Cardinal returned from her little foraging trip, the silken bag she wove bulging with sticks and leaves, and towards the bottom was a small red stain that I could only guess was either a burst handful of very red berries or something she’d killed and was likely to be her dinner. Slung under her abdomen was another pouch she had not left with so I assume she made it on the go.
probing the connection I asked her how her small expedition was, apparently about a half mile from here there is a river where she stopped to make a bag and collect some water, to help process the wood into mulch for her fungus which she had tucked away inside a small protective divot in the space between her throat and thorax. Now back inside the oval chamber she had claimed as her chambers she grabbing a chunk of dry rotted wood from her bag using those little grabby hand claws and after thoroughly dunking it in the water bag she put the whole soggy mess in her mouth and began chewing with a second set of smaller jaws set into her maw. She usually kept them closed like lips and the serrations on these jaws interlocked like fingers giving it a look similar to that of a hellish paper shredder, not to mention that the jaws, like her bigger mandibles, opened sideways instead of up and down, and there was something I could have almost described as a tongue, if tongues were round and pointed like needles and covered in small hairs, mixing the wood pulp as she chewed, turning it into a mulchy paste and sticking it onto a flat basket-like platter of silk she was spinning and weaving with her mid legs from the spinnerets on the first segment of her abdomen.
After processing about half of her wood she grabbed the precious ball of fungi ripping off a knuckle sized portion of mycelium off and before she put it away I asked her to put it on the floor, when she did I told her not to panic and with a the quizzical tilt in her head she put the ball of fungi on the floor where I consumed it. Making it disintegrate into nothing before her eyes, instantly began to panic like I had expected. spilling her mulch paste and holding onto the small remaining chunk of fungi she had left clutching it to her thorax like her life depended on it, which I suppose it did to a point. I had to prod the bond a few times to get her to calm down, explained what I did and then made a mound of it about the size of her head materialize on the ground in front of her, I could see the relief wash over her as the joints in her legs relaxed and she wobbled on her hind and mid legs slightly as she released the little ball of fungus in her fore limbs from her chest and gently placed it on the pile of fungus and turned to the spilled over mess of paste and the scattered silk plate I apologize for scare and spilling her work and proceed to absorb all of it along with her two bags and all their contents, the water gave me the most trouble but I assumed it would just mean I need practice. I then materialized a large stone bowl containing the mulch mush, a small pile of dry rotted wood and leaves, and then formed two more stone bowls and filled them with water, the water once again resisted my touch, maybe it's because one of my aspects is for fire or possibly its because I simply don't have the water aspect.
Cardinal looked like she would cry tears of joy, if ants could cry that is, but by the way her mandibles vibrated it gave her the anty equivalent of a quivering chin. Her face is surprisingly expressive for the lack of moving parts or perhaps it's because of the bond I can just tell, I honestly don't know. The last of the evening and the whole night passed over, Cardinal just stood there the whole time mulching and mixing her gritty wood paste and then kneading the small chunks of fungus into them and finally encasing the whole now dough-like ball in a layer of silk and she poked holes in a circle around the bottom of the mulch balls using a stick the picked from the pile and sharpened with a mandible, evenly puncturing the ball until the the whole bottom half looked like a colander. Afterward she set the silken wood-fungi dough ball to her left. Now garnering a small army of them, I decided to absorb one while she wasn't looking, instantly replacing it afterward just so I could have the blueprint.
