As the sun crested the hills, a new queen was born. The queen of the newest day was different from the previous, as she sat silently atop her throne. With a look, she took in the kingdom the previous generations had built, and she waited.

There was a whisper in the wind that grew in power as more voices joined in.

“Invader” they called.

“Approaching” they yelled.

The Queen of ants, the mother of insects, waited. She had to be sure. If a battle was on the horizon, she would be ready. She had been reborn a hundred times after the devastating defeat in the last battle. It was time to prove her strength. She wouldn’t fail.

The paragon of birds was the first to see the intruder. Like an infection, the information spread to the Overseer where it was distributed to all. The creature was bipedal, with a thick shell, hunched back, a stick it used to walk, and a familiar smell. It was the same invader that had set fire to the dungeon, and had left the monolithic stones for her children to pray to.

It was the precursor of destruction.

The interloper's final steps brought it to the precipice of the dungeon, where it hesitated. With a final step, it entered the knee-high grass that lined the dungeon. Ready for battle, his eyes searched the sky as magic flowed through his body. He saw the cloud of smoke and feathers overhead as they flocked to their king. They were a coughing cacophony of feathers.

The queen guided her children through the grass. They encircled to distracted intruder, ready to attack. There was a rustle through the grass in the dungeon without wind as every blade of grass was pushed aside as they charged.

A landslide of ants swarmed forth. Since their last encounter, her children had only grown. They doubled in size, seven inches from antenna to stinger; eighteen centimeters of refined mana and stone shells that reared for battle.

The invader snapped his attention to the earth, to her children. Mana flowed into his staff as a wave of acid flowed forth. It reduced the vanguard to a puddle, total annihilation that did little to protect the army behind them. A tidal wave that turned her children into a soup to soak into the soil.

But he had become distracted.

The sky did not stay still. The dungeon itself screamed with bloodlust as birds fell. Gravity took over as they became feathered missiles. They shot through the acid, turning their body into nothing. Nothing save for the bones that became hollow point projectiles.

They exploded upon the earth. Craters of acid and death. Those that collided only put tares in the invader’s fluffy exoskeleton. The largest of birds, the paragon, the king, followed his army as he dove with them. His corpse shattered against the chest of the being, but failed to even draw blood. His attack had failed, but it was not the end.

For he would return. He would always return.

He was the leader of the undying flock, always ready to take aim with his life.

Just as she was the reincarnating queen, always ready to learn and become more.

She did not know how to turn the tide, but she knew who would. She wove her magic back into the dungeon to form a new queen. One that would be stronger. A dance of death as she joined the king in the afterlife.

Their dance was one of heaven and earth, of the ruler of the sky and the mother of the soil as they spun around the mortal coil. Every death became life, as every end never was.

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She was the ant queen, the greatest of her kind. The strongest of her ancestors. She was the current generation. With her new life, she listened deeper than before. She heard the thoughts of the Overseer as he commanded his legion of slimes to ‘deal with the rift raff.’

She saw the acid part for the slimes immune to its tide, and her children followed. The slimes did not last long once the invader swung his staff down, obliterating them, but he was too panicked to see through the smoke. The smoke that hid her children, the smoke created by the king of the sky upon his return.

Her children bit, stabbed, stung, and tore at the soft hide exterior of their enemy, exposing the skin beneath. They climbed ever higher. They dug into holes in his armor created by the bird. Blood came out, and no acid fell, for the invader could not use his magic against himself.

The queen felt the battle shift in their favor when the invader fell, but knew it was not the end. She watched as he pulled a vial from his pack and drank the contents. The paragon tried to stop him, to destroy his hand, but he was too slow. His death was marked by a spray of blood as the invader lost his hand. The emptied vial discarded.

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"A back alley drug,” the Overseer explained, his connection to the divine beings of creation far stronger. “It was called a tonic of hunger. Expect regeneration.” As they watched the invader threw his face into the nearest puddle of liquified ant, and drank. Nutrients of his kills flowed through his body as the wounds he sustained were healed- as his severed hand regrew.

The current queen didn’t know much about potions, but she knew who would. Death was just the beginning, as she met the lord of the sky once more. She entered limbo as she watched her children massacred by the harbinger who turned the acid onto himself, only to eat what remained. He too had found the limbo of death.

Death was always the precursor to life. He was the precursor and the harbinger.

The new queen was different. Her antennas larger, her ability to listen all the better. She heard the Overseer as he watched the invader cut through their forces, as he stomped on ants and tore apart slimes with his teeth. The Overseer realized where they were going, and how to cut them off.

We had to keep it away from the center of the dungeon.

A task that felt impossible to king and queen alike, but that didn’t matter. They would meet death countless times if it meant another wouldn’t.

Every life, the king tore away at its armor and body.

Every rebirth, the queen guided. Ants tunneled below the battlefield, they caused sinkholes, pitfalls, and channels to redirect acid away from their allies.

Every reincarnation saw the two change. The king’s bulbous growths and lack of feathers had slimmed until he was as frail as an arrow. The queen’s body fell away, her shell grew soft, her movements clumsy, but it was all in the name of progress.

Progress that showed little, as the harbinger ate every monster in his path, as he drank the pools of acid. As he became an unstoppable glutton.

Immortal and unwavering, they died so those above them wouldn’t. The slime’s presence was far less temporary, yet they would give their lives in an instant for the highest duo. The dungeon’s crystal and the voice of knowledge must be protected at all costs.

The invader’s blood spilled. Their clothes were left in tatters. A pack they carried exploded with the food it held. Yet he did not go down. His eternal hunger gave him new life as his crusade cut towards his target, but they could see as he tired.

Every death that sustained him was not enough. His eyes drooped as the staff was discarded, yet he pushed forward. On the verge of death, he marched forward. Birds exploded against his chest, his face, but only when they shattered his knee did he fall, landing next to a circle of stone.

The dungeon core screamed with triumph as mana filled the dungeon like never before. Instincts filled the mind of every creation as they closed in to finish the fight for good. A chant of those three words emanated from their creator, as a hundred voices joined in as one.

“HUNT. KILL. CONSUME”

All descended upon the target, only for a single message to appear over the invader’s head.

> Delver has entered a safe zone. Unable to harm.

The invader… had changed. The limbo of life and death had changed them, weakened them. They had lost their ability to kill, to fight. They were no longer someone capable of doing harm to the dungeon, and so the safe zone protected them.

The battlefield had gone silent, cold. The air was tense as they looked over their fallen enemy. An itch in the back of their mind told them there was more. None understood, but the queen knew who would. The next queen would know.

Yet she never died, for the chance slipped away as a deep fog rolled in, a thick purple that smelled far worse than the caustic bile that seeped into the dungeon’s depths. From within they saw something rise up.

A new invader entered the dungeon.