Chapter 26

When Stix crossed into the land protected by the shield, she knew that the old records kept by the Tarans were true.

As she approached the shield, the first thing she noticed was an odd area that was close to four meters wide. When she stood just inside the edge of this zone, she had an uninterrupted view for nearly a kilometre in both directions, until the curve of the shield or the height of grasses obscured the ends.

She walked along the edge to the north for about a hundred meters. She noticed that in the zone the shield had created, the earth undulated with the terrain, but there were no wide gaps or sharp changes in the level of this area. The ground under the shield looked as if it had shifted in places to accommodate this base point for the shield to connect to.

A strip of bare, compacted earth, about fifteen centimetres wide was visible between the two sides of the zone. The grasses that grew inside this area were very short and sparse near this centre point. As you got closer to the outer edges of the zone, the grasses grew taller until the vegetation blended into the acres of grasses and small shrubs around her.

The hairs on her chitin prickled as she approached the invisible shield. The prickle intensified as she touched it and she felt a slight resistance but the shield let her pass through with no other fanfare. She knew from the records she had found that she still had two-thirds of her walk to go before she reached the city in the mountain if it still existed.

She was still surprised she wasn’t turned away from the shield. It was said that the shield simply made you think you were entering the zone but you kept walking until you found yourself on the northern coast or the southern one.

She was now in enemy territory as far as her people and the Giant Ants went. While many of her people believed they were dead, she knew that they weren’t. She did wonder if the Giant Ants still harboured ill feelings. As far as her people and the Tarans were concerned, they were no longer a threat and had mostly been forgotten about since they had been gone for a long time now.

Stix foraged as she walked. She had found that she didn’t like the open plains and had to hide several times when she spied the Giant Eagles overhead. They were so big that they could carry an ant of her size off with little trouble. Apparently, the Eagles liked the sweet taste of an ant’s abdomen. Many of the four-legged predators also seemed rather fond of sucking the flesh from the interior of an ant’s legs.

After several more days of travel, she was happy to see the next mountain range get closer with every step. She didn’t think much about what to expect at the end of this journey. This land had been closed off for nigh on two thousand years. She did think about what she had learnt when she had combed the human’s libraries looking for articles on wizards, while Gazza and his family had been busy at school.

She had stumbled on an old account that spoke of the last big war between the Ants and the Tarans. She had learnt that once the Ant War was over, a Psychic Mage had informed Queen Dyane that her husband had died and her oldest daughter, Lillian, was lost to her.

The Tarans had guessed by the Giant Ants going berserk that something bad had happened to the Garret when he had gone back to talk to the Queen of the Giant Ants. The fierce fighting had the Soldier Ants and Tarans fighting side by side. In many ways, it had helped the two species become more tolerant of each other and even garnered a little more respect.

Stix realised as she mulled over all she had learnt that the famous Mage Garett had been the catalyst for all of the islands leaping into an advanced era of technology. However, within only a few generations of his passing, invention had stagnated once more. The people didn’t go backwards but they didn’t go forward in any significant way either.

Some of the writings Stix had devoured indicated that Garett had travelled extensively and he would disappear for anywhere between six months to two years at a time. The authors hinted that Garett had also been free with his loving before and after he married Princess Dyane and had left at least one child on each of the Sister Islands.

It was a common thread that Garett was trying to ensure his superior magical abilities were passed on and that he left a magical box or an item for each child that he knew he had sired. No one knew from where he had obtained the items and it was even written that he could make them, but few believed this as everyone knew that only a true Wizard could make magical items.

It was alleged that he had sired three other daughters on Ant Island, other than his two daughters to the Queen. The three most prominent families outside the royal family each claimed one of these daughters to be the matriarchs of their line. Since each family held both a four gem medallion and a ring, no one contested their history. A spurious account even declared he had a son. Most Shifters would admit to this fact, even if it were true.

