He issued a strict command for them to hold their ground, then slipped seamlessly into the shadows, utilizing a bit of beast repellent as an extra precaution then creeped forward to investigate what had terrified his vanguard.
He moved silently through a thick patch of glowing violet ferns, the air growing thick with a foul, acidic stench, and carefully peered over the edge of a massive, depressed crater in the forest floor.
His breath caught in his throat.
The crater wasn't made of dirt. It was a shifting, undulating, horrifying sea of matte-black and rusted red. It was a colony.
Thousands… no, tens of thousands… of the giant, cat-sized armored ants he had killed upon first entering the jungle were swarming the massive basin. The continuous clicking of their massive mandibles sounded like a deafening, continuous torrential downpour of rain hitting a tin roof.
