By the time I’d reassembled the loose amalgamation of garments I called clothes I’d almost forgotten what had triggered the whole mess in the first place. Luckily I managed to recall before I refastened my face coverings or maybe I’d have gone through it all again.

I left my face uncovered this time. I was sensing something I couldn’t quite put my finger on, and that meant there were good odds of it being a smell. Scent was by far the least immediate of the mundane senses.

I inhaled deeply through my nose, taking in all the scents of the jungle. It was an overwhelming blend of a thousand different scents, each straight from the anal glands of an uniquely unpleasant animal, but there was something else running through it.

Something that provoked my unease. I frowned and sniffed again. I’d definitely smelt this before, not that long ago, but it wasn’t overly familiar. Something I hadn’t run into on the surface probably.

I sighed and set out to find its source, but if I found a big honking heap of shit at the end I was gonna be pissed.

Of course when I did reach it I found the only thing that could possibly have been worse: nothing. It was just another fucking branch! Plain and empty, exactly like a thousand others, if a bit more open in the middle. I was about to give up and assume my nose was fucking with me when I heard the tapping skitter of approaching feet.

I stepped off to the side, falling into a crouch and letting my leaf cloak drape over me. The only thing visible from outside was a stray bit of leaf. A stray bit of leaf with a spear, but that was just another branch to the eyes of an animal.

A trio of massive ants pushed their way through the foliage and made a beeline right for me. I pushed back the urge to bolt, breathing softly to keep my muscles relaxed and ready. The sight of human-sized insects growing closer was nothing if not intimidating, but breaking under the pressure was a mistake that had killed more than a few prey animals.

My mettle was tested more than I would have liked as the ants approached and I got a far better view of their viciously jagged mandibles than I could have ever wanted, but in the end I was proven right. They weren’t aiming at me at all.

They were aiming at the scent. The soldiers came together around the otherwise unremarkable bit of bark, antennae slapping at it furiously. After a few seconds of that they tapped their antennae together and, ritual complete, proceeded onwards in silent unison.

I stayed still for a good minute, ready for any stragglers, but when it became clear that none were evident I stepped out into the clearing and looked after the ants. I could see for a good ways through the tinner growth here, but they were still well out of sight.

I frowned. This really was less of a clearing, and more of a path. It was hardly unheard of, deer and the like would form simple game trails all the time, but… well actually ants built shit all the time, that was their thing. It made plenty of sense that they’d have carved their own paths through the jungle.

I just really didn’t want to live in a world where ant paths were big enough for me to notice.

I sighed and shook my head. No matter how uncomfortable I was with its existence, I’d have to be a fool not to use it. Not only would I be able to move a bit faster without the undergrowth tripping me up constantly, it might well lead exactly where I wanted to go.

It was tempting to go full paranoid and parallel the ant trail from off to the side, but in the end I wasn’t sure that I would be any better off bumbling into a wannabe ambusher five feet off the trail than in the middle of it.

Instead I took the more bold route and simply followed them directly. I might not be the bold sort of person, but even a raving madman would stumble upon a good idea every so often. Shadowing the trio of soldier ants had an inherent risk, but it would ensure that I wouldn’t be the one triggering any traps.

I broke into a light jog down the path, keeping my ears out for ants and ambushers alike.

It wasn’t more than half a minute before I caught up with the ants, or at least as caught up as I wanted to be. I was close enough that I could peek out and see the soldier ants, but not so close as to be in sight all the time.

Now just walking behind something wasn’t the kind of thing that sounded all that difficult, but it was a hell of a lot more stressful than it sounded. Always on the edge, never too close, never too far. Nonetheless, I found myself getting into the rhythm of it, ducking back when I got too close and surging forwards to catch up when I fell behind.

I managed to smooth out that process significantly when it finally occurred to me to use the exact same method that had lead me here in the first place: sniffing.

The ants weren’t just navigating by scent, they were leaving a trail of it as well. It was far fainter than the patch of pheromones that had attracted my notice in the first place, but it’s recency allowed me to pick up on it anyway. Between their own trail and the scent markers they themselves were following I no longer had to worry about keeping them in sight.

I still had to keep fairly close if I wanted the ants to flush out any predators, but it did add a bit more wriggle room. That was valuable in itself, even more so because I could keep track of their position without sticking my head out and risking them seeing me.

