They are bugs.  Only bugs. Too big to crush beneath our feet now, but they crunch the same way. They think the same way. They invade my jungles and cross my rivers and attack the villages I protect. They carve craters in the earth and consume the trees and destroy the balance we fight for.

Whatever  they do in Kinshasa, I do not care. Kinshasa with its millions of people and towers that scratch the sky, I do not care about. The ones who live there kill each other for the stupidest of human reasons. If the swarm of giant bugs eats them and infests their towers, what do I care about this?

I am not king of those people. I am king of the jungles and the deserts. There is no place they call “Africa.” There is only the place we call our kingdom, Músi. Those people stay because I allow them to stay. If they are in harmony with Músi, my empire and I will protect their villages. The cities, let the bugs have them.

But the bugs come to destroy it all. The one the humans call Xixorax is the one that needs to be crunched underfoot now.

Hondo comes to me from deeper in the shadows of the rainforest. Our forces are in the trees above and behind him. More are crouched in the bushes and grasses on both sides of us. Hondo is eager to spill blood, no matter the color. He lugs along a truck with no wheels but with a missile on it that I know is ready to be launched. The truck and the missile are dirty and scratched like a infant’s plaything dragged around too long.

He says, “Kondo, my king, they come.”

The sky darkens to the east as the bugs take to the sky from a hole our scouts found six suns ago. The swarm comes our way at last. They cannot see us through the trees, but we see them. Xixorax flies near the front of his grubs of the sky.  He is ugly. Hondo bares his fangs and slaps the ground with his free hand. I know what he wants.

“The village first,” I remind him.

“If we destroy it now,” Hondo grunts, “the village is first.”

“Then we must bring them to us. I will send the bombers and then the gunners to destroy the ones that fall to the ground. After, I will—”

Like many times before, Hondo impresses and disappoints me. He bellows, “Bring them to us!”

His is the first missile launched. Guns and bombs explode moments later, but the missile explodes before them all.  Our troops hoot and howl as Xixorax falls from the skies, but I see what they do not. They howl because they think he is crashing. I do not because I know he is diving. He is the first into the forest, down from the sun and into the trees, ready to destroy all life he finds. His swarm descends after him. My apes run to catch them where they land.

They come at us with a chaotic rage that makes them look out of control. They dart and scurry, changing directions with no pattern that I can see. Our gunners open fire, but the swarm is everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Explosions and gunfire and war howls and the maddening drone of insects drown out my orders. But it does not matter. Hondo knows how I think.

Xixorax has pinchers that snap as he lands. He has a single horn that he lowers as he charges. He has no fear as he drives into our gunners and smashes past our bombers to target Hondo.

He does not understand that Hondo is a gunner, a bomber, and a general all in one. When the two of them smash into one another, the trees are uprooted in the explosion and the ground is broken like glass where they meet.

I feel my blood boil. I am ready to wage war. I forget about the village and the fishermen on the Congo. I forget about the broken shackles on my wrists that the humans used to try to hold me. I forget about the thick heat of Músi that grows hotter with each missile, each bullet, and each drop of blood spilled. I can only think of tearing my enemy’s limbs from him as I howl and charge.

Hondo and I land blows at the same time, but the bug’s armor is thick. Still, for a moment, I believe Xixorax is startled, suddenly aware of the danger he is in, an insectile survival instinct the sends him scurrying for safety. Hondo roars—he believes it, too. Xixorax takes to the sky again, and Hondo and I smash aside the foliage to reach him and finish him.

We have been distracted.

Xixorax does not go very high. Only enough that Hondo and I realize at the same time, we have been tricked. He is visible to something that approaches. The sound is the drone of wasps, angry and defiant, unified into a single voice. We have been lured into standing our ground for this threat’s arrival with Xixorax as the bait.

“What comes?” Hondo snarls to me.

“Death,” I say, but I do not say for whom. I leap for Xixorax as Hondo aims his next missile at whatever it is that comes for us now.