The Colony seeks.

The Colony does not find.

Curious. Strange. Prey-Animals missing.

The creature that hovered its way through the forest on silent wings was not truly sapient, but it came close enough to fake it for short periods of time. Its heavy carapace shifted colors and blended in with the background as it navigated past purple trees and yellow-leafed bushes. The dozens of minds packed within the spherical form were curious. They had come to hunt, and to feed, but they were not finding their prey.

Dead not-food. Curious.

The spherical carapace stopped for a moment above a dead forest-sweeper. A small–for lack of a better word–*hatch* flipped open near one of its sensory organs and a long proboscis slipped out and ghosted over the still creature's form. It paused when it felt the gaping wounds that had been blown in the sweeper's acidic flesh, and paused again when it tasted something strange in the wounds.

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Chemical. Smokepowder? Curious.

The sphere retracted its proboscis and started to float on, hovering on unseen wings, when it stopped. Its sensory organs detected lingering heat several paces away from the dead forest-sweeper. Curious. It drifted that way and examined the… Footprint.

It was like no footprint the Colony had ever encountered before. And even now the residual heat was almost gone. What was left was elongated and rounded on both ends, like a kek worm in its larval form.

It led away from… Or to? The lair of the prey-animals.

The Colony rarely visited the lair. It understood on some level that doing so may have provided it with easy food, but also would have driven the prey-animals away and deeper into the forest. The Colony did not want the prey-animals to leave. They were near the Nest, and usually offered easy hunting.

But there were no prey-animals in the forest today. And something was killing the forest-sweepers. And that something was heading towards the prey-animals' lair. Or away from it.

Curious.

The Colony shifted directions and began to hover towards the lair. If the prey-animals were there, it would try not to intrude. It did not want to drive them away.

But it was very curious about the footprint. And it was curious about the dead forest-sweeper.

And curiosity made it hungry.

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