I waited until Princess disappeared down the slope then traced my steps back to the surface. I took the fastest route up, where the traffic waved and smashed into me with the curling, swirling paths. There I gained a few more notifications.
You are still injured, buddy. Take it easy for some time. Don’t get hurt. Have some respect and care, all right?
You have acquired skill: Stress resistance.
[Stress][Tier-1][Lv-1/10][Resistance]
[Don’t play the game of tug and war against opponents you can’t handle. It might increase our strength, but will definitely cause an injury.]
[Reward: Your Endurance increases by .1 points every time the skill levels up.]
I shuddered when the colorful graphics blocked my sight. My brethren pushed me along, taking me for a ride along the waves while my mind tried to solve the mystery behind the phenomenon. All was for naught. I realized I was missing something important, a key to the lock. Still, I tried, until a hard nudge brought me back to reality. The workers weren’t happy with my conduct. I apologized and moved on with nothing to show for the disturbance I had caused them, deciding to wait for some other, more peaceful time.
I made a stop at the fifteenth floor and tasted a few mouthfuls of soft and white mushroom cakes to fill my stomach. Honeydew was good to jump-start the day, but it was a high potential fuel that didn’t last long. Mushrooms were slow to digest and a very good source of long-lasting energy.
The workers at the farm worked tirelessly to keep the quantity and quality of their product stable. The site was regularly disinfected and checked for pathogens. The workers took great care of the farm, as was required of them.
The mushrooms were farmed in a set square shape five heads long and five heads wide. The excess was regularly cut and stashed in the excess chambers that fed the city population. Leaves were daily brought into the farm that was first smashed into tiny pieces, and then mixed with water and ant excretion collected from the various corners of the city, and turned into fertilizer. The fertilizer was one of the greatest finds of the previous generation. It had single-handedly allowed the city to become self-sufficient.
There was talk of paying the beetles in protein for balls of dung that could free the workers made to collect leaves, but it was difficult to make them listen, and not every beetle was friendly.
The workers all gave me the stiff antennas of rejection when I asked about the explorers, and ran away as soon as I was done feeding. I asked the few soldiers around if they knew where I might find the explorers and they were all too happy to tell me to go up… to the tower. For some reason, the explorers had decided to spend their day outside in danger. I hoped nothing bad would happen to them before Princess was done with them.
Workers wormed their way up and down the tower tunnel carrying a water and dirt mixture of cement in their abdomens.
The project might sound small scale, but for every worker focused at work, there were ten in waiting. The tenth level of the tower alone was occupied by over three hundred workers! The rain had destroyed more than five floors worth of exterior wall and inner construction. Add to that a soldier to supervise every five workers and there were a well over a few thousand bodies at work at the same time!
I found my curbed excitement rising when I reached the tower. From the fifth floor up I encountered more and more workers and soldiers. They were strict, disciplined, and patient. But everything was not good. There was a bit of nervous energy floating around. Everyone knew about the dangers and the endless nightmarish possibilities. However, the constraints also brought the workers and soldiers together, mending their relation.
I was casually making my way through, looking for someone sane enough to answer a few questions, when I bumped into a soldier.
She had long legs that one, making me wonder how I had managed to bump into her. Her antennae were waving all over the place, abdomen swaying. I couldn’t believe it. She was drunk out of her senses.
Who are youse? The mutated long-legged soldier poked me in the head. Her scent speech was all over the place. And why youse smell of a female royal. Youse pretending to be ovulating? Youse a pretender?
At first, I was appalled by her behavior then remembered my task and changed my opinion. She was contacting me of her own accord —and why would I waste the opportunity? I tried to get the information out of her, but things didn’t go as planned. No. I’m Princess Tiny’s royal guard and I’m here to—
Youse a what? She was flabbergasted. A Royal? Hear that, captain? The soldier turned her head, antennae lagging behind. He, the captain, was standing right next to her but she couldn’t find him. The brew was messing with her senses —which was not unexpected. The royal winged male, however, made her vent some of the intoxications before, finally, pulling her face to his. He could see her after all, infrared eyes were a boon only the leaders were gifted. To my surprise, the same oblongs spheres were also upon his companions head, situated on the forehead right between her other larger set of eyes.
Captain! She said. This wok here has the same title as youse. He says he’s a Royal something-something. Says he’s a big wok!
Is that right? Another soldier, a slender marksman joined the conversation before I could claim otherwise. He reeked, but of poison, not mead.
I heard him, Scented a fourth soldier, the largest among the lot with mandibles the size of-of my whole shading body! I heard him true, alright. He said it. I’m not worse than a soldier, he said. I speak the truth. You all know me!
