WARNING: The chapters of this story have been rearranged, the comments below may not properly reflect the content of this chapter. The order has been changed due to accurate constructive criticism, and these changes will reduce the jarring back and forth between perspectives. Thank you to all of my readers whose feedback allowed me to make these changes, please enjoy the chapter.

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Damien felt fear growing within his cerulean nemesis. After the first battle, there had been a short period of fear yet the blue energy soon transitioned to a mix of hatred and greed. Damien could understand that instinct. With each loss his enemy's desire to possess whatever power had defied him would grow. It had been the same for Damien and Rex, even his ants. Rex stormed in, slaughtering his maggots and leaving, taking Damien's hard earned mana time and time again. The ants had nearly destroyed him, but in the end he captured their queen instead of destroying her. The more ferocious the enemy, the more desperate he was to subjugate them. But after this second battle, the fear festered. Damien knew that he would win so long as he could continue to endure.

As he repelled the rodents he saw one single thing in the enemy who sent them, and that was weakness. His enemy had found a much weaker lair, and completely underestimated him. Had he sent even one more mouse, Damien would have died. Even when victory was within his grasp, he still held an army three hundred strong in reserve. But there was far more to it than that. His minions were immense, at least for their species. They fought and died, devouring one another, spending every day in an endless struggle for survival. But these rodents were fat and spoiled. They raced to their death's at their master's command, but they were novices on the field of battle.

They were all the size of their wild counterparts. They spent their days lazily nibbling on grass, and it was clear they had never had a real fight before. This blue lair had it far too easy, it had grown far too complacent. Damien couldn't allow that. He could not suffer the thought of the villain who killed Sheila being some lucky bastard who hadn't worked for anything he had. Just because he was stronger and older he thought Damien would roll over and die. But Damien was patient. He would endure these attacks as long as it took. He would build his forces and bleed this enemy dry. And when he had marshaled an army mighty enough to lay waste to his foe, he would destroy him.

As this plot simmered in his glowing heart, he began to prepare for the next wave. The coming battle would be more one-sided than the last. He was learning the ways of war. This was not some glorious battlefield of honor and justice, his life was on the line, and he would use every dirty trick he could to win. The next three days were filled with constant digging and trap laying, as fast as his mana reserves would allow.

The first order of the day was to control the battle line. After this second encounter, he had learned much about the point of contact between him and his foe. Through the access tunnel, there was an invisible wall. This wall was the end of his own crimson domain and the beginning of the enemy lair. Beyond this wall, all he could see was a deep black void. By expending his mana he could push this barrier away, driving out the enemy influence, however it worked both ways and the blue force could push back. At first Damien was winning, it wasn't even a close match, but as he grew closer and closer to the blue's lair and further from his own it grew harder. More and more energy was required to drive away the enemy. He wouldn't be forcing blue out of his own lair anytime soon, however there was an important lesson to be learned here. This worked both ways, and the same applied to him. The energy required for this enemy to crush him in a battle of mana would be astronomical.

Now that he knew he could safely maintain his own territory, he expanded south towards the blue. He dug a tunnel out of the side of the cave entrance leading due south, further than the southernmost boundaries of his rooms. Then from the end of this tunnel he expanded east and west, one end stopped just short of opening a new path into the world above, the other ran the entire length of his existing territory with the other. The result was a barrier in the form of the tunnel completely protecting his exposed side from attack. As his enemy burrowed out to attack, it would reach this section first. Because it was impossible for the enemy to dig outside of it's own domain, it would be forced to either drive out Damien's influence at great expense or follow the existing tunnel which would leave them at the proper entrance to Damien's lair. With this, traps could be focused around a single approach instead of spread out along the entire southern wall. Damien intended to take full advantage of this.

The tunnel connecting his cave entrance to the southern barrier would become a ruinous hell for the next wave of rodents. Before he had dug cylindrical pits, to catch enemies unawares or simply hope they were knocked in. This time, he dug trenches. Deep trenches three feet deep and one foot across with sheer cliffs dropping down. Again he took the bones from the wreckage of the battlefield, crafting stakes and spears from femurs and ribs. Soon the cavernous trenches were filled with the macabre stakes, ready to receive the doomed charge of the enemy. As the old fortifications were rendered obsolete, he directed one of the two ambushing ant colonies to begin the arduous process of moving into the new fortifications. He dug line after line until he reached his main tunnel. From there he returned to traditional pits, this time with a special twist.

There were no spikes, however these pits were four feet deep and a full foot wide. Their unique ability was something he had actually used before, Ajax had finally recovered enough to web the pits. Just as the pit he had used to catch Rex, these ones were lined with two dozen layers of thick, sticky webs and then topped with a tightly woven web which was then covered in a mixture of moss and dirt. The meticulously disguised pit wouldn't cave in to anything smaller than a rat, that is of course unless there was a swarm of mice passing overhead. Damien was well prepared for a long drawn out war, and to that end he desired mice and rats of his own. He had captured a few in this last battle, however they were not as simple to breed as his multitude of insects. The more adults he secured, the faster his new army would grow.

