One Ant Versus the Heavens (Ant Cultivation Quest)

Day 1,896 (Dance 75): The Great Abyssal Journey

The Dancer equips herself for a great journey. She dawns her arctic abyss armor. And inside she places immortal leaf cauldrons filled with luminous water. Then she eats a full meal of titan meat and spirit fungus before heading to the rift.

Braving the extreme cold the Dancer makes her way across the ice flows and into the depths of the abyss. Cold air swirls around her but her reserves of luminous water keep her warm. She finds the massive frozen beast again and huddles in its shadow for a few moments while she takes her bearings.

Unfortunately there is really only one way to find the source of the abyss. She must move towards the coldest and most inhospitable parts of the abyss. She travels deeper and deeper into the snow and ice. The journey is disorienting as the Dancer can see nothing but white and blue swirling around her. It is so cold that the Dancer has tucked her antenna into her armor to keep them from freezing.

Her water is running low. Perhaps too low for her to return, but the Dancer continues on. Her duty to the colony drives. Her need to support her sisters and Mother. Imagining them gives her strength, and so she continues to put one claw in front of the other. So lost is she in these memories that she misses when the abyss begins to brighten.

Only a sudden shadow draws the Dancer out of her reverie and the realization that there is something different from the abyss of ice and snow. It is a giant pillar covered in ice, but with something shadowy inside it. The Dancer tries to get a closer look, but the ice blocks her view too well.

The light however is coming from behind the pillar. So the Dancer moves around it to take a closer look. As she does the cold becomes an almost physical thing and she has to exert herself to the utmost to push through it. When she does she finds herself looking at a massive spherical stone.

It sits at the top of a conical mound of ice and glows a brilliant blue. The cold is clearly coming from the stone, but not just the stone. Looking closer the Dancer can see that the stone is cracked. And from that crack is flowing a frigid wind so palpable that she can see it in the air.

Clearly the sphere is damaged, and possibly if it could be repaired the abyss could be made livable, or at least less dangerous. But the Dancer doesn't know how. She should return to the colony. But if she does she might not be able to get back. And time is running out. More of her luminous water freezes every moment.

Suddenly the Dancer is struck by an epiphany. In a rush she drinks the last of the luminous water and eats the immortal lead cauldrons. Energy blossoms inside her and the Dancer feels invigorated. She propels herself up the icey mound with long strides and finds herself looking at the crack in an instant.

And then she uses the Earth Sealing formation. She can feel the stone pushing back against her. This is no ordinary rock. It is infused with power and purpose. But the Dancer's will is indomitable. She can see the Energy swirling inside it and directs her formation across both the ragged edges of stone and the swirling matrix of energy.

She nearly loses her grip on both the formation and the ice several times, but through sheer will she wrestles the crack closed. It takes nearly all her energy, and the results aren't pretty or elegant, but she succeeds. The sphere is left with a ragged imperfection and it still pulses with cold energy, but compared to before it might as well be a summer day.

Making it back out is difficult. The Dancer is exhausted and only barely makes it back to the frozen beast. Then she has her second stroke of luck. She notices that the beast is thawing. Perhaps not fully, but enough to no longer be completely ice. She is able to tear off a chunk and eat it, restoring a portion of her energy.

From there she manages to stumble back through the rift and out of the abyss. There a watch party of myrmidons finds her and carries the ice encrusted Dancer back to the colony for the Queen to tend to.

Abyss Calmed
Dancer Exhausted and Cold

The Legionnaire tends to the garden in the Dancer's absence. She oversees squads of myrmidons as they move through the garden. Each one tends to a separate flower or patch of fungus while the Legionnaire herself sees that the Immortal flower is cared for.

She carefully harvests some of the Immortal fungus as well and delivers it to the honeypots under the Queen's direction. Together they experiment with different doses and preparations of fungus. In small quantities it doesn't seem to do anything but make the honeypots slightly more energetic.

However in large quantities the fungus makes the honeypots start acting strangely. They roll around their chambers and emit vast quantities of complex and confusing pheromones. They are not random either, but seem to be describing strange vistas and trails through lands that no ant scout has ever been to. Much less the nest bound honeypots.

The Legionnaire deciphers a number of directions to food sources in the lake hills and even outside the Mystic realm that might be worth sending scouts to just in case. While the Queen smells the traces of some kind of underlying schema in what the honeypots are discovering.

Honeypot Oracles

Day 1,899 (Dance 75): The Frozen Chamber

The Queen ventures into the ice abyss covering a crackling layer of magma. For the first time since her initial flight she is alone for none of her mortal daughters can survive here. Indeed, venturing out like this is putting a halt to the entire colony's life cycle. So the Queen moves quickly to make the pause as short as possible.

The Abyss is already less cold than the Dancer related to her, and combined with her larger mass and more powerful cultivation the Queen is able to make rapid progress. She follows the tracks that the Dancer left behind and finds first the monumental frozen beast and then the frozen sphere.

