"All those goblins were killed," Shire said to the Ant Queen with a sigh.
"Those two species are vicious indeed. They’ve eaten many of my children," the Ant Queen said, her antennae twitching with obvious sorrow. "You were the ones who just helped my children, preventing those Giant Bees from rushing into the burrow."
"Yes, we were just helping each other. They eat goblins, too," Shire said, nodding.
"I didn’t expect this. The reason those goblins stopped coming to trade is that they were all hunted down and killed. Perhaps our fate will be the same." The Ant Queen touched the surrounding Worker Ants with her antennae, as if issuing commands.
"What did they trade with you?" Shire asked, his interest piqued.
"They would gather many flowers and trade them for our soft-white paste. My children need to eat honey to grow after hatching, and I also need honey to restore my stamina." The Ant Queen’s large compound eyes swept over the busy Worker Ants in the burrow as she spoke calmly. "However, my life is nearing its end. I no longer have the stamina to produce the next Ant Queen. This colony will soon die out."
"Die out?" Shire immediately grew tense. "If you die, what will happen to all your children?"
"Without my commands, they will just die here, or be hunted to extinction by those two enemies." The Ant Queen lowered her head, continuously stroking the Worker Ants below with her antennae.
Shire pinched his chin, his mind racing to find a solution. ’The entire Ant Kingdom has only one brain giving orders, and that’s the Ant Queen. If I want a stable, long-term supply of mounts, the Ant Queen has to survive. Otherwise, the game is over before it’s even begun. Besides, these are docile, herbivorous ants, not those ferocious, all-devouring carnivorous ones. They’re practically god-sent mounts.’
Not to mention, if all the ants died off, his own tribe would be the next to suffer.
"Have you never thought of fighting back before?" Shire asked, looking at the Ant Queen.
"My children have searched for their nests before, but none returned. They were likely all killed. Now we don’t even know where their nests are," the Ant Queen said with regret. "And even if I exhausted all my strength to birth a new Ant Queen, those two enemies wouldn’t give the new queen time to mature."
Shire looked at the Ant Queen before him, whose movements were slow, seemingly from old age. He thought for a few seconds. "I have a way to change the current situation, but I need your children to cooperate with me."
"What do you need my children to do, goblin?" the Ant Queen asked, lowering her head and touching the side of Shire’s face with her black antennae.
"Let me command a few Worker Ants," Shire said, looking calmly at the Ant Queen.
...
SULALA... A Burrow Bee crawled through a tunnel in the underground nest. It then stopped and looked back at the wall, where there seemed to be a blue stone. Seeing no other changes in its surroundings, it continued its patrol.
The blue stone slowly slid down from the wall, then transformed into a ball, floated forward, and stopped at the entrance of an underground chamber.
Two small white circles popped up on the blue sphere, blinking twice like a pair of eyes. Then, it cautiously peered inside from the entrance.
This was a Burrow Bee pupa incubation chamber, filled with many pale yellow pupae. After confirming it had reached its destination, the basketball-sized sphere zipped into the chamber and, as smoothly as liquid pouring from a bottle, turned back into a stone.
After the patrolling Burrow Bee crawled past, two white eyes popped out of the blue stone again, and it glanced left and right.
The "stone" then shifted its body slightly, slowly approaching a pupa and stopping right beside it.
It remained perfectly still. Once the patrolling Burrow Bee had passed, it instantly enveloped a pupa with lightning speed, then slowly edged out of the tunnel.
"Chief, that’s the fifth one," Lame Leg said, looking up.
Shire looked at the blue mass of the Secret Servant before him. It slowly peeled back its form, revealing the pale yellow pupa within.
"That should be enough," Shire said with a nod.
He had started by leading Red Eyes and Lame Leg here, taking a roundabout route on three Worker Ants, which he then had hide under the trees.
After getting as close as possible to the entrance of the Burrow Bee nest, Shire had Lame Leg unleash the Secret Servant.
"You really have a talent for being a thief," he said with a smile, looking at his new subordinate.
Lame Leg had controlled the Secret Servant to steal a total of five pupae, and in all that time, not a single Burrow Bee had noticed. The predators simply regarded the Secret Servant as a blue rock.
"Let’s go. Quick, back to the Worker Ants." Shire tied two of the pupae together with a cloth strap and hoisted them onto his back.
Red Eyes followed his example, slinging two onto his back, while the last one went to Lame Leg.
They returned to the shade of the trees where the three Worker Ants were waiting. A leather strap engraved with characters was now fastened around the base of each ant’s antennae.
Back in the ant burrow, Shire had spent a long time researching and experimenting on how to Control the Worker Ants’ movements using leather straps inscribed with Rune Speech.
He knew that ordinary Worker Ants have no brains of their own; they only receive colony-wide commands issued by the Ant Queen and transmit information via pheromones through contact with their antennae.
After many failures, Shire had finally found a way to make the Worker Ants accept his commands.
"Ready?" he asked, looking at Red Eyes and Lame Leg. Both of his subordinates nodded firmly.
