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The ants assaulting the horses quickly find themselves battling against water, mud, and heat, and though they manage to pile up, and spill out and over Ru’in’s bronze creations, the slick walls do slow them somewhat, many of the ants simply broiling and teeming, about and over their brethren, until they are too exhausted to march anymore. When the flaming spider thrown by Astarot is thrown into the huddled mass, however, things become a bit more interesting; with audible sizzles of their exoskeletons, and the vaporous venting of their gooey insides (sounding quite like the shrill, tiny screams of ant death), the ants broiling out of the hill are met with an incendiary death for several minutes, before the golem is extinguished.
Those who find water find themselves free of the torment of any further ants, but many of the enraged, large black devils remain clamped to their skin, in a valiant effort to avenge their captured and incinerated comrades. Though they are slowly smothered, Syrena, Maude, and Zubari don’t find relief immediately, having to wait for the ants to drown before they finally let go.
The fire spiders out in the open are highly effective, as well, leaving swathes of ants crispy and dying in their wake, at least until the scattered ants are seemingly driven on by some unheard, minuscule war cry from the tunnels below. Swelling over the small, burning spiders by the hundreds in suddenly reorganized troupes, the first many to swell over the blazing bodies of the fire spiders are quickly murdered by the flaming arachnids, but soon, thousands of black ants amass on each of Volterra’s golems, and they can ward off the assault on the others no more.
The clay quickly begins to smother out the ants, but, like the horses in the water, Esinakh doesn’t immediately gain relief, having to wait for them to be suffocated before they let go. Dragomir, too, suffers the ants wrath, the hateful avengers biting into his soft nose as he rushes to aid the filly. Her falling clay, however, quickly builds up a gooey, high death count, with lots of ants crushed beneath her hooves, and stuck beneath the wet mud.
Patrick, Alysanne, Yael, and Toulouse find that for as many ants as they crush or knock away, others replace them. To boot, the decapitated or dying ants still cling to their bodies with their last mustering of strength, only falling away when every last nerve ending gives in to the light. Still, a large number of the biting cretins have been thwarted or slain by the others, and soon, there seems to be an end in sight – at least until the ants suspiciously stop arriving from the mouth of the mound.
About three feet to the right of the mound, the earth seems to gently skitter, granules of sand wobbling, and shifting. Soon, a small hole appears, which gradually widens, faster and faster, until a broad opening in the ground reveals a branch of the carpenter ant’s tunnel network below. Rising up out of this opening is the Queen herself!
The reason as to the success of this colony is obvious at the sight of this magnanimous Ant Queen. Though her soldiers are large ants, she is by far the largest; nearly four inches long, with glistening, ivory bordered wings, the mother of the hive is a glistening, opalescent green and blue. As obviously magical as she is pretty, the enraged Queen takes to the skies, flying up into the air in the center of the clearing.
Her losing army withdraws into the ant hive, except those still clutching violently to the skin of their attackers, leaving their commander to win the battle, or die trying. With a loud hum of her wings, the Ant Queen seems to huddle into herself, before her abdomen lunges outwards, each thrust projecting magical bullets of ice towards the horses at random. Leaving no creature within the clearing unscathed, the Queen viciously defends her children, giving them time to escape deep into their tunnels.
[ The Ant Queen has appeared, and the rest of the ants have retreated back into the anthill via the new entrance she has created! The Queen is now launching small, ice projectiles at anyone in the clearing.
You have 72 hours to respond to this final round! ]
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[DROP] The Greedy and the Needy [EARTH MAGIC DROP]
