The sun was shining high on the sky. Cury was crawling towards an ant nest.

He had all his papers with him, and his very own fountain pen.

He wrote down some information, time of the day, how he had planned to perform his experiment and what he had brought with him. Everything was ready. He looked at the ant nest, with curiosity, and a little fright.

Then he shoved his left hand down the nest and began throwing pieces of the nest all around him.

The ants retaliated, bit him, and shot projectiles of acid towards him. It was painful, but he used his hand in order to be more precise.

He could use a glove, but that would allow the ants to remain inside the glove and keep causing pain. He fiddled with his fingers through the nest. He was after the queen.

These ants, around this season, were very aggressive. Added to that, they were not bound to the nest, but to the queen. Meaning, if he took the queen out of the nest, the ants would follow.

Suddenly he felt it, a little rougher bite on his index finger. Cury gasped for air, yet he lost all the air he gasped for.

The pain, it was intense. He felt a burning sensation, spreading through his hand, moving up through his blood stream.

It was not dangerous so far, but it was painful. This was the strongest defence the queen ant had. She never used it for hunting things. This was purely evolved to defend the queen, to frighten predators and very likely scaring them away.

Cury pulled his hand out of the nest, and along with it came a hundred ants, clinging to his skin, biting him. Because of the many small needle-like stings, blood emerged from his skin. He gritted his teeth.

The Queen ant emerged from the nest, still attached to his index finger.

A success! Cury had completed the first step! He had taken the queen ant.

With his free hand, he pulled out the regular glass vial out of his right pocked and dropped the queen ant inside and sealed it with cork. The worker and soldier ants all came out from the nest. They were furious, like raging bulls as they ran towards the glass vial. With killing intent, they aimed for Cury.

Struggling, with blood pouring and more ants running across his body and biting everything in their path, Cury pulled out another vial from his left pocket. It was the red-sand vial.

He turned the regular vial upside down, uncorked and shook it, desperately trying to get the Queen to drop into the red-sand vial. The stinging, burn-like pain was increasing, and Cury was letting out a screeching sound in pain as his eyes gave out a black-like glow. However, when he did, the Queen fell straight down.

Not having any time to spare, Cury sealed the red-sand vial with the same cork he used before. In an instant, all the other ants that followed ceased their retaliation and with dizzy-like movements, tried to find their way back into their nest.

Sweating like never before, Cury gasped for air and collapsed from a high concentration of sleep-inducing poison which the Queen had injected.

Sometime later, Cury woke up. A couple dozen of ants were lying dead around him. His head was aching; his body was aching. Everything was aching. Itchy, bruised up and dried blood all over his legs, on his arms and inside his shirt. Even on his face!

He looked like the loser in a catfight, except this one he had won!

“Right, the vial” Cury exclaimed.

He quickly looked around and found it lying right next to him. He realized he needed to make notes of this wild experiment and pulled out his papers. They were all shredded.

“What in Hosgrund’s hell are you doing Cury!?” a voice shouted from behind.

Turning around, Curry saw a very familiar face.

It was Sun, a girl from their village. She had brown hair and green eyes, pretty tall for a nine-year-old.

Cury turned around and replied “Nothing.”

“As if this is nothing Cury, Come on. Why are you covered in blood? Why are you.. are you..” Sun saw what Cury was holding in his hand.

“What is that?” She almost shouted.

'No, Sun can’t find out about the red-sand vial!" He would be done for! His father would not forgive him!'

“It’s a…“ Cury was interrupted.

“It’s a Bloody Queen ant isn’t it! Why do you have it and how did you get away from the soldier ants!?” Sun was speaking way too fast, not giving him a chance to answer.

“Well, you see…” Cury once again didn't get a chance to talk himself out of this situation.

“Did you kill all the soldier ants? Is that why there are so many dead ones around you? That’s why all the worker ants retreated!” Sun was bombarding Cury with questions to which he had no chance to answer.

Now, Curry had enough of being interrupted.

“Shut up Sun! I didn’t kill anything. I don’t know why these ants are dead. I was only performing an experiment with the red-sand glass!” He yelled obviously annoyed, revealing a hint of green in his eyes.

“Wait, no!.” Cury thought. He mentioned the red-sand glass, but Sun didn’t seem to have understood what that meant. panic rising.

His eyes once again slightly shifted feeling into confusion.

Then Sun started again, unfaced.

“Hey, if you didn’t kill any of the ants, then what? Do you expect me to believe it was the forest guardian?”

"Sun, you are not usually this nonchalant to what I say, why are you like this now?" Cury wondered quietly to himself.

“You know Mercury, if the soldiers didn’t die, and the worker ants didn’t retreat, you would probably be dead by now. That’s how dangerous these Bloody ants are. You know that!” Sun said, with a slower and more careful tone.

