By the rotting tree, an ant scurries about, its antennae twitching. Normally, when one thinks of an ant, they think of the small insects that could be squashed under a boot. Oh what a scare they would get if they were to encounter a snare snatcher. The human sized ant emits a frequency similar to a bird chirping, lying in wait. Its efforts are rewarded when the unfortunate winged fowl comes to find a mate, only to end up on someone else's dinner plate. As the snare ant was ready to return to the colony, It caught a scent.
The antennae twitched once more as it smelt a mixture of beetle egg and the blood of a juvenile rock bug. The ant soon finds the source: a puddle, a sickly pale yellow puddle that is beginning to dry up. Not one to pass a free meal in such a predatory world, The ant lapped up the old bile, before collecting the bird and returning to the nest, feeling slightly heavier than usual.
A hill of gravel standing taller and as magnificent as a medieval castle looms over the distance. Worker snare hunters toil, their feet hammering the earth as one unit. Pheromones waft within the vicinity, the commands of their superiors urging them to assigned roles. The ant with the avian marches into one of the many winding tunnel systems, cloaked within an abyssal darkness, designed to confuse any invader. If not for their superior vison, even they would have gotten lost within their homes. The ant continues until the tunnel gives way to the beating heart of the hill-the queen's chamber. It releases a pheromone signaling of food, before scuttling away to find more.
The responder soon dragged itself from the shadows. Large guillotine mandibles snap as the rope like antennae twitch. A dark red body of an ant soon appears, the abdomen swollen to twice its body size. The bird is consumed whole, before the snare snatcher queen resumed its primary role of creating the next generation. The day turned to night as hundreds of eggs where generated, pilling high within the chamber. Yet as the queen and her workers sleep, with the guards patrolling outside, a thief made its prescense known. The larvae dropped from beneath the snare snatcher queen as it went to claim its bounty. From one to ten to beyond fifty, over half of the eggs were devoured by the gluttonous parasite. The egg eater soon dug a patch into the wall, burying itself within to prepare for the next night.
On and on would the feast continue, the guards none the wiser, the queen worried and stressed. Workers stampede the plains of the hollow earth, desperate to fulfill the rapidly exhausting food quotas in order to ensure the next generation's survival. Parrot frogs croak and squawk as the chomping mandibles dig into their skin. A bramble boar that was once digging for roots now lashes at the swarm after its vine covered hid, lashing in a enraged frenzy as the unending hoard continued. Even the death jackals were not safe, forming protective circles as they fought off ants by the hundreds, marred with gashes aplenty.
Yet while the colony drove both itself and the hollow earth to its limits, the main perpetrator continued to grow. The third molt went on to make it as big as a game console, and the following fourth made it slightly larger than an old Tv box. Its final molt before adulthood was on the horizon, yet it knew it could not hide forever. The larvae nestled into its now cramped hiding spot, bidding its time for the final harvest.
The luminous gas hung lower within the hollow earth as the creatures of the night stilled, not daring to venture out in hopes of avoiding the ravenous ant workers. The queen could not sleep, as she pace around her chambers, eyeing the last remaining eggs of her kin. It broke her poor insect heart to know that the next hope for their kind had been reduced to only a scantly few in her reign. The wall near the eggs suddenly shook, pieces of it crumbling to the chamber floor. Attention fully grabbed, the snare snatcher queen hissed as she released her pheromones for all guards to assist her.
The wall collapsed to reveal a worm like creature in a dirt brown color and two razor mandibles. It leapt, tearing at the side of the ant queen, blue blood of the insect crown falling onto the ground. The guards swarmed in as their queen shrieked, the bean pole legs helping her retreat. They charged in only to get swiped of their feet by the lashing swipe of the larvae's tail. It consumed two of the fallen guards before the remaining six regrouped. Outnumbered, the larvae decided to cut its loses and flee. The dirt covered tail slams onto the chamber, forming a temporary smokescreen as it dug to the surface. The snare snatcher queen raged as she had not only failed to catch the egg thief, but had lost the last of her eggs along with two of her most nurtured guards. The ants, both guards and workers alike stormed out of their homes, beginning the man(bug) hunt for the larvae.