Queen Chrysalis was dead.
At first there was no immediate sign that her long life had ended: no fever, no spasms, and no farewells. She had simply lied down on the raised platform that was her bedding in the royal chamber and died. As if in a deep sleep, her body was still and prone, her legs and ears relaxed and her eyes closed. Her stillness alone was not enough to warn her children that a catastrophe had struck on the entire hive. She lay there, in fact, as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred; perfectly still as a statue—a macabre remnant of her former self.
Unlike ponies and other vertebrates, who have an internal skeleton surrounded by soft tissue that quickly rots away, changelings are encased in an external skeleton. Their soft tissues shrivel into dry threads and lumps, but their exoskeletons remain—a warrior’s armor fully intact long after the warrior is gone. Hence the workers and drones were at first unaware of their mother’s death. Chrysalis’s silence said nothing, and the odors of her life, still rising from her, signaled, I remain among you. She smelled alive.
Changelings, while possessing very good eyesight and highly developed vocal organs to help create the most convincing of disguises, were still primarily dependent on pheromones when it came to identifying one another. Furthermore, in the dark and dingy innards of a hive, eyesight accounted for little in communication, and the energy spent in speaking usually meant that the spoken word was reserved for situations that required one to be direct. In this aspect, pheromones still reigned supreme within the hive. This evolutionary quirk would prove crucial in the hours following the death of the queen.
This was easily the greatest challenge for the Badlands Hive since the fiasco that was the attack on Canterlot. Yet the workers would carry on undisturbed until they were certain that their queen was dead. Even so, an unnamed something had settled upon them, making them aware that there was a problem without realizing what it was and its extent. So they continued on for a while longer with the precision and expediency expected of a changeling hive, albeit with concern and worry looming in the air. Like a large ship at sea, it could not be easily diverted from its route in spite of the dark clouds on the horizon.
It was an entire day until the ship realized that it had gotten itself into a gale.
Everyone had been on edge in the latter hours, and while it went by unspoken, it still instilled a sense of fright in the hearts of drones and workers. Fortunately —or, arguably, unfortunately— the warriors seemed mostly unaware of the gloom that ruled the dark tunnels of the inner hive. The smell of alarm did spread fast from the chambers of the drones responsible for the queen’s well-being, but it was not strong enough to carry itself to the outer parts near the surface, where the majority of the warriors were stationed, nor was it strong enough to send the changelings who did taste it into a panic. That did not mean that everything was fine, however.
Buzz clicked his tongue. It was his way to show his discomfort with the situation that he knew every drone in the chamber felt. Regardless of what he felt, he kept tending to the food pellets that kept on coming from the respective chambers. All of this crystallized love was enough to feed every changeling present in one sitting. It was not, however, meant for them: this treat was for the Queen and her only.
But the pile of food just kept growing and growing like an unwelcome tumor. Their Queen had not eaten in hours, still asleep according the Kappa podmate changeling among them. He was mostly certain of his assertion, although even he was beginning to smell worried as the stockpile grew. Yet, they still kept working on keeping the love dry with the buzz of their wings.
Again, Buzz clicked his tongue. Then a smell reached to him: focus on your work. He didn’t even need to wonder who had sent him that, recognizing the alpha podmate responsible of feeding the Queen. Good thing that he couldn’t see Buzz’s scowl in the darkness.
It was not long before the Kappa was sent once more to investigate on the Queen. With only the sound of chitin scraping against the soil among the sounds of labor, it was difficult to tell when he actually had left.
So, Buzz and the other drones kept working mostly in silence under the keen nostrils of the overseer.
Suddenly, a piercing shriek erupted from the tunnel leading to the royal chambers, tearing every single drone’s attention from their duty. For a moment, Buzz expected an absolutely livid queen storming in with the carcass of the drone who had so indignantly awoken her from her slumber. He believed that his was a reasonable expectation that every drone in the chamber shared, considering their past experiences thanks to their privileged relationship with the monarch. They knew her better than most of the other members of the Hive.
