Colony's Hope

A New Home

The next few days were a practice in patience for Skye, who was becoming more and more paranoid as they stayed above ground. Ants their age would still be working in the nursery or the storehouse, not outdoors. They were also very alone...but after three days, they were getting used to the quiet. At the very least their food supplies were ample in this area of the forest. It would have been much more difficult to survive otherwise.

It was on the fifth day that they were given another mission...unfortuantely it happened in the middle of them gathering pieces of fruit. It startled them so much that they jumped, dropping the fruit on top of themselves. Chittering in annoyance, they started grooming fruit juice off themselves while tapping on the mission screen. They read over the details briefly, stopped, then looked closer at the letters.

New Quest- Make a new home

You have been above ground for too long; make a new home before you start suffering penalties.

There was more to it, mostly about what kind of area would make for a good nest and such. However, the idea of penalties was alarming. Clicking and clacking their mandibles together, they brought the fruit back to their knot hole. Tapping their third and fourth legs together, they thought carefully about what to do. They couldn't carry their food larder with them, and the nearest place that would be safe for a nest was a good two day walk from them...at least according to the information they were just given.

They sighed, making a decision. Going out onto a branch, they pulled several leaves off the tree and went back to their base. Using their mandibles, they cut up some fruit and dead insect. It wasn't that it was heavy, per se, but it was cumbersome. They knew from their time here that they needed to have freedom of movement to travel in this forest. So, a small pack of food, just enough to get them to their destination, was tied to their thorax, well out of the way of their legs. After that, they clambered down to the ground and started heading in the direction the quest had pointed out to them.

*

The trek through the forest was difficult at first, as Skye couldn't easily see any hiding places nearby. However, they soon learned that leaf litter made for good cover when a bird twice their size swooped at them. It was a close call, and it reminded them to always be looking up as well as around. It was still a bit eerie to realize that they were many times the size of an earth ant...especially considering that many of their predators were much bigger than they were.

Eventually, though, they got into a general routine to keep themselves alive. Once the initial danger was more or less handled in a reasonable manner, they were able to focus on other things. Like the fact that they were utterly alone. Even in their prior life there had always been some kind of non-hostile population around them. As an ant, Skye felt the solitude more accutely now than they would have before, though. It was a sort of mind-numbing weight that threatened to crush them, slow their movements until they stopped.

It was as they were reaching the suitable home site that they realized that this was the penalty the unknown quest giver was talking about. Eusocial animals were not meant to survive alone; they needed others of their kind. They kept this in mind as they found a small mound of dirt underneath a tree. Slowly they began to dig, barely noticing that they were getting stronger with each passing hour.

*

Skye flopped down in their newly built sleeping quarters, chewing on a piece of fruit that they had left over from the move. They were exhausted, but satisfied. It was a small nest, barely counting as an anthill currently, but it would do for their home. It was nice and dark, something that quieted their anxiety. They were still alone, but it was better to be underground and alone at least.

It was as they were finishing the fruit that a message popped up, barely startling them this time. Sighing, they checked it, wondering what new hell awaited them now.

You have a new home! Congratulations!

New Levels achieved:

Lvl: 7

HP: 56

MP: N/A

Str:21

Dex:70

Con: 42

Skills: Bite lvl 7, Wall Climb lvl 5

Evolution level reached!

They almost dismissed the message out of hand, exhaustion making them careless. It then registered in their slowing brain what had been noted at the bottom of the message. Evolution? The hell was that about? They tapped the word, curious; they didn't expect it to actually open another window on this...weird system thing that they were seeing, but there it was. It showed two possible evolution trees.

One was to stay as a pharaoh ant, but actually choose a caste...from the little bit they could actually see in that tree, they had a feeling it was the path to becoming like Mother. Glancing at the other tree, they noticed it was to completely change species. From the description, and naming, it was the common black ant that could be found literally everywhere in their old world. They weren't the biggest species, but they were definitely bigger than the pharaoh ant.

They sighed, pressing a tab to the side to put it aside for a bit. This was not a decision to make while exhausted; they would examine the choices in the morning. For now, they curled themselves into a little ant ball, yawning or trying to. Twitching their antennae to make sure they were catching every scent, they started to drift off into sleep.

As their mind started to go blank, they wondered briefly if this was what Mother had meant when she had said that they were different. And the question of if they would still continue the family line plagued their thoughts and dreams. It wasn't something they really wanted to change...but they may have no choice in the matter. They needed to survive, no matter what.

*

"How is the subject doing, Doctor?" a shadow voice said, barely audible. Skye looked around, wondering where the hell they were. There were no lights, no shapes, just auditory queues. Their antennae waved, trying to scent something other than themselves. There was nothing there, absolutely nothing. They were alone...so why could they hear voices?

"They've actually reached evolution, Doctor. They are doing very well. They might even live long enough to save this world," another voice answered. Skye cowered as they realized that they were the subject being talked about. What kind of twisted nightmare was this? They felt panic stirring in their body, quivering like a rattle-snake's tail.

"Good. Keep an eye on them and let me know if something goes wrong. We lose this one, we'll need to act fast to get a new subject before it's too late," the first voice said. It was after this that the dream started to fade away, leaving Skye to float in a nothingness. Despite how disturbed their mental state was, no dreams came to bother them now. They were just stuck dwelling on the new information they had gotten.

They were afraid; was all this just some sick science experiment? Had they died just to be someone's lab ant?! Their fear and anger persisted well into them waking up. As they woke up, their memory of the dream started fading. They were left with anger, unrecognizable and foreign. They didn't know why they were angry, but had a feeling it would be a long time before they figured things out...if they ever did. Shaking off the looming melancholy, they started getting ready for the day. They needed to replenish their food larders.