You are dead.

The aged warrior made the comment in passing. She was having a heated conversation with the Princess who had joined her on the ledge. Their topic was bouncing around me, the city, and the slaves. She wasn’t kidding about me being dead, though. By the rules of the duel I had indeed suffered a catastrophic injury: a scratch around my thorax. It doesn’t sound much, but the wound was dealt with such ease that had my opponent put more strength behind his mandibles he would have mortally injured me —no one can survive being sliced in half, after all.
I am special.

I was just glad the familiarity of the scratch didn’t bring my past trauma to light. As for the result of the duel: I didn’t know what to make of it. My opinion was biased toward the slaves, but a worker can’t fight a soldier anyways. Yes, I had killed one, but those circumstances were different, and it had involved more luck than ability.

Did you drop your other mandible on the ground? The aged warrior scented: the odor was crisp and piercing, striking like an alarm.

No? I made a confused reply and was yelled at for stalling.

Stop dawdling. You are not a pampered princess. That earned her a cry of unfairness from the princess, which she should have just kept inside because it had no effect on her rowdy master. Show me the spirit with which you killed the termite soldier! Give me that anger and vitality. I’m not asking you for the impossible —a worker can’t kill a soldier— but, if you can’t even get serious for yourself, I can’t take you seriously either. Then we’ll have a problem.

How do you know about the termite?
Are you that foolish?

She knew thanks to the I.C of course! I made a mental to not let her or anyone else make that kind of connection with me. If she could freely siphon knowledge from the princess then I hadn’t any hope of blocking my mind to her. My worry was as real as a pair of mandible hanging a hairsbreadth from my neck —outrageously serious.

Are you alright, brother? You look a little winded there. My opponent tapped my back. There was a buzz about him and it was irritating to say the least. You are not wounded, right? He said tracing the souvenir he had left me. His touch tickled. I could almost hear his worry from the scent. It was weak, courtesy of his missing antennae, but accurate than even the scents laid out by the princess. He was considerate. I liked him —until he said something that irked me like a grain of sand in the eye. You should rest. Let me worry about guarding the Princess. A soldier is a much better choice anyway.

Take my place? His words did more than just irked me. They lit a fire under my bottom, boiling my fluids to produce bubbly anger. Eat the result of my hard work? I stood up asking for another match and this time showed the soldier his place. Become a guard my blasted bottom!

I was angry, of course, though only hyperventilating, not out of the mind crazy that I was against the termite soldier. That was something else. This anger was more subdued; just a lot of steam. Needless to say, I didn’t somehow overturn the situation and pulled a win over my opponent. All that happened was me taking another beating and him earning respect in the princess’s eyes.

Do you see it? I’m good aren’t I? The soldier flexed his mandibles to the princess, who had reached out to me in kind to help disinfect the second scratch he had gored me. It was oddly infuriating. This one was on top of my head and deep. A little mishap and I would have lost a part of my brain… and died.

Why don’t you dump this worker and let me take care of you? He continued, despite being ignored by the princess. He can’t even take care of himself. How will he take care of you?

That surprised me. That’s enough! I discharged a hefty dose of pheromones in the air, for dominance. It wasn’t strong enough, for the soldier only pulled back his antennae instead of going crazy, but it did make him pensive. You should stand back. I told the princess, eyes staring at the soldier who could not have been more ignorant of the spark he had lit.

I’d been wondering what I had done to deserve such reprehension. They had forced me into a duel against a soldier, who though wounded, was doing better than most soldiers. He was taller, stronger, and definitely sharper than me. And they wanted me to preserve my dignity against him? It was a sick situation.

I got up and pushed his head back. He was getting uncomfortably close to the princess. Get back and get ready.
Oh! The soldier finally got his mental gears twirling, shown excellently by his whirling antennae. He rubbed his head where I had pushed him and sharpened his stature. You aren’t done yet? He asked.

And in the heat of the moment I ended up agreeing for another match. I wondered what the princess thought when she sensed this exchange of scents. She might as well have spoken her mind, because her wavering antennae told she wasn’t too happy. The audience was surely happy thought, and unconventionally verbal about their thoughts. Most called me stupid. A few were interested in seeing the outcome. And, surprising of all was the lot of them that were supportive of me for some reason.

Will you both get going already? I’m not getting any younger!

With the aged warrior's blessings we tussled for the third time: One in anger and the other in utmost concentration. I was the latter until the bout ended and we switched the emotional states.

The soldier bore countless scars over his body, like red veins struggling to pop out from under his skeleton. We took positions facing each other. He stopped taunting me. Much of it was related to his inability to hold a conversation over distance. Apparently, it takes a good pair of antennae for a long-range scent transmission, which I sadly couldn’t do, and neither could he.
My opponent had practiced hard to turn his lone antenna into a very good and precise receiver, but it was also where his fault lied. He had to keep vibrating his antenna to produce that effect, causing the buzz and a sensory overload of information, resulting in a momentary lag in his movement.