But there was no furious shouting; no fear-inducing smells that would still even the most grizzled warrior; no stomping of slender hooves. There was only the hurried shuffling of very small hooves. Even before the message was spoken, the pheromones were enough to tell Buzz what had happened: “Dead! The Queen is dead!”
It was then that all of Tartarus broke loose.
Mandible’ ears twitched in anticipation. She looked to see her equal alpha warriors of the different pods, smelling the anxiety in what was the Royal Chamber. The body had since been disposed of by the mortuary workers with no fanfare whatsoever. Royalty or not, every cadaver found within the hive was properly disposed of by the undertakers among the workforce. It was a matter of health: the deep soil was moist as was the air, both full of microbial necromorphs which made the risk of infection a very real one.
The eight assembled warriors were the eldest members of the hive, and, as such, were now the ruling caste of the hive. Soldiers just hours ago, they were now effectively all queens.
Mandible wasn’t sure what to make of the fact that she was now in charge of an entire hive, even if only in part. Instinctually, she was prepared to deal with the death of the Queen, but only with a younger queen still present amongst their numbers. In spite of her newfound importance and responsibility, the hive was still queenless.
The silence in the chamber was palpable and there was very little movement within it, save for the flickering of the soft, green glow of the bioluminescent fungus that was used as a form of illumination within the hive. While no torchlight, it provided enough light to make every warrior’s facial expression visible. They all looked unsure—afraid, almost.
“Why?” one of the warriors, Clava, finally said, breaking the spell of inactivity. “She was only thirty-three; why did she die so young?”
Silence once more: all of the alphas looked to one another for an answer that didn’t come.
“She was not ill, or so the drones claim,” she continued, looking back to the tunnel leading out of the chamber. “Nor was she fatally injured. She was still alive and well the last time we’ve seen her.”
“But how long ago was the last time?” Mandible asked, genuinely curious. “How long ago was it when we have actually seen Queen Chrysalis?”
“A whole week,” mumbled Clypeus, one of the more elder warriors, “right after being blasted all the way from Canterlot. It wasn’t even during a debriefing.”
Clava nodded in agreement. “Yes, when we were still getting back on our hooves she was among us, but stormed off before we could speak to her.”
A murmur of general agreement droned in the room as well as the accompanying pheromones. “Wasn’t she right where that blast came from?” another warrior, Stinger, asked. When the chamber filled with an inquisitive smell and she only got blank stares, she explained, “Perhaps, that magic did something to our Queen. Perhaps that is what killed her.”
Mandible chewed on the idea; it did seem to make a certain amount of sense, but… “Then why weren’t we affected?” she posed. “We were all struck by it, and yet, here we are.”
No answer. None of them seemed to be able to come up with an acceptable answer. With a sigh and a tone laced with venom, she muttered, “Pony magic.”
The end-all and be-all secret weapon of the Equestrians, their magic was not only troublesome by itself, but it was bolstered by the Elements. How and why a species was so favored was a constant source of frustration in the Queen’s reports when undercover. Not even the ponies themselves seemed to fully know the arcane arts that they practiced, making the whole aspect all the more infuriating to the Queen. Mandible could recall the storms that the topic brought upon the strategy chamber; she was among those who huffed irritatingly at the reports of what their magic was capable of. If life was a motherly being, Mandible supposed that it had its favorite child.
The mere notion of such a thing irked the changeling to no end.
“It doesn’t matter how or why,” one of the other alphas, Labrum, said, snapping everyone out of their thoughts with an attention-grabbing smell. “We need to deal with this now. Otherwise, the Hive will not survive.”
A generic waft of agreement filled the chamber. Satisfied with the response, Labrum went on, “Have our infiltrator cells been notified of what’s happened here? They need to be kept informed.”
“Messengers have been dispatched,” Stinger, the one responsible, said. “It will take some time to let some of our more distant outposts know what’s going on, a month at most. They will be ordered to stand by for further developments.”
A nod: Clypeus looked about. “We need a queen. Do we know Aurelia’s whereabouts?”
“According to the drone who mated with her, she set her sights on the Hayseed Swamps to the east,” Mandible provided, buzzing her wings slightly. “Though he doesn’t know exactly where her hive is.”
