If they actually get completed, I don’t see how anyone is ever going to remove us from the land we’ve taken. I mean, are you really going to go inside those hills and fight us? You aren’t coming out, I can guarantee you that!
No sooner do we show our faces along the border than we run into a small patrol from the ka’armodo side. Two young lizards and their attendants are marching back and forth on our side of the invisible line separating our territory.
Obviously, they dispute that, but we’ve had enough of being pushed around by them. The proxy war they’ve started on the fourth has put all of us ants on edge. We no longer are willing to tolerate their nonsense.
Despite posturing arrogantly, it doesn’t take much for us to run this small squad off with their tails between their legs. A squad of tier six monsters is no joke. When all four of us reach tier seven, it’ll take something pretty serious to prevent us from doing what we want, at least up here.
Thinking about it, will I even be able to stay up here when I evolve? I think the mana level would be fine, tier sevens are fine here, after all, but what about the Call? As it is, I can barely—not really—tolerate it, and if it gets any worse… I may never be able to come back here.
BAH!
No negative thoughts allowed! The Colony has embarked on an unprecedented campaign of buttocks-kicking and I shall channel that spirit! The Call shall be kicked, along with the ka’armodo, the termites, the Ancients, and anyone else who wants a piece of this business district!
Anthony doesn’t back down!
Except when the lizards come back with a patrol of ten ka’armodo, several of them the older type with extra arms, and almost fifty setsulah. In that case, I back all the way down and hightail it to safety.
It’s nice they want to show they take me seriously, but do they need to bring out that many? That’s overkill, dammit! Even if I tried to nuke them with a Gravity Bomb, there’s a chance they’ll be able to break it apart before it can detonate. Even if they couldn’t, with that many mages, they could shield themselves for sure.
Day one ends with me and the crew hunkering down in a still-under-construction nest to get some shuteye, something that is exceptionally difficult for me given the pain I’m in.
Eventually I manage to get a little open-eye, at least to refresh me a little.
When I shock myself awake, I take a moment to stretch out the kinks and clean my antennae. I really need to take a break at some point and look at my mutations and Skills. I’ve fallen into a poor habit of not bothering to check my status page on a regular basis, but the upgrades to my important Skills come so far apart these days, it’s hard to work up the motivation.
I can remember a time when every Skill Point, every little crumb of Biomass, felt like a milestone. Now I need to stack up hundreds of Biomass before I can achieve much, mutation-wise.
It’s depressing in a way.
But no matter! The spirit is strong and I shall overcome!
…Once I get back to the fourth. Right now, I can’t concentrate properly given the incessant yanking on my guts.
When we go out and about, it doesn’t take long to find some trouble to throw ourselves at. A scout returned to the nest whilst I was napping and reported suspicious movements from the lizards over the border. Perhaps they’re going to pull something now that they know I’m here? A show of strength of some sort?
Or maybe they just want to lure me out and kill me after the trouble I’ve caused them. I wouldn’t put it past them…
Might as well go and find out.
127. Bug Zapper
Is the Colony evil? The monstrous ant foe poses a conundrum, as far as enemies go. It’s very easy to paint such alien creatures as ‘other,’ distinct from the sapient people of Pangera, and therefore remove sympathy. The ants do not speak in the conventional sense; they don’t even make sound. When describing them to someone with no direct experience of them or their society, depicting them as mindless, soulless, and evil is almost trivially easy.
Unspeaking, unthinking killing machines. Tunnelling through the soil to strike where they are least expected. They have no mercy in them, no kindness. All they know is hunger, all they think of is war.
And such a viewpoint will be swallowed hook line and sinker by the average citizen on the street. After all, what do they know of the Colony? Nothing at all. It isn’t as if an ant is going to pop up in the street and prove them wrong. Although their diplomatic efforts have spread farther than any might reasonably expect, the common person knows not of these things and has never come into contact with a sapient ant monster.
For those of us with more information, with more academic rigour, we cannot state that they are evil. Their motives may be difficult for us to comprehend, and their actions may not always make sense to us, and therefore seem barbaric and unnecessary, but theirs is a rich and layered society that, while unified far more than our own nations, is not a monolith. They have their own disagreements, negotiations, and strange manner of decision making. They have culture, art, craftsmanship, and all the other trappings of intelligent civilisation.
Perhaps what they do could be considered evil, but the Colony itself is far too complex an entity for such simple labels.
Well, well, well. The ol’ lizards have decided to try and set a trap for little old me. Unfortunately for them, I’ve never seen a trap I didn’t want to stick my head in!
Wait…
Anyway, I’m going for it. I won’t be dissuaded! Not that the Colony makes any effort to stop me. When I tell the local generals what I intend to do, they just nod as if that’s what they expected all along. In fact, when I sally forth with Crinis, Invidia, and Tiny in tow, we find an army of ten thousand ants has already been deployed, waiting in neat ranks for me to leave so they can tag along as I go to confront the wizard lizards.
“Uh, you lot are all heading out to the border?” I ask, a little surprised to see them.
“Yes, of course. We expected you would go, and we want to make sure things don’t escalate out of hand.”
“You really think the ka’armodo would try and pull something?”
There’s a pause as the general in charge looks at me steadily.
“…Yes. We were concerned the… ka’armodo, would start something.”
That tone doesn’t seem down the line to me…
“You… aren’t implying that I’d be the one to start something… are you?”
“Nooooo,” the ant drags it out for far too long.
“Fine,” I huff. “Be like that.”
The way they’re acting, you’d think I’m gunning to start a conflict with our new neighbours. I’ve been so patient with them that it practically hurts! After everything they’ve done, don’t we deserve the chance to kick their scales in?
The answer is obviously yes! However, it can also be true that the Colony doesn’t necessarily need open warfare with an ancient race of powerful mages and their bonded servant race. Let’s not be silly, we were lucky to get away with ticking off the golgari; I don’t think we’ll get lucky a second time. If we give the ka’armodo a reason to mobilise their real strength, they will probably smash us. We need more time. Time for more ants to be born and trained in the antcademies, time for the ants in the third to amass experience and Biomass, then evolve to tier six.