In this moment, Anders knew the reality of the black clouds of death which had struck terror into his rodents, and left the few survivors crippled and dying. The clouds were not clouds, but an unholy swarm of monstrous flies. Tens of thousands poured out into his lair, and a cascade of ants plummeting to the ground below came with them. His rodents and rabbits had been slaughtered by insects, it was completely beyond his imagining.
When looking through the distorted memories of his returned veterans, he had never imagined that the black cloud was alive. He had never seen or imagined a swarm of insects so thick they appeared to be a single cloud, a single supernatural force of death and destruction. It explained why he had failed to find proper wounds on his pets.
Each bite was so small it was insignificant and impossible to identify, but when tens of thousands of bites came together it seemed as if his pet's flesh had disintegrated all on its own. He had seen plenty of flies and insects enter into his domain. They had come alone, in pairs, or even by the dozen but it was a simple matter to squash their pathetic little lives to protect his precious pets from death and disease. The idea that tens of thousands had banded together was an impossible scenario, but so was Anders' very existence. Then there were the ants.
They were the tiny specs he had seen in his visions, the insignificant creatures who devoured his pets from the inside. Ants on their own would have to swarm in the hundreds to take down a single mammal, but with intelligent direction they could be so much more fearsome. A single ant could scale the body of a grown man and sneak into their ears and then deeper through the ear canal. Then they were free to set about their macabre work, as they would be nearly impossible to remove.
Anders had poured all his time and strength into creating a haven for his pets, raising them in peace and watching them grow. It was a pleasant, peaceful life. But this foe, newly born, had found the perfect ways to use pathetically insignificant creatures to bring down beasts thousands of times their size. It was absurd. It wasn't fair. He was so much stronger, and his creatures were so much better. Despite all his advantages he was doomed to lose the moment he had attacked this lesser foe. He had resigned himself to accepting his death, but this was just insulting.
He had believed this foe had some infernal magic, some secret power which had allowed him to fight beyond his strength. But it was just a bunch of bugs. His foe simply outnumbered him a thousand to one. Obviously it changed nothing, he was utterly beaten. He only wished that he would be destroyed by something less pathetic. Although their invasion gave him the slightest glimmer of hope.
He had some estimation of the might of his enemy. He knew that his foe had barely scraped by each time he had launched an assault of rodents, and he knew that while his ruby foe had grown stronger this last week, and it was truly impressive, it wasn't enough for the enemy to launch this massive offensive and still defend against Anders' great assault. This was the first true chance Anders had had since the first battle of their bloody war. If he could somehow survive this, his pets would destroy his enemy, but he soon realized how foolish he was. His rodents might destroy the enemy's heart, but Anders would not survive this day, and his beloved pets would die with him.
The swarm of death had cascaded down from the roof near front of Anders' lair, just in front of the entrance tunnel to the outside world. How could it have known? Anders thought, How could it have known that I was going to send these last few pets of mine to escape?
As Anders watched, the flies blocked out the light of the world above, completely filling the entryway as they swarmed out into every nook and cranny of Anders' domain. He watched helplessly as his creatures were attacked. His pets were caught and cornered in their dens. The young screamed and ran as their happy and carefree haven was shattered and replaced by death and destruction. The babies too young to fend for themselves died in their nests, crying out for their mothers who had all abandoned them, desperately fleeing to the deeper recesses of the lair as their babies were devoured alive.
Some few tried to break through the hellish storm, but they were mercilessly torn apart. The flies swarmed and attacked everything in sight, but the true might of the enemy lay in the five columns of ants slowly marching in formation. At the front and center were enormous red ants, and these held the line against the charge of any animals seeking to flee their doomed home. Behind them and on the flanks were four separate columns of black ants, two were fairly large, but much smaller than their red comrades, and the rest were almost insignificantly small. It was the four groups on the sides that were causing him the most grief.
They covered every last inch of the floor of Anders' caverns with a solid carpet of chitinous fury. They scoured every last tunnel, burrow and hole. There was nowhere for his pets to hide. Those who had survived the black blizzard of flies were hunted down and slaughtered, and as the ant legions passed, only death lay in their wake.
Within minutes, any of his pets in the entry cavern that hadn't fled deeper into the lair had been completely annihilated. The insect swarms continued their brutal advance. They split into two at the fork where the tunnels from his first room broke off into a side passage and the main thoroughfare to his heart. He choked back a mental sob as he saw his pets scrambling at the walls of the room at the end of the side passage. It was a dead end, and they had nowhere to go.
