[You mean they’ll come back and try again? Don’t these people have hobbies?]
He chuckles and even White hides a smile behind her sleeve.
[They do: killing you,] Grey says. [I wish that was a joke. They will be back. It might not be the Legion or the golgari; there are plenty of others out there who are intolerant of your kind of life. In fact, once the word gets out, expect a horde of hunters to descend on this area to prey on your people for resources.]
[We’ll put them in their place.]
He shrugs.
[Then stronger ones will come. This too will be a problem you cannot avoid. Not in the short to medium term.]
Well… that sucks. On that cheery note, I leave them be and head over to visit the prisoners in the nearby cells. Turns out Irette hasn’t taken the defeat of the golgari all too well. I think she might have been holding out hope that they would win, liberate her, and she would be able to return home to live in comfort amongst the Shapers once more. Her dream shattered, she’s but a fragment of her former self. Can’t say I’m super sympathetic, but it’s still a bit sad to see someone brought so low. Hopefully, she can pick herself back up soon.
After that, I continue to whip around the Colony on my whirlwind tour, dropping in on each and every caste, saying hi to the Council members and trying to get a picture of what is needed from me.
None of this is strictly necessary, of course. If I want to know what members of my family really want, all I have to do is open my mind to the whispers pouring through the Vestibule. But I won’t! Face-to-face meetings are more polite! Let’s stick with that reason. As expected, each member of the Council has a huge list of things they need done, though they’re strangely hesitant to ask for me to do anything directly. It’s only when I run into Sloan that the general tells me why.
“Granin has convinced us that the best thing for the Colony is for you to power up,” she says bluntly. “Which means the members of the Council are under instructions not to load you down with chores.”
“But that’s no good!” I protest. “What’s the point of being the strongest member of the family if I don’t do anything to help the family?”
“The idea is that we have you around to deal with the stuff that we can’t deal with ourselves. For the time being, just get out into the Dungeon and defeat monsters. The pressure from the wave is building, and it’s getting harder to hold our lines, especially in the places where we aren’t fully entrenched. In this case, just go out and take all the experience and Biomass you can. That’s the best thing for us right now.”
I guess I can do that. Time to put my newfound muscle to the test!
35. Going on Tour
Turns out that the Colony had already begun to invest a significant amount of time and energy into the wave farming project. As I exit the nest and make my way into the tunnels, I see the vast wheels of ant industry turning on a grand scale. Tens of thousands of carvers, each and every one of them an earth mage, shifting impossible amounts of stone and dirt, diverting water, creating new chambers and tunnels as part of an immense, interconnected web of farms. Each stretch of tunnel I move through is patrolled by yet more soldiers, scouts, generals, mages, and core shapers, keeping watch for the endless spawns that the Dungeon spews forth.
The sheer quantity of work being done is mind-boggling, and frankly well beyond the scale I envisioned when I put the idea to the Council. They didn’t muck around, that’s for sure. Once the idea was in their heads, they clearly wanted to go as large as they possibly could. I’ll never accuse them of having too small an appetite!
From what I’ve seen just on my way out of the nest, the new farming setup will be hundreds of times the size of the previous one, built around the surface nest. If all goes well, the amount of Biomass and cores we can gain will fuel the Colony into another wave of expansion. The trick is, are we going to be able to defend such a large swathe of territory?
Which is where enormous construction project number two comes into the picture. As my pets and I leave the nest behind and travel farther away from its comforts, we no longer see the ongoing farming project and the thousands upon thousands of labourers hard at work. Instead, we see thousands and thousands of labourers hard at work at something completely different: fortifications.
Turns out there are a whole host of Skills within the System related to building, shaping, designing, and utilising defensive emplacements. It makes sense, since there’s pretty much a Skill for everything, near as I can tell, and after the siege, the carvers of the Colony have become, if not masters, then certainly experienced in putting together some hefty defences. Their Skills trained from the days on end they toiled shoring up the nests, these workers have now turned their attention to a grander stage: the defensive wall that will encircle the core of the Colony’s territory.
Tons of rock are shifted and shaped every hour, and even as I watch, sturdy walls, ramparts, spiked embankments, pitfalls, and more come into existence. Every single inch of them hardened and baptized by the magic of the carvers. They’ve even gone so far as to prepare healing centres and resting chambers, peeled free of the Dungeon’s veins through monumental effort, in order to ensure the healers can work unimpeded. I know for a fact this work is replicated throughout the Colony’s territory, a vast sphere of walls and forts that will defend each and every tunnel that would provide access for the invading wave.
The overall design was that of a detail-oriented mad person, or Sloan, Victor, Cobalt, and Tungstant, as they are otherwise known. I’d seen the carvings and was barely able to make heads or tails of them, despite them being explained to me. It wasn’t as if they were satisfied with one wall per entrance, oh no, that would be insane! The pitiful delusions of a mad ant! Instead, there are layers upon layers of redoubts, forts, walls, and traps that could be abandoned or retaken as needs required, all intricately designed to funnel the hordes of enemies to deadly killing grounds where the largest tunnels intersect and merge.
As we continue to march, those enormous works are put behind us and something else takes their place: the sights and sounds of battle. This is the true face of the wave. Not construction, not relentlessly patrolling soldiers, but an endless war of attrition against a literal wave of monsters without end. Here the Colony has placed the vast majority of its strength, almost a hundred thousand monstrous ants forming an unbroken, living wall to hold off the wave until the fortifications are complete.
It’s toward these frontlines that we make our way, and it isn’t long until the deafening roar of monsters at war is resounding from the tunnel walls and echoing off the stone.
In the tunnel ahead, a team of hundreds is pushing back against the wave, trying to ensure that none get through. The fight is desperate and difficult, with ants being pulled from the frontline and healed before being sent back in or dragged away for further treatment. Without the benefit of a proper defence, the Colony is forced to put bodies against bodies and there is clearly a toll.
A nearby general rushes up to me.
“Eldest! I didn’t expect to see you here, but I wouldn’t say no to some help.”
I look over the fight taking place not a hundred metres away.
“How bad is it, General?”
The much smaller soldier caste member doesn’t equivocate.
“We were holding fairly easily at first, but it keeps getting harder, and I’m having to rotate my soldiers for rest more often. The pressure on the healers is increasing by the hour, and without more mage support, we may find it difficult to hold out more than a day if things keep going like they are.”