Hive Queen

by Sinclair, Grayson

  He scowled, his brows furrowed. “You’re going to kill thousands, and you don’t even care, do you?”

  “Of course I do,” he said, his hands clenched tight. Magnus picked up his nearly full wine glass and downed it in a single gulp. “But I do this for the good of the many, not the few.”

  Magnus snapped his fingers, and Lachrymal’s Heart appeared, suspended in the air over the table. He reached out and touched a single finger to the brilliant emerald. “Epsilon, forty-two, seven, three, nine, Delta.”

  With those words, the Heart shuddered, and a chime rang through the dining room. A crack split the gemstone, which was followed by even more cracks as it shattered into a thousand pieces. They rained down to the table but disappeared before they touched the wood. We all stood and stared transfixed at where the Heart once resided.

  In its place was a girl.

  She had deeply tanned skin, a thin delicate face, and curly brown hair that stopped at her round chin. Her glazed eyes were green, the exact shade as Lachrymal’s Heart. She wore a plain gray dress that stopped at her calves.

  The girl hung in the air for a second before dropping to the table, folding her legs under her as she rested on her heels. After a time, she lifted her head and stared around the room, her jaw clenching and unclenching as she worked it around, trying to find a way to speak.

  “Ah, there we go. I’m not used to this vessel yet,” she said, her voice deeper than I was expecting from such a small woman.

  She rose and climbed down off the table before walking over to Adam. “Master Bell, it has been too long,” she said, bowing.

  “Edna? Since when do you have an avatar?”

  “I’ve had this form since the very beginning; there was just never a need to use it before. But it was the easiest option to converse with all of you.”

  “Who is she?” I asked as I got out my chair, letting go of Raven and Eris in the process.

  Edna turned to me, a small, very sad smile on her face. “Hello again, Sampson Acre. My name is Edna, but you would know me better as Ouroboros. I am the governing A.I. for this world.”

  Chapter 31 - Fallen

  I marched around the banquet table and slapped Edna across the face.

  She stumbled back from the force but remained standing, a small reddening welt rising where I’d struck her. Her green eyes wide, she raised a hand to her cheek, wincing as her fingers brushed her tanned skin.

  “That hurt,” she said, her mouth agape.

  “You know what that’s for.”

  Edna nodded, dropping her hand. “I assume that settles accounts with us.”

  I heaved a sigh, already tired of the headache that wasn’t quite yet here, but I knew was coming. “Yeah, we’re good now.”

  “Sam, what the hell? Why’d you slap my A.I.?” Adam asked, staring at me like I’d lost my mind.

  “We had business to settle. It’s settled. Let’s move on.”

  I went back to my chair as Edna shook her head and stood by Adam as we all returned to our seats.

  “Now that Edna is here, we can continue,” Magnus said.

  “I’m afraid you’re mistaken, Mister Parks. You used a loophole in my programming last time to initiate the purge, and it has since been corrected. You will not be able to repeat the actions of the past.”

  Magnus sighed, tugging at the hairs on his chin. “Why must everything be so complicated?” he muttered before he looked up at Edna. “You refuse to help me?”

  “I refuse to help you kill any more innocents.”

  “That’s unfortunate.”

  “Shit!” Adam cursed as he turned to me. “Sam, take Eris and get away!”

  What? I rose from my chair just as Magnus snapped his fingers, freezing me in place. Freezing all of us in place.

  “Magnus, what the hell?” I asked, moving my neck to face him. “What are you doing?”

  He looked up at me, his eyes haunted and pained; they must have weighed a thousand pounds for how heavy they looked in that moment. “Truly, I am sorry. You’ll never understand how much I wish I didn’t have to do this.”

  “Do what?”

  “I was counting on us being able to resolve our differences and work together on this, but even with the override, I’m back to where I was before, but I still don’t have full access. If Edna is unwilling or unable to assist me, then I must take alternate measures to achieve my goal. I’m sorry, Sam. But I need Eris.”

  “Why?” I shouted.

  “Because I need access to Edna’s root programming, but she’s blocked my access and since she won’t help, I need the codes.”