Shire fastened another leather strap inscribed with Rune Speech around his own forehead and tried to issue a command.
A nearby Worker Ant lowered itself to the ground as Shire had instructed, allowing him to use its leg joints as steps to climb onto its back.
Soon, all three goblins had mounted the Worker Ants.
"Let’s go. Time to give the Burrow Bees a little show," Shire called out with a laugh.
The three Worker Ants then ran out from the shadows and began scurrying back and forth around the entrance to the Burrow Bee nest. While doing so, Shire deliberately held up the pupae for all to see.
Soon, the nearby Burrow Bees spotted them—and especially the five pupae on their backs.
Shire knew that bees were highly protective of their pupae. Now that they saw goblins had actually stolen them, they would surely report to the Queen Bee in the nest, prompting the entire hive to swarm out.
BZZZ BZZZ BZZZ... More and more Burrow Bees crawled out of the entrance, buzzing their wings. Seeing that a good number had emerged, Shire shouted loudly.
"Run!"
...
Lame Leg clung desperately to the Worker Ant’s carapace, terrified of falling off.
This was his first time experiencing such speed. The Worker Ant beneath him was pumping all six of its legs, moving at full throttle.
In the sky behind them, a swarm of Burrow Bees was hot on their trail, buzzing furiously.
"Yeehaw!" Red Eyes, who was beside him, cheered excitedly from the back of his Worker Ant.
Lame Leg glanced at him with envy. ’That guy’s got some nerve,’ he thought, ’to be having fun at a time like this.’
He knew the Burrow Bees were after the pupae on his and the Chief’s backs. And while they couldn’t catch the three goblins for now, their numbers were overwhelming.
The Worker Ant ran at top speed. Lame Leg watched the Chief up ahead. ’He can even afford to look back at the sky,’ he thought. ’As expected of the Chief.’
Before the mission, the Chief had fed each of the three Worker Ants a lump of honey, calling it an "accelerant." Lame Leg didn’t really understand, but he remembered seeing the Chief feed the Ant Queen a lot of honey before they left the Ant Burrow.
The three Worker Ants sped over the rugged terrain and through the undergrowth. Lame Leg had to duck his head repeatedly, keeping his body low to avoid being swept off by branches.
"This is so much faster than walking!" he said with a grin, and the wind immediately rushed into his open mouth.
Because of his bad left foot, he walked much slower than other goblins, but the Chief had never looked down on him. On the contrary, he had said with great seriousness, "You are the most important person for this mission. You are the key to our success."
Lame Leg was thrilled to have been chosen by the Chief. He’d heard that many goblins loved going on missions with him, as those experiences were something they could never have in a lifetime of digging for mice and raiding birds’ nests in the forest.
"Almost there!" The Chief’s voice carried over. Lame Leg looked up to see him pointing in a direction.
’Run that way,’ he commanded the Worker Ant beneath him.
The Chief had told him before the mission that as long as he did what he was told, he would be safe. Before he could even react, Red Eyes was already nodding furiously.
So far, it seemed there was no danger, aside from the bumpy ride on the Worker Ant’s back and the need to hold on tight.
In fact, he was starting to fall in love with this feeling of lightning speed, which made him temporarily forget about his left foot.
"Yeehaw," he whispered, mimicking Red Eyes’ shout. He felt his spirits lift even more.
"Yeehaw!" Lame Leg shouted out loud.
He saw the Chief turn back and smile at him.
Soon, he saw the Chief signal for them to stop. Then, three globs of Blazing Fire Glue were thrown.
Lame Leg looked at the white silk threads on the ground and on the surrounding trees. He knew they had reached the Giant Spiders’ territory.
SKREEE! A piercing shriek rang out as several black spiders emerged from a burrow up ahead. They seemed to have detected the disturbance on their webs and were starting to crawl toward them.
"Throw the pupae!" Lame Leg heard the Chief’s shout and immediately flung the pupae with all his might.
He then ducked low again, tightened his grip on the Worker Ant’s carapace, and followed the Chief as they veered south. A Giant Spider was chasing after them, while the other Giant Spiders that had emerged were already clashing with the Burrow Bees from the sky.
The Worker Ant ran swiftly, maintaining some distance from the spider.
But gradually, Lame Leg felt the Worker Ant beneath him begin to slow. He kept looking back, terrified the spiders would catch up.
He had been terrified when they first encountered the spiders in the forest. They were enormous, especially their eight hairy legs and their two black chelicerae, which could pierce him effortlessly.
Later, in the underground stone chamber, he had seen that cocoon and the Bone inside. The Chief had said it belonged to the goblin who originally lived there.
’How tragic,’ Lame Leg had thought at the time. And now, a spider was still relentlessly pursuing them.
"Blazing Fire Glue, throw!" he heard the Chief shout.
Then, from beneath the trees up ahead, his comrades all stood up and hurled their Blazing Fire Glue at the Giant Spider chasing him.
"It’s going to die," Lame Leg laughed aloud.