Hive Queen

by Sinclair, Grayson

  They clattered to the ground, and a sharp pain radiated from my left arm.

  I looked over, and the pain only intensified.

  Her scorpion tail broke through my chitin and tore through my forearm; the tip stuck out the other side.

  I jerked my arm free, and blood rushed from the ragged wound. Shit. Not good. I’m partially immune to the poison, but I can’t deal with the side effects or a bleeding debuff right now.

  A terrible realization came over me, and I cursed as cold dread settled in my heart. She’s going to kill me if I don’t stop her. I don’t have a choice.

  I’m sorry.

  I clenched my teeth and threw myself in a roll as she struck again. I came up and wielded my hand and a half sword in both hands. The timer for Aura of the Arachnid was running low, and I had two minutes to finish this.

  It would be over in half that.

  Jasmine struck again, but I’d seen her tricks. She was fast and unbelievably strong, far better than I was at handling the mantle of Hive Knight. But her combat skills were lacking. She relied too much on brute force. It left her vulnerable.

  I stepped forward as she struck with her limbs. Instead of dodging, I turned my body as they glided past, barely licking at my chitin. As they struck air behind me, I used my own limbs to pin hers, and I struck.

  I put my entire body behind my thrust and aimed for the spot on her chest that I’d hit earlier, where the chitin was weakest.

  The blade hit dead center, and her armor couldn’t withstand another strike. It buckled and caved under my steel, and it slid through her chest and stopped as the chitin of her back held.

  I pulled my sword from her chest as the eldritch glow from her eyes dimmed. The smooth chitin peeled away, retreating under her skin. Blood welled at the corners of her mouth, and she collapsed. I caught Jasmine before she hit the stone floor and cradled her against my chest.

  Without her armor, she seemed so frail as I held her. My own chitin faded as I canceled all of my abilities, and I sagged as my battle fatigue rose as I prematurely shut down Aura of the Arachnid.

  My legs failed me, and my knees hit the stone hard as I held onto Jasmine. Her auburn hair covered her face and stuck to the blood that cover her cheek.

  “Someone, help her!”

  I pressed my hand to her wound as her blood painted my hands, staining them crimson. I looked up at Magnus and Aliria, who hadn’t moved a muscle. “Magnus, help her! She’s going to die!”

  He shook his head, softly, just once. “She’s already gone, Duran. I’m sorry.”

  “She’s not, Jasmine’s fine!”

  I brushed the blood away from her mouth, only to smear even more blood across her tawny skin. Her head nestled in the crook of my arm, and her once-beautiful eyes of honey were nothing but glass.

  He was right. Jasmine was gone.

  “No, no, no.” I glared up at Magnus. “Help her! You’re a chronomancer, bring her back!”

  “I can’t.”

  What? No, that’s fucking unacceptable! I laid Jasmine down as gently as possible and rose to face Magnus. I marched across the floor and ascended the steps of the obsidian throne, ignoring the concern across Eris’s and Raven’s faces. I grabbed Magnus by the collar of his black silk tunic, balling it in my fists and yanking him from his seat.

  “Bring. Her. Back.”

  Magnus stared into my eyes, his too-light green burning a hole straight to my heart before he looked away. He swept his eyes to Jasmine’s supine form, and he quickly brought his eyes back to mine. A tear fell down his cheek before he brushed it away with his thumb.

  “I can’t!” he seethed. Magnus brought his fingers to his eyes and wiped away any more tears before they could escape. “I can’t bring her back. Not anymore.”

  “Damn you!” I threw him back and walked back over to Jasmine. Her blood pooled beneath her body. I crashed to the ground next to her and tried to fight the grief that rose in my heart. Damn it!

  “Place your hand on her, knight.”

  I paused. Why?

  “To reclaim her chitin. It will replace what you’ve lost and will be a great boon to you…it is also a way of honoring a knight who has fallen in battle. Her chitin will be carried on.”

  With only minor hesitation, I placed my hand on Jasmine’s still-warm skin, and a heat crept into my palm as her chitin absorbed into my skin. Within a moment it was over, and as much as the Aspect had said it was a way of honoring her, it felt like desecration.

