Darkness. But not empty A green pulse. Faint. Distant. Like the echo of light through thick water. The world pressed against me. It was soft, warm, curved. My antennae twitched, brushing against its slick walls. Moist. It felt familiar and yet confining at the same time. The air inside started feeling unbearably hot. The heat enveloped me as my body covered in sweat. In that moment, all I wanted to do, was to escape. My legs kicked. Front first. Hind next. Something inside me urged that this was the right call. I pushed with greater determination, my heart raging, maybe it was just the heat. I pressed my head forward, mandibles scraping instinctively. Tap. Tap. Crack.
A line split the ceiling of my world. Sound bloomed, wet and sudden, like the cracking of old bark after rain. The air outside rushed in, and it smelled… alive. The air was murky, yet I could taste something sweeter. More tapping. Not from me. To my side. All around me. There were others.
My shell split wide as my antennae reached into the cool, open air. The world was huge. The chamber glowed in dim pulses of green moss on the walls, hanging tendrils of bioluminescence. My first sight was a haze of motion. One, two shapes emerged from their own breaking shells. A sense of familiarity washed over me as I studied them. We turned toward each other. Our antennae met in a sprawl of twitching language we didn't understand yet but felt. I checked for that sweet smell once more, my antennae twitching as I made my forward to the wall. As I took a bite off the mushroom."...sweet..." The words barely formed in my mouth. The others joined in. Their mandibles clicked as they too bit of the mushroom, tasting its sugary contents. Yet, this discomfort remained. No matter how delicious it was, this uncomfortable sensation annoyed me, wanting something. It was not physical, rather it was if it hovered in the air but still tangible on my nerves. I crawled my way out the chamber, the rest followed suite. This feeling edged me closer to it, as I pursued it in the tunnels, as I made way up and down the rough terrain. Until I saw it.
It appeared to be a battlefield. Dark ichor soaked the stones. Webs clung to walls. Bits of something broken and jagged, long legs bent at wrong angles. And at the center…Him. The giant. Possibly the cause for my agony. He lay still, half-curled against the cavern's edge. His body was torn and dark. Ichor crusted his side. His carapace pulsed faintly, just once. Then nothing. We hesitated. Then stepped closer.
His scent was… familiar. But I could not understand why, its antennae did not twitch even after touching them.
One of us, a bit smaller than I, crawled up his side and tapped on his head with cautious mandibles. Another circled his legs, trying to lift them. I pushed at his abdomen. We moved around him, over and under, touching and nudging. No response.
I chirped, a short, high-pitched click from my mandibles, "Waaa..." they tried. A croak. Then again, "Waaake…?" We tried more sounds, shared them like pebbles passed back and forth. "Wake." "Move." "Big-one." "Sleepy-bite." "He… no… wake," one finally said, curling its antennae low. "He broken?" asked another. I didn't know. I didn't like the not-knowing. But my stomach twisted, a gurgling echo from within. Hunger.
A pause. One of them turned toward the other corpse nearby. Not the big one. The long-legged, hollow-eyed thing. The enemy. The spider.
"It… food?" We all stopped. Wondering together if it can be eaten, it had no sweet smell, but instinct took over and without plan, we approached it. The scent stung our senses, bitter, rotting, but filled with something… vital. We devoured. "...bitt..er.." I said as I munched on it, but it stopped neither of us as we continued with the feast.
The flesh crunched softly. The juices were acrid yet filled us with warmth. It took time. The spider was huge, the size of the three of us combined. But we ate. We ate till there was no evidence left. We chewed on bone, gut, eyes, venom sac. Until it was gone. Until our hunger eased. And then we looked again at the unmoving giant. The silence returned once more. "What now?" one asked. "Bring him home," I said.
The three of us circled around. We gripped one leg each with our mandibles, tested the weight. Heavy. Immense. But not impossible. One of the giant's legs jerked, kicking one of the ants in the face as it stumbled and rolled backwards. The other one laughed, but we continued. Together. One step. Another. A slip. A pause. But we didn't let go. Finding strength in numbers, we moved him. Down the tunnel. Back toward the place we had first breathed. The place of warmth and green glow. The place where we were born. We didn't know what would happen next. But we knew we would do it together.