I watched as Octavia ran up the tunnel, then began following after her.

"You're being awfully cavalier about this," I said. "We don't know what's up there."

"You were the one who insisted that we should follow where Anne's sentry ants were taking us," said Octavia. "Just a couple minutes ago, you were the one insisting that following where they bid was our only choice. That was when the destination was unknown. Now, we have more information, and yet you're less confident. What changed, little dragon?"

"I guess I'm worried about encountering a big dragon," I said.

"I'm not," said Octavia. "You can detect that big dragon if it's nearby, right? If you sense its presence, we can flee back the way we came."

"True," I said. "I guess I wasn't thinking through it logically. It's just, as soon as you mentioned the surface, I couldn't stop thinking about the elder dragon. I only saw it for an instant, but it looked so…vicious."

"I hope you haven't developed a phobia of dragons," said Octavia, climbing upward. "It would prove very inconvenient if you ever encountered a mirror."

"I wouldn't say that I have a phobia of dragons. A phobia is an excessive and unrealistic fear. I think I have exactly the right amount of fear for elder dragons, given what we've seen. I mean, that dragon destroyed your tunnels. It could easily do the same to Anne's."

"True," said Octavia. "But we have no reason to believe that it did destroy Anne's tunnels. I'll be sure to let you know if we encounter any closed of passageways, unexpected crevices, or anything else unusual."

I climbed after her. "How would you know what's 'unusual?' This is the first time we've been in this tunnel."

"I looked at the map, remember?"

"Good point," I said. "I guess that detour to Anne's map room was worth the time. Do you think –"

My front claw failed to find a grip in the tunnel in front of me, and I slid a few feet back before friction brought me to a halt.

"Careful," said Octavia. "The tunnel's only going to get steeper."

"We're almost at a 45 degree incline already," I said. "Any more than this, and we'll be nearly vertical."

"Correct," said Octavia. "The vertical part is just ahead."

As promised, it wasn't long before the "tunnel" was more of a vertical chasm, with my four-claw grip on the wall the only thing keeping me up. Octavia adjusted her climbing form, straddling the chasm and extending her legs out so that each set of four legs was anchored on one half. I struggled to keep up.

"Sorry for my speed, or lack thereof," I said. "I think maybe you should go on ahead without me."

"Okay," said Octavia, a bit too eagerly. She quickly began scuttling up the chasm with her legs spread. It was less than half a minute before she was so high up that I couldn't even see her, the echo of her plinking claw strikes against the rock being the only sign of her climbing. I winced. I had told her that she could go ahead without me, but I hadn't expected her to do it so quickly. There wasn't much I could do except continue climbing, one claw at a time.

A minute later, she re-emerged from the darkness above, this time suspended from a thread. She lowered herself until she was right above me. "Need a lift?"

"I certainly wouldn't mind one," I said, allowing her to secure a thread around my torso. A minute later, we reached the top of the vertical shaft and Octavia began leading me down a horizontal tunnel.

I followed behind her, squinting in the darkness. I could run faster than Octavia, but in the extremely low-light conditions of the tunnel, my footsteps were less confident and more plodding. "I'm guessing that Anne probably didn't have dragons in mind when she designed these tunnels" I said, glancing back at the vertical shaft.

Octavia laughed. "No, I don't think she anticipated you."

"So why are these tunnels big enough for us?" I asked. "Surely, ants wouldn't need tunnels of this size. They're much smaller than us."

"Anne isn't," said Octavia. "This is how big a tunnel would need to be to accommodate her."

"I wonder if there's a minimum size a creature needs to be sapient," I said. "In fact –"

"Hold on," said Octavia. "This is new."

I glanced past her. "I can't see anything. It just looks like the tunnel continues."

"Yes," she said. "It wasn't supposed to continue in this direction." She pointed up. "See that hole? That's supposed to be the part that connects to the surface."

"That would be the smaller ant-sized hole I was talking about," I said. "At least, that hole in the ceiling doesn't look big enough for someone like you, me, or Anne."

"Yes," said Octavia. "This tunnel ahead of us wasn't part of Anne's original design. It must be a recent addition."

"Or it could be an old addition, and she just never updated her original blueprints."

"No," said Octavia. She clawed at the ground. "It's loose. Recently dug out." She took a few tentative steps forward.

"Is this a problem?" I asked.

"Not a problem yet," said Octavia. "But now we're venturing into uncharted territory. I don't know where this tunnel is going to take us."

The larger fork of the tunnel still led us upward, but this time at a more gradual slope.

"I wonder when we'll start to see daylight," I said.

"Not much of that left," said Octavia. "By my reckoning, it's nearly dusk."

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"I wish I had your intuitive sense of time. All I have to go by is the presence of sunlight."

"I don't think that's true," said Octavia. "You just need to get better at listening to the signals your own body is giving you. I can judge how much time has passed based on how much my silk reserves have regenerated, as well as the toxins."

My mind flashed back to the moment I'd witnessed Octavia unleashing her spinning toxic sludge attack, so wild in its execution that it had left her blind afterward. I asked, "ready to use that if the time calls?"

"As a matter of fact I am," said Octavia. "I'm hoping it doesn't come to that, but be ready. We're nearly there."

As I followed Octavia, I could see the last vestiges of natural light – the sun had set, but the last bit of natural twilight was still visible from within the tunnel.

As we climbed out, I inhaled deeply, drinking in the fresh air for the first time in far too long. The ground beneath our feet had the texture of rock that was recently sandblasted, just one part of the landscape that had been altered by the arrival of the elder dragon. I scanned the horizon, looking for any sign of Anne or her ants, and saw the two sentry ants, which had already begun marching west, the same direction as the now-set sun whose last remaining bits of light were peeking out from behind the horizon. The two sentry ants led us to the top of a slope.

