August Short Comic Poll #2 - Winner (Patreon)

We've had close races before, but this one was really dang close!

The winner however is:

4. For the Hive! - In the Seventh Realm, Hobgoblins - the larger, militaristic cousins of the goblins - of the Eastern Archipelagos have been the Realm's resident seaborne scourge. Pirates and privateers whose only allegiances are to their own brethren or whomsoever can make their coinpurse the fattest. And when no one else is ready to pay them, they certainly don't mind doing some treasure hunting. After all, the islands around Terrelai are plentiful and many rich folk have lived on them.

In one such treasure hunt, aboard the Ginger Swan, serves a young Hobgoblin who is a bit of an outlier, being the odd intellectual Hobgoblin. This young man is one of many seafaring adventurers looking for loot on the islands off the coasts of the Great Taurian Plains. And as luck would have it, he discovers a ruin the island has swallowed up. One that's covered in absurd murals depicting "savage Orcs" and "whisper-thin Elves."

But all of that pales in comparison to the centerpiece of the ruin, an egg-shaped black jewel larger than his own head. As in a trance state, he walks up towards the podium it magically hovers above, only to accidentally step into a bee's nest! In his panic he flails around and makes so much noise that he awakes all the sleeping owls above who flap their wings wild enough that the air is practically choked with feathers. And in a final clumsy move, the Hobgoblin lad stumbles onto the jewel at the same time a bee and an owl bumps into it.

And in that move, the Cornerstone of Convergence activates. Fusing the destinies of bees, owls and a particularly intelligent Hobgoblin into one. Similar to how the Twin Cornerstones altered reality itself regarding Elves and Orcs, so does the black Cornerstone change every Hobgoblin and all of their history.

Feathers cover the young Hobgoblin's arms and parts of his head, his arms now having retractable feathers that offer flight, and claws adorn his feet. His clothing alters to that of a chitinous armor that carries a similar aesthetic to the carapace of bees, his kind being quite proud of their secretive ability to produce such chitin. "His" kind now being the wrong word however, since practically all Hobgoblins are female, living in hive-like structures on their islands where they farm giant flowers for their sweet nectar. And finally she feels her mind expand to the point where she recognizes that what just happened is patently ridiculous. But it inarguably did happen and with her expanded intellect she recalls memories of her past that assures her that she is the only person in the entire Realm who knows what just happened.

Shoving the Cornerstone into her bag, she flies off to meet her archaeologist companions in the airship they docked outside. This stone has brought a great change to the entire reality of the Realm and she must inform her queen of the dangers such an artifact could pose to the world. And someone needs to be sent back down there to look over those strange murals. Could an artifact like this one have changed reality before?

[Seventh Realm Reality TF - Crude, but a bit brainy, male Hobgoblin to a new kind of Female Hobgoblin that fuses owl and bee characteristics to create a kein that is a bit bird-like in appearance and with bee-like social structures and cultures]

Big thanks to everyone for voting and another thanks to ChiCha for the suggestion <3

https://www.patreon.com/posts/august-short-2-108440038