The giant ants gathered Nadine and Corey up in their segmented arms and carried them down the network of tunnels. Their strength was incredible. Although Corey knew that an ant can lift a lot more than its own weight. The insects made eerie clicking noises with their mandibles. Were they communicating with one another?
Nadine was pale, but she looked determined. "Don't worry, hon. Keep still. Don't provoke them. I'll get us out of this."
The ants took them to a shelf on the wall of a huge, underground cavern, where some freak property of the rocks caused everything to be lit up in a sickly, green glow. They bound their arms and ankles to stone pillars. The pillars were above. There was a huge dam made up of piled boulders. The weird underground lights down here were almost as bright as day. The air was so cold and smelled of rotting seaweed. Corey's heart was thudding in his breast. He turned to Nadine who gave him a reassuring smile. Her freckles looked really weird in this light. The sight of her smiling face made him feel better – in fact, he felt a happy glow inside. He smiled back.
Nadine wiggled her left wrist. Her wrists were slender and delicate. Could she get out of her bonds? She could! She had already worked her wrist free. She withdrew a penknife from a pouch at her belt, and began cutting through the rest of their bonds. Corey hoped fervently that the ants wouldn't notice. But they were swarming all over the cavern floor and the shelves of the cavern!
Nadine withdrew a lipstick from another pouch at her belt. No, it wasn't lipstick. It was that plastex explosive in a lipstick case. She unscrewed the top and broke a piece of the red, gelatinous much from the stick with her gloved fingers. It hissed and fizzed alarmingly, but she held it in the palm of her hand and flicked it at the stone dam, gazing intently at the point of the stone structure she flicked it towards. The little red glob landed on a boulder at the base of the dam.
BOOM!
There was a tiny explosion and the dam began to wobble. The chill, salt water spilled over in waves as the rocky structure quivered. The ants all crowded around the damaged dam, clicking their mandibles frantically.
Nadine took Corey by the hand. "Quickly!"
The ants were distracted, so they paid the two of them no notice. Nadine led Corey round the shelf and through another hole and down a passage. Then off a side passage, then down a fork to the right, not slowing down. Corey wondered how she knew where they were going. He was already hopelessly lost and disorientated.
Occasionally, Nadine would pause and put a hand to her ear, as if listening intently for something, and sometimes would mutter, "I think we've lost 'em," or "Shake those ants off."
Then suddenly she halted.
"Sorry, darling. I've gotta sit down," said Nadine weakly.
They sat on a smooth, flat boulder. Nadine took some deep breaths and then clapped her hands to her mouth. She was retching slightly. Corey put an arm around her shoulder. "Are you alright? Um… Do you think you've got an upset stomach?"
She turned her freckled face to him. Was that a sad or a fond smile playing around her soft lips? "Sweetheart… I- I- I might be going to have a baby," she said in a rush. "We might not get out of this and I don't wanna keep it to myself. Ohhh…" She groaned and then buried her face in her hands.
Nadine was having a baby? What?! A baby? Now? Since when?!
Corey blinked as this information hit home. He felt giddy at the questions revolving around in his brain. "S-sorry…? Nadine? Um… you're not married anymore though?" He squirmed uncomfortably. It wasn't really his business to comment on that part. "Oh God… I wish I knew exactly what to say."
She looked up and kissed him on the cheek. "You're sweet. If you knew exactly what to say, you wouldn't be you." Her bottom lip quivered. Tears shone in her brown eyes. "W-We might not get out of this. I'm so sorry you got pulled into it."
Corey didn't want to see her so sad. He cupped her face in his hands, the way she sometimes did with him when he was sad. "I'd never miss the chance to go adventuring with you." He wanted to show off how brave he was. At this time he could only tell her. "I don't care about the danger."
The sparkling tears began to trickle down her freckled cheeks. "Y-You're so silly. That might be why I love you."
