Day 54

Damien's first action taken after the great battle with his sapphire foe was to bind the crazed lizard, Rex. Tighter and tighter his surviving spiderlings had wound the terrible beast, but it would still last only a short time. There was only one way he could come up with that would ensure the great lizard would remain here until his own energies coursed through it's body once more, he would make his lair into a tomb. Perhaps tomb was too strong a word, but he needed to seal the entrances. It was the only way he could focus on his mission to dig deeper and to grow stronger with his minions steadily corrupted in this way. Deep in their souls, he felt them slowly but surely breaking down the foreign power, he just had to be patient.

And so he did it, he called forth dirt from the abyss within himself, and packed it down as hard as any dirt had ever been until only the barest air holes remained, enough that natural, wild insects would be able to fly in to add to the menagerie of captive creatures, but it would prove impossible for any of his exorbitantly enlarged insects to get out. And that was to say nothing of the greater beasts he had conquered, however they were mostly rodents, critters of the earth, and they were all far, far beyond his control. If left to their own devices, they would surely dig to freedom, and so for now they would be kept in the pit they had been trapped in, and this would merely serve as a secondary barrier to their escape. But soon it would be time to feed them.

In time, the rodents and the leporids too would come to bend the knee to Damien. This was the nature of his magic. It was true, irresistible sorcery, and there was nowhere they could hide to get away from his all-corrupting influence. Especially when they were trapped underneath his crystal body.

His next thought was for the ants. The first bearers, the reds, had returned to their queen. He was forced to admit he was afraid. If he understood things correctly, if their queen devoured the massive pile of shards being presented to her, then she would swell up so large and so fast that she would be jammed in the tunnel, and likely crushed to death. And even if she should survive, she could be corrupted. But so far, these ants had not led him astray. Their natural instincts for how to harness this terrible power up till now had been nothing short of miraculous. 

He hadn't the slightest clue how to make use of the captured shards, he could only watch the humongous ants follow their instincts, and do what they were born to do. And do, they did. The carriers formed up in an orderly line in front of their queen, and she divided their loads into five piles. Then her bodyguards reached back into her heaping pile of eggs, and brought forth four eggs which appeared just like any other. Until he looked much, much deeper within each of the four treasured eggs which was being brought to rest, each upon one of the five piles while the red queen herself ate the fifth. Each of the four eggs held a queen's embryo.

His largest breed of ants were about to quintuple in number, but how on earth was he going to fit four more ant colonies in his dungeon? The ant colonies were dug deep into the surrounding hillside, and it was past time for him to expand his domain, but it still left him with one glaring problem. How was he supposed to feed all those fresh mouths? He had few enough creatures to harvest the plant matter scattered around his lair into usable fat and protein. The most obvious of these were the herbivore beetles which ate the moss, the worms, flies, and maggots which ate the manure of his beasts as well as decaying plant matter, the cockroaches which ate anything, and then his new rodents and leporids. However, his new mammalian residents would need time to grow into a sustainable population or else they would be utterly squandered as a resource. For the numbers of new creatures he was about to have, that really only left one source of food available to him. Outside.

It would be a simple thing to order his ants to tunnel their way to the outside world, and though it would seem to go against the effort he had put towards sealing off the outside, the ants were different than the others. The ants were forced to bring food home to their queen, their entire existence depended on her survival, and she would not be simply abandoned. Without her, their existence was pointless. Without her, they could sire no children, and the whole of their colony would perish.

As her four eggs waited for their time to hatch, the original red queen swelled to nearly two feet in length. She was destined to be the dominant superpower in his lair for the foreseeable future. Her hatchlings would lead their colony to supremacy and glory in the bloody days ahead.

Next stood the guardians. While they had utterly failed to match the ferocity of the reds, they had at least managed to recover enough to swell their ranks. Two new colonies of guardians would rise, and their original queens each broke a previously unheard of threshold of ten inches. The two new guardian colonies would be placed at a new gateway for defense once they were born, Damien just had to decide whether they should guard his own, original dungeon or if they should guard his newly conquered territory. 

