As the silhouette of a figure steadily came into view, and their appearance lost its black blobbiness and gained proper details instead, the group steadily slowed their pace until they were fully stopped a few metres away from the figure.

Taking in the details of this figure informed them that while their assumptions weren't wrong, the weren't entirely right either.

At the very least, this was no ant. The severe lack of an exoskeletal carapace and any antennae was a dead give away for that. Unfortunately however, the figure did seem to be human. Or at least, they had been human at some point.

Standing before them was a living corpse, or what appeared to be one. The corpse of a middle aged man, by the looks of it. It had waxy, greying skin that hung loosely from its bones, as if it had been stretched out and then left to flap in the wind.

Their mouth hung open so wide that you could stick your entire forearm inside the gap, vertically, and still have room to wiggle your fingers. Their entire lower jaw was completely unhinged, hanging in the stretched remains of their mouth and swinging like a hypnotic pendulum with every slight movement the living corpse took. Rivers of drool poured from the edges of its mouth, trickling down its chin, which still had the remnants of a salt and pepper beard, before falling to the ground to be drank up by the grass beneath its feet.

A look inside this gaping maw of a mouth would reveal that he had no tongue, and this was not the only thing that was missing. His eyes had been removed at some point, perhaps from simply falling out, leaving nothing but dark abyss' of shadows as you could gaze directly into the black sockets of his skull.

The living corpse stood before them with a considerable hunch in its posture, its back curved down so much that it looked akin to a prawn, if that prawn had been rotting for weeks on end. They did not have to question why this was, because the answer was practically staring them in the face.

On his back was a large hump, roughly the size of a beach ball, that was stretching his already loose skin to its absolute limits. It was not the only bulbous, cancerous looking growth. He had them in a few places, such as on the side of his head and on one of his arms, although these growths were considerably smaller and only the size of an average watermelon.

In fact, what first appeared to be a beer gut turned out to be another one of these bulbous growths. A fact that they discovered because these growths were not cancerous in nature, instead they seemed to be from something else entirely. Something that was moving underneath his stretched skin, causing it to bulge ever so slightly to accommodate the small bodies of whatever was crawling within him.

His arms hung limply by his sides, swinging alongside his jaw with every unsteady step he took. Apart from the growths, that made him look like Popeye, he had very little meat on his body. His arms were like twigs as they dangled there, hanging so low his knuckles were almost scraping against the ground as his fingers twitched occasionally from wayward brain signals.

It was only when a small ant, what used to be normal sized for the creatures before they mutated, crawled out from his eye socket, skittered across his face and disappeared into his mouth did they finally realise what was crawling within him and what those bulbous growths truly were.

He was a nest. A corpse piloted by the ants to act as a mobile nest, with a food source to boot for all the new-born ants. How horrifyingly efficient.

Collapsed against some of the trees nearby, there were corpses of other creatures that no doubt had met the same unfortunate fate. Although they had no bulbous growths on their bodies, instead gaping holes where those growths had been burst like a zit.

Every ouch of meat had been cleaned from those corpses, consumed by the ravenous new-borns as their first meal, and possibly their final one considering how starved the adult, insectoids had appeared.

All that was left of these creatures was discarded bone and rotten skin, that hung off of their bleach white bones like a ragged blanket. One corpse belonged to a bear of some kind, while the other belonged to a creature Seth couldn't identify for the life of him. No doubt some mutated abomination that was far beyond what it used to be.

Despite not having any eyes, the corpse nest seemed to detect their presence somehow and turned its body towards them, its head swinging around from the movement. It gazed at them with those empty voids, before lurching backwards on unsteady feet, as if it was trying to run away from them.

It stumbled slowly and clumsily up a small mound that had been created in the dirt, doing its very best to get away from those who had discovered it. And yet as it moved, an eery whisper echoed throughout the bowels of the forest.

"Kiiiiiilllll Mmmeeeeee.... Kiiiilllllll Mmeeeeeeeeee... Pplleeeeaaassee Kiiilll Meeeeeeeeeee"

It was a sound that sent shivers down their spines, those of them that still had spines that is. It didn't take a genius to figure out where the sound was coming from either. With a rasping voice, the living corpse, which seemed to be much more living than corpse, continued to speak its mantra over and over. It endlessly begged and pleaded for death as it stumbled away in a desperate attempt to stay alive.

A complete contradiction between what it was saying and what it was doing, but based on the other corpses it was unlikely that the living nest was in full control of his actions.

Even if it hadn't been begging they still would have to kill it. They couldn't let this thing wander through their territory and amass another army of ravenous insects. The fact that it was pleading for it made it easier, even if it weighed heavy in their hearts and churned their stomachs at the sight.

Being in the front of the group, Alexandra cracked her knuckles and took confident strides forward. They were all eager to squash this bug and move on from this grotesque, macabre sight as quickly as possible. But life could never be so kind as to always give them what they wanted.

A shadow crashed to the ground in front of Alexandra, stopping her in her tracks and positioning itself between her and the fleeing nest.

Standing up straight, they were greeted with the sight of a colossal ant. It's body bulging with muscles, that were promptly hidden behind a carapace of exoskeletal armour, which looked significantly more durable than those they had crushed with ease before.

This ant was as tall as Alexandra herself, an impressive feat considering that she was over 8 foot tall, and had scythe-like claws at the end of each of its four armed, which glimmered wickedly in the light as if to show how eager it was to tear them limb from limb.

It's mandibles clacked together, releasing a serious of grating clicking, before a rumbling and disjointed voice emanated from between its mandibles. When it spoke, it did so in heavily broken English, but it was English nonetheless.

"Human... Die... To Us..."

It clacked its mandibles once more, but this time the rumbling noise that it created was not words. Instead it sounded as if it was... laughing. It was a noise that was quickly joined by another mandible clacking laugh, then another and another. An entire chorus of disturbing, disjointed laughs echoing out as all the ants within the forest laughed in unison, and happened to be using the same voice to do so.

But it was not these ants that moved to join their commander, instead five more figures appeared behind the towering ant, each one looking different from the next.