I roll into the parking lot, the sputtering of my ancient sedan drowned out by the crunching of gravel under the tires. The windows were open wide, the AC blasting, but the summer heat poured in relentlessly, stealing the cool air before I could enjoy it. I kicked the door open as soon as the E brake, the most reliable brake still on the car, cranked into place.

I bailed out of the vehicle as soon as the AC cut out, snapping up a hat before the door shut like some raider of lost things. Even with the cap on, the bright gravel made me squint down the long country road, waiting for my contact. The hair under the hat grew sweaty instantly.

With little else to do for the moment, I circled the car, eyeing the rural park-and-ride for a bit of shade to stand under. Instead, the lot was surrounded by a thick knot of ground vines, a carpet of grey-green that wrapped about itself as though frozen amidst an epic struggle.

I was slightly mesmerized by it, letting my eyes follow one vine for as long as I could before moving to another. I had lost track of time entirely by the time a white plume of dust appeared in the distance. It wasn’t until the roar of an ancient pick up turning into the lot that I shook out of my focus.

I crossed the lot quickly as the far door of the truck opened and slammed. From around the corner of the lifted vehicle a tiny old woman appeared. She held out a hand and I quickly filled it with cash. She took a moment to count it, then she gestured to me to come closer. She pulled down the gate to the truck bed and withdrew a cardboard box.

The box rattled with each slight jostle like many thousands of chimes and I winced. She chuckled, opening the box to let me inspect my new project. Inside the box were hundreds of vials. Inside each vial, hundreds upon thousands of ants.

The Dryad woke with a start, the cold morning air causing her to shiver and send a violent rustle through her leaves. She sat up on her branch and blinked about in confusion.

This… isn’t my bed?

Then the previous day’s calamities washed over her once more. A buzz and siren filled her mind for a brief moment as she took it all in once more. She pinched her cheeks violently, but this new, rural reality remained.

Below, the raven, Poe, sprawled lazily, a wing bursting through the dome-like nest he’d constructed in the night. He breathed slowly and the Dryad considered the merits of disturbing his peace with a wrestling move she’d seen on TV. With her form now quite compact, feats of such athletics seemed a lot more realistic than before.

A golden eye opened and locked on her as though detecting her mischievous intent. She withdrew behind a branch with a meek wave and the bird’s breathing slowed once more.

Around them, frost had settled over the lands. The many lifted tiers of the plains were pale and dewey, glittering softly as the first dawn began to creep over the far mountains. Fog rolled between the taller landmarks before her, making each hill it’s own flying castle in the clouds.

A hint of movement from between the distant wagons drew The Dryad’s attention and she watched as the settlers became active. First, the elves, wandering between their wagons to set up the pavilion tents they hadn’t the night before. Later, the goblins, as green and small as they were described in endless fantasy novels. They worked in large clusters to set up amenities through the morning, such as a latrine and a barber’s station.

The larger sun had finally crested the horizon when the more exotic forms became active. The Dryad stared in amazement at the snake-tailed humanoids chatting amiably with a giant wreathed in detached, floating arms. She gaped as a gorgon traded potatoes from her cart for rats caught by a young humanoid made of turbulent air.

The dew had almost entirely burned away from the fields of golden grain by the time the more standard humans The Dryad was used to were visible. They seemed as weary and roughened by the road as the rest, yet took charge of projects already under way.

“Typical,” The Dryad muttered with a roll of her eyes.

“What is?” A cheerful voice croaked up from near her roots and she waved a hand as though to clear the cliches from her sight.

“Just humans being humans.” She answered back, matching his tone as she slipped from the branch and unsteadily drifted towards the ground.

“Were you or were you not one of them until” The bird flipped his wing as though to check his watch, “Yesterday?”

“And today I’m an absinthe hallucination, things change!” She replied enthusiastically, alighting on the cold ground with a sound of mixed surprise and disgust.

The Raven grumbled, extricating himself from the collapsing failure of a nest, asking “So, what’s the plan, uh…”

The Dryad opened her mouth to give him a name before she realized the opportunity. It was time for a new name to go with this new outlook. She cast about for inspiration before her eyes fell upon her tree, a willow.

“Juniper.” She answered with a grin.

“But… your tree is a…”

She stared at him intensely and his head slowly withdrew towards his body, his argument withering in his beak.

“Alright, well, my name is Lonewing Silenttalon Deathswoop.”

“No it isn’t.” Juniper retorted flatly.

“My gods given name, wing to the sun!”

