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For those of you reading The Runesmith Chronicles for the first time I recommend going back and starting with the first book The Runesmith Chronicles (it's actually Oni and the Farmer but it's too late to change it here :P). Mostly so you have a better understanding of how things like the magic system works and what's going on as I often reference earlier chapters.
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Enjoy!
Blu
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Edited/Proofread by - oldfart and 2muchdiggity
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Chapter 23
The worker perked up at the faint vibration coming from the surface. It was still far away and stopped nearly as soon as she noticed it, but it was unmistakably coming this direction. The sound reminded her of just before their last harvest, though there were far fewer of the creatures. There was little she could do at the moment, harvesting the interlopers would be impossible right now. The rest of the colony had gone deep for the upcoming cold season and it would take some time before even a small hunting party would get up here to the newest gardening chamber.
She stepped out into the tunnel and waved her gaster in the airflow leading down into the depths of the colony. The large, oblong appendage sticking out from the base of her spine worked similarly to those of regular ants, releasing a scent telling the colony there was more food to be harvested. Hopefully, they would still be around when the soldiers arrived. She was tempted to send out a little bit of the emergency pheromone just to see if a few more of the queen's beautiful army might come as well, but punishment for such a false alarm would be harsh.
The soldiers were so pretty, standing tall and proud with their small eyes and round faces. Instead of having mandibles by their mouths, they attached to a point up by their rounded, human ears. She wished she had ears like that, they seemed much more useful than feeling sounds through her feet and antennae. The soldier's mandibles were shaped differently from hers and closed vertically, covering the bottom of their faces and making them look deliciously dangerous. They also had long sharp blades extending from the back of one arm while above their wrist a needle-like stinger was hidden behind a tiny hole in the tough chitin. The worker loved to watch as the armor covering a soldier's torso separated to show the smooth and soft skin beneath. And their tiny gasters were so cute! Certainly not as useful as hers but they were able to produce the scents they needed, especially when hunting or fighting.
The worker had never seen a reflection but knew from her sisters that she resembled their tiny cousins. Personally, she hated her chitin-covered, teardrop-shaped head and with its large, multi-faceted eyes on either side. The two short antennae sticking out from the top of her head were cute though. Her scissor-like mandibles next to her mouth probably bothered her most, their placement and the extra muscles needed to use them barely allowed her to speak. A hard, black carapace covered her thin body and, though it had feminine curves, she knew that there was no soft skin beneath. Her outer shell meant that her middle legs weren't specialized into moveable armor and the insectoid limbs were instead used as an extra set of long, extremely strong arms or legs depending on what she was doing. When not in use, the middle appendages moved back and out of the way, the knees coming up behind her shoulders as the longer, lower part of the thin legs crossed behind her back.
As beautiful as the soldiers were, they were nothing compared to the gigantic queen. Her size was only matched by her beauty. She could crush a worker if she accidentally stepped on one. She needed to be big so she could carry around her large abdomen which constantly supplied the colony with new eggs. The rest of her body was smooth and soft flesh, much like the soldiers' torsos or the occasional human that they encountered.
The only thing she didn't like about the queen was the royal guard constantly nearby, those huge red women terrified her. That was probably a good thing. Too many of the workers, herself included, would sit and stare at the queen's beauty until they withered away.
The royal guard was also an uncomfortable reminder of what happens when you displease the queen. Though they were the champions of the colony, they weren't natural. Workers who displeased or disappointed the queen were simply killed, but soldiers were barricaded into a room and... changed... into the red women. The transformation made them mighty soldiers but reduced them to a child-like intelligence, just enough to follow the queen's commands. The worker preferred knowing she would simply be killed if she ever did something to warrant the queen's punishment.
Her antennae twitched as she caught a scent wafting toward her from the vent at the far end of the tunnel.
A human male was coming. No... two males were coming, along with two females.
A sense of longing that seemed to radiate from the bottom of her torso came from wanting desperately to experience something she never could. Where the queen and soldiers had openings to take the males inside them and collect their seed, she and the other workers only had smooth pieces of black chitin.
She once watched a soldier riding a male from their last harvest and immediately understood why they did such things in private. The sight left her, and the other workers who spied on the soldier with her, wanting to know that feeling. Once the woman collected his seed, she would take it down to the queen's chamber and share it with their matriarch. The worker had never seen this process herself but understood that the queen and soldier would rub their openings together as the soldier attempted to squeeze the man's seed into the regent. This didn't make much sense with the size difference. By her estimation, a soldier could nearly fit inside the queen's opening. She dismissed the thought; that was just silly. If the queen didn't need semen at the time, she would have the soldier press her opening to the matriarch's mouth so she could eat it as a meal instead. This was supposed to be a very pleasant experience for the soldier.
If a worker brought the queen a male, then she would often bestow a boon upon them. Her request would be to watch one of these sharings or feedings, it sounded like an amazing sight.
The worker ran up the slope, away from the garden, until she could feel the tiny vibrations in the earth from the group above. They were moving very slowly, but her antennae and feet were extremely sensitive. She moved along the wall of the large tunnel, looking up and marking their location until they finally stopped. Three were out front but another was standing alone, away from the others. Hoping her target was a male, she quickly and quietly began burrowing up and to the side. The tips of her antennae began to glow as the soil around her hands flowed down the slope and ran out of the hole as though carried by water. She was able to dig in near silence, other than crawling forward or using her insectoid middle legs to brace herself within the tunnel.
She stopped to get a read on her prey's position.
A foot scraped across the ground above her and the worker lunged upward. Her innate magic caused the friction holding the dirt together to vanish and effectively liquified the soil beneath the human's feet. Grabbing the leg of her shrieking prey, she quickly dragged the human down the steep slope. When the woman fell to the floor of the larger tunnel, the ant-girl darted around and cuffed the woman's head with a chitin-covered hand to silence her. She immediately realized from the lumps on the human's chest that this was not a male. The worker was disappointed, but it was still an opportunity. The colony needed to eat and there was still room in the garden chamber. She drew a viscous, sticky substance with strong healing properties from where it was stored in her gaster up into her mouth. Leaning over the dazed woman, she opened her mandibles wide and placed them on either side of her prey's thigh. The colony didn't need its food running away.
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Kal slid down the tunnel and straight into the arms of the fighter.
