Day 54

Ajax was the uncontested champion of this battlefield. He had quickly snatched over a dozen shards by leaping about the room from battle to battle and slaughtering anything in his path. The great spider had undergone explosive growth in the last frenzied minute, and was a full two feet across from leg to leg. His sturdy legs had continued to grow thicker and stronger, and the claws on the ends of each leg were a full inch long and razor sharp. His body was broader and flatter than before, and his solid armored carapace had a seemingly metallic sheen. His wounds had healed completely, and he resembled a giant black and gold tarantula. He was a truly terrifying specimen, and Damien was proud of his fierce warrior.

The next most successful group in the melee were the ants, and their teamwork was exemplary. While the denizens of the eternal gloom descended into chaos around them, the ants worked together with unshaken discipline. They didn't race off and scatter in search of gems, instead they marched together and took one at a time. While the maggots and flies were squabbling amongst themselves, and often killed before they could devour their prize, the ants marched through and protected each-other while their sisters ate their prize. Strangely, they didn't devour them all. Half of the shards they gathered were carried, and the other half swelled their warriors to great heights. While only thirty ants remained of the crew sent to break the crystal, most of them were now between six and eight inches. 

The beetles were the only other group to have any luck, and they simply allowed the pests around them to bite uselessly on their shells while they devoured the slivers of sapphire. Their shells were thick enough that only the ants or Ajax would be able to break through. They trudged across the field, scooping up their prizes without a care. 

Through sheer numbers alone, some maggots, grubs and flies got lucky, but before they could gain the advantage, there was a furious charge from the north. The ant brigades, spiderlings, and Rex refused to sit on the sidelines as their rivals grew ever stronger.

Rex scurried through the horde of flies and maggots, stomping them into the grass with every step. His beard had turned dark black and was flared out to its fullest as he threw himself into battle. He raced towards the great shining beetles, the troublesome armored bugs that the others had ignored were his favorite prey. He pounced on one of the larger moss beetles that had eaten a shard and grown far beyond it's normal size, and he pinned it under his feet. In another moment, it was in his mouth and he swallowed it whole. 

As if he had eaten the shard himself, Rex began to grow, but he pressed on. Even as he shed off his too-small skin, he leapt on to the closest swollen beetle that radiated the foreign power. He stomped, bit, slammed, clawed and gulped down his pray, racing to not be left behind by the arachnid titan at the center of the chaos. His bones thickened, his muscles swelled, and his flesh hardened. His spines and claws grew stronger, thicker, and sharper. As he ran and fought, his body was raised above the ground, and his spine stiffened and strengthened to hold his gorged body straight. As he grew inches at a time with each stolen shard, he raced deeper into the fray to hunt, constantly looking over his shoulder. Even he had to flee from what was comming. The ant brigades were marching. 

The carpenter ants had reacted first, and they stormed through their cousins, stomping and killing as they carved a path to the battlefield beyond. Even in the midst of battle, their rigid formations never wavered, but neither did they stop their advance. If the front line stalled in battle, the second climbed over top and joined the fray. Then the third, and the fourth and so on until the enemy was crushed and they could rejoin the march.

The guardians had collapsed before them, fleeing to the sides of the cavern and following along on either side, fighting desperately for their right to exist whenever a few of the red beasts pushed into their lines while still marching towards the chaotic storm ahead. Every living creature knew deep within their soul that true power lay ahead. If they took it for themselves, they would grow stronger, but if they failed, or sat on the sidelines, they would be left behind, and at the mercy of those who had evolved. All were advancing into the maelstrom of ichor and violence, yet the ambusher ants had vanished.

Hundreds of the tiny black assassins had been slaughtered as the red and black brigades stormed through them, but the rest simply melted away. To all except Damien, it was as if they had never been there at all, but every few seconds a great red ant or a black guardian mysteriously collapsed mid-stride or convulsed in agony. Damien saw the tiny shadows racing along with the others towards the promise of power, only stopping to take vengeance for their fallen sisters. The tiny ambushers might be weaker than their cousins, but they could be far more deadly. Each ant had their purpose and their place, and each performed their task masterfully. 

