Queen to Queen

In the sprawling underground labyrinth of the Crimson Plains, the ant queens of the Myrmex tribes reigned not just with pheromones and instinct, but with a profound, ancient gift: the ability to weave their minds into a vast, shimmering tapestry of thought. Each queen, adorned with a crown of iridescent chitin, could link her consciousness with every ant in her colony—workers, soldiers, nursemaids—forming a single, radiant intellect greater than the sum of its parts. This was the Great Joining, a power that pulsed through the tunnels like a heartbeat, binding the colony into a living, thinking whole.


Deep within her chamber, Queen Zyrra of the Red Hollow flexed her mandibles and reached out with her mind. A thousand tiny perspectives flooded her senses: the gritty texture of soil beneath a worker’s legs, the faint tremor of a predator’s footfall detected by a sentinel, the sweet tang of nectar carried by a forager. She wove these threads together, her will threading through the colony like a needle through silk. Dig deeper, she commanded, and the workers obeyed, their movements synchronized as if they were extensions of her own body. Reinforce the western wall, she urged, and the soldiers shifted, piling earth with precision no single ant could achieve alone.


But Zyrra’s vision stretched beyond her own colony. The Myrmex tribes had long faced threats—floods, rival insects, the creeping shadow of Two-Legs with their poisons. Survival demanded unity, and so the queens had devised a sacred ritual: the Sending of the Emissary.


In a shadowed alcove, Zyrra summoned her finest scribe-ant, a lithe worker named Klyx. She poured her thoughts into Klyx, imprinting a message into the ant’s very being—a chemical code etched into her exoskeleton and a memory locked within her tiny brain. “Take our plan to Queen Vyss of the Black Spiral,” Zyrra whispered through the Joining. “Tell her of the floodwaters rising in the north. We must dig channels together to divert them.”


Klyx trembled under the weight of her task, but her loyalty was absolute. She scurried from the colony, her body glowing faintly with the queen’s intent. The journey was perilous—across open ground where hawks circled and spiders lurked. Klyx knew her fate: she would not return. The Emissary’s role was a sacrifice, her life given to bridge the tribes.


When Klyx reached the Black Spiral, the guards seized her, their antennae probing her scent. They dragged her before Queen Vyss, whose dark eyes gleamed like polished obsidian. Vyss linked with her own colony, her mind swelling with the chatter of ten thousand voices, and then extended her consciousness to Klyx. The message unfurled like a scroll: images of rushing water, maps of proposed channels, a plea for alliance. Klyx’s body twitched as Vyss extracted every detail, her essence unraveling in the process. With a final shudder, the Emissary collapsed, her purpose fulfilled.


Vyss withdrew from the Joining, her mandibles clicking thoughtfully. “Zyrra speaks truth,” she murmured to her council of soldier-thoughts, a chorus of agreement rippling through her mind. “The flood threatens us all.” She summoned her own scribe-ant, imprinting a reply: We will dig with you. Send your workers at the next moon. The new Emissary darted off, carrying the pact back to Red Hollow.


Across the Crimson Plains, this dance of sacrifice and unity played out again and again. Emissaries crossed treacherous paths, their bodies bearing plans for shared granaries, warnings of predators, even strategies to repel the Two-Legs. Each queen’s mind swelled with the knowledge of her sisters, their colonies interlocking like roots beneath the earth. Together, they built not just tunnels, but a civilization—a network of thought and purpose that no single colony could dream of alone.


And so, beneath the oblivious feet of the world above, the Myrmex thrived, their queens weaving a legacy of cooperation through the silent, noble deaths of their Emissaries. The ants were many, but their minds were one.