After the rain, the wasteland should have been empty and desolate, but right now, as far as the eye could see, the entire land was blanketed in a strange dark purple.
Ants!
There were countless ants!
Each one stood at least as tall as a man's chest, some even higher, their bodies a sinister dark purple that gleamed with a metallic sheen under the post rain sky.
They crawled forward on multiple jointed legs, forelimbs evolved into sickle shaped serrated blades that quivered faintly in the air. Round, unblinking purple eyes fixed on the campsite without the slightest flicker of fear. The antennae atop their heads swayed constantly, cutting the air in sharp twitches as if something far more intelligent than instinct was quietly measuring the distance.
Above them, a darker cloud of winged shapes hung lower in the sky, flying ants, separate from the soldiers below. Their wings produced the suffocating buzz that had torn him from sleep.
More terrifying was their number.
