The ant awoke in darkness. His body shimmering in the cold air. Dust clung to his shell. He didn't remember falling, but he remembered helping them across the hall, until he stumbled too close to the edge, and fell into the abyss.
He screamed at the top of his lungs, " Hello!" no response," Is anyone there.... Can anyone here me?!" Only the tunnels replied to him, echoing his voice, almost mocking him. He entered one of the tunnels. Above, fragments of pale fungus light flickered faintly through the cracks in the ceiling, like stars behind a veil of dirt. His antennae trembled, waving through heavy air. His claws scraped at the slope above. Too loose. Too steep. Each attempt sent him sliding back down a bit, soil caking his legs and biting into his joints. He was trapped. Alone.
He turned toward a narrow tunnel, diverging, trying to find a way back up. That was when his legs brushed against something wiry, barely-there filaments like fragile hairs dancing on the floor. He took a step. The ground shook. Without warning, something erupted from the wall beside him, a fleshy missile with a hardened, oversized head. It struck like a hammer, barely missing him.
CRACK.
A puff of dirt exploded into the air. The larva recoiled instantly, slithering back into its burrow, its pale armored body vanishing into the earth. The tunnel sealed shut, dust settling like nothing had ever happened.
Gone. The ant fell in shock. " Wha.... What the... hell was that. Where even is this place." Anxiety started creeping up on him, touching his shoulders as it whispered its thoughts, "You will never make it out alive." The ant sprung on his feet and started running.
Time Passed.
His heart still pounding, the ant fled from the trap zone, deeper into the unknown. Silence returned, once more to haunt him. But it wasn't peace. The tunnels grew narrow and unpredictable. The floor sloped unpredictably, and he had to climb over roots that sweated moisture, each of them pulsing faintly like veins.
His legs ached. The walls closed in sometimes, becoming so tight he had to flatten his body to squeeze through. In others, they opened into sudden expanses, where ceiling fungus glowed like green lanterns and condensation dripped from high above.
The air was thick. Humid and musky, filled with the scent of decomposing plant matter and the faint tang of predator musk. He passed holes, tiny round pockets in the dirt, some oozing slime, others filled with twitching roots or insect wings half-buried in soil. Every sound became a warning. Ever sound proposing danger. The click of shifting dirt, the subtle hiss of burrowing things, the occasional vibration in the ground. It was all alive. Everything here was waiting to feed on him... waiting for him to lower his guard.
At one point, he passed a tunnel wall that looked unusually smooth. "Could it be a path that will lead him out of here." he wondered. Curious, he brushed it with an antenna and jerked back. The surface was lined with old exoskeletons, crushed and embedded into the wall like fossilized scars, barely visible unless one touched them. The ant's breath hitched. This place was unnatural; danger could be lurking around every corner. But he had no choice. He had to go forward.
Eventually, the tunnel curved and widened. A distant, wet sound echoed through the stone, almost tearing. Then chewing. He crept closer, his tiny form hugging the wall. Beyond a root curtain lay a hollow chamber. At its center crouched a creature, all dark shell and wicked pincers, its massive claws clenched around a twitching corpse. A spider, like the one he saw above, half-eaten. The creature tore another chunk free, then froze. Its head rose slowly, pincers twitching, like it had sniffed something sweeter in the air. The ant froze.
His eyes, limited but sharp in this dim world, locked onto the creature. Not quite a spider. Not quite a beetle. Something else entirely.
It loomed there in the shallow glow of glowing root-fungus, crouched over a mangled corpse, its body still partially concealed by crisscrossing shadows. Segmented limbs twitched methodically. Its front legs—no, claws—were long and curved like sickles, and they clicked together with slow deliberation, as though it were cracking its own knuckles in anticipation. The ant tilted his head.
It had no stinger. But it looked like it didn't need one. Those front claws were wide, serrated like leaf-edges, strong enough to split open a spider's abdomen like wet bark. Its body was coated in a deep bronzish-black sheen, like old, polished wood, but marked with countless dull scratches and scars, reminders of things it had fought and won against. The back of its shell curled slightly upward, almost like a tail, but ending in a set of strange bristles rather than a point.
And then—its face.
The ant recoiled instinctively. Its head was flat and wide, like a hunting mask. Eyes—not two, but several—glittered along the top ridge, like a necklace of glass beads reflecting the ambient glow. Its mouthparts worked slowly, mandibles moving sideways, slurping something sticky from the crushed spider beneath it.
"Well… well… what's this?"
Its voice was dry and sharp, like legs on brittle leaves.
"An ant?"
The ant instinctively took a step back.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa little one. I am not going to hurt you." It smiled and stepped forward." The ant held his ground, standing firm.
"Do you know a way-out mister?" his voice shaking, from the scene he had just witnessed.
"Why yes of course! Why don't you come closer and I will guide you outside?" his simile tuned into a grin. The ant skeptical, but with no other choice, inches closer to the being. But as he got close enough, the creature snapped his mandibles, scaring the little ant. The ant started running on shattered nerves, the monster behind him shouted, "Run, little one! Run! Show me what you got!" his voice filled with passion and hunger, chasing the ant, ever so close behind him.