Then all that remained were his final breed of ants, the assassins. These were the only strain of ants that failed to grow. As he examined them closely, he had to admit he was glad they hadn't grown, as their specialty lay in moving unheard, unseen, and unfelt until the last possible moment. But as he looked, he saw something out of place, something different. Their legs had straightened, their feet seemed hollow. It was as if there was something inside them. He lifted one of the largest assassins, one that he could most clearly see the alterations on, and carefully, using his mind, he snapped one of the ant's legs. He had no taste, no sense of smell, but something about the liquid that gushed out of the ant and now rested on his floor seemed foul.

Damien beckoned to one of his moss beetles, and commanded it to drink the liquid he had poured from the broken leg. And the beetle bravely marched up and drank from the slight puddle. He gulped the liquid down as if it was water, but something deep inside Damien told him to wait, to watch. But nothing happened, it must have been blood, or at least not foul. It was-oh. It merely took a few minutes, but there it was. The beetle was convulsing violently, and then it perished. His assassin ants now contained poison inside them. It would take him time to learn the best way to administer it, but for now, now he was pleased.

His next minions to draw his attention were his beloved spiders. Thirteen of the babies Sheila had left him had made it to adulthood. It was an ominous number, but it would have to do. Four were badly crippled, and he wasn't entirely sure if they could ever recover, but there was at least one potential use for three of them. Three of the crippled spiders were female. It might be distasteful, but they could be easily used as brood-mothers. Whatever it took to grow his empire, he would do. Shae on the other hand... Shae was something else entirely. 

Her knowledge and comprehension of telepathic language continued to grow at a rate that would put human children learning to speak to shame, but only because of how much she had learned this last few hours. Her current level of comprehension was just enough to ask the one question every adult that dealt with small children dreaded most. "Why?"

"Because I said so!" Damien roared back at the incessantly babbling spider. He had tried to tune out her constant chorus of "Why....? Why....? Why....?" And he had nearly succeeded as he focused on his other minions, and their drastic evolutions unfolding before his eyes, but he had reached his final limit. 

She cowered for the briefest of moments, as if considering the repercussions of her ceaseless chorus, but that brief pause gave way to yet another question, "But why?"  

"Because I am trying to work, to categorize each and every change to the creatures that serve me so that we might survive the next accursed enemy that tries to attack us!" Damien roared across the lair to his first conversation partner he had had since his death.

And then the dreaded question returned once more, "But why?"

"I don't know! I haven't the slightest clue, but I know what has happened once can happen again! I know that the next time, the next enemy may not be so stupid as to send mammals in blindly to kill insects! I don't know! I haven't any idea how to ensure we all survive! So, please. Let me work, and just go sit over there. You can watch, I don't mind that, but you have to be quiet."

"We aren't making any noise are we?" Shae gasped in horror, bolting away to the corner of the room.

"No, no we aren't. It's a figure of speech, it just means that I need you to stop pestering me. Can you do that?"

"Yes!" 

"Thank you little one. Now where was I...?"

"You were about to move on to the beetles I think..."

"SHHHHHHHHHH!" Damien hissed at her.

"Sorry..."

"But you are right. It's time for the beetles."

Like the ants, there are three separate varieties. Unlike the ants however, which diverged based on role and role in the lair, these are divided by their diet and color, the carrion, herbivore, and the cockroaches. The black and yellow carrion beetles are by far the largest among them, as their ability to prey upon the maggots and even the mighty maggots allowed them to harvest far more of the crystal shards than any of the others and grow to match. The largest carrion beetles had stretched to fourteen inches long, and were now racing back and forth around his lair like vacuums, sucking down any carrion left behind. 

