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The Way Things Are

It was not a bad day, but a lot of days did not seem bad. The towering blades of grass were swaying pleasantly in the wind, workers were whistling pleasantly to themselves as they gathered food for the rest of the Nation, and construction crews were busy expanding the Nation. All was right with the world, on the surface at least. It did not take much for things to go wrong in the Nation. As glorious as the Nation seemed to its citizens they knew it paled in comparison to the Others. The Others were races of giants to the people of the Nation, but who was a giant and who was small could be subjective. Certainly, the Others would have thought that they were just normal sized and the people of the Nation were the ones that were small.

The people of the Nation were a race of insects after all. On the world that the Nation and the Others lived on there existed regular feral animals and those of the anthropomorphic variety. The people of the Nation happened to be anthropomorphic ants, among the smallest of the anthropomorphic races. Many of the anthropomorphic insects went unnoticed by the larger breeds of anthros and quite often found themselves in less than pleasant situations because of that. Over the course of time many of the varieties of anthro insects had been wiped out by the larger anthros, but the people of the Nation were not aware of that. All they knew was their own struggle for survival.

Their entire glorious Nation existed in the backyard of a family of anthro dragons. Granted, it was a rather large yard since the home was in a fairly upscale neighborhood. The house itself was very large even by the standards of the Others, but the people of the Nation thought it was still a drab building that could not match the beauty of their own buildings, each one unique in its design and function. The horse stables that were also in the backyard were even worse to the citizens of the nation. It was an almost painfully unoriginal building that made the Nation wonder about the imagination and technical skills of the Others. Despite this, the Nation knew it was helpless against the Others, who did not even seem to acknowledge the existence of the Nation's people on most occasions. Even when the others did take notice of the Nation, the results did not tend to be good.

******

"You, Worker 17, hurry up and help get the last truck loaded up," Boss 7 said to me. I had just been assigned to Boss 7's unit about a day ago and even though most of the units operated in a similar fashion, there were still little differences. These differences happened to be throwing me off more than they normally would with this unit. I was slowing the unit down, which was never a good thing. It never served to be out in the open for any longer than was absolutely necessary and I was making all of us do just that. We were not really afraid of being spotted. The dragons that lived near the Nation took excellent care of their lawn and the lush green grass provided us with plenty of cover. However, all the cover in the world would not protect us from getting accidentally stepped on.

Getting crushed was a constant fear for anyone that had to venture above ground and it was something that could not be avoided. The Nation branched out into all areas of the dragon's backyard and we numbered in the tens of millions. We could only produce but so much food bellow ground and the rest had to be gathered from above. Of course, we had thought of fighting back against the dragons on occasion, but even with our numbers we were so small compared to them. There was only so much we could do against them and even if we could win against one family there would be many among the Others we would have to fight eventually. Our best minds had indicated that we may just be able to defeat the one family of dragons if we mobilized the entire Nation, but we would lose at least half our numbers to do so if everything went our way. The next group of Others that we would have to face may just wipe us from the face of the planet even if things went our way most of the time.

Instead of fighting back, we just endured and expanded when we could. Since the Others were not purposefully trying to wipe us out we were still able to expand fairly often. The Nation had already grown to inhabit the vast majority of the dragons' backyard. But that could be a bad thing. Since we controlled so much of the yard that meant that some of us were crushed every time the dragons came out into their backyard. We had tried to develop safety systems to prevent as many of us from getting stepped on as possible, but none of them really worked. The thick grass normally prevented us from seeing or hearing the dragons ahead of time. We could only wait until we could feel their heavy footfalls and by then it was normally too late.

I would like to say that the dragons were a lazy family that did not get out much, but that would not have been very truthful. The dragons loved coming outdoors quite often. Whether it was to take care of their horses or to just have a picnic, they always seemed to have reason to come outside. Even though the chances of me being in the specific area of the yard that they were walking was not all that great, I knew that the dragons came out often enough that it would be more surprising if they happened to stay indoors for the day.

As the final bags were loaded into the transports for the day it was looking like the area I was in was going to be fortunate enough to avoid a dragon visit. But, as usual, things like that could change with all too little warning. "Did the rest of you feel that?" asked Worker 21. That was not a question to be ignored for people of the Nation. Sometimes people could get a little jumpy and imagine things, but they were right about things, like feeling vibrations in the ground, often enough that it tended to be deadly not to listen to them. Besides, it was not that long after Worker 21 felt something that I did too. From the looks on the faces of everyone else, they had felt it too. There was fear in those faces. We did not just start running around in panic, though. That would just get even more people killed. We tried to figure out which direction the vibrations were coming from and then we made our move.

In the event of a dragon walking through the yard it was an everyone for himself sort of situation. We were supposed to, and did, help anyone else when we could, but we really were not all that capable of even helping ourselves in these situations. All we could do was try not to get stepped on and not interfere with anyone else as they tried to prevent the same from happening to themselves. I waited to feel the spacing between the footfalls causing the ground to quake and cursed silently to myself. At first there had been a lot of space between the thudding footfalls, and then there was so little time between them that the ground was pretty much constantly shaking. That meant that the entire family was probably coming out for a picnic. Since the family consisted of three teenage boys, their parents, and a pet feral dog that meant there were ten titanic feet to avoid in the area plus four more slightly smaller titanic paws.

Then tremors form the dragons' footsteps started to grow more violent. Everyone tensed up, waiting for the moment when they thought they could tell where the dragons were coming from. When that moment did come, all the workers and the bosses took off running as fast as they could. Some of the younger workers that still had little experience with the dragons were more panicky than the rest, but they still managed to keep a little bit of control over themselves. A retreat from the dragons was never the most organized thing. It really was a sort of organized chaos. No one had ever found out how to perfectly predict where the dragons were coming from and that meant even the most experienced of us could still end up underfoot one day. Still, no one pushed or shoved one another, no one knocked someone else over trying to escape, no one did anything at all that would directly jeopardize anyone else's chances at escape. Of course, everyone ran in different directions and there was no telling who was running the right way.

Since each Boss was responsible for 200 Workers there were quite a few bodies to avoid getting in the way off. And then there were the Workers from the other groups close to us that had to be avoided as well. Escaping from the dragons was never an easy thing, especially when there were was many of them out as there were today. Then I received my first sighting of the dragons. A clawed, pale blue, three-toed, webbed foot came crashing down right on the area where the trucks were still parked. They were crushed in an instant, completely undoing the day's work. That was bad, even though no one had been cursed. It was not often workers were allowed back within the tunnels until they had gathered the required amount of food. That was especially true when there was a picnic around and there was plenty of food to gather. We were definitely going to have to make up for all that lost food.

I was going to have to worry about that lost food later though. It looked like the area I was in had proven to be the unlucky one for the day. If one dragon paw had come down in this area it probably meant the entire family was coming through. It did not take long for the dragons to prove me right about that thought. Dragon paws started descending like rain all over the area. With so many of them around, there really had not been a right direction to flee in. With so many workers around it was impossible for the dragons not to step on any of us. An emerald green paw came down on a couple of workers here, a dark red one on a few there, a midnight black one on over a dozen more just a short distance away from me. Those huge heavy paws were more than my people could take. The relatively tiny bodies of my people were reduced to broken husks with startling ease while the Others walked on without noticing what they were doing to my people.

In this situation all my people could do was run. It was not like our weapons did much more than bounce off the smooth leathery hides of the dragons. Some of the newer workers thought they were all running in the right direction since they were running in the opposite direction that the dragons had come from. I was running along with them and I did not think the same thing that they did. Experience had taught me that it was better to run to the side of the dragons. That way when they walked past all you had to worry about was getting stepped on once and we had to avoid those tails of theirs as well. When we ran in the opposite direction of the dragons we had to try and stay ahead of the dragons for as long as we could and that gave the dragons a lot of time to step on us, as the crunching noise made by my fellow workers behind me as they fell under a pale blue paw served to remind me.

Staying ahead of the dragons' paws was no easy task, but this was not the first time I had been forced to do so and I had practiced for doing so while back in the tunnels. I, as well as quite a few other workers, were able to stay ahead of the dragons all the way until we broke out from beneath the grass cover. That was not a very good thing. It meant we were out in the open in significant numbers and past experience had shown us that the Others did not like to find the people of the Nation in significant numbers. Our bodies were the dull brown color of the dirt we were forced to scurry across and that helped to conceal our presence, but that would only help for but so long if any of the dragons decided to look down.

Fortunately, only two of the dragons seemed to be behind us now, the emerald green one and the black one. Most of the time all my people were able to see of any of the Others were their paws or hooves due to all the grass obstructing our view. However, when I did get to see one of the others it was a sight to behold. They just made the people of the Nation look so insignificant with their oversized bodies. You had to learn not to admire them or you could get distracted when looking at them while trying to flee from them, as yet more workers learned the hard way when they stumbled and wound up underfoot.

It turned out that the two dragons that were unknowingly chasing me must have been going to check on their feral horses. They were chasing us right towards the stables. That was both a good and a bad thing. There was an entry point to the tunnels that we would be able to hide in temporarily in the stables. The problem was that it was at the back of the stables in a hidden area that was not easy to get to. Any area that the dragons frequently visited would not have tunnels that were easily accessible for the dragons and that often meant making the tunnels difficult for us to get to as well.

Still, I was grateful for the distraction that the horses would provide to the dragons. If they were busy taking care of those beasts they would not have the chance to look down and spot us all that often. We also had something else working for us. While the dragons had to waste time opening the doors to the stables we were able to run right under the door, giving us time to get even further ahead of the dragons. We did not get much time, but we were grateful for whatever time we could get.

Everyone knew where the entrance to the tunnels were and that was where we all headed. Some of us probably should have tried to get their by different routes, but we were all exhausted after being chased by the dragons. Everyone wanted to take the shortest route back to the tunnels that they could. That meant passing closer to the one of the horses than we would have liked, but there should not have been much danger from them while they were in the stables.

Some of the newer workers were marveling at the horses, Akhal-Tekes I believe. As far as horses went they were rather elegant looking and lightly built breed to me. Well, that was lightly built for a creature that was like a mountain of flesh compared to me. While the new workers marveled at the beauty and nobility of the horses I just ignored them. Even if the horses were relatively harmless in the stalls, I had been in the grass while they had been grazing before. To me those horses were walking digestion factories. I had seen far too many workmates disappear into the bellies of those beasts. Personally, I did not want to get closer to any of them than I absolutely needed to. That was why when we had to stray past a huge black stallion on the way to the tunnels I stayed on the far end of the group from the horse.

The horse did not pay much attention to our passing, and that was for a good reason. All the horses were well aware that the dragons had come into the stable to feed them and the stallion we were passing by was not about to pay attention to a bunch of ants when there was food around. We probably should have been paying attention to the dragons too. It was the green dragon that came by and gave the horse a handful of grain. Horses, being the messy eaters that they are, tended to knock just as much food out of the hands of those feeding them and this horse was no exception. Grain, slightly moist from the horse's saliva, rained down all around the group I was traveling with, often sticking to our bodies. Under many circumstances that might not have been that bad. Free food was free food after all.

Unfortunately, horses were simple animals. Unlike the Others, my people were able to communicate with the feral animals of this world, but the less intelligent they were the less likely that was to be of any good to us. We had been able to come to an understanding with the dragon's pet Weimaraner, but the horses just were not smart enough for us to get very far with them. When the horse bent down to lick up the stray grains that had fallen on the floor as the dragon walked away we could not do much to avoid our fate. My boss, Boss 7, pleaded with the horse, "Please, hold your tongue and let us pass. We are not grains for you to eat."

The horse paused in mid-lick. I doubted he even remembered that he had talked with ants before. Instead of licking, the horse let his huge nostrils hover over us and he started sniffing, "You smell like grain, but grain doesn't normally talk." What came next was not exactly unexpected. The horse's long pink saliva coated tongue darted out. Those in the way tried to dodge the massive pink muscle, but at least ten of them were licked up anyways. I could tell the horse was swishing my grain coated comrades around in his cavernous mouth. "You tried to trick me. You taste just like grain so you must be grain."

The horse had made his pronouncement and there was no way we were going to be able to change his mind. We all just started running, but with the horse right next to us it was a pretty futile effort on our part. Lick after lick captured my workmates. Even my boss got stuck to that mammoth, saliva coated, fleshy tongue. When the horse's tongue darted out in my direction I thought that I was finished. Numerous people behind me were already stuck to it and I thought I would just wind up another helpless part of the horse's meal. The tip of the tongue did come in contact with me and I felt it adhering to me, but I was able to get a good grip on the floor before the horse could withdraw the tongue back into his mouth. There was a tense moment when I thought I would lose my grip, but I held on long enough to tug myself off the horse's tongue. If he had licked me again he probably would have been able to take me into his maw, but, fortunately for me, the horse lifted his head and started chewing on what he already had in his mouth.

Those of us that had survived did not waste time trying to get away from the horse while we could. We still had to pass under the horse to get to the tunnels, but while we were under the horse the horse could not eat us. After we were past the horse those of us that remained would finally be safe from harm. It was unfortunate for use that the dragons had taught the horse a new trick without anyone from the Nation knowing they had. When the green dragon walked back past the horse she gave the order, "Sit."

The dragon had no clue we were there. She was just trying to get the horse to perform a trick that he thought was amusing. The dragon was able to get a good laugh out of watching the horse sit as if it were a dog. For the group I was with that trick was anything but amusing. We had been facing away from the stallion when it was ordered to sit and we did not realize what was happening until it was too late. All the rest of the survivors, including myself, had been beneath the horse as it took a seat. We only had a few moments to react to what the horse was doing by the time we noticed it was sitting down. For most of us that was only enough time to scream.

The horses massive rear seemed to fill up our world with startling speed. There had to be a few dozen of us left, but a few dozen of my people is not even close to enough to support the weight of even one feral horse. Most of us were turned into paste without the horse even noticing he had crushed so many of us. I, along with a few others, were destined for a different fate. We had been directly beneath the horse's tail hole and that was the only thing that prevented us from getting crushed too. There was not much for us to be grateful about, though. The horse's tail hole was just as greedy as his mouth was. I could feel it sucking at my body as I tried to hold on to the floor. The others around me were getting sucked into it despite their best efforts and it was not long before the horse's rear overpowered me as well.

Once I lost my grip on the floor there really was not much I could do. The horse sucked me right up his anus, probably without even meaning to do so. I and the others that had been absorbed by the horse's tail hole had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. In a world dominated by the Others and feral beasts, that was not something uncommon for my people. Unless my people were deep within their tunnels we were always in the wrong place and just waiting for the wrong time.

After the horse had finished sucking us all into his body his anus sealed up behind us. We were trapped within the massive equine and our futile attempts at escape did not even register as a minor annoyance to him. All we could do was sit around and wait within the dark rank environment. Since this was the end of the horse's digestive system we would probably get out eventually, but I did not think I would like the way the horse would eventually get rid of us. Still, it might have been better than what was happening to some of my other former coworkers as they made their way all the way through the digestion factory that was the horse's body.

It did not take long for the horse to process his meal and I saw the first signs of that headed my way. With something like that headed at us we all redoubled our efforts to escape from the horse's anus. Getting rolled up in what looked like a sizable mound of horse waste to us was not something any of us wanted to experience. That worked about as well for us as had our previous escape attempts. The tail hole refused to open for us up until the point where the horse's fecal matter was pressing us up against it. Between the fleshy walls of the tail hole and the horse waste, there was a lot of pressure forcing us to become another part of the horse waste. I tried not to smell it or notice what made up the mound of waste. That was not entirely possible. I did have to breath eventually and it was impossible to ignore that the mound of waste was made up of more than indigestible plant matter. The horse had also failed to completely digest the chitinous shells that made up the bodies of my people. It was not pleasant seeing what had happened to them, but I did not think it was any less pleasant than what was about to happen to me.

Even though the best efforts of my people had been unable to part the walls of the tail hole, the piece of fecal matter had been able to do it easily. It was very humbling to realize that my people were not even as mighty as a piece of waste in this world. The horse expelled us from his body with the rest of his waste, not noticing or just not caring that we were there. We plummeted back to the floor of the horse stables as a part of horse waste. It was quite a long fall for us since the horse was standing up, but it might have been survivable under different circumstances. Unfortunately, after we hit the floor we were all still stuck in the mound of fecal matter. The horse was not done voiding himself of his waste either. A few more drops of horse waste rained down on us, crushing us under its waste. Even getting stepped on seemed preferable to this, but there was nothing I could do to alter my fate as one more drop of fecal matter dropped down on top of me. That was the last drop that my body could take as my body burst under the pressure of all the waste I was buried under.

******

It took a while for me to claw my way from out under the blanket that the dragons had laid out for their picnic. The fabric of the blanket was heavy, but not crushing in weight, at least not under the parts that the dragons were not sitting on. There were many others that had not been as lucky as I had been though. If a worker did get trapped under the parts of the blanket that the dragons were sitting on then I doubted I would ever be seeing them again. But, that was not something that I could worry about at the moment. I had to find my way to where the other workers were regrouping so we could continue with our gathering operations.

Getting back together after something like having a bunch of us getting crushed was nothing unusual. It had happened so many times in the history of the Nation that we were well practiced in doing this. The people of the Nation had been going through such disasters long before the dragons had occupied that house and it would continue to survive and go through similar incidents long after the dragons were gone. Still, these incidents could be very devastating, as was revealed to me when I made it to the area everyone was regrouping in.

Of the three groups of workers in the area there was not even enough workers to make one whole group. That was a little convenient since one of the bosses for one group was nothing more than a smear beneath one of the dragon's paws and another boss was missing. The surviving boss was Boss 1. He was an old survivor and would probably get promoted out of having to come out on these gathering trips soon, as long as he continued to be a survivor. I was actually one of three Worker 5s, but two of us were promoted since no Worker 2 or 4s had survived. Since I was the most experienced of all the Worker 5s I was the one that became Worker 2. That put me just a couple more promotions away from becoming one of the bosses. Once I worked my way up through those ranks I would finally be able to get out of these gathering trips just like Boss 1 was about to do.