The Dryad, now Juniper, crossed her arms, but the raven held her gaze… if only for a few moments longer than normal.

“Is there… any way I can shorten that? Los Lonely Birds? Loney? L-wing? I certainly can’t call you ‘silent’... LSD? OH!” She snapped her small fingers, grinning wickedly, “Lucy it is!”

The raven leaned its head back and croaked out an amused laugh. The laugh caught in his throat as he froze, eyes widened in fear. A moment later, a tremor rumbled through her roots, rattling up her trunk to make her leaves dance.

“What the hell was that?” Juniper shouted, leaping into her thin branches.

Lonewing grunted and shuffled his wings, preparing to take flight with a few ungainly hops.

“I’m not sure as of yet,” he croaked as he swooped out over the river, “But I must tell the master!”

The black bird wheeled twice over head, ignoring Juniper’s outraged protests, and took off towards the swamp to the northeast. Juniper stomped imputently in frustration and crossed her arms as another tremor pushed through her roots. It wasn’t like the overall noise she felt in her roots as the various floating terraces bumped and shifted with the wind. This felt like a huge force was moving through the very earth itself. It made her stomach turn.

Her leaves had finally finished their mad dance when she realized how alone she was here. She was removed from the settlers by a few minutes run - and that was at a human pace. She was exposed, her and her little tree that she could barely move ten feet from.

Another buzzing tremor passed through the earth and Juniper held her hand out reflexively, as through trying to keep her roots still, holding a hand across herself as her stomach flopped once more. To her surprise, there was a reaction.

Though her roots remained still, a patch of green grass had sprung up in a dense circle on the ground. It wasn’t quite like the amber grain carpeting the plains but instead a wild woodland mix of grasses and weeds. It grew tall as she concentrated, smelling of fresh forest rain.

The dryad let go and the plants remained, a jaunty green patch no bigger than a few inches in diameter. She tried again, aiming for a spot on the other side of her tree, this time coaxing a few flowers into the mix. Each flower was unique to her, like a four leaf clover painted the colours of the sunset. Juniper marveled at the bloom, tapping her hands at their dark purple centers in amusement. Each tap caused the flower to rock back wildly on it’s thin stem, emitting a puff of pollen that soon turned the dryad’s hands the same shade.

After a few minutes of pretending to be a bee, by buzzing her lips as she pimp-slapped different flowers, an idea dawned upon the dryad. She looked at her tree and a grin slowly spread across her lips. If it worked, if she could really cheat her own growth...

Juniper approached the willow, a hand outstretched, and focused the same lifeforce through her hand. She closed her eyes as she poured all of her mental effort into it, pressing them so tight she could see red.

The red grew brighter as Juniper relaxed, opening her eyes to find her vision filled with elongated hexagons. Each was only a few inches long and an inch tall, but each flashed red, reading, “Error: MenuItem_PlayerController_Trunk_Trunk.mp6 is Not a Valid Target: Error Code 420x69”

“Nice.” the dryad muttered bitterly, then sighed. “Well, it was worth a shot.”

Another tremor gurgled through the ground, this time strong enough that the pack-beasts began to low and pull against their hitching posts. The settlers halted in their camping preparations, scattering among the wagons to withdraw weapons and armour from their luggages. The dryad marveled at their speed, organizing into groups as a call was passed among them, the words drifting towards the dryad on the wind.

“N...tial… ite?” She murmured, her copper brow furrowed in thought. “N… eventual… fight?”

A silence filled the air and earth as Juniper mused, a stillness punctuated only by the frantic arming of the townsfolk. Then, the earth erupted.

From the ground, long chitinous bodies emerged. They crawled out of the taller floating structures, shaking the dirt from their glittering bodies. They were too far away for the dryad to see accurately, but they appeared to be no larger than a large dog. At once, with an audible Thwap!, they opened their wings, drying them in the mid-morning sun.

“Nuptial flight.” the dryad groaned, connecting what the settlers had said. She glanced towards the forest, hoping to at least see Poe - now Lonewing - returning.

A low, wining siren filled the air as each shiny bug body lifted skyward.

“You! Boy! Grab those children and put them in the wagon! In the wagon!” Cleaver bellowed, his deep voice carrying through the camp. He grabbed at a human’s wrist, the old dwarf nearly yanking him off his feet in his haste. He stomped towards a group of other Earth-blooded who had huddled up and were exchanging coins between each other. “Hammer! Chisel! Tychus! Keep your coin and go guard the meister.”

