I met their vanguard at the kitchen – already deep within my keep. I launched my forces and briefly repulsed them – but on came their legions – an innumerable mass of gibbering inhuman death. I could not hold them. For all my powers and experience I was nigh overwhelmed and nearly pulled down by force of numbers. I had no choice…no choice I say but to launch my weapons of mass destruction. A chemical attack designed not to throw them back, not to repulse their troops, but designed to annihilate them. It was genocide. Ant Armageddon.

It was victory. When it was over I walked through the bloody killing field. Ant bodies piled atop ant bodies, a charnel house of destruction. Their once proud standards crushed underfoot, their pincers broken and lifeless. Dead, all dead…I had shown them no mercy. You may think me harsh, even foul for these tactics – but would I have faired any better if the victory had been theirs? I think not.

Most frightening of all, I learned only now it was not my land or even my life these beastly denizens of the pit sought. No – not these did they hunger for. Their goal was more sinister, more base. To carry off the fair princess of my realm was their mind, their evil plan. A woman whose beauty is beyond compare and whose smile could melt the most stoney heart. It was for her that I fought – though perhaps I grasped it not at the time. But she was not even here – she was far off in the east, in the Land of Rye – and until her return, she is but a memory etched into my mind and engraved upon my heart. I long to see her soon again.

End

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Author’s Note: Like many of my works of short fiction, I wrote ‘The Great Ant Invasion’ in a single draft on my PDA in 35 minutes or so while on a train one morning. I hope that you enjoyed it. Most of my fantasy is darker and more serious than this, but this story gives you at least some small flavor of my writing style. I have several works in print, available on Amazon.com (paperback and Kindle versions) and Mobipocket. I hope that you’ll check them out.