“Throwing away disposable pawns so they don’t have to taint their own claws,” Minerva grunted, a mannerism in which she was almost identical to with her husband. “The whole enterprise reeks of cowardice.”
“I suspect they believed our own disagreements with the Mother Tree would lead us to look the other way as they instituted this program. I tried to warn them, Consul.”
“Too stupid to listen. Pride will doom this world a second time. I will not carry water for these fools.”
She slammed her hand on her desk, and the shockwave blew Myriam’s hair back. Remarkably, the table held.
“Send in the scribe!” the Consul roared, and the massive doors opened a crack.
The scribe entered in full armour, gleaming with enchantments that protected the wearer from outside influences. The commander nodded. A wise play. Except the Consul’s face darkened at the show of weakness. She stomached it, for now.
“Withdraw all forces from the lands of the ka’armodo, on every stratum. End all joint exercises, training and missions, immediately. Close all diplomatic channels and make preparations to relocate every base and training facility that falls within their sphere of influence.”
Myriam was staggered.
“Are you sure, Consul?” she asked, her voice steady despite her shock. “Some might see this as a grave overreaction. Certainly, the ka’armodo will not look kindly on us abandoning them in the face of the coming disaster.”
“Us? Abandoning them?” Minerva sneered. “We did not turn our backs on two thousand years of tradition. We didn’t spit on the memory of those who died in the Rending. We didn’t break the taboo and create self-sustaining monsters to do our bidding and fight our battles for us. We have held fast, fought the good fight, and stood firm in the face of the worst this world has to offer for the good of its people. A sand-baked hunk of lizard meat thinks to test our resolve? This is the Abyssal Legion, and we are unmatched beneath the surface. We have battled since the Cataclysm to preserve this world, and I am not going to stop now.”
The Consul stood straight.
“Some lines you only have to cross once. There is no going back. They will tell us it was only a rogue element. They will tell us it was done without knowledge or approval. They will tell us we are too hot-blooded and need to calm down. They can get stuffed. From this day forward, they are poison and we have cut them out.”
She glared at the scribe who quivered in his armour in the face of the most powerful human in the world.
“I have spoken,” she ground out.
104. War Resurgent
My father, and even at this early juncture, I must apologise for every one of my writings circling back to the man who raised me, was the first to ever mention the fifth stratum to me.
He described it as a world of endless and profound noxiousness. A place where every particle of substance that filled it had been bio-engineered into a vehicle for death. A single breath could kill. A single touch, lethal. He spoke of rivers of poison that flowed through the air. He talked of lakes filled with bile so virulent that reality itself was infected by it.
At the time, we lived in the fourth, within the temple city of Artas, home to the grand cathedral of the Path, as I’m sure you know, and the idea of such a place existing within such relative proximity had me waking in screaming fear every second night for months. I cursed that old man (silently within the recesses of my mind, for I wholly lacked the fortitude to face him directly), for sharing such horrific visions with me, a mere child. For many years, I resented him, wondering why he never watered down his experience for me, not made it more digestible for a youth.
When finally I decided to face my fears, one by one, as an adult, it eventually came time for me to visit the fifth. I needed to dispel the horrific image of my tormented childhood and replace it with the firm reality which could not possibly match the terrors conjured by the imagination of a child.
I was wrong. He kept so much from me when I was a child. What I saw was so, so much worse than anything I could have imagined. How could a good world possibly stand for such things to exist?
It’s become something of a habit to poke into the gathered Will of the Colony whenever I want to know something about what my siblings are up to, but I’ve started to think that might be considered something of an intrusion. I mean, it might not be the same thing as peering into their minds, though it’s certainly adjacent! Instead of resorting to this more intrusive method of enquiry, I prod one of the rushing workers with an antenna and fire off a quick question.
“What’s going on? Why the rush?”
“Eldest! I didn’t expect to see you there… resting.”
I rear up to my full height, which is rather impressive now, over three metres, at least. I certainly tower over this presumptuous carver!
“I fought two battles back-to-back and hadn’t slept in days! Are you suggesting that I shouldn’t be taking torpor?”
“Ah… no.”
“Are you saying that torpor and rest are unnecessary?”
“No!”
At my words, the shadows within this stretch of tunnel darken precipitously as a cold wind blows against our antennae. The rush of ants continues past us, even quicker than before, every individual avoiding paying any attention to the unnatural darkness or the ant I now loom over. I eye the suddenly nervous carver.
“Just one more question… when was the last time you had a rest?”
The question strikes the poor worker in the heart, and she physically recoils, her antennae flailing wildly as she fails to control her panic.
“I–I—I’ve been busy!”
So shouting, she runs down the tunnel, only to be swallowed whole by the darkness that rises to embrace her. In a blink, everything returns to how it was before, the workers streaming down the trail, no ominous living shadows, no bitter cold wind, and no carver.
Good work, I sign to the air.
Then I poke another of my siblings.
“Hey, what’s going on?”
“Eldest! I didn’t see you there! I certainly didn’t see anything that I shouldn’t speak of…”
“Good. Any chance you can tell me what’s going on? Why are there so many of us around here? Is there an emergency?”
“Not as such.” The general rubs her head with one antenna as she ponders the question. “I came in as part of the third wave an hour ago and received a short debrief before I was directed to the front. Apparently, the southeast quadrant is seeing elevated enemy activity and fortifications in that region are only sixty percent complete as of last reporting.”
Hang on… what?
“The three main fronts of concern are still the central, eastern, and northeastern, of course; the fighting there is intense, I’m told. There was a counter offensive launched down the main tunnel thirty minutes ago which eased the pressure, but they had to pull back to avoid supply lines being cut by tunnelling forces. The counter-tunnelling efforts are draining a huge amount of antpower, but if they keep the termites off of our carapaces, then it’s all worth it, of course. Anyway, thanks for the chat, Eldest, I really need to get going.”
With a quick and unnecessary salute, the general is gone, whisked off and vanishing into the endless blur of ants rushing past. Fighting? Counter-tunnelling? Three active fronts?