Still cupping her gorgeous face in his hands, he kissed her freckled nose. They gazed into each other's eyes for a while. Nadine had such beautiful eyes, and Corey thought they were even more beautiful now. Soft and brown, warm and shimmering… Who was the lucky guy who was an item with her? Corey did not know anything about the character who had put a bun in her oven, as the saying goes. He assumed that Nadine must be a couple with him. He never dreamed she'd been raped by a chaos ogre.
"We have to keep going," she murmured. "The ants could find us at any time."
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They crept along the tunnels.
The tunnel opened out into a rocky chamber. There were huge, white grubs with little mouths lying around the stony cavern.
"Ooh! Baby ants!" squealed Nadine, putting her gloved hands to her face. She picked one up. It squirmed in her arms, and she tickled it. It's little mouth turned upwards in an absurd impression of bliss. "So cute," she said, her brown eyes misty.
Weird. But Corey knew she was pregnant, so it must be her maternal instincts kicking in.
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"Better leave them, or these larvae, or the ants might get angrier with us," he suggested, touching her arm. "We've already damaged that dam of theirs."
She sighed, nodded, and kissed the blunt, white head of the big grub. "Take care, little ant." She put the ugly larva down on the stony floor with the others and Corey took her by the hand. Holding hands, they went down a longer passage which opened out onto a ledge in the wall of yet another great cavern. There was a sweet, musty smell in the cold air here. Looking around, Corey could see shiny green strands of ropes hanging from the rough, rocky walls... and a glimpse of the starry sky in a hole in the roof of the cavern, high above them.
Then they heard an angry, buzzing, droning sound and looked up. A startling sight met their eyes.
Nadine gave a little cry and Corey gasped.
What did they see? They saw a colossal, red ant, but this one had wings and its abdomen was grossly swollen.
"The queen," said Nadine. "Oh my God… I think she's angry." She held up her plastex lipstick. "Sure hope I have enough." She flicked a gelatinous, red globule at the wall of the cavern, both below the level of their ledge and to the left of precisely where they were standing. There was a small explosion in the wall below them and the ledge juddered. The queen ant buzzed even more angrily, and swooped down, spitting some kind of yellow tinged liquid in the direction of the explosion. Nadine grabbed one of the weird ropes from the wall and looped it around their waists. It was some kind of strange seaweed. Then she tied them together and took another strand of weed from the cavern wall. She took Corey's hand in hers. Her fingers were so white and delicate.
"Gotta time this just right," she said, breathing hard through her nose, her boobs rising and falling. "Jump when I say jump, please."
Corey got ready to jump when she said jump. The queen ant flew down and to the left in the direction of the explosion sound. When she was immediately below them, Nadine yelled "JUMP!"
Hand in hand, they leapt down onto the thorax segment of the great, flying insect. Nadine looped her other coil of seaweed around the queen's great segmented body.
"Sorry, your majesty," she muttered. "But take us up!" She pulled on the seaweed reins and the queen ant buzzed angrily, but rose into the air.
He beating wings on either side of them whirred and zzzzed like great electric fan turbines. Nadine held Corey tight as she gripped the bug's red thorax with her legs. The queen ant took them up and out through the hole in the cavern roof and Nadine pulled on the seaweed ropes so she descended, landing on the ground near a forest of trees.
The intrepid spies slid off, and Nadine pulled Corey backwards, away from the queen. The queen buzzed and clacked her mandibles, but then decided to get back to her own turf and took off into the air alone, back the way she had come.
Nadine gave a sigh of relief. The first, faint streaks of dawn were visible on the horizon and in the rosy light, her pretty, freckled face glowed with a sheen of perspiration.
Overcome with relief, they hugged one another tight and Nadine nuzzled Corey's neck, giving a little moan as she did so. "Dunno about you, but I'm about done in," she murmured.
They entered the shelter of the trees. The leaves were blue-green and weirdly shaped like diamonds. In the gnarled roots of one of the trees, there was a hollow and they bedded down in it, wrapped in each other's arms.
