Initial scouting reports have shown that, contrary to the usual habits of their people, they are now focusing not on eradication of all that moves near to them, but instead on the establishment of several strongholds. They haven't shown any particular desire to expand beyond the lands they have already claimed. It is, in short, a genuinely baffling turn of events. Even so, we continue observing, and will ensure that every inhabitant of the Union is apprised of whatever it is that occurs within the bounds of this new city.
-Report from Scout Captain Inoktuk of the Mustelid Corps to the Council of the Union.
Knowing what was coming, I took care to focus nearly entirely on merely containing the attacks of the ants. Though tired from days of slaughtering them with reckless abandon, I was far from exhausted, and could still fight for some time yet. When they swarmed me, I didn't use any of my [Skills], merely killing where necessary and allowing their numbers to swell. Fifty ants turned to one hundred, one hundred to two hundred, and I ceased attempting to number them. The swarm continued to burgeon in size, the giant insects climbing over themselves and stacking up the walls of the hole. I allowed it to happen, merely killing what was necessary to ensure I and the rest of the fighters could safely retreat.
By the time I reached the peak of the little valley, I wondered if I'd made a mistake in allowing the creatures to swarm so much. I could kill them all with [Murderous Melody], their minds and bodies seeming excessively vulnerable to the damage my sonic waves wreaked on them, but it seemed a waste, and I'd need to make sure that none of the keelish were too close. I'd hate to hurt or even kill one of my people in my rebuffing this latest assault, but before I could consider making any assignments or commands, a ball of lightning fell from the sky into the middle of the hole. It crackled and exploded, sending ant corpses and limbs flying every which way.
Percral roared his challenge to the ants, his entire body covered with thick snakes of lightning. Every swipe of his claws, jaws, tail, and legs stunned or killed another ant. Insect corpses filled the hole, but Percral was far from the only Keel looking to flex his new prowess. While I battered away one ant with impunity, Brutus appeared. He remained an unassuming mix of green and brown, and while he'd always been hulking, he now was almost comparable to an indlovu. He stood over eleven feet tall, frills spread wide in a challenge. His shoulders were well over three feet wide, and as he roared, I felt that though there was no magic empowering the sound, a dozen or more ants fell, stunned, at his cry.
Took charged into the opening, reaping the ants' lives like so much chaff. Before long, she grabbed one by its head and began using it as a massive club to batter dozens of struggling ants back into the hole. Most of the Keel, Foire, Ytte, and Shemira included, tore into the ants, driving them into the hole. Each Keel secured a radius of at least fifteen feet clear of ants, and the hundreds were reduced to less than fifty in less than a minute. When only a dozen ants remained living in the bottom of the hole, Joral and Sybil made their appearance as they leapt into the forty foot-deep hole without hesitating.
Joral spoke with a low thrum. I couldn't understand what it was meant to signify, but the ants stopped where they were as he made the sound. Their long antennae twitched as they rocked back and forth. The ants responded to Joral's communications, and Sybil laid a hand on his shoulder, somehow strengthening the Kou'Tal's ability. As she did so, the ants seemed to bow to them before turning and going back into their tunnel without caring about this failed assault attempt. I looked down at them, curious as to how this happened, and Sybil locked eyes with me. She grinned widely, her fangs seeming to glow in the midafternoon's suns light.
"Hello."
—-
I allowed the newly evolved Keel to take the time necessary to give any orders they needed to issue before gathering them all together. Now that I had a representative of nearly every main caste of Keel, or so I supposed excepting Kha'Tal, I could take in the differences between them. Shemira, Vefir, and Sybil were all Sou'Tal, what I understood to be "nobility" by the inferior judgment of humans. I'd thought that before, but now I understood intrinsically that what Sybil had done was the duty of all Sou'Tal–to enhance and uplift those of the other castes. Shemira too could do the same, and her magic worked to the eventuality of doing so. The stature of the Sou'Tal was tall and thin, at least by Keel standards. Sybil, the smallest of the three, was at least eight feet tall while Shemira and Vefir's heads reached nearly nine feet, and they were "merely" layered with obvious muscles that rippled under their scales without straining against the constraint of their skin. Their scales, like mine, had the ridge down the middle of them, though they were smaller and more delicate than my own, made for the frontlines of a battlefield. Finally, their claws were narrow, almost delicate, though I saw Shemira extend them for a brief moment. With that, their fingers shifted from those of an artisan to those of an assassin, the three fingers tipped with six-inch-long knives
The Sik'Tal, the hunters like Foire, were hard to get a full estimation of what the caste as a whole might look like, but he was smaller and more lithe than all the other castes. His head remained red compared to his much darker body, but his colors were now much more muted than before. Now, he stood a mere seven feet tall, significantly smaller than the rest of the Keel, his scales much more dun in appearance than the rest's. His whole body had shifted to be more aero dynamic, to be swift and deadly, from the tip of his tail to the ends of his clawed fingers. Even so, I could feel that there was something else about his caste that wasn't immediately apparent to me. Perhaps an additional blessing from Nievtala or something like that, but I couldn't place it.
Took, Brutus, and Percal were all Hak'Tal, the soldiers of our Empire, and they looked it. Percral, the smallest of the three, was broader of shoulder and thicker of waist than me while being the same height of a bit over ten feet. Took and Brutus both towered over us at eleven, and their bodies rippled with thick, dense muscle tissue. Even more than my own scales, theirs were large, thick, and armorlike, forming what I suspected would compare to the full armor of an Earthspeaker, though it wouldn't renew itself like theirs could. Even so, the scales on their shoulders were nearly an inch thick, and when I scraped a claw against them, I couldn't even scratch the armor until I put a genuine effort into it.
Then there was Joral, the single Kou'Tal of the Keel that'd evolved. He was a mix of the others, nearly as tall as I was, though thinner than all but Foire. His frills were larger than the other castes', and his scales were somewhere between the size of mine and those of Foire. His hands were larger as well, though not as naturally built for combat as the rest of us. Just as with Foire, I could feel that there was something else about the Kou'Tal caste that I hadn't learned just yet.
I happily looked around myself at the keelish–no, Keel of my elites, those who would help me to rule this new Empire, and grinned. I counted them, as with myself, there were now ten Keel. But I was only seeing eight others? There was one more that evolved. Where was she?