But, before anyone could head back into the tunnels and be safe for the day we all had to make up for the lost supplies that the dragons had crushed. That picnic of theirs was going to be the perfect place to pick up those supplies too. With the new group of workers organized, we set off for the picnic blanket that I had been forced to pull myself out from under not that long ago. By the time we made it to the blanket the dragons had already finished setting up for their picnic.

Even though we needed to finish our gathering operations as soon as we could, we waited until the dragons were all deep in conversation. When they were busy talking to each other they were not looking at the ground. If they were not looking at the ground then they were much more likely not to notice us. We did not go out and start gathering what we wanted in one big group though. Over 100 workers going out onto the blanket at the same time would pretty much guarantee us getting noticed. We went out in groups of no more than three or four workers and we never took anything directly off their plates either. All we would take were what they considered crumbs that happened to fall on the blanket. That kept the number of workers that were noticed at a minimum.

Unfortunately, a minimum was not no one. Something always happened to my people when the Others were around. It was inevitable that something was going to go wrong for one group of workers while we were working in such close proximity to the dragons. And it did not take long for the dragons to prove me right. One of the dragons had been drinking a glass of what I assumed to be lemonade when he sat it down right on top of a group that had been returning with some crumbs. Full of ice and still more than half full, the glass was more than enough to crush that group. Misfortune also befell another group a little while later. They did not even make it to any crumbs before the bronze hand of the father of the dragon family came to rest on top them. Since the dragon rested his considerable weight on that hand, those people were thoroughly crushed.

All of that did not discourage me though. I had seen it happen often enough that I was fairly used to seeing my people getting crushed as if they were nothing. Truthfully, I kind of liked it better when the Others did treat us as if we were nothing. When they did decide to pay attention to our existence things could go bad fairly quickly. That was something that was demonstrated to me when my turn to go after some crumbs finally came up. I had done this many times before, risked my life for what the Others considered nothing more than crumbs, but could make a decent meal for those back in the Nation. This just happened to be the unlucky time for me, like it had been for a couple of those earlier groups. The unlucky time happened for many workers eventually. No matter how careful you were and how much experience you had nothing could save you from an unlucky moment.

My unlucky moment happened to come in the form of a blood red dragon looking down at where one of my group members was. The dragon might not have noticed my companion if it were not for the fact that he was standing directly on a white strip. Our own brown bodies did not blend in well with the color white. The dragon noticed my companion easily and then his eyes scanned the blanket and he spotted the rest of us as well. We all knew that we had to run in this situation, but we all knew it was a futile effort. Only the luckiest of individuals ever managed to get away from the Others once they were noticed and they were out in the open. To my knowledge it had only happened once and that was because there was a crack in the ground that the giant had not been able to get into. There were no cracks for us to escape into, it would actually take us a few seconds we did not have just to get off the blanket. Our fate was now completely up to the fleeting whims of the dragon and I knew it.

I was not looking back to see what the dragon had planned for me. Some people said that when their end came they wanted to see it, but I was not one of those people. When my end came I wanted it to be quick and painless. It seemed that just because I wanted it to be that way that was why the dragon chose to do something that would be just the opposite. Instead of just crushing me outright I saw two leathery walls surround my body. Those walls closed in around me in a firm grip. It did not take me long to figure out that the dragon had decided to pick me up between his thumb and index finger. There was already another captive there with me and it did not take the dragon long to capture us all. I had hoped he would drop me while trying to pick up the others, but I was not so lucky.

Once the dragon had all of us securely in his control we were lifted before his face. He actually was a rather noble looking creature. A long elegant neck led up to a head that had a certain lethal elegance to it. He had an impressive set of horns plus a set of webbed spines running down his head and all the way down to his tail. I did not know what they were for, but the great thinkers in the nation theorized that those webbed spines in addition to the dragon's webbed hands and paws meant they had an aquatic heritage. The dragons also had wings which meant they probably had a mixed family history according to those same thinkers. That was all out of my area of expertise, though, and I found it kind of hard to believe that there was a body of water around that was large enough for the dragons to need to adapt to swim in. Our people had certainly never encountered such a large body of water before.

A couple of the members of the group were pleading for our lives, but none of the Others could understand us. I always thought it was strange that we could understand them and the beasts of this world could understand us, but the Others could not understand us. That made begging for our lives a very difficult thing to do when it came to the Others.

Part of the dragon's lips pulled back in what started out as a sneer of disgust, but quickly turned into a smirk. There was something about that smirk that I did not like. When his tongue darted out from between his teeth to lick his lips I started to get an idea of what he had planned. "Well, looks like a few little bits of extra protein decided to join the picnic," said the dragon. That sentence was like the pronouncement of a death sentence to me. There would be no way of talking my way out of this situation.

The dragon licked his lips slowly a couple more times as if taunting us by dragging out the situation. His thick saliva soaked tongue left little tendrils of drool behind as he did so. That was a pretty good indication that the dragon really was looking forward to eating me. I had heard that sometimes the Others thought eating people from the Nation was a disgusting thing that they would never do on purpose, but the carnivores among them normally were not so picky. When the dragon opened his toothy maw full of very sharp teeth there was no doubt in my mind that he was a carnivore.

The long slimy purplish tongue of the dragon lolled out of his mouth as he moved us closer to his maw. Thick strings of saliva decorated the maw like some sort of strange spider web. His hot humid breath washed over us as he breathed, letting us get a smell of what he had been eating so far at the picnic. The dragon's pink maw was mottled with dark black spots and I was not enjoying the sight of it at all, nor was I liking the sight of the shadowy abyss at the back of his throat. I could tell the dragon was stretching things out on purpose and I was trying to put that time to good use.

All of us that had been captured were trying to force our way free of the dragon's grasp. Kicking, punching, biting, nothing seemed to work and the dragon was only using two of his fingers. If we had been dealing with a thin skinned creature we might have at least been able to annoy it, but we were not able to so much as tickle the dragon through his thick leathery hide. Despite how hopeless the situation was we continued to fight on while the dragon did not seem to notice our efforts.

Our struggle came to an abrupt end when the dragon released us and we found ourselves falling through the air. It was only a brief fall, though, as we soon landed on his slimy tongue. We actually had a couple of seconds to try and jump off the tongue before it was withdrawn into his dank maw. Unfortunately, we did not have the ability to run. The saliva on the dragon's tongue adhered to our bodies with surprising strength. As we struggled against the stuff and it further coated our bodies we just found ourselves stuck even more firmly to the red dragon's tongue. We were withdrawn into the dark tomb that was the dragon's mouth and when his lips sealed around us so was our fate.

All it took for the dragon to send us speeding towards our next destination was a brief little swallow for him. To us it was an irresistible force that tugged us off his tongue with ease. Considering we had just been trying to get off his tongue we were not exactly happy to do so now. As we sped down deeper into the dragon we knew it was not a good fate that awaited us. Inside the dragons titanic body it would not distinguish between us and the other items of food the dragon had decided to eat. Protein was protein and we would all be absorbed, even if we were nothing more than specks compared to the rest of the meal.

By the time we fell into the belly of the dragon we had been disoriented from the speed of the fall. The plunge into the mix of digestive enzymes and partially digested food did not help us out much either. It would have been nice if we had been dissolved instantly, but the dragon's digestive system was not so kind to me. My death was far from quick and instantaneous as my body was slowly dissolved by the hungry dragon. Eventually, there was one small kindness in the form of a little belch on the part of the dragon. That belch helped to get rid of a lot air in his stomach, air that was helping to keep me conscious. Without that air I was finally able to pass out and my pain ended. I would never wake up again and the dragon just continued to enjoy his meal.

******

"Are you sure this is a good idea 1247?" I asked my friend. "The workers and the bosses got hit pretty hard today by the dragons. It just does not seem to be a good day to be an ant."

"You worry too much 1251," my friend said to me, "There were a bunch of them all together and that was why they suffered such heavy losses today. It wasn't like the dragons were doing it on purpose. They're just so large and clumsy they can't help causing damage."

"That's not the way I heard it went for a few workers. Once the dragons caught one group of workers they realized their picnic was being invaded. From the rumors I heard they managed to add at least 100 workers and a couple of bosses to their meal," I said.

1247 just waved off what I said and responded, "Those are just rumors. Why would the dragons eat us on purpose? You know all the adults are just scared to death of the dragons. Something goes wrong and the Others just have to be doing it on purpose."

"Maybe, but how would you know. We've never gotten to see the dragons before. You can't just say that the workers and the bosses are exaggerating everything," I reasoned.

"And that's why we should go see one of the dragons while we can," 1247 said enthusiastically, "Or do you want to wait another two years until we become workers and the first time we get to see a dragon all will probably be able to see are their feet. Don't you want to be able to see the whole thing? I mean, I hear they actually have toes that are far taller than any ant in history. That even goes for the youngest dragon in the family. He's only supposed to be 16 years old, just a couple years older than us, and he's still growing. Don't you want to be able to see something of that size in its full glory."

I nodded a bit sheepishly in response. In truth, I did want to see a dragon, or any of the Others for that matter, but I was so frightened at the same time. Close to 1,000 workers had perished today and most of them were by complete accident. Those were all experienced workers that had dealt with the dragons before too. I did not know how well I would fair against even one dragon. But, I could not just let the chance to actually see a dragon pass me by. With so much attention going towards helping out the injured workers we were able to slip out of the tunnels for the first time in our lives. We also happened to live fairly close to the dragons' home and getting inside had not been much of a problem for us. There were a few little holes in the dragons' home that our people had made sure could get us into their home when needed and we were using one of those holes.

We had been able to follow the hole we had entered all the way up into one of the dragons' rooms. Of course the exit to the hole was in a hidden place that would only let us get a view of the dragon's paws. In order to get a better view we had climbed up onto the dragon's bed. It was various shades of brown and we just picked one of the shades that matched our bodies the best. We thought that if we blended in we would be perfectly safe. Since we had wandered into the home of the dragons at a late hour we did not have long to wait before the dragon that lived in the room came in for a good night's rest.

That dragon happened to be the pale blue one and the youngest member of the dragon family. It was hard to believe he was only a couple of years older than we were. He was just so huge. We were left in awe of his size. Since we had lived all of our lives in the tunnels we had never seen any living thing close to the dragon's size. Of course the furniture in his room was built for a creature of his size, but the furniture itself did not look like it was built to the quality of what people from the Nation would expect. The dragon was different, though. He was an actual living thing far larger than anything I would have ever expected a living thing could be.

The dragon did not move to where we had expected him to when he came into the room. We had been expecting the dragon to take a seat in front of his computer first, but he came over to the bed and looked like he was going to sit down. I had heard of unlucky moments from the workers back in the tunnels, but I was not truly aware of how frightening it could be to find myself in one of those moments. Despite how big the bed was we had somehow chosen to hide in the same place that the dragon had decided to sit down. Between his rear and his tail we had a lot of dragon to dodge. We could not move fast enough to avoid both.

At first we tried to get beneath the point where his tail joined with his body. It seemed like there might be an arch where the two met. If we could get there we just might be able to keep ourselves from being crushed. As the dragon's rear descended on us our world turned various shades of blue. The dragon was wearing blue jeans a few shades darker than his own leathery skin and the underside of his tail was an even lighter shade of blue than the topside of it. We sprinted as best we could and I was surprised to see that it looked like we were going to make it to safety. When we were under the arch I was overjoyed and was about to give out a shout of triumph when I noticed that 1247 was still running.

It looked like he had not had the same idea that I had when running for the safe spot beneath the dragon. He had just been running in blind panic and he had not realized he was already in the safe spot. I tried to give chase and restrain him before he ran to far out beneath the dragon's thick and very heavy looking tail. There just was not enough time to do that however. When the dragon sat down on the bed it actually caused me to bounce, but that was nothing compared to what happened to 1247. He made it just far enough that part of his body was crushed beneath the dragon's unimaginable weight.

I thought that he must be dead, but then he screamed, "1251! Help me." His voice was full of pain and the little shifts that the dragon made with his tail elicited screams of pain from my friend. I tried to move to him and give him some help, but I could not pull him out from beneath the mountain of flesh that was the dragon. All I seemed to do was cause him even more pain as I tugged at his body. And then an even worse disaster struck. Whatever we were doing seemed to be just enough to get the dragon to notice. He did not actually realize he was sitting on top of a couple other beings, all he must have noticed was a small itch.

A gigantic clawed hand reached under the tail along with me and my friend. I could tell what the dragon was doing and tried to help my friend as best I could. Even if I was making any progress I did not have enough time to pull 1247 to safety. All it took to put an end to 1247 was one casual swipe of a claw as the dragon attempted to take care of his itch. I had to get out of the way before I could get caught up in the dragon's scratching. What happened to 1247 was not something I would ever be able to forget. Multiple claws kept swiping his body, decimating his tiny form and smearing him all over the dragons tail. It was a swift death, though, unless he could somehow survive as a streak of bloody remains.

I was not completely safe myself. The dragon was scratching far too close to me for me to believe that. Massive fingers that were easily large enough to crush me even by accident were all around me and constantly on the move. I was doing my best to dodge them all, but I was getting tired a lot faster than the dragon was. What I had hoped would happen was that the dragon would just stop scratching and give me some time to get away. My good fortune did not last long enough for that to happen. I made a misstep and wound up right in the path of an oncoming finger. Fortunately, I was able to hop onto it instead of getting turned into paste by it like 1247.

Just as I hoped onto that finger was when the dragon decided to finally stop scratching himself. I did not have enough time to safely hop off his finger while it was still under his tail. All I could do was hold on and hope the dragon would not notice me on his finger. I was terrified to see the dragon lifting his hand in front of his face. He must have felt something beneath his tail when he was scratching and he was inspecting his hand to see if there was anything there. With him actually doing a thorough job of searching for me there was no chance of me staying hidden.

I could tell when he noticed me on his finger and he looked pretty angry about it. Then he looked down at where he had been scratching and he looked infuriated. "Gross, you bugs can really make a mess despite how small you are," the dragon said disgustedly. The dragon eventually looked back at me. He still looked mad, but there was also a little smile on his face as he addressed me. "That's what happens when you invade someone else's home though. You're going to have to be punished too. You ants have been rather bold today and I don't want the rest of your friends thinking we were starting to go easy on you. I'd probably be finding you all over the place if you thought that."

I pleaded with the dragon to not do whatever he had planned. Promises that I would never bother him again did not work because he could not understand me. My being too young to even be a worker did not seem to have any effect on the dragon either. I would have backed away from the dragon if I could have, but there was nowhere for me to go accept somewhere else on the dragon's body. That did not stop me from at least trying to run and running did not keep the dragon from doing what he planned. He used his other hand to flick me off his hand with contemptuous ease. The dragon's hard claw slammed into my body with lightning speed. Pain lanced through every part of my body as I was launched through the air. My vision blurred and I knew various parts of my body had to be shattered.

I could not tell how long I flew through the air. My mind was too fogged up at the time to comprehend something like that. What I was able to comprehend was that I hit something large and hard that brought my flight to a sudden stop. That sent another wave of pain shooting through my body. When I hit the ground I fell on something that was broken, but that still did not hurt as much as getting flicked by the dragon. I tried to get up and find out where I was, but I was having a hard time moving.

"Now where did that little bugger go," I heard the dragon say from somewhere above me. I heard a thump on the surface of what I was laying on not that far away from me. That made me want to try and recover at least enough to see clearly. It only took a few seconds for that to happen and I was not happy with what I saw. I had landed on top of the dragon's dresser after hitting a picture of his family. His hand was dangerously close to me and he was scanning the top of the dresser for my presence. He had yet to find me because I was in the shadow of his own finger and the dresser was pretty close to the same shade of brown that I was.

The dragon started tapping his finger on the dresser and I tried to crawl away from it. One little move in the wrong direction and I stood a pretty good chance of getting impaled on the dragon's claw. I was not very mobile at the second, but that probably helped me out at the moment. If I moved that much it would make me easier to notice. Going unnoticed did not help me out in the end as the dragon said, "I guess he must have landed somewhere else."

His hand moved just enough to impale me on a claw as it tapped on the dresser one more time. I screamed in pain, but the dragon did not hear me. All I could do was flail about in agony as the dragon lifted his hand off the dresser. I did not even notice the dragon moving his hand towards his mouth. Truthfully, I really did not notice much besides the pain being caused by the claw that had penetrated my body. I did notice it when the dragon started picking his teeth with the claw I was stuck to. That made my body shift around in ways that sent continuous waves of pain echoing through my body. It did not last for long though. The dragon managed to get the thing that had been bothering him from between his teeth. That thing, much to my horror, happened to be a partially chewed up worker and a piece of unidentified meat that the dragon must have eaten during the picnic.

When the dragon started to withdraw his claw from his mouth I did not come with it. The dragon's actions had caused me to slip from his claw and I fell right into his mouth. He had no clue I was there and I doubt he would have cared anyways. Actual, he might have cared, but not in a good way. I was just a pest to him, a bug to be destroyed at his whim, not a fellow teenager that had just gotten curious.

I could barely move as I sat helpless on the dragon's tongue, soaking in his saliva. Even if I could have moved I would have been too afraid to. The slightest movement may have alerted the dragon to my presence. I was uncertain of how long I laid there in the dragon's dark humid maw with his reeking breath as my only company, but he eventually decided to swallow for some reason I did not know. That swallowing motion sent my pain filled body sliding down the dragon's serpentine throat at a dizzying rate of speed. The walls of muscle surrounding me did not even have to do any work to aid me in my descent. My fall did not cease until I had reached the belly of the beast and the end to that fall was not very pleasant. Even though the fall from the dragon's mouth to his stomach may not have been very far to him, it was a tremendous fall for me. Smacking against the bottom of the dragon's belly caused me enough pain to make me nearly pass out.

