“Nicely done, drones. We’ve cleared this passage. Now let’s rescue some Guardians!” Anopheles said to her worker drones. The tunnel her crew was working on was clear; all that was left to do was to get the trapped changelings out. She could hear hooves and horns scraping against stone as the drones and the trapped changelings on the other side tried to make a hole in the rubble. Soon, a horn poked out from the other side.
“Taskmaster, look!” called one of the drones.
“Good. See if you can make a hole big enough to pull them out.” Normally, Anopheles would have done what her brother had done for the previous tunnel and just blasted the wall down with magic; however, the tunnel ceiling wasn’t holding up well enough for that.
“All right, you three, I need you to mortar up the crevasses in the crawlway with secretion, got that?”
The drones in question only stood there in confusion.
Anopheles spat a glob of green resin-like substance onto her forehoof and smeared it onto a cracked wall section. “Seal the cracks!”
The drones quickly complied.
“Surely I’m not the only Taskmaster to use big words? Anyway, I hope Pyralis is doing okay...” Anopheles wondered aloud. She turned around and, as if on cue, Pyralis and Gemini came trotting up the tunnel.
“All right, Anu, this is your lucky day,” said Pyralis. “You might be getting out of these tunnels sooner than expected.”
“Oh?” Anopheles cocked a hypothetical eyebrow. “Why is that, is something about to go horrifically wrong?”
“Ah, it’s nothing really,” said Gemini nonchalantly. “Well, there is just one tiny problem: the entire hive’s about to cave in. No big deal.”
Anopheles froze for a second, and the two Hive Guardians could have sworn that they heard the clang of her jaw hitting the floor.
“Told you she’d take it well,” Pyralis said coolly.
Gemini scratched his head. “Did I break her?”
Gemini took a few tentative steps toward the transfixed Taskmaster. He waved his hoof in her face, checking for a response – and was promptly levitated into the air by his hind legs and shaken back and forth like an oversized rag doll in the jaws of Cerberus.
“WHAT?! YOU CALL THAT A TINY PROBLEM? THAT’S ABOUT AS BIG AS PROBLEMS GET! HOW CAN YOU BE SO NONCHALANT ABOUT THIS?!”
“Changelings, you can’t fight here, this is the war room.” Pyralis cast a brief barrier spell between the two, causing Gemini to hit the ground head-first. He then turned to Anopheles. “Don’t worry about it too much, the Queen’s got it all figured out. If you want the details, then Her Majesty is up for a little private chat with you.” Pyralis tossed a pendant at Anopheles, managing to wrap the chain around his sister’s horn.
“Cheer up, Anu,” said Gemini as he rubbed his head, “you get to come with us!”
“Not a very reassuring argument, Gemini,” Pyralis said wryly, ducking under a swing from Gemini’s hoof.
“Wait... where am I going with you?” asked Anopheles.
“Like I said,” replied Gemini, “a little private chat with the Queen should set the record straight.”
“Alright, I’m going.” She turned to the drones. “Keep working, drones, I’ll be gone for a bit. Don’t screw this job up, you hear?”
“Don’t worry about it, Anu, Pyralis and I will take over here,” said Gemini with a grin. “Right, Pyralis?”
“Do I have to babysit these guys?”
“I knew you’d help. Go on, Anu, the Queen’s waiting.”
Anopheles nodded and spread her wings. “Alright, I’ll leave you two in charge here. Just don’t do anything stupid... er than usual.”
***
A squad of Royal Guards patrolled the inner sanctum. They marched with their hooves tapping against the stone floor in perfect unison. With one exception.
In the back of the pack, a young Royal Guard trundled along behind the rest. Unlike the steady march of the other guards, Dorylus moved at a quick trot; for every one step the other guards took, he had to take two. Dorylus was only a week out of training, and already he often wondered to himself why he had to do this job. In the beginning, he was motivated by pride and loyalty, but soon the monotony took its toll. Dorylus wasn’t particularly large, powerful, or prominent, and as such, he soon found himself swept aside and mostly ignored. He didn’t particularly mind, but every now and then, part of him wanted to be noticed. That part of him desired a chance to prove himself a worthy member of the Hive. However, the Royal Guard was rarely ever called into action, since intruders never made it too far, but as with most changelings, Dorylus never questioned an order, nor did he ever voice any complaints, and any ambition was quickly squashed by ingrained loyalty.
