Surprisingly, as the "royal" ant disappeared back into the depths of the hole, all the ants scurrying around me also pulled back into the hole. It wasn't more than two minutes before the only movement around the hole came from my people. No ants ventured out, and while I looked down into the dark cave that the ants lived in, I detected no movement with either my vision nor my thermal vision. [Tremorsense] also didn't feel anything, though the ants were surprisingly difficult to detect under the best of circumstances.
Just as soon as I wasn't surrounded with ants, Brutus hopped down into the deep divot in the ground and looked at me searchingly. I merely flicked my tail in response before saying, "For now, don't kill any ants you see here. Any of the beasts you find outside of the walls is fair game. In fact, Joral, I think you should assign a couple Kou'Tals to camp out by a nearby hole and kill every one of the beasts that they see there. That should be an opportunity for us to see what exactly these creatures are going to try to demand."
"Demand?" Joral clarified.
Again, I flicked my tail. "This is something that all of our leaders need to meet about. Just know that the ants here, we won't kill unless they attack us first. Even then, we don't want them to build into an insane swarm as they have before, so ensure that we don't devolve into wholesale slaughter."
"As you command." Joral flared his frills as he bowed his head. Then, with a couple quick signals, he commanded the nearby Khatif to go find someone. After thinking for a moment, I figured that it would be Farahlia, and I didn't say anything. Instead, I gestured for the rest of us to retreat out of the hole. Outside of it, I called three Kha over. As they looked up at me in curiosity, I spoke.
"Get to the Zaaktifi and let her know that we're gathering the entire leadership of the Empire for a high priority meeting. I'm not sure where she is, so separate to ensure you find her quickly."
They flared their frills as they bowed nearly deeply enough to bury their snouts in the dirt, and I waved them off. Without a word, they sprinted away, one to the north and the other to the south. Brutus's steps conveyed his curiosity, I could feel the faint twisting in each step he took, but even so, he focused entirely on the ants and the ground underfoot.
I focused entirely on the possibilities ahead of us, though. Instead of thinking about the ants as beasts and a mere resource, I now had to change the way I thought of them. I'd seen in Tala how important it was that I act in a way that the species reacted to, so what did I know about the ants' society? Nothing, really. In Tala, I'd merely forced my way into leadership, and as a Keel, it was accepted. With the ants, there were obvious hierarchical differences, but not like in a keelish swarm or in the Empire. The lowest tiers of the ants were far from even as intelligent as the stupidest keelish I'd met. I could almost think of them less as creatures so much as mere extensions of the larger, smarter parts of their colonies.
So how could I interact with the ants? I'd need to wait for one of the ants with the crowns, or at least, one that I was able to communicate with. Given that the one I'd spoken with was considered a qualified representative of whatever nation the ants made, I didn't know what I could do to communicate with the creatures without their implicit approval. And if I wanted to have a possibility to not have an all-out war with a species that seemed to have endless numbers and an unreachable capital, then I'd need to negotiate somehow.
I couldn't kill them all because I wanted to speak with them, but I could only speak with the royal and the only way I'd ever gotten the attention of the royal was by killing every ant I saw. The cycle wasn't immediately solvable, but engaging in hunting a different location seemed like it would be an opportunity to reopen communications.
"Oh, Joral." I said, keeping myself from cursing.
"Yes, Zaaktif?"
"When Farahlia goes, let her know that at the same moment that the ants begin to show the same reaction that the ones here did, nobody is to engage, and they should send for me."
"Yes, Zaaktif."
Joral sent another Khatif after the first to do as I commanded. Then, while my people worked to assemble themselves together, I lost myself in possible plans. We could engage in negotiations, but we didn't know what they wanted. Even so, I didn't want to create an enemy with something living under me. If we couldn't come to some sort of an agreement, we'd need to move somewhere else. The plains below the mountains were filled with the shadow wyrms, and the north, though temperate and beautiful, didn't suit the majority of our people.
War didn't seem practical either. We'd need to engage on their terms in their ground, where we were outmaneuvered and outclassed. Though a keelish could live under the ground, even a Khatif or Kha wasn't suited for that, much less a much larger Keel.
We'd need to understand what their goals were when they came out of the ground. Given that the entirety of the Shandise had ant presence without being entirely overrun by them must mean that the majority of the ants' lives were spent underground. They weren't actively expanding to cover the land, but had something they needed to get from over land. So what could it be? I'd only seen them grabbing a little bit of vegetation and the occasional creature. They were evidently capable of eating flesh, but that wasn't why they were here.
I shook my head in frustration. If only I'd understood even a little more of what their motivations were, I could much more easily engage with them on terms that favored both of us. That first contact had been too curt, too short to determine anything other than the fact that there were, at least some, thinking ants.
"Zaaktif." Sybil darted close to me, though without breathing heavily. Again, I was struck that the keelish that'd complained to me about how weak she was was now absolutely capable of ripping a True Speaker apart with her bare claws. A part of me wondered what [Skills] she had that allowed her to move and think as quickly as she did, but the [System] and Nievtala hadn't given me any information regarding what I'd need to do to be able to see what my subordinates and companions' [Statuses] were like.
"Hello, Zaaktifi." I grinned back. "I have something for you to look into and give me more information on. When do you think you'll be ready?"
"Immediately." was my mate's reply, a faint grin teasing at the corner of her mouth.