Instantly, many lights appeared near her. The two soldiers were silhouetted by it, and she heard the thrashing of water. Swarms of smaller lights from all over the pond darted to the shore. The two soldiers held onto each other as they were pulled underwater. The remaining warriors went in and tried to rescue their sisters.

An attack! Primordina thought.

There was no need for command. The soldier daughters held onto each other and counterattacked. Some stabbed with spines, others slashed with obsidian, while all tried to sting the enemy. The frigid liquid glowed with blue and yellow. Sixty dots or more swirled around the ants. Their translucent flesh acted like a disruptive camouflage pattern and the ants could not focus their attack.

Primordina ran forward. No longer was she a protected caste, she had to fight. It was not duty; it was now pure desire. Forever free from her egg-laying duties, her maternal instincts kicked in to kill those who threatened her daughters.

Ants formed a chain and tried to drag the submerged soldiers out.

The glowing intensified as more assailants joined. To Primordina’s right, a massive extensible jaw opened up and snapped shut on a soldier ant protecting her flank. Primordina recoiled in surprise and watched it engulf the ant and try to submerge. Primordina stabbed, but the creature backed away too fast. Under the glowing water, inside the creature, she could see the soldier struggle. It flexed its six legs and distended the stomach of the creature, which could not swim.

Primordina entered the frigid water and stabbed at the enemy. Her right eye registered a flash and saw her right midleg being swallowed. Holding her obsidian blade with her mandibles, she slashed at the swallower. The light backed away quickly.

The enveloped ant struggled and clearly the attacker bit much more than it could digest. The creature writhed in pain and its glow dimmed. To Primordina’s surprise and great relief, the swallowed ant cut itself out from the inside by slicing the thin skinned belly. The daughter took position again at Primordina’s flank.

The tussle of battle continued for only a few moments more until it was obvious the tide had turned. The swarming boneless creatures had little in the way of teeth and were hardly larger than a single ant. They had small anesthetizing fangs which did not penetrate space ant armor, as the creatures preferred to slowly digest their prey in their low-energy environment.

The formation cohered again with sister soldiers side-by-side which swiped at the churning luminescent water. The color of the water ran dark pink as coppery blood spewed from the creatures’ wounds.

More lights appeared. Primordina and her daughters retreated to the shore. They watched the lights devour each other as the strong now ate the wounded.

Primordina counted her daughters. Eight? She looked around, but the water dimmed and it was black again. How many were there before the battle? She could not remember, nor did she count herself, but they all stood on the icy shore trying to clear out of their spiracles. They coughed and shook off the water. Two of the ants had never released their attackers; the prey had became the predators as ants dragged the flaccid glowing trophies onto the shore.

Chirrup, they heard, but from a point off the side instead of over the water.

Primordina’s troop was hesitant to reply. In the black, they readied their weapons and tightened up their formation.

Chirrup. Again, but closer.

Reply, Primordina commanded an ant.

Chirrup.

A reply came quickly, and from only a few bodylengths away in the darkness.

Primordina could see the infrared outline of an ant.

Friend. She told her soldiers.

There was almost a collective exhale as the tension melted.

Overwater, the ant identified itself.

Runno? she asked. Yes, it was him. She could finally smell him.

Follow, he commanded. They walked around the interstitial lake. Occasionally, he would jump over a large hole or crack, but only after he informed the others. A distant soldier sent out sounds, which he followed back.

There in the dark, Prmordina made out two ants. The larger one was one of their missing soldiers; the second a single small worker.

Primordina went up to the worker and tapped her antenna. Through a long series of back-and-forth communication, she got the impression that Deephive had experienced many quakes, and then flashes of intense heat shot through their colony. The steam broiled most of the nest. The worker had escaped because she had been carried away by the melted water and her chamber was pinched off by a bend in the tunnel.

Runno went up to Primordina. They both agreed the troop should return to Overwater.