“That’s if she even has one,” muttered Clava next Mandible. Her words were not too audible, but the smell that she emitted held a far greater impact than her words.
And what irritated Mandible about it was that the warrior was right; the Hive lost track of Aurelia once she entered the marshlands. The status of her own hive wasn’t the only thing in question: her well-being was an unknown. As much as the Badlands Hive knew, its last daughter queen was rotting somewhere in the Hayseed Swamps, dead as her mother.
“I’ll have scouts begin the search and pull the necessary resources to find her,” Mandible stated. “She may be willing to merge her hive with ours or, if she still hasn’t founded one, she can return to take the old Queen’s place.”
“That’s if she’s willing to do it,” said Clava. “If she is anything like her mother, she will ignore our plight, saying that we’re ‘weak’ or something along those lines.”
A smell of curiosity filled the chamber. “Have you actually met Aurelia?” asked Stinger.
Clava opened her mouth but closed it. “No, I have not,” she finally said. “Have you?” she asked with a cocked eyebrow. A negatory pheromone was the response. “Did anyone here even talk to Aurelia?” Her eyes took a cursory glance at the assembled changelings.
The collective mix of smells of ‘no’s and head shakes was surprising to Mandible: had none of these alphas even bothered to gauge the future queen when she was still a youngling? Her question soon answered itself however, when she realized that none of the warriors here had any tasks that involved the young Aurelia; rearing eggs and younglings fell under the responsibility of nursery drones and workers, not that of warriors.
“We can ask the drones who cared for her if we need to learn more about her personality,” Mandible said. “But the question still remains: what do we do if, for whatever reason, Aurelia cannot be our new queen?”
The exchange of unsure glances and odors made it clear: no one liked the alternative.
A sigh escaped from Mandible. “Alright, we’ll need a count of the Queen’s hisem and any potential suitors who can become part of it. We will split it evenly among us as planned.”
The looks that she got were varied, but they mostly carried surprise. “What do you think we can achieve by going with the contingency plan?” asked Stinger across from Mandible.
Mandible closed her eyes and thought for a moment. “No matter how we look at it, we need a queen,” she said, opening her cyan eyes. “If we cannot find a queen, we’ll make one.”
“And if we can’t?”
All eyes were on Mandible. Repressing the urge to release her panic pheromones or gulping, she let out a slow, even breath.
“Then the Hive is doomed.”
Days passed; the hive soldiered on in spite of the missing vital organ that was its Queen. Unlike the organisms that were part of it, the super organism didn’t feel fear or any sort of trepidation about the lack of a queen capable of maintaining the Hive’s numbers. It was just aware that that particular role had been filled by others who could not fully replace the previous holder of that duty. It knew that it was unwell and that if the problem did not resolve itself soon, it would wither and die a slow death.
But it trucked along, as if nothing were wrong. It was dependent on the changelings that inhabited it like an organism was dependent on its own cells: no matter how much it wanted a solution, it had no say or influence over its own well-being.
As such, the vessel that was the hive sailed through the storm: it was listing; it took in water; it was slowly sinking and risked losing everything. It just did what it could do—survive. For it was at the mercy of the luck of its crew.
“Hello there, young one!”
A small chirp was the sole response of the youngling. With a small smile that went by unseen by the new adult, Seta proceeded to cleaning and applying a natural antiseptic on its exterior. Like most chambers, the nursery was obscured in darkness. Not that it really mattered; the recently emerged changeling (a worker, Seta noted glumly) could easily sense the nursing drone as well as her surroundings.
She squirmed at Seta’s cleaning, buzzing her newly formed wings tentatively and releasing a smell: what are you doing? it said.
That wasn’t quite what she was communicating. Her olfactory message came off more as general anxiety; a lack of experience of chemical communications was the obvious reason as to why that was. Like any newborn, the worker had some difficulty in using her scent glands properly, but in time she would learn. The spoken word would take a while longer, however.