It wasn't exactly luxury, but Corey felt so happy and safe with her arms around him, that he quickly fell asleep.
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When Corey woke up, it was warmer and the sun was higher in the sky and cast dappled shadows through the diamond leaves of the weird trees.
Nadine was just outside the hollow and when she saw he was awake she grinned and kissed him on the cheek. "Was gonna wake you earlier, but you looked so adorable lying there." She shoved a wooden bowl at him. "Good morning. Have something to eat."
She thrust a wooden bowl of yellow gungy stuff at him. Corey trusted her, and began to eat. He didn't know what it was, but it made him feel great.
Afterwards, they bathed in a stream that ran through the forest. The trees shaded them from the sun as they stripped off. The stream bed was covered in soft white sand that felt all weird under Corey's toes. Little shoals of rainbow coloured fish darted around their legs. Corey blushed at the sight of Nadine's pale, freckly body unclothed, her boobs bobbing and floating as she swam through the tepid water. The sight was arousing… Corey felt himself harden and determinedly swam up and down.
"Hey, Corey! Come and catch me!" called Nadine.
She winked and swam off downstream. He splashed around after her and she waited in the shallows, grinning, her dark hair now limp and sodden. When he got close, she splashed him and then swam off again, this time following the stream into a rocky cavern, lit up by bioluminescence like the tunnels of the giant ants, only much more beautiful, with all the colours of the rainbow and stars in the sky.
The lights lit up her gorgeous, freckled face as she sat in the sand, waiting for him to catch up. She tutted. "That's how you catch me? No, no. This is how it's done."
She leapt on him and he let her wrestle him onto the soft sand, gripping both his arms. Oh God… her closeness, her naked body and her boobs pressing into him were making him really hard. She grinned and touched his nose with the tip of a slender finger. "That's how it's done." She leaned close, her warm breath tickling. "I got you and you gotta stay with me… my sweet boy. After all that awful business in the giant ant nest… I realise something. Why couldn't I see it before. I love you and I can't lose you. It's like you've stole my heart."
They rubbed their noses together and he held her in his arms. It felt so right… but then Corey remembered. "Nadine… what about your… baby's father…" He felt uneasy as he said that.
She looked into his eyes. "Darling… the father is…" she sighed and stuck out her bottom lip. "Listen to me." Her voice quivered. "On a mission one night, I had to investigate a chaos ogre soldier … um … Isla didn't tell me he was dangerous and he raped me." She said that in a rush and then gasped.
Corey felt a cold sensation of shock in the pit of his stomach, followed by anger. "You were raped! And Isla knew about it?"
She sniffed and nodded, her bottom lip still sticking out. "That's how I'm pregnant. Believe me, I do not love the father. In fact, I think he's just a sperm donor."
Wait… awful as this was, didn't it mean that Nadine was available and had all the more reason to want to marry Corey? Her baby needed a real father. She could see that. Could his dream of being with her come true? Surely it could, if he proposed to her now, but did he have the nerve?
"Nadine, I – I love you too… I will you um…" She gazed at him, her brown eyes wide.
"Marry me!" He said in a rush. "If we get out of this, I – I wanna be your baby's father and … we'll be a family straight away and we can live together and be happy."
She stared at him, her brown eyes wide and round. Had he presumed too much?
"Oh Corey … Yes! Yes!"
She kissed him fiercely, he could taste her tongue and luscious lips, though fortunately she didn't have pregnancy vomit in her mouth at this time. He began to feel sensations rise in him at her closeness and kissed her back as they clutched each other, but then there was a splashing through the water and something came lolloping towards them. They broke apart and saw, to their horror, a huge, slimy thing, leprous grey in hue, like a deformed humanoid thing, completely hairless, with sunken pits for eyes, a gaping mouth and long feelers instead of fingers. Some horror of the island's underworld, but freakier than the giant ants. It was groping its way towards them, searching blindly for food, its gaping mouth open wide to reveal razor sharp teeth…