Chrysalis

“What are the lizards playing at?” Morrelia growled.

Commander Chyron chuckled humourlessly as she watched the activity in the port city with unblinking eyes.

“Trying to slither back into our good graces, I don’t doubt. Leadership is still furious with them, to put it mildly. It’ll be decades before relations get back to anything like what they were.”

“Decades. That’s not much to them.”

“True. Hardly even a blip. They may even view it as a worthy tradeoff for the ‘experimental’ action they took.”

“Are we really withholding support during the waves?”

“Completely. Thanks to that, we’ve got more resources freed up for trivial, ‘save the world’ type actions like this one.”

From the top of the old Legion fort they currently occupied, the Colony could clearly be seen. The ants were as industrious as ever, putting up their nest in a staggeringly short amount of time. Morrelia felt she could barely blink before the construction was done and hordes of ants ran in and out through the main entrance, carrying in goods from the ships down on the docks. Blink again, and the fortifications had improved, soldiers were patrolling, lookouts were positioned high up the nest and mages had begun controlling the flow of mana in the vicinity.

Commander noticed the

dirt and rock. “They’ve spun that entire thing out of thin air. Imagine

was still difficult for her to think of Anthony and his family as an enemy. She hoped it wouldn’t come down to fighting, but what

now,” she said softly. “They have territory, resources, expertise. At what point

glanced at her Tribune, then

look after their own backyard is becoming harder and harder. The waves have people spooked, mana levels just surge higher and higher each time. Commander Titus believed another Rending was coming, right from the start.

been misappropriated; report any instances of this story

In the face of another Rending… what could they even do? It wasn’t as if the original members of the Legionem Abyssi, those founding legendary

against the waist-high stone wall, eyes glittering coldly in the

the path, the golden city, everyone has grown complacent, confident. They were able to fend off the waves well enough. The worst they had to deal with were Krath raids, which were unpleasant but manageable. It’s hard to blame them, I suppose. It’s been

Legion has diplomats in every court, council chamber and market square screaming about being ready for the worst. Some are

“Are we ready?”

out a

all the places we’re going to be needed. Which means some parts of the Dungeon will be let go, perhaps as soon as the next wave. At least our resourcing is getting better as the danger grows closer.

was an inescapable fact, but this bad? There were places in the Dungeon that leaned on the Legion for their defence. If the troops were withdrawn… they would surely fall to the monsters. How many thousands, tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands, would perish were that to