07 - Queen

The Dauver’s soft chitin strained and stretched out between the plates of her shell. Mandibles squeezed, cutting through flesh, cracking bone, marrow oozed out of fractures from the pressure.

She gorged on the still live animals her hunters brought her. The nutrients would grow the hive, her hive. Each meal was a new member and an extension of herself.

She was the one to the many, and the many were her. She heard twelves of thousands of signals all relayed to her. Each designation mapped, indexed and stored itself in the Dauver’s eight-lobed brain.

Drone efficiency had reached the point of diminishing returns in the southern hemisphere. Anomalous hive destruction reported in region 12. Watchers detecting infestation precursors in hive 64, relays 12.1 12.5, 12.9 and 12.19.

The unnatural precursor pattern was inconsistent with past infestations. She changed the pheromones and adjusted the modulation of her screeching. Excess larvae and architects were sent north. Region 14 and 15 had excess hunters and guardians. These were sent to the primary defensive swarms.

The infestation was changing. Survival demanded the unnatural blight be subverted. Adaptation, the queen ordered a hundred Dauver males to her chamber. They consumed the mutagenic plant matter of the spiricoso until their vitals dropped.

They were entranced, incapacitated. She injected her venom into the males and waited for them to enter their reproductive state. The Queen drained them of their fluids to fertilize her eggs. Enzymes and proteins adjusted, altering the next specialized drones.

When they were barely more than a shell she injected the eggs into the slowly melting slurry. In this state they were still alive, could still serve their new function. They left towards several hatcheries at different hives.

There they would lay down and eat more of the plant. First eggs would hatch and then larvae would find every living organ and eat all they could. Eventually, not even the shell would be left when the nymphs emerged in 5 rotations.

Eat, grow, shed,

Eat, grow, shed.

* * *

A fetid scent that was both rancid and smelled of sour leather wafted up to his nose. Damp soil caressed his feat as stones jabbed and scraped his soles. Eyes fell to the instrument finding hands still holding it ready. He was here again.

Had he never left? Had he fallen asleep and dreamed his humiliation and journey. A voice, hard and demanding echoed through Yagbur.

“Go ahead and sound them. Start this, show me what happened.”

He blew and rubbed the mandibles against the ridges of the tymbal's bladder. It was complex and full of rasping scrapes layered upon high shrieking tones, and percussions. Yagbur knew others didn't hear the full thing, not as he could.

The world started again. His party passed members each carrying the domi. He felt it all, that dread of the coming abandonment. He remembered figuring it out well into the act. Every feeling, every memory he'd felt then Yagbur felt now.

Even though it had been his first raid, never had they needed so many. Never had they attacked one so far south and near completely thawed. Nor did he ever hear tales of the sentinel's enmity of the Dauver.

"I care little for these musings. I need to see what happened." the world shook and blurred. Yagbur's mind warped and boiled, everything condensed until he heard the scurry of shells, heard Havlek’s breathing and feet pounding. Then he saw Havlek’s face emerging from the hive.

“So this is how you saw it happen?”, the voice asked.

Yagbur didn’t respond, he couldn’t. His hands followed the waypoints of the past. All fear and emotions traced the trails of his memories. Hands and mouth continued to play the instrument.

Parts of reality reversed, Yagbur wished he could scream, but could not. He saw and was the past. Time moved against his will and boiled forward again.

The collision happened. Havlek was on top of him.

"There!" the voice sounded. Yagbur's being wavered. Pain screamed and sound ripped. Mind escaped mind and body tore from body. Then, after an agonizing instant, it stopped and he stood as an observer.

“This is a better way to experience the memory.” the voice was no longer ethereal but right next to him. “Why stand still when you heard them coming? The others hadn't returned for some time, you should have left him.”

“I didn’t know what to do. I was to sound the instrument. I was to keep them from knowing of us," Yagbur said as he saw the first set of mandibles grab hold of Havlek’s leg.

Old eyes looked. They saw Yagbur. In them was a disappointment, broken hopes, and his resolve to throw them away.

Yagbur heard the screaming dismemberment dissipate into the clouds of his memory.

"Sing for me" The words came, not from the image before him, but around him. "Let me hear your gift one more time before. Show me you are not a burden."

Yagbur's mouth opened and no words came out. The sounds were breathy mists of mind.

"You know the Shaman of the Plains recommended Havlek. I saw the potential and gave the freshly blooded kesit one task. Kill the signaler, don't get caught. Bless the hive, leave, all were supposed to return."

A sonnet of colors, clouds, and shades of lies sounded back to Yagbur. He drifted, evaporated, tangled in the soft sacs of the lungs.

"No, you're right. There will never be a time I expect no casualties." There were notes in the words, they were complex and placed well before utterance. The song continued.

"Do you know how I survived?" The Dreamer asked.

The scene changed. An emaciated boy dragged an equally emaciated elder to a table. The boy began cutting neat lines into the skin.

“I was their butcher.” The boy pulled the skin off.

“They showed me how and I cut up my brothers, sisters, and fathers.” He watched as organs were pulled from the guts.

“We fed them to them and ate the scraps.”

Yagbur heard the omissions, a feminine scent, a discordant note.

Thunder clapped, and his mind ripped. "No more of that."

Havlek was in a chamber. A long-bodied 12 legged bug with huge grasping jaws and complex finger-like claws was standing. A thin rip, barely audible sounded.

“He made a noise. This is what I saw from the echos of your memories. This is what I sent him to kill. A listener. Do you know what they do?”

Yagbur answered, but somehow knew this was not the truth, "They listen and spread the taint of the dauver with their songs."

The old man sighed and shook his head, “The Shaman of Mind has simplified it. They listen and when something is off they tell the whole infested hive and all the ones around it.”

They were back in the hut. Smoke still billowed from the thermal. “Havlek blighted us. Now all the unenlightened Domi in this sector will be fed to the dauver. The domi will feed themselves to molting jumbles of legs and fangs until we are all that is left.”

The First Dreamer was breathing slightly heavier. “What happens now that the Dauver knows something is wrong here?”

Yagbur shook his head, and they were high above the planes. The blue-white sun beat down on their backs. He realized he was falling. Wind ripped at his skin. How was it that it took this long to fall? A chuckling could be heard to his side.

“Look down. It toughens your innards and tightens your bowels.”

Below columns of the Dauver, the bugs stretched from horizon to horizon. “This is what happens when they see a threat. This is what we have to run from or deal with.”

“Why can’t we go back to the cold.” The runt asked.

“Because it’s cold and most of us would die again and I don’t have the time left to gather up enough others.”, the elder promised through the discordance.

They were countless. When a pass was too narrow for the column to proceed they climbed over one another. They chewed through trees and bramble and they moved up and Yagbur knew they moved to them.

“All will be right. Yagbur, you will make it so," The Dreamer promised.

A vision of Yagbur holding up the sun flashed. The columns of myriapods turned black and faded to dust; the twisted singer's face straightened and was made whole.

"In memories, you will be whole, you will strengthen us with your spawn. The Kin will recall the Saga of the Singer."

His words pleased, but Yagbur heard them flicker like a leaf on the wind"I need you to find the seed in the north."

The First Dreamer continued to explain as they fell towards Enkyall. Yagbur listened as his path was laid out for him.

Fractals swirled with the words around Yagbur as Spiricoso further wrapped him in its embrace.