Not for the first time, she stood, her six legs heaving her bulk from the floor, only for her to slowly lower herself back down. She’d given her word she would remain and defend the brood, so she would. No matter how much it grated her. Internally, she vowed that her children would never extract another such pledge from her, no matter how they pleaded.
“How do you think the battle is going, Mother?” Antionette asked, obviously nervous.
The two young Queens were anxious; despite being members of the council and privy to all the planning that had gone on, they too felt helpless at being unable to help protect their family.
For the Queens’ life had continued much as it always did. The Biomass reserves were brought to them, they ate, and then they produced their maximum daily quota of brood. The Brood Tenders cared for and raised the young in the chambers, much as they had before. The only real difference in their environment was the huge chambers carved beneath the egg-laying space to house the hatchlings who couldn’t be transported to the surface nest for their Academy training.
Obviously, the Queen hadn’t been able to leave on her regular hunting expeditions, another imposition that chafed her, but otherwise, the three of them continued to perform their role for the colony without pause.
“I’m sure it will be fine,” the Queen soothed her daughter, patting her on the head with an antenna. “Trust that they will work hard and succeed, just as we must…”
She trailed off, her antennae quivering.
Antionette and Victoriant looked up at their mother in confusion. It was unlike the Queen to be distracted at any time.
The Queen turned toward one of the walls of the egg-laying chamber and approached it slowly, her two antennae dancing in the air as she felt the vibrations in the air. A trickle of dirt broke loose on the wall, cascading down the rock to come to a rest on the floor. Then another. Then another. As she finally came face to face with the wall, the rock had started to quiver and shift, almost as if it were being pushed from the other side.
“Daughters,” the Queen called, not turning around, “fetch the guards. All of them.”
“Mother?” Victoriant called.
“Now, child!” came the stern reply.
Suddenly, the wall bulged, and the Queen leapt back to avoid the collapsing stone and dust that rained down when whatever it was finally broke through. Waving her antennae to clear away the dust, the Queen found herself face to face with the featureless, ringed face of a giant worm.
[I’m sorry,] she heard in her head.
Before she could respond, the worm lowered its face, the almost invisible mouth opening wide to crunch into the stone floor of the chamber, and in a breath it was gone, burrowed into the space between the rooms. With the bloated creature no longer blocking her view, the Queen was able to see the massed ranks of stone-covered warriors charging toward the new opening, and she reacted in the only way she knew how.
“FOR THE COLONY!”
Mandibles wide, the War Queen charged into the breach.
147. The Siege, Part 25
Brendant Dashed into the depths of the nest, the emergency pheromone trails screaming against her antennae with every step.
The brood was in danger!
The Queens were under assault!
Every nerve in her body was on fire with desperate rage. There wasn’t a single ant in the colony who wouldn’t put their life down to protect the brood, including the eldest, and now they flooded from every inch of the nest toward the breach.
She burst into the egg-laying chamber to find a scene of utter chaos. Without any plan or strategy, the ants were throwing themselves upon the enemy any way they could. Brood Tenders raced up the walls and dropped down on the golgari from above, biting and tearing with their feeble jaws until they were dispatched by the stone-people in short order. That didn’t stop others from repeating the action, and already, the piles of dead and dying ants being dragged out by exhausted medics were growing into hills.
A member of the council and graduate of the eldest’s own training program, Brendant knew she needed to be calm, needed to take control of the situation and establish some order. Only then would the chances of a successful defence be maximised. She knew that. But when she saw the Queen, covered in wounds, thrashing in the midst of the battle, she lost it. Her reasoning fled, replaced by her instinct, and the next thing she knew, her mandibles cracked against a golgari as she bit again and again.
What had happened? Where was the Queen?
She pulled back and lifted her head, desperately seeking her mother amidst the heaving, battling bodies. There! She was there! Somehow, someone had managed to get her to retreat. In glimpses caught through the legs and segments of ants that crawled over the top of each other to grapple with the invaders, she saw the Queen being tended to by healers as she stood, wounded heavily and dripping ichor on the floor.
“Hey-hey! You awake now, Brendy?” a scent managed to cut through the chaos long enough for Brendant to catch the meaning.
Vibrant?
“You gotta do better than that, Brendy!” her sister chided. “Can’t go losing your temper just because Mother had to fight. Not like she didn’t want to anyway.”
Suddenly, she was there at her side, the massive and absurdly quick soldier who talked just as fast as she moved.
“Hi-hi! You look a little beat up, let me getcha!”
Those massive mandibles reached out to grasp hold of her thorax, and before she knew what was happening, Brendant was being dragged away from the fighting.
“Hey! Vibrant, let me go! I can still fight.”
“Hummmm,” Vibrant released a meaningless, musical scent as she continued to haul her wayward sibling out of the fight before dumping her in front of a small team of medics and generals. “Got her out of there finally!” Vibrant cheered. “Get her fixed up, alright? She couldn’t bite a cheese wheel with her mandibles like that! What have you been doing, Brendy? Trying to chomp their swords in half?”
Bewildered and confused, the soldier could barely process the rapid-fire words coming out of Vibrant as the healers applied magic and regeneration fluid to her many injuries. Her carapace began to tickle as it started to stretch and flex, the damaged sections stitching shut at a visible pace.
“Vibrant?” she finally muttered. “When did you get here?”
“Pretty fast! We got word over at the gate, so me and my team raced over here to help out. Everyone was pretty mad, so we ran-ran super fast. I don’t think I’ve ever run like that before. Good thing the others did such a good job holding the breach, by the time we got here, the stony people hadn’t gotten far at all!”
“What about the brood?” Brendant was desperate. “What about the young?”
This chamber was directly connected to the chambers above, where the eggs were kept before hatching, and then above those were the myriad rooms reserved for the larvae. For a brief moment, even the irrepressible Vibrant was at a loss for words and she knew something was wrong.
“Tell me,” she said.
Vibrant sighed, a scent rarely detected in her vicinity.
“We weren’t fast enough,” she said softly. “Several groups of golgari were able to invade the upper chambers, they’re still fighting up there.”
A crushing despair and rage seized Brendant’s heart as she thought of the young lives lost, but after a few seconds, the anger won.
“Come on, let’s scour these scum from our home!” she declared.