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AR Chapter 377
🕑 Added 2025-04-30 04:00:11 +0000 UTC“Clear the drifts here! They’ll melt eventually, but we’re ready to work now! The snow must be moved to outside of the walls, so do not move it to another drift nearby, as if you’re found, you’ll be forced to move that entire drift as well. Your Alpha will know more details. Now move!” A Khatif Sou’Tal gave commands to a pack as they walked past. The pack’s Alpha seemed to have known what they were going to be assigned to do and began to issue orders as several of the Kha sagged in disappointment. I chuckled and looked to the other side of the road, where the clearing in the center of the city waited to see how the ants would react to the impending spring
As the days once again grew longer and the constant clouds withdrew from overhead, we stopped having any visits from the wyrms. After our interactions with them, we’d come to realize that suns’ light through the clouds was enough to keep them solid, while they completely avoided any direct sunlight. Near as Joral could understand, direct light would harm or even kill them. Thus, they were active during the winter while the skies were mostly cloudy and hibernated during the summers. Nobody had been able to learn anything about where they laid their eggs, or if they laid eggs at all. Even so, the idea of subjugating some of the wyrms for our own use appealed to everyone, disregarding the inherent danger in that.
With so many hunts hinging on her, Hala had been bitten once, and there’d been no small amount of panic considering she was one of our magical Khatif. Fortunately, we’d learned that the shadow magic only consumed and grew from magic that was actively being used. That hunt had failed, as Hala had ceased using her magic and the two wyrms, seeing our preparations for them, retreated into the nearby forest, where they dissolved into shadows. Considering what could have happened, we considered ourselves luck to have avoided any deaths.
So, convinced it wasn’t going to be the wyrms that were the source of this constant feeling of anxiety, I focused on the ants. There weren’t any nations that were aware of our presence, were there? No, that was wrong. The Indlovu had guided us, and the Wilds knew what our destination was, even if this was too far for them to range out. Beyond that, I didn’t know what lay to the north of the Indlovu or the south of where we’d settled down. There was no way to know for sure what it was that threatened us. So, I focused inward, on what we could see and possibly control.
Under the insight of the Khatif from Tala, we built a fortress of sorts around the primary access point for the ants. Stones stacked at least five feet up in a wall around the entire crater. There were dozens of other places where the damned insects could escape from, but this was the only place that we’d seen inside the city. Sure, that was because this was where they’d found the Shandise and began biting into it, but that was beside the point. I forced myself to keep my mind from racing. Ytte and Kajar, a Khatif that’d gained her same propensity for earth magic, had spent days walking through every bit of the city and strengthened the stone underfoot to serve as a hindrance to the ants that lived underfoot.
Although the ants served as a great food source, we couldn’t fully exploit them as such for now, given that we didn’t know how much they’d change once the snows fully melted. If they became ravenous and we’d infuriated them at the same time, then we’d have signed up for another war, one I wasn’t sure we could distract the insects from. When I asked Nievtala what would happen, her response wasn’t particularly heartening.
The winter will go long this year. It’s been held back, but nature demands that it be fulfilled. The ants… I will not give that information at this time.
Thus, to keep from relying entirely on ever expanding hunts of the ants, I’d decided to command the Kha’Tal to focus on expanding our indoor fields. Through the spring and summer, we could create more outside the bounds of the walls, but for now, it was more important that we have them at all. Later, we could focus on getting them to better locations, just like with the stables.
The pains of a swiftly growing nation itched and picked at me. There were thousands of things to think about all the time, and my mind, faster and more developed than it ever had been, struggled to parse the many duties that fell to me. The construction of the temple was stagnated as Ytte struggled to understand how to refine the tisarite in the rock she’d carried around for so long. We hadn’t met any people to whom we could declare our nationality, there were a mere 2,831 citizens of the Empire, and the small progress made towards the requirements for a capital city frustrated me.
Even so, despite the various things that nipped at the back of my mind and bothered me, I enjoyed, for the first time in my current life, the opportunity to relax. I worked hard through the day and spent time with my people in the evenings. Most of the Keel took turns preparing the tubers for eating, and though we hadn’t found a particularly appetizing preparation for them, most of us found we liked them best grilled directly in the fire and served with meat. If the meat was cooked inside one of the slit tubers, its juices spread to the flesh of the vegetable and vastly improved the taste. In a life long past, I would have wanted more than just meat, but now, a Keel didn’t need much more than the flesh of its prey. The tubers, which we ended up not giving any specific name to, provided enough nourishment in combination with frequent ant hunts to keep the entire city’s population from starving. That said, there was no excess, and many tails grew thinner and thinner as the winter waned.
When the first sprouts poked through the snow outside the bounds of the city’s walls, celebrations for true spring’s arrival came alongside more prey.
Comments
No_Creative_Name
Old habits die hard. Thanks!
Veldorn
"several of the keelish sagged in disappointment" Shouldn't it be Kha?