Next came the ten inch long cockroaches, and while in life he would have found them utterly repulsive, now he could do nothing except celebrate their existence. The roaches were the single creature to bridge the gap between herbivores and carnivores perfectly. They could eat any of the plants, the mosses or the grasses, new or old, but they could also break down absolutely any protein or fat left behind after the squabbling of his various creatures. And then to finally top it off, they could digest manure just like his flies and maggots. They were the perfect source of food to keep his lair alive and well until he could reinforce his food chains.

The lesser of the three beetles, the herbivores, were by far the smallest at only six inches. However such creatures that specialized in the harvesting of plant matter would never go to waste in his growing empire. Each creature that could digest plant matter was a small generator, creating power and energy to be harvested by those further along the food chain. He watched intently as one of his more aggressive spiders pounced on one of the green and black beetles, and as the life within the beetle expired, it had fulfilled it's ultimate purpose.

His next family of minions were his flies, and their "cousins", the ones he had affectionately named mighty maggots. These creatures were some of his simplest, despite the fact that like any of his creatures they would have turned any biology research team into rabid dogs, based only off their impossible size. Not to mention the maggots ability to reach reproductive maturity without reaching physical maturity. 

His last dilemma was far more complicated, and far less likely to resolve itself. He had many, many rodent and rabbit juveniles trapped in the final room of his original lair, and he had a larger lair full to bursting with grass, however he had no way to get the rodents and rabbits from the pit they were trapped in, to the grass buffet awaiting them. He was going to either have to carve a ramp out of the pit, or dig another tunnel between the lairs. 

But, wait... Was there any rule that said the lairs had to be laid out in a single floor, and only a single floor? Could he go beneath? Damien started to hollow out a tunnel out of the pit, but at the last second he remembered a crucial piece he had forgotten. He had to reinforce the seal on the entrance of the newly captured lair first, or else the beasts would dig their way out in moments and all simply vanish into the night. It was a simple task pack in more dirt on the entryway of the foreign lair, he had had plenty of practice and he was getting better at manipulating the soil of the earth around him. As soon as that path of retreat was better sealed, he tunneled from the heart of his lair, the depths of the pit he had caught his enemies in all the way to the deepest part of their own home. Beneath the mound their master had once called home. It would take them some time to free themselves from the mess of webbing, but they would manage it in their own time.

This under tunnel wasn't the only necessary expansion in Damien's lair. With all the bursting growth happening all over the place from each of his minions, it was time to expand his tunnels and caverns. His ants had already greatly expanded the usable space in his lair, by excavating their winding and twisting nests for their queens. But the main thoroughfares were becoming cramp deathtraps. He widened every tunnel by at least two feet, and widened the small tunnel linking the two lairs he now controlled to a full four feet across. Then it was time to excavate some new rooms deeper inside the hillside. He started with the tunnels he had already started digging deeper into the hillside, and expanded them even larger than the other caves he had dug before. 

The first one he dug around the bend, on the opposite side of his lair from his newly conquered territory, it was massive and square. And the second was just a long rectangular hall stretching out into the depths of the hillside. They were both barren for the moment, but it wouldn't be long before he had seeded them with moss and all manner of insects and beasts. And then it was just a short wait until a thriving ecosystem took hold. 

As he surveyed his newly settled domain, he was overwhelmed with delight at the terrible power he now held within his lair. the insects, the mammals, all of it would be his. But there was one creature that stood guard out front, one beast that stood between him and the entirety of the world above. That single, lone weasel. The beautiful lady that slept curled beautifully in one of the tiny alcoves he had excavated in the outer wall. She slept soundly, unmoving in her hibernation? It had to be hibernation right? She had slept continuously for days at a time, but Damien had no real understanding of how mammalian hibernation cycles worked. But there was something off, something odd about the way she slept. It was as if she was growing, and growing rapidly.

But only her belly swelled, as if she was diverting every last ounce of food straight to her belly. As if she were pregnant.