I turned in the direction of the spider's den, ants still trailing behind me. Yesterday, I had fled the spider's den, fearing the unknown. I wasn't sure what lay within, but maybe I was better off dealing with the devil I didn't know than the devil I did, because the devil I did know consisted of a hundred angry fire ants ready to bite me to death. At least, I assumed they were angry. But maybe I was just projecting: the ants could be acting from a position of reasoned and rational self-interest. Either way, I didn't see any way of negotiating with them, so I kept scurrying away. Unfortunately, the ants behind seemed to be gaining on me, and I reluctantly began sprinting to stay ahead of them, putting me down to [1 SP] in the process.

As I arrived at the mouth to the spider's cave, I flattened myself against the ground and wriggled through the low entrance.

Once I was within the cave, I listened for movement. I presumed that the echo of the cave would give away the sound of any movement within, but as I flattened my body against the floor, the only thing I could hear was the rhythmic thumping of my own pulse. I crawled forward until I could feel the tug of cobwebs on my front claws, and reared back for a moment before leaping forward, trying to jump as deep into the mess of webs as I could. The only way this would work was if I was able to put cobwebs between me and the ants, and this seemed like the best way to do it. I landed in a thick mess of webs, and took a few slow steps forward. I moved slowly, checking over my shoulder to make sure that I wasn't destroying the webs behind me, but the webs were sticky enough that I probably couldn't have moved any faster even if I tried.

Seconds later, the ants came streaming through the cave entrance, their shapes silhouetted against the beam of light that shone through the cave's low entrance. Several of them stopped, standing hesitantly at the edge of the web, before the nearest one stepped into the web, immediately getting caught. It struggled, first attempting to go forward, then back, and with each movement it became more ensnared in the webbing, until it was completely covered, unable to do anything but flail, trapped in a section of the web.

A second ant tentatively tugged at the web in a different place and, finding its leg stuck, attempted to free itself, only to find another leg caught in the webbing. It skittered backward, futilely attempting to escape, each movement trapping it more in the webbing, until it too was completely trapped, web stuck to every part of its body.

A dozen or so remaining ants paced back-and-forth across the width of the cave, presumably looking for a spot where there might be a break in the web, but luckily the spider that called this cave "home" had done a thorough job. I noted with no small amount of relief that even the walls and ceiling of the cave were webbed up.

The group of fire ants, finding no way forward, and apparently unwilling to risk a third ant life to 'test the waters,' exited the cave the same way they had come. I was almost ready to begin reveling in victory when I saw the shadow at the cave's entrance, which still bore the shadow of several ants who remained, apparently standing watch at the cave's entrance.

So, not a victory, then, but a stalemate. They weren't pursuing me into the cave, but they were standing wait at the entrance, watching for the moment I emerged.

I waited. What could I do besides wait? Clearly, the time when the fire ants would be at their most vigilant and most ready to strike would be immediately after they had chased me here. The longer I waited, the greater the chance that their ranks would thin as more wandered off to do things more productive than stand vigilantly waiting for the moment that I emerged. Admittedly, that was a bit of an assumption on my part — there was no guarantee that ants wandering away wouldn't come back with even greater numbers to help them, as they had already showed me earlier today. But their numbers were already at the point where I was sure that I couldn't win in a fair fight: even if the hundred ants left and came back as a group of two hundred ants, I was fairly certain that I was dead either way. The only problem was that with each passing second, I grew closer to death by starvation. But at the rate I was burning calories, it would be nightfall before I reached the point of starvation. I could afford to wait a few minutes — or even a few hours — to see if things would change. Things could change. Maybe the ants were diurnal and would allow a window for escape after they all went to sleep. The only way to find out was to wait.

