It was already well past nightfall as Pharynx and Thorax made their way into the Hive's archives. They weren't exactly much, the old ways didn't put much stock in writing anything down. Any secrets spread on parchment or paper could be given to most anyone and just like that secrets spread. Now however, that made finding out history, even relatively recent history, a hassle. Nonetheless, there was still a part of the Hive set aside for things that did need to be written down, a wall of honeycomb-shaped nooks, each one meant for a scroll. Most of them were empty, and always had been. Part of Thorax felt empty as he Pharynx levitated the torch they'd brought with them upwards. The sheer hollowness of the archives, with the changelings no longer needing to hide within the Hive there was a real chance the archives would have been forgotten if not for now.
"What are we hoping to find?"
Pharynx's voice snapped Thorax out of his momentary stupor. The changeling king glanced at his brother and then back at the scrolls. "Anything to do with genealogy, or anything that looks like it was written or added to recently."
Pharynx glanced at the wall, and smirked a bit. "Well, at least this shouldn't take too long, once we figure out how everything is sorted."
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Pharynx was very, very wrong. The scrolls had no apparent rhyme or reason to their ordering, one side of the room could seem to have only foreign intelligence, but then suddenly contain a scroll with a seemingly meaningless list of recipes that were apparently stolen on a whim. Added to that was the fact that many of the scrolls were wrapped very tightly, making them much longer than they had appeared at a glance.
"I swear there were fewer scrolls here when we started." Thorax groaned as he returned another unhelpful scroll to its spot, before glancing in Pharynx's direction. His brother had begun on the opposite side of the wall and the two had hoped one of them would find a sorting method by now. "Have you found any-"
Thorax caught his words as he watched Pharynx replacing a scroll. In a completely different slot than he'd retrieved it moments earlier.
"Hey, wait!" Thorax cried out before catching the scroll with his magic to stop his brother from misplacing it. "It doesn't go there!"
Pharynx glanced at the scroll and then back at Thorax. "It does now, I'm resorting them." Reaching up he pushed the scroll into the slot with his hoof.
Click
Both brothers froze as they heard the mechanical click from beyond the slot. After a moment there was a soft grinding noise from the opposite wall, behind them, as if something was being moved. Pharynx moved first, turning and moving the torch to light the far wall. One last honeycomb alcove had been revealed, a single, ornate scroll was within it. Thorax walked up, his magic enveloping the scroll.
"Careful. It might be a trap." Pharynx warned.
"If it is, it's absurdly well-hidden."
Thorax gently pulled the scroll out. immediately upon exiting the alcove, a series of dangling items dropped, hanging in the air below the scroll. Both brothers froze again... but nothing happened, they were apparently just decorative tassels, hanging from the bottom of the scroll. Thorax slowly levitated the scroll closer, and up close, the "tassels" became much more clear. They were decorative baubles of some sort, each shaped uniquely, as if to indicate something specific. They only hung from half the scroll, starting at the far left, and the farthest one had a familiar gnarled and black appearance. A curved horn.
"Chrysalis," Thorax said under his breath, recognizing the horn. "What does this scroll have to do with her?"
"Only one way to find out." Pharynx offered, prompting a slight nod from Thorax as they unfurled the scroll.
Within was a series of names and numbers, connected to one another from a single origin pair. Near the center of what was written it was crowded, with many names and numbers, eventually slowly petering out of time, until at the bottom there were but three names, with no numbers added.
"It's a family tree," Thorax concluded as he looked down. "I don't recognize any of the-"
He stopped as he reached the bottom.
It listed Chrysalis and her two sons, Pharynx and Thorax.