The battle yet raged, a full hearted defence of the Colony demanded the attention and resources of every caste and every council member worked (almost) around the clock to ensure the family would ride through the trouble, greater and stronger than ever before. In many ways, the current Colony was like an egg, a hard shell on the outside, protecting what lay within from the storm as they grew and developed.
Although the war was waged against the Dungeon in a constant battle of attrition, inside the territory claimed by the ants, a different narrative was playing out. Unprecedented growth. The wave brought challenges, obviously, but it also brought more food, more cores, more experience and an opportunity. With the castes bringing in previously unheard of levels of resources every day, all of it was being funnelled into an absurd population explosion. Much like a chicken nestled within the borders of its shell, the Colony was getting ready to hatch.
In fact, Cobalt mused, that this might well be the second largest transformation to take place within the family since the Eldest had changed their species and put them onto their current path. Not only would the population of the Colony more than doubled by the time the wave was complete, the number of higher tier ants would also have seen a similar increase. Against all odds, the brood tenders had gone above and beyond, finding ways to budget the required cores and succeeded in realising the Eldest’s ambition of having each hatchling graduate the academy at tier four. A monumental achievement that would change the fate of every ant. To manage to do this at a time when egg production had skyrocketed was mind boggling to the carver and she could only dip her antennae in awe to the efforts of Theresant and Florence.
The strength of the Colony as a whole had risen to an entirely new dimension, and it would only continue to rise from this point forward. Cobalt herself was currently under extreme pressure to finalise the designs and preparation work for four new satellite nests that were due to begin construction the very second the wave receded. Teams had already been assigned, the workers prepared to drop their current tasks and rush to assemble when the word came through. Resources were being stockpiled, Queens being raised and guard detachments organised. As a matter of fact, last she’d heard from Antionette, the eight new Queens had already evolved to the fifth tier, the same as every other Queen in the Colony. The decision to put a massive priority on the tier of the Queens had already paid dividends, bringing their egg-laying capacity higher and allowing them to further develop the mutations which increased the stats of their offspring and allowed them to produce eggs more efficiently.
Cobalt raced around the model of the nest she was currently working on, her eyes pouring over every detail as she considered every angle. This was the final draft of the third nest and she wanted to ensure it was perfect before she moved onto the final design. Immaculately carved and shaped in hardened stone, the massive model weighed over a ton and was an exact scale representation of the new nest and the surrounding Dungeon, down to the finest details. Spotting an error, she clacked her mandibles in irritation before bringing one antennae forward, charging it with earth mana as she smoothed down one section of tunnel by a millimetre.
“Surely it’s ready by now?” huffed Sloan from behind her. “I need to brief my generals and I’ve already been waiting here for ten minutes!”
“I don’t rush your work,” Cobalt chided her sister as she reached into the network of tunnels connecting the chambers in the model before her and shaved off another tiny fraction of stone. “Would you have the new Queens take residence in a less than perfect nest?”
The idea of short-changing the Queens was certainly not something that Sloan wanted to have on her conscience at all, they were the future of the Colony after all. She shifted in place for a few long seconds before she spoke again.
“Are your carvers even able to notice such tiny changes to the design?”
Cobalt chuckled as a few of her assistants turned to look at the general with genuine disdain in their eyes.
“Absolutely,” she told her sibling. “They aren’t really using their eyes to examine the model, but their mana sense. The stone is infused with earth mana which they can detect with minute precision. Once this master design is complete, eight copies will be constructed by my fellow carvers here and each will be a perfect replica, down to the level of mana in every square centimetre. We’ve gotten pretty damn good at this you know?”
She finally stepped back from the model with a satisfied waggle of her antennae.
“There, finally done.”
Without another word, the eight waiting carvers got to work, leaping onto the eight prepared blocks of stone and ripping into them with mandibles and earth magic as they raced to complete their own models. These would be the eight carvers in charge of producing this nest and they took their responsibilities very seriously indeed.
“Why isn’t Tungstant in here helping out anyway?” Sloan asked.
Cobalt sighed.
“There has been a lot of movement at the checkpoints as garrisons have been pushed back. The amount of frontline repair work that’s been required has more than doubled over the last week, so we decided one of us should move closer to the hotspots to help coordinate construction efforts.”
“Makes sense,” the general replied, her mind turning to her own experiences at the checkpoints, “not long to go though, we only need to hold on a little longer.”
“Not long to go,” the carver echoed, already thinking of the next design she needed to complete. “Alright then, bring your generals in, you can brief them while the carvers work, it won’t distract them.”
“If you’re sure…”
“I am.”
“Alright then.”
With a wave of an antenna, a dozen of the smaller soldier caste entered the chamber and huddled around the model as their senior general began to detail their next major duty, managing the garrison of this new nest and the difficult work of protecting the carvers as they worked on constructing it. It would be a difficult task, but that was the kind the ants most craved. Moving into the next chamber through a narrow opening, Cobalt stopped to behold the half-finished design her sibling had begun work on before she’d left. It would take hours to go over the nuances and tease out the partially formed ideas and concepts that Tungstant had been working on, then hours more, with a great deal of trial and error, before she could bring those elements to fruition.
Each nest was a product of its environment after all, there were so many things to consider, so many variables that were unique to the location of the nest. Where would the tunnels converge? Where could the natural features of the terrain be utilised to better defend the nest? Where would Biomass, minerals and other resources be taken into the nest? Where were the nearest hunting grounds? The quality of the rock, the stability of the soil, all things that needed to be considered. She moved over the half-formed sculpture as if in a trance, sensing its flow and direction with her antennae as well as her mind. Hours later she brought her antennae forward and brushed away a portion of stone, her first alteration. An hour after that, she used her fore-claw to pinch off a section of tunnel, then resumed her communion.
Slowly, but with an accelerating pace, she got to work. By the day’s end, the model would be complete and another eight copies would be produced. Within the shell, the Colony continued to develop at a rapid pace. Soon would come the time they would emerge as an entirely new creature. Cobalt was confident that the Dungeon wasn’t ready for what was about to come.
