A few days later, the colony had two ant queens that were no longer mere shardjaws.
One had evolved into an embermaw ant queen, while the other had taken an aquatic path, becoming an aquamandible.
But the fruits of those transformations didn't appear right away.
Only after Theo began feeding the ants enormous amounts of food did the brood start getting bigger. That was when he first tried comparing them to the earlier embermaws and aquamandibles, only to reach a disappointing conclusion.
Most of the earlier embermaws and aquamandibles were already dead. They had been among the very first, and it had been a long time since their birth.
Meanwhile, Clara and Elias were nowhere to be seen. That absence made Theo realize he might have grown a little too attached to them.
They were important, as his people, but to want them around him at all times felt like a different level of dependence Theo didn't want to delve into again.