The giant rose to his full height, his head clearing well over the wagon roofs as he retorted “b-b-but g-g-g-glory a-” he stuttered, but cut himself off as Cleaver raised a hand.

“Save it, that fool puts himself in enough danger, you’ll be sure to get some action Tychus. You’ll for sure see some action.”

The hundred-handed giant considered, each of his floating arms whirling slowly about his body, then at once waved dismissively.

“F-f-f-ine.”

One of the other Earth-blooded, a dwarf by the name of Hammer, stepped forth with a familiar box in hand. He passed it off before hustling away, leaving Cleaver to withdraw his prized knife, a heavy cleaver set with golden runes. He took a calm moment to run his thumb over the edge, nodding approvingly as it instantly drew a bead of mud-brown blood. A dwarf was only as good as their tools, after all.

His moment of calm passed as the familiar whine of Ruimates filled the air. He glanced up, wincing as several heavy chitinous bodies already collided midair to begin their breeding rituals.

“RUXNAX, YOU GET BACK HERE THIS INSTANT!” Grixnax bellowed, the goblin matron whipping her shoe off and sending it sailing through air just over Ruxnax’s head. She heard him snickering as he made off with his hunting bow in hand and sighed. There went another one.

“Go get my shoe” she instructed another of her brood in a tired sigh over the deafening whine of wings.

Artel stood awkwardly in his shining armour, glancing at the other fighters he had been grouped with. Their armour was scuffed and chipped, missing pieces, and from the way they bantered, so did their shoulders. They looked battered. They looked like they had been in a fight or two.

Artel, on the other hand, clearly had no such experience. He had been picked up in the last stop the caravan had made, a small town on the furthest marches of the kingdom, fresh from his training. His armour was practically unused, his sword, virginal.

The young knight glanced into the sky, keeping an eye on the grotesque breeding overhead. A bead of warm sweat trickled down his brow and he tried to wipe at it but only managed to scrape his forehead with his gauntlet.

The whine of wings only grew louder.

“That,” Starla mused, “Is a lot of bug sex.”

Stella rolled her eyes at her twin, the lamia flicking her tail against the other’s side. “Let's not talk about the-”

“The bug sex”

“Yes, that.” Stella gripped her glaive tighter, a queasy feeling shifting in the pit of her stomach as she glanced up. She glanced away, the nausea making the bugs feel even closer overhead.

“Do you think they love each other?” Starla pondered quietly.

“Why don’t you ask them when they get down here?” Stella retorted.

“DO YOU LOVE EACH OTHER?” Starla shouted

“I said when they get down here!”

“But they are…”

Stella glanced up, yelping as she realized that they were beginning to descend. The bugs clung to each other with their bulbous, horrible pincers and slowly tumbled in clumps of five or six towards the ground.

Juniper sat in abject horror as she watched the massive ant-like creatures take to the sky, begin their insectoid intercourse, and now drifted towards the ground like great orbs of glitter. They appeared to be more than just ants as one such orb began to drift her direction.

Each creature had six legs but also possessed two huge front pincers. Some were hooked and toothless, built, seemingly exclusively, to latch onto the other. The other type was much larger and had pincers that were wide and shovel-like. The ball crashed into the earth, placing her between it and the river, and it between her and the wagons - effectively cutting off any quick rescue.

Juniper quickly retreated into her branches, placing herself at the top of her tree and willing each twig to close up around her. The branches protested at such quick shaping but it was the closest she could come to armour at this time.

A wide, shovel-like pincer burst out of the undulating insect orb. It stabbed into another and the huddle burst. Each insect hobbled away from the larger one on legs that had been bitten away in flight, barely making any ground as the female gorged on the body of her first mate.

Juniper gawked, mouth agape as, half finished and apparently satisfied with her meal, the large female began hunting the smaller males and dragging them back to her first meal. She began to dig in the ground, shoveling out huge scoops of the land before dragging the bodies into the chamber with her. All this in minutes.

Just beyond this burial, many more occurred where each orb touched down. Juniper tried to follow each one, but was drawn away by movement in the corner of her eye. There she could see a male that had escaped the predatory hunger of its mate hobbling close. It hefted its mass on one good leg, it’s wings torn and oozing a greyish ichor.

Up close, they were much uglier than expected. Their chiton was pitted and slick, thin hairs pointing in all directions from each crack in the armour. They lacked a stinger, but made up for it with fangs that constantly moved over rows of chewing teeth. It fed on anything it could fit into it’s maw as it made a meandering path towards the willow.

