Chapter Text
I have been born twice.
The first time, I emerged from my shell into the world. I blinked, and looked up to see my mother staring back at me, and my three sisters.
My claws outstretched. I felt myself picked up, but life was still so new to me that I didn’t know by whom. My chitin stretched, and I felt myself crack and bend under the weight of existence.
As we grew, memories began to form. My identity stayed with me. My mother… I knew her by sight and by scent. My sisters, the famed warriors of our nest. Our village.
I was not like them. Not as big, not as strong. I could tell they didn’t resent me for it, but I could not say the same for myself. Still, they were my sisters, and I loved them as they loved me.
Yet still, it was hard to grow up in their shadow, and they cast a very big one. When we would travel through the village, I would skulk about behind them, feeling even smaller than I was. They would take on mantises our age and trounce them easily, sending them scurrying back to their own parents, if they made it away alive. I couldn’t risk doing the same, lest our mother lose her son.
That was about the time Mother began taking us out of the village to show us our surroundings. She showed us the nearby creatures, these small… things. They looked like the mushrooms that perforated our homes, but with faces and limbs. Creatures that ballooned when you got near them and made these strange clicking noises. She told us they were not to be harmed… “worthy hunters seek worthy prey” she had said. It was ingrained into us at an early age the code of honor, how we sought ourselves to be strong and fight others who were strong. That others proved themselves through feats, not cowardice.
As we got older, my sisters got stronger and bigger. I did as well, but to a lesser degree than them. Our mother grew older… and older. Her chitin began to crack, and her claws softened.
Soon, we came back to our nest, and…
The funeral was brief. Quiet. As me and my sisters paid our final respects, they knew the day was upon them to take our mother’s spot and lead our village. I was technically included in that, too, but…
Being smaller and weaker… a bitterness was left in me. It was safe, as long as I starved it.
It wasn’t long after when that blasted king arrived. Of course we refused his call, yet those feeble-minded creatures above us agreed to follow him. It seemed for a brief, tense moment war may break out between his narrow followers and us, but my sisters negotiated a peace, and we agreed to keep those beasts below us at bay if we were left to be.
This arrangement worked for quite a while… and then it began to spread.
We didn’t notice it at first, because we resisted it. But we could hear its call… a bright, shining light. Brighter than anything, even lumaflies. It spoke to us, calling us forth. But we held back, we refused to follow. Our minds were sharp, and we suppressed our dreams.
The change was more noticeable in the creatures above us. They became more lumbering, more mindless. They no longer chittered about each other anymore or acted intelligently. Many of them attacked us mindlessly when before they had scurried away, even as we effortlessly cut them down. The round ones sprayed a noxious, orange substance, one that burned and hissed on our chitin.
We retreated to our nest, and for a long time down there, we stayed. We waited for the events above us to play out, and for this plague to leave us. All the while our village grew, and we kept the peace with Hallownest as we fought their demons for them.
In the end, we proved we were better. But the bitterness in me found a way to feed, snipping scraps of food from the feelings I swallowed into my gut. Watching my sisters take their natural born leadership as I… I stuck to the sides.
The plague eventually dissipated, through what means we did not know. We had hoped the Pale King above us had found a way to quell it, though we did not approach to ask. Why would we?
The day came where I found a mate, though I hardly remember her face or her name now. I had a child… a small daughter. I loved her more than life itself, as she grew as I once had. I knew, or at least thought, she would not be the last, but she would be the first, and I was immensely proud.
Until… until that day. That day she returned and she found me. She told me about her lover… that blasted knight .
A bug from Hallownest.
To say we argued would be an understatement. She left in a rage, and I did not follow, my anger stinging my spirit and the words I had spewed still lingering in the air.
Time passed, and I began to worry when she did not return. My instincts told me to go out and look for her, but my wounded pride did not allow me. My sisters worried as well, even though they had shared my sentiment. Eventually, though, I pushed past it and left our village. I may have been meek by my sisters, but out here I was in my element.
It felt… good. Powerful. I swung and I slashed, I chopped down everything in my path. Everything was prey. I could hear my mother’s voice in my head, telling me to only fight what was worthy prey. I obeyed it… but it got easier and easier to push away as I looked for my daughter.
Eventually, I caught her scent and began to follow it. I had already imagined the ways she would apologize. She would abandon that loathsome creature and return to the village with—
…Then I saw it. The thorn bushes, the grove. Her… her…
I buried her there. In me I felt something break. I cried out and I carved at the very earth itself, demanding an answer for what had happened. My mind tore itself apart trying to comprehend the reality I was now living in…
And then I understood. That knight. The Pale King’s lackey. It must have killed her. It must have betrayed her. It was all a trick to steal our village out from under us, and when things went awry, it killed her without a second thought!
My grief and my insanity transmuted into rage and hatred. I willed my soul out into the world, into the creatures of the kingdom around me. I demanded retribution, I sang out my fury into the very plants and stone around me until my energy was gone and I collapsed into a fitful coma.
That… was when it appeared to me again. The plague. Promising power. Promising revenge. Promising to find me my compensation.
I heard my mother’s voice, warning me not to trust it, but I shoved it down. Smothered it until I heard it no more, then rushed to it.
That was the second time I was born.
When I awoke, I knew immediately I was different. I stood, and I found I was now big…! Bigger than even my sisters! Stronger and faster…!
My mother’s voice did not return as I slaughtered every puny creature in Hallownest as I made my way back to my village. I attacked until the remains were unrecognizable; no creature in this place I came across would leave my presence without feeling a fraction of my pain.
By the time I finally made it back to my village, my transformation and its cause were all too plain to see. My sisters were… horrified. I tried to tell them, tried to explain what they had done, how this was our revenge manifested.
But they wouldn’t listen! All they could focus on was me and my new appearance, my eyes which now pulsed orange! They exiled me and forced me from my own home, simply for having the courage to take what was mine!
Instinct brought me back here. Back… where my sweet daughter lies in the ground…
I can feel it taking my mind now. But this is for the best. Once my pitiful bonds are dissolved, it will guide me through these gardens. Even now, more of my kind who see what I see join me.
And this is my last decree, before I surrender to my new strength.
We will find the Pale One in this place and we will slaughter it and whatever pathetic, groveling maggots of Hallownest remain with it. I can smell it, and I will slash at it until I no longer can. Until only shreds of flesh and root lie at my feet, until the screams of my daughter in this echoed chamber are replaced with that monster’s!
Then we will return to my village. My weak sisters will fall, and the plague will bring them back as my followers, and I will lead them until we have torn that city to its last stone. Until I am sure every last of his knights is stuck to a wall on a claw, and I have eaten their hearts in retribution for shattering mine.
And when I find the Pale King… I will make him suffer as I have suffered. His children, wherever they may be and however many he may have, will scream for their father’s crimes, just as mine screamed for none! And he will know pain as I have known pain, when I cast him to the bottom of his palace, where the remains of his body will…!
Will… W-Will…
I…! I will… I will…
I… hate…