After a large snake found its way into the lair months ago, Anders had sealed off all but the main exit. Originally there had been dozens and dozens of burrows and tunnels connected to the outside, but now with four large rooms, there was plenty of space and open air available to his pets, and they no longer needed to leave to scrounge for food. There had been no need to expose them to more danger than he had to. He had believed that to be the best decision at the time, but once again he saw that his attempts to shelter his rodents had doomed them all. No side paths for predators to come in left no escape paths for them to get out except through the lethal storm.
He tried to dig a path for them to escape, to save these poor creatures, but he had wasted too much time frozen in shock. The flies had already permeated most of his lair. There had never been an issue with the wild flies wandering in from the outside, they had been simple targets that he could bring down with a simple thought, but these flies were different. They were filled with the red mana of his enemy, and they radiated the foreign power throughout Anders' dungeon. It wasn't near enough to drive him out, but his powers were completely nullified by the high concentration of the enemy mana. He couldn't see through the depths of the swarms of flies, and he couldn't dig through the walls anywhere near them. He was powerless.
The helpless creatures clawed at the walls until their paws bled, frantically digging for their lives. Old, young, wounded, or strong, it made no difference, they were all helpless before the the advancing legions. Some brave few tried to face them, tried once more to break through, but their terrible deaths shattered any hope their fellow beasts had of a successful charge. The rest did what their instincts told them, and dug for their lives. Even as their back legs were torn apart and eaten, even as their brothers, sisters, friends and offspring died at their sides, they struggled till their last breath to escape.
Is this war? Anders wondered, Is this what I sent those poor creatures into? Is this what awaited them on the other side of that black abyss? Horror was too weak a word to describe what was unfolding in front of him, inside of him. This lair was his own body, and he saw everything, felt everything. The deepest concentrations of the enemy were beyond his sight, but his own pets broke through the fog. He watched, heard, and felt every helpless cry and every agonized death. He tasted the blood in their mouths, and smelled the blood, piss and death around them.
As the massacre of his trapped, defeated, and helpless pets reached its end, a similar scene had mirrored it in the main tunnel. The second room there had proceeded just as the first, with those who could flee piling up in the final room, the chamber that contained his blue heart. Where once there had rested a brilliant sapphire, only the darkest blue gem remained. Almost no light escaped its faceted edges. So this is despair... he thought.
He took one last look at the regimented advance of the ant legions, it was a truly terrifying sight. They marched in step, and while it wouldn't have been audible to anyone other than himself, he felt the terrifying precision of their formations. Thousands of ants mirrored each-other perfectly, never missing a stride. It was a discipline unseen even in the strictest professional armies, and their lines only broke when they encountered a foe. There were no holes, and no hope. There was one final option left to him.
He had never dreamed of a counter attack being launched against him so soon, and the invasion tunnel he had sent his forces through rested on a side wall of this last room. Anyone with a mind for strategy would have never used this most critical room as a mustering ground, but it left him with this final opportunity. One last chance for him to save some of his pets.
He did not know what fate awaited them on the other side, but it could not be any worse than what would come to them here. With so many of the enemy forces occupied here, he could only hope that they could find victory or escape the weakened, split forces of the enemy lair.
He sent the desperate survivors into the breach, giving them his final command: Kill. Escape. Never Return.
And so the great exodus began as every last surviving creature fled his dungeon, the adults and youths carrying their babies with them. They dashed through the tunnel, and dozens at a time vanished from his view. Soon just one remained, the rest were all gone, he could only pray for their safety. He gazed upon the last of his pets, his mightiest beast and closest friend, his possum.
It was a strange creature, soft light brown fur all over except for its pristine white face. It had stormed into his den after smelling the corpse of an old mouse that had chosen Anders' cave as its place to die. He had been wondering what to do with the body, worried that predators might find it, but before he could decide, the starving marsupial dashed into the den, rushing with purpose towards the source of the smell.
After it gobbled up its fill, and before Anders could come up with a way to drive it out, the possum curled up next to his core, happily resting after its meal. Anders couldn't bear to drive away the cute, starving creature, and allowed it to stay. That random encounter had resulted in his closest friend in this strange new life, and now, at the end, this possum refused to leave.
Run. Please run, Anders begged, theres no point.
But still the marsupial refused to leave his side. He tried to order it, to override its loyalty and love and drive it away to have a chance at another life, but it was futile. His friend only snuffled his nose, and snuggled around the blue core as he had a thousand times before, only this time he shielded Anders from the furious storm of flies with his thick fur.
