User:StoryoftheUndergrowth

The wind darts past the mountains. The freezing landscape and clouded air house nothing but storms of snow, calmly falling to the ground. A party of ants, binding their strengthened legs to the ground for all they were worth, overcome the treacherous journey up a hill's side and fix their gaze onto the surrounding area. Planting a flag, the group begins to return via the same path. Moments later, the wind intensifies. The flag is shot away, and the snow crumbles into an avalanche, dispatching every member in its path until none remained.

Chapter I - The Barren Islands
"ATTACK!" The words, seemingly emerging out of thin air, could be heard by every ant echoing through the foggy caves. Suddenly, rows of cyan and pink ants who were previously camouflaged could be seen surrounding a giant scorpion. Streams of acid were fired to make quick work of the scorpion's thick outer-layer armour. To finish off the scorpion, deeply rose voloured ants used their slender legs to jump ten beetles into the air straight onto the scorpion. Enslaved by muscular mandibles, the scorpion falls leaving a buffet for the colony, which now has a supply of food once again.

"So, your saying it's already dead? A beast that big would at least withstand a few sprays of acid." The bright, cyan coloured ant was speaking to a hot pink coloured ant who seemed to be leading the offensive.

"Yes. Its stinger could still have venom, which is why I wouldn't want to let an amateur like you biting meat off the back. You did well coming up with that plan though, Imber. Because we brought the scorpion into the giant pit, no ants got eaten."

"Oh, come on. Anyone can think of basic traps, you were just too focused on the possibility of it storming the nest you couldn't think."

"One could put it that way. Now bite off a chunk, we don't have enough ants to carry the whole carcass back to the nest. It would fall if we tried that, anyway."

Imber accepts his orders and rips off a large chunk of scorpion flesh, and soon joins the deep pink trail back to the nest. The nest was located in a cyan stalactite eight beetles up from the ground. The height gave the ants protection from the creatures of the ground, which were the only source of food available.

Imber places her legs on bright pink sand, surrounded by red and dark blue rocks. The rest of the terrain was composed of cyan crystal which could be found on the top of the rocks. While the conditions may be lacking, plants, who get light from the intense crystals, have evolved symbiotic relationships with fungi, which break down rock into nutrients. The rock itself is so rich that plants, and thus the animals who eat them, can support so many more abilities and numbers.

The massive amount of plants also translates into a large amount of oxygen, which only gives animals extra energy. Transpiration from the flora makes the atmosphere, which is already warm from depth, very moist and humid. The conditions make life underground here very diverse - enough to support more species than a tropical rainforest.