I haven't really played around with it too much yet but there is a sort of mind space I can enter and it's like I'm looking at a shelf of all the things I've absorbed and can break them down to their base components. I can't take something like wood then separate it down into pure carbon atoms and whatever else is in the chemical makeup of cellulose, but I've managed to separate the component parts of the granite I've been mining, mostly quartz, feldspar and mica, the rest was all too finely mixed and I would have had to start wasting mana on it for me to be able to separate, so I just dumped it to keep from cluttering my resource shelves, not that I'm pressed for space, when something gets added the space on the shelf just materializes, I just didn't want to have to organize it all later when it starts getting cluttered with spare parts, I feel myself getting sidetracked so I refocus on the quartz, I take a crystal and make it larger, almost as big as my core in length but leave it skinnier. I then focus on the Ignis aspect feeling a bright warm sensation. The quartz begins to glow with a crisp white light and continues glowing after I stop forcing mana into it. using discern on it I'm greeted by the information pouring through my mind. “Lumen Crystal.'' However I was pulled out of my mental crafting space by Cardinal nudging me through the bond before I could delve into the info too far.
"Do you have that hopper I caught yesterday?" she asked while picking bits of wood mush and pulp out of her finger joints and looking with satisfaction upon her finished work, beaming at the neat rows of silk balls with her big oval eyes that looked like they could be shining topaz carved into the sides of her head.
"The rabbit?" I replied, I had completely forgotten about it, that rabbit was probably the only thing she'd had to eat in the last two days at least and I'd absorbed it and forgotten to give it back. "Do you want just the meat or the whole thing?" She contemplated the question for a moment.
"Just the meat is fine, if I need bones or fur for something I can catch another." a fair response, I'm sure she knows I could just materialize them for her but I guess she most likely enjoys the hunt, life enrichment and all that. I made a sizeable slab of fresh hare meat, bloody and lean, appear before her and I had to divert my gaze as she began to cut it apart, I don't mind blood and gore generally, violence had been a vibrant part of my past life in the military, seeing people get turned into pink mist by mortar fire and land mines throughout my career in the marines and being stationed in Sweden where we were stuck in modern day trench warfare, but something about the way she hacked the meat apart with her mandibles made me wince and I returned to my sanctum.
I had replicated the pillar and pedestal type setup I had in the first room before I relocated, it just felt right, I also widened the tunnel down to Cardinals chambers so she could fit comfortably, however this also meant an average sized man in light gear could crawl up the tunnel, give and take I guess. My mana was running low and by the glow in my core I was probably sitting around twelve or fifteen. My two points into Terra meant that working with stone was a breeze and two points into Vita made the fungus and wood cost almost nothing. the meat was a little expensive but again two points into Vita and one point of Mors made it manageable, a five pound slab of rabbit only cost five mana, granted that was still one tenth of my total pool, what cost the most was thew water, what I'm guessing was maybe four or five gallons took a whopping twenty points of my mana.
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I began idly adding quartz details to almost all of the Celtic designs that cover the dungeon interior. I know there's no light so it's likely most of these will remain unseen for now but I didn't need light to see and it seems like Cardinal doesn't either for the most part. As my mana was dwindling to the lower half of single digits I was interrupted by the feeling of intrusion in the bowl where outside my entrance six more dire ants had landed in my domain. Milling about in circles flaring their wings and snapping their mandibles at each other making an audible crack almost like what you would hear from a tree falling as its branches twist and snap when it lands.
These snaps are what alerted Cardinal to their presence and I didn't have to tell her what she already knew was outside. The males were smaller than her, about three quarters of her size but the chitin armor covering their body looked thicker with small spines along the bows and curves of their six shoulders, likely to help ward off predators while they forage for their queen and defend her from intruders. While they were built like armored vehicles, Cardinal was sleek with regal curves, her body was built for speed and power above most other things, because if the queen could escape, she could restart a colony in less than a month somewhere else. The male ants were built for defense, and I'm assuming after mated they would gladly die to protect their partner.
When Cardinal arrived the six males were squaring off with each other, not taking note of her presence. She splayed her mandibles as far as they would go and slammed them shut like cracking a bullwhip. Of the six males, two retreated immediately, they were common brown dire ants as I looked them over with "Discern", nothing particularly interesting other than being a bit more robust and generalized, completely generic as far as giant murder ants go. Cardinal charged out into the center of the courtyard, scaring off one more of the Common browns, it landed at the edge of the bowl next to the others who chittered and nipped at him, it reminded me of snickering laughter. Looking back there was one more common brown who was standing his ground next to the two others who were a bit more interesting.
