A faint, muffled sound carried through the earth as two ants pressed forward, their mandibles scraping at packed soil. The air was stale, gritty with dust. Every breath they took carried the raw taste of dirt.
"We're almost there," Brill muttered, his voice steady but laced with tension as he burrowed onward. The dim light from behind cast only faint shadows, swallowed almost entirely by the dark earth. Skitt followed close, his antennae twitching, alert to every vibration in the stone around them.
They had been tracking the faint trail of blood; droplets pressed into the ground by the limping cricket. Eventually, the tunnel opened into vibrations—distant, rhythmic, like stomps. The muffled cadence of many legs shifting in unison.
Then they broke through.
The earth thinned, and faint cracks of light pierced through. Brill's mandibles trembled as he carved a hole just wide enough for an eye. What he saw on the other side made him stop right in his tracks. His heart slammed against his chest, a cold paralysis washing over him like he'd been submerged in ice.
Before him sprawled a nightmare.
The chamber stretched wide, littered with crickets sprawled across stone mats, some scarred, others groaning with open wounds. The air smelled of damp rot, sweat, and smoke from crude torches that lined the jagged walls. But worse, far worse than what he could've imagined, were the brutal cages.
There were five of them. Stone walls fused and stacked crudely but solid, each one stuffed to the brim with moths. Their wings bent and crumpled from being pressed so tightly together. Their cries wove into a desperate chorus, pleading for food, begging for air to breathe. Brill's mandibles clenched. Each cage was a suffocating tomb, every movement of a moth's body scraping against another's.
And then, he saw him.
The figure stood tall upon a makeshift stage of piled stone. A grotesque silhouette, its shadow stretched long against the wall. A cricket, broad-shouldered, scar carved deep across his right eye, mandibles twitching with barely contained fury. His entire body was encased in black armor, dull and scuffed, save for the glint of a spear clenched in one arm. His head was bare, no helmet hiding the scarred carapace or the pride etched into his posture.
Brill's chest tightened. His breath rattled as the memories he wished he could erase were resurged. That first time. When he and Skitt were small and near helpless. A cricket had come for them, towering, monstrous. If not for their giant protector, they would have been food—chopped, shredded, swallowed.
The thought clawed into him. His legs shook. His body quivered with that instinctual terror. On the stage, the cricket chief raised his arm high, voice booming through the cavern, echoing against stone walls.
"My fellow tribesmen! The time has come! No longer shall we live like beggars in the wild!" His voice was sharp, full of fire, yet Brill caught the weariness in his tone, the rasp of someone who'd screamed too often. "Sharakam herself has laid her eyes upon us! She has blessed us with magical ants, a treasure worthy for kings!"
His tone swelled, pride swelling into fury. His mandibles snapped, and his spear jabbed toward the crowd, the point glimmering under torchlight, saliva already dripping from the corners of his mouth as he continues. "Should you see one, take it hostage! If any of you fools dare harm their shells—"
His voice broke into a frenzied roar, spittle raining down onto the weary crowd. "I'll skin you down to YOUR BONE AND HANG YOU TILL YOU WISH YOU WER—"
The cough of, what appeared to be, his second-in-command, a leaner cricket lurking in the shadow behind him, cut through the madness. The chief halted, chest heaving, saliva still dribbling from his mandibles. With a guttural grunt, he wiped his mouth, straightened, and cleared his throat.
"Anyhow. Come, my soldiers!" He lifted his spear, high into the air. "Raise your weapons and follow my lead! We'll feast for many MOONS TO COME!"
He bellowed triumphantly, the sound tearing through the chamber. But nothing came back. The crowd of crickets only shifted uncomfortably, their hollow eyes refusing to match his fire. It wasn't until the second-in-command gave a discreet nod that the camp erupted into applause. Weak, forced, a pitiful echo of what was demanded.
Brill couldn't breathe. His legs twitched to retreat. But beside him, Skitt was calm, antennae flicking with thought.
"You heard that?" Skitt whispered, his voice almost gleeful.
"Y-yeah," Brill stammered, his heart still pounding.
Skitt's mandibles curved into a grin. "They wouldn't harm us unnecessarily. This is fantastic! I have a wonderful idea on how to save the moths."
Chill settled into Brill's spine as his gut dropped. He already had a rough idea of what Skitt meant and was not at all fond of it. "You aren't going to throw me into the cage, are you?... I think we should just go back and report to mister Giant." he asked bitterly, antennae drooping.
Skitt's grin only widened, mandibles glistening in the sliver of torchlight through the hole.