Chapter Six

I was moving. Holy shit I really was moving! I didn’t even care that I was nothing more than the trailer behind the car, I was moving. The tunnel walls whooshed past me, or at least that’s what it felt like as the ant crawled along at a comfortable pace. And I had Essence to thank for it. No wonder Wensah wanted the stuff for herself. Anchoring or tethering myself to the ant with Essence was one thing. But not only seeing but feeling the ant’s soul? I felt connected. It was like suddenly getting internet access after living in a cave. Sure, it was only an ant, but a loneliness I hadn't even noticed until now, suddenly became less. And the cherry on the cake? I. Was. Moving. Well, I was dragged along, but motion was motion.

Essence collection dropped by a fifth as the tentacle stopped collecting the stuff — it was now a dedicated tether and sort of a communication line to the ant’s soul, although the only thing I could sense from the ant was its dedication to work. I was alright with that because I was moving. Luckily I could still move that particular tentacle, and lo and behold, I pulled myself up onto the back of the ant-soul. I was no longer the trailer. I was the rider. It was as marvelous as it was weird.

The ant crawled along the tunnel, my spherical body hovering a millimeter above it.

It was just then that I noticed something: the tentacle that connected me to the ant wasn’t taut. It was completely slack, coiling around, the sharp tip of it the only point of contact between me and the ant. I wasn’t really riding it and I wasn’t really being pulling, at least not in the traditional sense, and certainly not by any rules of physics I'd ever heard of. I felt no air resistance or inertia, or any other things associated with movement. I had no idea how all this worked, but it seemed that as long as our connection existed, my body would just follow wherever the ant-soul went. It was good enough for me, and there was no immediate need to sweat the details.

And then, I saw where all the ants that had crawled past me over the last few days had been going.

***

We arrived in an open space, a crater of a sort. As we exited the tunnel into this huge hole in the ground, I saw the sky of this world for the first time.

It was blue. Blue. Like home. And there were clouds. Like home. I even saw something fly across and disappear over the edge of the crater, like a bird or a plane, or maybe Superman, but I didn’t hold my breath. It was a familiar sight, and by all that was holy I needed it and I soaked it in.

And while I soaked in the sight of brilliant blues and whites and sunshine, I also observed the crater itself.

From my tiny little vantage point the crater seemed enormous; in reality, it must have been about a meter across, and twenty, thirty centimeters deep, and that was my best guesstimate. In a word, it was unremarkable. It might have been dug out by a larger animal, or a gardener, who knew? It didn’t matter. The ongoings within this earthen trap however did matter. Not to me. To the ants.

A vicious, full scale battle was raging in this little crater of death, where my familiar, black ants were fighting a large force of red ants. And from what I saw, this fight was going to be fought to the bitter end.

***

I had seen ants fight before; we used to live in a detached house when I was a kid. We had a backyard, and there were all sorts of bugs there, including ants. I never gave the little critters any more then a minute of my time back then, but sometimes their war would spill over onto the patio, and I had a vague memory of seeing different colored ants wrestling with each other. But to a kid back in the day, there were more important things to watch than ant wars. Like Saturday morning cartoons. Seeing ants from up above, it was just some bugs going at it.

From down here at eye-level, it was something else.

It could have been just a skirmish, or the final battle of a long war, I didn’t know. But the battle was brutal. Unrelenting. Apocalyptic. This wasn’t just some bugs going at it. This was thousands of otherworldly monsters tearing each other apart. I was shocked and horrified in equal measure.

Reds surrounded Blacks in twos and threes, Blacks ganged up on Reds, stabbing with their horns, maiming with their mandibles, and killing. Segmented legs, heads and other parts littered the ground. And as more and more ants died, more and more of them poured forth from tunnels all over the crater, joining the fray. It was chaos. It was wholesale slaughter without a single thought to casualties. And it was silent. Ants didn’t scream. There were no war-cries. Only violence.