The leader of the Royal Guards held up a hoof, and the squad stopped in unison. Not watching where he was going, Dorylus bumped into the changeling in front of him and hit the ground on his rump. The changeling turned to him and glared, causing Dorylus to swallow nervously as he got back up. As quickly as he turned to Dorylus, the changeling in front snapped back to attention. Dorylus reared onto his hind legs to see over the Guards in front of him to see what had gotten their attention. He stifled a gasp; it was the Queen herself.
Slowly and deliberately, the Queen strode towards the back of the squad. The Royal Guards stood to attention as stiff as ramrods with their chins up, looking towards the cave ceiling. Dorylus quickly dropped to all fours and did the same. After several intense seconds, he noticed in his peripheral vision that the Queen was right next to him. She slowly paced out of Dorylus’s field of vision, and a second later, he felt a hoof on his shoulder.
“Come with me.”
Dorylus swallowed. He immediately regretted ever wanting to be noticed.
***
Queen Arania hovered in midair in a particularly large cavern that she used as a sort of meeting hall for the Hive. She had summoned her Hive Guardians and Taskmasters with a pheromone signal, and they now lined the walls of the chamber, waiting anxiously to hear what their Queen had to say. Near the back, next to a tunnel entrance, Pyralis and Gemini sat together with Anopheles and Dorylus, who had both been briefed on the mission they were about to undertake.
“My loyal subjects,” the Hive Queen began addressing the massed changelings, “I have summoned you here to deliver a dire message...”
“Okay, um... what’s his name again... Praxis? When do we leave again?” whispered Dorylus, who had been relieved of his armour by Arania. Although his heart rate had slowed down significantly from when he was hoof-picked by the Queen, he was still having a hard time thinking straight. Not only would this be the first time he leaves the Hive, but he was going on a mission with three changelings he barely even knew – quite a nerve-wracking experience for the young changeling.
Pyralis didn’t even bother turning. “First of all, the name’s Pyralis. Get that into your head. Secondly, I’ll tell you when to get up. Third, don’t ask the same question three times in five minutes. It leaves a bad image.” He then leaned in close to Anopheles and lowered his voice. “Honestly, do we have to bring the rookie?”
“I don’t usually allow rookies on missions like this,” Anopheles replied, “but the Queen insisted on sending a Royal Guard on the job. Apparently, Dorylus here wasn’t satisfied with just wandering around the inner sanctum, so that worked out.”
“Fair enough.” Gemini shrugged. “I just hope we don’t have to drag anyone else along.”
“...and I have come to one inescapable conclusion: our home will soon be no more.”
A frightened hubbub rose among the massed changelings as the Queen’s last few words sank in. They turned to each other, chattering frantically, and soon the clamour rose into a din of screeching and chittering as panic began to take hold.
“Your Majesty! Can’t we do anything about it?!”
“What are we going to do?!”
“We’re all gonna die!”
Pyralis rolled his eyes. “Yeah yeah... I’ve already heard them all.”
“Repent! The end is nigh!”
“It’s a cookbook! A COOKBOOK!”
“Never heard those before,” Gemini commented. “Who’s Nye, anyway?”
“SILENCE!” shouted Arania, magically amplifying her voice. Simultaneously, she sent out a pheromone wave to calm the panicking changelings. The tumult subsided just before complete pandemonium broke out.
“There is no need to panic,” the Queen continued when the chamber was quiet once more. “The roof will hold for long enough to allow us to evacuate the colony to the surface. My orders to you are as follows...”
She paused and turned to her chosen four. She gave them a small, almost imperceptible nod before continuing her address.
“That’s our cue,” Pyralis remarked.
The small entourage rose and filed through the nearby exit, unnoticed by any but the Queen.
***
The four changelings soon found themselves in a small, empty chamber, where they had been instructed by Arania to go during their last-minute briefing. Just like the Queen said, there were two cocoons lying on the ground in front of a tunnel entrance. One, of course, was Princess Elytron. The other was much smaller and filled with Eciton gems – the green emotion storage gems, named after the brilliant changeling who first forged them. Between them was a scroll. Pyralis unfurled it using magic; it was the map that the Queen had shown him.