In the end I wish that I had just passed out. Even though I could have only been a speck in the dragon's digestive system my presence was enough to set it into motion. Acids started flooding into the dragon's belly, enough to make me think the dragon's belly was going into overkill just to digest me. Unpleasant burbling noises were the only company that I had within the belly of the beast. The dragon's body seemed to want whatever protein it could get, though, and it was more than happy to get it from me. It did not take long for those acids to digest me, but the brief moments that I had left seemed to stretch on forever as I was forced to watch my own body dissolve and the unpleasant smell of my own decaying body started to fill the air. When my end did come it was a very welcome relief.

A Need for Change

"This has got to stop," argued Administrator Tonvlin, "How many more disasters must the Others visit upon us before we finally commit to fighting back."

"What good will fighting the Others do us," asked Administrator Ezrail, "It would take the entirety of the Nation just to fight this one family of dragons and even then victory would not be assured. Even a conflict with a small number of the Others could very well result in our complete extermination."

"That could end up happening even if we don't fight back," said Vice Administrator Cagtay. "Any one of the Others could decided that trying to wipe us out might be fun. They already have their cursed exterminators try to wipe out all our tunnels within a certain distance of their home. The only thing saving us from them is that they seriously underestimate our intelligence. They think we are actually no smarter than our feral counterparts."

"The Others have shown no interest in trying to completely wipe us out yet," Administrator Kendon said in a tone that indicated he was trying to convince himself more of what he said than anyone else.

"Have not shown an interest in wiping us out," Tonvlin said contemptuously, "They eat us for food, crush us because they don't like us, and as our scouts reported while going after a pair of adolescents, they don't even show any mercy for our young. The Others are nothing more than a bunch of primitive barbarians who have nothing more than overwhelming size to their advantage, and yet they treat us as if we are nothing more than pests. Barbarians like them will try to wipe us out eventually and we need to do something about that before it happens."

"And what would you have us do that has not been proposed and rejected many times before?" asked Ezrail.

Tonvlin smiled as he said, "I invited Vive Administrator Cagtay here to answer just that question. Cagtay, if you would?"

"Of course Administrator," Cagtay said to Tonvlin before turning to address the other administrators. "As Administrator Tonvlin has said, all the Others have going for them is their size. We have already determined that we have the technologically superior civilization and that we would be able to defeat the others if they were not so obscenely large. For most of our history we have tried to figure out how to fight beings of such size, but now we believe we have figured out how to get around their size."

Kendon leaned forward with interest in his eyes, "And just how do you think you are going to do that?"

"Over the past few years we have assembled some of the finest minds within the Nation to come up with a new weapon, one that will rob the Others of their size, making them much more manageable," explained Cagtay.

Ezrail looked astonished as he said, "And you have such a weapon now? Has it actually been tested yet?"

"Not at the moment," Tonvlin responded for Cagtay, "But, I have already received permission from the Queen to put together a team to test this device. We want to see if this actually works before we make the announcement of this new weapon to the entirety of the Nation."

"And how long will it be before this team of yours will be ready to test this new weapon?" asked Ezrail.

"The team is close to being fully assembled and will be dispatched to the dragon's home this Saturday," responded Tonvlin.

******

Now that the day was finally here I was feeling more anxious than I ever had in my life. My life's work looked like it was going to change the way the world worked for the people of the Nation. Like all the people of the Nation, I had been forced to make my way up through the ranks, but my stint as a worker had been mercifully short. My intelligence had been quickly recognized and I had been made into a researcher. It was not long after that that I was able to earn an actual name. I was now Head Researcher Teliyin, partnered with Head Engineer Covax, and I was one of a very small number of females that was being considered for the role of the next queen.

That was why there had been a few objections from Vice Administrator Cagtay when I had chosen to personally lead this team into the dragon's own home. They did not want me out of the tunnels and they wanted me purposefully getting near the dragons even less. But, I needed to lead this expedition. What I had invented, along with Covax, was something that was not unheard of in fiction. It was what many people would have simply called a shrink ray. The ray was not just a little gun that required the user to point and shoot, though. There were numerous complex adjustments that had to be made to the ray before each firing that not many were capable of. Covax could probably do it too, but he was not very reliable under stressful conditions and he would have to be left in the tunnels. The ray did combine the DNA of the Others with that of the people of the Nation after all. I hoped to make most of those adjustments automatic in later models, but we needed to prove that my invention actually worked before I thought about doing that.

My team would consist of a couple of junior researchers to assist me and quite a few warriors would accompany me. Quite frankly, I did not know what all the warriors were for. I was going to be exiting the tunnels directly into the home of the dragons. All the threats that the warriors were actually capable of protecting me from in the grass were not present in the dragons' home. They insisted that there were still dangers they needed to protect me from though. It was like they thought some sort of house spider might show up to gobble me up. Our weapons may not have been much use against the Others, but even my personal sidearm was capable of fending off a mere spider. Bringing along all these warriors seemed like an unnecessary risk to me. The more there were of us the more likely we would be noticed before I could test the shrink ray. They just would not let a potential queen venture out into the world unprotected.

Gathering together all the warriors needed to protect me is what had caused the mission to take so long to get started. Not any warrior would do for my protection after all. Most of them were handpicked for this mission and they had to be gathered from all over the Nation. Even though the entirety of the Nation existed within the backyard of the dragons it still took a while for us to pull together everyone from the far corners of the Nation. But, now that everyone was finally gathered the mission could commence.

We were set to arrive at the dragons' home early in the afternoon. At that time the dragons were normally away from their home on a Saturday. They tended to be out doing things with friends or taking care of errands that they did not have time to deal with during the week. We had also taken the precaution of making sure the dragons had left before we started out on the mission. I wanted to have plenty of time to set up my shrink ray before the dragons came back.

The trip to the dragons' home was not all that eventful. Since we could travel all the way to their home in the safety of the tunnels there really was not much that could happen. I was so anxious about the mission that I was not very talkative and the warriors were never known for being a talkative bunch. We did manage to attract a few looks from various other people going about their business in the tunnels. Groups of warriors did not just travel around in large groups for no reason at all and people had to be curious about what was happening. No one followed us though. People tended to learn what happened to adventurous ants awfully early in life. It they did not, well, what happened to those teens earlier in the week was not all that uncommon a fate.

I had mixed emotions as we entered sight of the entrance to the dragons' home. It had been a couple of years since I had seen the dragons and when I had all I had seen of them were their massive crushing feet. This was going to be my first time seeing a whole dragon since there was not going to be any grass obstructing my view. When the only sights you had ever seen of a creature were of it stepping on and crushing the life out of your comrades you developed a healthy respect and fear of said creature. However, I was extremely hopeful for the first time in my life. If my invention actually worked we would finally be able to shrink the Others down to size. My invention would also make it so that the Others could finally understand us. We might finally be able to convince them to stop treating us like pests, and if we could not we would finally have a means to make them pay for their actions.

******

It was hard to believe I had been called in to look after a group of researchers that actually planned to fight back against the Others. Every warrior knew that fighting the Others was suicide. We were normally only supposed to handle fighting rival hives from our feral relatives and other overly aggressive insects. That was easy enough for us to handle due to our massive technological advantage over other non-anthro insects. But, fighting the Others was a completely different story. It would take all the people of the Nation, not just the warriors, to even attempt fighting them. The fact that Head Researcher Teliyin thought she had some sort of miracle weapon to help fight the others did not help my mind handle years of thinking that the Others were an enemy that we could not hope to defeat.

I wished that Teliyin could have just trained me or one of my warriors in the use of her weapon. Risking a potential queen for this mission did not seem worth it to me, even if her weapon worked. If something happened to her it would all fall on my head, Commander Zafren, as it very well should. I would never forgive myself it I let someone as promising as a potential queen get harmed. But, Teliyin insisted she was the only one that could use the weapon adequately in its current state and so she had to come on this mission and we had to somehow make sure nothing happened to her.

That was why my warriors were taking the lead into the dragons' home. Just because the scouts thought all the dragons had left did not mean that the dragons had actually left. The scouts did somehow manage to get things wrong every once and a while. Depending too much on the scouts could lead to fatal consequences on occasion. Besides, the dragons also had a pet dog that they had not taken along with them today. The Nation had an understanding with the dog, but he was only but so intelligent. If he got careless he could easily forget out presence and that dog was more than large enough to crush us beneath his paws.

Sure enough, the first sight to greet us upon entering the dragons' domain was the sight of their pet. For a dog, he was only of medium size, which still made him incredibly huge by our standards. He had short silver-gray fur and a thin tail. I believe that the dragons called the breed a Weimaraner. I would not have thought that the floppy eared creature could hear that well with his ears plastered against his head, but his hearing tended to be hideously good. If he was in the same room that we were coming into and there was no other noise he could usually hear us entering. That was the big reason why we had to come to an understanding with the dog. It had taken a while, but our diplomats had eventually managed to convince the dog to stop eating and toying around with us. Our people had gone through a lot of trouble to get that done, but it was still better than that one time a few generations ago when this house had been owned by wolves. They had all of that nightmarishly good hearing and none of the ability to be reasoned with.

"Visitors," said the excited dog, "Do you want to play?" It was a good thing that the dragons were not home. The dog was not exactly being quiet. Then again, if the dragons were home he would probably be playing with them and ignoring our presence. He normally only paid attention to us when the dragons were away or no one was paying attention to him. Since the dragons were away at the moment it was going to be hard for us to get rid the sociable canine. I personally thought we should just shrink the dog, but we were under orders not to use the shrink ray on any animals. The absence of the dog might make the dragons suspicious and we did not want them to be any more alert than they normally were.

Fortunately, Teliyin was a talented diplomat as well as a brilliant researcher. Still, dealing with the dog was not an easy thing to do. He was a very large animal and, even though his intelligence was limited, he knew he could make us play with him if he wanted to. What Teliyin had to do was convince the dog that he did not want to play with us and that he wanted to go and do something else. The dog had started out as dead set on playing with us, but after about 20 minutes Teliyin was able to convince him he wanted to go play with some of his squeaky toys instead. That was a pretty good thing since his toys were well away from the area we intended to operate in.

With that done we were able to proceed to the front door of the house. What we planned to do was set up close to the door and wait for the dragons to return home, hopefully one by one. After they closed the door we would shrink them and no one would know any better. When we had the entire family we would return to the tunnels, leaving the Others with no clue to what had happened when they inevitably came to investigate what had happened here. It was a plan that seemed simple enough to pull off as long as the shrink ray worked. But, there were always things that could go wrong that everyone tended to overlook. I just hoped we had not overlooked any glaring flaws in our plans.

******

We were close to the front door and I was growing more anxious with each step. It would not be long before I was testing out my shrink ray on an actual dragon. I just hoped that dog did not get in the way again. It was unbelievable how long it could take to convince that thing to do something. Hopefully, if my device worked we would soon be able to skip things like that and just shrink things like dogs whenever we needed to.

It turned out that I had a much shorter time to wait for the dragon than I had thought I would. As we were still making our way to the front door I heard the lock on the door turning. We were already against the side of the wall, so I was not too worried about being caught out in the open on the floor. I doubted the dragons would actually notice us. But, as the door opened I received an unexpected surprise. It was not just a dragon that was returning home, but a dragon and a few of his friends.

That was definitely unexpected and it should have been something I had thought of. If this were one of those fictional shrink rays I was using this would not be much of a problem. Unfortunately, my shrink ray was not as good as those. I would have to perform a great number of adjustments to shrink the entire group at once and I had to do it before they all split up. It would have been bad if one of them found us shrinking any of their fellows if we had to track them down and shrink them one at a time.

The dragon that was returning home was the red one, the middle child, and he had five of his friends with him. Like all of the dragons and many of their friends, the Others that I saw before me were kind of slim in build, but still had enough muscles on them to look slightly athletic. They all looked like they were in their late teens to early twenties and not a single one of them was of the same species. That complicated things even more for my shrink ray and I could see that was something I was going to have to work on.

There was another complication for me that was not directly related to the shrink ray. The dragon and his friends were jostling each other around playfully. That did not sound all that bad, but they kept pushing each other towards the walls. We were still far enough away from any cover that the dragon and his friends would reach us before we could get undercover. If one of them happened to get pushed toward the wall when they were right next to us we might be in a lot of trouble. That looked increasingly like it was a possibility we were going to have to face. There was no way that I would be able to make the proper adjustments to the shrink ray before the dragon and his friends walked past.

I had to ignore the impending threat that all those giant paws presenting to me as I made the adjustments. If I made any mistakes by letting myself get distracted with fear I would just have to start all over again and we would probably have to abandon the mission for now. I had to get this right the first time or else I would just be putting everyone in danger for no good reason.

My progress was steady, but as the Others walked past one of the dragon's friends pushed him against the wall. If he had just come home alone we would not have had much of a problem since he would not have walked along the edges of the wall like we were. Unfortunately, that push sent him and his huge feet right against the wall. I was not in the way of those mammoth dragon paws, but quite a few of the soldiers were, about a quarter of the ones escorting me. There was a very audible crunch as multiple chitinous shells were crushing at once. Bits of my escort squirted onto me as the life was literally crushed out of them under that huge red leathery paw of the dragon's. A little twist of the dragon's foot as he tried to recover his balance ended up turning the already broken remains of the warriors into paste.

Things did not start to improve after that. In fact, they got much worse. It turned out that the crunching noise made by so many bodies was noticeable to the dragon and his friends as well. "Well, look what we have here. You ants really have been pretty active lately. We might have to call the exterminators again, see if they can do something about the rest of your friends. But, I think I should be able to handle the you guys myself."

The dragons friends were not exactly trying to restrain him. They were actually laughing and joking while suggesting various things he should do to punish all those "puny bugs." It was hard trying to block out what they were saying, but I had to. If I did pay attention to them I was certain I would freeze up in fear. I probably would have given in to my fear if it were not for the warriors starting to form a protective shell around me. They would not be able to do anything to the dragon, but it was still much more comfortable having them around me than I thought it would be.

Having all those warriors around me did help me out in other ways than just giving me a boost of courage. I was directly against the wall while the warriors were out front and, because of that, the dragon was paying more attention to them than to me. The dragon knelt down, his huge form still towering over us, and scooped up the warriors that had been at the front of the group. By the way his ugly purplish tongue was running over his pebbly lips, I could tell what he had planned for those warriors. They tried to fight back and they were better equipped to do so than the typical worker was. All that really meant was that the small set of warriors was able to slightly annoy the thick skinned dragon rather than saving themselves.

"While crushing all of you little pests might be fun, it would also be a complete waste of perfectly good food. So down the hatch you go," the dragon taunted the warriors. He was talking down to them and as he talked his breath kept washing over me. It was amazing how well I could smell it even from where I was. His breath had that foulness to it that I heard many predators seemed to have. It was the smell of death that many of my people had described after getting close enough to the Others and somehow managing to survive. I hoped to be one of those survivors if only I could get my shrink ray working.

As the dragon opened his mouth to admit his tiny captives I knew I was going to be too late to save them. He tossed them into his maw as if they were nothing more than mere snacks and his friends snickered about it the whole time. The dragon made a show of toying with them in his mouth for his friends. An almost unnoticeable lump descending the dragon's throat was the only sign left of the existence of those warriors. It was a hard thing to look at and the dragon was reaching for another group of warriors.

"How much longer until you get that thing working," Commander Zafren asked. He had been holding back asking me that question for a while now. I knew he had been afraid of further distracting me, but he could not help himself now. He wanted to see all of his men wind up as dragon food about as much as I did.

Zafren was not the least bit distracting, though, as I shouted in triumph, "Done!" I did not waste any time after that and just pointed the shrink ray at a the dragon and his friends. The device fired off just before the dragon could grab his next set of prey. I doubt he and his friends knew what hit them. The shrink ray had no visible beam and the only way to tell that it was working was when a disoriented expression crossed the faces of the Others. They all looked a little woozy as their bodies started to change form and they shrunk down to a much more reasonable size.

The process took a few seconds to complete itself. That was pretty good, but it still left plenty of time for someone to walk in and see what was happening. It was another problem that I had to somehow correct with the shrink ray. I was just happy that no one else decided to come home while the group in front of us was still shrinking. Since the shrink ray I used combined our DNA with the others they were doing much more than just shrinking. They started to resemble us to the point where even their own family would not have recognized them. All of them were a little bulkier than we were since their original endoskeletons remained while they also grew their new exoskeletons. They also kept certain features that would let us recognize what species they originally were. The features were very faint, though, and many of my people would have just thought they were a little deformed if they saw them without seeing the shrinking process. In other words, the shrink ray was a complete success.

"What just happened?" various Others muttered as they recovered from the shrinking process. They were around the same size we were and the change in perspective had to be a little disorienting for them. The warriors were not in a mood to let them recover from the experience either. They had a look in their eyes that made it clear the Others were lucky they were under orders to bring them back to the tunnels to answer for their crimes against us.

Still, the dragon had just eaten a good number of warriors and they could not be happy that he was digesting their remains in his belly at this very moment. And it was not like anything could be done to help those warriors either. Even if we could induce vomiting the world would not be a pleasant place for those warriors. They were just going to have to be left to digest in the belly of that monster. Before any of the Others could mutter another word the warriors were on top of them. They were not exactly gentle when it came to restraining the Others. The amount of punching and kicking that was involved in the process left just about all of the Others unconscious. Commander Zafren did stop his warriors short of actually injuring the Others, but that was the only restraint he imposed. He actually threw in a couple of kicks of his own at one point and I could not blame him for that. After what I had seen the Others do to our people over the years and what I had just seen that dragon do the warriors, I would not have minded throwing in a kick or two of my own.