Investigating the sphere with her divine sense the Queen finds that its core is some kind of object that she is not familiar with. Some kind of substance that seemed to radiate Ice Qi. The stone surrounding it seems to be mostly natural rock, but there are traces of a technique used to surround and enclose the substance.

Unfortunately there isn't any kind of formation or ongoing technique present. If the Queen had to guess she would say that someone found the substance and then molded it into the sphere to be used as a source of cold. The purpose of this eludes her however as there don't seem to be any connections to the rest of the mystic realm.

The Queen also spends a brief time exploring the ice abyss now that the area is not a swirling blizzard. She finds that it seems to be a large narrow chamber with several rows of cubbies along the walls, some of which hold plants and beasts in frozen states.

The other major feature is near the rift into the abyss. From this side the Queen can make out that the rift is just a widening of a crack that goes around a large section of the wall. She senses faint earth shaping formations in the enclosed area. Though they would require far more earth Qi than she has to activate.

Meanwhile the Queen's daughters tend to the nest itself. Or at least the Legionnaire does. She oversees all the myrmidons going about their regular business and also personally tends to the Dancer's recuperation. Fortunately the Dancer doesn't appear to be in any grave danger. She just needs time and rest to rebuild her energy.

The immortal fungus helps with that as it provides a steady source of qi and nutrients for the starving Dancer. It also scrambles her pheromones. She reports fighting legendary beasts and exploring ancient ruins and fearfully warns the Legionnaire to jump left several times.

Seeing that her Sister is not quite in her right state of mind, the Legionnaire limits her consumption of Immortal Fungus for the moment. After seeing the reactions of both the honeypots and the Dancer the Legionnaire is curious about trying the fungus herself. But given the Queen is gone exploring and the Dancer is sick she refrains. Someone has to be responsible for the colony.

Day 1,902 (Dance 76): Soup for the Soul

It is time for family bonding. The Queen turns her whole focus to the sick Dancer and carefully tends to her injuries. She uses soothing Qi to heal the worst of her frost burn while a living blanket of myrmidons makes sure that she remains warm and cozy.

The Legionnaire meanwhile selects the medicinal flowers with the greatest potency and proportion of water Qi in their petals. She brings them to the Queen who carefully examines each one for possible contaminating Qi or other toxins. The resulting pile of verified petals is notably smaller, but still serves to fortify one of the honeydew's nectar into a very nutritious brew.

The honeydew who makes the mixture is positively vibrating with energy and even the Dancer perks up once she tastes the mixture. The Legionnaire also peels off one Petal from the Immortal Flower. After considering it carefully the Queen splits it in half with her mandible.

One half she feeds to the already fortified honeydew. The ant immediately starts shaking and spasming as the excess qi feeds into their undeveloped meridians and dantian. Fortunately the Queen is carefully monitoring them and uses her own Qi to smother the reaction and keep the honeydew's mortal frame from taking injuries. The Queen forces the Immortal Qi to dissipate through the mix of nectar and medicinal flowers.

Once the Queen sees that the mix has completed she immediately has the Honeydew share it with the Dancer. The elixir rolls through the Dancer's body like the light of the Ur Ant itself. She is rejuvenated and her remaining injuries heal within mere moments. She surges to her feet and proceeds to run all over the chamber even while the myrmidons struggle to hold on to her carapace.

She is rapid firing pheromones all over the chamber and the Queen can tell that she is undergoing an enlightenment. So quickly clears the remaining tenders out of the chamber while the Legionnaire runs alongside the Dancer to make sure she doesn't hurt herself, and to carefully remove the desperate myrmidons safely.

Once her mortal daughters are safe the Queen tosses the Dancer the remaining half of the petal and her Daughter instinctively eats it. Her movements speed up considerably. So much that the Legionnaire has trouble keeping up and the Dancer becomes a blur of ant tracing intricate patterns around the chamber.

The Queen can only catch whiffs of the enlightenment herself. It seems the Dancer is musing on the nature of Ice, Water, and possibly Time. Her carapace begins flaking off and the Queen realizes that the Dancer is beginning to molt. So she ejects the Legionnaire from the chamber and armors herself in a rocky shell.

She collects all the bits of impurity as the Dancer sheds them, and once her Daughter comes to a final quivering stop the Queen wastes no time in grabbing the Dancer and carrying her out of the chamber before quickly turning and erecting an Earth Sealing Formation on the chamber.

In the aftermath the Dancer seems exhausted again, but mentally rather than physically. She will simply need some time to meditate and stabilize her foundation. The Legionnaire chivvies the myrmidons back to work and the Queen contemplates what she saw of the Immortal Flower's energies when she was monitoring the Honeydew and the Dancer. It was more than just pure energy she is sure.

Dancer: Seventh Molt

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Quest Note: I'm just going to push this to a three day schedule for now.