Finally getting the chance to give a straight answer, Cury responded, “I was only performing an experiment and I was planning on running for it after I had captured the Queen. Do you see that the vial is red?”

“Of course, I do, I’m not stupid, and everyone knows that vials should be made out of clear glass.” Sun replied.

Then she continued in the same breath

“Wait, why is the glass red? Is it blood? Is it your blood?”

Another wave of Sun’s questions hit Cury. “Okay, all right, I’ll tell you, just promise you won’t tell anybody!” Cury said.

“It can’t be that bad, it’s not like you will get into any trouble, right?” Sun asked.

Cury looked down at the red vial with the Queen sealed inside. “I stole this red-glass vial from my father. I wanted to experiment with it, try and see what would happen. It all began a couple weeks ago, when I wanted to know how you could remove the queen without killing every other ant.”

“That’s impossible and you know that” Sun answered.

To which Cury continued “Well, yes, it should be. But I formed a hypothesis. What if they converse with magic. Moreover, the red-glass, which in one of my father’s experiments managed to block out what I suspect was a magic that allowed a tree to converse with its leaves, could also block communication between the ants!”

“You are crazy! How do you know so much about magic? What if it didn’t work!?” Sun yelled out, now understanding what had happened.

“A scientist should always strive for the truth, long live experiments” Cury laughed, eyes glowing in red over joy that it, in fact, did work. Added in the sudden insult Cury truly understood how worried Sun was.

Sun, now calming down, also started laughing. She felt a warm feeling flowing like a breeze out of Cury, embracing her. Telling her that everything would be all right. She liked this feeling.

Cury put the vial in his pocket and the two sat on the grass as the wind allowed leaves to dance across the blue sky, enjoying the late summer warmth.

After some time, Cury stood up and looked at the dead ants. He asked himself how they died and noticed that one ant was actually alive! Judging from how the ants' bodies were positioned, it seemed that the soldier ants had attacked each other.

An all-out war between them, leaving one survivor.

Considering all the ants were female ants, the winning ant was now obviously the next queen for the nest.

With the realization of this, Cury pondered that he could make new ant-farms. For what purpose, he didn’t know. But he could multiply the amount of ant hills in the area easily. Well with the cost of some of his blood, sweat and tears.

The thought reminded him of the fact that his entire body was covered in itching injuries from needle-thin bites.

“Actually Sun, I need to go back home. I think I should confess to my father about the fact that I stole his red-sand vial.” He said, breaking the silence

“No, you just said that he would get very mad!” Sun blurted out.

“It’s not that big of a deal considering what I discovered. In fact, he might even be proud!” Cury responded.

“Well, I guess. But do you have to leave now? We haven’t hung out for ages!” Sun said.

Thinking over it, Cury felt his stomach rumble.

“I guess we could share one of old Agda’s pies. She shared one with me in exchange for an errand. It’s one made with beef” Cury suggested.

“Those are great, my family usually don’t buy them, beef is too expensive.” Sun sadly said, but upon looking up into Cury’s slightly red eyes, she calmed herself.

Sharing the pie, the two children talked about all experiments Cury had performed this summer, and Sun chimed in with what was happening in the Poz recently, how a group of soldiers had come through, asking about a fire wielding human Cury hadn’t heard of.

After having their fill, time for jokes, cool experiments and latest gossip, Cury gave his friend a hug and began walking back home.

Sun, living in the other direction waved and she too, headed home.

On his way home, strutting through the forest, Cury heard a soothing voice whisper his name.

“Cury”.

He turned his head towards the location the sound seemed to originate from.

“Who goes there?” He yelled. “Show yourself!”

From behind a couple of bushes, an old cranky woman’s voice suddenly shouted “The manners! Never have I heard the likes. Here, I am stuck in a fox pit, and all you can do is yell at me? Children these days!”

Cury jogged towards the bushes in slight panic, looking behind them.

True her words, an old woman dressed in a blue robe sat with her left leg inside a fox’s lair.

A hushed whining sound could be heard from within the lair, probably from a fox warning the intruder.

“Here, let me help you! And I apologize for my behaviour!” Cury hastily said, reaching out his hand.

“Perhaps I misjudged you!” the old lady answered, taking his hand, pulling herself up and out while catching a glimpse of his for the moment green eyes of annoyment.

“Name’s Mercury, I wish we could meet under better circumstances!” Cury said.

“Yes, I know who you are Mercury. Cury for short I believe? That’s why I called out your name earlier!” The old woman responded with her cranky voice.

“What, no I. what?” Cury said. “How do you know my name?” He added

“I am a Seer, a great Seer actually. So great it seems to be my name nowadays. Do like the rest and call me Seer if we meet me again.” The old lady snarkily said.

Staring into Cury’s now confused, grey eyes, the Seer said

“Chosen by Chance I see”.