>>60332243 out of 10 ants slain. The vast majority of those were themselves already wounded, unable to join the efforts of foraging and bereft of the vast stockpiles of the hive, their bodies succumbed to the effort of self healing. Ant lives were short, but purposeful.
And yet, even this number would have been considered a massive success and a herculean effort by humans. It was a wonder if any humans would have survived the same conditions at all.
The ant civilians marched as if marching was something they had practiced their entire lives, forming long columns, with the stronger of them standing post. "The Drive March" they called it. Again, without the need for shouting or men upon horses or even wizards projecting their voices, the ants organized themselves and nearly as soon as the order was given, the ant civilians were on the move within 10 minutes. They marched by day, and they marched even in the night when men and horse found it hard to see without magic. The ants did not sleep like men, but took short naps, surrounded by their bretheren, before waking to resume work again all while standing. All this would needing to stop. Constant movement without pause.
They ate as they marched, some moving ahead to hew down the trees for leaves, others to hunt beasts along the way. They drank rivers, ponds and streams, forming chains of ants which would collect water and gather it to the march. It wasn't enough of course, they couldn't feed the worst of them. And so the worst off died. And then something that would seem very morbid. The ants *ate* their dead to sustain the living. When asked, the ants insisted that nothing go to waste. Even the wounded who had yet to die seemed themselves happy to know that their lives would carry on in the 'Flesh of the Hive', to live forever, and be born anew one day.
It would appear to the humanoids that some ants were lost, dragged to their doom by termites, many wounded. This was true, and yet there was purpose even here. Strangeley these wounded ants would choose to march ahead of the drive, away from the cover of legionaires. To the humanoids it would seem as if those ants were never heard of again, yet when they perished, the march knew to shift left, to move right, avoiding those places they vanished. These ants were bait, their deaths warnings to the civilians to avoid that place. Literal warnings, for their names and numbers and even their last words were known to the march. For they heard them. They heard their cries of pain and warning and loyalty to the Empress
Indeed, would any mortals humans have survived the same conditions? Not trained and supplied legionaires, not expert magisters, just men with naught but the clothes on their back and so many wounded. Even the most optimistic calculations by magistrates would surmise that if this same number of humans, without benefit of magic, prepared logistics, vehicles, had been put to the same conditions, it was hard to see even 1 out of 10 surviving
