Soul of Blades - Interlude: The Hidden Queen (Patreon)

Authors note: thanks for your patience!m guys!

In the quiet of her grand chamber, a girl sat. Well, she wasn’t quite a girl. Yes, technically she was a girl, in the way that technically a lion was a cat. But for the sake of simplicity, she often considered herself as a simple female; it was a quaint misnomer. 

She sat on her throne and pondered her nine sisters, each with their own unique impressions that left ripples across the globe.

She picked up a morsel, examining its texture before placing it between her teeth and savoring the satisfying crack as it split open. Juice from her morsel's core squirted, cooling her tongue with its freshness.

Her first sister, much like a shadow, seemed ever-present yet elusive, her actions like mirages that barely stirred the air. The girl tossed another morsel high, watching it spin before catching it deftly between her teeth, her movements mimicking the first sister's quiet grace.

And her second sister? She shivered, causing a soft tinkling sound to ripple through her. the less time spent thinking of the second, the better. 

The girl nibbled on another morsel, pondering if life's true essence might elude the tomes and rituals that so captivated her strangest sister.

The third sister's artisan hands constantly shaped metal and stone into forms of beauty and strength. The girl split another treat, appreciating its solid exterior giving way to the softer inside, much like her sister's ability to turn rigid materials into art.

The fourth sister was something of an alchemist, lost in her labyrinth of bottles and concoctions, forever in pursuit of the perfect mixture. The ‘key’ she called it. As the girl reached for another morsel, she felt akin to her sister, each nut a mystery of flavor waiting to be discovered.

The fifth sister's touch brought healing and comfort, her nurturing presence a balm for any ailment. The girl smiled as she felt the juice of the snack soothe her palate, a momentary comfort much like her sister's reassuring mental presence.

The sixth sister's elusive nature made her blend seamlessly with her surroundings, her steps light and untraceable. The girl playfully tossed a morsel, this one with 12 legs, and watched it disappear momentarily into the shadows before plucking it from the air, a nod to her sister's art of vanishing.

The seventh trained tirelessly, her spirit unyielding and fierce. The girl's fingers gripped another appetizer firmly, feeling its resistance before cracking it open, a small tribute to her sister's indomitable will.

The eight‘s ambitions stretched far, her dreams as vast as the lands she sought to claim. As the girl savored another morsel, she pondered the vastness of her youngest sister's aspirations, and each meal became an image of the territories yet to be conquered. Each bite was an example of what was to come for the lands above. In her mind's eye, the fat human she held in one of her many hands was identical to the entirety of the town her brood had recently assaulted; ripe and ready to be consumed.

Crunch.

Another notification.

The ninth sister, the strategist, saw life as a grand game, her every decision calculated and precise. The girl carefully selected the next morsel, from a shivering line of them. Some morsels avoided her multifaceted gaze and attempted to hide. How futile. She considered its shape and size before snapping it up, an homage to her sister's deliberate and thoughtful approach.

The Drifter arachnae disappeared down her gullet.

But the Hidden Queen was still hungry. Perhaps she would try more humans next? She mentally issued orders to her hive to deliver a new batch to her chamber.

All Arachnae of all forms and variances still possessed many similarities that tied them together. One of these similarities were the countless pores that inhaled and excreted their pheromones.

They filled the air with their pheromones, at all times and on all lands,  and had been doing so since the first Arachnae evolved into being hundreds of years ago. Yes, They were a young species, but they were powerful, unstoppable. the apex of life. The Hidden queen estimated that a tenth of any single pocket of air on the entire planet consisted of Arachnae pheromones.

The pheromones they excrete were harmless to living creatures, no different from the very air it proliferated, but the undetectable scent contained microscopic patterns of information that allowed the Queens to communicate with each other and give general commands to their respective hives. In the past, Arachnae variants could only project subtle feelings of intent, emotions, and fleeting impressions. A few words at most. Only the queens could truly utilize it to hold conversations in any way they wished. In the past it was a limited thing, a tool to control the hives and communicate with her sister-queens over vast distances.