  I’m sorry.

  I opened my mouth to find the words, but whatever I’d been about to say was silenced by the soft vocals of a woman singing.

  Magnolia knelt by her daughter, holding her head in her lap, singing softy while she ran her fingers through her hair as she cried and sang.

  I couldn’t understand the words, but I wasn’t meant to; it was a lamentation for Jasmine and Magnolia alone.

  Her words tempted my own grief, and I fought back my own tears and stood, turning back to the throne. “Please, Magnus, please bring Jasmine back.”

  “If it were within my power, I would have done so already. There is nothing anyone can do to help her any longer but lay her to rest.”

  My hope shattered, and I couldn’t fight the tears any longer. They spilled freely down my cheeks. I couldn’t take my eyes from the young woman I’d killed.

  “Oh, Sam,” Eris said, rushing over to me.

  Her arm brushed mine, but I pulled away. I couldn’t speak, couldn’t have responded even if I wanted to. There was nothing I could say at that moment. I fell to my knees in front of Jasmine, trying to find the words, but none came.

  “I─I’m…” I choked and cried.

  Warm fingers took hold of mine, and I blinked away my tears to see Magnolia, smiling at me through her own tears. “It’s okay.”

  “No, no, it’s not. I…I killed her. Nothing is okay.”

  Magnolia squeezed my hand tight. “No, you didn’t. She did,” she said, before her gaze turned black as she tilted her head to Aliria. “You took advantage of my daughter’s loneliness and twisted her to benefit your goals. All she ever wanted was a friend, and you used that against her!”

  I wasn’t any better. I brushed her aside when I could’ve so easily taken the time to get to know her. I’m sorry, Jasmine. I’d have been honored to be your friend. I reached over to the small pool of blood underneath her body and dipped my finger in it. I brushed it across my lips and closed my eyes.

  Jasmine’s memories flooded through me, and I made sure to burn every single detail into my mind, all the good and bad I experienced as the Mnemosyne showed bits of her life to me. Her senseless death could have been so easily avoided.

  I won’t forget you, Jasmine. I swear. It was a promise made to a dead girl. It didn’t matter to her any longer, but it mattered to me. She deserved to be remembered by someone other than her mother.

  I placed my hand over Magnolia’s and looked into her eyes. “I swear I will remember her, always.”

  “Thank you, Duran. She liked you more than you know. Even after you left, she couldn’t stop talking about you,” she said, twisting the knife even deeper into my heart.

  I let go of Magnolia’s hand and stood. I turned to face Aliria, who held the same cold, impassive look as always, despite just watching her knight die right in front of her.

  “Jasmine just died! Your knight. Say something!”

  Aliria gave me a bitter smile. “She failed and lost to a knight who doesn’t even know how to use his power properly. I’ll find another.”

  I don’t remember moving. One second I was by Jasmine’s body, then the next my blade was a centimeter from Aliria’s throat.

  The only thing that spared her was Magnus.

  “Let me go!”

  Magnus shook his head in my periphery. “Your anger is understandable. Justifiable, even. But I can’t let you harm Aliria.”

  “Argh!” I screamed wordlessly in her face, spittle flying to pepper her cheeks
.

  Magnus released me, and my shoulders hung heavy as I walked away from Aliria. I didn’t know what to do with myself, stuck between wanting to avenge Jasmine and to just leave and go home, but I could do neither.

  Magnolia lifted Jasmine in her arms and rose. She faced us, and with tears streaming down her face, she inclined her head in a shallow bow. “If you’ll excuse me, I must go bury my daughter.”

  “Of course, Magnolia. Truly, I’m sorry for your loss,” Magnus said, his voice weary.

  “I’ll help,” I began and took a step.

  “No…thank you, but this is something I must do myself,” she said and carried Jasmine from the room, leaving behind a trail of too-bright blood and another ghost in my heart.

  I stared at the pool of blood for a long moment before Raven and Eris walked over to me.