It was reported that Garett had visited the nearest continents, Elton, Weston, Oron and Dori. How many children he left on those continents was not known. The few documents that recorded his adventures were not written in his hand, so the historians had debated as to the validity of the stories these accounts told as many of them were quite fanciful.

Dyane died at a very young age for a magical Genteli, as she had been only two hundred years old. She contracted a strange wasting disease that neither her magical items nor the healers could cure. Her remaining daughter had then assumed the crown and only ruled for as long as her mother had.

In fact, no Taran Monarch had ruled on Ant Island for any longer than two centuries since that time.

Stix had traversed some fifty klicks across the corner of the Uvale Plains that was under the shield.

She was heading towards what she believed was a town, which was in the hinterlands of the mountain range that stretched across the horizon before her. For several days, she had noticed the lights at night-time and suspected that they had electricity, for the town to be so bright.

She crossed a wide, rocky, river bed with a shallow stream still flowing in it. As she climbed over the bank on the other side, she noticed the orderly fields that were spread over the area between her and the town. The town was still about two klicks away.

The height of the hills and the dwellings also explained why the lights from them shone so far at night. As she got closer, she was quite sure that the town had been built by ants but many of the buildings had the touch of human inventiveness to them, the farm buildings in particular.

Stix was very unsure as to what sort of reception she would get and simply hoped they wouldn’t kill her out-of-hand. As she got closer to the town and since the late afternoon sun was behind her, she performed a concealment spell. The first ants she saw were working in a field near a high and long barn that looked like it was of human design, rather than of ant design.

She had already passed many fields that were under cultivation. She had identified the most common cereal crops and the layout was to maximise growing space. Several machines that would need a human to drive were near the large barn.

She felt an extremely odd, prickly sensation when she realised the ants looked not much different to workers in her home nest, as far as features and size went. The exception was that they had a white strip on their dominantly russet-brown chitin, instead of the motley of dark browns and creams that her people had.

Stix was then shocked to see humans working with the ants. It took several minutes of watching them before she realised what it was that was different about the humans. They all had a white strip of hair that ran from their foreheads to the back of their necks and was about three centimetres wide like on the worker ants.

The rest of the hair was a shade of russet-brown that was a darker shade of their skin tone and a colour that was similar to that of the ants. Stix felt faint and had to shake her head as she kept coming to the same conclusions. The Giants may once have been a lot bigger than her people had been but they were not so anymore. The most amazing thing was that somehow, they had become Ant-shifters.

Stix suddenly felt confined. She tried to move but her legs wouldn’t comply. A very tall, slim male in human form sauntered over to her. “Why the concealment spell, sister?” he asked her politely.

Stix was even more surprised when a flicker wearing a bright red and green vest embroidered with red flowers, came out of the shed and wandered over to her. He reached out to touch her and she thought at it, ‘The Magi Flickers have arisen. A Prime and a Healer. Prime Basil said you would help me.’

“What is she telling you, Jagger?” the man asked. The flicker shushed the man and looked back at Stix. ‘That has become common knowledge. Did he tell you of the device he gave Old Prime?’

Stix chuckled and removed the concealment spell since it seemed they could both see through it. Both the flicker and the man gasped when she appeared. She then said to them, “Release me and I’ll show you what Basil gave the father of his two new wives. I come here in peace. I have been sent by the Gods and I have to find my mate.”

The man walked closer to Stix. “Show me your female form,” he demanded.

She shook her head. “I know of a virus that is changing magical people from non-shifters to Shifters but I was unaware that it affected Ants. We were under the impression that the virus had only recently come from Dog Island and only affected the two-legged Tarans.”

This time, the man changed form. Stix was surprised that he was slightly smaller than she was in his Ant form. As he came closer, she noticed him scenting the air. She also read his scent and found that it was very sweet and she liked it. She thought him quite handsome as well, for a drone.

