Emile’s idea proved to be brilliant. They picked up a rock and handed Hawk a shovel. “They’ll come for both of us. I’ll book it. You get one of the little bastards.”

  Hawk would rather have had a sword. Either the slick, beautiful milk-crystal blade the Shadow had created for her, or her own rough-wrought knife-edge that she’d used to kill Kali’Mar. But a shovel was good enough, for now. She could live with it.

  Em, understanding the brutality of what was about to happen, heaved themselves up onto the shed, the straps of their harness fluttering around their more mundane cargo pants. They’d grabbed a collection of large, heavy rocks on the way, snatching them up while Hawk was busy weighing the shovel in her hands. Now they began to pitch them at Hawk’s back window, underhand and slow. Thonk went the first and the second. The third went crash, and glinting fragments of glass fell across the windowsill.

  And then the horde erupted from it.

  They were a brilliant orange, even visible in moonlight, and each of them at least the size of a large cat, if not small dog. Their mandibles made a horrifying clicking sound as their mouthparts writhed between them. Antennae trembled across shattered glass and windowsill. Black eyes like multifaceted beads glared out of unforgiving heads. And these were just the regular soldiers. Hawk did not recognize any of them as the big-headed Majors or, worse, the aggressive Supermajors fire ants were famed for. Good, she thought, even as she clenched her fists tighter on the shovel. That meant this colony was quite young. Majors and Supermajors only showed up when food and territory were well established, and worth such an investment in resources.

  These thoughts went fleeting through her mind, almost as fast as the ants that advanced upon her. Shovel out, she brought it down, hard, against the nearest rust-red body. It squished like a melon, the carapace surprisingly brittle. Not enough calcium, or something, she thought. Another ant skittered forward with a nearly lazy grace, confident in its jaws, its strength, its venom. She brought the shovel down on the head and felt it go crunch.

  There were two more. One of them was trying to get at Emile. They kept kicking it off the Rubbermaid shed, shouting wordlessly, ha, yah, ha! And the ant would retreat before the combat boot connected with carapace. Hawk had the last, and it was faster, brighter than its siblings. It could follow her with deadly ease, no matter where she walked. And this time when the shovel came down it bounced off the small head with emphasis. This seemed to stun the ant, but not kill it. It retreated a moment, then kept going forward.

  “Hawk! The torch!” Emile shouted.

  Nodding, Hawk tossed the shovel across the yard to Emile, who took it with a dangerous grin and began beating on the sides of the shed immediately. This stunned the ant too—they must have been equally sensitive to sound. Vibrations. Their attacker retreated down to the base of the shed and trembled, as if regaining its bravery.

  Hawk then dashed over to the shed and grabbed the silent makeshift torch, still soaked in gasoline. The ant fixated on her, turning rapidly and racing forward with its mouth agape. Wordless, terrified, she lit the torch and jammed it forward at the huge creature. It made a clattering sound like shaken dishes and retreated.

  They are heat adverse, Hawk thought. A little of her tension died. She’d be able to defend herself, once she went inside. But the ant she’d targeted was stubborn, and better made than its sisters. It raced forward, jaws working, sensing and avoiding the fire. As long as Hawk kept the torch between herself and the ant, she would be alright…but the makeshift torch wasn’t going to last for long.

  Em had the shovel. Now they peered down at the ant challenging the base of the shed. “Aren’t you the invasive little fucker?” They said with a feral grin, and jumped off the roof of the shed, shovel pointed head down in front of them like a bishop’s staff at prayer. It thumped down hard against their enemy’s neck, which shattered under the blow. The head went flying, mandibles clenching down on nothing but air with a strength that could have cracked bone. The remainder of the body flailed frantically, its stinger working plunging over and over into soil. Venom spilled forth with a thick, pungent smell, and the mostly destroyed grass seemed to melt as droplets of poison sprayed across the yard.

  “Hawk!” Em shouted, and tossed the shovel back.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  Hawk took her friend’s lead, and dropped the torch on the dry dust that used to be her back yard. Glass ashes were not flammable. She discovered this concern only as it solved itself. But getting the shovel between head and thorax wasn’t going to be easy. The damned thing moved too fast. She dodged its searching antennae, its crunching mouthparts, and slammed the shovel down on its head again. Stunned, it held still for the fraction of a second Hawk needed. She jumped on its back, both feet, and her sudden weight sent its six legs sprawling. Now she flipped the shovel around, held it as Emile had, and slammed the edge into the ant’s neck. It, too, began stabbing desperately at soil, humping its body beneath her in a desperate effort to reach her flesh, to kill her with its toxic venom. Images of old stings flashed through Hawk’s memory, including the terrible knowledge that the venom built up inside the body, that it could not be shed as easily as hope. She wrenched the shovel back and forth, and the mandibles made a dreadful clacking sound like a scream of pain, vibrating together as it struggled in rage and agony. She pulled the shovel up once more and brought it down with all of her might.