It became a lot less convenient when the scent trail started leading upwards crossing over leaves and

Why the hells I hadn’t expected that, I didn’t know. They were ants after all, the little bastards could cling to anything. Ultimately I was helpless to do more than sigh and start climbing as my pursuit entered the third dimension. It made the whole thing unnecessarily complicated when the branch was sloping up anyway, but evidently the ants didn’t share my opinion.

I suppose you wouldn’t when you could walk on walls. I was taking the hard way by comparison, sniffing out the dotted pheromones and hopping from one handhold to another. But hard way or not, I was following those damn ants.

I hesitated when I reached the mist layer, then pushed on. While obstructing my view wouldn’t have been entirely pleasant in most circumstances, this was actually a good sign. We were getting higher.

I let myself slow further. The streams of mist floating about at this level would obscure me as well as any threats, making it all too easy for me and some predator to blunder together without either of us seeing it coming. Sure, we’d both be equally surprised, but such unplanned encounters innately favored the stronger, more direct creature.

I was increasingly proud of my growth and the strength I’d found, but I still fought best with a plan. The day I blindly threw myself into battle and trusted my strength alone to carry me through was the day I’d die.

Once I slowed a little however, I slowed a lot. The difficulty of picking out the scent trail spiked quickly after a certain point, and I worried I might miss the hidden ant entrance altogether. Fortunately, the difficulty of the fading scent trail plateaued almost as fast as it had spiked.

Ah. The ants’ direct scent fade fast, but the scent markers they laid down deliberately where made of tougher stuff. Clever, but inconvenient. It would make it harder for any predator brave enough to attack the colony to track active ants, but they’d still be able to take advantage of the organizational benefits that came with marking resources.

I wondered how much of this was intentional. Could the ants manually adjust their pheromones, or where they simply spraying what nature had blindly given them?

I suppose I’d never know the answer.

I was exhausted by the time I finally found that damn ant hole. I’d ended losing track of the next scent marker and had to scout outward in ever expanding circles to find it again. It wasted more effort than any other kind of searching and if you thought that sounded bad, well wait until you try it in three dimensions.

The technique had still found me the next scent marker, and with it my path out of here, efficiency be damned. It was nothing special to look at, just another gap in the overgrown jungle with strings of speckled moss draping down across the entrance, but that was why I’d been so happy to exploit my ant guides. No reason to go through all the trouble of searching when some poor sucker could do it for you.

I swung up through the opening, pressing my feet on the opposite side and hooking my hands around the lip. I couldn’t hear anything from inside and the smells were good and faded, so I wasn’t too worried about running face first into anything nasty. Better to start before that changed.

I shimmied my way into the tunnel, getting my ass out of view and finally returning to the comforting simplicity of a good tunnel. Only two directions to get eaten from, no overly bright light… it was good to be home.

This tunnel was unfortunately vertical, so I was reduced to crab walking up with limbs braced on either side. A lot easier if you happened to be an ant, I presumed. Either way, I was getting up this damned tube.

The composition of the walls was an inconsistent mess of roots and dirt and rotting plant matter and stars know what else. While annoying in its persistent ability to jab me right in the spine every time I moved, it did make finding purchase fairly simple. Even if that purchase was directly into my spine.

It didn’t take much climbing for the light to fade, but even in the darkness could feel the tunnel around me. I had no more need of sight to navigate this tunnels than did the ants that had lead me to it.

Maybe that was why they clacked so much, an extra mode of communication in the dark? Or was there no need for any supplement to their pheromones?

Probably not, leaving markers and indicators was really all you needed to get things coordinated and that was all ants needed. I was already starting to pick up the warrior ants’ scent trail again, so that was easily enough to recognize each other in the dark.

I ran my hands over the walls as I climbed, feeling out for a hiding place. If I could smell the ants again, then I was already closer than I wanted to be. This tunnel was too damn tight for the four of us, and I had no interest in blundering face first into an ant’s mandibles.

Luckily the tunnel wasn’t just tight, it was also far from uniform. It winded and wavered, indicating a clear inconsistency in material. All I had to do was find a…

There. One section gave more than it should’ve beneath my hand and I followed up by driving my extended fingers into it and gouging out a chunk of the looser earth. The dirt tumbled tumbled down, simplifying extraction greatly. I shifted over, spreading my legs to brace against the opposite wall so I could claw with both hands.