She was startled by this thought and was shocked when he chuckled. When one of his antennae gently touched hers, she shuddered. He stepped back and shook his head in confusion. “What are you?” he asked her with shock.

“I am Magi Stix and I am an Envoy Ant of the Soldier Ant people. I was supposed to be observing an interesting couple of humans that wore very powerful magical items for my Queen. At first, it was thought that they were simply mages who possessed a full set of items. I believe that they were at least High Mages when I first met them.”

“When my new master came back from his last trip to Mt Fire, he and the mistress had changed. They’d learnt to dull their auras but I knew that they were even more powerful than before. My master placed this band on my foreleg.” Stix extended her leg so they could see the gem-studded band when she made it appear.

She then went on, “He had put a spell on it for me so I could safely enter and leave the magical shield that protected his property in Avilla. I now believe that the spell and the band let me in through the shield over this land. I felt the shield but it didn’t impede my progress at all.”

“Unbeknown to my master when he placed the band on me, an entity from your race decided to become my spirit guide. She is the one who said that I must come here. My master told me that I must follow where the fates led me and they led me here.”

‘Why do you wish my help?’ Prime Jagger asked Stix.

Stix looked at him. “Prime Basil informed me that if you believed that I was the ant that he told your people about, then your people would help me to get an audience with the Queen Ant under the shield and hopefully she would give me permission to find my mate.”

Stix knew this was her mission but she still wasn’t sure, why she needed this special friend she had been charged to find since she couldn’t mate with anyone. Her entity had not given her any more information other than she had to come here to find this ant.

Stix told her pack to appear, she grinned at their gasps when it did. She removed the Fred from the pack using the sticky pads on her foot and handed the item to Jagger. She then handed him a tin of pear pieces as she said, “I can’t actually use the silly thing since I don’t have fingers. However, the flickers and the people of the White Tribe swear that they are very good can-openers.”

Prime Jagger then spoke to the drone but let Stix hear him by continuing to touch her. ‘Stone, this is the Envoy Ant we were told about. You can either have her killed and save your people a lot of trouble or do as she asks and take her to the High Queen. I think Queen Lillian needs to hear what she has to say and that she should learn how Stix got here.’

Stix gasped, “Is she the Princess Lillian or is she a descendant?”

Jagger chittered and Stone clicked his mandibles in amusement. Stone said, “Even the one and only mother of the Ant-shifters can’t live that long. However, her great-granddaughter currently rules at Mt Ant as the High Queen. Come, I’ll take you to my mother,” he said as he gestured for her to follow him.

As they walked, Stone said, “My mother is called Queen Star. She is the current Queen Lillian’s last princess to survive a mass mating flight. Mother has been here for about a hundred years now. The high Queen has not declared a mass spawning for a new Queen since. The speculation is that she doesn’t wish the population to expand.”

“Some of the other Queens are also worried that our population is getting too large once again. Queen Lillian doesn’t allow them to claim new land outside the currently established territories. She claims that if we do, we will not be able to maintain the treaties with the other sentient beings that live under the shield with us and we will start another war like her mother did, five hundred years ago.”

“So are any of the Ants here from the Giant Ants race?” Stix asked Stone as she walked with him since Jagger had scampered ahead of them.

“It is true that the Giant Ants of your histories don’t exist in the same form that they once had. We are not grieved by this. Mutation and change are inevitable to all species. The separation had made us stronger and we no longer fear either the other races of Ants or the human Tarans. We live longer than we did before and have small clutches more like human families but that isn’t a bad thing for us.”

“Are many of your people magical?” Stix had to ask as she regarded the layout of the town they entered on the wide, paved road.

“The other six Queens who rule the large towns have medallions and some of the princesses who rule the smaller provinces have magical rings. The other princesses and matrons, or the ladies, as we call our ruling females, and some drones and flickers can do minor magics. Only Queen Lillian and her Prime Drone, Mantis, wear stronger magical items.”

Stix’s next question was, “How long do your people live now?”