Antelligent Design

139. Dreaming

“Hi-Hi! How’s it going, Mother? You can glow now? That’s cool! Can I glow someday, or is it a queen thing?”

The queen didn’t have time to spare to turn to the babbling child who appeared beside her. She was deep in battle with a colossal Garralosh spawn, far taller than she was, and the wounds on both sides had piled up. The creature leered with both its jaws as the queen lowered her body to build the energy in her legs.

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.

It came again. That rumble which shook the world itself. There was hunger in it. The queen could sense it. A vast, hungry appetite without end, and rage. She had no idea what had driven the old monster to such anger, but she cared little.

“Someone sounds upset! I wonder why? Not enough Biomass, maybe? That always annoyed me. The senior used to stuff Biomass into my face all the time! Sometimes I wouldn’t be able to talk for hours. The senior really wanted me to grow up strong!” Vibrant nattered.

Somehow, the little soldier managed to Dash back and forth as she battled at extreme speed, all whilst she talked at a constant, rapid rate. The queen felt the faint beginnings of a headache. Distracted, she missed a dodge and a long-armed swing from her opponent thundered into her side. Her Mana Enhanced carapace flared and sparks flew as the claws penetrated the energy and gouged into her side.

“Too slow! Gotta move faster than that, Mother!” Vibrant laughed as she Dashed.

Before she could twitch an antenna, the smaller ant appeared by the leg of her foe and latched on with her mandibles. She savaged the leg with all of her strength before darting away and dodged a sweep of the monster’s tail.

She wasn’t going to fall for that again!

Seizing the moment, the queen bulled her way into the face of the massive lizard. Knocked off-balance, the creature roared with both mouths. The queen feinted high before she bit low, her mandibles digging deep into the torso.

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!

Every monster shivered as the air seemed to vibrate inside their lungs. Such a thing would terrify any normal creature, but the ants were indomitable. The aura released by the queen pumped them full of energy and filled their hearts with the thirst for battle. They continued to tear into the enemy, their own wounds and safety a distant thought.

The battle raged before the eighth wall. The ants threw themselves at the Garralosh spawn and the remnants of the horde with reckless abandon and wounds mounted on both sides. Even with the flanking attack of the shadow beast pets, their superior teamwork, mages and healers, the ants were sustaining damage. Soldiers, scouts and more had begun to fall in increasing numbers, but no backward steps would be taken.

The queen fought at the front throughout it all. Tireless and without peer on the field, she threw herself into the more powerful Garralosh spawn over and over again. Supported by her children, she was able to lay many of them low. But they were many and she was but one. Even she began to flag as her wounds mounted.

“The queen’s started to struggle up there!” Advant shouted. “We need to get healers up there immediately!”

“What healers?” Grant called back, exhausted. “Almost all of them are recharging their glands and cores. We just have to get up there somehow!”

The ants’ ferocity rose to a fever pitch. Every time the queen was injured, it was as if the entire colony flinched before they hit back twice as hard. The Core Shapers themselves dared to rise out of the pitfalls and fight alongside their pets. Mages poured out their Mana, holding nothing in reserve. The fight became increasingly bloody on both sides.

“She’s coming!” the pheromone message smashed into Grant like a truck.

“What?” she called back.

A scout raced up and down the line of battle as she repeated the same message.

“She’s coming!”

Grant froze. Her heart seemed to slow in her chest. The time had come. The white-hot frenzy of the ants cooled as the message sank into their antennae and reality asserted itself.

“RETREAT! Back to the final wall if you want to live!”

Would the colony survive, or would they perish here and now?

“Someone has to go tell the queen…” she muttered.

Would the queen retreat? Should she? If the queen couldn’t fight off the beast, then none of them could.

This torpor feels different somehow. I’m not sure exactly what it is. I try to put my feelers on it, but thinking is difficult, elusive. My awareness is washing to-and-fro. Separate pieces that come together only to float apart.

Am I awake? Perhaps it’s a lucid dream.

Something is different.

Faint whispers tickle in the back of my mind. They creep up to my ears… antennae? I don’t know. Perhaps they speak straight into my thoughts, I don’t know. Strange whispers they are, indistinct and blurred, I can’t fully understand them. In some ways, they’re more like impulses or desires, but they’re not my own. As time passes, they become louder and there are more of them. They drag and pull at my skin, my carapace. No… deeper than that. A thousand tiny hooks that tug at my very soul.

I feel helpless to answer them. I’m adrift in a dark river, distant from my own body and unable to react. I’m changing. Even as the whispers grow louder and my body shifts at the edge of my awareness, something more fundamental is changing. This is evolution.

What does it mean to evolve? To change oneself in a physical sense? I’d thought that was the case. Even as I float, half asleep, I can still tell this is different. This is deeper. The longer it goes on, the more my mind wants to sink, to fall into the centre and stay there. Why move? When I move, things are destroyed. Better to be still and quiet.

Stop whispering to me. Stop pulling at me. I want to sleep.

But I can’t. The hooks are insistent. Each moment that passes, they drag me a little further out of the river and closer to shore. A thousand hooks and a thousand voices, each with their own particular tug and tone.

Over time, my mind and body come back together to meet once more in the middle. The light returns to my eyes. So slowly.

I’m so hungry. Yet, and it’s the strangest thing, on the inside, I feel so full. The whispers are louder. Insistent and desperate. They need me, very much. They need me and so I will go. The call alone is enough.

With great care, I lift a leg, then another, then another, until all six are positioned around me. Then I push, and the blood begins to flow through my body once more. Mana sputters to life inside my core and trickles out through my veins and then further, to seep into every fibre of me.

But still the whispers. Still the hooks with their endless pull. It isn’t pain when they drag at my heart, but something far worse. I need to go to them.

I’m coming. I’m awake.