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 direction of

toward the still-growing mound of dirt and rock. “They’ve spun that entire thing out of thin air. Imagine how quickly they could fortify in a Dungeon tunnel and how effectively. Dislodging them will be

still difficult for her to think of Anthony and his family as an enemy. She hoped it wouldn’t

At what point does it become too costly for us to try and eradicate

at her Tribune,

and harder. The waves have people spooked, mana levels

author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances

felt a chill. In the face of another Rending… what could they even do? It wasn’t as if the original

leaned against the waist-high stone wall, eyes glittering coldly in 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 several thousand years since something like

are looking different. Neglected defences are being stretched. Underfunded armies are buckling under the pressure. The Legion has diplomats in every court,

“Are we ready?”

out a

some parts of the Dungeon will be let go, perhaps as soon as the next wave.

thought it was this grim. She’d known it was bad, that 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