A Bug's Life: The Ant Queen
Chapter 6
Home Sweet Home
Morrow came, as the dark grey clouds enveloped the bright sky above, howling their strong winds through the branches of several charred bushes, littered throughout the ravaged landscape of scorched earth and burned grass; all the greenery, blackened by the fires that raged across the grassland, wiping out everything in their path, until eventually dying out on their own.
Ash particles filled the air, blown by the screaming winds; if one were to stop and listen, it'd be like hearing agonising wails from the many bugs that tragically perished in the blazes. Barely any colour could be found, as grey and black carpeted the barren wasteland, with a few small green plants squeezing their way out of the smouldered soil.
Food had become scarce, since it was engulfed and eaten by the raging flames. No bug could, nor ever wanted to live there, excluding a very few that happened to live within a massive tree, located amidst the desolate place, once a beautiful grassland, teeming with colourful life and vigorous with lush green.
The humongous tree itself, a crooked trunk, stretched out to the sky with gnarled branches, and in between the large roots, towering over and digging into the darkened earth, was a huge mouth agape; two smaller holes above the opening, appearing as eyes, had given the tree a frightening face, as if it was wailing out in pain and agony.
Standing guard atop the towering roots, whilst looking through the rolled-up grass blade telescopes with water droplets serving as lens, a couple of hornets were watching about for either their own, or any incoming intruders. The others patrolled the entrance down below, constantly on the defensive, ready to pounce on and pursue any invader that dared to approach their home, the Hornet's Nest, housed within the tree trunk.
One of the hornets screeched loudly to their another, after they'd spotted a swarm in the distance, recognising it as their own. Shrieking back in reply, the other hornet whirred its wings and up they flew to the branch with a snail shell sitting on it.
Blowing into the attached mouthpiece of the snail shell, and a monstrous roar was blared, alerting the other hornets of their queen's return with the captured ants. Gathering into two symmetrical lines, the hornets all stood at attention, as they awaited their ruler's arrival with the rest of the swarm, and their soon-to-be dinners.
Swarming through the air choking with ash, were Thistle and her drones; while each had their own ant or even two squirming in their clutches, close to Thistle's chest was Dot firmly in her grasp, as she flew over the many thickets of charred shrubs, and the blackened landscape. Plump cheeks puffed up from all the tears shed, Dot cried herself to sleep, ever since being forcefully taken from her home. A grin across Thistle's face was drawn, seeing how she and her swarm were drawing near home.
"Wake up, sweetie! We're home!" patronized Thistle, as she shook Dot a few times. As she slowly awakened from her slumber, Dot expected to be back at Ant Island, in her daisy bed with her mother, elder sister, and even Flik, all there to assure her that everything was just a bad dream. Instead, Dot had found herself held against Thistle's chest; as her eyes darted around her surroundings in a desperate search for any signs of colour, she found almost nothing but blackness and melancholy.
Accompanied by two hulking guards, heads helmeted with spiky chestnut shells, out came a hornet unlike any other, having antennas curled up like her queen, but was much smaller than the rest. Her body was quite slender, and her abdomen fairly round but not too plump; her eyes were beautifully blue with a hint of green. Passing by the remained hornets, the three soon drawn themselves to a halt in anticipation of their queen's homecoming.
The moment Thistle touched the ground, all the hornets present, including the one different from her fellow hornets, all kneeled down in unison, bowing their heads before her very majesty. "Ah, home sweet home!" Thistle breathed in delight of being finally home, after a while of being in the air. Transferring Dot to one of her upper hands, Thistle began nearing the three bowing hornets. "Arise. You too, Nettle," Nettle, and the two guards, whom were also Thistle's personal bodyguards, soon rose up from their feet, as ordered.
"Guards, cage this one up, and take her to my level!" with one guard taking Dot from Thistle's hand, the other went to get a cage to lock her up in, "my daughter and I have some things we need to discuss." "Daughter?" Dot said in slight surprise, as her eyes piqued with curiosity, only to be hushed by a growl from the guard. "Ah, ah, ah! I wouldn't want her spoiled if I were you! She's an absolute fit for a queen! So, I expect her to be carefully handled and well presented, once our banquet comes! Capisce?" Thistle warned through her gritted teeth, earning herself a simple nod of assurance from her guard.