Before the ants could reach their goal, an unseen army made their move. Forty-seven spiders released their hold on the ceiling and plummeted to the floor below. Those who took after their father slammed down claws first into the fray near a disputed shard in a miniature tribute to the bloodthirsty champion. They released a flurry of bites and scratches onto the maggots and flies around them as they assaulted those trying to claim their chosen prize. Some few brave, yet foolish warriors landed in the middle of the surviving ant formation.

The ants had been carting around a hoard of shards, just sitting on the backs of the ants in the center. The four spiders each impaled a courier, and the element of surprise was their only advantage. They had killed four of the weakest among them, the couriers hauling their prize, yet surrounding them were ants nearly a full foot long, and extremely angry that their tribute had been stolen. The first two of Ajax's heirs each grabbed two shards, swallowed them whole, and leapt out of the encirclement. The last two, a male and a female, were greedy. They were sitting atop a heaping hoard of shards, and they gorged themselves on their stolen treasures. Their victims did not hold back their fury.

As the colossal ants charged at the interlopers, the lagging, swelling spiders realized the time had come to escape. The flung themselves on their newly strengthened legs over the heads of the charging ants, desperate to clear the horrific, gnashing mandibles. The female spider narrowly scraped through as her rear two left legs were torn off, but the male slipped. He had misjudged his newfound strength, and he had not dug his claws deep enough into the earth for such a heroic leap. He launched himself directly into the snapping jaws of one of the ants he had offended, and with a single snap his blue ichor coated the red giant's maw.

As the three surviving bandits made their escape, the rest of their aggressive siblings waged their own battles. Some were brought down by incessant attacks by flies, and met their demise as they challenged the lizard titan. But those who had inherited their mother's grace waged a different war. While the warriors had crashed into battle, the quiet ones were halted in their descent by silken threads. They had carefully dropped overhead of past victors, and dropped onto the maggots and flies who had gorged themselves on the sapphire spoils of their long war.

A devastating venom gushed from their fangs to fill their shocked prey, and they died in utter agony as the fast death raced through their bodies. While they were more cautious, Sheila's successors were even more vulnerable than their brash counterparts, and many were overwhelmed as the hungering maggot horde descended upon the fallen shard eaters. The gluttonous gobbled down their prey before dashing off, the efficient ones gutted the maggots or flies, and ripped the gem from the corpse of their foe, and the crafty bound them with thread before leaping onto the silken strands that had stopped their fall, whisking them away to the ceiling where they could eat them in peace and relative safety.

While the spiders battled and stole their way to power, the ant brigades arrived. The armies carved a bloody path through the maggots, grubs, beetles, and those flies that failed to escape to the skies. The spiderlings too slow or too cocky to get out of their way were mercilessly cut down. Damien winced every time one of Sheila's gifts fell, yet he knew he couldn't coddle them forever. They would only survive if they grew strong, and if they were to grow strong they had to throw themselves into the crucible of battle. The strong would grow stronger, and the weak would be culled.

The surviving red ant titans raced to join their sisters, still carrying a great hoard of shards despite the spider bandits. As they arrived at the red ant lines, they ran right through them. With their enormous bodies raised high above their tiny brethren, it was a simple thing to step right over top of them. Damien watched them, puzzled, as they raced without pause back to their colony with their hoard. And then the entire red brigade turned and charged home, surrounding their heroic sisters as they fled the field of battle. 

Damien was bewildered. They were clearly the dominant force in the battle, and yet they fled at the moment when they were reinforced by over a thousand ants. It was absurd for them to leave. It was a simple matter for him to look into the minds of his minions, however he often left them to their own devices. His mind was incredibly expansive, and he could process a staggering amount of sensory input and information, but with many tens of thousands of insects, he couldn't read all of their thoughts at once. He only focused on the most powerful, and the most interesting, and now these great ants met that criteria. 

He looked within the minds of the fleeing heroes, and what he saw shook him to his core. They feared the ambusher ants, their tiny cousins. They knew that at their immense size, they would be helpless against the tiny specs of death permeating every gap and orifice, but they weren't afraid for themselves. They feared losing their hoard of shards, because they were for a purpose far beyond their own growth. They were for the queen. That monstrous stockpile they had gathered were all going to be fed to a single creature, and yet it would increase the power of the colony dozens of times.