  “What does that have to do with Eris?”

  Magnus laid his palms flat on the table, thumbs curled around the edge. “Eris is the last of the original NPCs created when this world was built. She’s different than all of the others because she, and all the others of that time, were created by using a cloned version of Edna. Think of them like her children. As time went on, Edna started using the brain scans and personalities of the humans we introduced to create the NPCs. Eris is the only original left.”

  I struggled against my invisible prison but couldn’t move anything but my neck. I jerked my head around the room before my eyes landed on Aliria. “Use Aliria instead!”

  “Do you think I haven’t considered that?” he shouted, slamming his fist on the table. “Why do you think I brought her back in the first place? She’s incompatible now. My magic changed her code when it was introduced to her. I’ve already tried!”

  “And you! Are you just going to stand there while he takes your daughter?”

  Aliria couldn’t meet my gaze, her eyes fell to the ground as she hung her head. “I do not wish to die again.”

  I turned to Magnus. “Can you get the code without harming Eris?”

  After an eternity’s pause, he shook his head. “It would destroy her. I’m sorry, Sam. I’d give anything not to take her from you. I know what she means to you, but it’s the lives of all of us versus one girl. I will make that trade, so you don’t have to.

  “It’ll be quick, painless, like falling asleep. It won’t hurt her, I promise.”

  “I don’t give a damn about your promises, they mean nothing! I won’t let you fucking touch her!”

  “You don’t have a choice, I’m afraid.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” I snarled, and activated Aura of the Antimage.

  It dispersed off my skin and swirled around the table, shattering all of the magic that kept us frozen. As soon as I could move my body again, I pulled Eris to her feet and drew my sword.

  Magnus stared at me in shock, his eyes wide, mouth agape. “Antimagic? But how?” He looked over at Evelyn and cursed. “Him? You chose him?”

  “He’s as worthy as any I’ve found these many years. You won’t be able to hold us again.”

  Magnus sneered at her, kicking over his chair as he raised his hands, and ethereal green pentagrams appeared in his palm. As soon as they formed, they sputtered and died, fizzling out to nothing.

  “Aliria,” he barked.

  She nodded and stepped onto the table, letting her chitin flow over her pale skin as two wicked swords appeared in her hands. “I’m afraid I must restrain you, my little fly.”

  Eris stared down her mother, her emotions so overwhelming that she was drowning in them. “You were going to let him kill me?”

  “It’s the only way for us to survive. I wish it weren’t so, but it has to be this way.”

  I raised my sword, ready to charge her, but Adam grabbed my arm tight. “It’s time to run, not time to fight. We need to get away before Nick’s magic returns.”

  Adam tossed two crystals at the stone floor, and they shattered, reveling his lava golem and a handful of bane wolves. “They’ll cover us, but we have to go now!”

  “Do as he says, Sam,” Evelyn said, drawing her twin blades. “Getting Eris to safety is the mission. We can fight later.”

  I nodded at them as Aliria cut
one of Adam’s bane wolves in half. Blood gushed from the split wolf before it dissolved in swirling shadow. The five of us took off towards the dining hall door as Adam’s summons bought us a few moments.

  “This house is a fucking maze, which way do we go?” I asked as the heavy wood door slammed shut behind me.

  Raven stepped to the left and motions at us. “Follow me. I know the way.”

  She took off around the corner as we all jogged to catch up. I held Eris’s hand in my left while Evelyn and Adam ran ahead of me.

  “We cleared out most, if not all of Nicholas’s guards on our way in,” Evelyn said, turning to me as we ran. “We should have an easy way out if you can take Eris and fly out of here when we get outside.”

  As we ran by a door, it flew open, and a man in heavy plate mail jumped out with his sword raised. I twisted, bringing my sword up as his came down. I caught it on the guard and grunted as I tightened my grip.

  I let go of Eris as I and the guard had our swords bound. “Protect her!”

  Adam grabbed Eris as I fought with the guard. I stepped forward and threw my weight into my blade, maneuvering both to the left near the ground.

