Inta and Entoma woke up when they heard the noise approaching their room. "You are ready?" The scorpionman said when he presented himself at the door. His claws clicked together at a steady rhythm that might have meant anything as far as Inta was concerned.
'Is he impatient, condescending, eager?' Just how this one felt was impossible to say and so Inta followed Entoma's lead.
"Yes, almost." Entoma said as she reached for her clothing and tossed Inta's over to himself. "We typically wear clothing, so we take a little longer to prepare for the day." Entoma explained, and the clicking claws stopped.
And so did Entoma. She looked over her shoulder, "Inta, don't." She said, he was in the midst of pulling his shirt over his body and stopped like a statue.
"What?" Inta asked, his eyes twitched a little.
"We're in their country, shouldn't we adopt their customs while we're here? I am a diplomat after all, aren't I?" Entoma asked the question rhetorically and tried not to laugh when Inta's open mouthed expression, fangs and all, were frozen in dismay.
"I… suppose, but I'm not. I'm supposed to protect you, and my clothing is enchanted." He pointed out.
Entoma held out her hand and cast her spell, "Chain armor bugs, come forth!" She called out, and seemingly from nothing, a hoard of small, black, ladybug shaped insects, each one slightly larger than a fingernail, they were a swarm so vast that their little legs could be heard scratching over the floor as they went toward the target she designated. Inta.
He looked down, his feet were rooted in place, his hands went out to protest for a moment as they crawled over the entirety of his naked flesh, he was soon wreathed head to toe, save for his eyes and nose, and then in one single motion, each insect bit down on the neighboring head to it, and the armor was secured.
"This is different." Inta said and waved his arms around, then lifted his feet and set them back on the floor again. "Very different. But how strong are they?"
"Better than steel, weaker than orichalcum, somewhere around mithril, though I've never tested it myself." Entoma answered,
Entoma set aside her bug mask and stood there clad in nothing but the body with which she was created. Her slender legs were purple, both as smooth and as reflective as glass. Her body as shapely as that of a youthful human woman. It was easy to forget that she was a hybrid and not some race of humans, until you saw the eight eyes of her expressionless wide face, and the legs that served in other times to disguise themselves as short human hair, took their place on either side of her cheeks.
"We are ready." Entoma said, and the scorpionman's clicking claws resumed as he led them out of their rooms and down the hall. Contrary to their expectations, he didn't take them back through the throne room.
Rather he led them down another path which carried them deeper and deeper inside the structure.
"First. The farms." The scorpionman said as if he sensed their curiosity. There were no lights to be had, leaving the small hallway engulfed in darkness. The way was narrow and the walls were nothing but bare stone, however as they went farther and farther down the hall, Inta noticed something.
'It's sloping down, it's gentle, but it's there, and it's also curving, so slightly it's barely noticeable…' The why wasn't evident, perhaps mere aesthetics, some innate racial preference for a particular design.
He was still wondering about the why of the design when the narrow path opened up. Inta didn't realize it at first, not until the scorpionman stopped and opened his arms out wide to prevent either from passing.
"Stop." Their escort said, and then Inta looked down.
The great abyss was deep beyond words, and it stared up at him beneath the sheer cliff face and seemed to pierce his heart like a knife of ice. "What is… what is that noise?" He asked when he heard the scittering in the darkness, the endless creeping, crawling, tapping and clicking that crawled up and down his spine and added to the ominousness of the empty black below.
"The ants." Their guide said without needing to hear the question. "Now wait." He added and tapped his claw against the wall. Inta kept peering down the sheer underground cliff and into the vast buried canyon, the scittering noise was growing closer. "Ants are very strong. Even one can carry five thousand times its own weight. That fact makes this, and our civilization, possible." Inta could have sworn there was a note of pride in their guide's longest set of sentences yet.
The outstretched arm which stretched in front of Inta now lowered a little to gesture toward the sharp dropoff where the skittering was loudest, closest, and rising fast.
Then an ant's head jumped into view and it clambered half over the edge, its giant head the size of a grown man's chest, its long and jagged mandibles clicked together, and the fine hairs over its entire body swayed back and forth while it waited. A second appeared a moment later, and then the heads lowered as if to defer to the trio.
"Follow." The nameless guide uttered and his many legs stepped over the two ant bodies and began to descend.
Inta looked more closely, rising on his tiptoes and looking over the edge, ants lined up end to end, each one with their jaws clenched onto the foot of the one in front, creating a long double line which swayed back and forth what had to be hundreds of feet in the air.
"You farm down here?" Entoma asked and ran her hand over the wall, a faint feel of moisture ran along the enchanted false hand. "What do you grow?"
"Ants. Fungus. Many things. We can grow nothing above. So we grow below." The guide said and with that, Entoma and Inta stepped on top of the giant ant's head.
They gave no sign of discomfort, and if anything didn't seem to notice anyone was there at all.
"Remarkable, and we're going to get to see it all?" Entoma asked, keeping her voice full of praise as she caught up to a pace or two behind her guide.
"Yes. We will begin at the base, then take you to the Queen." Their escort said without a backward glance.
"I can hardly wait." Entoma promised, and made a playful skip from one ant to the next, and the clicking claws of their guide, clicked just a little bit faster when she said it.