“I’m giving you a bath, silly girl,” Seta chimed playfully, continuing to clean her in spite of her minor protests. His words most likely meant nothing to the young adult, with only one prior occurrence of her in her minute-long life as an adult; she still had no meaning that she could attach to Seta’s words. Still, talking to the currently mute worker helped in an intrinsic manner. It’d make her have an easier time learning speech later on. The scent he released however, meant far more than mere words. Wordlessly, Seta calmed her down with an aura of reassurance.
He kept administering his antiseptically charged saliva on the worker’s exoskeleton. Having emerged just then from her pupa, the exoskeleton was still vulnerable to possible infections. It’d take no more than a full day before her body would adjust itself so as to be prepared to the dingy air of the Hive.
Once finished, he smiled with the satisfaction of a job well done. “Look at you, all cleaned up.” Although neither one of them could actually see the then saliva-coated chitin of the worker, it wasn’t as if she would have corrected him about it.
“Say...” Seta started slowly, acting as if he had just noticed something important. “You’re a sister of mine! The last one of a long line at that.” The worker only chirped in response.
Normally he would have never said this to any recently-emerged youngling as they were all siblings—children of a single queen. But in light of current circumstances, what he said was true: this new worker was from the last egg that Queen Chrysalis had laid about a month back. From now on, all younglings that emerged would be children of the alpha warriors who had taken up the duty of producing offsprings. That is, if a fertile queen wasn’t found in the meantime.
Careful not to make the youngling aware of his concern, Seta sighed. The nursery was mostly barren, with only a few of the more recent pupae that had arrived from the brooding chambers. For his whole life, he wondered who the father was to some of the younglings that he welcomed to the world. Now, he would have to guess as to who the mother would be for the new generations of changelings that he’d have to tend to.
It was a surreal feeling.
Another chirp caught his attention, and he smelled the youngling’s pheromones: what now?
“Now?” Seta said, putting on a small smile. “Now we get you to your clutch mates. Come along now.” He made for the exit, leaving an inviting trail for the youngling to follow.
She followed, just like every youngling before her.
“One prince.”
“Ah-hah! Two tens, then.”
Undercover’s disguised eyebrow shot up, scrutinizing the beige pegasus across the table from him for any tells. If Mirror Image was lying, his disguised face was beautifully blank. Those supposed tens were his last two cards. Suspicious, Undercover looked over his own cards. A ten of spades: didn’t Mirror already put another two tens just a few plays ago?
“Manure,” he said with a cocky grin, leaning over the table to reveal the last two cards on the pile; a ten of diamonds and clubs stared back at him. Undercover’s jaw slackened. “Wait, no. That’s not—”
Now it was Mirror’s turn to grin. His emerald pony eyes shone with no small amount of smug satisfaction, letting Undercover know just how badly he had failed to read the other infiltrator’s poker face. “I dropped one ten and one princess when I said two tens before,” he explained, passing the card pile over to Undercover. “You might not have noticed, Undercover, but I’ve perfected my mask while you have not. That’s what makes me a beta and you a delta. ” His pegasus form was suddenly engulfed in a ball of green fire before it dissipated to reveal his grinning changeling body. “And with that, I’ve won again. You really need to work on your facial control and reading, Undercover.”
Undercover grumbled as he picked up the deck of cards, not bothering to drop his own disguise. He was on the verge of making a snarky comment when a knocking on the door came. The two changelings tensed up at the sound, prompting Mirror to quickly don his disguise again.
Silently, the two infiltrators walked to the door, taking their places at the sides of it. Ready, came the smell from Mirror. Nodding, Undercover asked aloud, “Are there rats outside?”
“The cats are having a feast,” was the response. The two changelings visibly relaxed: Silhouette. They recognized both her pheromones and her feminine voice as if the key phrase wasn’t proof enough of the changeling’s identity.
Undercover unlocked the door and let in the pink unicorn mare with the dark olive mane. After closing the door, he asked, “Any news, Roseberry?” He wiggled his eyebrows in a sardonic fashion.
Undercover took any and all opportunities to practice with facial expressions, no matter how unfitting with the situation or tiring they were. As Mirror Image had painfully reminded him, he needed to improve.