Until this moment, I’d thought only us, humans, were capable and willing to go to such lengths to exterminate each other. I’d thought only man had the willingness to organize and conduct murder on such a scale. We fought all the time; an invasion here, a world war there; I’d thought it was a human thing. The ants proved me wrong.

Outsiders! Work! Outsiders! Work!

These were the words that came to mind as my connection with Jack informed me what was going on inside of his little head. Yes, I’d named my ant Jack. And I was fairly certain that when Jack thought “work”, what he meant was “kill”. And he did not hesitate: Jack went to work, dragging me with him. We descended from the tunnel to the bottom of the crater some twenty centimeters below, and we were in the middle of it.

***

Jack rushed forward and immediately teamed up with three other black ants. They didn’t need to look for an enemy for longer then a second: Reds were everywhere. Jack’s squad attacked the nearest one. The Red was larger then Jack or his comrades, but it was alone. The Blacks surrounded it, biting into it from all sides. Before the Red even knew what had happened, it was in pieces.

Two Reds approached from the sides. I activated Mana-Glove and I lashed out at one of them as it charged at us. It would have rammed Jack with its horns, but two of my tentacles came down on it like the righteous hammer of God, splitting its head into three pieces. It’s soul stayed there, standing, but I didn’t get the chance to grab it and eat it. Jack’s squad moved to block the way of the other Red. Horns stabbing, mandibles clacking — one more Red and one Black dead. Jack’s squad was down to three. Then the squad moved again before I could claim the souls of the fallen.

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From the chaos of battle two Blacks appeared at our side, moving forward with us. Squad was up to five members and already singled out the next Red. I had to give it to the critters: they knew the meaning of the word teamwork.

Work! Outsiders! Work!

Jack was committed, and I had no choice but to tag along and engage in warfare. I didn’t mind, to be honest. As it turned out, war was an all-you-can-eat buffet for me. I just needed to slow Jack down somehow, so I could actually grab a few of the souls left lying around every second. And with hundreds of ants on the left, hundreds of ants on the right and thousands in front, souls were plenty.

I kept Mana-Glove active on two of my tentacles. My MP was ticking down, but the Reds kept coming, charging at the just as many Blacks around, fighting and dying. Some Reds still slipped through, and I had to defend Jack. Unfortunately, Jack was going too fast with his squad, and I couldn’t properly wrap my other two tentacles around the souls of the dead — briefly brushing against them as we crawled past wasn’t enough to start consuming them.

‘Slow down! Stop!’ I yelled at Jack in frustration, putting all my mental power into it.

Jack slid to a halt. Ah. So he did listen if I yelled loud enough.

The squad pressed on, but Jack stood still next to a Red I’d just slain. Another Red charged us, and I chopped it up. Jack still didn’t move.

Work?

The thought, or whatever it was, came across more a question that a statement.

‘Yeah, in a minute. Just wait!’ I said to him.

Who would have thought there would be a time in my life when I’d be having rudimentary conversations with an ant.

I reached out with my tentacles: one tentacle to each of the two Red souls on either sides. I stabbed through both souls at the same time, as deep as I could, and I ate. It went slower than it had in the tunnel — there I’d used two tentacles on each soul. Still, in as little as five seconds, my tentacles sucked them up like soul-smoothies through a straw. It was great. The taste filled me, and I was ready to move onto the next.

'Alrighty Jack, onward!’ I ordered him and I rode into battle on an ant.

***

Jack responded to my orders well. I yelled directions at him and at the same time I sent mental images as to what those directions looked like. Left and right wasn’t something he understood, but “this way” and “that way” paired with the images seemed to do the trick, and I got the hang of it quickly. This was definitely a skill in its own right. I decided to call it: Critter Control.

The Reds were still everywhere. But so were the Blacks. There was no end in sight, my MP was ticking down steadily, but I couldn’t afford the luxury of leaving Jack undefended. Whether we moved or stopped to eat, there was an enemy waiting to kill my ant.