That single red queen had given birth to every last ant in her colony, and she would pass on any growth and evolution down to her children. All of them. She birthed hundreds every day. It was a plan which fit the structure of their colony so perfectly, he was ashamed he had not thought of it himself. All of this would make them a mighty force for his lair, but that was not what had rocked the very foundations of his consciousness. These ants had thought of this plan.

It was simple, it was basic, with very crude but efficient reasoning, but these simple, primitive creatures had considered their situation, thought out the best option, communicated, revised their plan, and then released pheromones to drive the more primitive of their sisters to enact it. It was the spark of true, individual intelligence. Before they had reacted on instinct, releasing pheromones to direct the motions of the entire colony in reaction to their environment. They were not smart, yet through individual reaction they formed a consensus that resembled intelligent direction. They had followed his orders only because they were magically directed by them, not because of comprehension. The more complex the order, the more energy had been required to guide them. It was an unprecedented development, and as he looked he saw similar growth in his other champions.

He hadn't been paying close enough attention to their thoughts as the battle raged, yet Ajax was thinking out every single action he took, calculating how best to kill his foe. Rex was originally his smartest, most advanced creature, yet his growth in mental capacity was no less staggering. He was counting. He could get no higher than four, but he was trying to count the number of enemies that surrounded him, thinking about how many he could crush at once with his gargantuan form. It was absurd, all of it. His insects were thinking. His lizard was counting. He was so absorbed with the discovery, he almost missed it.

Shae had claimed a huge shard of the core that had been buried in the dirt by the impact from being launched by the explosion. She was nearly unrecognizable, grown to a full foot from leg to leg, but just as she finished killing all the beetles who had found it, Rex charged over. He was over four feet long now, his muscles bulging through his thick, scaled, hide. His maw and wicked talons were soaked blue, he was completely drenched in ichor. He had crushed a dozen spiderlings, a hundred beetles, and countless maggots and grubs for the shards, and now there was just another little spiderling between him and the largest shard he had seen. 

The great bearded dragon charged forwards, maw opened wide, but it was suddenly slammed shut, roof of his mouth impaled through by eight fiendish daggers. Ajax had thrown himself atop the charging reptile to save his daughter Shae. As he gained the beginnings of consciousness, he remembered his lost mate. It was a brief and emotionless relationship, yet the memory had hidden itself deep within his simple mind until he grew smart enough to unlock it. It was a fleeting feeling, a whim, yet this little one behind him reminded him of her. She smelled just as her mother, and she looked just the same. It would be a shame for her to meet her end just now.

Damien quietly cheered that Shae had survived, and ordered her into a hasty retreat as the clash of the titans unfolded before him. Rex threw his head up in rage and pain, flinging Ajax off and over his body. The warrior spider landed on his feet, and darted in just as Rex whirled around to face him. The great spider darted in, and stabbed forwards at the lumbering beast, while Rex lunged fruitlessly after him. Ajax was far more agile, although Rex completely eclipsed him in strength. Ajax raced past his head, and Rex chased after, snapping at empty air behind him. 

Ajax leapt on top of Rex once more, this time on his back. The spider bit down, but only a single fang made it past the thick scales, releasing just a few drops of venom before Rex's thrashing nearly threw him off. As Ajax moved to take another bite, Rex flipped himself over, driven mad by pain and rage. Ajax managed to leap clear of being crushed, and raced towards the side of the lizard once more, easily skittering past his head. Just as he was about to leap atop Rex, a spiked, armored tail slamming into his side. 

Ajax had never fought a lizard before, and he had no idea that a tail was just as much a weapon as their teeth. He was completely blindsided, and all four legs on his right side were completely shattered, his abdomen and body crushed in. He was completely stunned and badly crippled. He might have been able to move with only his left legs, but not soon enough, and not fast enough to escape even if he could. 

Rex swelled his beard in a gesture of dominance and victory, and readied his sturdy legs to pounce and put an end to his rival once and for all.