Youse said that? Youse asking for a BEATING, small wok?
I couldn’t understand why they were doing this, but they surely had me intimidated. My legs shook like a leaf under the onslaught of wind. I was most probably leaking fear, for the soldiers were growing confident by the second. No, I’m here to find the explorers. I almost blasted into the tunnel.
Maybe the sudden overload of pheromones broke their confusion? Whatever the case, they stopped harassing me. And the winged royal male finally intervened. What for? He scented; it was a crystal clear injection of pheromones, precise, and authoritative.
On the order of Princess Tiny, I—
The tower shook. Is it an earthquake? A scent asked. It wasn’t that.
It shook again.
The soldier no longer had their attention on me. Surprisingly, the chatter had also died down.
All the soldiers and workers stood motionless, antennae raised and vibrating — sensing the change. The workers had stopped working and were passing down scent signals.
The tunnel shook again and the city inhaled.
It was too intimate an exchange to neglect. An extremely pungent scent of alarm washed down the tunnel pores and engulfed everyone present.
The soldiers stirred, their released pheromones adding to the whirling storm passing through. My body started moving on its own, drumming the ground with the abdomen to signal the lower floors: a practice I learned the day I graduated from the nursery.
Attack! Attack! Attack! Attack! Attack!
The chant undulated through the tower, and down the city, as the large organism started waking up. It did something to me, the chant, the chemicals, the energy and anger in the air. The change wasn’t instant but it staked and increased with every passing second. I wasn’t alone in this change. The soldiers behaved in much the same way; including the group, I had been unlucky enough to confront.
I soon found myself heaving, and moving, rushing behind; no, with the soldiers. I felt purposeful: rash, but also dignified. This was different from the time we had fought with the termites under the mountains. There I had been alone; surrounded —sure— but alone still. Here I was a drop of blood, a part of something whole.
We rushed up through the broken tunnels, toward the hole in the western wall. The soldiers rushed out first. I went right behind them. Sun rays blasted my sight full of light, but the scent was clear, the path laid, enemies identified. It was them again. The termites! They were attacking. Why? Why and how? Attack! My surrounding pulled me out of thoughts and into actions. My sight returned only a second later.
I saw.
There were hundreds of them, blurs of motion suspended in a white haze. Familiarly large and armored, the termites were winged! Some even carried passengers under their bulky bodies: hulking soldiers, easily three times the size of our largest hunter. But those monstrosities were far and between, barely numbered enough to hold all my legs. Most of their carried numbers were made of those armored, black monsters we had encountered on the mission, the ones resistant to poison.
Something grew hot inside me. The pain and the anger came back at their sight. The soldier and her painful cries grew strong in my mind. My panic rose with my breaths and anger from the scents in the air. They were falling from the sky like drops of rain, wetting the tower surface with worker's blood. Soldiers lay on the ground in pieces, limb and headless; some unmoving, and others convulsing and flailing.
The sight made my anger surge. It made me storm ahead of the others. I left the long-legged maniac and her companions behind in a cloud of dust. The strength surging inside me pushed at my joints, wanting a release. I gave in. The chemicals made me fearless. I crashed into something large and dark, something that smelled foul and foreign. I was mostly blind following the fumes tails rising behind the termites.
Instantly, I felt my surroundings light up and the energy coursing through me decrease. My high didn’t break but my thoughts did return. I questioned my action as something hot covered my face. It stung, but not in a painful way. That sting stimulated another course of heat inside me, but not at a level that it could control me again. When I finally found control over my body I was hanging from the side of a termite, being threatened to be flung over. The termites had its middle legs caught and stretched by a pair of soldiers, and face dripping with the burning poison of our specialty. I was hanging at its abdomen, mandible dug deep inside but slipping. Needless to say, another set of notifications covered a part of my sight.
Hold on, little fellow! Don’t listen to the wonderment of the battle high! Focus on my voice. Focus!
You have acquired Mental Corruption Resistance.
***
First you stressed your body and now you are straining yourself by outputting more power than your body can handle. You are hopeless.
You have acquired Strain resistance.
[Mental Corruption][Tier-1][Lv-1/10][Resistance]
[It protects your mind against foreign influence.]
[Effect: a small chance to completely negate the effect of someone’s mental fiddling.]
[Reward: Your intelligence increases by .1 points every skill level.]
***
[Strain][Tier-1][Lv-1/10][Resistance]
[Your body becomes better at handling the strain produced with time. The skill enhances the result just a little bit.]
[Effect: You feel 2% lesser after-effects from physical skills.]
[Reward: Your Constitution increases by .1 points every skill level.]
