Cornered Rat (3/4)

While the Queen is brooding over her options, a pureblooded, lone Hawk flies up and requests entry into the Threshold from atop the mountain. Since the humans and Hawks don't have a very good relationship, the guards stationed on the outside of the mountain are about to capture the Hawk and ask questions later.

However, upon seeing that the Hawk elite carries no weapons, he orders their feathery guest to be brought unharmed to Commander Fisco.

Once the Hawkman is brought up to Fisco's office, the human commander looks at his guest and sighs in relief. Of course, ever being aware of the surrounding Rekhin Clans and their politics, Fisco recognizes the young prince of the Hawk clan.

Yeah. It would've been pretty bad if the guards stationed outside had captured the young Hawk and treated him roughly – especially when the man himself claims to have come in peace.

Once the door to Fisco's office closes, the Hawk prince pulls out a recording crystal and hands it to Fisco.

The human commander takes ahold of it and runs his mana through it – listening to the voices trapped inside.

The recording itself has Lord Kalkor's voice in it, and it's the dragon's warning to Fisco, telling him all about how the Ant swarm will be coming for the humans next.

Fisco isn't surprised at all to hear the news; in fact, he's been spending all of his time ever since Haalfrin's initial report preparing the fortress for an invasion.

Knowing that he didn't actually need Kalkor's warning, Fisco resists the urge to frown. There's nothing worse than owing someone for a favor that you didn't need! It's like being given a gift that you didn't want by a man you know never does anything for free.

And Fisco has no delusions about the dragon king doing this just out of the kindness of his heart; he'll certainly want something from the humans later.

With the Hawk man's powerful spiritual abilities, he easily senses Fisco's displeasure, but he ignores it. Instead, he opens his mouth and starts to explain to Fisco about the Ant swarms abilities, and what he should expect from them.

However, Fisco waves the prince off and says, "That's not nencessary your highness. I have many friendly ears among the Clans, and I'm already well aware of what's going on out there." He abruptly stands up. "If you'll excuse me, I need to start preparing the fortress for the swarm YOUR king drove towards us."

The Hawk Prince frowns at this, but he leaves without protest; even the prince is prideful enough to not argue with the human about an accusation that happens to be true.

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Sometime after Fisco had his conversation with the Hawk prince, we see the Queen again, except this time, she's on the move.

The time for thinking has passed. Now, it's time to eat.

Ever so slowly, the Queen creeps up on the fortress. She's afraid of moving too quickly, as she's well aware by now of the Drakin's connection to the elementals.

Earth Elementals tend to be few and far between – most of them being huge behemoths that inhabit mountains, continents, and planets. Hence, so long as the Ants creep slow enough, the earth elementals won't feel them, as most living things are so small to them that they can't even notice.

The Elementals in the air are a different thing entirely. Unlike the Earth elementals, which have few, but permanent and large members, the Air elementals are perpetually popping in and out of existence, as they constantly devour each other and split apart. Every pocket of air has an Air elemental.

You'd think that the dragon's could just interrogate Air Elementals inside the Ants' tunnels to get their location; however, this isn't feasible (fortunately for the Ants). This is because an Air elemental's lifespan is so short that unless the Drakin is right on top of the tunnel, he won't be able to get answers from the Air Elementals below before the airy spirits die, and the evidence is erased.

Thus, the Queen only has to worry about not digging too hard in order to avoid the Drakin's detection. Because of this, their journey takes a very long time… but it's better to take a while than to ruin the plan before it even starts!

The plan is only going to be set on a timer once she's found out anyway, since the dragons should be thinking that she's still attacking their main settlements (because of the fake queen she made).

And so, after several days of careful, meticulous digging, she finally nears the human fortress.

Just to be sure, the Queen orders her workers to carve out a plethora of tunnels beneath the mountain the humans live in; she knows that the battle isn't going to be over in a second, unlike her previous acts of genocide against the Rehkin clans.

Since the battle might take a while, then she'll need her own defensible position. With the mazelike tunnels she'll have carved, she can use it as her own makeshift fortress in case this battle turns ugly.

The Queen then abruptly receives a mental transmission from her subordinate queen, who's crying, "MOTHEERRR! I NEED YOUR HELP!"

Through their spiritual link, the Queen Mother sees images of a horrifying horde of 3 and 4 horned dragons, who are circling about the ants and burning all the land they could possibly feed from, charring the landscape black.

There must be hundreds of them – no thousands! The Queen, as well as all her subjects, feel the horrid stench of fear and pain as the decoy forces up above are purged by fire. The last the Ants above hear are the dragons' roars, which are mixed with both anger and sorrow.

With so many dragons up there roaring in chorus, it feels like the sky is tearing apart. What's even more horrifying is that the force of the dragon's shouting is knocking the air around so hard that it's creating tornadoes, which are sweeping across the land even now.

What terrifies the fake queen even more is that that all her Mole clan slaves have just… disappeared mysteriously; she doesn't know how they did it, but the dragons must have managed to rescue her mole slaves.

What's so catastrophic about this news is that since the moles are the ones who helped dig most of the Ants' tunnels, the Drakin now have a (mostly) complete map of the tunnels. The only tunnels the moles don't know about are the ones the main Queen had dug on her way to the Threshold, as she had left the slaves behind.

Now, there's nowhere for her decoy queen to hide.

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"AAAH!" the fake queen screams in rage and fear, "Cover up the tunnel entrances! Don't let the Drakin find us here!" The young girl is only a few days old, and she's already about to die? Unacceptable!

Before her ants can even effectively carry out her order, she feels the panic in her Ants' thoughts, and she sees what they see.

There, the Ants witness scores of dragons in their humanoid forms, who are all blocking off the tunnel entrances.

Then, the dragons delicately set up airtight barriers over all the tunnel entrances – minus several small holes just big enough for the dragons to press their mouths against.

As one, the Drakin take deep breathes, build up explosive energy in their lungs, then blow out a torrent of white hot fire into the tunnels. With all the air exits blocked off by the dragons, the fire has nowhere to go but further into the tunnels.

Despite there being many dragons contributing their fire to the cause, the tunnels are just too big to be completely engulfed in fire.

Sure, the fake queen is sent into hysteria after witnessing more than half of her territory light up in flames, and most of her forces be wiped out in an instant.

However, the Drakin weren't actually aiming to kill the ants all at once with fire. Rather, they were exploiting the fact that fire consumes breathable air when it burns; with the tunnels so tight, and the air pockets sealed off, the ants inside will no longer be able to breath; this way, it won't matter how many times their queen revives them; they'll just die.

And so, the young queen contacts her mother in a fit of panic, "MOOTHERR! I NEED YOUR HELP!"

"What can I do, daughter?" the Queen asks with a shaky voice.

Instead of directly replying, the fake queen curls in a ball and starts sobbing in sadness, "Mooomm, I'm scared. Am I going to die…?" Her sobbing grows fainter and fainter as her mind gets dizzy. "Mommy, help me…! Help…" Her sobbing turns into painful coughs as she starts clawing at her throat. "Moommy! Why… can't I breathe…? I… don't… under…stand…"

Her hands drop to the ground, and her stiff corpse is left to rot amidst the scorched earth and the ashes of her fallen sisters.