  The guard’s blue eyes lit up as he tried to compensate and bring his sword back, but I had my opening. I hooked the top of my foot around his heel and tugged, taking his leg out from under him. His head smacked hard against the doorjamb as he fell back. before he could rise, I thrust my sword through the gap in his helmet, puncturing his carotid.

  His blood spilled around my sword as I pulled it free, his death rattle echoing in the empty room behind him.

  Adam still held Eris as I turned and was about to join them when the clink of armor and voices sounded down the hallway behind me. “Go, take her! I’ll cover us!”

  “What about you?” he asked, his eyebrows raised, lips pursed.

  “They don’t want me!” I shouted. “I’ll be fine.”

  “Sam,” Eris said, tugging on Adam’s iron grip.

  “Go, love. I’ll be right behind you,” I said before turning away from her and walking around the corner.

  Half a dozen men stood in the hallway, lambent torchlight reflected in their too bright armor. Give me Chitin Armor, Aspect.

  “Of course, knight.”

  It slithered over my skin, and I gripped my sword tightly as I activated Spider Limbs and Scorpion Tail.

  Chitin pooled heavily at my back, forming my new appendages as I met the first of the guards. The hallway was too narrow for them to surround me, and my jagged black scorpion tail made it dangerous for them to try.

  A few paled at the sight. A demon made manifest in front of them.

  I raised my sword as a tall guard came forward, a mace clutched in both hands. It was heavy as he swung; it displaced the air with a soft whistle as it barreled toward my head. With a thought, Chitin Shield formed to meet the challenge. As his mace rebounded off my shield, I whipped my sword in an arc, following the trajectory of the mace as it flew back. I angled my blade, and its edge parted the flesh at Mace’s wrist, severing the fine tendons that let him control his weapon.

  Mace dropped his mace and stumbled back, holding his dripping wrist. Blood welled through his fingers, and he groaned as his face scrunched in pain.

  I lunged to end his life, but a second guard stepped forward and caught the tip of my blackened steel on the flat of his dagger, deflecting my strike. In his right hand was a short sword that came for my face as Dagger riposted.

  Two of my limbs pulled me back as the blade licked the chitin by my cheek. I stepped back as my tail shot the tip of my stinger forward, its noxious poison trickling in a purple stream over the obsidian chitin. It punched through his steel chestplate hard enough that the tail lifted him into the air. Dagger choked as all the air was forced out of his lungs. He curled in on himself as he coughed, and blood splattered across the stone walls and floor.

  I retracted my tail as Dagger slumped over, his lifeless head cracking hard against the ground.

  “You son of a bitch!” another guard screamed as he leapt over the body of his comrade.

  While he hung in midair, I stepped to him and brought the left side of my spider limbs up sharply to meet him. The man impaled himself on my appendages, two of them lodged in the upper part of his chest plate, but the third landed high, just under the man’s eye as it pierced through his bone and into his brain.

  Two of the other guards slunk around and attempted to flank me, but I attacked with the remaining three limbs and my tail. I punctured their armor with just as much ease as the others, and they both died quick—if not painless—deaths.

  The final man was wiser than his dead friends and turned to run. His brains kicked in too late as I flung the suspended corpse of the guard at him. It hit his legs, and he hit the stone tile hard as the body pinned him to the ground.

  I stepped over the dead as the man tried to crawl for his sword that had slid from his hands when he took the nosedive. I nudged it with my foot as his fingertips brushed the leather handle, sending it skittering down the hall.

  The man looked up at me, his wide brown eyes panicked, shot through with fear.

  “Mercy!” he pleaded.

  “You’ll find none here,” I said as my sword ended his life.

  I wiped the blood from my blade, staring at the scorpion tail as it drifted into the corner of my eye before curling around my waist. For what Aliria tried to do, I have to admit they’re damned impressive.

  No sounds crept toward me from either end of the hallway, so I hastily pulled up my interface.

  Combat Results!

  7 Killed (Human): 10500 Exp!

  Total Exp Gained: 10500 Exp!

  Exp: 6800/6800

  Level Up!