I stroked my legs to find some purchase on the tower wall, kicking air but getting no results. Out of chance, another soldier saw our struggle, and she slew the termite. The others let go when the termites stopped moving. Horrified, I watched as the termite legs lost their strength and it fell back from the tower, taking me along. We fell into a tumble. The dirt tower and the brown ground became indistinguishable to my eyes. A notification appeared and disappeared from my mind.
Out of some freak miracle, I managed to pull my mandible free, but couldn’t stop my free fall. The termites kissed the ground first. There were no sounds, only a small displacement of sand grains, and that’s it. Falling from height wasn’t a death sentence; our body was light enough, but there are always complications. No one comes out of a fall completely unscathed.
But I fell on my feet, stumbled forward, and rubbed my face on the ground. I somehow found balance mid-fall and curled my head between my legs, rolling and scrapping my back in the process. The momentum swung me all the way around and put me up back my feet without anything broken; all in one continuous motion.
A notification colored my sight for a dazed interval before it vanished.
Small as a pebble and light as a feather, no wonder the fall didn’t hurt you much.
You have acquired a new skill: Feather Fall.
***
You have five and a half legs, and a segmented body, actions like rolling are not made for you. You better learn your lesson now, before you break your back and end up paralyzed.
You have acquired a new skill: Roll.
[Feather Fall][Tier-1][Lv-1/10][Active]
[It makes your body light as a feather to ensure a safe and reduces fall damage.]
[Effect: Fall damage reduced by 10% according to the skill level.]
***
[Roll][Tier-1][Lv-1/10][Passive]
[It is the knowledge of moving your body in a way impossible without the skill.]
[Reward: You gain .1 points in dexterity every skill level.]
It didn’t occur to me then —courtesy of the chemical remnants still coursing inside me, and the battle high— but I wasn’t nimble enough to perform such actions.
I pulled away from the battlefield, scared and stunned. I wasn’t hurt but shocked out of my senses. The scents on the ground level were indistinguishable from each other. All the instructions and trails were overtaken by the emotional outlet of the soldiers and the termites dying and fighting.
A winged termite turned toward me and fell lifelessly to the ground. It succumbed to the soldier's poison and, as I later noticed, to the large rend it had suffered on the back.
The wound had leaked, but the termite’s inability to cope with poison was strange. The ones from the cave had been different.
The two castes weren’t the same, but resistance against poison wasn’t something selective. If their queen had found a way to pass on the gene to one caste then the whole colony should be resistant; that strangely wasn’t the case.
The winged royals —I noticed— acted firmly as carriers alone, none dropping into the mess that was the battlefield. Rarely ever did one pass through the poison mist raised by the soldiers on the tower, or hit a bad draft and fell down; otherwise, they seemed to have a clear plan. Such an ingenious method! Never before in the history of ant warfare had an enemy or a friend ever decided to use their royal caste as carriers. There were many stories, but none quite so exquisite. No queen would issue such an order, for it was akin to playing with their future!
This was my first true battle. And it was different, much too gruesome for a damaged worker to be a part of. I was slowly finding my feet again, but the chemical shouts and pain trails were not kind to my mental health. I always believed battles and wars were fought like the duels: the opponents respectful and honorable. That only the end result differed. But in reality, there was no respect no honor, only suffering, anger, and death.
The battle on the ground was just a small part of the mayhem that was happening atop the tower. The termites had found the one vulnerability and were pressing into it with unquenchable motivation. Our soldiers had already established their territory on the ground.
Most of the royal termites had dropped their passengers upon the tower and conceded the sky. Not worried about rescuing the survivors? I wondered what they were thinking! How could they do that to someone their own? Their actions only made it more convoluted to guess their aim. The termites were basically committing suicide. Or they had an objective other than simple destruction of the city and provocation?
Well, there were professionals to think about that sort of thing. For all that was worth, I had done more than should be asked of someone like me. I had gone to battle, assisted a kill, and survived. Now I could sit back and relax. I could, but I didn’t. The soldiers never thought like that.
I hadn’t yet forgotten the one who had kicked her helpers away because she didn’t want to be a burden on the city. For all my wisdom and intelligence, I was very much a fool. It was a tough job to put my life back in danger, now that the battle high was worn out. I suddenly wished the high would take me again, so I wouldn’t feel badly obligated to work my worth.
Just do your job and stay quiet, a little voice spoke in my head. It acted only as a painful reminder of my situation and nothing else.
The field around the tower was littered with mutilated bodies of ants and termites pushed off the tower. Most were dead; while some still stirred with last sparks of life: locked in battle, mandibles holding squeamish opponent, digging deeper and deeper. Soldiers were busy putting them to rest, both the enemies and friends.