Giving a lopsided smile with too much lipstick applied on it, ‘Roseberry’ said, “The same old: the old timer’s still trying to get a working mare to offer her hoof while in bed.” She gave a roll of the eyes. “As if that’s ever going to happen.”
Mirror Image, now out of his disguise, cocked his eyebrow. “He’s still trying to woo you?”
“What can I say?” the mare said, shrugging. “Some stallions just cannot resist my charms.” With a very sultry bed-eyes look, all the more exaggerated with the heavy eyeshade, she also added, “Although I’ll admit that the ‘Roseberry magic’ helps, just a tad.”
Undercover laughed. “Just a tad?” he parroted, dropping his disguise.
“Well,” Silhouette began, switching back to her normal changeling form, “I suppose hypnotizing them and convincing them that they’re having the time of their lives without actually playing out their fantasies on me counts for a lot more.”
That got the three infiltrators laughing, saturating the small apartment with positive pheromones. With the chuckles ebbing away, Silhouette was the first to recover. “But yes. That one stallion is still trying to get me to marry him. Marrying a prostitute?” With a shake of the head, she looked up with some concern. “It’d definitely attract attention.”
Growing serious, Mirror asked, “Is he going to be trouble?”
“No, he may be a bit annoying, but he’s a good source of love.” She gave a very pony-like shrug. “So long as he doesn’t do anything stupid, I’ll be fine. Speaking of...” Silhouette walked over to a bookcase. She pressed a secret button on the side, and the whole thing slid sideways to reveal a hidden compartment in the wall. Her horn glowed to siphon out the love she had collected for the night, depositing itself within one of the many crystalline food pods in the stash. Once done, she picked one of the fuller ones and began munching on it.
“I still don’t get how the hivelings were starving before the invasion,” Undercover said, looking in the hidden stash. “Getting enough love to feed the whole Hive really shouldn’t be so difficult to warrant a takeover.”
“I’m convinced that it was just a show of force,” Mirror said, resting himself on the couch with a food pellet of his own. “Were things really as bad as they made it out be back home when you were still there?” With no disagreement from the other two he continued, “The Queen just wants to send a message to the Desert and Hill Hives. What better way to convince that you’re the biggest bug of the land than capturing the Princesses and the Bearers as food sources?”
Undercover nodded. “War trophies.”
“Exactly,” Mirror replied, crunching down on the crystallized love. “It’s definitely put the bigger settlements on the lookout for us. Our attack may have failed, but the Queen’s left enough of an impression that it’s been almost two months since then and they’re still doing random searches at the ministry.”
“She did make our jobs more difficult.” Silhouette set her food down. “If we’re having a tougher go of it, I can’t imagine how things are for the Canterlot cell.”
“If there’s even one yet,” Undercover mumbled glumly. The sentiment was mutually shared, if the smells were anything to go by. They’ve heard and read the public captures of infiltrators in the bigger cities like Manehattan and Fillydelphia. No one knew what they did with the prisoners, but the rumors that were the most prevalent involved harsh interrogations and perhaps some form of torture. As far as they knew, all of the infiltrator cells (with the exception of the Canterlot one for obvious reasons) were still functional, if not at full strength. The Delta knew that the Manehattan one was down by at least two infiltrators, while the Fillydelphia cell had lost one. The possibility that their comrades might have revealed the location of this cell, let alone the existence of it, plagued the changelings’ minds. They had already abandoned two of their safe houses when they got wind that somepony was getting curious.
It was part of the changeling’s nature to be able to adapt to changing circumstances. It did not mean that they enjoyed having to reconsider their hideout locations every time the possibility of it being compromised seemed real enough, however.
Mirror finished munching on his pellet. “The Other hives must be pretty upset with our bold move,” he muttered. His tone indicated resentment, but Undercover tasted some smug satisfaction from him. “Don’t think that they came as far as Canterlot, or even here, but—”
A knocking came from the door.
Unlike earlier when Silhouette was behind the door, they knew that it couldn’t have been anyone from their cell; only three infiltrators manned it. Two possibilities remained: either it was a pony or another changeling. While the former was concerning for obvious reasons, the latter wasn’t necessarily reassuring either, especially after Mirror mentioned about the Others. It could have been a single infiltrator, or an entire group of them. Had they come seeking payback?