Even with my full focus it took a good few minutes to carve out a burrow. I lucked out and found a void in the earth, but the trapped pocket of air was only a foot or so on a side. Still, that was a foot or so that I didn’t have to dig through myself.

I’d dug through the softer earth before the space was truly big enough for me, but the scent of ant was already getting stronger. I gritted my teeth and shoved myself in the hole ass first.

I’d tried the head first thing before, and it was a terrible idea. It was always easier on the way in, so why add hardship to getting out again?

It took some doing, but with my legs pushing off against the far wall I managed to force my ass past the thinnest part and wedge myself inside just as a faint scraping began to tickle at my ears.

Shit. If I’d started this earlier I could be safely ensconced right now, but no, I just had to put off the crippling cramps for a little bit longer.

I withdrew my legs into the cubby with me, knees pressed up against my chin. No way in the hells was my spear going to fit, so I just jammed it into the wall across my entrance. The slender length of wood wasn’t much defence as a single window bar, but that was more than trying to fight with it under these conditions would offer.

With my hands free I scooped up dirt from behind me and began packing it around the entrance in one last effort to hide myself and scrounge up some much needed room at the same time.

With the spear shaft taking up the rest of the space I could only imagine my construction to look like the world’s shittiest wattle and daub prison. Kinda impressive if I did say so myself. Wattle and daub prisons were such an inherently stupid idea that you wouldn’t think execution could make them any shittier and yet here I was.

Thankfully, my slapdash wall wasn’t built to keep anyone in, or even anyone out. All I wanted to do was keep the ants from noticing me, and in the dark that amounted to insuring that they didn’t blunder into me.

The distant skittering had grown louder and gained an intermittent tapping to go along with it. I stopped my scrabbling for dirt. With the limited senses of the darkness I couldn’t afford to be handing them another. With sound gone all they’d have would be touch and smell. I wasn’t entirely sure what kind of nose fit on an ant’s face and I wasn’t about to get close enough to check. They definitely had something, but I could only hope that it was cripplingly overspecialized in favor of signalling over hunting.

My tight confines should be holding back more than my limbs anyway. Without air movement they couldn’t pinpoint a source even if they did pick up on my scent. I forced myself to take a slow breath. If I didn’t regulate my breathing I’d risk hyperventilation.

My thoughts continued, chasing themselves in circles and dragging the scant minutes of waiting out into a painful slog. The extra time did nothing to sooth my swirling thoughts. No matter what avenue I tried I could find nothing to ground my fears.

Because there was nothing to ground them. What were an ant’s weaknesses, it’s strengths? I didn’t fucking know! But here I was, buried in a hole of my own making and my life lay on the strengths of ants.

Stars, I hoped they were stupid. If they were even half as stupid as I was all my worry would have been for nothing.

That damn skitter-tap, skitter-tap, skitter-tap grew louder with the pounding of my heart until I shut my mouth, ability to breathe smothered beneath the dread.

I bit down on my cheek. Copper welled in my mouth, the vibrancy of its taste shocking me. Huh. I guess I hadn’t tasted any fresh meat since getting my Senses up this high…

And just like that the danger was past, the trio of ants skittering past my position in my second of distraction.

I froze. It couldn’t just be over like that, with them simply skittering past. I forced myself still, muscles quivering with misplaced adrenaline, but their footsteps were still just barely audible when I burst out of my fragile confinement. I took in sweet gasps of freedom not just from the stale air, but to act.

I darted up the shaft and my sudden anxiety faded away along with the distant sounds of the ants below. I channeled the last vestiges of my fear into movement, pushing myself to make more distance.

I’d seen people break before. You couldn’t grow up in a slave owning society without understanding that not every scar was physical. Still, I thought I was above that.

Yet more foolishness. Nobody was above that, least of all me.

I took a deep breath, drinking in the taste of dark and rot to replace the vibrant pollens and scent markers of the jungle. Scars or not, I was one step higher, one step closer to my goal. There was no time for weakness or worry here, so I pushed back my old anxieties and took one more step.

And one more after that.

And another after that.

And another.