Point of view of Queen Taressa
I was surveying the ants patrolling the border, as no gap in the security of the territory could be forgiven. There was no real task that had to be done, other than making sure the colony was safe. Back in the days, I would not have gotten out of the nest often. But that was back when the colony was but a nest with a small perimeter. It was also safer for me to walk around outside now, being both bigger and stronger.
The arrival of the mushroom king was surprising. I had never seen sentient plant life, never mind a mushroom that could shoot jets of fire able to kill goblins. That was not even the important part, to be honest. For the past few years, I had commanded many battles against differing enemies. The acid beetles that migrated through my territory in search of food one day were particularly nasty. Many of my children died that day.
I was proud of my intelligence. In fact, I relied on it. The reason the colony yet lived was because of my planning. But when I read the mind of the mushroom, I saw not only the battles with the goblins but also strategies I could have never thought of. As the mushroom fought the goblins, the use of a normally useless storage mushroom delayed his death long enough for his warriors to appear. Her children, albeit they were strong and fierce, would never fight like that. I had only ever employed three tactics. Attack, retreat, and surround.
The choice to pledge allegiance was the obvious one. The mushroom would benefit the colony. I was ready to give up all control and merely be a queen for spawning new ants to fight for the mushroom. But he did not require it. Why? Why not take control? With the knowledge he had, he could easily justify it.
This thought had troubled me for some time. I looked for the answer in the interactions I had with him. Was it because he could not be bothered with it? Or did he consider commanding the ants a task too trivial for him?
Nothing he talked about with me seemed to imply that was the case. In fact, he used my children to do many tasks and left the detailed command of the colony to me.
It was not until the two-legs entered the camp that I understood why. He did not command the ants directly, because he was thinking of something much bigger. He was going to command the two-legs in the future.
I had a low opinion of the two-legs. A few had passed by during the years before. Some simply traveled further in the forest, but some saw the colony and decided to kick it. One even lit a fire next to the nest. My children suffered simply because the two-legs had a fleeting whim. As their queen, I could do nothing.
But now, I could do something. With size came power. With power came the right to rule. A right I had already given to the mushroom king. But I would do my part, as any queen would. I and my children would fight and die in the struggle for territory. We would crown the mushroom as the king of the two-legs.
The old two-legs was different, not like anyone I had seen before. I ripped and tore through his memories and saw nothing but kindness. He did not know of the horror until the other two-legs invaded. He had lived with the nature in his world. He was no ruler of the land, but a caretaker. His people had made a pact with beings not far from me and upheld it for a millennia.
I revised my opinion of these two-legs. The beast-kin was their name. They would do well as subordinates of the king. But they must be watched for now.
I was always connected to the territory, a kind of psychic web of consciousness laid across it. That is why I felt something very wrong. A foreign entity had entered. It was quick and seemed to move effortlessly among the trees. I screamed at the ants to move in to protect the territory, and in the same moment I felt a pain emanating from the center. An arrow had impaled the king!
I ran as fast as I could, but before I could do anything, a shockwave laid me low to the ground. I felt the king fade, only a whisper remained on the web. I felt rage, hate, sorrow, and spite. I screamed.
"KILL THE INTRUDER!"
I followed it with activating my psychic scream in the direction I felt the foreign entity. All of my power, all of my hate and anger. My children did the same, they were all connected to me. The forest seemed to hum in a discordant tone, the beast-kin cowered on the ground.
Out of a tree another two-legs fell, he was already bleeding from his nose. I approached with my children. This two-legs did not deserve death. I still had the anger, and I felt my resentment hit my limit. I ordered my children.
"Rip his clothes, tear his weapons away. He does not die today, or tomorrow. Keep him alive and feed on him. Keep him awake but unable to fight. Drag him down in the nest."
My children did as I willed. The two-legs now crying in pain, realized he was unable to move or attack. He started screaming, which was quickly stopped by another psychic scream from my children. All that I heard as he was dragged down the nest was a muffled, panicked sound. Good. More of that.
I ordered my other children to scour the forest for any other invaders.
I still felt a slight ping on my psychic web. The king was not yet dead. I did not know how, but I had never seen a sentient mushroom, so his life-giving parts might be hidden somewhere else. I failed to protect him today, but I shall not fail again.
---
Kira PoV. Slightly before entering the forest.
Kira had never felt most of the worst parts of being a slave. She was female, and the humans seemed to treat boys and girls differently. She ate the same food and slept in the same barn as the other slaves. But she did not suffer the whip, nor did she have to train her body or get sent to the quarry.The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
She was not happy however, and was always looking for a way out. But it was a futile effort, since the ring commanded her thoughts should she stray too far from what was acceptable. Old man Toqlan said it was a dark object. A curse given physical form. She did not care what it was, she still looked for ways to destroy it. Every time she had the thought of destroying it, she had a headache.
Every morning, she would get training in how to speak. In the afternoon she would learn to tailor clothes or learn stories word for word. She would get training in the different ranks in society. Of course, slaves were at the bottom. Every last day of the month, they would all go to the church at night. The humans were there during the day and slaves during the night. They would all be forced on their knees, and the priests would say prayers to their murderous, cruel god. She hated it. She instinctively knew that this was not her god.
Her life was not horrible. She was fed, although with gruel and leftovers. However, the reason she abhorred this life was her little brother. From when he was five, he had been required to train his body. They had tried training him in using different weaponry. But her brother did not have what it took, and he was whipped many times for failing his lessons.