Another soldier was found during the backtrack. So ten soldiers, one worker from Deephive, Primordina, and Runno, started the long climb up to Overwater.

They saw lights dart along the water. Her soldiers were now eager for battle, and maybe a meal. (Their digestive systems might not process alien flesh, but the belt and moon had exchanged microbes, so their biochemistry was not as alien.) Were the creatures going to attack again? The shoal of lights ran to the shallow water, as if to attack. One ant speared a wiggling organism. It stayed lit out of the water and the soldier held it up as a lantern.

In the deep water, Primordina saw a black mass of negative space chasing the school of alien swimmers around the pool. The small creatures jumped out of the water onto the ice. Other lights evaded, but a few were suddenly extinguished and added to the black mass.

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The surviving Deephive worker passed along the message. Hurry!

Primordina saw a sudden wave of light spring up on shore, illuminating an indescribable horror. Two massive ‘unjointed antennas’ unrolled from the water and delicately searched the ice shore. It picked up the glowing creatures and dropped one into a gaping maw. The monster’s tentacles were far more agile and muscular than any antenna, but that was the only appendage Primordina and the ants could relate it to.

Another luminescent creature floundered near Primordina. She speared it and they scurried up a tunnel. Behind her, high-pitched squeals and clicks came from the monster. It was eyeless and had a featureless large fat mass for a face.

Slap! Slap!

Primordina heard wet things hitting the ice and searching around. She doubled her speed, nearly climbing over her soldiers. Primordina tried to count her daughters, but the tunnel and the bouncing blurred lights made it impossible.

Slap.

Then Primordina heard a loud gasp.

She turned around and saw a daughter soldier being dragged back. The tentacle had fanned out into a dozen microtentacles. She saw the veins of the unshelled creature pumping through the pale, armorless flesh. A horror.

Primordina dropped her failing light and pulled at the trapped soldier. With all her might, she tried to prevent it from being pulled back. A second soldier pulled with her, a third sliced at the tiny tentacles. Coppery blood squirted. The creature recoiled and ants escaped.

They felt safe only after a long climb. Ascending was not as strenuous to Primordina, even though she spent her life mostly confined to one room.

Though safe from predation, the distant early warnings of quakes intensified. Colossal forces were working on the ice, while the gas giant’s Jovian size pulled at the top of the ice shell. This squeeze and pull heated the core of the moon. The low gravity and salt water allowed seamounts to tower higher than had ever been seen on the space-ant’s original home. The unattached ice shell rotated to the highest undersea volcano.

The sudden change in air pressure halted Primordina in her tracks.

The other ants sensed trouble. One soldier chirruped an alert. Danger! Her antenna said to Runno.

His legs sent out a signal: Climb!

The ants climbed until they found themselves in that original chamber.

Climb! Runno signaled again, but they made no progress on the glass slick walls.

Quakes became roars, and seawater rushed up.

Raft, they all instinctively knew, but the water was under them fast as they could assemble. One soldier was pulled away in the torrent. Primordina held her daughters close, Runno and the worker too. Their hairs and legs interlaced and locked out the water and gave them buoyancy. Ants needed to get their backs out of the water, as they breathed through the spiracles there. They floated up the glass-smooth wall.

The air pressure increased, and the rise slowed, and they were now pushed (or sucked) to the middle of the chamber. They could not get a read on their location from sight, nor sound, nor smell.

Searching for anything, Primordina slowly noticed an underglow. Her antenna tapped out a warning to the others, but by now the cold sapped their strength. Below the waterline the stingers were still sharp, but their muscles lacked vigor to strike. Water continued to rush into the chamber and they sensed the ceiling. Best they could hope for was to be trapped in a pocket of air.

But the chamber top had a funnel shape, and the physics of hydraulics shoved them to their salvation.

The colorful illumination intensified. Individual lights darted and swirled, then the mass surged up. The ants spent their last quanta of energy to set their stingers straight, hoping to strike the swarm. But then the circle became a ring, and it hugged the walls of the chamber.

