Sure enough, it didn’t take long for the order to come back from the main nest.
“We’re abandoning the wall! Prepare to push on the count of ten!”
“Get ready!”
“Still work to do here! Don’t slack!”
“Don’t slack, yourself!”
“Five!”
Grant braced herself and she felt the soldiers on either side do the same.
“Mages, start to channel! Stay clean on the lines!” the generals hollered.
The smaller ant Mages came forward until they were right behind their soldier siblings and began to channel the Mana within them.
They crafted it into the mind-bending shapes and constructs that would bring death to their enemies and a reprieve to the colony. If only for a few seconds.
“PUSH!”
“RAH!”
As one, the soldiers shoved forward and ripped into the monsters. They teamed up to throw monsters down from the wall and throw them back, clearing space to allow them to disengage. The soldiers backed up and turned around before they rushed away from the wall, leaving the smaller Mages as the front line.
Up and down the wall, a hundred ant Mages completed their spells and unleashed them on the horde at the foot of the walls. Gouts of flame and spears of water poured forth. The shrieks and roars of injured, infuriated monsters filled the air as the ants silently completed their deadly task.
With their limited cores and Mana Glands, they weren’t able to maintain the magical onslaught for long, only a few seconds, but it was enough. As the monsters of the horde descended on their wounded members to feast on their Biomass, the ants fled to the seventh and penultimate wall.
“Looks like the number crunching by the bigger brained castes was pretty much dead on,” Grant observed to the nearby general as they retreated together.
The two ants carefully followed the prepared scent trails as they narrowly dodged the traps and tunnels that dotted the open ground between the walls.
“We might even have one wall to spare,” the general chuckled.
Grant shook her antennae.
“We’ll need more than one to hold off Garralosh’s children. They’re bigger and stronger than most of the trash we’ve been dealing with so far.”
The ants crawled up the face of their seventh defensive layer and took position at the top. They would have a few precious seconds of rest before they were tested again. Rested troops greeted them as they crested the wall. Scouts, soldiers, healers and generals, already in place and ready to battle the enemy.
The ant hill rose high behind them, much closer now than when the battle started. The colony was prepared to make their final stand now. Once this position was overrun, only one wall would stand between the horde and the nest itself.
“How many casualties so far?” Grant asked one of the healers.
“Below three hundred,” the worker replied.
A remarkable number. A miracle almost. They’d defeated thousands of mindless enemies for the cost of only several hundred colony members. It would get harder now.
At that moment, Grant noticed a disturbance at the peak of the nest. A flood of worker and artisan caste ants poured out of the opening at the peak, followed by a familiar, massive frame.
Grant was conflicted, but she had to admit, it was a good time for the queen to reappear.
135. The Leeroy Initiative
“Haul your abdomen, Sloan!” Victor yelled at her slower contemporary.
“I’m coming!” Sloan grumbled back.
The two generals were exhausted. They hadn’t fought on the front line during the course of the battle, but they’d been debating, planning and coordinating the efforts of the colony without pause for over a day without rest.
“Finally getting to the good part and you want to miss out?” Victor joked.
“I’ll push you into the mouth of a Garralosh spawn,” Sloan promised. “Watch yourself up there.”
“I’m not worried. Leeroy will probably already be in there and can push me out.”
At the mention of the more… enthusiastic, of their soldier siblings, an irritated twitch flicked through Sloan’s antennae. Now that they’d come to this point, nothing could be held back. Which meant Leeroy, and the soldiers who’d kept her pinned down in the nest, had been sent back to the wall.
The two generals rushed out of the dark nest and into the bright light of the surface. Victor shielded her eyes with her antennae as best she could as she stared at the carnage taking place beyond the walls. From this high up, the children of Garralosh were in full view, flames trickling out from between their teeth.
“About time you slackers made it up here,” Burke said from nearby.
“We haven’t been slacking!” Sloan ground out.
“I know that, obviously.” Burke turned to Victor. “Why is she so tense?”
“Not much torpor.”
“Ah.”
They continued to observe the battle. Things were heating up, and not just because of the flame-spewing crocodile monsters. The queen had re-joined the front line, and the ants there had quickly reached a boiling peak of rage and fury.
“We need to get down there,” Sloan gasped urgently.
“I know,” Victor replied, intent.
“Do you really think you can stop her?” Burke asked the two generals.
“Not a chance,” Victor replied.
“We managed to convince her to return once. Why not once more?” Desperation crept into Sloan’s scent.
Victor flicked her antennae toward the battle that raged at the seventh wall.
“The queen is committed. I don’t think she expects to survive this battle. The only reason she retreated last time was because she would have caused more deaths than she saved. There is nowhere else to retreat to now. If the colony puts itself between her and danger again, she’ll just push us to the side.”
“We have to help her!” Sloan pleaded.
“Of course we will. Coming, Burke?”
“Let’s go!”
The three members of the twenty rushed in to join the battle. There was nothing left to do now but fight. The closer they came, the more their senses were overwhelmed by the din of battle. The roar of the monsters, the clash of claws, mandibles and carapace, the stink of Biomass mixed with a thousand messages pouring out of the ants every second.
More than that, the boiling rage and feverish heat that built within the closer they came to the queen. Before they could reach the edge of the wall, the queen and the ferocious worker and artisan caste ants that followed her crashed against the enemy like a tidal wave.
Acid flew in the air, so thick it fell like rain over the enemy, and the Garralosh spawn roared with pain and anger. The ants cared not and made no sound as they doubled their ferocity. For every monster that made it to the top of the wall, four or five ants were there to meet it. The soldiers on the front line were the first to move. They seized the victim in their mandibles and pulled, trying to haul them over the wall.
Then the smaller ants got hold of them and the unfortunate creature was buried under a swarm of bodies.
Then the children of Garralosh reached the wall. Flames roared into the sky and hundreds of ants fell back from the edge, lest the inferno claim them. The wash of heat was felt dozens of metres away as the air crackled against Burke’s antennae.
The only ant not to take a backward step was the queen.
The flames licked against her carapace, but she didn’t appear to care. Her attention was seized by the face of her enemy, after all this time, at last they would feel her wrath!
The moment the hideous creatures came within her range, the queen reared back and raised her head before she unleashed a torrent of acid from her mouth! Garralosh spawn in front of her were bathed in acid in an instant, their scales sizzled and melted as they stumbled through the downpour.