I was ideally suited to protect him: I saw in all directions, so there was no surprising us, and none could stand before my mighty Mana-Gloved tentacles.

We joined squads and left squads as we prowled the battlefield. By the time I consumed my eleventh ant-soul, I had half an MP left. My Essence pool was at 7, and it was time to get turne it into MP. But before I could start doing it, a squad of Reds rushed us. Four of them saw Jack, all alone, and they attacked. I flung my two Mana-Gloved tentacles at them in an instant. Jack clacked his mandibles in a panic. They were going to get us. I killed one of them, but I couldn’t fend the remaining three off all at once, not with only two tentacles. They were on us in a second. I wrapped my two un-gloved tentacles around Jack, wanting to protect him, to shield him. I knew full well that my immaterial appendages were incapable of doing so, but it was instinct that made me perform the act. Whether it was my old human or new Tentacle Horror instinct, I neither knew nor cared.

Then I felt Mana leaving the pool, the last half an MP sinking down to a quarter, the Mana-Gloves disappearing as their supply was cut off.

The first of the Reds rammed into Jack. Oh no! Jack! This was the end, wasn’t it?

It wasn’t.

My faithful little buddy, Jack, shrugged off the attack. The horns of the Reds slid off his torso, not even leaving a scratch. But no, that wasn’t right. They left scratches — not on Jack’s body, but on a faintly shimmering coat of Mana that covered him. The Reds surrounded us, stabbing and biting, their reward nothing but tiny clumps of Mana falling off the invisible armor that Jack now wore. My Mana pool was almost empty, a tenth of an MP remaining, trickling down as it streamed to replenish the armor. I wasted no time: I willed my Essence Pool to pour all seven EP it had into the Mana-Pool. I was back to three and a half MP. With the stream of Mana renewed, Jack’s armor held, scratches and gouges closing and disappearing.

Jack gave as good as he got: his mandibles chomped on the Reds, who failed to realize their attacks were ineffective. As long as I had MP, Jack was invincible.

I was more than just startled by this new development: with only a half-conscious desire on my part to protect Jack, Mana acted. I didn’t know it could do that. Then again, there were a lot of things I didn’t know. Nonetheless, I was impressed and … a little bit worried. Would Mana act on its own again, for instance if I got angry with someone and had an impulse to punch or to kill the person? Or ant? Did I have to be careful what I felt and what I wished for? Well, those questions had to wait — the battle was still raging, and this new skill I’d just learned was consuming MP at a rate of one and a half per minute.

Jack — invincible as he was now — made short work of his attackers. He chomped and skewered them to death. I ordered him to stand still for a few seconds and I used all four of my now free tentacles to eat the souls of the four Reds. At fifteen souls consumed, I was feeling that same sensation of getting full again. I was close. I was maybe a soul or two away from leveling up again, and I was determined to make it happen while I still had enough MP to maintain Mana-Armor on Jack. I steered him to turn around and go to where the fighting was the fiercest.

***

Work! Work! Work!

Jack crawled forward steadily, and if I didn’t know any better, I’d have said he was happy to be heading into the thick of it. We crawled over and around ant bodies, little twigs and leaves, blades of yellowed grass, and in half a minute we joined the fray where large and menacing looking Reds and Blacks were hacking away at each other with abandon. I suspected these ants were the dedicated soldiers of both sides: they were larger, their heads bigger and their horns longer, their mandibles something straight out of a horror movie. It didn’t matter — Mana-Armor held, and I still had over two MP left, and my EP pool filling steadily. I quickly navigated us to a couple of freshly killed Black soldier ants; their souls were still there, and I grabbed one of them. My four tentacles mushed it and absorbed it in a second.

I was full, and I could grow again.

I knew I’d decided earlier it would be my tentacles I’d grow this time, but I needed a larger Mana pool. So I grew my body and I reached Level Three.