******

It was hard understanding what had just happened to me. One moment I had been having fun with some bugs and the next I felt so dizzy I could barely stand up. When I started to recover from that wave of dizziness I was able to get a brief glimpse at a strange new world that just made me feel disoriented all over again. Before I could recover from that I saw the strangest thing yet. Something that looked like an ant the same size I was came into view and delivered a solid blow directly to my face. I was sent reeling and my vision blurred. While I was still trying to figure out what was going on blows started raining down on me in quick succession. I tried to defend myself, but I was being attacked from too many angles and I eventually blacked out.

It was hard to tell how long I was out for. The screams of one of my friends was what woke me up. It was not the screams of someone that was in pain, but the panicked screams of someone that had lost control of himself. "What the hell is going on? What have you done to me?" he kept screaming over and over again. My head was still throbbing from the hits I had taken and I really wished he would just shut up. I wanted to just sleep off the pounding headache I had for a while longer, but his yelling was going on and on. Eventually I opened my eyes and I was about to shout him down when I finally got a good look at the strange ant-like creature that the voice of my friend was coming from.

The sheer sight of him was enough to shock me into silence and then I looked down at myself. When I saw the strange body that resembled the new body of my friend I started joining in with his shouts. I was freaking out and I hoped that I was just having some strange dream. That would have made some sense. There had been a lot of activity with the ants in the yard lately and it would not be too farfetched to believe I was having a dream about them. But, those blows that I had received earlier did not feel like a dream.

"Go shut those Others up," I heard a someone say gruffly.

"Yes sir," I heard someone else say promptly.

I turned to look at where those voices were coming from and was surprised to see a large group of ants. It did not seem possible that they were talking, but I noticed that others in the group seemed to be talking with each other. The looks that they occasionally tossed our way were not exactly friendly either. I also noticed that they were carrying some sort of strange weaponry, stuff that I had usually thought was a part of their bodies, but now that I was their size I could see was clearly something handheld.

One of the ants walked right over to my friend and tried to get him to shut up. When he did not the ant delivered a blow to his chest with the butt of his weapon. That silenced him quickly enough and then the ant started walking in my direction. I shut up before he even got to me. My aching body did not want to take any more hits at the moment. The ant just glared at me for a little while before walking back to rejoin the other ants.

That probably helped me out a bit since it calmed me down and let me really try to figure out what was going on. I finally realized that I was restrained. All of my other friends were restrained as well and they all looked like mutant ants, just like me. Most of them were still asleep, but a few of them were groaning and indicating that they were about to wake up. I tried to get as close to my other friends as I could. When they woke up they were in for quite a surprise and I did not want all of them screaming at once. Those ants did not look like they liked us all that much and I did not want to give them another excuse to deliver another beat down. Everybody screamed when they first came to, but I was able to calm most of them down eventually. The ones I could not calm down were dealt with by the ants. I was just happy that no one was killed.

With everyone as calm as they were going to get in this situation we finally started talking to each other about what was happening in hushed tones. We did not want to get those ants angry at us again. They seemed to be concentrating on something and we did not want to disturb them. Of course, the first question to be asked was, "Hey Gabe, what the hell is going on?"

That question was directed towards me as if I would somehow know what was going on just because we had been in my house. I had no more clue what was going on than anyone else did. All I could tell was that we were under some large object, hidden in the shadows, and the ants were looking out from under the hiding place. Most questions seemed to be directed towards me and I think that everyone thought of me as the leader of the group for whatever reason. It was not like I could answer any of their questions, but I did prove to be pretty good at keeping people calm.

The ants did not look like they would answer any of our questions and I most certainly did not want to bring any more attention to ourselves than necessary. Still, I wanted to find out what was going and I was probably going to have to ask them eventually. Before I could think of a way to bring any of my questions to the ants something else happened. I heard what sounded like a giant door opening and then some loud thumping noises started approaching. That was enough to get most of my friends to stop talking and see what was happening.

I do not know what I was expecting, but it was not what I saw. A pair of very large feet came stomping by as the ants also went into motion. The strange thing was, despite how preposterously large those green and bronze feet were, I recognized them. Those paws had to belong to my parents. And then I saw a female looking ant point some sort of strange device in their direction. I did not know she had actually done anything until my parents feet paused in mid-step. Then I was able to witness with my own eyes what had probably happened to me.

The paws in front of me started to shrink and change. At one point I had only been able to see my parents feet from the hiding place that the ants had us in, but eventually their entire bodies came into sight. They were also starting to resemble dragons less and less. Eventually, they looked like strange mutant ants just like me. It was then that I knew where I was and what had truly happened to me. Despite how impossible it seemed, I had been shrunken and turned a hybrid ant by a bunch of bugs. I was under a piece of furniture that I should have just barely been able to fit my foot under in my own home and I was being held captive by some bugs that probably had a grudge against me.

It was then that I started to be truly frightened of the situation I was in. I had a very hard time believing I was just dreaming and there were some very angry looking ants that were out for revenge. And it was not just me or my parents who were in danger. My older brother was throwing some big party later on today and I thought all of the guests would be in a great deal of danger.

******

After multiple tests of the device I was starting to think that Teliyin's device really might be the miracle weapon that the Nation had been hoping for. Its rate of fire was abysmally slow, but that could be worked on. We were well on our way to collecting the entire dragon family too. There was only the eldest brother and the youngest one left and then we could return to the tunnels once more. Now that we were in a place of safety I felt we could do that without suffering anymore significant causalities like we had in the first testing of Teliyin's shrink ray.

It was taking a while for the other two dragons to arrive though. I was considering asking the prisoners when the other two would return, but I did not trust them to tell the truth. The Others were our eternal tormentors after all. So, we waited. I could tell that hours had gone past and I was just happy the dog had not shown back up to harass us. The sun had set and it was dark outside before I finally heard the front door opening once again. That was when something went very wrong with our plans. Instead of just a dragon or two showing up, a flood of teenagers and young adults started flooding into the house.

They carried vast amounts of food and beverages with them as well as other items that made me curse to myself. The dragons had been away for so long in order to prepare for a party. By the horrified look on Teliyin's face I could tell that she could not possible configure her shrink ray to shrink them all.

"Looks like we are going to have to abort the mission Head Researcher," I said to Teliyin.

"I concur Commander. Should we head back to the tunnels now. Three out of five is not bad," stated Teliyin.

"They will be missed by their family, but it's not like we have left any trace behind that we are responsible. The Others will probably think it was a kidnapping or some such thing, and technically it is a kidnapping," I explained. "But we should probably hold off on the trip back to the tunnels. There are a lot of hooves and paws out there right now and it is quite a trip back to the tunnels. I don't want to risk anyone getting stepped on now. Let's just wait until the party ends."

"Sounds like a good idea to me. And we might be able to catch the last two brothers after the party of over," said Teliyin just before things started to go terribly wrong.

"Hey, move that furniture out of the hallway. If anything gets trashed like it did in that last party my parents are going to kill me," yelled the black dragon to his friends. Much to my horror, our cover suddenly disappeared as the piece of furniture we had been hiding under was moved to another room. There were too many of us on the floor not to be noticed eventually.

"Looks like we're going to have to get back to the tunnels before one of the Others spots us after all," I said loud enough for everyone to hear. That was not an announcement that many wanted to hear. With all these Others around there were a lot of opportunities for very bad things to happen. It was going to be hard ensuring the safety of Teliyin during the trip back to the tunnels, but I was sure every warrior here would do their best to ensure her safety. There was also the matter of what would happen to the shrunken Others we had taken prisoner. We were supposed to bring them back to the tunnels for trial within the Nation, but if anything bad did happen I was not sure of just how much effort my warriors would put in to making sure the Others lasted long enough to make it to trial.

If the party had taken some time to set up for we might have had been able to make it a good way towards the nearest entrance to the tunnels. Unfortunately, the Others attending the party had come well prepared and all of them were able to get the party started fairly quickly. There was one good thing about that and that happened to be that they were all so busy with their party that they did not notice a group of ants walking along the floor. We were definitely present in enough numbers that someone should have been able to notice us relatively easily.

Then again, even without being noticed there were more than enough hooves and paws around to make me very nervous. The dragons were wealthy enough by the standards of the Others that they could afford to throw very large parties and this was definitely one of them. Their home and yard was also more than large enough to accommodate more visitors than I was easily able to keep track of. I wished more of them had decided to stay outside than in, but we did not appear to be that lucky.

We did manage to make it all the way out of the hallway without incident. But, that was as far as we made it. This was a party for older teens and young adults. It did not take them long to start getting out of hand. From the way they were behaving I was guessing the parents were not supposed to be here for this party. When they came home they must have just been making a quick stop before heading somewhere for the weekend. The presence of the middle brother did not seem to bother them much either. I guessed he was not supposed to be here or they just did not notice his absence with all the other people here. Some of them actually did seem a little surprised to see the younger dragon here when he arrived. A lot of the party members were very scantily clad, so much so that many of them had rather private regions of their bodies clearly visible.

The older dragon eventually noticed the younger brother and pretty much exiled him upstairs to his own room, protesting all the way. It seemed to be one thing to have a wild party in his parents' house, but exposing his younger brother to a party like this seemed to be a line that he was not quite prepared to cross. A brief glance back at the parents of the dragons told me that they were not exactly happy about this party, but they were a little relieved to see their youngest head upstairs and out of this party. That was one of the last observations I was able to make before things started to go wrong.

The partygoers where engaging in a bit of roughhousing. It was the type of activities that could very well end up with furniture getting broken. Eventually, someone went a little too far and ended up pushing over a husky with bright red fur and the typical large number of piercings that seemed to be popular among the Others' youth this generation. The husky was a far enough from us that it should not have been much of a problem. Unfortunately, he managed to keep his balance long enough to stumble backwards and right into range of us. As his rear descended on us we were forced to scatter. It was fortunate that many of the Others here were actually slim of build, though slightly athletic in look. If he had been fat many of us would not have been able to dodge his descending rear.

I just barely managed to dodge the furry mountain of flesh myself. The fur on his rear had touched my body as it passed by me. Most of my people had survived, even if we were now on different sides of the husky. A few of our shrunken captives had not fared so well. Running when a giant object was coming down on us was instinct for my people, but for them this was a new thing and not all of them had run. A small number had just stood there in shock as the husky fell on them.

I looked around to see who I was with me on this side of the husky and was a little disappointed to see only warriors, the parent dragons, and a few of the other dragon's friends. The middle child, as well as Teliyin and the rest of my warriors were on the other side of the husky. I wanted to wait for the husky to stand back up so I could reunite with the rest of the group, but it seemed like he had banged his head hard against the wall and he was sitting down for a while, holding it in his hands. Some of his friends were coming over to see if he was alright and that meant that the area I was in was about to get much more dangerous.

We had to scatter once more as the area became of sea of paws and hooves that could not have cared if they crushed a few beings of such insignificant size. It was impossible to stick together and I imagined it was much the same way for those on the other side of the husky. The groups just kept getting smaller and smaller as we continued to try and keep from getting crushed. Not everyone successful either. I witnessed a couple of close companions crushed beneath the toe of a rather colorfully scaled lizard, one of the dragon's friends had enough of his body crushed under the hard hoof of a horse that he would only survive long enough to regret he had not been completely crushed, and yet another warrior managed to get trapped between the toes of a purple furred wolf before getting popped like a grape when those toes flexed in the wrong way. All of that happened without the Others even being aware of our existence.

I was able to get one last look back at the husky that had caused our initial separation. His friends were helping him back up and I could see that most of the ones that had been trapped beneath him were nothing more than barely noticeable stains beneath his rear. There was one survivor, though. I would not call him lucky. He had somehow managed to get trapped in the husky's tail hole, which was not even partially covered up by whatever weird garment he was wearing. Little legs were kicking furiously out of the tail hole as the tiny captive tried to escape, only to be pushed the rest of the way in when the husky reached back to scratch the annoying itch that was being caused by his struggles. He would probably survive for a while within the husky before something came along to put an end to his insignificant existence. Truthfully, it put a smile on my face to see that happen. That had happened to my people more often than I would like to think of and it was nice to see it happen to one of the Others for once. But, I had to get back to focusing on my own survival before I met with a similar fate.

******

Things certainly did manage to go bad very quickly. Not only had everyone been separated, but I had dropped the shrink ray as I ran. It might have been better if it had just been crushed. Instead, it wound up completely intact between the toes of some giant. As unlikely as it was to happen, if the Others managed to discover the device and what it did the Nation might start attracting a lot of attention before it was ready to truly fight the Others. Someone had to go after the device and they were not letting me do it. That meant going after it was left the warriors and my assistants.

We were already starting to run short on warriors too. Because of that we were not able to keep track of all the shrunken Others and a few managed to get away. I kept a careful eye on the dragon brother that we had, though. Besides me, there were a couple other warriors making sure he did not get away. We would have liked to make sure his friends could not get away too, but it was the dragon we really wanted to bring back to the tunnels for trial.

The friends that did get away would not be able to do much anyways. Head Engineer Covax had made sure that the shrinking process was irreversible. That had actually been done despite my objections. I did not have much love for the Others, but permanently altering them did not seem like such a good idea. What would happen if we happened to shrink one of the rare good Others or if we managed to talk things out with one of the Others that we shrank? We would have no way of ever truly negotiating with the Others since the shrunken Others would not be able to communicate with their fellows any better than we could.

That was probably going to be something that came as a shock for the escaped friends. They had scattered in every direction too. Quite a few of them seemed to want to run upstairs. There were fewer Others up there and they must have figured it would be easier to avoid getting stepped on and while waiting to get someone's attention if they went up there. If they did get someone's attention I was certain that would be the last thing they regretted doing.

I did not have much time to worry about them though. While trying to get away from all the Others that were trying to crush me without noticing they were doing so I had been forced into one of the guestrooms. Fortunately there were no Others in there at the moment and that gave the little group I was with some time to catch our breath. It was going to be a long walk back to the tunnels though. It should have only taken a few hours, but with the party going on we probably were not going to be able to get back tonight. By the way many of the partygoers were dressed this party was going to last for a while and the private rooms, like the one I was in, were going to fill up fast and remain active all the way into the morning. We were going to be playing a very long game of dodge the Others before we could get home.

A Change For Some

Who would have thought a trip to Gabe's house would lead to such crazy happenings. One moment I had been looking forward to crashing a party that Gabe's older brother was throwing and the next I found myself shrunken by some sort of militant ant people. And now that the party had started I found myself in very real danger. At least some good had come from that danger. When that husky had nearly fallen on us he created a chance for us to escape from those crazy ants.

They were still chasing after me as well as a few other friends of mine. I had wanted to try and find some isolated room to hide in, but having to keep from getting crushed by all the paws around me had forced me to flee upstairs. At first I had been worried about getting trapped upstairs, but then that did not seem like such a bad thing. Those ants probably came from outside, so that meant I was trapped in Gabe's house. There probably were not many people upstairs anyways. It was about the safest place I could be while the party was going on.

Still, I needed a good place to hide before those ant people caught up with me. None of my friends agreed on where we should go after we made the exhausting climb to the top of the stairs and we did not have any time to talk about where we should go. We ended up splitting up without really meaning to. A couple groups ended up heading towards what they hoped were empty rooms while I ended up heading for the room of Gabe's younger brother, Trent. Certainly he would help me out in dealing with my pursuers. There were plenty of them too. They had obviously come prepared to deal with handling many prisoners.

Fortunately, with no one upstairs I was able to sprint all the way to Trent's room. Even then it took considerably more time than the few seconds it should have taken me at my normal size. If I had been forced to be more careful it probably would have taken me over an hour to reach his room. Trent's door was closed, but at my size I could run right under it without even coming close to worrying about bumping my head.

What I saw upon entering Trent's room was a little worrisome. The teen was pacing angrily back and forth within his room. He obviously was not that happy about being booted out of the party. No one his age wanted to hear that he was too young to be included in on the fun. His anger made me pause. I would not normally have been that scared of the younger teen, but when he was large enough to crush me with a toe he seemed much more intimidating. That action probably saved my life.

My other friends just kept on running towards the dragon, yelling and screaming in an attempt to get his attention. Trent did not seem to hear them at all. That made me wonder if we were too small to be heard. It was not like I had ever heard an ant make any noise before. Or was it just something about this new form that prevented us from communicating with Trent. It really did not matter in the end. What did matter was when Trent did notice the tiny forms running along the floor of his room.

"That's it. I can't stick around for the party and now I have ants invading my room again," Trent stated a bit testily, "Ah well, at least I have something to play with now." The dragon raised that pale blue paw of his above my friends and brought it down on them. He did not crush them outright. All he did was place enough weight on them to make it impossible for them to move. He was gradually putting on the pressure, though. It was horrifying sight that I could not help but stare at and it helped me to understand why those ants seemed to hate us so much.

Trent was obviously looking for something to vent his frustrations on and us bugs, or what seemed like bugs to him, were the perfect things to vent his frustrations on. It was not like many people cared about the fate of bugs after all. Coming to see Trent had obviously turned out to be a very bad idea as the young dragon's now impossibly heavy foot slowly crushed the life out of my friends. Fragile little limbs began to crack and break. Their screams filled the air and Trent did not seem to care in the slightest. He just kept on gradually adding weight at an agonizingly slow rate. Little by little their bodies were flattened and their new chitinous bodies broke apart, proving to be utterly useless at protecting them from Trent's wrath. Some of them popped like grapes and others were just completely flattened. There was no way they could have survived, but that was not enough for Trent. He kept twisting his foot, grinding up their bodies into a pasty mix that made identifying their bodies impossible.