Shoved into the ball-shaped cage, Dot was locked up and carried away by the other guard; the cage itself was made from small bent sticks, held together by tightened grass blades, and had a tiny door that can be opened, but had to be closed and then quickly tied with a grass blade, to prevent the captured from escaping.
As soon as the two hornets left with their captive, Thistle averted her attention onto Nettle, before snapping her fingers, beckoning for her to take a little stroll with her for a little talk, like what a mother and her daughter would, to which Nettle followed without question.
"I trust that the preparations are moving along smoothly?" inquired Thistle, wanting to know how much progress the swarm had made with the preparations for the hornets' banquet, since she'd left to pay Ant Island a threatening visit. "Everything's going along well, mother," Nettle replied, "The tables on the top floor have been set up, and the workers are right on schedule. Our banquet should be ready soon, before we make our leave for Ant Island at nightfall."
"Ahem! Don't you mean "Hornet Island"? As it soon shall be known?" remarked Thistle, with an eyebrow and a finger raised in query. "Oh? Oh, y-y-yes. Hornet Island, as we'll be calling it. Yeah, y-y-you're right..." Nettle trailed off, diverting her eyes away from her mother.
"Is that a problem?" Thistle demanded darkly, as she grabbed Nettle by the chin to face her once more, after she'd noticed how she wasn't looking her in the eye when addressing her. Feeling some of the sweat rolling down her forehead, as her mother's darkened face tore right into her soul, Nettle instantly answered, "n-n-no. No, i-i-it's not. No problems. Wouldn't want to have any problems with you... Again."
"Good, glad to hear that!" Thistle's dark expression had quickly shifted to smug, knowing that her daughter hadn't forgotten her place, "Now, if you'll excuse me, daughter. I have some lazy bums I need to kick! Consider this as my "friendly reminder" to them!" After being left there standing by Thistle, Nettle gently placed a hand on her right cheek, which bore three scars, as closed her eyes, sighing inwardly to herself in relief; Nettle feared, if she'd given her mother the wrong answer, she would've had to face her wrath right there and then, like last time.
Up the tube they went, and the guards, along with their caged young ant, were inside the Hornet's Nest; the nest itself was definitely more than what met the eye: impressive for its size, its architecture unique, as everything was constructed with a paper-like material, a mixture of hornets' saliva and chewed-up wood, and its envelope patterned with swirls. The nest's inside was gleaming with light green mushrooms, growing from within the envelope's walls. Ten levels there were, all of which were connected by a thick mainstay and a couple of pillars to keep them from falling on top of another. As bumpy the floors were, columned were ceilings with hexagonal cells, either stored with food or sleeping with hornets comfy inside. The upper floors housed the drones, whereas the workers slept in the lower levels, and the food was mostly stored somewhere in the nest's middle.
Peeping through the stick cage, Dot could see the hornet workers in a single file, moping with food in their hands, as they flew up from one level to the next, one at a time, whilst being monitored by the drones, each holding a glowing mushroom in one of their free hands. She noticed how they seemed to appear malnourished and skinny, looking like shrivelled-up husks, with bags under their tired eyes, and expressions of sorrow and tiredness.
What worsened, though, was how their drone counterparts treated them: apart from being poked in the abdomens by their spears, the workers had to endure all the barking from the drones as they dawdled right by, as if being ordered to get moving. Dot's expression had gradually changed to that of sympathy, as she continued to watch the workers being bossed and pushed around; she couldn't help but feel reminded of the oppression and the indignity that her colony had to suffer from Hopper and his grasshopper gang.
Disturbed by what she'd seen next, Dot had witnessed one of the workers dropping to their knees and collapsing to the floor, overcome with fatigue; ignored by the rest of the workers, as they walked around their body unfazed, a drone had come by to drag them by the foot, and was then thrown amongst a small pile of other workers, who'd unfortunately succumbed to a similar fate.
Dot felt sick to the stomach of how cruel the drones were being to their worker counterparts; at the very least, her colony was being bullied by a different group of insects, but what she saw was happening within the same nest, within the same swarm.
Flying up by several levels, and the guards were now at the edge of Thistle's personal floor, underneath the top level, and passed by many pillars and columns. Dot squinted her eyes a little bit, after seeing a familiar speck of blue in the distance; with her mouth agape and eyes widened, Dot beamed upon recognition of that blue speck to be the ant that she'd thought would never see again.
