The words of the eldest rang in her ears.
No sacrifice without purpose. Preservation of life is the fundamental principle of a flourishing society. Leeroy had been drilled on these points many times. Much more than her siblings. Yet in the heat of the moment, even this was not enough to contain her boundless spirit of sacrifice.
As the large soldier ant screamed and roared her defiance at the enemy, the nearby general began to notice a change come over the figure. It was almost as if she were vibrating with pure energy. The general sharpened her attention. It would be soon…
After chomping away one more foe, Leeroy could no longer contain herself. She shuffled back a few steps and paused for a single heartbeat to gather her strength.
“WITNESS ME!” she screamed, scrambling forward a few steps and hurling herself off the wall.
In that one glorious moment, when her legs left the ground and her body began to sail into the air, Leeroy felt as if she could see her own future. She would fall amidst the enemy and fight with every fibre of her being. Like a burning flame consuming its fuel, she would flare bright, and many monsters would fall before her.
Eventually, she would be overcome. Torn apart by the enemy, she would pass away at the foot of the wall, selling her life in its defence.
But so great would be her sacrifice, so expensive her death, that she would turn the fate of the battle! Right here, she would save her family!
Alas, it wasn’t to be. After too short a time, Leeroy felt her legs seized by powerful mandibles and her forward momentum was seized.
“What!” she cried. “Let me go! It’s all part of the plan!”
The general sighed.
“It may be part of your plan, elder, but I was instructed by General Sloan to prevent you leaping off the wall as part of her plan.”
Damn you, Sloan! Leeroy raged. I’ll get my chance yet!
127. Pushes and Pulls
A delivery system of flesh and bone. That’s what the horde truly was. As an instrument of the dark will that controlled it, the massive gathering of enslaved monsters had been used to scour the Kingdom of Liria and possibly neighbouring kingdoms as well. Here and now? That mass of bodies served a different purpose. To deliver Garralosh and her children to the target of her wrath as easily as possible.
Sloan knew that only when they destroyed enough, thinned enough of the horde away, would the true enemy show its face. Until then, Garralosh and the Ka’armodo would be content to stay back and allow their unwitting soldiers to absorb the punishment.
“The key to this battle, is holding enough strength in reserve that we can deal with the croca-beasts when they come,” Sloan had declared at the planning meeting.
To that end, the colony prepared waves of tricks and schemes they could employ. The horde would pay dearly for every inch of ground they took. The worry was, the primary reserve force of the colony still hadn’t woken up.
The eldest was still sleeping!
Sloan couldn’t help but clean her antennae over and over again in an attempt to calm her nerves. Something her sibling couldn’t help noticing.
“Calm down,” Victor advised.
“I would if I could!” Sloan snapped.
“The eldest will awaken in time. How could you doubt it?”
“You do realise what will happen if they don’t?”
“I suspect we’ll all be wiped out and the colony will cease to exist,” Victor replied, unruffled.
“Y-yes! That’s right!”
“And how does you stressing about it change anything? Have a little faith in the eldest. When have they ever let us down?”
That was a little hard to argue against. The eldest was a six-legged storm, stirring up change wherever they went. To date, they had never let the colony down. Indeed, they pushed the colony forward at every turn.
Sloan dragged her antennae through the knee joints of her front legs once more before she settled with a sigh. The two generals were positioned in the main nest in a chamber close to the surface. In a room next to them, scouts came and went at a furious pace, passing information to a team of generals who sorted it and manipulated a large three-dimensional map carved into the chamber floor.
“Let’s see how the battle is progressing,” Victor suggested and moved to inspect the map.
Sloan clacked her mandibles in irritation. “I don’t like that we’re stuck here, Victor.”
Her sibling sighed, but sympathised. “I want to be out there on the wall just as much as you. But we’re the best generals in the colony. We can best serve the colony from here. Don’t go Leeroy on me.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Sloan chuckled.
Unlike the two relatively calm generals, the war chamber was a flurry of activity, filled with the muffled scents of a dozen different conversations. Ants crawled carefully over the map, making constant adjustments to the sticks and place markers.
“Looks as if the first wall has done its job,” Victor observed as she pored over the map.
“We can still hold it,” Sloan proposed. “If we commit the reserves from the second wall, we could hold on for another thirty minutes, at least.”
“The risk would be too high,” the other general countered. “And unnecessary. The outer wall wasn’t built to hold and was never intended to resist assault for an extended period.”
Sloan nodded. This was how the two of them did their best planning. One proposed a plan, the other tried to tear it down. After the back and forth was done, they felt comfortable that they had the best strategy they could make.
“Alright then. Time to sound the retreat.”
Victor turned to the scouts waiting to carry messages to the front.
“Pass the word for the retreat from the first wall. Prepare the reserves. We want every family member to make it back.”
The scouts saluted and raced off to deliver their prepared messages whilst the two generals turned their eyes back to the map. Ants pored over it once more, making the delicate adjustments based on the events they knew were going to play out above.
Furious activity exploded within the nest. Ants ran over the top of each other, hastening to reach their assigned positions. The potential for devastating loss was huge. The retreat needed to be managed carefully, with precision. An orderly retreat back to the second wall was the aim. Not a scattered manoeuvre with the lines being overrun and soldiers being cut down left and right.
To this end, Propellant had taken her place amongst the fire mages.
When the word came for the retreat, the spell slinging ants leapt into action.
“Get ready for it!” Propellant bellowed. “Draw out every scrap of your Fire Mana!”
The ant Mages had been striving to master the Skills of spellcasting and Mana Shaping ever since the eldest shared the knowledge of them with the colony. Few had achieved a reasonable level of mastery. In fact, most of the ants were still stuck drawing from their Fire Mana Gland until it was empty, and then retreating to the Dungeon to recharge.
It had been an endless source of frustration for Propellant and Coolant, but the reality was that the Mage ants lacked the raw stats to push their Skills into the higher ranks. Nonetheless, progress had been made in group spellcasting. Certain Skills had been unearthed that allowed the ants to work in small teams to achieve better effects, and the benefits were showing.
In teams of five, the fire mages began to draw out the Mana contained in their glands. The ants were positioned in a circular formation, facing inward. In the middle of each group, a bright flame sparked into life. The flame grew brighter over time as more Mana was fed into it. At this stage, the lead mage in each group, the one with the highest manipulation Skills, began to shape the raw energy into the desired construct.