I had just stood there paralyzed with fear the whole time. It had not even occurred to me to try and help them out. Even if it had I would have just joined them as nothing more than stains beneath Trent's very huge foot. Something else had happened while I was watching all that happen too, the ants had caught up to me. I noticed that when I was tackled hard from behind and restrained none too gently. They started dragging me out of the room without much resistance on my part. I was too shocked from what I had just seen to put up much of a fight. Unfortunately, we never made it out of the room.

A large webbed foot came down in our path out of the room and we looked up to see Trent staring back down at us. There was an ugly look in his eyes as he said, "It figures there would be more of you. Good thing too, I'm not finished venting." There were not many of us left and Trent was able to gather all of us in one hand without much of a problem.

"Now what should I do with all of you," Trent said as he rolled a couple of ants between his thick leathery fingers. I am not sure if Trent did what he did next on purpose, but the ants that he was rolling around between his fingers suddenly burst apart as they were crushed. It really did seem like it could have been an accident. Trent was just so large compared to us it could not be easy for him to handle us.

The dragon gave out a snort of disdain when he noticed what he had done, "Looks like you bugs are too frail to have much fun with, but I wonder how long you can last in an acid bath." It was then that I knew Trent was going to eat us. The idea seemed preposterous. There was no way I should have been in a situation where I was going to get eaten by my friend's little brother, but here I was, staring down the throat of a dragon as Trent opened his maw.

I tried fighting back this time as did a couple of the ants, but most of them looked resigned to their fate. This sort of thing must happen to them a lot after all. There was not much we could do against the dragon and Trent seemed to notice that too. That was part of the fun for him. He may not have had the control over his life to attend a party, but he had enough control over our lives to determine whether we lived or died. It must have been a very intoxicating feeling for him.

Trent took things slowly, letting the utter hopelessness of the situation sink in for us. The smell of death kept washing over us as he breathed. His plump, ugly tongue was salivating and almost seeming to pulse in anticipation of the little tidbits it was about to receive. I wondered if that purplish tongue and cavernous mottled maw of his had always looked so disgusting or if it was just now that I knew I was going to be entering it that seemed to look almost evil in nature.

It was doubtful that Trent cared what I thought of his maw as he tipped his hand and let all of us fall into it. Our bodies were almost instantly soaked in saliva as we fell onto the huge purple muscle. I did not even have time to think about escape before Trent closed his maw, sealing us in. Without the cool outside air the inside of the dragon's maw grew almost unbearably humid. The smell of death intensified and surrounded us like some sort of miasma. Trent's tongue started wriggling beneath us, licking us roughly against the ridges on the roof of his mouth. Some of the other ants were actually getting parts of their body broken as Trent toyed with us.

The dragon was letting us know how much power he had over us and how little control we had over our own fates. All we could do was hope in vain that he would release us. Trent had no plans to release us, though. Instead, he just swallowed us whole, letting us plummet down the long dark tunnel that was his throat. We landed in a nearly empty belly that was more than happy to have us in it. Digestive juices started flowing into his belly soon after we entered it. Some of the air in the belly flowed out in the form of a contented burp for Trent as his belly started gurgling happily to him.

Trent was happy to have something to vent his frustrations on and was pleased enough to just listen to us digest while the party went on. We were not nearly so happy. All we could do was try to search for a way out before we could be absorbed by the dragon's digestive system. I did not know it, but our struggles just pleased Trent all the more. The little gurgling noises that his stomach made as it attempted to digest us were much more ominous in nature to us. It seemed just a little too egger to digest a meal as insignificant as a few bugs. That was the only noise we were able to hear, besides the beating of Trent's powerful heart. Those were the last things I would ever get to hear as Trent's body overwhelmed our insignificant struggles and he enjoyed the god-like power he held over us.

******

I wish that I knew how things were working out for the rest of my friends. After we split up upstairs there was really no way of telling what was going to happen to them. All I could do was try my best to avoid those ants as I headed for a nice empty room to hide out in. What I needed was some time to think about what had happened to me and how to get out of the situation I was in. Everything was just happening so fast and the world was such a dangerous place with me stuck at this size.

If I tried to make any major decisions right now I would more than likely end up making mistakes. I had made plenty of mistakes in my life, but now I could see those mistakes turning fatal very easily. There was also the problem of what those ants were going to do to me. They did not exactly seem like the friendliest people around. It was a good thing there was a nice dark guest room to hide in not that far away. Me and the few friends that I was running with were able to duck into the room with the ants in hot pursuit. It was a good thing we happened to be in fairly decent shape or they would have easily caught up with us.

They had a much harder time finding out where we were headed inside the room. Without any lights on and the blinds closed it was pitch black inside the room. I had been to Gabe's house on quite a few occasions, so I knew the general layout of the room. My decreased size was throwing off my sense of direction a bit, but I could still get around alright. The ants were having a considerable amount of difficulty keeping up with us in the room and it was not long before I could no longer hear any signs of their pursuit.

I found a nice little spot in the room where I did not think the ants would find us any time soon and settled down to talk things out with my friends. I asked, "So guys, what should we do now?"

"We need to get that shrinking device back Alex, that thing that female ant used on Gabe's parents," responded one of my friends.

"And how are we supposed to do that?" I asked. "That thing has probably been crushed by now."

"If they made one, then they can make another," said another one of my friends. "They obviously want to shrink the rest of Gabe's family, and probably anyone else that comes here for that matter."

"Yeah, all we have to do is wait for a good opportunity to get the jump on them while they're trying to shrink someone else one day," said yet another friend. We all continued debating back and forth about what to do. Everyone thought we had to find a way to return to normal, but there were a few different opinions about how to do it. Some ideas were better than others, but I thought we were being a little productive.

Then our conversation was interrupted as someone opened the door to the room and turned on the lights. Having the entire room suddenly lit up like that made me wince a little as my eyes adjusted to the light. It took me a couple of seconds to figure out who had come into the room because of that, but I was eventually able to see a fox and a husky. I had been to enough of these parties to tell their type right away. The husky was pretty timid looking and the fox was a little more confident looking, but trying to look much more confident than he really was. My guess was that the more confident one had known he was gay for a while and the less confident husky was just coming to terms with being gay. Now they were both experimenting for the first time and the more experienced one was trying to make it seem like it was not his first time.

When I heard one of the actual ants shouting that he had spotted us off in the distance it made me realize that what the foxes were up to really was not all that important. With the lights on we were easy enough to be spotted since we were out in the open. It looked like the chase was back on and I needed to find a better place to hide. The problem was that there were not that many good places to hide in the room. Those ants were not that close, but they could probably find us pretty easily if we just hid under a piece of furniture.

Fortunately, there was a discarded beer bottle on the floor. The bottle was lying in the ground and the opening was facing away from the ants and we would be able to crawl into the bottle before they could see what we were doing. They might suspect we were trying to hide in it, but with only one opening to defend we might be able to keep them from capturing us again even if they found out where we were. Everyone else seemed to have the same plan in mind as we passed by the beer bottle and no one had to be told to climb in.

The dark beer bottle barely let any light inside of it. That would definitely make it harder for the ants to spot us inside of it. The bottle still smelled of beer from within and we soon discovered that there was still some beer in it. Actually, there was still quite a bit, just not enough to spill even while it was lying down. At our present size that was still enough beer to drown in and we had to be extra careful since we did not know if our present bodies were capable of swimming.

While we were being careful not to fall into the beer I heard voices from outside the bottle. The ants were considering whether they should take a peek into the bottle or not. I hoped they would just leave so I could get out of the bottle. The ants were not in the mood to be so convenient. It was not long before they started making their way into the beer bottle too. I thought we were going to have a fight on our hands. It was then that I discovered that no matter how immediate a danger the ants were, the things that were always the greatest danger to things of my size were normal sized people.

Just as all of the ants had managed to crawl into beer bottle I felt it being lifted. The bottled tilted at an angle and it was impossible for us to maintain our footing on the smooth glass surface. We all fell deeper into the bottle and into the beer that was still left within it. It was not surprising to find out that my new body could not swim very well, but it could do just good enough to keep me from drowning if I put in enough effort. Still, it took a lot of effort to keep my head above the beer and I was not sure how long I could do that for.

Drowning was not my biggest worry, though. It looked like the husky was gulping down a bit of beer to help fortify his courage. Just staying afloat was difficult, but trying to keep from getting swept away by the current was this side of impossible. Me, my friends, and the ants all started flowing right into the husky's cavernous maw and there was nothing we could do about it. Cries for the husky not to swallow us went unheard and our taste was completely covered up by the beer. There was no way for the husky to notice our existence.

I watched as some of my friends and the ants flowed right down the husky's throat, flailing all the way. It was difficult to believe that the husky was taking just a couple gulps of beer, but it was as if he were swallowing hundreds of gallons of the stuff in mere seconds. I would have joined my friends and the ants down the husky's throat if I had not happened to get a little lucky and drifted close enough to one of the husky's fangs to grab on to it. There were a couple others that managed to get a hold on something before they could be swallowed, but only a couple. All the rest were taken down the dark abyss that was the husky's throat to what I presumed would be their final resting place.

I would have felt sorry for all of them if I did not have my own things to worry about. Even after the husky stopped drinking I still found myself trapped in his maw. I was happy that he did not know I was there and was not trying to swallow me. But, I still had to wonder if the dog would inadvertently swallow us eventually. What I had to do was find a way out before that could happen. That way presented itself to me much sooner than I thought it would as I soon discovered what the husky had been fortifying his courage for.

When the husky opened his maw again it took me a moment to recognize what I was seeing. My mind did not want to accept that it was seeing a giant cock. Much to my horror, I was about to be in someone's mouth as he gave someone else a blow job. The fox's thick pink member entered the husky's mouth a bit tentatively. He was obviously a bit nervous since this had to be his time, but both he and the husky looked like they were going to go through with this. When the fox's member entered the husky's maw I suddenly found his formerly spacious maw was considerably more crowded.

It was worse for others than it was for me. Another one of my friends had been stuck between the husky's tongue and the fox's cock. Despite the almost spongy surface of the husky's tongue, he was still crushed beneath the weight of the cock and left a little red streak as the cock traveled further into the husky's maw. I desperately wanted to avoid having the same thing happen to me. It was a good thing that I happened to be to the side of the cock instead of in its path like some of my other friends and the ants. If the husky's tongue had stayed still I might have been able to avoid even coming in contact with the fox's member.

His tongue did not remain still, though. I found myself having to ride things out on the husky's tongue as he attempted to lick the plump piece of fox meat in his maw. The husky was obviously having some trouble using his tongue with a cock filling his mouth. Still, I was slapped up against the fox's member repeatedly as the husky learned how to give a proper blow job. Both the fox and the husky were a little awkward. They never could settle into a proper rhythm and that made it hard to predict just when the cock would be pumping in and out of the husky's mouth. It did not make much of a difference, but the uncertainty just made the situation that much more terrifying.

Even though it was an awkward first time for the two I could see that the fox's member was thickening with arousal. A drop of pre fell onto the husky's tongue and then he paused briefly as he took in the strange new taste, but he soon went back to delivering his blow job. I was smacked against the fox's cock one more time before I ended up sticking to the massive member instead of the tongue. That gave me a nice vantage point for what came next. The fox came and he came hard, at least he did from the perspective of someone small enough to fit in the slit of his cock with no problem at all.

Anyone in front of the massive waves of fox cum where washed right down the husky's throat. They tried to hang on, but their tiny bodies could not stand up to the overpowering might of the fox's orgasm. Despite how humiliating it was, I was happy to be stuck to the fox's member at that moment. I had no interest in getting washed down the husky's throat in a veritable ocean of cum. Even if they did survive getting their bodies battered by the fox's seed and the long plummet to the husky's belly, the only thing that had to look forward to was an acid bath that they could not possibly survive.

Stuck to the fox's member, I at least stood a chance. I would be able to get off of it eventually. Climbing off his body might be a bit problematic, but a time would come when I could safely make my way off of him. All I had to do was remain on his cock until he was finished with his spasms. There were others in his mouth that were also anxiously awaiting for the streams of cum to stop shooting out of the fox. Not many of them managed to remain in the husky's mouth. The ones that did were practically drowning in pools of cum that remained in the his maw.

But, finally the fox started to withdraw his cock from the husky. As long as I did not get pulled off the cock by the husky's lips I thought I would be fine. That did not happen either, much to my relief. I was once again exposed to the cool air of the outside world and I hoped the others in the husky's mouth would be able to escape as well. That hope was soon dashed as the husky wiped a little bit of cum that had leaked out of his mouth and swallowed what remained within. There was no escape for those that had been in the his mouth now.

All I could do was try to save myself. The fox and the husky would probably be going their own separate ways soon and I would be able to escape eventually. Unfortunately, it looked like they were not going to go their own separate ways just yet. The husky looked like he wanted to leave, but the fox started trying to talk him into taking things a step further. It was obvious the husky had enjoyed giving the fox a blowjob, but he did not look very sure about taking things any further. Of course, I wished the husky would turn the fox down, but in the end it was the fox that got his way.

I looked on in horror as the husky flipped himself over and presented his rear to the fox. The fox's member had grown a little more flaccid since his blowjob, but it got its vitality back awfully quickly at the sight of the husky's willingness to move on. He did not give the husky any time to change his mind. I could not blame him for that since the husky did look like he was very reluctant to go on with what the fox was doing. All I wanted was for the husky to change his mind before the fox could do what he wanted to do.

As I steadily approached the glistening pink tail hole of the husky I tried to find a way off the fox's member. The saliva on that was acting as an adherent was drying up, but it was not drying up fast enough to matter. I struggled with all my might to free myself. It did me no good. I was stuck firmly. The fox's cock came in contact with the husky's tail hole and then he paused. He was a little more hesitant to enter the husky than he was letting on. For a brief moment I hoped that hesitation would mean the end of all this, but I was wrong.

The fox started slowly inserting his member into husky. I could hear the husky moaning in a mixture of pleasure and discomfort. He was not used to the feeling of having someone enter his tail hole and it would definitely take some getting used to. In time I felt he would probably come to like it, but for now he was not there. That did not help me out much. I slowly slid past the fleshy opening of the of the husky's tail hole. It seemed even more humid inside the husky's anus than within his maw. The fleshy walls were firm and felt like they would crush me against the fox's cock. I was not looking forward to what would happen to me when the fox started pumping in and out of the husky.

Then things changed. I felt an unusual shifting and the fox's member was practically yanked out of the husky. It looked like one of them had finally decided things had gone too far and was breaking it off. I thought it would have been nice if I had come out with the fox's member. As the fox had extracted himself from the husky I had only been pulled halfway out of the canine's rear. I guess I should have been grateful that I was not crushed as the fox drew out of the husky and that I had not been crushed, but when you are stuck halfway in someone's tail hole you do not feel grateful for just about anything.

The tail hole was tight around me, but I felt like I could pull myself out if I tried hard enough. I could hear the fox and the husky having a little argument. They had obviously gone a little too far and they both sounded a little awkward and very embarrassed. That was fine by me. As long as they were like that they were not going to be doing anything that would place my life in danger. But, I had forgotten something that could still cause me some degree of harm. Even if I had remembered, it would not have helped me defend myself from what was to come.

The husky reached back to rub his tender tail hole. Even though the fox had only been in him for a brief amount of time it had still had its effect. My vision was quickly filled with a giant padded finger. Any progress I had made to extract myself from the husky was instantly wiped out as he unknowingly pushed me all the way into his anus. Without the fox's cock there to hold it open I was sealed into the husky. My best efforts to force my way out were next to useless and I was forced to just sit there and enjoy the ride within the husky. It was not a ride that would last for long. The husky's anus suddenly tensed up on me. It was like a vice closing in all around me. My frail ant-like body could not stand up to such pressure and because of that, I burst like a grape.

******

I had to admit to myself that I was panicking. All I was doing was running without any plan or goal. I just wanted to get away from the ants, I wanted out of this giant house, I wanted everything to just be some sort of crazy nightmare. It did not look like I was going to be able to get anything that I wanted. The ants were catching up to me, I was trapped upstairs, and I doubted I was going to wake up to find that everything was just a dream.

I took me a while to even notice that most of the members of the group I had run up the stairs with had split up. There were plenty of rooms to head to upstairs and I did not know which ones they had all fled into. A quick look at the few friends I was still running with told me that they were just as scared as I was and they probably had not noticed where they went either. There was not much we could do even if we knew where they went. Any change in our course would let the ants pursuing us easily overcome us.

All we could do was head straight into a room up ahead. The door was closed, but that did not mean much to us since the crack under the door was more than tall enough for us to run under. I would have preferred the lights in the room be off so that we could hide in the room better, but it did not seem like I was very lucky today. At first I did not see anyone in the room and I wondered why the lights were on. I would have tried to guess something if I was not still panicking. If I had guessed something I might have at least been able to assume that there might be something that was a greater danger to myself than just the ants.

As it was, I did not find out what type of danger I was in until a huge paw came out from under a bed I was running next to. It came out right in front of me and my friends. Most of us did not have the time to stop ourselves before we ran head first into the paw and bounced off of it as if it were a brick wall. That was the first thing to shock me out of my panic. But, that panic started creeping back awfully fast as Gabe's pet dog pulled himself out from under the bed. It looked like we had run into the room they had decided to keep the dog in during the party.

Gabe's dog had never exactly been a small dog, but to my shrunken form he looked absolutely gigantic. I did not even get the chance to hope he had not noticed us since he was already staring directly at all of us. The titanic Weimaraner leaned down to give us a good sniffing. I would have run if I could, but I was too frightened to move. What happened next should have been a bigger surprise to me, but after getting shrunken and turned into a mutant ant person it just was not as surprising. The dog actually talked, saying, "Hey, you smell like Gabe's friends."

