บท 51: How tasty are ants?
For the first time, Myra realized how much work it would be, not just to build up a large group of people and have them work on the same thing or for the same purpose, but to keep them from ripping each other apart in the process.
With all their different ideas and thoughts, humans would always get into conflicts and it would not be rare to find disagreements.
"Complaints here, brawls there and destroyed property in between!" Myra complained to Aaron while reading the magic crystal with the latest reports.
"At least they fight among themselves and not with some civilians, otherwise we would have some more issues." Aaron replied, not surprised by the rather small amount of conflicts for such a large group.
"Myra be realistic, we have over a thousand people working for us now. It is already exceptionally good how few of those complaints we get every month. You should be happy about it."
"You are probably right, it still annoys me though why can't they just all happily live together. Some of these arguments that started fights are just silly." Myra understood that there would always be somebody who disagreed with someone, it did not mean that she liked it.
"Well it can't be as easy as with Tia." Aaron commented and Myra got upset instantly.
"Don't talk to me about that ... that woman! It's bad enough that she wanted to kill Nell because of some dubious organization hiring her to kill him, but nooo, Nell doesn't just let me kill her, because that would make sense."
"But what does he do instead? He doesn't even lock her up in some jail, no he turns right around comes to me and asks me for a royal pardon because he wants her as his girlfriend! A freaking assassin as his girlfriend, when have you ever heard of such a thing. Aren't they supposed to be scary loners?"
Aaron laughed. "How did their relationship even start under such circumstances? And if you don't like her, why listen to him?"
Myra sighed. "How am I supposed to know how they got together? It's not like they told me or that I even asked about it. Did you tell the others how we met?"
Aaron grinned at the question. "Obviously not, that would likely get me in trouble with you."
"See, I got myself a good boyfriend, fiancé ... whatever. As for why I listened to him? Probably intuition. If Tia were really evil she would feel different. I guess."
"At least it's your guess and not mine, I would never have seen an assassin as someone who is not really evil whatever that means. Your intuition sometimes borders on prophe… wait a moment, are you using divination magic?"
"Uhm only like three or four spells permanently. The others are optional when I need them."
Myra looked a bit guilty that she never told him why her 'intuition' was always rather accurate. It had been the start of countless praises and discussions after all and Myra rather enjoyed the idea of being good at judging someone's personality.
"No wonder and you never told us anything about it."
"Don't complain Aaron, it's really hard to interpret those things. Easier on the imminent danger spells, the prophetic ones are kind of a mess. They change too much."
For a while Myra continued her work on the new flying gear while Aaron had his own amount of paperwork to complete.
"It's done!" Myra called out. It was her usual way of telling Aaron to come over and look at whatever she made and praise her.
It often ended in him asking why she would create such a thing and then ask her to destroy it again, but she always made new things anyways. There have been way too many weapons designed in this little workshop that would luckily never see the light of day.
Aaron sometimes wondered what would have happened if he let Myra make those weapons and they got into the wrong hands. Having magic tools that could wipe out a whole city without even fighting seemed like something that he never wanted to see produced.
At least many of her items were useful and interesting.
"What is it this time?" Aaron asked. "It looks like some flying gear that someone disassembled and then turned into several parts with more power."
Myra happily nodded. "You seem to get the basics now, I'm impressed!"
"What? It's really a disassembled flying gear?" – "Kind of. I changed it a little to fit onto our phantom cat mounts."
"Don't we already have a group of archers who can fly? I can even fly without that thing now, remember? Why would we need the cats to fly?"
Myra grumbled, but didn't have anything to say about it. In the end she was still not ready to take that step and let her body fly permanently without damaging it.
"Don't argue, Brightpaws wanted one too. If he grows up at the same rate, our daughter will join us in a few years, then we better make sure that she has some way to fly as well, because carrying a kid around while protecting her seems like a bad idea. Also Nell's group can't fly."
'Why not start a flying castle or island if you want to make everything fly?' Aaron thought to himself but didn't dare to mention that idea in front of Myra. She would likely take that idea not as a joke but as a real suggestion and make it possible somehow.
"Alright, I think everything's ready. Rae!? Are you coming with us or will you stay here?"
Soon the noise of little feet on the wooden floor could be heard. "Are we going to visit Aunty Alyn and Uncle Liam?"
"Yes, we go see how they are doing and then cause some trouble with these insect things. We're the stronger beasts so they either have to give us some of their territory or get eaten."