“Don’t kill the big ones yet! Wait for the signal! The signal!” Cleaver waved his hands at a young human who looked like he was closer to soiling himself than killing the female not ten feet in front of him. Artel and Cleaver watched it drag a still-struggling male under the ground, it’s own multifaceted eye fixed right back at them.

As soon as it vanished underground he patted the boy’s arm.

“Don’t worry lad, there’ll be time for valor, there will be plenty of time.” He glanced up at the sky, using his thick fingers to measure the distance of the smaller sun from the horizon. “Half an hour or so, lad, and they’ll all be sitting ducks. That’s when the real fun begins. The real fun.”

“You’ve done this before?” Artel asked, straightening his back and inhaling to appear taller and braver next to the grisled dwarf. The earth-blood swatted the knight’s stomach with the back of his hand, driving the air out of the young noble with an “oof!”

“Stop that, you’re already tall enough as it is.” he growled, “There’s nothing to be worried about. Keep an eye on where to stab on the queens, since they can’t dodge much. It’ll help when the workers come out, it will definitely help.”

“Wait, the workers?”

“Yeah, those little bastards are the real problem.”

Ruxnax dropped hard to the ground, his hands shaking and his shirt clinging to his body. The rogue male bore down on the goblin, it’s yellow eyes filled with broken arrow shafts. It lifted itself on ragged wings to lunge at its prey. Ruxnax grabbed at the quiver at his hip but only gripped air. He yelped, throwing his bow and curling into a ball.

“Is it dead?”

Ruxnax felt something sharp prod his side and he yelped, skittering to his feet and eyeing the two Serpent-blooded. They perched on their mud-scaled snake tails over the body of the male, which oozed cold blood into Ruxnax’s shoes. The one that had prodded him with her polearm waved and smiled at him behind a curtain of wild hair that obscured most of her face from view.

“Guess not!” Starla giggled, then glanced up as a horn blared from the other side of the camp. The twins exchanged meaningful looks while Ruxnax gingerly approached the felled monster. He tried yanking his arrows from the insect’s eyes, but only managed to come away with splinters.

“Come on, let's get you back!” Starla announced, scooping up the goblin under one arm. Behind them, Stella moved to the edge of the queen’s chambers. She took her glaive in both hands, raised it overhead, and locked eyes with the queen, who was busy feasting on one of her mates.

A second horn bellowed through the camp and Stella drove her blade down into the insect. She vanished out of sight as Starla and her cargo weaved between humans barking orders and inexperienced fighters milling around as though lost. Each break in the wagons gave them a new view into the chaos taking place beyond.

First, the more experienced fighters struck the queens, slaying all they could reach at once. They were spread across the plains for a surprising distance, each driving their weapon into the earth repeatedly until the green gas shot up. All the while the queen Ruimate screamed, joining the chorus of wailing, dying bugs. Job finished, the fighters made a break back to the line, stopping only to help any team lagging behind.

Ruxnax could just barely start to see a dark mass growing on the distant mountains before he was tossed back into his wagon. He turned back to say something to the girl but a shoe slammed into the back of his head, sending his vision spinning. By the time he had recovered, his ear was soundly in the goblin mother’s grip and the snake was out of sight.

Juniper cowered between her branches, watching the damaged male chew its way through the grasses towards her. She would be dying for the second time in as many days, once more in an utterly undesirable way. She looked up at the dual suns overhead and silently called them every foul word she could think of.

A ripping noise drew the dryad’s attention back to earth and she watched the bug rip up and chew on one of the long vines that laced throughout the countryside. An idea lazily floated into her mind and she relaxed, the fear slowly turning to determination. She held a hand out and focused her mind.

At first there was little effect, the grass by the vine growing bright and green before being scattered by the enthusiastic insect’s mandibles. Then, slowly, the vine started to grow. At first it was barely anything, simply a few small offshoots that vanished into the hungry maw. It continued to nibble insatiably, but the vine did not seem to end, and it began to get tougher. Soon, the monster was swallowing a continuous length of vine barely dented by its rows of jaws. It stopped, realizing only too late. The dryad focused harder, pouring every ounce of this new, magical feeling into the act of growth.

It wasn’t until the carapace had split open, revealing a jolly little bush sporting bright green flowers that the dryad relaxed her attention. She watched its remaining leg twitch in fascinated disgust for a few moments, her brow furrowed in concern at the power she had at her fingertips. She looked at her hands, slightly dazed, surprised at the power she could wield just by focusing a few moments. It was a powerful spell with little drawback.

Then, at once, a wave of fatigue rolled over her and the world faded to a soft green blur.