'Next...' Ian's gaze swept over the ice field below.
After the recent Domain harvest and the insect tide's assault, the ice field was already unrecognizable.
Deep, cracked chasms scarred the landscape, along with stretches of vitrified ground that had melted and then solidified, and a layer of gray-black powder left behind by the vaporized Insect Race.
At the edge of this devastated area, Ian's Perception picked up a strange fluctuation.
On the very outskirts of the ice field, in the areas not yet completely covered by his Domain, several smaller, purplish-black Nests had begun to writhe.
They were retreating. The fleshy tissue on the surface of the Nests was rapidly contracting.
The swarms around the Nests, particularly the massive Level Four Guard Insects, were clustered around several grotesquely bloated Mother Insects, moving away from the ice field.
Their pace was slow, even clumsy, but their objective was clear: to escape this death zone.