I wished to take advantage of that lag.

It was a surprisingly good examination of the situation, but that didn’t help me .I didn’t know how to convert this information into a successful attack. I couldn’t spray poison and he had been crushing me at close range. A notification appeared out of the blue, halting me for a second. And I almost lost my momentum to it.

---

You keep looking at others with such concentration and they’re going to label you a pervert, pervert.
You have acquired Skill: Analyze.

---

[Analyze][Tier-1][Lv-1/10][Active]
[Looking close enough at something can reveal the most amazing of things. It’s a matter of understanding and focus.]
[Effect: Increases your focus and understanding of foreign principles and objects.]
[Reward: You wisdom increases by .1 points at every skill up.]

---

I shook the static from my sight and charged straight at him. But I had already missed the timing.

I confronted him head-on, and he took note of me when I was close enough to slice him a new mark. He circled around my back and pinched my head, holding me as effortlessly as a caretaker holds a pupa. He released the victory scent, while the aged warrior commented again:

You are dead. And that’s enough from you. You don’t have the desire to get better. I can’t help you.
The soldier let go and turned to face the two on the ledge. See? He can’t protect you. Even the mighty chariot admits it.

Do you want to get your antenna plucked?

I heard their cheerful banter —and it hurt. I wasn’t jealous of him. He was a soldier and I was a warrior. There was a clear distinction between the two castes.

So, Said the little hungry voice inside me. Are you giving up? The workers don’t want you near and now you are not good enough to even be a slave. Wanna lie down in the pit and get buried under the dirt?

My heart pounded, sight tinted red. I rushed at the soldier; no plan in mind only a craving for recognition.
She’s going to leave you. The voice grew louder, controlling.
I went for his abdomen.
It was a cowardly attack, but I couldn’t control myself any longer. A warning scent rose from the slaves around us. And somehow the soldier noticed. Instantly, he pulled his abdomen out of my sight and the next thing I knew a stinger was growing larger in front of me. I was stabbed in the chest. The realization halted my steps, but there was no pain and the soldier was now facing me, mandibles open and head lifted in a display of warning.   He hadn’t poisoned me out of courtesy of the duel.

I was pacified and heaving; still I charged straight at him. It was anger and the feeling of loss. Such negative emotions don’t work well together. They distorted my perception, draining me of common sense. I wanted to express all I was without thinking about the consequences. The soldier looked about ready to chop me a new hole, but he didn’t.

This time he held my lame leg and dragged me around. I lost that one. I got up infuriated over my failure and he surprisingly attacked first, slammed into me with all his weight and force, sending me swinging into a tumble. Once more! I stabilized myself and went back, anger forgotten, sight back to normal and a plea lopping again and again in my mind: Just once; let me hit him once.

A notification lit up my sight again, asking rather than telling, whether I would like to perform a charge?

I agreed without thinking. Strength was drawn from inside me and put in my legs. The step I took pulled me off my feet and flung me at the soldier. I instantly covered the distance between us. My opponent was still processing the sensory information he had collected when I entered his range of close encounters. I felt him panic. My mandible inched closer to his chest, just a bit more and I would have stabbed him… killed him. Sight focused on him, his chest, the hair growing on his black skeleton, the warps and rends hidden under the hair—

Do it! The voice told me. Stab him! Kill him!

The thrill left me drained and dizzy. I woke up from it and turned my head left, pulling my mandible along. I was late in the sense that I couldn’t stop the serrated tip of my mandible from carving him another bleeding shallow trench on his thorax —this one leading from the middle of his puffed up chest to the edge and beyond— but barely early enough to not stab him dead in the center of his chest.

We collided. I fell to his left and he went to the ground in shock.

By Queens bloated buxom —he defeated a soldier! The aged warrior commented as the audience erupted in scents and alarm.
My body grew slugging and heavy. My sight darkened.

I won? Finally,

Dazed, I sensed movement next to me. The soldier was getting up. I turned and saw him coming at me for real this time, mandibles moving to snap and separate my head from my chest.

But then a cloud engulfed us and I lost sight of him. Not just him —I lost sight of everyone. It was not pheromones, but poison, a misty, constraining version of it that didn’t burn or hurt, but paralyzed instead. I tried to get up, but couldn’t. I felt lashed to the ground, unable to move.

The effect lasted for an unknown length of time before slowly fading, returning me the senses it had stolen. I woke up and sprung to my feet ready to defend myself, or face the soldier if it came to it. There was no need for that, however. The soldier was sprawled on the ground, head down, antenna sluggish and feet folded underneath his body. The princess was beside him, disinfecting the wound I had given him. She had cleaned and patched it up, and was in the process of finishing the aid.

I could have killed him. I didn’t feel well.

