Heart of the Nest pt 2 (1013)

Big 'ol chunk of mass, surrounded by many more, smaller chunks of mass. Huge amounts of toing and froing. It has to be the queen's chamber. There's no way the termites would allow egg production to cease, not even during a crisis. Especially during a crisis.

How is a social insect supposed to overcome its challenges? With overwhelming numbers! I didn't come here with a half of a million of my own siblings because I love their company!

Although I do…

[Can you sense it Crinis?]

[I can't… this whole area is shielded.]

My shadowy companion of death and darkness sounds frustrated, unusual for her, but I can understand it. For someone who started off completely blind, Crinis has evolved to the point where she's possibly the most visually acute of us all. She can't see light, but she can see mana, and shadows, and use both to 'see' through walls and deep into solid rock. Not being able to look at something right in front of her face must be a weird sensation.

[It's fine,] I assure her, [this is it. We just need to dig our way through. You three keep them off of me and I'll take care of the rest.]

Zen of digging, activate!

Not that I want to actually relax here, that would be profoundly unwise, but I do need to get my dig on in a serious way. I aim myself in the direction I need to dig and begin to pump my mandibles with furious energy, ripping into the stone. Haha! Making good progress here. At this point in my journey, I can cut through regular stone like it's butter. I'm just too strong and too heavily mutated to be resisted when it comes to digging!

THUNK!

Ouch! That is to say… unless you go ahead and heavily reinforce the rock. That one chomp has set my entire face to wobbling. What the heck did they do to this stone?

I scratch and scrabble at the wall to clear some space and get a good view before I set my antennae to tapping and my mana sense probing.

Holy moly! They've done some work on this… in fact… I'm not even sure what it is that they did. It's not condensed rock, that'd ping my gravity sense due to how much heavier it is. They've done something else entirely… this is a different type of rock from the stuff surrounding it. It's chock full of mana, I can tell that much. In fact, it's likely to be a big part of why Crinis can't see beyond this point. The enchantments they've used may even be plugged into this material itself.

Behind me, my three friends are desperately trying to stave off a ravenous horde of termites and are bound to succumb if I take too long. The sound of skittering legs and gnashing mandibles is almost deafening in the narrow confines of the tunnel. I have to work fast!

Without a second thought, I pump earth mana into my mandibles, vastly increasing their cutting power, lock my jaws into place, and let it rip.

CRUNCH!

Oof! I… I did it! A little bit! My mandibles have managed to rip two long grooves out of the mysterious stuff, but I haven't been able to rip through it like I would have liked. I could get through it like this, but I don't have the time to waste. I have to roll out the big guns!

VOID CHOMP COMBO!

I brace myself and unleash my most potent bite eight times in rapid succession, draining my stamina to almost nothing. In fact, by the time the last bite slams shut, my vision nearly blanks out for a long moment. Thankfully I have a half million ants close by and in seconds I can feel my strength returning.

[Master, are you all right?]

[I'm fine, just a little winded,] I tell her. [I've cleared the way, let's go!]

I jump through the opening I created and feel my pets following along close behind. What I see spread out before me is a scene from a horror movie.

We have indeed breached the inner sanctum of the termites, and boy oh boy, have they been busy. The chamber itself is large, over a hundred metres across and completely lined with that strange stone. Opposite from us I can see a weird sort of observation chamber shielded behind a shimmering pane of glass. It's currently empty, but I can easily imagine that this is where the ka'armodo conducted their experiments and modifications on the queens.

And queens is the right word.

Below us are six, SIX, heaving, pulsating, white blobs of insane egg production. The queens are massive, their abdomens swollen to over twenty metres in length. A constant stream of termites rush into the chamber, delivering ton after ton of precious Biomass farmed in the caverns below to the royal majesties who are spamming out eggs at a stupid rate.

How can I know that? I can see it!

Behind each of the six queens is a freakin' queue of workers waiting to grab the next clutch and let me tell you, those lines are moving fast. Forget about one every three seconds, this is more like three per second! Times six!

There must be millions of termites packed into this nest! Just how many workers do they have tending to the fungus?!

It has to be a lot to maintain the kind of production I'm seeing here….

The ka'armodo must really have lost their minds. Imagine if this had gotten out of their control, which it most likely would have. This colony of termites would have been a plague on the fourth stratum. With the start the lizards had given them, along with the power they would have gained from annihilating the mother tree, it would have been a nightmare to get rid of them.

[Master!]

[Oh, shoot!]

No time to get distracted. We have entered the very heart of the nest and the termites are not happy. Sensing that their precious queens and brood are at risk, they are going absolutely mental. Even the much smaller worker termites who swarm all over the chamber are posturing aggressively at us, trying to jump up to our level and bite at my legs.

[Stick to the plan, people! We need to drop down a level. Tiny, I need you to punch a hole in the floor, do you think you can manage it?]

BOOM!

[Nice! Down we go!]

The four of us jump down, Crinis clinging to my carapace and Invidia holding onto Tiny's back. We pass the queens, who chitter menacingly at us, though I'm not particularly threatened since… they literally can't move, and drop down to the level below, which happens to be filled with angry termites.

[Crinis, take care of crowd control!]

[Die, trash!]

[Oookay. Invidia, focus on barricading us in and I'll get to work on the spell.]

Eye ablaze with power, my little demon puts his overwhelming mental powers to the task and begins to create thickened barriers of stone around us even as Crinis slides into the shadows and starts to annihilate the worker termites. Tiny busies himself smacking everything nearby, but I notice that even his unbreakable fist is suffering after blowing a hole in that rock. His bones haven't broken, but the poor guy's fingers have certainly seen better days.

I'd heal him if I could, but I have to focus all of my brains and every drop of mana I have on this next spell.

Things are about to get… volcanic!