  Level: 69

  3800/6900

  10 Stat Points Available!

  I paused at the notification, at the first life I’d taken today. I’ll make her pay for your death, Jasmine, I swear.

  With a thought, I closed the interface and let the Chitin Armor fade. My arachnid appendages wormed back under my skin, and I changed into my shadowsteel plate. You gave this armor and sword to me, Magnus. I’m going to use them to destroy you both.

  Magnus would never lay his hands on Eris. I would die first.

  I left the bloodied hallway and started working on finding my way back to the others. I encountered only minimal resistance as I wound through the sharp corridors. A few guards who engaged me met their end on my blade. I cut them down, not even bothering to use the chitin at my disposal.

  With a flick of my wrist, I cast their blood off the edge of my blade as they dropped to the floor. Though the guards told me one thing, that I was going in the wrong direction. Evelyn wouldn’t leave even a single guard alive, so I need to pick a different route.

  I took a right at the next hallway I came to and picked up my speed.

  It took another few minutes, but I eventually found my way to the stairs that led to the upper floors of the castle and the parapets. I took the stairs two at a time and burst through the doors as the sun hung low in the sky, burnt orange tinged the horizon as day began to fall to night.

  The others gathered around Raven, who’d already shifted and had Eris sitting atop her, staring at me, eyes wide with concern. I smiled at her as I approached but shook my head when she attempted to climb off Raven.

  “All right, let’s get moving! What are standing around for?”

  Evelyn walked across the ramparts to stand in front of me. She leaned up and flicked me on the nose. “Idiot,” she said, but there was no heat in her voice. “Do you expect us all to fit on the giant chicken?”

  “Ah,” I so eloquently replied as I stared over at Raven. Yeah, no way we all fit. Three is pushing it—four is out of the question.

  “Okay, Adam, take Eris and Raven and get out of here. Evelyn and I will work our way out.”

  “I’m not leaving you!” Eris shouted, hopping off Raven and sprinting the distance. “I won’t leave yo
u behind.”

  “We don’t have time to argue about this. We’ll be right behind you, I promise. Now go!”

  Eris hung her head, her large obsidian eyes downcast as she reached out and brushed the tip of my hand. I pulled her in close and held her for a moment. “I love you, but Evelyn and I can take care of ourselves. We’ll join you in a few hours, I promise.”

  Adam rushed between us and grabbed my shoulder. “As touching as this is, we’re out of time. Larry just died, and that bitch took out my wolves like they were nothing. Nick is coming, we have to go!”

  Eris and I broke apart, and I all but pushed her towards Raven. “Go!”

  She didn’t fight me and ran back to Raven, quickly climbing up her feathers.

  “You too, Adam.”

  He shook his head. “I’m not leaving without Evelyn.”

  I threw my hands up. “Then both of you go, I’ll stay.”

  “No!” the shouts of both Raven and Eris were deafening.

  I was about to reply when Evelyn tensed. “Doesn’t matter now. He’s here.”

  The large doors burst open as Magnus strolled through with Aliria in tow. They were only a couple hundred feet away, and we were on the cusp of running out of time.

  “Go, go, go!” I shouted and took off, but a firm hand grabbed mine and stopped me in my tracks.

  Evelyn’s golden eyes stared into mine as her hand wound around my wrist. “There’s no more time. Make sure James leaves, do you understand, Sam?”

  “What about you?”

  “I’m going to buy you time to escape.”

  I shook my head violently. “Hell, no. I’m not leaving you here, Magnus will kill you!”

  She gave me a small smile as she lifted onto her toes and pressed her lips to mine in a chaste kiss. “Yes, he will.”

  She stepped back, and my interface flared to life in front of me.

  Ability Share: Return to Zero

  Accept Y/N

  Yes.

  I waved away the screen as quickly as it appeared, not bothering to read what the ability did. “What’s this?”

  “A weapon. Use it when the time comes,” she said as she pulled away from me. In her hands was the knife Thrayl had given me. She’d stolen it from my belt. “I’m taking your knife. You won’t get it back.”