The ant stared at them. Rillik, Elly, Drake and Lacos stared back.
A pause.
Rillik swore viciously, then began to turn the boat around, not bothering to hide his frustration.
“Let’s just kill it and get on the mountain,” Drake said. “There’s only one.”
Rillik didn’t bother answering, still openly cursing.
“There is never just one,” Lacos quoted the advice their leader had imparted earlier in the day, then he pointed over the monster.
Drake turned to see where his friend was pointing, it took a moment, but he eventually noticed several sets of antennae poking from behind trees or around the edge of a bush. It was like the ants were hidden, but not so well that they wouldn’t be found if you actually tried to find them.
The ant in front of them clacked its mandibles several times, the sharp, percussive noise ringing out in a rhythm that felt distinctly like mocking laughter.
“Ah, shut up you damn monster,” Rillik growled as he hauled on the oars.
The rest of the crew slumped in the boat.
“That’s the fourth time we’ve tried to land today,” Elly groaned. “How are they always waiting for us when we get there?”
“I still think we could force a landing,” Drake grumbled. “They’re only ants.”
Lacos held his chin in one webbed hand, pondering.
“Dozens of groups have made landfall already, maybe hundreds. The ants should have their… jaws? Do they have jaws? Their jaws full dealing with those mercenary groups, but still, we are met by a large number whenever we approach.”
Rillik finally stopped cursing and laid off the oars for a moment, staring back at the ant still standing in the open, watching them.
“This is why I never trust jobs without enough information,” he spat over the side, “and why we play it as cautious as we can until we learn more.”
“We’re just wasting time,” Drake said, “other groups are out there earning money and we’re just getting laughed at by an oversized insect.”
The young man fumed in his seat, glaring at the mountain as he clutched the hilt of his sword. Rillik sighed.
“Patience. Where is your patience? Do you have debts I don’t know about, Drake? If this is about money, talk to the group, we can help you out.”
A little anger bled out of the man, but he still simmered as he turned around.
“No,” he said quickly, “nothing like that.”
“Then sit down, shut up, and be patient. By the Path, how many times do I need to show you the folly of rushing in blind before the message starts to sink into your thick head? Are other groups on the mountain? Yes. Are they making money? Yes. Will they all make it back? Not even close. Every group is going to take heavy losses today, you mark my words.”
“What do you mean?” Elly asked. “I get that we didn’t expect it to be ants, but isn’t that a good thing? They’re first stratum monsters, not fourth, and they have strong cores. This should be easy, right?”
Rillik just shook his head.
“Don’t be stupid. Stop and think for a minute, would you? You see a monster from the first stratum laughing it up on the fourth and you think you’ve found a free buffet? Don’t be daft. And look at the way they behave. I’ve taught you to analyse monsters, what do you think we are actually seeing here?”
The three younger mercenaries considered the evidence they’d gathered from a morning of trying to reach the shore without being detected.
“They’re organised,” Elly said after a moment. “There’s a watch on the shoreline, there has to be. Except that doesn’t make sense… don’t they have bad eyesight?”
“They aren’t showing normal signs of monstrous aggression. Baiting tactics, laying traps, even openly taunting us. All signs of intelligent behaviour,” Lacos stated thoughtfully.
“There’s no doubt they’ve been monitoring us somehow,” Drake said. “It’s possible they even have some sort of primitive tracking device like we use.”
The others looked at him as if he were insane, but Rillik only nodded.
“Ants. Smart ants. What will the Dungeon think of next?” he groused. “There’s thousands and thousands of the little buggers lighting up that mountain like a maypole, an ocean of gold to mercs like us, but it’ll be incredibly dangerous to try and take it.”
They sat in silence for a long while until Rillik finally sighed.
“What’s more, you haven’t realised exactly what they’re doing. Why are the ants hidden, but not hidden well? They could tuck themselves underground and you’d never know they were there, but instead they’re almost out of sight. They want us to see them, they don’t want to fight. If a crew is too stupid to look, or underestimates the danger, they’ll blunder in and get chomped, but someone with eyes to see will notice and back off.”
“Why would they do that?” Elly asked.
“They’re just buying time until the big bug wakes up. The whole lot of them are playing defence. If we landed in force, they’d probably just go underground and force us to go down there and fight them. I hate this.”
The group fell silent as they absorbed what their leader was saying. A gloom fell over them as it began to look as if this had been a wasted trip after all.
“There has to be a way,” Drake said, “we can’t come out here and go back with nothing. They’re just ants. We can bait one out, fight them on the water, or flood their tunnels. We still have options. All we need is a few cores to pay for our trip.”
He did his best to sound reasonable, but beneath the surface was an undercurrent of tension that was obvious to the others.
“Drake,” Rillik said seriously, “this is your last chance to come clean. Why are you so desperate for money right now? Cough it up.”
For a moment, it seemed as if he might say something, but then his face closed over, his expression growing stony.
“It’s nothing. I just don’t want to have wasted all this time.”
Rillik sighed.
“Look, we may still be able to salvage something, but it’s going to depend on what everyone else is going to do. Damn it all. It’s so much easier when the monsters are stupid.”