For one brief moment, they could see the opening above, which led back to Overwater. That was the way they had come and hoped to return to. Primordina wanted to return. Though she had no job in Overwater, she did not wish to linger in the cold depths of here any more.

One end of their raft fell as slimy pale things pulled a soldier down. She let go to spare her sisters and disappeared forever.

Daughter down. Primordina thought.

Monster! Runno’s antenna said. The other ants uselessly bobbed their stingers down, trying to hit the assailant.

The water level finally enabled Runno to reach up and grab the ceiling. He found a good hold, and with three of this six legs secured, enabled the ants to climb up him.

Masses of bubbles came up from the water and rapid change in pressures made the water level drop. The air turned toxic and steamy. Primordina coughed to clear her spiracles of water or sour air.

Flee daughters! Primordina said, and let her remaining children escaped up Runno and into the chute from where they came from. Primordina waited until the surviving worker from Deephive ascended.

Lights appeared again around the edges of the chamber. The luminescent creatures lit erratically, bathing the subglacial chamber in flashes.

Primordina looked down and saw the monster. A faceless bag of flesh with numerous tentacles. White and pale as the ice which surrounded it, the monster ‘looked’ up at them and struck with its tentacles. Some magic of adaptation enabled the creature to hold on to the slick walls. It pushed alien mouthparts up into the funnel while tongues darted up. Most of her ants were high enough up the chute to resist the monster’s suction.

Hold on! Primordina saw a daughter soldier fall.

Meanwhile, the monster also fell, a loud splash followed.

She took her obsidian blade into her mandibles, let go, and succumbed to gravity. It was time for the Queen Mother to become the queen mutha, if you know what I mean. Downward she fell towards the ugly monster.

She landed in the middle of the creature’s sound melon. Now she was the annoying tiny creature on the face of a larger one.

Fury overcame any instincts of self preservation, and now all she sought was revenge. Primordina sliced and shoved her blade into the fat. She was surprised at the weakness of the monster. There was no exoskeleton to pierce—in fact, felt no hardened structure at all! What kind of creature has no skeleton? She would have thought if she had the capacity. Instead, she acted only with red hot hate. This thing had killed too many of her daughters. It deserved to die.

The sound melon split easily, and Primordina crawled inside the organ.

The monster shook and touched itself, and its fatty insulation saved Primordina as it repeatedly self-attacked. It was violently annoyed by the pain in its major sense organ. Primordina stung as she sliced. This enabled the blood to flow freer because of the anti-coagulant. Her blade sliced through the connective tissue holding the two halves of the melon.

The creature's tentacles ripped and prodded the wound, trying to find its internal assailant.

Primordina used all her strength to operate on the innards. She finally struck an artery. Gushes of coppery blood spurted into her crevice and almost swept her out. She dug her claws in and continued the internal operation, twisting the obsidian blade every which way until Victory finally rewarded her. She severed the main neural cord, and the creature went limp.

It slowly sank.

Primordina eventually cut herself out. Exhausted and suffocating, she was elated when she felt the ice water. She kicked and floated up. Changes in water pressure flushed her around and funneled up into the shaft. She slammed into another ant.

In the swirling chaos, the warrior thought she was being attacked and turned around, ready to fight.

Overwater! Primordina’s antenna identified herself.

The soldier ant lifted her up. Water sloshed around the air pocket.

Queen Mother? The soldier asked.

Yes.

Monster?

Slain. Primordina replied.

The soldier stopped and ran its antenna all over Primordina, since her exoskeleton was still coated in fat and the coppery blood. She passed the message up the line of ants up the chute.

Primordina returned to the hive and rested in a new hutch specially built for her. She would not live much longer, but her deeds were recorded in cordage and she grew into myth: Primordina, Queen Mother of Overwater and Slayer of the Eyeless Horror.