  The head at last went flying.

  Quickly, she got off the ant as its death throes brought it further and further across the lawn, away from the dead bodies of its sisters. Hawk took deep gulps of air as she watched the creature die. It hurt, in a way; she considered the ant beautiful. There was an insectile grace, a glory that could not be matched by soft flesh, and she’d spent her entire life studying these creatures. Sure, she might hate RIFAs, but it was a hate born from human activity, that these creatures were ripped from where they belonged in the world and spread out where they did not. And tonight she had a specific person she could hate for this, because it was his actions that had done it: Kaiser.

  Another thing to your ledger, you rich son of a bitch. She dropped the shovel.

  But Em was doing something totally unexpected. They had grabbed the body of their ant, and now they hauled it towards Hawk. “Gimme your shovel.”

  “What?” Hawk said, dazed.

  “You’re still going inside that house, right?” Emile said. Behind them, the shattered window flashed every so often with gold-red bodies, ants trying desperately to shore up the fresh hole made in their nest. “We’re gonna smear you with bug guts.”

  Hawk considered this statement for a moment, and decided thought didn’t make it better. “What the hell?” she said.

  “You’ll smell like the colony. They’ll let you in.” Emile said.

  “Em. It’s a dead colony member. They’ll throw me out immediately.” She paused, considering the volumes she’d studied on how ants handle their dead. “Probably after ripping open my abdomen.”

  “You won’t smell dead right away. Right now, this body is still twitching. It thinks its still alive. You need to smear yourself with its guts. They’ll let you in long enough to set shit on fire.”

  And with a sickening jerk of the shovel, Emile split the dead ant’s gaster wide open.

  ***

  Now freshly covered in bug goop, Hawk made her cautious way through her own rear window. The climb in had to be cautious, because jagged knives of broken glass hung in the shattered window like broken teeth. She picked the largest shards away…and was immediately confronted by a large insectile head. Gulping, there was nothing she could do. Not even run. She could only stand there while the ant played over her body with antennae.

  It passed her by.

  She crawled into her house and was confronted with her own destroyed ant room. Terrarium after terrarium was smashed, and her collection of formicariums for less established species all lay broken open on the floor. Vines of ivy and pothos were shredded on the floor, their stems ripped in vegetative agony. Fluids unknown and unknowable dripped from every surface; some of these were sugary. They’d gotten into her nectar supply.

  The tank that had held the fire-ant colony was, naturally, in multiple pieces on the floor. To her surprise, most of the ants were there, still tiny, and dying in quantity. Nearly every ant in this room, in fact, had collapsed. Her camponotus girls were now nothing more than Glass ashes in tiny packets. Limbs broke off like shards of fiberglass even as Hawk watched. Campos are pretty far from Solenopsis, she said. Carpenter ants vs. fire. Of course they’d fall to glass first, if there’s a prism.

  But she didn’t think there was a prism. She thought something else had happened, and she dug cautious fingers through the infested dirt, scoring a few stray rocks and multiple angry ant bites almost immediately. But she did not find the smooth, cool surface of the Archetype’s orb she’d put in there, all those short days ago.

  Shit.

  She splashed gasoline around the room, heartless. She could not grieve over these small things, despite their importance to her. In terms of sacrifice, this one was already commanded. Her ants were dead. Some of them, perhaps, still had the dying left to do. And she’d brought this death upon them. But how could I have known now warred with you’d have guessed it out if you’d thought for five seconds.

  Instead of berating herself, she tried to think. Where would these ants have put their brood? She’d thought the ant room, given how careful she’d been about temperature and humidity, but clearly these ants had decided that was too much of a risk. Usually the brood chamber was the central most “room” in a colony, as deep and safe as they could make it, while also being easy to evacuate or move, should another part of the colony better fit the brood’s eternal demands.

  Another giant ant trucked past Hawk. It held a piece of Glassed drywall, mixed with spit, in its arching mandibles. It paused for a moment to sniff at Hawk’s be-gooped legs, then moved on.

  She was running out of time.