Peter looked out over the field and realised with a mild sense of surprise that his work for the day was done. The crops were watered and growing well, the weeding and pest control had been done. He eyed his fences askance, no, they were fine too.
He’d been a vegetable farmer for many years, but he couldn’t remember a time when his work was actually done. That wasn’t how farming worked. You spent the day slogging your guts out, elbow deep in filth, and you went home when it got too dark to work any longer and collapsed in a heap, most of your tasks left undone.
The middle-aged, grizzled man reached out a hand and gave his wooden fence a poke, almost as if he didn’t believe it could be as solid as it looked. The pine betrayed him, barely moving as he nudged it.
All he could do was put his hands on his hips and sigh, looking up at the clear blue sky. Things were just so efficient now. The watering happened basically automatically, a complex syphoning system had been installed by the ants, an enchanted system. He barely understood the start of how it worked, but all he had to do to give his plants a drink was pull a lever.
Fence maintenance was a communal effort, the wood provided was far finer than what Peter’s last house had been built from.
“Welcome home, dear,” his wife, Renita, greeted him as the doorbell rang when he came through the entrance. “Back early again?”
Peter sighed again and kissed his wife on the cheek. She merely chuckled at his mood.
“You need to get yourself a hobby,” she advised him patiently, for the hundredth time. “I don’t think this free time is going to go away anytime soon.”
He tried not to wince as she said ‘free time’. He almost succeeded this time.
“I know,” he said, “I’m just not used to it. I feel like I’m being lazy.”
“Well we wouldn’t want that,” she chuckled.
He rolled his eyes.
“I’m going to go for a walk. See if I can clear my mind,” he announced.
“That’s a good idea, dearest. Grab a loaf if you pass by town.”
He grunted. He hadn’t planned on heading that far, but now he probably would. The best bread would be long gone by this hour, but he could find something worth chewing on, surely.
Another ring of the bell and off he went.
It was a pleasant afternoon, the sun was out, a light breeze blowing. The surroundings were picturesque. The well cut and beautifully made road cut a straight path through fields, some with budding crops, some with cattle or sheep. He waved to a few of his neighbours as he made his way slowly toward town, the giant anthill looming larger on the way.
The roads kept a wide enough berth around the enormous mound so that the regular folks such as himself wouldn’t have ants getting in their way and vice-versa, but he was certainly close enough to see them at work.
There was quite a bit of activity on the surface today, which was a little unusual, groups of ants discussing together (the antennae waggling were always a dead giveaway) as they looked down on something happening beneath his line of sight.
Normally, Peter was more than happy to leave the Colony to its business. He was just a humble vegetable farmer, what did he know of Dungeons and monsters and goodness knows what else they got up to? Nothing, that’s what.
But for some reason, curiosity took hold and directed him off the road, toward the hill and groups of ants clustered around something he couldn’t see. He had no fear of the monsters. If they didn’t want him poking around, they would let him know and that would be that, but as he grew closer, he found none were in a hurry to move him on.
Instead, he was able to walk straight up to them and found himself looking down into a pit, possibly ten metres deep, a hundred long and fifty wide. The dirt in the bottom was hopelessly churned, and as he watched, a pair of smaller ants, mages he guessed, were moving around smoothing it out whilst, at either end of the pit, two teams of ants were discussing amongst themselves. Vigorous antennae slapping occurred at both ends, which indicated the conversations were rather lively.
After a few minutes, the two groups descended into the pit, a hundred metres between them, and took up their positions. He noticed a few things at that moment. The groups were made up of different types of ants, for starters. Smaller mages, larger soldiers, mid-sized scouts and generals. There were ten on either side, and interestingly, one group was carrying a rock or stone of some type.
Obviously, this was a training exercise of some type, a drill of some kind to practise a particular Skill or scenario the ants had dreamed up. For some reason, however, Peter felt he wanted to see what happened.
The signal to begin was invisible to him, but clearly not to the two teams. The twenty monsters exploded into motion, lunging forward as they raced towards each other. The mages hung back initially, but soon the ground began to boil beneath them as ramps, tunnels and walls of pure stone began to erect themselves.
On the front lines, the soldiers crashed into each other with tremendous force, straining to shift each other as they grappled with mandibles. The faster scouts tracked each other as they raced along the sides, darting left and right with blinding speed. They used the walls for cover, ran upside down on the ramps and slopes or even on the side of the pit as they tried to position themselves to best advantage and slip past their opponents.
It was chaos, but organised chaos. It took a little while, but gradually Peter was able to work out what was happening. The team with the rock was trying to move it to the other side of the pit, while the other group was trying to stop them.
Exactly what combat scenario this fit, he had no idea, but he found himself gripped by the spectacle as the two teams battled with grit and guile to achieve their objectives. This particular round ended when a mage managed to catch an opposing soldier by surprise, shifting the ground beneath her, causing a stumble. The soldier wrestling with her didn’t miss her chance, lunging and twisting, levering her foe out of centre position.
Like lightning, a scout launched into the gap, cut through the lines which hadn’t been able to adjust in time, and reached the end of the pit.
Peter burst out into applause.
The two teams turned to look at him for a long moment, until he felt self-conscious and stopped. They regrouped on either end of the pit, discussing amongst themselves once more.
The farmer realised they showed every sign of going again, so he settled down and sat, strangely eager to watch it all happen again.