Tied up, while being suspended by a single long blade of grass from the hexagonal hole in the ceiling, was Flik, with his face down at the ground, crestfallen; his antennas soon perked up, when he'd heard someone calling out his name in glee.
"Dot?" Flik could recognise that shrilly voice anywhere; snapping around to see where that voice came from, at the corner of his eye, he was met with Dot in a cage, carried by Thistle's guards. He was initially happy to see her alright at first, but then his cheerful expression quickly faded, realising that she too was nabbed by the hornets, along with the other ants.
"Oh my gosh, Flik! It is you!" shrilled Dot, obviously ecstatic to see her best friend again, after what felt like it had been so long, before suddenly silenced by the guard's snarl, making her recoil in fright inside her cage. With their head, the guard had motioned their fellow to hang up Dot's cage, to which they responded with a low grunt of affirmation.
Taking the cage from their hands, up the ceiling the guard flew, as they knotted the grass blade around the cage's handle; spitting mucus into their hand, they stuck the grass blade into the hexagon hole with it, dangling the cage down with Dot in it. The two guards then growled at the two ants fiercely, as they gave them a deathly glare, serving as a deadly reminder that they would stop at nothing to hunt them down in case they tried to escape.
Once they'd made their leave, the two ants could at last catch up on what had happened, since he'd left the colony, and the grasshoppers' defeat. "I-I-I didn't think I'd see you again, Dot. I assumed the worst, when Thistle said she'd pay the colony a... "visit". You, of course, know what I mean," Flik had emphasized the word "visit" with much remorse, blaming himself for the hornets raiding Ant Island, and the abduction his colony's majority.
"Yeah... I do know..." Dot's curly antennas drooped, as her face fell. Noticing her fallen expression and hanging antennas, Flik had perceived that something else must've happened at Ant Island, something terrible.
"Dot, I know Thistle didn't just have her minions steal the ants. What else had she done?" instead of a response, Dot averted herself away from him, preferring to not say any more. Upon notice, Flik's face intensified with seriousness and concern, "Dot, what happened?" "She... She..." Dot's bottom lip began to tremble, as the painful memory of watching her mother being stabbed by Thistle with her stinger started replaying in her head; no matter how hard she tried to repress it from tearing her apart mentally, it was to no avail, because of how powerful her trauma was for her to handle. "Thistle killed my mum!" Dot whimpered, concealing her eyes, as she sobbed quietly to herself.
Hearing these devastating news, Flik's serious face had suddenly turned grievous, finding himself in utter disbelief of what his antennas had told him; he felt more guilty than ever before, as if creating the nutcracker for the hornets wasn't bad enough, Thistle had murdered not only Dot's mother, but the colony's queen as well. He already recognised the massive significance the queen had to a colony, as without her, the colony would crumble down to a low rubble; Flik could only imagine the amount of distress the colony was in back home, with their queen murdered.
However, someone else important had come flying to Flik's mind: a particular someone, not only an ant, but a princess as well, the worrisome type. "Wait... What about your sister? Is she alright?" wondered Flik, as he began to worry about Atta; hope glimmered that nothing dire had come to her, whether that be from Thistle and her hornets, or something else entirely, something much bigger than herself...
To be continued...
Quick Author's Note:
Hey guys, FireAntKing2311 here. Chapter 6 is here finally.
This chapter was quite the challenge for me to write, due to the amount of times I had to re-edit this. Anyway, in this chapter, not only are we re-introduced to Flik, who has been absent from this story for some time, since the first chapter, we're introduced to a new character named Nettle, who'd be voiced by Arleen Sorkin (who you'd might recognise as the actress who voiced Harley Quinn in Batman: The Animated Series), the hornet swarm as a whole, and their home, the Hornets' Nest; all I can say is that they're a complete contrast to the ant colony, back at Ant Island. While the ant colony is more peaceful, the hornet swarm is more barbaric, as you can see.
Stay tuned for chapter 7, as not only are we going to see Atta again, but we're about to be introduced to another new character, who'd basically be her companion who'd tag along on her journey to rescue the ants and bring them back home safely.
That's all for now.
FireAntKing2311, out.