At least I learned that I was now capable of lifting objects many times my weight. Rocks and boulders were nothing to me, which was a good thing since I and several other sister ants were charged with excavating a new chamber for the colony.
It freaked me out a bit to think that the amulet had turned me into a female worker ant. Shouldn't it have at least turned me into a male drone? But the repetitive blasts of pheromones made it difficult for me to focus on those thoughts.
My primary purpose was now to work, which meant to remove earth and rock as I worked in unison with other ants to excavate a chamber that had collapsed. During the work, we uncovered the crushed bodies of some unlucky fellow ants that had been trapped in the chamber during the collapse. Instead of feeling any loss for their sacrifice, or even being worried that we could have easily been in the position of those crushed and mangled ants, we treated them like obstacles to be removed, carrying the husks of their bodies from the chamber along with what seemed like tons of dirt and rock.
I wrestled huge and jagged chunks of rock into my mandibles and then carried them through long, winding tunnels to deposit outside the colony's subterranean depths. I must have made the journey back and forth dozens of times. It was the same old drudgery, time after time. Whenever I began to resist against acting as a mindless slave, one of the damn enforcer ants would blast me with pheromones that focused my thoughts onto being the best little worker ant I could be.
I needed to get back to my house, to the amulet. If I could break free when the pheromones began to weaken, perhaps I could reach the amulet and escape.
I picked up a large boulder and headed toward the tunnel that led to my backyard. Once on the surface again, that would be my best chance...