Book 6. Chapter 50: Interlude: To'Orda
“My, my, moody today, aren’t we?” To’Sefit said, voice coming clear through his channel.
“Nnnn…You led me here.” To’Orda grumbled back, annoyed. “They are not repairing my shield. I have been deceived.”
“Now now, all I said was that this was the nearest mite colony to you. Why, I never said a word about them helping you or not. How should I know the whims of mites?”
To’Orda worked backwards through his memory. And then deduced that indeed, To’Sefit was honest with her statements. He’d asked her for mites to fix his mite blast door shield, and she’d delivered directions to the nearest mites. She’d never said a word about them cooperating with him.
Before him the world teemed with bright orange lights crawling all across the ground. Rocks were being eaten up, vanishing in place of heavy metal sculptures. Buildings that had once been half submerged into rockfaces were slowly torn apart section by section, replaced with metal bridges held in tension by cobalt strings, softly glowing.
The entire landscape before him was turning into a maze of towers and bridges, following the designs of the mites.
He’d been standing in the center for the past day now, waiting. Eventually, some of the mites had reacted, finding him to be far too stationary. He could tell the moment he’d turned from a curiosity to a target. Mites began to walk across him, and he crushed them under thick hands the moment they tried to zap away some of his matter.
His shell was fine. He’d repaired it himself after that human exploded on him and his boss.
The mite doorway that had sucked the majority of the explosion did not survive as perfectly. A small crater had evaporated, ripped apart atom by atom. It still functioned, still had the general shape and the material was as durable as it always had been. The fractal he’d inscribed on the other side to draw danger remained functioning as well, protected from the blast.