Regardless—the three of them needed to be prepared for any of those possibilities.
Silhouette hid her food pellet and that of Mirror back into the stash and slid the bookcase back in its place before assuming the identity of Roseberry. Mirror and Undercover took on their disguises and made themselves inconspicuous by setting up their card game on the table.
All was set, and Silhouette made for the door’s peephole. Having her in his view, Undercover could spot the confused look on her pony features, before opening the door. That was surprising enough in it of itself, as protocol dictated that they first asked who was at the door, regardless of the situation. What was more surprising was the almost livid scowl forming on Silhouette, something that he had never seen on Roseberry before.
Outside was a white pegasus with puffy blonde mane and tail, and that was all Undercover needed to see to understand Silhouette’s anger.
Positively fuming, Silhouette tugged hard at the mare and pulled her inside. Once the door shut behind them with a click, she turned to glare at the intruder. “What in Tartarus are you thinking, walking around looking like that?” she seethed. “Don’t you realize how similar you look to the Bearer of the Element of Laughter, you stupid hiveling? Do you have a death wish or something?”
With all pretense dropped and forgotten, every changeling turned to regard the supposed hiveling. As Silhouette pointed out, the mare looked like an exact replica of the infamous Pinkie Pie, albeit with wings and the wrong color scheme. Her ears flattened against her head, followed with a very distinct odor of regret and shame. “S-sorry,” she said, “I didn’t mean to attract attention. I’m just a worker.”
“Of course you are,” Silhouette muttered angrily. “They always have to send a freaking rookie to send us messages.” She brought a hoof to her face, uttering something that was too quiet to make out. “Alright, hiveling,” Silhouette said as she brought her snout right up to the worker’s, “what’s so important that they sent a worker instead of someone who knows how to disguise themselves?”
The worker wilted at the judging stares of the infiltrators, now all out of their disguises. With a sigh, she too dropped her disguise to reveal a petite worker. It took a moment longer before she finally said, “Priority One message: the Queen… Queen Chrysalis is dead.”
For a long moment there was a distinct lack of a reaction from the infiltrators. Undercover only blinked. “Come again?”
“She died in her sleep due to unknown causes,” the worker explained, gauging the elder changelings’ faces. “She died six weeks ago.”
Mirror Image stumbled for a reply. “Wha– who’s Queen now?”
It was definitely definitely shocking news, but it was an eventuality that had to happen sooner or later. It happened sooner, so that granted the message some urgency, but it wouldn’t make it a Priority One; at most, it was a Priority Two, and even then that was pushing it. Of course, the Queen’s next-in-line would take her place. What was her name? Undercover wondered, before recalling Aurelia’s name.
He was about to tell Mirror who it was, but the messenger had another important tidbit to add. “No one,” she said. “Right now we only have the alpha warriors taking care of brooding, but we do not have a queen to take up the throne.”
Now the infiltrators were definitely worried.
“W-w-wait, what happened to Aurelia?” Undercover asked with an edge to his voice. “Why isn’t she Queen?”
Somehow the messenger shrank further in fear. “She left the Hive not long before the attack. Were you not briefed on that?”
Mirror and Undercover exchanged brief glances while Silhouette looked to the floor. “We… we were focused on the sabotage plans,” she slowly said in realization, returning her gaze towards the two infiltrators. “Everyone was too busy working on the attack. The Hive must’ve forgotten to bring us those news.”
Frustration filled the small apartment living room. “Not that it would have mattered,” Mirror said, “any and every communication between us and the Hive is slow.” He turned to the messenger. “You said that the Queen died just over a month ago, right?” With a nod from the hiveling, the beta huffed. After some minor pacing, he nodded to himself. “Alright—okay. What are our standing orders?”
The worker’s wings buzzed with some renewed confidence. “Orders for Baltimare Infiltrator Cell,” she recited in an even, almost mechanical, voice. “Maintain low profile and continue observation of the population center; avoid any and all contact with foreign infiltrators or cells; wait for further instructions from the Hive.”