His captives seemed far more difficult to penetrate than even the mighty Rex had been. It was one thing to indoctrinate a wild creature, but to dominate a being which was already imbued with the mana of another master was a different matter entirely. He could feel the blue influence slowly fading away, but it would be a long struggle. The overworked Ajax had bound them in oversized cocoons to wait out the ordeal without doing irreparable harm to Damien's lair. They screeched and squealed, but they were not going anywhere. The ambient energy they released was also a pleasant boost to Damien's reserves. It was yet another reason why he needed to dominate more of the warm-blooded beasts.

Before moving on to the inner defenses of his Lair, he expanded north. A tunnel now jutted east, out towards the open sky from the north eastern wall of his first room. After a few feet, he turned north, running parallel to the hillside. Every few feet that he dug out, he shot a small side tunnel east, widening to a small cave before opening a small tunnel into the world above. He continued his northward digging until he had four such tunnels. He had realized that his best hope for gathering new exotic beasts was to give them more places to enter, and the small caves were placed in hope something might take up residence. Small prey animals seeking shelter, or a predator looking for a new den. It cost him nearly nothing to dig and maintain, and yet the benefits were potentially enormous.

With the front additions completed, he passed over the first room, leaving his insects to their own devices. At the hallway to the second room he lay down another series of defensive lines with the same sheer trenches and stakes. The only difference would be that these trenches would be covered as soon as Ajax recovered from his extensive webbing work. The finishing touch was placing the second ambushing ant colony here, as long as everything went well these ants would not suffer heavy casualties. Their job was to act as skirmishers amongst the deadly stakes, retreating if they came under direct attack. In this way, he could divide the two ant colonies safely.

The final round of defenses were laid in the tunnel connecting his current throne room and the second hall. Here was where his final defenses rested. It might seem strange, yet being so spread out in the last few battles had taught him the value of choke-points when outmatched in a fight. In this case, laying traps increased the value of these halls an immense amount, as all the enemies had to be funneled into a small area. And this was the most vital hall of all, as after this nothing lay between him and the intruding armies. Here was where he placed his mighty red ants. These ants were naturally gifted with a size and strength only the mightiest heroes of the black ants could boast of. To allow them to make the most of their strength he built large mounds throughout the hallway.

The mounds were all a foot tall, gradually slopped on each side, and riddled with countless ant passageways. Their purpose was to force the mice into choke-points where the ants could surround and slaughter them before retreating through the passageways to set another ambush. He had run out of bones, but soon the mounds would be covered with stakes to create a more daunting obstacle and further funnel the enemy mice into the kill zones. The final touch on this fortified hallway was that Ajax took up residence on it's roof, spreading his webs across the passage.

With his defenses laid, it was now time to decorate. On the fourth day of renovations, he brought several moss patches over into his boss room and scattered them around to foster their growth. Then he hollowed out dozens of the same alcoves he had placed in the first two rooms and spread them out along every wall in the final room and along every hallway as well. His cave walls were riddled with cozy spots for his minions to squabble over, although unless he placed food for the maggots and grubs in them, their only occupants were beetles. Next he examined each and every last creature in his domain, selecting the largest and strongest of each species to propagate.

Several of his mighty maggots had somehow gained the ability to mate despite never transitioning into mature flies, and these were among his first choices for his new room. By now the greatest among them had grown to a full and bloated two inches, mostly from cannibalizing their lesser cousins. His best flies were keeping pace, with the mature adults nearly the same size. Of his insects however, the carrion beetles showed the greatest growth. Their constant devouring of the maggots allowed them to swell up to three inches. The predators truly showed the most formidable growth, although even his scavengers were becoming aggressive predators at this point, all except the moss eating beetles. They were brought into the next room as well, but only as a source of food for Rex and the other beasts. Then there were the captive mice.

After being bound in silken string, they were dumped in a freshly dug and very deep pit at the rear of the room. Escape would be impossible, and down here in the throne room they would be corrupted faster than anywhere else. He made sure to leave plenty of room for new arrivals in the pit.

As the final day of renovations wound down to it's close, he felt movement atop his heart. His entire world stopped for a moment before the egg sac ripped wide open and two hundred baby spiders swarmed out of the breach.

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Legend:

Big Red - Damien's heart

Red - Traps

Yellow - Ajax's web

Orange - Rex's den

Pink - Ant colonies

Blue - Hostage pit

High Res: http://i.imgur.com/fynNY4L.png