Rae frowned. "We eat insects? Don't they taste bad?" Myra shrugged. "I'm not sure yet, we have to try it I guess, but I see no reason why they should taste any different than other things. Now if we like the taste, that's a different story. At the very least they would give us some good materials."
All of them got ready and prepared for their short journey. Myra had already placed a transference circle at the western border and there would be no need to walk or ride all of the distance.
"Aaron, let's go could you start the circle?" – "Why is it always me who has to start this thing. It's draining my power like crazy."
Aaron tried to complain even though he already knew the answer and reason for it. It did not mean that he had to like the feeling of getting sucked dry of his powers quite literally.
"Because you're the strong one with the skylord ability, while I'm only strong if I burn through my foundation making the time till I will advance to a skylord with this body even longer."
Their surroundings changed and within moments they found themselves on the other side of the empire.
"We're here!" Aaron declared and tried to find a place to sit down for a moment, while Myra stabilized little Rae, who seemed to be a bit dizzy.
"We jumped really far." She complained and hugged her mother to not fall over. "Mommy's landings are softer." she added after a few moments, making Aaron cringe, while Myra just laughed.
Yes, Rae would definitely grow up being as honest as her mother.
Their arrival was quickly noticed by the guards and reported up their chain of command. When they left the little building with the array, Liam and Alyn were already approaching them.
"Aunty Alyn, Uncle Liam!" Rae was the first to rush to their side to say hello. It took them a while to get Rae settled and soon Alyn was taking her around and teaching her about their flying gear.
"Alyn we're going ahead to get rid of some of these things and claim some land, we should be back in a few hours." Myra was confident, that with Alyn and Liam around, Rae wouldn't get into too much trouble.
It gave her and Aaron a few hours of doing what they needed to prepare for their kingdom. They could hardly settle down in a place with aggressive territorial insects close by.
"I'm going to give them a warning, if they react to it, well, that's their choice. I'm not sure yet if these insects are smart." Myra said while they were on their way through the frosty tundra.
She was being carried by Aaron, who was flying through the sky and seemed to enjoy the time they were travelling like this. Why she didn't use the flying gear? She could and always had it with her, but she just enjoyed being carried.
Aaron on the other hand didn't like that he had to fly around being used as some carriage, but as it was Myra and she was hugging him tightly in order to keep from falling down, he really had nothing to complain.
They were dressed in their usual clothes, as all of them, even Rae could easily shield their bodies from cold weather, but they would definitely have to do something about this if they wanted commoners to live in this place for an extended period of time.
This was beyond normal cold weather, this was just freezing all year long. Whatever caused the cold was obviously something magical.
They soon found their target. Several large holes in the ground, where ant-like creatures were traversing, these tunnels probably leading all over the place.
Myra sent out her aura to give these creatures an early warning and watched closely how they would react. The ants seemed to be confused for a moment, before they started to feel threatened and quickly hid back in their burrow, or nest, or whatever one would call the home of such creatures.
They were used to hiding in the nests when something that could fly came by and they would attack if it was something on the ground. Little did they expect that their nest would not be able to protect them this time.
A loud rumbling noise could be heard and the first few of the insects' tunnels were collapsing, making the ants retreat in fear.
The walls and the ground was made out of frozen earth and was as hard as stone walls. This was the first time the insects had to deal with someone, who could destroy their home from a distance and they were unable to retaliate.
Slowly one after the other their tunnels were destroyed and the ants retreated more and more towards the western parts of the frozen lands.
Myra in the time landed and placed some magical formations all over the places they had 'cleared' from the tunnels, formations that would prevent the creatures from digging tunnels on their lands once more.
"Done here! Let's head over to the next location."
They repeated their actions several times, until at one point when they just wanted to place another formation they were attacked by a group of stronger tougher looking ants.
"I think their soldiers are here." Aaron commented and got ready for a fight.
"Well, since they want to cause us trouble, I guess we will fight them and see who is stronger."
Myra didn't take the threat seriously, but as a test she shot a few magical spells in their direction. Fire seemed to work the best on them, but overall these ants were really tough.
"They probably all have the strength of at least orange or red grade knights. It's no surprise that no one wanted to fight for the land all this time."
Aaron agreed. "From what I've read, these ants have slowly but steadily been expanding their territory. It wasn't this big in the past, but because of their really slow advance, no one bothered about it before."
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