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I moved to reorient myself to observe the entrance without having to twist my neck. The thick webbing certainly made my movement slow and difficult, but I was able to turn 180 degrees in place, and I was fairly certain that if I had to leave this tunnel, I could do it without too much effort. I wasn't trapped here, unlike the two ants who had followed me into the webbing. The privileges of greater muscle mass, I supposed. This web probably hadn't been spun by a spider who expected to ensnare dragon-sized prey. It was an unfortunate outcome for the two ants, but I wasn't about to start feeling sorry for them, not when dozens of their compatriots were waiting outside the cave to bite me to death the moment that I stepped out. If it was them or me, I certainly wasn't going to take their side.

Admittedly, I had been the one to make it an issue of "them or me." For days, I had peacefully coexisted with the fire ants — or, perhaps "coexist" was the wrong word: we had been mutually oblivious to each other's presence. It was only after I had begun fumigating their underground nests with my [poison breath] attacks and started exterminating them en masse to farm exp that things had turned ugly. If there were a way to negotiate or parley for peace, I'd certainly take it, but I didn't have the first idea about how to begin negotiations with an ant colony. Open my mouth and talk to them? On a whim, I tested the idea by opening my mouth and emitting a squawk, the closest thing I could manage to a "hello." That squawk might serve to announce "I'm here," but it probably wasn't capable of articulating the terms of a peace treaty. And of course, all of that was moot if the ants couldn't be reasoned with; they certainly didn't seem open to reason.

Then again, maybe that was my anti-ant bias talking. These ants certainly seemed capable of some level of reason: they had identified an existential threat, and coordinated a strategy for launching a strike to eliminate me before I could continue wreaking havoc on their community. Then again, a high level of cooperation didn't necessarily imply a capacity for logic or reason: ants back on earth were plenty capable of cooperating on large projects like "skeletonizing a dead animal" or "carrying the remnants of a discarded cookie back home" and somehow managed it all without much capacity for actual thought. I vaguely remembered an AP biology lecture from a teacher who had mentioned that ants had a certain number of neurons — I couldn't recall the figure, but it was in the thousands, a pittance compared to mammals — even the smallest of rodents boasted brains with billions of neurons. Ants probably couldn't even feel emotions like fear — even less reason to feel sorry for them. I was entirely open to the possibility that this might be the sort of world inhabited by sapient bugs (if they could exist in the mind of a Pixar scriptwriter, then surely sapient insects weren't beyond the imagination of a world-building goddess), but so far, the ants hadn't offered much indication of sapience.

I reflected back on my conversation with Athena, the last moments of my pre-dragon existence. I couldn't help but feel like she hadn't properly calibrated my expectations of this world based on what little she had shown me. Admittedly, it was hard to complain that I had been sold a false bill of goods — she had made no specific promises. Still, she had shown me a world where a group of people had cooperated to take down a giant monster. I had assumed that, at the very least, I would encounter fellow adventurers who might help me get a start in this world. Now, here I was, having no friends, no potential parties to strike alliances with, and not even a voice that I might use to begin a conversation even if I did manage to encounter another sapient creature. I certainly hadn't expected my life in this world to end after less than a week, trapped in a cave, waiting for the moment when I'd have to choose between starving to death and fighting an overwhelming number of critters who were ready to bite me to death.

Or, maybe this was exactly the world that Athena had promised me. She had shown me a world where a group of weaker creatures had, through coordinated effort, managed to slay a giant monster. In this scenario, I was the giant monster who had threatened the ants with extermination, and these ants were the plucky underdogs who, through cooperation and their heroic willingness to sacrifice themselves for the good of the group, seemed destined to triumph over the monster who had invaded their world, the villain of their story. Maybe the moral of the story was that it was best to be an underdog, and by choosing power, I had fallen for some kind of trap. My [kin sensitive] trait gave no indication of any other creatures of my kind in the vicinity. I was, it seemed, alone it the world. Was I destined to make an enemy of every creature I encountered? Maybe that was the mark of a true villain.

Well, if I was destined to be the villain of this story, I would do everything in my power to make it a story where the villain won.