Queen Fina (1/3)
Over the thousands of years since the great dragon had been defeated and put to sleep by the Ant Queen, the Ants had long since built a mound of earth leading up to the Threshold, while the castle itself lays bare beneath the grey sky.
After all, ever since the dragon had torn the mountain up from its roots, the Queen saw no reason to waste so much effort to move the mountain back.
There, the Threshold walls appear gloomy beneath the grey sky, and the tall & narrow streets are draped in shadows. In every corner and every alley, there are countless Ants huddled and hiding – hoping that they're out of view of the enemy's fortress up above and their downward pointed cannons.
Deep in the heart of the Threshold, there is a throne made out of bones erect right in front of the World Gate, as if the Queen herself is guarding the place.
Out of all the Ants, the Queen looks identical to her children in every way, except for the stress lines on her face and sharp cunning in her eyes.
"What are you thinking about, Queen Mother?" one of the Ants serving her asks. "You have that brooding look on your face. Is it about the demons again?"
"Hmm…," the Queen mumbles, but otherwise doesn't answer. The Queen never talks about what her plans are to her children, since she doesn't trust any of them with this information; what if the enemy captures and interrogates them? Besides, her children die all the time, and it would be too much trouble to re-explain things to them every time they come back to life.
So, the Queen just grunts an acknowledgement and turns over on her throne.
Deep in her head, the Queen is pondering over something she heard from some of the Arkin she had caught and interrogated recently.
She had learned that the crow goddess of death has camped out in the human's floating castle… and that this goddess is far more powerful than she, herself, is. That worries the Queen.
Still, the Arkin made it sound like this "Freyya" isn't allowed to interfere with the battle, but that does little to comfort the Queen. It's best to come up with a countermeasure… just in case.
The problem is that it's impossible to think of ANYTHING she can do to this goddess! She knows next to nothing about Freyya's abilities, though her instincts tell her to stay far away from the Crow woman.
More specifically, her instincts tell her that the subtle, spiritual ripples coming from the demons' central tower is Freyya's, and that this unique Spiritual Aura contains a power the Queen herself knows she can never fight against.
The more the Queen pays attention to Freyya's Aura with her own Spiritual senses, the more she can tell that Freyya's avatar is constantly bleeding Death Aura, and that the demons are getting stronger because of it.
If the goddess can forever produce Death Aura… doesn't that mean that the demons and Haalfrin can grow stronger without having to engage with her own Ants? Doesn't that mean that the demons have a greater advantage the longer they can stall the fighting?
This can't do!
Before, the Queen was relying on her enemy having to slay her Ants to get more powerful; that would force them to come down and fight her army – giving her own forces a steady supply of new mana.
However, if the Arkin demons can escape this cycle and still grow stronger (all while denying the Queen any flesh to eat), then they'll steadily outpace her forces and eventually destroy her!
Thinking about this scary new advantage the demons have, the Queen wants to squirm on her throne in fear.
For now, she'll have to devour a lot more Arkin than she did before in order to keep up with her enemy's accelerated growth. This puts a lot of pressure on her.
She also knows that she can't just get more aggressive, since the demons' power is rapidly outstripping her own. The future battles would be unfavorable for her.
So, the Queen reasons that she just needs to stall for as long as possible so that she can quickly advance her Names. According to the information she's tortured out of the demons, Haalfrin has more Names and more Advanced Names than her, yet they're both still evenly matched; that means the Queen has more room for growth! Advancing Names is a more viable path for her than it is for him!
However, in order to spend the time to meticulously train and advance her Names, she won't be able to focus so much on the war.
Training your soul requires most of your mental energy, but the Queen needs all the concentration she can get just to direct her swarm. If she were to enter a secluded training now, then her war with the demons would suffer so much in the short term that they'd probably defeat her forces completely before she even finishes!
Plus, the Queen knows from past experiences that if her control over her army grows too sluggish, then the demons will know that she's trying to train her Names; the demons are always wary of her growing stronger, so they always get hyper aggressive on her forces in order to stop her from training.
…
"Well," the Queen thinks, "I didn't want to have to do this, but I have no choice. I'm going to have to make another Ant queen… to help conduct the war…"
The Queen never likes to pull this trick, since she's always worried about her other queen living for too long, getting ideas, and usurping her own authority. After all, each of these Ants are exactly identical, so any new queen she makes will have the same abilities as herself; the only difference between them would be wisdom and age.
And so, the Queen orders everyone out of the throne room. Once the place is quiet once again, the Queen raises her hand and releases a single egg from her soul.