One was a deep ebony black with silver wings and eyes, I skipped over the general information and went to its subspecies line, “this subspecies is prefers to build an external hive and its lower cast members will be born with wings its, however it does not have the venom glands that most other ant species possess. These Dire Ants are primarily nocturnal” The next one was much more strange on the looks scale, it was a pale green yellow with white and brown splatters covering its body, and its eyes and wings were a glossy emerald sheen.
“This Dire ant subspecies is extremely toxic, its venom is nearly four times more virulent than its relatives and has no issues with living within highly toxic environments considered inhospitable to most organisms, these Dire Ants are split evenly with diurnal and nocturnal patterns.”
Cardinal without missing a beat flared her wings and the four of them splayed out behind her head and she spread out her mandibles as far as they would go. Almost looking like some demonic turkey the morning sunlight reflecting and refracting the geometric shapes in her wings creating a dazzling kaleidoscope effect around her, forcing her body to stay a pearlescent white to reflect even more color, this was meant to be a flashy threat display to see if they are willing to dance with her. The final common brown flitted away, landing on the lip with the others, and the first one to step up was the multi colored and emerald eyed ant it flashed its wings and while stepping side to side spreading its mandibles and slamming them together in fast bursts, giving me flashbacks of machine gun fire. shaking myself out of my stupor I returned my gaze to the dancers, the male was slowly but carefully rotating itself in a circle flaring and vibrating its wings and when it was facing back towards Cardinal he stepped forward flaring his wings in a way that made it look like it was a dog shedding water from its coat after a swim. He then placed his head under her mandibles, exposing the nape of his neck. While his head was lowered and he was in his vulnerable position he began tapping the base of her antenna rabidly with his.
Apparently Cardinal did not like what he was saying because she let her mandibles slam shut only just barely missing the male's antenna as he jerked back, he dropped his display and moved to the side, making room for his competition. The black and silver male stepped forward, lifting his wings and mimicking Cardinals stance slightly swaying back and forth causing the lights reflecting off his wings to intermingle with hers, the stark light show was dazzling and I didn’t want to look away but another group of male ants had landed on the opposite lip and were apparently waiting their turn forming a loose que of sorts, my dear Cardinal seems to have drawn quite the crowd because down the hill on the other side there was the sound of more ants snapping and chittering at each other. I let out a sigh, “This is going to take all day.”
The black and silver male finished his slow rotation flicking his wings in and out and approached, this time instead of lowering his head he raised it exposing his unarmored neck to Cardinal and tapping on the tips of his antenna against hers, if she decided she didn't like him she would have no problem decapitating him. However I guess he was quite the silver tongue, or rather, silver antenna. He finished his little tippy-tappy thing and backed up slowly, not lowering his head until after he dropped his wings and bowed his whole body forward until his mandibles were on the ground. Cardinal dropped her wings and let out a billowing crack from her mandibles causing some common browns in the growing line to jump and flare up in defense and then promptly remove themselves from the oncoming traffic to migrate over to the losers. The sound was deafening. And I even felt the reverb around my core in the depths of my sanctum. Black and silver walked over close to the entrance to my dungeon and let himself down onto the belly of his carapace, instead of waiting with the rejected members of his group. They didn't leave, and in fact it seemed like they were in guard, looking around suspiciously and watching the tree line. Either something was wrong or they all were going to stay and wait for the still growing precession to finish. Either way I had a feeling that if something went wrong the horde of giant venomous ants milling about my territory would keep her safe, even from any rogue princes that might try to start something. I turned my view inward, I don't think I could stand to watch the entire procession do their little dance and try not to be decapitated, no matter how pretty the light shining off of their wings may be.