But some weeks ago, everything changed.

The system arrived. She had despised it at first, unwilling to trust a method of primitive written communication that reminded her so much of her enemies, the lesser races. But then it had placed information directly into her mind as a fellow queen would. It brought so many changes, it granted them ‘levels’, and ‘stats’. She loved the ‘stats’. And the ‘skills’, too.

The passive skills, ‘Hivemind: Arachnae’, and  ‘Adaptive Evolution’, for example.

‘Hivemind: Arachnae’ gave every single Arachnae in the world a voice. Where before, only the queens could truly utilize and control the information stored within their pheromones, now, all Arachnae could communicate as the queens would, although with some difficulty. The non-queen Arachnae variants still obeyed their every whim, if she wished, she could order the entire hive to kill itself, and almost all of them would. The non-queens, the workers, soldiers, and variants, had weak mind-voices. Like a soft wind so low you didn’t know it was there, if she concentrated, she could hear the newborns babbling thoughts throughout her hive, and observe the running of her kingdom. Some voices were slightly louder, like the soldiers and some of the stronger variants, they were about as loud as a soft tap, and easily ignored. The queen's mind-voices were like storms. If she wanted to, she could stop the hive with a thought. Call out to her ‘sister-queens’ on a whim. But she didn’t feel like it.

She loved the hive mind; with it, she and her sister-queens' voices could shake the world, or send thoughts, sights, sounds, tastes, and smells to each other, have conversations across vast distances and yet see each other as if they were standing side by side. One of her sister-queens could even send memories. They would use the skill to rally their armies to decimate their lessers.

And for a while she had thought they had won. When news that all the living races born with sentience had disappeared from the land entirely, she had been confused. The beasts- from the weakest to those strong enough to develop sapience and power of their own- ruled the land for a short while. The first few days had been a bloodbath, many of her enemies fell. In those moments She believed the humans to have been eradicated. It was a good time.

Until they returned.

But they were weaker. She laughed audibly. So much weaker! She giggled still. They had all been weakened considerably by the system, but her kind had engorged themselves on the lesser races and quickly regained some semblance of strength, ‘Adaptive Evolution’ had caused the setback to only be a temporary one. They simply had to feast until they’d gained a remnant of their power.

she had intended on remaining hidden for longer, increasing the hidden numbers of her beast-like brood who evolved without adequate sentience from only having feasted on creatures and animals, but the system's arrival had changed everything; from now on, humans and all the living races above would be the main course.

And their search for a final evolution would solve that.

All Arachnae evolved throughout their life, once at birth, another shortly after, and once more at some point in their lives. Maybe four times for the most talented of them. ‘Adaptive Evolution’ had simply given a name to something they had always been capable of.

Idly, she plucked a soldier from the ground, and her beautiful porcelain face, resembling almost identically the woman she had eaten upon birth over a hundred years ago, split into 5 twisted segments, an arachnid mouth and fangs stretching impossibly wide beneath her porcelain carapace's face. Then she frowned.

Stop it.

The soldier immediately stopped struggling at her thought-message-command.

Crunch.

She squeezed, and the brittle thing fell apart in her oversized hands like dried leaves, a mess of ichor and clattering carapace littering the floor. Someone would have to clean that up.

Idly, she sent a soft thought-message throughout the hive, ordering the closest cleaner variant to come and remove the mess from her eating. Perhaps she would order them to stay in her chamber.

She held the soldier's glowing core between her fingers, suspended above her gaping maw.

She swallowed it whole.

[You have predated the mana heart of the defeated. +1 to strength, +1 to dexterity, for 15 minutes]

She smiled again at the system's message. That was a good morsel. Its ‘stats’ had truly changed things for her and the sister-queens.

Bring me more. More humans. More cores. More hearts.

Her command shook through the minds of all within her hive.