyance of the core shapers, they saw for the first time how the slugs would react when they saw someone messing with their precious goop.

How could Solant describe it? They went absolutely, one-hundred percent, without exception, gonzo crazy.

A fat toad monster hopped around the corner and saw the wuffers happily huffing and puffing, soaking up the slime and purifying it, and grew still. Naturally, the ants had sprung into action, recovering the slow-moving pets and taking up a defensive formation.

What they didn’t expect was for the frog to unleash a mighty croak, the explosive exhalation filled with mindless rage, before it hurled itself headlong toward the massed ant position. Such was its anger, the monster fought completely heedless of its own survival, throwing itself recklessly into the jaws of the soldiers, trying to crush them with its mass whilst it lashed out with powerful legs, lashing tongue and toxic bile.

Many were wounded, despite the fight being thousands against one, and Solant was not pleased.

In the midst of reprimanding her soldiers for their slow reaction, and blaming herself for not foreseeing the situation, she sensed something might be a little off, and stared hard into the haze-filled depths before them.

“Let’s pull back and fortify,” she ordered crisply. “I want tunnel fort three dash two constructed in five minutes.”

“That build is allotted seven minutes,” her lead carver and fellow broodmate, Subutant, stated.

“We don’t have seven,” Solant replied shortly and the carver dashed away, issuing a flurry of instructions to her fellow builders.

“What do you see?” Sumant asked, bracing in the frontline along with the other soldiers as they began an ordered, step by step retreat toward the mountain fortifications.

“That frog would have been heard for kilometres through these tunnels,” Solant replied, watching the haze intently.

“You think it was calling for reinforcements? It didn’t seem that intelligent.”

think it was calling for them, but I think they’ll come

opening, firing lines for spells and acid, along with channels for pulling

Just in time.

to thicken, imperceptibly at first, then in a rush, growing so dense that

need wuffer mist,” she ordered, and the core shapers grudgingly responded, the pets raising their tendrils and happily

enough to prevent the miasma from flowing through the gap, but didn’t break through the haze that filled the

first roar, then the second, the third, and more, and more. Squelching, wet gurgles of rage bounced

tunnel, one minute. Quick!” she

mages coordinated to drop the temperature well below freezing, pelting every surface with a barrage of frozen water. Thirty seconds later, they pulled back and the fire mages stepped forward, igniting the air itself in a furious blast. Rock groaned and cracked

louder, and much, much

fire mages cut off the blaze at the last second and scuttled backward, huge soldiers

arrived, screeching, its circular maw wide open and a ‘tongue’ of razor-sharp barbs projecting wildly forward. Prepared for the injuries, the soldiers lunged and chomped, their mandibles sizzling as they bit into the toxic flesh. Heedless of the wounds, the slug pushed forward, discharging

water from the mages cleaned out much of the goop, but it was stubborn and more than one soldier battled on with a

pets came alongside them. Opening their mouths wide, the wuffers shot forth blasts of

temporary fort. The wuffers descended on it with apparent joy, settling atop the remains

wuff!” they

toxin elemental, then a toad, then more,

fighting. The price they had paid for the pitiful progress that had been achieved made her want to chalk up the battle as a loss, but in her heart,

of cores and the lessons learned were a rich reward

it would have been ten times as difficult to hold off the assault. The sludge monsters had willingly thrown their lives away to try and coat the ants with slime and acid, to fill the position with corrupting miasma. Without the wuffers counteracting the poisonous

more promising, the transparent jelly-caterpillars were only tier three. The next time Solant returned, she was determined they would be

retreat,” she ordered. “I want the most wounded to be returning under escort in the next two minutes. Everyone who is healthy will remain

to the