The termites were supposed to be a source of food, not invincible raiders who didn’t care for their lives!
Their behavior didn’t make any sense.
That’s when a flood of soldiers arrived at the surface from the deepest depths of the city, the headquarters. They rushed out of the colony through the various vents and exits and started scaling the tower from the ground up. Many followed them. I didn’t. I went the other way first, back inside the city before rushing up behind them. I wasn’t giving up; I had just realized the limitations of my single mandible and my position. There was no place for me on the battlefield. But there were other ways I could help.
The tower wasn’t a small place. Its surface was large enough to hold the five hundred or so termites that had been dropped by the winged ones.
The termites were pressing into the destroyed portion of the tower, attacking it with an unseen craze. By the time we reached the initial point of collision, the battle had already moved inside the tower. The termites had already crushed our soldiers and were now busy mowing down the workers.
The workers were finding it hard to resist them. Although these hard-shelled termites were really immune to poison and didn’t succumb to the whittling of the soldiers, even their defense crashed when the new wave of soldiers joined the ones already up there. However, the giants flourished when the battle intensified. They crushed many and spit even more before someone noticed that they couldn’t easily change directions. Still, the five of them alone took more than three teams of thirty soldiers before succumbing to the rush.
Robbed of their shields and outnumbered five to one, the termites couldn’t hold on for much longer. They did make an all-out attempt when they saw the jaws of death closing on them and tried to take as many with them to the other side as they could, but failed to do so. There were losses and higher than the amount there would have been had the battle had played out in the more conventional ways. And when all was said and done the termites lost their lives and us, our prestige.
They had waged a war. Soon we would have to answer them. Soon we would have to make them pay us back for the loss of life and the damages. But for the time being, the situation was clear. The reason could take a step back until this mess was sorted.
They had come from the west, the unoccupied region where no ember queen had ever managed to dig her claws and stake her claim. There was a generation that had sent princesses in that direction to search for open land and untaxed resources, but none had ever sent back delegates to announce their presence and create a supply route with the kingdom. However, it wasn’t like there was no ant city in the west direction. The western front was far, with a city situated right in between.
I didn’t follow the soldiers back to the ground. I didn’t walk behind empty-handed everyone while the others carried the weight.
I deigned the role of a caretaker and offered water to anyone in need. I couldn’t heal, but I cleaned the wounds of the injured with water and fed them the little honeydew I had managed to wrestle out of the pots supervised by angry workers. My title of a loud-mouthed traitor was as true as it could have been. The worker really looked at me unfavorably. And that was it. It, however, sparked a realization in me regarding the notifications. Not that the knowledge excited me.
I dragged the injured to the ground and took them to where the nurses had created a healing station. I wasn’t alone in the cause; many workers joined me once the battle was over.
It was the job a worker was supposed to handle: repair and caretaking. Fighting and wrestling were jobs best suited for the soldiers —there was a reason behind their bodily strength and larger mandibles. However, I couldn’t be a worker anymore, and neither was I a soldier. I was nothing, but I wasn’t going to let my disability hold me back anymore.
Never again, I promised myself.
The whole place was a mess.
The soldiers were done with their job, but the workers were going to have it rough. They would have to scrub the scents away and repair the damage and I was going to be with them till the end.
I was thinking about the princess and how she would feel about a delay in the construction of her project, when a foreign set of antennae touched my head. They read me with three simple taps and went forward to make a connection in a manner of precision I hadn’t felt before. My first reaction was to offer water, as I had done for so long, but that’s not what they wanted.
You surprised me. They transferred their thoughts with their chemical signature attached. You were very brave today. I never thought someone in your condition would take the arms of their own accord.
Who? I asked in surprise and jumped back upon learning that it was the winged royal, the captain of the four delinquents I had met right before the battle had started.
I believe you were trying to find us?
I-I had forgotten about that part. Exhaustion and hunger didn’t help either. However, since he had found me in the middle of all the soldiers, to ask about something that may or may not matter to him, I decided to answer him with all the seriousness I could muster at that moment.
I was asked by princess Tinbuji to find the explorers. Princess might believe she needed to be reminded of her stature, but I personally didn’t want to be the one with the job.
Then it is your lucky day. He said. Obviously, I asked him to explain, ignoring his surprising merriment. I thought he knew the explorers, but I wasn’t expecting the truth.
Well, congratulations young wok-worker, for you have found us. I am the captain of the explorers. You can call me 7; And they, are the members of my team. He pointed an antenna to his left where five soldiers were gathered around one of the termite giants, all busy shredding the giant, part by part.
I grew vigilant.