She knew that when they were older, he''d be sent to the quarry. Sent there to break rocks until he died. Whipped until he could no longer stand. She knew she was probably going to become a "pleasure slave" when she grew up. With what she was learning, nothing else really made sense. Farm slaves learnt to harvest and process virta, a brown and green plant farmed all around their village.
She snuck out of the barn during the night on occasion but had to stay in the village. The ring would command her to go back if she strayed too far, and the slavemaster would know. The slavemaster was a fat, cruel man. He was around 30 years old and liked the whip. During some of these nightly escapades, she''d walk around the perimeter of the village to try and see a way out. She had even gotten a skill, [Acrobatics], one night. It made jumping, climbing, and sneaking much easier. Still, one night she had been caught by a woman, a baker down the street from the slavemasters villa. She was an old woman, maybe 50? She had long, sand blonde hair.
She prepared herself for the woman to yell for help catching an escaped slave. The scream never came. She looked at the woman and was met with a concerned look. The woman reached into the basket that was slung on her arm and gave her a loaf of bread. She then whispered.
"There is no way out, I wish there were. Share this bread with your fellows at the barn. I pray there comes a day you can follow your eyes wherever they may go." The woman seemed to wince in pain for a second, and then recovered.
With that, the woman walked down a sidestreet and was gone. Kira was baffled. She had never had a human show kindness to her or any of the other slaves. She must have stood there, frozen in confusion for at least 10 seconds. Most humans just ignored slaves or looked at them with sadness in their eyes. She ripped off a small piece of the bread and ate it. Just in case she was caught on the way back. She had never tasted bread. Not this sort of bread, anyway. Sometimes they got some sort of hard bread that tasted like nothing. To be able to swallow it, you had to drink a lot of water.
It was sweet, and it felt like it filled her entire stomach with just a bite. She looked at the loaf in amazement. The humans ate bread every day. She wanted it. She wanted to eat bread every day.
When she returned to the barn, there was a quiet feast. Everyone took an equal piece of bread, except Toqlan. He only said that he had eaten it on their homeworld and that the ones who never had should eat it. Kira thought him insane. If he knew how amazing this bread was, how could he not want it?
A few weeks later, they were walking down one of the sidestreets, on the way to their duties for the day. It was the slavemaster, her and her brother, Toqlan and Ula. The slavemaster was talking to one of his guards while they walked ahead of the slaves. Down the narrow streets, they could only walk two people, shoulder to shoulder.
She heard a scream around the corner of the street, and soon a man flailing his arms in front of him came into vision. A horse came around the corner and turned to kick the man flailing his arms with its back feet. The man hit the wall and either fainted or died, she was not sure. The horse then started running down the narrow street towards them.
The slavemaster ordered them to run back to the barn, and she and the others followed his command. She looked back as they ran, Toqlan lagging behind the others. The guard and the slavemaster tried to run at the same time and tripped each other in their panic. They both hit the ground hard, but the guard was the quicker one to recover. He put his hand on the back of the slavemaster as he pushed himself up and started sprinting. The slavemaster looked angry and betrayed, but that look was soon replaced by pain.
The horse had caught up, one front hoof stepped on the back of the slavemaster''s head. It made a crunching sound. The other front hoof landed on his hand. The hand with the ring. She heard another crunching sound and the sound of warping metal hidden under it. She felt as if a weight lifted off of her. Her mind felt happy, more happy than she ever felt.
Toqlan immediately screamed.
"Run down the street further up on the right."
They all did. And just as soon as Toqlan turned the corner, the horse rushed past. Toqlan checked that they weren''t injured and then said.
"We are free of being slaves as of now. The ring is broken, and we must make our escape now before anyone figures that out."
They all nodded. They had all thought of this day and all had an idea of how to escape. Toqlan led the way, and soon they were out of the village, walking amongst the virta fields. The long stalks of virta hid their figure if they crouched, and in this way they traveled for an hour or so, from one field to another.
They had moved south from the village. They were taking a small break, and it all hit them. Tears came welling up, not only in Kira''s eyes but in all of their eyes. Toqlan once again spoke.
"We are not entirely free yet. We must trick our pursuers. But for now we can rest for a few minutes."
After that, they turned west. Toqlan, as he was a slave teacher, had seen maps of this continent. He knew that to the west there was a forest the humans called the frontier forest. It was deemed a dangerous forest because a portal to another world lay on the shores on the other side of the forest. A portal to land the humans could not conquer, filled with savages and beasts of great power.
That would be their destination. They could not go through the portal, since none of them could fight, but if they could make it close to it, maybe the humans would not follow.
It took them a few days to get there. It was rough, although the slave food was bad, it had at least kept them alive. Without the small amount of food they got, their stamina soon depleted. Toqlan looked the worst, and Kira thought it might be because he did not eat any bread a few weeks before. But maybe it is just because he is old.
As they entered the perpetual shadow under the melian trees, she felt a buzz in her head. A tingling, uncomfortable sensation. She looked at the others and saw that they too felt something. The buzzing soon turned into a scream, and they all could not move.
Then a voice spoke.
"You have intruded on sovereign territory, two-legs. You will be taken to the king to be judged for your transgressions. Follow or die."
They were surrounded by ants that were much bigger than what she''d seen in the village. They were the ones talking, she could sense it. Toqlan spoke with a quivering voice.
"Yes, we surrender. Please, take us to be judged."
She felt sad. Was this all the freedom they would get? A few days of starving only to be eaten by ants.
Fuck this world.