After all the things that had happened so far today a talking dog did not seem all that strange. "Yeah, we are Gabe's friends and we could use some help," I said to the dog.

He sat down and paid closer attention to us. I could hear his tail thumping on the floor behind him as he grew excited about being useful to us. "Yeah, we could use your help. There are these crazy ants chasing us that want to hurt us and it would be very nice if you could do something about it," I said.

"Crazy ants," the dog said, cocking his head quizzically, "The ants are usually nice enough, but you said these ones are crazy, so I guess they must be dangerous. Stay right here and I'll handle them for you." The dog walked right over us, being careful not to walk on us. Looking at what the dog did to the ants was not as comforting as I had thought it would be. He just stepped on the ants, those huge paws of his making quick work of our pursuers. It did not take him two seconds to crush all of them and I found that a bit frightening since the dog could do the same thing to us if he decided he needed to.

Still, when he came back over to us we all made sure to tell him what a good dog he was for helping us out like that. We did not want to say anything that would upset the dog in the least bit. The dog basked in the praise and it actually looked like we had found something that would help us out. With the dog's help we might have been able to track down the rest of our friends and help them deal with the other ants.

We tried to explain our situation to the dog, which proved to be harder than I thought it would. Even though the dog could speak it was still only about as smart as a normal dog. It was difficult to explain things to him in a way that he could understand, but I think we eventually managed to convey just how bad a situation we were in to him. Just as we were about to ask the dog to help us find the rest of our friends I heard the door to the room opening. It looked like Trent was coming into the room to check on his pet.

I remembered the way people tended to treat ants and I was not exactly happy to see him. The dog thought we might be in danger from Trent too while we were stuck in our present forms. That was why he said, "Let me hide you somewhere safe until Trent is gone." I did not think that was a bad idea at first. Then I discovered just where the dog wanted to hide us.

A wide, pink slobbery tongue darted out of the dog's muzzle and licked me up before I had a chance to protest. The dog had also managed to get the rest of my friends in a single lick. I knew the dog was trying to help us out, but when I was surrounded by nothing but huge fangs and a gaping abyss I could not help but feel frightened. Still, the dog was not swallowing us, so I supposed that I was alright, besides the dog breath.

If Trent had not decided to play around with the dog a little bit I might have been fine too. Unfortunately, the dog happened to have his favorite tennis ball in the room and when Trent decided to play a game of fetch with his pet, things went very badly for us. When the young dragon threw the ball, the dog went to fetch it. That proved to be a wild ride for us inside of the dog's maw, but it still was not that bad. It was not until he tried to pick up the ball that he even remembered he had some passengers in his mouth.

"Don't worry. I won't hurt you while I play. Just let me put you somewhere else for a while," the dog tried to whisper to us. To me his voice still sounded very loud, but I thought that was because we were inside his mouth. I doubted it really mattered, though, since I was sure Trent could not understand the dog anymore than I could when I was normal. Then I felt the dog's tongue flexing beneath me and I realized, much to my horror, just where the dog planned to keep us.

I tried to fight back against what the dog was doing and to plead with him to stop. If the dog could hear us from within his own mouth he did not show it. With one mighty gulp we were propelled down the dog's slimy throat. The scent of the dog's breath in his mouth had not exactly been pleasant, but as we fell down his throat it only got worse. We tried to get a hold of whatever we could in the dog's throat, but whenever we did manage to halt our fall the muscles surrounding us would defeat our efforts with laughable ease. The dog now had complete control over our fate.

I did not think he was planning on killing us as I fell into the gigantic belly of the beast. He just did not know what the digestive process truly entailed. All the dog knew was that things went in one end and came out the other. I hoped that the dog would throw us up instead of waiting for us to work our way through his digestive system. Then the dog's belly gurgled happily all around me as it welcomed the tasty treats the dog had just given it. To me it was not a very comforting noise. And then the dog continued playing his game fetch. It was easy enough to tell what the dog was doing since I was jostled around the dog's belly as he played. I was battered against all its walls and I occasionally collided with my friends too. It was hard to tell just how long Trent played with his pet, but it was far too long for me. Then again, it might have been better than just sitting around in the dog's belly and watching digestive enzymes flow into it.

"Please just let us out the way we came in," I muttered to myself as the dog continued to play.

******

So far the party was a blast. These dragons normally did know how to make things pretty interesting. I was enjoying the scenery quite a bit too. It might as well have been a nude party. My friend, Kenneth, also seemed to be enjoying the party. Like me, Ken was a Dalmatian. We had been friends for a while, but I had to admit we could get on each other's nerves every once and a while. That was probably because both of us were pranksters and we were each other's favorite targets.

Just thinking of pranks gave me a bit of an idea, though. Before I acted on that idea I had to take care of a little itch. It felt like there was something between my toes and I lifted my paw up to scratch it while I leaned against a wall. When I did that I felt that there really was something between my toes. A quick look at my hand showed some weird little object that looked like it had been crushed while I scratched. There were also a couple of ants on my index finger that I tried to shake off, but they managed to hold on tight. I might have just crushed the little buggers, but I felt that the opportunity for my prank was about to pass pretty soon. So, I decided to just let them come along for the ride and handle them later.

I walked up to Ken and said, "Hey Ken, I didn't know you were going to be at this party too." As I said that I extended my hand to do one of those brief greeting handshakes that friends sometimes do.

"Now you know I would not miss out on a party like this Carl," Ken replied to me, extending his hand for the handshake as well. As he was doing that I quickly grabbed his hand, bringing it around to my rear and letting loose with a fart that I had been holding in for a while. That one had definitely wanted to come out and with nothing covering up my tail hole I was sure Ken could feel the air coming out with that one. There were a few other people around that saw what happened and it did get a chuckle out of a few of them. I could see that most of them thought I was just being immature, though, and I could have cared less. Even if they thought I was lacking in maturity I still had my fun and I was not about to let anybody change that anytime soon.

Ken was not looking so happy as he said, "Carl, you jerk. Take this." I do not think Ken thought about what he was doing before he did it. He grabbed my hand like I had done with his, except instead of just bringing it up to his rear he changed his grip so that he had a good grip on my finger and inserted it right up his tail hole. I was too surprised to even think of a response to that as Ken pushed my finger as far up his tail hole as he could. It was only once he started moving it around that I finally reacted and tried to pull my finger out, but Ken was putting up a pretty good fight.

"What the hell are you doing Ken? This is beyond gross," I had to restrain myself from shouting. There were already enough people staring. Whether I liked it or not this had become a scene. People were probably going to be talking about this for, well, I did not want to think about how long they would be talking about this for. This was especially bad due to how gay this must look to everyone else. Both of us had girlfriends and we would probably be hearing from them about this too.

Understanding about how this must have looked to everyone else finally dawned on Carl. His expression changed dramatically as he suddenly looked very awkward and shy. He let go of my hand and I pulled my finger out of his anus as fast as I could. The wet squelching noise it made as it did so made both of us wince. After that, Carl pushed his way into the crowd of people surrounding us as everyone burst out laughing. I retreated from the scene too, heading in the opposite direction. It might have been best to leave the party, but I decided not to. Best to let everyone get everything they wanted to say to me about what they had just seen off their chests before they had time to really think of something good. Carl would probably come to the same conclusion, so it would probably be best if I avoided him for the rest of the party.

My first stop was going to have to be the bathroom before I even thought about getting back to the party. That really was a gross experience and I doubted anyone was going to want to shake hands with me for the rest of the party. As I looked at the offending finger I remembered it was the one that those ants had been stuck too. Chances were that they had just fallen off, but the thought that they got stuck in Carl's tail hole gave me a little laugh. If they did, though, I was certain they would not be enjoying the rest of this party. My thoughts about the ants were quickly interrupted as I saw another friend of mine headed towards me. Knowing him, he would want to joke about what had just happened. I tried to make it to the bathroom before he could reach me and give myself a few more moments of safety before comments like his would start flying for the rest of the party.

******

I could not believe it. We had been so close to getting that strange device those ants had used on my husband, my son, and me. Then, one misstep on that Dalmatian's part had ruined everything. Actually, I guess I had no right to complain. The Dalmatian had stepped on me, but fortunately I had been between his toes, along with another one of my son's friends. Instead of getting crushed, I had wound up stuck between his toes, the same toes that the shrinking device had been stuck between. It was there that I found my pursuit had been in vain. The shrinking device had been crushed and with all the pressure around me I thought I might be as well.

Every step the Dalmatian took was torturous for me. Each one felt like it would be the last for me. When he finally stopped walking it came as a small relief. There was still a lot of pressure around me, but it was not as bad as when he was walking. Things did not remain calm for long as the Dalmatian noticed us between his toes. When he tried to scratch the itch that was us we had to grab onto his finger or be crushed by it. I hoped he would not notice us hanging on to his finger, but that hope was quickly dashed when he did see us and tried to shake us off his finger. Even I was surprised when I successfully held on and did not go flying through the air.

When he stopped shaking and paying attention to us I felt like it was a miracle. If he would just leave us alone for a little while I thought we might be able to climb down his body and to the floor. That proved to be more difficult than I thought it would be. The gentle swaying of the Dalmatian's arms as he walked made it hard to move, needless to say actually climb anywhere. And then there was that prank, one that was very lacking in maturity in my opinion, that went horribly wrong. I just wish that the recipient of that prank had not decided to go for revenge right on the spot.

We had been relatively safe on the Dalmatian's finger until the other one decided his revenge would involve sticking the other's finger up his tail hole. Our view was quickly filled with the puckering pink hole surrounded by white fur. It happened so quickly that I did not even have time to think of taking my chances and just jumping off the Dalmatian's finger. We rushed passed the opening of the tail hole and the finger carried us deep into the other Dalmatian. I could feel that the finger was being moved around in the tail hole since we were often getting pressed up against the fleshy walls within the tail hole. Then, all of a sudden, the finger was pulled out of the tail hole almost as quickly as it had been shoved in. The big problem with that was that we did not get pulled out of the tail hole with the finger.

At first I held out hope that we might be safe in the Dalmatian's tail hole, but events would quickly destroy that hope. As the Dalmatian moved around we were bounced around within his cavernous anus and sometimes each other. Those fleshy walls seemed like they would have been softer than they were, but when I was bouncing off of them they seemed hard enough to my tiny body. When he stood still things were not much better. I could hear his body working. Somewhere above me I could tell that his digestive system was in full swing. There were gurgling and squelching sounds that could be easily heard.

Some people would have thought it was a good thing that we were not going through that digestive system, but I knew we were still at the end of that process. I was not looking forward to seeing the end results of that process. Unfortunately, it did not look like I was going to be able to do anything about that. The Dalmatian's tail hole was sealed tight. My son's friend and I were not nearly strong enough to pry it open. And when he started walking again we would just start bouncing around his anus again.

There were also certain actions he would take that would cause his anus to clench up for some reason or another. What had seemed like a spacious cave would quickly become so cramped that my body felt like it would burst at any moment. And then, as if to add insult to injury, the Dalmatian would always choose those moments to pass gas. If the fleshy walls were not holding on to us so tightly we might having been blown right out of him. Instead, we were held in place as his foul smelling gases rushed past us, on more than one occasion. It turned out that quite a few things at the party made to Dalmatian rather flatulent.

I was battered and bruised for what seemed like hours. It was hard to tell how much time had really passed by. My watch had been lost to me without me actually noticing. At one point I realized I was not going to escape. The Dalmatian's rear had become my whole world. It was not a pleasant world, but I had to endure living within it. Or I could handle it like my son's friend. I was watching him slowly loose his mind as he begged for the giant Dalmatian to let him go. Of course, he could not hear either of us, so those pleas fell on deaf ears. At one point I could have sworn my son's friend started to sound almost worshipful of the Dalmatian.

I knew the party had to be over eventually, but that did not mean our suffering came to an end. Just because the party was over did not mean the Dalmatian ever stopped moving. Even when he slept it rarely remained still within our fleshy prison. His motions kept us awake and battered us through the long hours of the night. I also found out that the Dalmatian had been holding back while he was awake. Now that he was asleep he was letting loose with blast after blast of noxious farts. The smell alone was enough to keep me awake throughout the night. All the gurgling noises that the Dalmatian's body was making as his digestive system continued working, even while he was asleep, was surprisingly loud and also helped to keep me awake.

I was almost happy when the Dalmatian finally woke up. What kept me from being truly happy was that I could hear a worrying rumble from above me. It sounded like the Dalmatian had to deal with certain natural bodily functions. I wanted out, but that was not quite the way that I wanted out. But, the Dalmatian could have cared less about what his unknown passengers wanted. He made a trip to the bathroom that I was forced to attend and could only watch in horror as I saw the first brown log approaching me from deeper in the dog.

I made one last panicked attempt to escape out the anus before the log ended up forcing me out. It did me no good. That thick brown mass pressed up against my back and against the warm walls of the Dalmatian's tail hole. Then, little by little, I was forced out along with my son's friend. It was a long way to the water of the toilet bowl below, but I suffered no injury from hitting the water. My son's friend was not so lucky. That lump of waste had landed on top of him, shattering his body. I tried to swim to the side of the toilet bowl to avoid the same fate, but log after log of dog waste fell into the toilet, generating what to me seemed like massive waves. It was impossible for me to get anywhere with those wave splashing me about.

When I tried to get the Dalmatian's attention I knew I was going to fail. The splashing of his waste in the water was louder than I was. I had to compete with nothing more than excrement, and I was losing badly. It was hard to believe that after what had happened to me I was less than someone's waste in this world. As if to emphasize this, one last nugget of the Dalmatian's fell on top of me. It felt like every bone in my body was destroyed from the impact and I was being held underwater. I could feel myself drifting off as the dog flushed the toilet. It had not finished before I passed out, never to wake up again while the Dalmatian just walked off and tried to think of ways to deal with what had happened at the party the other night.

******

Things could not be going worse at the moment. I had to admit I had found that awkward situation those dogs were in to be pretty amusing, up until the point where one of them stormed off. He came entirely too close to us as he passed. Even though we did not get stepped on, he still knocked over a plate of food. We happened to be under that plate of food as it fell. That plate also happened to have a fairly large slice of pizza on it that fell right on top of us. It did not crush us, but the pizza was still very hot and the gooey cheese was clinging to our bodies.

There was a good side to all this. At least my pursuers were also stuck in the pizza and they were not making any more progress towards my friends and me. We were on one end of the pizza while the ants were stuck on the other end. After all the running I had been doing it was a welcomed relief to finally get to stand still. Some of my other friends were struggling to free themselves, but they were too tired to do anything. I doubted they would have been able to free themselves even if they had all their energy. The cheese was just too sticky and the pizza itself was too heavy. Unless someone came by and picked up the pizza, we were going to be stuck for a while.

I was content to sit back and wait. The people in the party probably would not eat a slice of pizza that had fallen on the floor. Probably was a pretty big qualifier. I know I had been to a few parties with guys more than willing to eat something that had fallen on the floor as long as it did not look dirty. What I was hoping would happen was that someone would throw the pizza away and we would have the time to eat our way free and crawl out of the garbage.

There was another possibility I had not thought of as I saw a large dog headed towards the slice of pizza. It was my friend's pet and I knew how much pets liked to find food on the floor. I thought he had been taken up to a room, but he must have freed himself at some point. Now he was just wandering around the party, getting treats where he could, and now he had found a nice whole slice of pizza. I could already see his tongue lolling out of his mouth with little strings of drool dripping from it in anticipation of the snack he was about to get.

There were quite a few people between the dog and us, but he was able to dodge all their legs with ease and made it to us with no trouble at all. In that little time my friends and the other ants had tried even harder to escape the pizza than they had been before. They were still trying even as the dog's huge cavernous maw opened up to take us in. Just because I was not trying to escape as hard as my friends were did not mean I was not afraid of being eaten. While they were trying to escape and making no progress at all, I decided to try something that I did not think would work either.

"Please don't eat us," I begged the dog. Of course, I did not expect the dog to understand me, but it was startling to see him respond. The dog looked around and at first walked over the pizza. He looked like he was searching for the sound of the voice. I could also see that the dog must have been pleasuring himself a bit before coming for the pizza. He must have been bored with all the people around and no one paying attention to him. Its shaft bopped ponderously above us, giving me a good look at a cock slit big enough for me to climb into with no trouble at all. I hoped that he did not get too happy about anything with that huge member pointed right over us. And then he moved just a little bit more, this time giving me a good look at his rear. It was then that a I got a good look at his anus. The opening to that was even larger than his cock slit and that made me hope even more that the dog was house trained and that it did not need to poop. The size of the log that thing could produce would probably be enough to crush something like me. I could swear it was pulsating at me in warning, but that was probably my imagination. Still, it was nice when the dog turned around, pointing that tail hole of his away from us. I did not know whether or not it was a good thing when the dog finally looked down, noticing me stuck under the pizza.

"Oh, it looks like more of you ants are still in house. Looks like you've gotten yourselves stuck. Little ones like you should know better than to be in a place like this with so many larger creatures around, but I guess little ones like you really can't be expected to be that smart," said the dog. I was having a hard time believing that not only was a dog talking, but it was talking down about my intelligence. Still, it was better than the dog eating me, so I did not say anything to him about that.

I asked, "Hey, do you think you could help us out here?"

"Of course I can little bug," said the dog as if I had just asked a stupid question. "Getting some ants out from under a slice of pizza is no problem at all. But, if I help you out now you will probably just get in more trouble later on. With this party going on a bunch of dumb little bugs like you would probably just end up getting yourselves stepped on. I'll need to do something about that, like keeping you where the rest of your friends are."

I was relieved to hear that the dog had a safe hiding place for us. It did not take long after this party started for me to realize that dodging giant paws really was not my thing. "And where are you keeping my friends?" I asked.

"The only place where I can be sure you bugs won't get yourselves stepped on," the dog said as if he were lecturing me, "In my belly."

