Chapter 326: 326: The Ant General
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Earlier that night, an enemy was making a sport out of boredom. Kai was unaware of that. The location is in between the northern and the Eastern forest border.
The terrain sprawled along the shallow ridge like a dark river of chitin and steel. Twenty thousand ants at rest turned the forest border into a disciplined hush. Night cookfires burned low blue instead of orange, concealed beneath hooded stones that vented heat without light. Armor hung on lines in neat ranks. Spears and mass-blades leaned together like bundles of winter reeds. Farther out, pickets stood knee deep in the leaf mold, antennae slanting in the same direction, listening to the earth itself.
General Vorak sat beneath a canvas awning stretched between two iron stakes. He had spread a map over a slab of bark so dense it might as well have been stone. The map showed three colors only. Scarlet for home. Gray for the unknown. Pale gold for the desert that swallowed borders and returned nothing. A courier’s tube lay open at his elbow. He had broken the seal cleanly and left the wax intact in a single curl. He did everything that way, cleanly and without wasted motion.
He read the message again although he knew every word.
’You have done good work. I am glad you have completed the First task I gave you. Now you must find the truth about my son Darius’s killer (third task). I want the killer’s cut off head beneath my foot. Check the second task before you come back. I need a quick update.’
It was signed by Hoorius aka current queen or incharge of the scarlet ant kingdom. It was in the formal hand taught only to royalty and those who spoke in their stead. A simple message on the surface. The hidden task acknowledged in the first line quickened the corners of his mouth. He folded the skin carefully and slipped it back into the tube.
Vorak closed his eyes and let the camp’s sounds travel his bones. The northern forest breathed damp and old. The eastern forest whispered fresher secrets. He placed his palm on the bark table. The wood remembered storms. He liked that. He liked things that had survived weather.
"Seventeen days," he thought. "Seventeen days to the Stone volcanic mountain, two more to the long crossing, three to come down to the desert floor without losing any company in the dunes, and the rest through open ground where the sun does the killing while an army pretends it is not thirsty. Seventeen days if no one decides to die stupidly."
He lifted the small object that sat beside the map. It was a stone no larger than a thumb joint, carved in the shape of an ant head. The mandibles were etched with bloodline rune channels. The eyes were two flecks of smoky crystal. When he turned it, something inside shifted with the weight of a drop of oil.
"With this," he said softly to himself, "I will know."
He rolled the Mandible Stone across his knuckles, then held it against the light that filtered through the canvas. The runes glimmered faintly, a color without a name. He only needed a drop of blood for it to work, and it would tell him what kind of soul thrummed behind someone’s skin. Soldier. Worker. Warrior. Beast. Predator. Or any Impostor.
He thinks, "I wonder what race you are, white hair, he thought. The reports all repeated the same useless poetry. White hair is like winter. Red eyes like coal under ash. Tall and handsome like a human."
The last word tasted foolish even in his mind. "A lone human, here. To reach the beast lands he would have had to cross that one and only old place, and no one crossed that place unnoticed. Not a smuggler at three star rank. Not a mercenary at five. Even as an eight star general, I cannot cross it without a hundred witnesses and an argument with the strong. So what are you?"
He paused, "It must be a... A perfect transformation. It definitely is. A mask no one has yet learned to peel."
He drummed the map once with two thick fingers and stopped. Boredom never served him long. He called for his vice generals.
They came in silence and arrived together, as trained. Four of them, each six star rank, each different enough that the army’s shape sharpened when they stood in a line.
Skall moved first because Skall always did. Thickset, plated shoulders, eyes that did not blink more than the rule. He smelled like iron and salt. He commanded the siege cohort and counted in hours instead of miles.
Oru was lean and long, joints loose, antennae sharp as blades. He wore a runner’s harness and carried no weapon you could see. He could cross a hill before its shadow knew it had moved.
Yavri’s plates had been lacquered years ago with pale resin that caught moonlight. She trained shield lines until they could hold a river. She was the only one who would laugh at Vorak’s jokes and live.
Mardek came last because Mardek came last to everything that did not involve killing. He was younger than the rest and had never lost a duel longer than a breath. He distracted everyone who did not know him with an easy grin that had teeth in it.
They saluted in unison. He did not return the gesture. He let their arms fall and then let the silence grow roots.
"Congratulations," he said at last. "You are about to enjoy a game."
They did not look at one another. "Good."
"We are seventeen days away from a mountain which should not be claimed by anyone. In the middle of the desert at the forest’s rim. Our current queen regent wants the truth about her son’s killer." He tapped the message tube with one big knuckle. "I do not care if the white hair is the killer. I want him under my feet while I decide what story will please the throne."