As the doom finally came to the end of his final cavern, and the ant legions were only a few feet away from his resting place, the possum leapt to his feet. With a mighty hiss, he threw himself into the ant horde, biting and stomping furiously to protect his friend. But it was all useless, and a terrible fate befell him. As Anders watch his only friend be torn apart, it was all over.
He was powerless. He was weak. He had failed.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Damien watched the advancing hordes of rodents and rabbits and laughed at how stupid he had been. He had been so focused on his losses, weakness and surviving on the defensive he had put off this day for far too long. He had been lost in the limits of his strength, and had failed to understand the true power of his warriors.
The beasts of his enemy came through the tunnel in greater numbers than ever, and charged out into the open tunnel of his southern bastion. They hadn't attempted to undermine him again like before, but it wouldn't have mattered even if they had.
Flies, and even the ants were terrible defensive creatures. The ambusher ants had excelled mixed in with the spiked pits and trenches, but on the open field, it was a different matter entirely. Damien had very few creatures capable of stopping the charge of the rodents. The ants didn't have the weight to block them, and the flies lacked the ability to do enough damage quickly despite their speed and maneuvering advantage. They could only attack as they passed by. Even the mice could charge straight through to his greatest weakness, the core.
They were attempting to do that now, and they raced madly eastward to the end of his southern bastion and the start of the bulwark between the bastion and the entrance, but as they charged through, the bulwark was covered over. Where vicious trenches had rested, only soft earth remained. The charging beasts had passed over the first obstacle.
He had only survived to this point with great sacrifices and traps. Sheila and her spawn had bought him the time to learn, but his slowness had cost him dearly. If he couldn't afford the risk or the terrible sacrifice, then only one option was left to him, and that was to use better traps. The bulwarks of terrible trenches and ants were undeniably effective, but he had missed out on one of the most important goals.
As Damien reflected, the hordes of beasts continued to flood through his lair. Damien had blocked the half finished side tunnels for this very moment, there was no way for the rodents to get lost, and they charged through the first room, and passed over where the second bastion had once stood proudly, a testament to his brutal creativity and his resolution to survive.
He had focused on survival, and defeating his enemy, but that was a mistake. The two single most important things were survival and growing stronger. Defeating his foe was a secondary priority. Despite his rage and grief, only strength would allow him to live on. He had clearly done his best to grow and fight against this mighty enemy, scrounging every last resource he could to survive wave after wave of beasts that completely outclassed every other creature he had, but it wasn't enough.
The second room was just as empty as the first, and the beasts quickly rounded the corner to enter the third and final tunnel of Damien's lair. This was the final bastion, the home of his fire ants. Where they had driven the enemy into encirclement after encirclement before retreating, making them bleed for every inch. But this too remained empty. The mounds were gone, smoothed over as if they had never been and the ants were far away on their mission of blood and vengeance.
The next foe might have cats, dogs, or even bears. He couldn't sit idly by with insects, lizards and a few spiders. They were mighty, and performed far beyond their strength in battle, but it wasn't enough, and he would never be safe with only this.
The beasts were through the final bastion, and Damien watched as they flooded out of the final tunnel into his throne room, or at least what was left of it. As they came out of the tunnel, they tumbled over five feet into a pit where there had once been a floor. The entire room was a gaping maw, taking in all that threw themselves into it.
He had realized that the beasts were not his enemy. They might be controlled by his foe, but they were merely pawns. They were a valuable military resource, and would bring a whole new variety to his lair, but he hadn't truly explored the possibility. Of course, he had made a few attempts. He kept some of the wounded, and set some webbed traps to capture them, but it had never been enough to make a difference. It would take months to breed the few he had captured into a viable army, and there would be tremendous issues with inbreeding, yet every week his enemy gave him one. A finished army arrived on his doorstep like a wrapped gift, he had simply been too stupid to accept it properly.
As the beasts tumbled, they became ensnared in countless threads of webbing that nearly filled the pit. Hundreds of beasts tumbled into the prepared trap, rabbit and rodent alike were wrapped in its silky embrace. There had been no hope for them from the moment they set foot into his lair.
Damien knew that this was his victory. He felt the despair and pain of his enemy, and knew that his troops were fulfilling their mission on the other side of the barrier. He had been shocked as he was cut off from them, but he finally understood why the tactics of his enemy had been so basic, and so unresponsive, but his minions were up to the challenge. His orders were simple, and they were a far better fighting force than his enemy had ever mustered.
The vampyric ruby twinkled with a wicked delight from his webbed nest high above the floor of the lair as his victims flailed helplessly below.