“So, my little changelings, are you ready to go?”
The Hive Queen emerged from a side chamber. The four changelings immediately turned to her.
“Raring to go, Your Majesty!” Gemini said eagerly, giving a quick salute.
“I am prepared,” said Anopheles with a nod.
“Can’t wait!” said Dorylus, straightening up to his full height on all fours.
“Good to go,” said Pyralis.
“Excellent,” said Arania. “Good luck to you all. I await your news.”
“Glory to the Hive!” the four changelings said in unison, as the Queen left the chamber. Then, Gemini clapped his forehooves together. “All right, let’s get this show on the road. I call dibs on the gems!”
Anopheles shook her head. “No, we’ll let Dorylus carry everything.”
“Come on! How come I have to be the workhorse?” Dorylus complained.
Anopheles took a deep breath and burst into speech. “One: you’re a Royal Guard, so taking care of the Princess is your job anyway. Two: the rookie is always the workhorse. Three: it’s good communication. As a Taskmaster, I communicate by telling you what to do and you, as my subordinate, communicate by doing what I say. Right now, what we have here is a failure to communicate, so I expect you to rectify that by communicating well. Savvy?”
Dorylus looked as though someone had thrown him a punch to the face which had not yet registered in his mind. “Uh... Wha?”
Gemini leaned in close. “What I heard was: if you don’t do it, she’ll kick your thorax,” he murmured so that only Dorylus could hear.
“And four: if you don’t do it, I’ll kick your thorax,” added Anopheles.
“Oh, you’re good,” Dorylus whispered to Gemini.
“So, that’s settled,” remarked Anopheles as Dorylus began attaching resin to the cocoons and affixing them to himself. “Let’s get going.”
She strode into the tunnel, and the other three followed (with Dorylus grumbling audibly). The tunnel itself was wide enough to comfortably accommodate Dorylus and his cargo, but it was too narrow for flight and it was a fairly steep climb all the way up, so Anopheles had to back out and let Dorylus go first. The other three followed, so that they would be able to catch him – or at least cushion his fall – if he lost his footing. After twenty minutes, the tunnel leveled out and the exit was in sight. It opened into a large cave, and for the first time, Gemini and Dorylus saw the light of day.
“Ahh! The light... It burns!” cried Gemini, covering his eyes.
“What is that?!” exclaimed Dorylus, turning his head away and raising a hoof protectively.
Anopheles and Pyralis shielded their own eyes with their forelegs and kept their heads lowered. “Boys,” announced Anopheles, “welcome to the surface world.”
“Your eyes will adjust,” said Pyralis. “Besides, you haven’t seen anything yet.”
The four changelings made their way to the mouth of the cave, with some difficulty in the cases of Gemini and Dorylus as their eyes took longer to adjust to the light. However, when they had adjusted, they gasped in wonder at the scene that greeted them. The cave opened onto a cliff, and the side of the mountain and the ground below were blanketed in green as far as their eyes could see. The songs of birds filled the air, the blue sky stretched upwards and outwards without end, and the sun bathed the entire scene with its radiant glow.
“Wow... where’s the ceiling?” For once, Gemini was speechless.
“Quite a different world from the one we know, isn’t it?” asked Pyralis. The few times he had been outside the Hive were all punctuated by the same sense of awe that Dorylus and Gemini were surely feeling now.
“Amazing...” said Dorylus. “This is what we’ve been living under all this time?”
“Well, one thing’s for certain,” added Anopheles with a smile, “you’re not in Kansas anymore!”
"There's just one thing bugging me," said Dorylus. "What about the blue ceiling? What happens if that falls on us? It looks so high up..."
"That's the sky, Chicken Little," explained Anopheles. "It's just air. It won't fall on us, there's air all around us anyway."
"Alright," Pyralis cut in, "that's enough sightseeing. Time to move."
"Of... of course," said Gemini, regaining some of his composure. "Let's go! For Nerub! ...I mean, for the Hive! Why are you all looking at me like that?"