I stand before the coming tide, my shield daubed with the black-on-red of my kin.

Around me I feel the gathered mass of our warriors, armour resplendent in our colours, swords scabbarded between brightly-painted wing casings. A hundred thousand of us; we return to these battle-lines every year, to drive off the ravenous hordes.

We will feast this night, once victory is assured.

Green has a host of connotations in our culture. Green is greed, insatiable hunger. It is the colour of the unknowable, one that invokes all the worst excesses of sin.

As the ragged edge of the aphid horde crests the ridgeline, all those shades of green come into sharp focus. And then the sky is full of wings, as they seek to reach the verdant lands beyond our line.

We rise like windblown seed, and take the fight to our ancient foe.