  “There was nothing more you could’ve done, my bonded. You gave her every chance.”

  Bonded? Not so much now, my love. But the sentiment is still there.

  “Doesn’t make it hurt any less.”

  Raven ran her fingers over mine, not saying anything, but her crimson eyes held what she knew her words couldn’t. We’d all experienced loss in our lives, and sometimes, a thousand words couldn’t express what a simple touch and a look could.

  “I love you both,” I said.

  No point in fighting how I feel, not anymore. I let go of them and stood in front of Magnus as he looked down from his throne. Sunlight streamed through the stained glass and covered us both in shimmering colors.

  “Tell me why?” I said. “You brought Aliria back, and she was nothing but ash. Tell me why you couldn’t do that with Jasmine?”

  Magnus sighed. “I’ll explain everything, I promise, but we’re about to have company. It’ll be easier to understand when they get here.”

  I threw my hands up, too impatient to wait. I wanted answers, I needed to understand why Jasmine had to die. And Magnus was the only one who could give them to me. “How long do I have to wait?”

  He cocked his head to the side. “Not long. If you’ll stop and listen, you can hear them.”

  What?

  I paused, closing my mouth and doing as he suggested, listening. For a long moment, all there was was the steady breathing of the five of us and a bird singing softly outside. I was about to give up when Eris spoke.

  “Metal, thuds. Someone’s fighting in the hallways, getting closer.”

  It took a minute longer for me, but eventually I picked up what Eris heard, and she was right. There were definite sounds of fighting inching closer to us. Who would be bold enough to attack─oh, of course it’s them. Took them long enough. They even had a head start on us.

  I shook my head, too weary of everything that had happened. It was only a few minutes later when I realized I hadn’t tended to my wounds, and I quickly pulled out a health potion and drank half of it.

  The others bristled as the fight worked its way to just outside the door, but I stood calmly. A man screamed on the other side of the door, and there was a loud thump, then another. The doors buckled inward and slammed open as a badly bruised man in once-bright silver armor, now dented and stained red, came sailing into the throne room.

  He landed with a thud and a let out a strangled, raspy groan as he stared up at us. “Intruders,” he croaked before his eyes rolled back in his head and he slumped to the stone floor.

  Two sets of brilliant golden eyes pierced the darkness. Sharp footsteps cracked as Evelyn and Adam strolled into the room.

  Both of them were battered and bloody like I’d never seen them before. Evelyn’s skintight leather armor was cut in numerous places, showing much of her pale skin as off-color blood dripped from the tears. Adam wore his medium plate armor, but while not as worn as Evelyn’s, he had a fair number of welts and dents. Blood ran from a split lip and a cut on the side of his neck.

  By the nine kings of hell, I’ve never even seen them bleed before.

  They walked through the room in utter silence, and as they came closer, they both stared at me, nodded, and turned to Magnus, expressions like I’d never seen on their faces before. Confusion, rage and immeasurable relief all melded into shock as their mouths opened slightly.

  “It really is you,” Adam said. “After all this time.”

  Magnus lit up, so much warmth filled his eyes as the biggest smile broke across his face. “It’s good to see you again, James. You as well, Jessica. I’ve missed you both terribly.”

  “Two hundred years,” Evelyn seethed. “We spent two hundred years searching for you, Nicholas!”

  “I know. And I’ll explain everything, to all three of you.”

  Evelyn tiled her head. “Three of us?” she asked before turning to me. “You’re including Sampson Acre?” She held up a hand as my mouth opened. “Don’t misconstrue that, guild leader—I’ve grown quite fond of you these past few years, but you’re not exactly one of us. This really isn’t your concern.”

  “You know my full name?” I asked.

  She nodded. “I’m the one who recruited you from that disgusting camp so long ago, after all.”

  “Jessica? Jessica Bell?”

  “Indeed, and Adam is actually Jameson Bell.”

  I sighed into my palm. “All three of you have a lot of explaining to do.”

  Chapter 30 - Broken World

  Magnus, or Nicholas, whoever he really was, led all of us to his study. Once inside, we gathered around his map table, and he looked at each of us in turn.