The trio kept looking on at the messenger. Eventually, Undercover asked, “And?” With no reply, he threw his head up in fresh frustration. “Great. Just great! Are you seriously telling us that we have no Queen and we’re expected to stay put?” he said with no small amount of disbelief. “We– the Hive needs all the help it can get in times like these! We ought to return to help out.”
“And abandon everything that we built here, Undercover?” Silhouette countered with a hostile tone. “Are you listening to yourself? If we left now, we’d lose all of our contacts and infrastructure that we’ve built up. We need to stay here. You realize how difficult it will be starting again from scratch?”
The tension between the two was palpable, and they stood at odds with each other. Surprisingly enough, Undercover wasn’t the next one to speak, but Mirror. “He’s not entirely wrong…” he muttered, as if he were thinking aloud.
“What?” Silhouette said, staring at her superior as if he had suddenly grown a second horn. Undercover too regarded him with a curious waft.
“Undercover’s got a point, gamma,” he said, lacing the latter word with what sounded like contempt. “We might be of more use back home. I mean, all alphas and no queen?” He shook his head. “That’s a stopgap measure. It’s the best that they can do, but what happens when the alphas’ ovaries begin to run empty and there’s still no queen?” Mirror gave them no chance to respond. “The Other hives are going to find about this; blood’s going to be spilled.”
The response to that was mixed: Undercover nodded, although his anxiety was obvious; the worker reeked of panic; Silhouette’s jaw hung limp, thinking up of a rebuttal that did not come fast enough.
“But… what do we do then?” Silhouette asked tentatively.
His eyes closed, taking in a deep breath through his nostrils. Mirror held it in for a long moment, before letting it out in a slow exhale. Finally, he opened his eyes and looked to the messenger.
“Listen up, hiveling; you have a response to send back.”
The fire crackled as a bit of firewood broke apart into ash, sending embers flying into the chilly night air. Carapace watched the flames blankly, both glad and disappointed that nothing of interest had happened since… actually, she couldn’t remember when was the last time that something happened.
Granted, the death of the Queen a couple of months back was something, but it wasn’t the certain something that she was hoping for. She had once longed for some action in the Western Post at the edge of the Hive’s territory; now, with the Hive’s future uncertain, she would have been grateful if nothing at all happened. But the boredom was beginning to get to her.
She shifted the cloth on her back, a loose dull white garb, ridding herself of some sand that had gotten into some of the wrinkles. Bringing a hoof to rub her eyes, her nostrils scrunched up at the sensation of hairs scratching against the long snout typical of a Saddle Arabian. Carapace never quite liked her guise, since her limbs felt too elongated and the slender frame was something that she still had not gotten used to: she was a warrior after all, not an infiltrator. She was just a prop piece in the backdrop of a Saddle Arabian nomad camp that was the face of the outpost. Of course, the likelihood of a wandering pony or Arabian who so happened to come across them was very low, but it still made the need of a disguised outpost necessary.
The wind picked up somewhat, making the fire waver and the tent flaps shake. While noticeably cooler, Carapace was not bothered by the moderate breeze.
But it did carry something that made her sit up and look.
Looking in the direction of the wind, she spotted a lone torch in the distance approaching the encampment. Carapace smiled instinctually: the porter with the monthly supply was early. While their food and water supplies were still healthy they were getting low. Any abundance of either was welcome. She rose up and walked along the sand ready to greet the porter when Carapace noticed something odd.
It’s coming from the west.
How she hadn’t noticed the rocky hills in the distance behind the porter was baffling in it of itself, but a second whiff of the porter’s smell confirmed it: whoever that changeling was, it was not one from Carapace’s hive.
She acted quickly, getting out of the light of the campfire and hiding in between the tents. She was downwind of the intruder, so perhaps she hadn’t yet been detected. The foreign stench grew stronger as she began to hear the scrapes of hooves on sand approaching. By now, she had dropped her guise, wearing only the baggy white robe.