A little girl pops into existence right before the Queen's feet, and the child quickly matures into a young woman. Looking at the naked girl in disgust, the Queen throws a robe at her child and says, "Put it on."
"…Huh?"
"Ugh. I'll do it myself." The Queen whips her hand around, and the robes fly up and wrap around the girl's bare skin.
The Queen then gets up from her throne and walks down the steps slowly towards the confused child on the ground. If the child had any idea what her mother was about to do, she wouldn't have stared stupidly up at her.
Instead of running away or trying to fight back, the little girl just stares into the Queen's eyes as her mother slips a collar around her neck. After a minute or so, the slave collar clamps shut.
"Hmm… I'm glad I learned how to make these things," the Queen smiles. There were both Arkin to torture for spells, as well as spell books littering the Threshold vaults that she could learn from.
"Anyway, my daughter. I have much to teach you about ruling. Make sure to pay attention."
"If this young princess is anything like her mother, she should learn fast," the Queen thinks to herself. "That much, I can have faith in."
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No matter how well the regent queen has been trained, nor how extensive their defenses are, the Ants are still getting pushed back; the true Queen can feel it.
Those pointy eared demons must be sensing weakness in the Ants, evident by how aggressively they've been pushing down on the Ants in their tunnels.
The Queen from her throne suddenly feels a dull pain in her mind as she senses the Arkin sweeping through her ranks in the basement maze. Being a defensible position, it makes sense for the demons to want to clear the place out.
The because of the demons' growing strength outpacing the Ants', the Queen's children are slowly being pushed out of the maze.
Knowing how badly things are going for her armies, the Queen tries her best to ignore it and trust that her specially raised daughter can pull through as long as she needs to.
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Many years go by like this, and the Queen starts to get more and more stressed out over their situation; her pendent is showing that instead of her being 10x more powerful than Haalfrin, she's only 9x stronger. That man is more skilled at her with magic, so he's actually a lot closer to challenging her than she would think.
As she feels the pressure on her soul and spirit get heavier and heavier, she starts to get… oddly nostalgic feelings in her soul.
More years pass by, and this vaguely nostalgic feeling turns into strange memories that start seeping into her mind. The memories themselves are too vague for her to really understand well.
The only thing she really sees are strange Ants with faces she doesn't' recognize.
Why? Who are these people? Don't all Ants look the same? Why is the colony in her dreams full of unfamiliar faces?
The memories invading her dreams truly confuses her.
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The more the Queen trains her Reh Name in hopes of advancing it, the closer she feels it is getting to lighting up the way Advanced Names do.
One day, when the Queen is particularly close to gaining a deeper Comprehension, her concentration is abruptly broken, and her attention is snapped away again as she hears her children crying out for help. "MOOOtherrrr! It hurts. They're burning us!"
"SHUT UP!!" the Queen screeches into their minds with boundless fury. "It's not like this is the first time you've been burnt. PUT UP WITH IT!"
How could they DARE get in the way of her training again!? Can't they understand the trouble their mother is going through for them?!
In that moment of agitation, the Queen knocks over one of the candles she keeps lit in her room. The candle falls over so suddenly that she doesn't have time to retract her hand out of the way.
With a searing pain, the melted candle wax lands on books and study materials she had collected for her training.
Before she can stop it, the Queen's precious parchments and arcane books start to burn, and some of the pages are melted together.
The Queen, seeing her things ruined, snarls in frustration.
Then, without hesitation, the Queen starts slapping the burning books and snuffing the fire out with her bare hands.
She had briefly considered putting up a mana shield to mitigate the pain, but she didn't want to waste mana on ANYTHING that could heal on its own. "Pch! It's just an arm anyway. It'll come back the way it was before."
Her attention then snaps into focus as she unexpectedly falls into an even deeper Comprehension.
"That's right…," she mutters, "All my soldiers… they're not just loyal subordinates, are they? They're my arms and legs. They're the body and I'm the will."
With this though, her mind is pulled into another vision…
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(3rd person POV)
Many Ants – both brothers AND sisters – are sitting cross legged in long lines. For some reason, none of these Ants share identical faces.
An elderly female Ant is standing before all the little ones, and she's walking back and forth, as if inspecting a line of soldiers.
As the old woman Ant is walking up and down, the starts moving her mouth up and down, and strange words start pouring out of her mouth.
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(The Queen's POV)
"Mouths moving up and down? Words? Isn't that what the pointy eared demons do to each other? Ugh. How crude and inefficient."
Despite her disgust at watching fellow Ants talk like a demon, the queen lets go of all her wandering thoughts and allows her mind to be taken by the vision again.