I Became an Ant Lord, So I Built a Hive Full of Beauties

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The dome's skin was brown with tar, but the way the ropes bent showed strain. Someone below had pulled them tighter than they should. Someone afraid. She measured time by breaths and the small knots of muscle in her shoulders that told her she had held one shape long enough and must change to another or snap.

The second hour crawled. Silence became a weight. Skyweaver broke it, her voice thin as silk across Kai's ear.

"I see reed mats far east," she whispered. "I see a man with a grin who watches the sky as if it owes him a drink. I see a brown dome. I will not speak of who is under it. I will say only that the cage has four poles and the ropes are damp. I am two minutes above the clouds. Call and I fall. Until then I am only a cold wind no one can see."

"Stay cold," Kai said. "Stay high."

"I am air," Skyweaver said, and the line went light, as if even words were too heavy to carry further.

On the march line, Mardek pushed a toe into the sand and studied the way the grains ran down the slope. He liked the look of it. It made him think of a game where the board moved while you played. He touched the beetle stone at his throat and smiled at the old promise it carried. His grin was too wide, too careless for a man on duty. He stretched his arms, cracked his neck, and looked toward the dunes that did not look back.

The third hour began. The moon tilted lower, and the sand shifted shade. White lights thinned toward the golden dust. Fat shadows grew on the leeward slopes of the dunes, long enough to hide two men walking shoulder to shoulder. Every shadow seemed alive, waiting to give itself away.

Silvershadow's voice came next, low and flat, made of sand and shade.

"I have eyes," he said. "Four hundred paces east of a rock shaped like a broken tooth. Two rows of carts, six across. Dome to the right of the cook line. The cage under the dome. Mardek sits near it. Beetle stone on a string. Grin he did not earn. If you come from the lee side you will count thirty before they can move. If you come from the wind side you will count fifty and then they will see your dust. Nets are rolled and tied. Ropes cross the gap between carts. I marked your stop with a bent reed that sticks where no reed should grow."

"Hold your shadow," Kai said. "I am coming to your reed."

"I am the reed," Silvershadow said, and left the road dark.

They topped one last low ridge and slid into a shallow hollow. The moon was a white coin on the dark blue table edge, throwing long rays stripes across the dunes. The camp lay two dunes away, close and far at the same time — too close for patience, too far for ease.

Azhara crouched. She drew a short line in the sand with her finger, then wiped it with her palm. Her eyes tracked the distant carts, sharp as knives.

"We said we would wait for the mark," she reminded. "We said we would let the shadow show us the better path. We said rope, not thunder. The plan gets you your girl and keeps the fight for later."

Kai looked at the sand and did not see sand. He saw a small hand on the floor of a cage. He heard a muffled word—Papa—strangled through cloth. He smelled wet reed and iron dust. He tasted the sass of a boy officer leaning on cruelty at the edge of his daughter's breath.

He stood up. He did not speak.

Azhara rose with him. She rolled her shoulders, checked a strap, and studied his face. She did not smile. She did not sigh. She only nodded once. "Then we do it your way," she said. "Fast."

Kai reached into his storage and pulled two five star rank beast cores into his palm. They throbbed, cold and bright, like clenched hearts. He remembered the first time he ate one and thought lightning had bones. He did not ask for counsel. He did not think about saving them for later. He lifted both to his mouth and bit down. They cracked like fruit under frost. Bitterness flooded his tongue. Heat shot down his throat and broke into light in his chest. His veins lit. His fingers tingled. His vision sharpened like steel after a whetstone.

The surge did not come gently. It tore through him, snapping against his bones, crackling along his tendons. His chest swelled as if made too small for the heart it now held. He tasted copper, fire, and rain all at once. His exoskeleton groaned as it hardened, black red sheen shifting like cooled lava plates. The spear shaft in his hand quivered, iron eager, wood alive.

Azhara narrowed her eyes. "Good," she whispered. "Now we cut our enemies."

High above, Alka banked once under a thin skin of cloud and stilled her wings until she was only a dark seed in the dark sky. In the shadows east of the camp, Silvershadow lay with one cheek on the sand, two fingers pressed to the bent reed, and did not blink. On the dune behind Kai, the wind wrote and erased the print of his last step, as if it wanted no record of what the next steps would do.

Kai used his soul mastery skills again, and opened a soul road to his daughter. "Miryam, I am here. I am coming to rescue you."

Two dunes away, Mardek stopped talking in mid sentence. He lifted his head and smiled at nothing. "Something hostile is coming, I am feeling a killing intent," he told the sky and himself. "I can feel it, It's something strong. Good. I was bored."

Kai did not hear him. He heard only the small voice again, thin and brave. "Papa… you are here."

He moved without any hesitation.