Her name was Khugar. She didn’t know why she had a name. She didn’t remember the before time. For her, there was no before time. She reached back into her mind and saw only haze. Then one day she remembered. She thought she should be able to remember more, but here she was. Each day was the same as before. She was a digger. She dug. Whatever it was, she dug it. One claw in, other claw out. Dig, scoop. Dig, scoop. Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle.

Khugar kept digging until she hit a rock. Normally a rock wouldn’t affect her very much. She was a very strong ant. She was a digger of the clan. She was literally born to dig. Until she wasn’t. She struck a rock harder than she thought and instead of her claw breaking it as she had all the rest before it, her claw broke.

She whined piteously. The healing ants came up to check her out. But there was little they could do. The healing ants stopped the bleeding but there was nothing they could do to bring back the claw. So now Khugar wasn’t a digger anymore. She lay away in her nest. No one made her go out to work. Little workers, hardly a few days old, still continued to feed her.

She was heartbroken. She clacked one claw. Then the other. But the other was gone. So Khugar opened and closed her claws in her mind. She closed her eyes. Well ants don’t have eyelids so it is more like a closing of attention as her mind turned inwards.

Clack. Imaginary Clack. Clack. Imaginary Clack. Clack. Imaginary Clack. Clack Imaginary Clack.

BOOM. Khugar jolted awake. There was a hole in her chamber. What had happened? Khugar was stunned. She clicked. She clacked. BOOM. Her broken claw was covered in a glowing outline of mana. Everytime she closed her claw, a wave of force flowed out of her claw. Khugar got excited. She hurriedly scuttled to where she was digging before her accident.

Dig. BOOM. DIg. BOOM. Dig. BOOM.

Khugar was beside herself with joy. She was breaking through rock as if it was soft dirt. She wasn’t useless. She could serve the nest once more.