I heard Octavia's gasp before I saw the ants.

The small hill we'd climbed, I now realized, was the lip of a crater, giving us a clear vantage point for a mass of writhing ants at the crater's center. Two forces opposed each other: red fire ants on the far west side, Anne's black armored ants on the near east nearest to us. The ants moved in waves, seeming to march toward the center of the crater in formation, and then away, in a movement that seemed almost synchronized, until I realized that the movement of the red and black ants was actually slightly out of sync: the red ants feinted forward, and the black ants mirrored their movement a second later. The fire ants, seemingly reacting to the black ants, then withdrew. This constant posturing, marching forward and back, advance and retreat, continued in a constant rhythm.

Toward the back of the black armored ant formation, I noticed a familiar shape. "Anne's down there," I said. "In the middle of that back row of black ants. Why is she in the fray? She's the type to command her troops from afar."

"She has to be close to give direct instructions," said Octavia.

"We've seen this scene before," I said. "Armored ants versus fire ants. Last time, the armored ants won, easily, without Anne commanding them. What changed?"

"We could go up and ask her," said Octavia.

I hesitated, reluctant to leave our safe perch at the edge of the crater. Octavia rocked back and forth, seeming to share my hesitation.

"Should we just go and ask her?" Octavia glanced behind us, looking back at the hole we'd emerged from. "Do we want to get involved in Anne's battle?"

"We're already involved," I said. "This isn't just Anne's battle; it's our battle. We formed an alliance with Anne to beat the fire ants. You seemed hesitant to believe that she was really on our side, but here she is, putting herself at risk, battling the fire ants. There are a lot of ways that this can go wrong, but if we want our side to win, we can't just sit back and watch." I began walking toward the center of the crater, and Octavia followed behind.

As we neared the center of the crater, I marveled at how orderly the ants seemed, forming rows. It wasn't just Anne's ants who showed this military-like rank formation; something about the typically chaotic fire ants seemed to have found order as well. As we approached, the sun receded even further beyond the horizon, and in the darkness of night, I could see an ethereal glow at the center of the crater, emitted by what looked like a large piece of shiny metal several feet across. "There's something down there," I said.

"Yes," called out Anne, who had broken off from her ant formation to meet us. "My armored minions are capable of holding the line, yet we find ourselves unable to transport it."

I blinked. "It?"

"Approach," said Anne.

As I stepped toward the rear lines of her massive ant formation, I could better make out the shape of the glowing metallic object that served as the centerpiece of this standoff. "Is that–"

Elder Dragon Scale aura buff: +1% to all offensive abilities

A notification briefly obstructed my view before I blinked it away. In my peripheral vision, I could still see the window as I drew nearer.

"Seems like the grand old dragon left behind a present," Octavia noted, acknowledging the same notification. "And it left quite a mark."

"Advance," said Anne.

Nearing the rear of her ant formation, I noticed the numbers altering, gradually increasing.

Elder Dragon Scale aura buff: +4% to all offensive abilities

"Why does it keep increasing?" said Octavia, apparently seeing the same thing.

"Is the buff proximity-based?" I asked.

"Indeed," said Anne. "And I have several plans for utilizing it, should we succeed in returning it to my workshop. Direct contact with the scale would, by my estimation, double your offensive capabilities." She turned her gaze back to the ongoing conflict. "My supply of ants dwindles. I attempted to deploy the smaller worker ants, but alas, they did not survive the initial assaults. These armored ants are my final reserve."

"Why can't your armored ants win?" I said. "They had no difficulty beating the fire ants earlier."

"I created these armored ants to be impervious to the fire ants' bites," said Anne. "Their armor was intended to render them invincible. They were invincible, until now."

"What changed?" said Octavia.

I glanced down at the status window as I took a step forward.

Elder Dragon Scale aura buff: +6% to all offensive abilities

"The dragon scale," I said. "It buffs offense, not defense. It strengthens the ants' bites, not their armor."

"Precisely," said Anne. "The best outcome I can achieve presently is the deadlock you currently observe. Neither side can make an advance on the scale without becoming vulnerable. The first to act ensures their own defeat. Currently, both sides are balanced, but it won't be long before the next fire ant reinforcement wave arrives, and these are the last of my ants. Your arrival is most fortuitous. I had no other options, save for retreat."

I looked at the rows of ants in front of us, hundreds and hundreds on each side, more ants than I had ever seen in one place at the same time. I was grateful to have several rows of Anne's armored ants separating me from the enemy. The last time Octavia and I had faced a fire ant swarm of this size, our only option had been to retreat. And now, thanks to the dragon scale aura, their bites would be even more dangerous than usual.

"Alright," I said, turning to Anne. "Got any plans for breaking this stalemate?"

"Indeed I do. Drew, I hope you saved your stamina."

I grinned. "Don't worry. I came ready for a fight."

Class: Baby Dragon Level: 10 (max reached for current class) Exp progress toward class ascension: 48% HP: 30/30 SP: 18/18 Claws: level 1 Scales: level 4 Mouth: level 10 Wings: level 0 (wingless) (max reached for current class) Traits: Carnivore, Kin sensitive, Carrion feeder Learned abilities: Sprinting, Noxious Breath, Poison Breath, Paralyzing Breath, Harden Scales, Roar, Speech Possible Learnable Abilities (Mouth): Hot Breath, Cold Breath, Poison Fangs, Petrifying Breath Possible Learnable Abilities (Scales): Abrasion, Camouflage Unavailable Abilities (Prerequisites not yet met): Sweltering breath, Chilling Breath, Venom Fangs