I saw the aged warrior riding on the backs of four brawny soldiers. They stooped beside me. You surprised us there at the end. She scented. Are you happy about the win?
No. I replied.
So what do you want to do?
I don’t know.
Well, think about it and come back when you do know.   

She transmitted her orders to the soldiers and they started toward the princess and her patient, where they stopped to pick up the injured soldier and away they went into the crowd. I lost her to a mess of intermixing motional blurs.

The princess took off without me then stopped and looked back. Her antennae waved, impatient and waiting. I filled my body with a strong breath and followed her out of the glowing cavernous chamber, up the slope and back into the civil part of the city where the soldiers were disciplined and workers tamed.   

The familiar heat and relative calm of the chambers and the tunnels worked as a panacea for my lost senses. I started thinking again, in droves. My excitement and worry was drowned by blame, but disappointment and shame won in the end. I almost killed someone from my own colony. Sure, it happened in the heat of the moment, but I was in the wrong and there was no denying that.

I was still lost in thoughts when I felt a tap on my head. We were on the threshold of the elevator shaft. The same one I had been afraid of traveling through. History was repeating itself.

What are you thinking about? Princess said.
Nothing,
Are you sure? She pushed. You are dragging your feet and walking slower than a snail. You are gathering quite some attention, even more than me. And the fact that we came out from that slope and still smell of fungus is not helping either.

I took a carefree sniff and learned that we did indeed smell of that nefarious stuff. The scent seemed even more profound now that we were not among the slaves and the mercenaries.

I’m sorry for causing you trouble.

You are no trouble —unless, of course, your antenna has finally broken down. In that case, I can only send you to the mercenaries. You might even have a great future, now that you have been acknowledged by them.

That came sudden as a bee’s drone and shocked me senseless. Huh? NO! I’m fine. See? I quickly tapped my feet on the ground, even my lame leg, which moved awkwardly at best. And twirled my antennae and swung them around, moving them between the states of flexibility and erection to show that they were in perfect health. I’m fine.

I didn’t figure out what she was doing until she leaked a trace amount of amusing bafflement. That’s when she tried to explain and her farce broke down completely.

That’s al-alright. I-I ‘dung’ thi-nk you ‘pregnant’ ‘lilliy’ areee fine ‘dumb’. The scent was such a jumbled mix of chemicals that it was mostly incoherent, but I understood her intent.

She was making fun of me.

Very funny, I said and stopped making a fool of myself.
Don’t stop! Show me the tap dance again. It was very … invigorating. She had spasms and even contortions. I even felt for a moment that she was dying. It was fortunately not the case. She had only lost control of her body, she told me with completely seriousness; like it was supposed to make me less nervous.

It took her a while to get going, and when she did we walked side by side, together.

We had a conversation on the way to the thirty-first floor. The topic ranged from her hope for the city and plans to fortify it further.

She wanted to cover the tower in twigs and skewers the kind of which she said were found in the west, protecting the veins of a glamorous flower that smelled of sweetness in its freshest state. She also wanted to make a trade pact with the bees; she just hadn’t thought of the right kind of object for their delicious honey. Daring of all was her idea to train enormous beetles for transportation of soldiers, conquering the sky as well as the land.
I felt my heart racing by simply listening to her ideas and hoped they would remains as ideas at best. There was no need for sky faring ants. We had enough enemies already.   

Like this we reached our destination, the thirty-first floor, where we parted. The thirty-first floor was another military encampment, one to keep the royal females safe. The soldiers there too stared at us in bewilderment. A worker who smelled of fungus with a lame leg and the scent of royalty, and a princess who was a size too short for her caste and carried no wings on her back; we were an odd pair.

She wanted to sleep, even asked me to join her in her burrow. How could I? The soldiers were quick to erect their antennae and point their mandibles at me. I took the clue and bid her farewell.

I didn’t know about her, a fertile female of the royal caste, but I, a worker, didn’t need rest anyway. I had only ever taken minute naps between eating and working to ensure a consistent state of energy level. I was not comfortable with the concept of cutting myself off from the world for a long interval of time. That’s not how workers lived.

So I told her and she was taken back. The soldiers eased their aggression at my counter. I was just happy they didn’t pick me up and send me to the Looney bin out of jealousy.

I thought everyone slept. Even Mother sleeps at night. So why don’t you? She asked.
What could I say? We just don’t.
Bidding her farewell, I was turning when I felt her antennae rub my head. You did well today. I’m proud of you. She said and was gone by the time I turned.

I felt nostalgic.

That single moment changed our relationship for good.

I vibrated my antennae and read the scent signature she had given me: Royal guard of TinerJi, 799^th princess, 6^th generation, 1^st lay. This worker belongs to me.

The knowledge that someone depended on me helped me relax. I felt tired. So I found a lonely corner near the elevator shaft and lay still to sleep. There I slipped into partial hibernation and learned the benefits of sleeping without a care in the world.