Monte and his friends were sitting in the inn again. They were drinking Slug Butt ale again.

“This place needs music.” Auggie said. He grimaced while taking a huge swig of his butt.

“Delicious.” He said, smacking his lips.

“Urrrppppp.” Dante let out a belch. “This food is good. I can’t believe Tree made a mushroom that tastes like a steak.”

“Yes. That is exactly what he did.” Monte agreed. There was silence as people at the table continued to eat. There was only the occasional smack of lips and gulping of ale.

“So Tracy.” Monte asked. “What did you do in the before times? You were always so cagey about it.”

“Probably because it was embarrassing.” Auggie noted.

“Ha.” Monte laughed. “Did somebody have an onlyfans?”

“No.” Tracy glared at the two idiots. “Nothing like that.” Tracy took a deep breath. “I wrote fanfics.” Tracy muttered.

Monte and Auggie leaned in closer. “I couldn’t hear you.” Monte observed.

“I wrote fanfics.” Tracy said a tad louder. “You assholes.”

“Are you going to tell us what you wrote?” Asked Auggie.

“Fine.” Tracy agreed. “I liked to write mashups of different universes. Like what would happen if Harry Potter and Peter Parker switched places? Would Harry use his magic to be Spiderman? How would Peter handle Hogwarts? You know stuff like that.”

“I would totally read that.” Monte said. “I can’t believe you never told us about it.”

“It was embarrassing okay.” Tracy replied. “I don’t mind if anonymous internet trolls don’t like my work. But it’s somehow different when I know the person, you know?”

Monte chuckled. “Just when you think you know a person.”

========================================================================

I was hard at work deep in the workshop. I was having all sorts of ideas. Growing weapons was awesome. But I had an idea about armor. I was wondering if I could make bio-armor for certain people.

I thought about different ways I could do this. Maybe some sort of bark skin. Or maybe I could use the ant chitin to make the armor.

I asked Bitey what she thought. “Bitey. I want to make armor for the humans. Do you have any ideas?”

“I always have ideas.” Queen Bitey responded. “But on this subject, I don’t.”

“That’s not exactly helpful.” I replied. “Are you still upset about the other queens thing?”

“Are you still upset?” Queen Bitey mockingly said. “Yes, I am still upset. How could you?”

“I am sorry.” I replied. It’s always better to apologize. “Would you like more control over the colony?”

“How?” Queen Bitey asked.

“Well. I’ve been working on a map room.” I told Queen Bitey. “It uses a resonating magic to reflect everything that is happening in my domain.” I showed Queen Bitey a prototype I had been working on. “It shows everything in a top down view. Information is relayed to here. And displays here.” I pointed to a circular pit in the map room.

“Right now the map is set to only show the surrounding environment. But it can be set up to show all the creatures here.” I showed Queen Bitey the control panel.

“The controls look a little small.” Queen Bitey commented.

“I was using the memories of humans to make this.” I replied. “I didn’t change the scale when I created it. But that is something I can easily fix.”

“Those red dots?” Bitey asked.

“Those are enemies.” I replied. “At least, they are unidentified creatures existing inside my domain. I generally assume anything not mine is hostile.”

“Hmmm.” Bitey thought out loud. “The blue dots?”

“Friendlies.” I replied. “Here, press this. You can select them. Here is some basic information.” I selected the blue dots Bitey had asked about. A detailed blue pop up formed over the selected dots.

“Four spryotes are nearby.” I told BItey. “Pretty cool isn’t it?” I was very proud of my creation.

“Can they take the enemy dots?” Bitey asked. “Have them defend us.”

“Sure.” I replied. “I don’t really know what the dots are though. Could be anything.” I selected the red dots and sent the spryotes towards the red dots. I could just use my thoughts and think ‘attack’ towards my minions but that was only a solution for me. “Here is the attack command.” I highlighted another button. “Spryotes are pretty stupid, but they’re pack hunters and their special attack is hiliarious.” I laughed at the memories of some previous fights.

“What happens?” Bitey asked.

“Just watch.” I replied. I selected some units from further away. “These guys are my eyes in the sky.” I told Bitey. “They’re small enough no one ever really sees them. And they have a cool swarm attack that is awesome. The dragoneyes swarm together and breath fire together.” I told Bitey.

“But we are just putting them on oversight.” I explained. “They don’t really need a whole lot to get a good picture and I want to surprise somebody with the fire attack.”

Another screen fuzzed to life. “This is what they’re seeing.” The four spryotes were circling a group of somethings.

“I don’t know what those are.” I said. “But I don’t think it matters.”

The spryotes started circling the monsters. I could see the spryotes yipping and yapping. I hadn’t gotten a sound transmission device. It was low on my list of priorities.

“Those things look like crabs.” I said.

“Crabs?” Queen Bitey asked.

“Like water spiders.” I answered. “Those are really big crabs.”

I could finally see the results of the spyrotes attack. The crabs started moving erratically.

“What is happening?” Queen Bitey asked me.

“The spyrotes have a powerful hallucinogenic attack.” I explained with a laugh. “Those crabs are high as fuck right now.”

The spyrotes moved in for the kill. The crabs didn’t put up much resistance. Whatever was in the spyrote attack was very potent. I wondered if the adventurers knew about it. Then again, getting a person with superpowers super high was probably a bad idea.

Queen Bitey watched the spyrotes eat the crabs. “You can track everything here?”

“Yes. I can pretty much see or feel everything that happens inside my domain. Scouts that go outside my boundaries have to report back for me to receive the updates. But otherwise it is pretty cool.” I explained.

“Ok.” Queen Bitey said. “I will do this instead. I will control your war room. Make other egg layers for your troops.”

“Can do.” I excitedly replied. This was going to be awesome.