I panicked upon hearing that and shouted, "No wait, that's not such a good idea."

The dog actually sighed as he said, "I would not expect a poor dumb bug like you to understand what I'm doing, but you'll just have to trust me. Until this party is over you will have to stay in my belly and I'll let you back out in the yard tomorrow."

"But if you do that you will end up digesting us," I tried to reason with the dog.

"Digesting?" the dog said quizzically. "Stop playing around and making up words. I can see little bugs like you obviously don't understand the danger they are in if they are still interested in playing around when they are in so much danger."

I said, "I swear I'm not making up words. If you digest us we will die and that will happen if you swallow us."

To my amazement, the dog actually shook his head in pity, "Poor stupid bugs. They aren't even smart enough to tell when they are making things up or maybe somebody told that to you and you just weren't smart enough to tell they were making it up. Probably those horses out back. I would not put something like this past them."

"The horses," I said, "No, they did not trick me. I'm telling you that swallowing us would be a really bad idea."

"Of course the horses did not trick you poor dumb little bug," the dog said in a calm, but patronizing tone. "But you need to trust me. Being a dog, I'm far smarter than an insignificant bug like you and I know what's best for you. Now just calm down while I put you in my belly."

I tried to protest again, but the dog did not seem to pay much attention to me. Apparently, the dog thought he was much smarter than I was and any suggestions I made were to be ignored. My only hope now was that someone would notice the dog had gotten out of his room and that someone would try to lock him back up. Unfortunately, everyone seemed to be ignoring the dog or they just did not want to interrupt their own fun to deal with him. With no one to come to our aid all we could do was sit there, trapped under the pizza, and watch as the dog prepared to make a meal out of us.

My view was filled with the dog's wide pink tongue and drool soaked maw. He was happy to help us, but he also seemed to be thinking about how good the pizza would taste too. The dog gingerly picked the pizza up in his teeth, being careful not to bite anyone in half as he did so. All of us remained stuck to the pizza as the dog proceeded to devour his snack in much larger bites than I thought he could. Since the dog was not bothering to chew, he was making his way through the pizza awfully quickly.

His warm breath kept washing over me in waves as he made his way towards my part of the pizza. The dog's drool soaked tongue repeatedly ran over my body, but never managed to free me from the cheese that still clung to my body. I was forced to watch helplessly as bite after bite disappeared into the dog. The others were still trying to escape and I was surprised at how much energy they had left to put into an escape attempt, but that did not mean they actually succeeded in freeing a single one of themselves. When my turn came to disappear into the dog's maw I found that I was not as scared as I thought I would be. Either I was in shock at what was happening to me or I had just come to accept the fact that I was dog food without the dog even seeming to realize he would end up digesting me.

The dog only took a little time to savor what he was eating. His tongue licked me and the others a few times. I wondered if he enjoyed our taste along with the pizza. At that point all I felt like was an added topping. Oddly, it did not bother me much that I was just a small part of the dog's meal. It was his rank dog breath that bothered me the most. When the dog swallowed, things only started to get worse. I had hoped that I would somehow be freed of the pizza once in the dog's mouth. Instead, after the dog swallowed, the muscles in his throat forced us deeper into the pizza as it was forced towards the dog's belly.

For the first time I tried to extract myself from the pizza by grabbing onto the hot fleshy walls that were sticky with what I hoped was only dog drool. Even though the walls were sticky, the same dog drool that made the folds of flesh sticky also made his throat too slick to get a grip on. There was nothing I could do to stop my descent and eventually I was deposited into the dog's welcoming belly. I could hear everyone crying out for the dog to let them out, or just plain crying in despair. There was something wrong with the number of voices though. I could tell there were more people in the dog than there had been on the pizza.

For a second I thought I was just imagining things, but then I decided to yell out, "Hey, is someone else out there? I could use some help?"

******

I do not know why I was surprised to hear that the dog must have eaten someone else. If he had decided his belly was a safe place to keep us, it would be just as safe to keep any other friends of mine that he came across. At least I was in a better position than they were. I could move about the dog's belly freely while they seemed to be stuck in some pizza. When I heard them I gathered the rest of my friends that Gabe's dog had swallowed earlier and tried to free the new arrivals, well, at least the ones that were our friends and not the regular ants.

It was hard getting them out of the pizza and we nearly got stuck ourselves a couple of times, but we managed to get the job done. I really do not know how much good that would do them since we were all stuck in the dog's belly with no way out. The only good thing about the situation so far seemed to be the fact that I had not been digested yet. Some of the others seemed to be surprised about that too after I explained how long we had been trapped within the dog. They thought we were lucky, that the dog must be having some sort of digestive problems. I thought that might certainly be possible since the digestive acids that already filled the dogs belly were not doing much more than causing my body to tingle slightly.

Even if our time spent in the dog's belly was survivable, the smell was still terrible and the fumes from the digestive juices were nauseating. Plus, as the dog moved about we were jostled around quite a bit. When the dog was walking things were not that bad, but when he did something like making a quick turn or jumping we would be bounced painfully around. The belly of the dog was dark, but I could tell that at least the pizza was dissolving into mush since it seemed softer every time I bounced against it.

It seemed like we were in the dog's belly forever, but eventually things started to get sucked out of his stomach and into a different chamber. I thought that was a good thing, that since I had survived being in the belly of the beast, that I just might make it through the rest of his digestive system. Unfortunately, I discovered that the next area I was forced into was working much better than the dog's belly had been. Whatever type of juices were in the next part of the dog's digestive system were working perfectly. Upon coming in contact with those juices I could feel my body burning.

I was not quite dissolving, but the process was excruciatingly painful. The others must have thought so too based on all the screams that I was hearing. And that was just the beginning of the pain as I started to make my way through the guts of the dog. The smells of the environment combined with the pain of being digested was an overwhelming experience and I occasionally passed out only to be awakened by the pain again and again. It was this way that I was sure my life was going to come to an end. Each time I woke up I could tell that a little bit more of my body had dissolved away. The dog was unknowingly absorbing my body as nutrients for his own body.

I was pretty bitter about that, and for more reasons than the fact that I was going to die this way. The fact that I had survived the dog's belly made it seem like I should have survived the rest of the digestive process to me. It would have been a messy exit, but I thought I should have been able to survive. Now the dog was greedily absorbing me even though there probably was not enough nutrients in my body to help the dog make a single strand of his fur. It just seemed so unfair to me. But that did not matter to the dog. He still thought he was helping us all out.

It was hard to tell just how far I made it through the dog's guts before I never regained consciousness again. That was something of a good thing for me. There was no more pain for me after that. As bits of my body were taken away I no longer had to deal with the fear of what would happen to me when there was nothing left. Since I was unconscious I was not able to tell that there was just a little left of my body. Like with many things, there were a few indigestible parts of my mutated shrunken body. It was lumped together with the rest of the waste in the dog's body.

Come the next day, when the dog was let out to do his business in the yard, he found a safe place to release his waste. He was expecting to find a few ants there and was a little surprised to find nothing but the normal brown lumps that normally came out of him. It was a little puzzling for the dog, but he assumed that all the ants had done something foolish inside of him and were still stuck there. The dog just shrugged to himself. If the ants had gotten lost it was their own fault, but the dog could not expect much out of the small stupid creatures. They might find their way out eventually, the dog thought to himself, but the dog was not too worried about something like that. Then again, they might have also run away while he was still voiding himself of the rest of his waste. That thought made him a little angry. They should have thanked him for helping them out before running off. But, they were just ants and they could not be expected to be smart enough to know when to thank someone, so he forgave in his mind. He just went about enjoying the rest of his day without ever noticing the chitinous shells or shrunken bones in his waste.

******

I had certainly thought my kids were going to have a party while I was away, but I did not think it would be quite like this. If I ever found a way to return to my normal size I was going to have to have a nice long talk with my kids. There were a few too many couples headed into every room of the house that I could see, and from the numbers I had seen walking upstairs there was probably a couple making out in my own bed at this very moment. I would have been even more frustrated about that if it were not for the fact that my wife was missing. She had gone after that shrinking device those ants had used on us, very much against my own advice.

Of course, I had to go after her, but with all these seemingly giant sized people around, we were quickly separated due to the ocean of paws and hooves stomping about. Now it was just me and a three ants stumbling about. They were still trying to catch me, which I could not believe. Those were some pretty relentless guys and they were obviously much more used to having to dodge huge paws than I was. That was not to say they were very good at dodging them, they just did not seem to have that same level of fear that I had. To emphasize my point, another one of the ants that was pursuing me was crushed beneath the red furred paw of a husky. Even though I only got a brief look at that, it was a gruesome enough sight. Watching an ant's body explode is a lot more gory when you are the same size as the ant rather than a titan towering above said ant. Form this point of view it seemed like the husky should have noticed doing what he did to that ant, but I doubted I ever really noticed stepping on an ant when I was at my normal size and in my regular body.

I was quickly forced to stop ruminating about such things after I was nearly stepped on by a blue furred otter. At my size I did not have the convenience of being able to think about other things while trying to run. While I was dodging paws and ants I lost track of how much time was passing by. All I knew was that I was getting exhausted. If I did not find a place to hide from the ants and all those paws pretty soon I was going to make a mistake that was going to get me caught or killed.

There actually were plenty of good places to hide, but I just had a problem of getting to them. With the party still going on I could not just run straight to anywhere. Every time I tried I would just be cut off by some paw or another and be forced to run in some other direction. This seemed to be working in the favor of the ants since none of them had been crushed lately and they were gaining ground on me. Eventually, between them and the paws, I did not have much of a choice about directions to flee in. Even though they were within feet of me I still tried to flee. At that point I was even more concerned about them than I was about the giant paws. They must have tasted victory because they were also paying more attention to me than to the paws as well.

That was why none of us noticed a large black foot right above us until it was too late. It took me a second to recognize that dark webbed foot as my own son's paw. I thought I was about to be crushed like a bug along with the other bugs by my own son. His paw came down with far too much speed for me to dodge. As I expected to be turned to a gooey stain beneath his foot, I felt warm leathery walls surround and press up against me. By some miracle I had ended up between his toes as his paw came down. I was stuck right were his webbing ended and much to my surprise, the other ants were stuck between his toes along with me.

As my son just kept on walking without noticing his tiny passengers we all had to deal with a wild ride. Still, it was sort of an improvement in my situation. The ants could not get any closer to me while they were stuck and I did not have to worry about getting stepped on while stuck between my eldest son's toes. He also seemed to be headed out of the house and away from most of the party guests too. If I could get out I would have to worry about getting stepped on much less. I did wonder why he was leaving the party for a little while before I figured out that he was headed out to the stables to feed the horses before they all fell asleep. At least he could remember to do that much while he was throwing this wild party of his.

I thought it was a good thing that he could tear himself away from his party to take care of the things that he needed to. But, without all the people from the party distracting him he could notice other things. My son had always been an observant one and this time it looked like that was really going to work against me. He looked down at his foot for some reason. Maybe we had been causing his toes to itch, it did not really matter. What did matter was that he noticed us, stuck helplessly between his toes.

"Well, what do we have here?" my son sneered. "Looks like some bugs decided they could get a free ride out of me. I'll have to show you the mistake of your ways." It looked like my son had less than friendly intentions, but when I tried to tell him I was not a normal ant like the rest of them, he either could not hear of could not understand me. I could not do anything as I was plucked from between my sons toes along with the rest of the ants and he held us before his face in the palm of his hand.

My son smiled ominously at us as he said, "And just what should I do with little pests like you? For trying to get a free ride I should just crush you like the bugs you are, but I think I am feeling a bit more merciful." I was terrified of what my son planned to do with us. By the look on his face I could tell that he was not feeling all that merciful. The ants did not look nearly as terrified as I did. They looked like they had accepted their fate and they were not even attempting to use their strange looking weapons on my son. I doubted they could do much damage, if any at all, to a thick skinned dragon like him. This was the way the world looked for them and all of a sudden I felt kind of bad for not paying attention to what I was stepping on all of my life. I was really beginning to understand why those ants had shrunken us.

My son walked over to the feed bags and dragged one of them over to our horses. He stopped in front of the big black stallion that we owned. I had been rather proud of that horse, but now, staring at him from my current size I could not help but be frightened of the huge beast. As I was wondering what my son had planned I found myself being dropped on the ground and before I even had the chance to get up, he started dumping grain on top of me as well as the other ants. What seemed like a never ending pile of the stuff just kept raining down, pinning me to the ground. I tried to move, but I could feel more of the stuff still coming down, burying me in what seemed like a mountain of grain.

"Alright little bugs," I could hear my son say faintly through all the grain, "If you can get out of there and avoid becoming a snack for my horse you can go free. And if you don't, well, I hope you enjoy seeing a his digestive process from up close."

I soon felt the pile shifting above me and it was not hard for me to tell that the horse was eating the pile of grain above me. My time was limited and I knew it. Still, it was hard to move, but with each bite that the horse took it became just a little bit easier for me to move. I started making my way out of the grain, hoping that it would not take me too long to reach the edge of the pile. It was hard work, but progress became easier as the horse continued to eat. I did not know whether the progress I was making was good, though. For all I knew the horse could end up eating me in his next bite and that made for a very nerve racking experience.

At least I thought that was nerve racking. Then the horse made enough progress into the pile that he was nudging at the part of the grain pile that I was in. He was even moving me around and each time he did so I realized what nerve racking really was. When my hand finally broke out of the pile I hoped I would be able to get away from the hungry animal. But, before I could even pull my head out of the pile I felt something warm and leathery close around my hand. I was suddenly pulled free of the grain and I could see that my hand was trapped in the lips of the titanic horse.

He was already chewing what was in his mouth and if he decided to lick his lips I was probably going to end up being considerably mushier than I currently was. I braced myself against the horse's upper lip and started tugging at my arm. It took a few seconds, but I was eventually able to force my arm free. Then I had to hold on tightly to the horse's muzzle, least I fall right back into the grain. That was actually one of the few things that seemed to be easier to do at my size and the horse did not even seem to notice my presence on his muzzle.

I had a good view of the grain that was still on the floor. There was one ant that I could see crawling out of it, but he quickly disappeared when the horse bent his head down to take another bite of his meal. After that it did not take the horse long to finish off the remaining grain. If any of the ants had managed to escape, I could not see them on the ground. It was possible that the other two I had not seen eaten had managed to get away, but I thought it was more likely that they were now residents of the horse's belly.

With the food on the floor gone the horse was no longer dipping his head to the ground. That was going to make it difficult for me to make it back to the floor and get away from the horse. I did not like the idea of having to crawl along the horse's face, hoping not to get noticed and flicked off, but I managed to do that without much trouble. Crawling down the mane on his neck proved to be a little more difficult. I did not know if the horse could feel me, but he would occasional twitch the muscles of his neck or flick his mane, either motion was nearly enough to send me flying off him. It was a long drop to the floor at my size and I made sure to hold on.

After taking much more time to make my way down the horse's neck than I thought it would take I found myself on his broad back. From my point of view it was possible to build a small neighborhood on that back. It was a sight that made me feel truly small. Then I went about trying to make my way down the rest of the horse. I wanted to just climb down his forelegs, but before I could make it far, the horse's back muscles started twitching unexpectedly. Since I did not have a grip on anything, I was sent bouncing along his back and I was just lucky that I did not bounce off of it. Unfortunately, by the time I stopped bouncing I was closer to the horse's rear than the front of his body. I thought about walking back to the front of his body, but I did not want to take the chance that the horse would start twitching again.

Being so close to a tail that was pretty much meant to deal with tiny pests like me was a little intimidating. But, it was not like I planned on crawling down right next to it. If I was careful it would be possible to crawl down his rear legs without having to worry about taking a hit from that tail of his. Things just were not going my way, though. The horse did not give me a chance to be careful as he twitched one more time. That was enough to send me rolling right down the horse's rear. I desperately tried to get a hold of any fur that I could as I began my fall to the ground. It was not working all that well until the horse's tail hole came into view. I did not like the idea of having to grab on to that, but I wanted to fall to the floor even less, so I did my best to fall towards the that hole and just barely managed to get a hold of it.

I pulled myself up and into the tail hole to try and take in my situation. It did not take me long to figure out that being forced to take shelter in a horse's tail hole was not a good situation to be in. Still, it was better than falling to the ground. Since the horse was moving around in his stall I was able to get a look at what was going on in the rest of the stables. My son was walking around, feeding the other horses. He was not being as careful with all the grain as he should have been and he was spilling large portions on to the floor. The other horses did not seem to mind. That just meant extra food for them.

With even more food on the way, the horse whose anus I was in was moving around even more excitedly. I was actually starting to get a bit a motion sickness and the smells emanating from the tail hole were not exactly helping. As my son arrived back at the horse's stall the horse happened to be facing away from him. I saw as my son was just as careless in this stall and spilled just as much grain here as he had in all the others. With all that food in the stall I expected the horse to whip right around, but he had to take care of something else first.

I watched as the horse's tail lifted up into a familiar arch. Then I heard a rumbling behind me. With those two signs as a warning I knew it was time to get out of the horse. Sadly, the horse's bodily functions were faster than my reaction speed. Before I could even make it one step a warm rank, and very powerful, gust of wind blasted out the rear of the horse. My tiny body was picked up by that wind and shot right out of the horse. I could not believe, even after all the other things that had happened this day, that I had been farted out of the horse.

My indignity was quickly replaced by fear as I plummeted toward a pile of grain that my son had dropped in the stall. It did not seem possible that some grain would be enough to break my fall, but it did just that. To me it was a miracle that made me think I just might survive all this. And then a shadow descended over me. I looked up to see the horse's gapping maw ready to take me in.

That was when I finally called out, "Wait, hold on a minute there boy."

