Chapter Text
When Hive are born, we know two things first: the touch of siblings, and the touch of the worm. Without the worm, we are not Hive; without our siblings, we are not Hive.
These two things have bound us for so long - what do we become without either?
- First Case for the Sky
~*~
Pain stirred the quiet emptiness. A dim ache at first, in her abdomen. But it spread higher, up, following her spinal plate into her thorax. She sensed a burst of panic in the back of her head - then silence as the pain began to bleed away. But the emptiness did not return, and she squirmed as the familiar instinctive push to get out sent her crawling through the chrysalis that had formed around her.
Something is missing , she realized as thought formed, sense of self clarified. Something is wrong .
She landed in an ungraceful heap on a cool, hard floor. Feeling in her extremities came first: feet, knees, hands, elbows - legs and arms. Thorax and abdomen and shoulders came next, the soft scraping of carapace as instinct put her on her knees. So far, normal, as expected. Her eyes blinked open, trifold vision blurred towards the texture of the green-white floor beneath a layer of water until it cleared to reveal the faint ridges of support structure beneath the surface.
The feeling of something missing persisted.
“- week premature,” a snarling voice insisted in the distance, preceding heavy steps that came closer. “What could go wrong, this is our nature!”
“It was the worm; it rejected the morph,” a second voice - sibilant, gentler but as confused - answered. She tried to stand, but her limbs felt awkward. Not the suppleness she had expected would come from the acolyte morph, but as though she was still a thrall.
The words finally sank in. The worm rejected the morph . Did that mean -
Heavy claws grabbed her shoulders and threw her back to the floor, hard enough to drive the air out of her and make her teeth clash together. A knight loomed above her, facial carapace tight in disgust, before picking her up by her thorax plates. She bit back a whimper of pain at the lift; the plates were still fresh and soft, enough they could lift away from her skin if the knight was keen to do so. He - pheromones strongly masculine - held her close to his face, disgust scenting his proximity.
“What did you do ,” the knight snarled hatefully as he shook her. Enough to sting, to make the pain worse. “You live when your worm did not! Answer !”
Rejected the morph.
Her worm…dead? She realized the emptiness inside her: physically, like there was a gap from her sternum to her hips, and mentally, its presence reduced to emptiness. She tilted her head back, and just barely spotted the grayish mass of what had been her worm at the foot of the remains of her chrysalis. Nausea crawled into her throat before finally facing the knight as he shook her again.
“Answer, reject! What did you do to your worm?! ”
“N-nothing,” she squeaked out; the knight’s grip tightened on her carapace and this time she cried out in pain. “Nothing! I swear! It - it just -”
Her voice cut off as a spell clenched around her, and her thoughts felt rustled and ruffled. The second voice was a wizard, then. She stayed still as the wizard examined the sleep of her thoughts, and when the spell faded the knight looked past her shoulder. A few moments later she was released to land once again on the floor, with a heavy splash as she broke the thin surface of the pool. The shock of the blows left her gasping for air, too stunned to move, and by the time she had the will to move the knight had moved to her side, resting the bottom of his foot against her head.
“...a freak event?” the wizard murmured, still unseen from her field of view. “No. Unthinkable. The worm was strong; something in the host must have weakened it.”
Me. I’m…weak? No!
“I’m not weak!” she protested. She reached up, trying to push the knight’s foot from her head despite his far greater strength. “No! I earned taking the morph, I gave -”
“ Silence !” the knight snarled. He started pressing down, but she kicked, squirming to try and lever her way free. “You dare argue! You have lived past your worm - you should not live without it!”
Yes I will!
She pushed again, with as much might as she could muster. The knight did not relent; the harder she fought, the heavier his foot became on her head. Her arms began to protest as she couldn’t gain the leverage to free herself from the knight, even as her feet tried to find purchase on the floor beneath the water. All the while the wizard watched, even though she could not see them.
She knew she had to fight: fighting proved her right to exist, her right to live . She cast around for anything she could make use of, but as she twisted her body squirmed out slightly from the weight of the knight. The scant shift was enough encouragement. She kept squirming and twisting, and steadily her head came free. She rolled away quickly, eventually getting her feet under her and finally getting a sense of where she was.
She was not in the morph chamber; her chrysalis had been moved from the close, tight cavern into a massive chamber in Savathun-Queen’s stronghold. Light glimmered off the walls, and she could see the pool she had just been battling the knight in had sunken effigies of Hive beneath the surface. The knight himself was much larger than she had anticipated, and the wizard was somehow taller and more elaborate than she remembered wizards being. But she had no further time to examine; the moment she saw a means to leave, she bolted for it. She heard the wizard screech to call the rest of the brood, in concert with the knight roaring at being denied his kill.
There was no time. She ran.
The corridors were unfamiliar but she followed them anyway. Claws - her own and those of dozens of thrall on her trail - scraped and clattered against the floor, the walls. There was so much noise but she kept running -
A doorway, into the air. A jutting support was a distance from the door. She could not think; she could only leap. The air whistled around her as she pushed away - thralls howled as a few tumbled over the edge, unable to slow down from their hunt - and her claws just hooked onto the support, feet dangling over hundreds of feet of empty air. She grimaced before beginning to ascend as quickly as she could to the top of the support - then made another jump to the next support, a third leap getting around a tower. The thralls were beginning to figure it out and were leaping after her.
Clearly I got the faster thinking of an acolyte.
She made a final leap and saw, in the distance, trees and rising rock formations. Places that screamed safety - or at least somewhere to hide for a little while. More howls and screams built behind her, so she bolted for the far rocks. Her feet tripped over themselves against the smooth floor of the stronghold, but she kept moving until the smooth white stone became soft dirt.
She spotted a cavern and tumbled into it as quickly as she could. But her speed was too much, and her back crashed against a rock wall. Mercifully, she didn’t hear her carapace crack, and the panic of her escape began to fade.
I have no worm , her next clear thought was as exhaustion sank in. No brood. I am not Hive.
Then what was she? Who was she?
Something loomed over her before the final threads of consciousness slipped away.