The hooffalls stopped; an aura of wariness came to Carapace, letting her know that the changeling was now in the camp.
With furious speed, she sprang from her hiding place, fangs bared and wings buzzing. The Other at the campfire, disguised as a dark brown mare pegasus with overstuffed saddlebags, turned with widened eyes. It dropped its mask, but by then Carapace was already all over it.
Her strike was true as her teeth sank into the chitin of the intruder, tasting the copper of her victim’s blue-green blood. Carapace had aimed for the neck, but the Other turned just in time for the maw to bite at its back instead.
It uttered a shriek and promptly bit back, twisting its head to get at Carapace’s vulnerable side. Teeth ripped into her cloth, but she suffered no injuries. With a quick move, Carapace struck the snout of the Other and let go of the back. It staggered back, wings bloodied, and then assumed a battle stance, hissing threateningly.
The warrior snarled back, unleashing as many fear-inducing pheromones as she could. For a moment, the two held their ground, seizing each other up, when the intruder made the first move: a straight on tackle. Carapace leaped upwards and let the changeling barrel beneath her. When she turned in midair, she was surprised to see the intruder making a break for it, with a trail of droplets of blood marking the sand.
Carapace wasted no time in pursuit, but the Other stopped, turned to face her and…
Carapace’s world was devoured by emerald fire. A resounding bang assaulted her senses as she felt herself spiraling down to earth. She landed hard against the rough sand; her garb tore up with the friction and she felt the burn on the exposed parts of her body. Pain surged in her, feeling bits of her face’s chitin being shredded against the sand. She had traveled for several yards before coming to a full stop.
For a long while, Carapace’s entire existence revolved around pain; she was unable to think straight with the pounding head and the pressure at the base of her horn; she couldn’t sense the movement of her limbs through the burning that coursed all over her body. Eventually, the green faded to black and the pain mercifully winked out with the loss of consciousness.
***
Concern: that was the first thing Carapace was aware of. The scents of it almost overwhelmed her nostrils even in her dulled state. The next thing that came into focus was her sense of hearing, as she began to make out the howl of the wind and the crackle of the firewood.
She shifted her head to the side and was rewarded with a dull throbbing pain pulsing through to her head as a result.
“Carapace?” she heard a distant voice ask. “Can you hear me?”
What she had intended to be a clear yes, Carapace only let out a slurred groan. Failing that, she decided to release an affirmative pheromone.
“Alright, good,” the voice said, growing clearer. “Stand still while I help you.”
A tingling sensation ran through Carapace. It was an uncomfortable feeling and her impulse was to fidget; fortunately she stilled herself enough (only kicking once with a hoof and twitching a wing slightly) as she let the cool feeling wash over her.
Eventually it dissipated, and a groan was heard. “I’ve done what I can, Trap Jaw.”
“Carapace,” an authoritative voice said, “I want you to listen closely. Can you do that?”
Surprisingly enough, Carapace managed to nod. “Good. Do you remember what happened?” Another nod. “Can you tell us what happened?”
She slowly opened her eyes, two figures coming into her view. Somehow, she successfully uttered one word: “O-other.”
Seta skittered at a hastened pace, his senses reaching out to make sense of the number of eggs. This was his third run through of nursery as he came up with the same number as before: a hundred and twelve.
He could feel his panic pheromone filling the chamber. This was too small of a clutch. Bigger than that of a single queen, yes, but far too small for eight bearing females. Last clutch that they had laid had thirty eggs more. Discrepancies in clutch numbers were commonplace, but this suggested something that the drone did not want to contemplate.
We’re running out of time.
It must’ve been a mistake; he must have miscounted. He wasn’t the only nursing drone or worker that took stock of the pupae and eggs. Surely he wouldn’t have been the only one to notice if the clutches were growing worryingly smaller. And yet, not a single one of his fellow nurses had reported the concern.
Seta did consider doing another count. The implication that he was right meant that if none of these pupae or eggs contained a youngling queen, the Hive was living on borrowed time. But no, he wasn’t wrong. He had to tell someone.
Knowing that he reeked of fear, he scurried off into the branching tunnel leading out of the nursery.