"And why should I do that?" the horse asked.

A few seconds passed by before I could get over the astonishment of talking to a horse and said, "Because horses aren't supposed to eat things like me."

"Here we go again," the horse said exasperatedly. "Yet more talking grain trying to get out of being eaten."

"More talking grain?" I said a bit quizzically. "I can assure you that I'm not talking grain. What I am is a shrunken dragon that has also been mutated into some sort of hybrid ant thing."

The horse actually tossed by back his head and laughed, "If you're going to lie you could at least make it believable. Then again, since you are just grain and I'm a horse, you really could not hope to match my intelligence."

I suppose that really was a story that was hard to believe, but I had to come up with something to keep myself from getting eaten. "Listen, my story has to be true. Grain does not talk after all."

"I used to think that too," said the horse, "But it was not that long ago that I encountered some other talking grain for the first time. They tried to trick me too, but they were too stupid. I don't know why you grains have decided to start talking all of a sudden, but I'm starting to find it annoying. You should not be talking your way out of feeding me. Grain belongs in horses and you should just be happy to be a part of my meal."

"I'm not happy to be a part of your meal because I am not grain," I tried to reason with the horse. "I am just really small and I happened to fall into some grain."

The horse snorted, "That is quite enough out of you grain. Even if you are only one piece of grain I am not going to let you go. You should just behave like the rest of the grain and quietly let me eat you. Since you are grain you will probably like it in my belly anyways."

"I most certainly will not like it in your belly. Getting digested is not exactly my idea of a fun time," I replied to the horse.

"The rest of the grain does not seem to think that or else they would be speaking up too. Maybe you must be exceptionally stupid, even for grain. It must be sad, not even being to tell that you belong in my belly," the horse said to himself almost as much as he was saying it to me.

"I'm not the stupid one. I just don't want to get eaten," I pleaded with the horse.

"Sure you don't," the horse said sarcastically as he opened his mouth above me. "But you don't really have a choice in all this. Grain belongs in horses, and since you are grain you belong in me. You will see that once you are where you belong." The horse was through arguing with me. I tried to run, but his huge maw was easily able to take me in. The warm earthy breath of the horse soon surrounded me. I was bounced around on his thick slimy tongue as he started to chew up his meal. Huge boulder like teeth surrounded me and it was a struggle to keep from getting chewed up by those things. I continued to try and plead with the horse, but he either did not hear me or he did not care about what I had to say anymore.

The horse just swallowed me down. Powerful muscles propelled me down his throat at startling speeds and I found myself in his belly in no time at all. His digestive system was already hard at work dissolving the grain he had eaten earlier. The noxious fumes that already filled the air made me feel lightheaded and the sounds that filled the space were very ominous. I could still hear the horse chewing up more grain for his meal high above me, his powerful heart was beating steadily and was clearly audible inside of the horse, and there was plenty of gurgling and sloshing noises within the belly as things were dissolved and the horse moved around.

Somewhere in the distance, I could also hear the ants talking to each other. It sounded like they had all be eaten. I was not a exactly anxious to reveal my presence to those ants. Just because we were all in the same bad situation did not mean that they would be friendly with me now. So, I just kept quiet while looking for a way out of the horse's belly on my own. I was never able to do that, at least not until the horse's digestive system was ready to let me move out of the belly.

By that time I had not been fully digested and I was still somewhat conscious. The horse's digestive acids did not seem to be able to handle fully digesting an ant. That did not mean I was unharmed though. I was in bad shape and I definitely was not in any condition to resist the will of the horse's body. As I started to make my way through the intestines of the horse I found that there were still things in the horse's body capable of dissolving me. Bits and pieces of me were absorbed into the horse's powerhouse of a body, but I was in such bad shape mentally and physically that I barely even noticed. It was a journey that seemed to go on forever.

At one point the only thing that really got to me was the smell of the place. It just kept getting worse too. That was when I realized that somehow I was still alive and I had pretty much made it through the horse's entire digestive system. I could not tell how many limbs were missing and I was not sure that I even cared I had missing limbs anymore. It just seemed like I was lucky to even be alive. And then I was wedged into a big brown lump of horse excrement that seemed to be the size of a house to me. The smell was overwhelming and caused me to pass out a couple of times, but the journey continued.

When the time came for the horse to void himself of his waste I was among the first lump of waste that he expelled. It was a long fall back to the ground, but it was good to be in the open air again. The waste cushioned my fall and made it survivable, but I was still stuck in that waste. It was nice to be alive, but the horse soon took care of that as he dropped another lump of waste right on top of me. The impact shattered my body and the horse just kept dropping more lumps of waste onto me. To the horse, things were perfectly normal. He had gotten what nutrients he could from the talking piece of grain and he could have cared less about what happened to it after that.

Not Meant to Change

Things could definitely be going better. It had not taken the ants long to recapture me, but at least everyone else seemed to have run off. Now it was just me, a couple of guards, the ant scientist that shrank me, and what seemed like the head warrior ant, who had recently managed to hook back up with us. After they had captured me they found a nice quiet place for us to wait for the others to return. We waited, and waited, and waited, but no one ever did come back while the party was still going.

"Do you think they are just hiding out until the party ends Commander Zafren?" Teliyin asked.

"I would like to think that were true, but it's doubtful Head Researcher," responded Zafren. "If they are not back by now the Others have probably brought their lives to an end one way or the other."

Teliyin seemed to hesitate before asking, "Then should we head back to the Nation or should we wait?"

"Waiting would probably be a good idea for now. If the other members of our group really have been killed out there it is probably too dangerous for us to travel as well. Let's just stay here for the night and hope someone does show up by morning." They continued talking about this and that for a while as they pretty much ignored me. All I really had the chance to do was watch the party. It did look like it would have been a fun time, if incredibly dangerous for someone of my present size.

Eventually the party did start to wind down, and by wind down I mean that people started to pass out from drink and exhaustion at various different places in the house. With everyone falling asleep, the ants started settling in for the night too. I was having a hard time falling asleep, but that ant scientist, Teliyin, came over to keep me company.

"What do you plan on doing with me?" I asked her.

"The plan was to bring you back to the Nation to answer for your crimes against the People. I'm starting to doubt whether we can do that now," Teliyin responded.

"So there is no way I could convince you to return me back to normal, even if I promised never to harm one of you again and kept other people from harming you too?" I asked a bit hopefully.

Teliyin cocked her head and said, "You would do that? If we could trust the word of one of the Others that really would be wonderful, but after everything you Others have done to us I doubt anyone would trust you anytime soon."

"Well, before I..." I let that sentence trail off. Saying that I thought they were just bugs before seemed like it would have been an inadequate explanation. "Let's just say I've had a change of heart since seeing the world from your point of view."

"I thought at least some of the Others would change their minds about us if they did get to see the world from a much more sensible size," Teliyin said with a sigh. "Unfortunately, one of my colleagues made sure that the shrinking process was irreversible. He did not want any of you returning to normal only to seek revenge on the People."

I was stunned by that statement, "You mean I'm stuck like this, forever."

"In time I might be able to devise a way to reverse the process, but I don't know if anyone would let me do so," she said. "And I'm afraid you may not have the time if many people in the Nation have their way. Since it looks like you are the only one of the Others that we managed to capture you are going to be the only target of the rage many of the People feel for the Others."

Thinking back on all the things I had done to ants over the years I was not looking forward to answering for my own crimes against them, needless to say everyone else's. I got quiet after that as I mulled over just what fate awaited me. Teliyin just sat next to me and did not interrupt my silence. If I did not know any better I would think that she actually felt sorry for me.

******

Even though it would have felt nice on a certain level to see the shrunken dragon tried for what he had done, I actually believed what he had said. Now, because we could not undo what we had done to him we were probably going to lose what could have been a valuable ally. At this point I would have just been grateful for a ride back to the tunnels. As far as I was concerned this mission was a failed success. We lost far too many in this little test run. We had even lost the prototype and all we were going to get out of it was one dragon around my own age who was going to get punished for everything.

Quite frankly, I was starting to think that the dragon had not even known we were intelligent creatures like himself until we shrank him down to size. I know most of my people did not think much of the Other's intelligence and they most certainly were not thought of as people. This mission really was going to accomplish frustratingly little. It was on that thought that I started to drift off to sleep. I did not sleep well that night and I did not get much sleep since Zafren wanted everyone up early.

The sun was just starting to peak through the windows and all of the others were still sound asleep. Zafren wanted to head out before they started waking up. It seemed like a good enough idea to me, even if my tired body still wanted to get more rest. Then again, after looking around at all the giant Others still in the house, I really wanted to get out of this place. It was going to be a long walk back to the tunnels. I decided to use the time to get to know the shrunken dragon, Gabe.

Commander Zafren and the other warriors were not as anxious to talk with the dragon. No one else had returned this morning, adding to the great loses they had taken on this mission, and Gabe was directly responsible for a few of those loses. It was not surprising that they probably could not stand the dragon. The warriors distanced themselves from us, well, from Gabe really and from me because I happened to be walking with Gabe. Since his arms were bound tightly behind his back and his legs were also tied together, restricting his movement to a slow walk, the warriors did not have to worry about him running off.

It turned out hanging back with Gabe was a good idea on my part. And that was not just because it was interesting getting to finally interview one of the Others. As we were walking a partygoer that had fallen asleep on the floor rolled over. He did not rollover onto us, but when he moved his legs into a more comfortable position his paw came right down on Commander Zafren and his warriors. One moment they were there, and the next they were nothing more than smears beneath the paw of a slumbering husky.

Gabe looked stunned and asked, "Should we go over there and see if any of them survived?"

"That would not be a good idea Gabe. Getting close to paws is never a good idea for us," I replied.

"You don't seem as bothered by seeing that as I thought you would," Gabe said a few seconds later.

"I have seen far too many of the People come to an end in such a fashion. After a while you don't really get used to it, but it just doesn't bother you as much," I said to him.

"Have I ever nearly stepped on you before?" Gabe asked.

"Oh yes, plenty of times," I responded.

Gabe looked a bit ashamed of himself as he said, "Wow, I'm, uh, I'm really sorry about that. I don't know what else to say about that."

I shrugged, "You did not know what you were doing. If I could return you to your normal size I'm sure you would watch your step from now on."

"So, do you still plan on taking me back to your people to be punished?" Gabe asked.

I thought about that for a moment. With the warriors and everyone else gone I was the only one left that knew the shrinking device worked. Gabe looked different for an ant, but not so much so that it could not be explained away as some sort of birth defect. I thought carefully about the future and said, "No, I don't think so, but if you will come with me I will try to come up with a way to return you to normal. I'll just tell everyone else that you look the way you do because of a birth defect. Then I'll tell them that I have chosen you as my assistant. No one need know that you are actually a dragon."

"Sounds like a pretty good deal, better than sticking around here and waiting for someone to step on me at least. Let's go then," he said.

******

Teliyin untied me after I decided to go with her. It was nice to be free again, but I was still probably going to be stuck this way for a long time. I was not fooling myself. Chances were it would take her years to figure out how to return me to normal, especially if there really was someone among her people trying to make sure the process could not be reversed. I did not know what life among the ants would be like, but I would have to get used to it.

We managed to make it out of the house without further incident. That was probably because no one had yet to wake up and we were already in the grass by the time I noticed people finally leaving. I was happy no one was using the backyard to get to their cars or that would have been a lot of trouble for us. Teliyin said there were a few entrances to the tunnels close to us, but we should not use them. There were too many people that knew she had been out on a mission and if they saw her returning to the tunnels with me there would be questions asked. We had to use a more private entrance that she knew about where no one would see us enter. It was a bit further away, but I did not mind the walk, at least not until I realized how dangerous a walk out in the open could be for someone of my size.

I heard the back door of the house opening and saw Trent letting the dog out to do his business. Of course, with a whole yard to choose where to relieve himself in he just had to do it very close to us. In fact, as he parked his anus right over top of us we had to get out of the way quickly as he dumped his load right where we had been standing. We managed to avoid getting crushed, but the smell was rancid. It did not take the dog long and he ran off elsewhere right after relieving himself. I would have gotten far away from that pile of foul smelling stuff if the sunlight had not glinted off of something in it. After a closer inspection I found that the thing the sun was glinting off of was a watch that belonged to a friend of mine. It was then that I realized the lump of waste I was looking at was partially made up of my friends.

After all the things that had happened to me, that finally sent me over the edge. I panicked and ran off into the grass with Teliyin following behind me. She tried to get me to stop, but this was all just too much. I wanted my normal life back.

My flight was quickly brought to an end as a massive black form landed right in front of me. I looked up a pair of long black legs to a dark feathery body and into the beady eyes of a raven. As I stood there rooted in fear the raven kept cocking his head back and forth, sizing me up. Suddenly, his headed darted down. Teliyin tugged me out of the way just before the feral bird's beak could snap shut right where I had been standing. The bird was about to snap us both up when I heard some barking and the raven flew off with my dog in hot pursuit, nearly stepping on me as he did so.

That actually snapped me back to reality. I apologized to Teliyin and she shrugged it off, saying something like that happened to a lot of her people within the first dozen encounters with things outside of the tunnels. After that all we could do was continue on our journey. We actually started to get a lot friendlier with each other after that. I guess that sort of happens after someone saves your life. When I mentioned that to Teliyin she said that might have been part of the reason. The other part was probably due to my transformation. Now that I was part ant I was probably going to be more attracted to her. By their standards she said she was quite attractive, a potential queen even.

It took about half a day for us to reach the tunnel Teliyin wanted us to use. I was happy that the journey was finally over and that we could get to some relative safety. But, before we could get into the tunnels a huge pale blue leathery hand blocked my path. I could recognize Trent's hand when I saw it and I looked up into his cruel looking eyes. He obviously was not happy about being excluded from last night's party and he had just found an outlet for his rage. He also had a few of his friends with him and I was reminded of how I had behaved yesterday when I had my friends to egg me on. Things probably were not going to go very well.

"Look what we have here, a couple of lone bugs that want to have fun with us," Trent said mockingly as he pinched us roughly between his fingers.

"So, what do you guys think we should do with them?" Trent asked his friends.

One of them that had been taking a drink from a water bottle piped up and said, "Bet you I can drink them before you do."

"You're on," Trent said as he walked over to his friend and dropped us into the bottle. His friends produced a couple of straws as we spluttered around in the water. These ant bodies of ours really were not all that good for swimming and we both started sinking almost immediately. When Trent and his friend started sucking on the water through the straws I started sinking even faster. I could feel myself being tugged beneath the water by their sucking.

No matter what I did I could not pull myself above the water. Little by little I was dragged toward one of the straws along with Teliyin. There was something that seemed so very wrong about this, besides the fact that I was about to get drunk. Teliyin was a brilliant scientist that had invented an actual device that could shrink things and now she was just a toy in a bet of an angry teenager. She was a potential queen and she had saved my life. It seemed like she deserved a more dignified death than this. But, in this world none of those things mattered when you were just an ant. I could see why she had tried to change things.

I doubted things ever would change for those ants now. If she never returned they might assume that her shrinking device was a failure. Her people would go on getting crushed, eaten, and subjected to humiliating treatment and there was nothing they could do about it. This was simply their lot in life, and mine as well now.

It did not take more than a few seconds before Teliyin and I were pulled up one of the straws in the water. For me it was kind of like a reverse water slide. It actually was not that bad, except for the fact that the slide ended in a titan's maw. Teliyin and I only stayed in that maw long enough for me to recognize it as my own brother's. It definitely had the sharp pointed fangs of a dragon as well as that fat ugly tongue. I had never realized it looked so horrible from the point of view of something we were eating, but I had never really stopped to consider things like that before and I never would now.

All it took was one more sip on Trent's part and we were washed right down his throat. As we feel I heard him say, "Looks like I win." It was hard to believe I was going to be digested by my own little brother. And he was laughing about it with his friends. We were readily admitted into his belly where we fell hard onto its fleshy walls. The only things in Trent's belly were Teliyin and I. That seemed to be enough to trigger acids to start pouring into his stomach along with us. We tried to avoid the stuff, but as Trent walked around it caused the acids to splash around, often coating us in searing digestive enzymes.

The rancid smell of the acids combined with the lingering scents of past digested meals into a very potent combination. Due to the lack of oxygen it was also difficult to work up the energy to do anything useful. It was difficult enough just staying conscious. We were not digesting as fast as Teliyin thought we should be and I had to explain to her that was probably because Trent liked tormenting ants the most. He had told me that he occasionally took things to make sure bugs would last as long as possible in his digestive system. I had never thought that stuff would work, but apparently it did.

We lasted for quite a while in my brother's belly and had no more than a single limb get dissolved. Then it was time for a trip through Trent's intestinal tract. It was a wild ride that might have been fun if not for the overpowering stench and the fact that we were dissolving even faster in the intestines. Little bits and pieces of our bodies were absorbed as nutrients into Trent's body. The constant gurgling of Trent's body started to get on my nerves. It was almost like my titanic brother's body were protesting that it had to go through so much trouble just for a couple of ants. But, my anger soon faded away. Pain was the only thing that I could really feel after a certain point.

My life was being drained out of me and there was nothing I could do about it. All I could do was sit back and go along with the ride. The horrid smell of Trent's digestive system intensified, knocking me out for long periods of time. I caught the occasional glimpse of Teliyin as she was forced to endure all this along with me. The agent of change for an entire species was being dissolved before my eyes. She was supposed to change the world and now all she would amount to was dragon excrement. Many more of her people would probably end up like this without her too. It was a shame. That was the last thought I had before I was wedged into a log of Trent's waste and passed out never to wake up again. Teliyin would pass on shortly after that, her body being deeply embedded in a lump of waste. We were both stored away to be properly disposed of later and Trent would flush us out of everyone's lives, never knowing what he had done to his own family and the dreams of an entire race.