  “I know we have much to discuss, and bear with me, as it’s a lot.”

  “Let’s start at the beginning. How you three know each other?” I stared at both Adam and Evelyn, who’d drunk a health potion each and were back to their usual perfection. “I thought I knew you both, but I don’t know you at all.”

  Evelyn smiled at me, brushing away a stray silver hair that fell in her face. “You knew part of us, the parts that we wanted to share. You, more than most, should know why we chose to do so.”

  I get it, I do, but I still can’t help feeling a little betrayed. But that’s wrong of me. “Okay, we’re all entitled to secrets, but I mean, come on. You knew who Magnus was this whole time?”

  “Not at all. We’d long since thought Nick died, since we couldn’t find him after all these years since the schism happened. We assumed he’d been a casualty,” Adam said.

  I placed my hands on the wooden lip of the map table. “The schism, how did it happen?”

  “An explosion in the bunker, we think. Something happened in the real world that took out several of our servers, leaving us with precious little data storage remaining. Which eventually led to the schism.”

  Adam slammed his fist down on the table. “You left out the most important detail, Nick. Tell him what you did.”

  Magnus sighed and looked over to Adam, his face pained. “After all that’s happened, you’re still angry?”

  “It wasn’t your call to make!”

  “Then whose?” he fired back, his finger pointed at Adam. “It had to be us, and you weren’t willing to make the call. I did what you couldn’t.”

  “You killed thousands!”

  “And saved thousands more.”

  “Hey!” I shouted, holding my hands up. “Both of you stop this and explain what’s going on.”

  Magnus and Adam stopped and turned to me, anger on their faces. Adam motioned to Magnus. “Tell him.”

  He sighed. “Before the schism, there was a decision to make. A choice to leave things as they were and hope the A.I. could fix the issues, or to purge as much irrelevant data as possible to move what we could save to the non-damaged drives.”

  “You made the call to delete everything.”

  “Yes.”

  I pulled out the chair by the desk in the corner and sat back, trying to think. Eris and Raven had been quiet through the exchange, but when I moved, they came and sat back against the wall next to me while I drummed my fingers across the elegant cherry wood desk
. It was a hard call with no clear outcome on either side.

  “Could Ouroboros have fixed the system?”

  Adam opened his mouth to respond but quickly closed it, his eyes shifting away. “Maybe. I don’t know. But we had time to find out if she could—we didn’t have to act immediately!”

  “If we had waited for her to get finished with her analysis, we’d have lost even more drives to the corruption, and it would have cost hundreds of lives in the slim hopes that we might’ve been able to save everyone. It was a pipe dream, and you know it,” Magnus said.

  “You still─”

  “James, he’s right. Much as I didn’t agree with how he went about it, he took decisive action, and much as you hate the cost, you can’t deny he saved everyone he could,” Evelyn said.

  “You were just as furious as I was. Don’t even deny it,” Adam replied.

  Evelyn leaned her hip against the table and crossed her arms. “I hated that he went around us without our consent and used your system access to do it. I hated the method, but I’ve always agreed with his results.”

  “Evelyn’s right,” I said, standing up. My fingers brushed against Raven and Eris as I passed, and I gave them both a reassuring smile. “Magnus did what he thought was best, and I can’t say I wouldn’t have made the same decision in his place. Risking the whole system in the off chance you can save everyone is a fool’s gamble, and you know it.”

  “I thought after all you’ve lost, you’d agree that we have to save everyone.”

  “If we can. But not at the cost of everyone else. I’ve lost just as much as anyone else here, and not twenty minutes ago, I lost someone I would’ve liked to befriend. A girl who did nothing wrong but still died a needless death.” I paced in a small circle, my footsteps clacking against the hardwood floor. “You can’t save everyone. That’s the lesson I’ve learned after all these years. Save who you can, when you can.”

  “Well said. Duran is right, especially now,” Magnus said, coming over to clap me on the back. “This doesn’t have to be a repeat of the past. We can work together this time.”