From our perspective the hive appeared absolutely gargantuan, stretching out downwards in all directions. The ants themselves were quite large too. It’s not that the human soul was small. Space was irregular, twisted in the Astral acting more like a fractal structure and the deeper one dove into it the weirder things became.

An Astral Phantom could fold themselves down a hundred times in the Astral by diving deeper into the currents simply due to how this dimension functioned. Thus, as we got closer to the hive, we became smaller.

[Are we waiting for… something?] Delta asked as I hovered at the entrance to the hive, moving our shield sphere back and forth.

[Yes,] I nodded. [Be patient.]

After a few minutes, I saw them. Semi-transparent, ant-like shapes. They advanced toward us like a wave from all around the hive.

[There!] I said.

[What are those?]

[Those are the hive's Astral defenders,] I explained as I began to move the shield sphere away from the colony, [Ant ghosts. They'll attack anything in the Astral that poses a threat to the colony.]

[...Ghost ants?] Delta echoed.

[Mhmm,] I nodded, humming the Alanian song of Tamus-Anima to mask the presence of our souls.

When I retreated far enough from the hive, the wave of ghost ants slowly began to disperse and return back into the hive.

I rapidly moved my Infoscopes forward and caught a ghostly ant that had gone too far out with a triple hum of [Tamus-Anima] suspending it in place.

The other ghosts did not notice the straggler.

As the ghost ant hovered in space, I ordered the Infoscopes to slice apart its shell and to inject a small shard of my soul into it with [Conjugo] via the [Tether]. It took three of my soul shards to completely dominate the ghost.

[-3 in Soul]