“Vin!”
“Gya!” He screamed, flailing about in a strange pile of plant refuse as he was ripped from his slumber. It took him a solid few seconds to remember where he was and he groaned, rubbing his aching head as it all came back to him. His minor headache was a huge improvement over the pounding migraine he’d gone to sleep with, but it was still far from pleasant.
“Shia, do you have to be so loud?” He muttered, looking up at the energetic elf. In stark contrast to how he felt, Shia looked like she’d just slept for an entire day and was practically vibrating with excitement. “Glad to see you’re feeling better.”
“It’s incredible Vin, they’re a hive mind! My master had theorized how a functioning society of people capable of communicating via thoughts would work, but he’d never managed to find one himself!”
“That’s lovely Shia, now if I could just get five more-”
“Somehow they can communicate with one another via their antennae, sending information back and forth nearly instantaneously. But they ‘speak’ primarily through the sharing of memories and experiences, so in the time it takes you or me to exchange a few sentences, they could have shared a detailed explanation of their entire day! It’s amazing!”
Realizing he wasn’t going to be allowed to sink back into the land of dreams, Vin sighed, sitting up and fixing the excited elf with a pointed look.
“I’ll admit that is very interesting. And it explains how we hear them in our heads. But what’s with… well, that?”
Vin gestured past Alka still standing guard out into the open tunnel toward one of the beings that was currently using a rock to scratch line after line into the tunnel wall, ever so slowly making its way down the seemingly endless tunnel. Glancing at the being, Shia’s face softened, and she seemed to calm down slightly.
“Ah… That’s the result of free will being given to a being who was never intended to have it.”
“What?” Vin asked, slowly getting to his feet and brushing the plant bits off him. “What do you mean?”
“Wow, where to even start,” Shia said, scrunching up her eyes like she was trying to remember something that had happened years ago. “The Rebel Queen gave me so many memories… It feels like I’ve lived in these tunnels for months, from even before the Great Reset.” Taking a deep breath, she nodded.
“These beings, which are called trogums by the way, are a rather interesting species. Like your world, they were the only intelligent beings on their own. At least that they were aware of. They never developed any sort of sailing technology, so they were constrained by the borders of their continent.”
“I guess that makes sense that a people who live entirely underground wouldn’t want to risk sailing the oceans,” Vin agreed, motioning for her to continue.
“The trogums live rather unique lives. Each of their settlements, or hives, is led by a single queen. These queens not only make all the decisions and lead without any oversight, they take rulership to an entirely new level. Their people… Well, it may be easier to explain it from a biological standpoint.”
“Trogums are actually hatched from a sort of large egg-sack looking thing. And the longer they are allowed to gestate before birth, the more developed they end up becoming. Their species essentially has three castes. The commons, the elites, and the queens.”
“I’m going to take a wild guess and say the commons are the weirdos we’ve been running into, and the elites are the guards?” Vin ventured.
“Exactly. What makes their society so strange, is that the common caste… Well, they’re purposefully ‘hatched’ before they’re quite fully developed. From birth, they fall under the control of the current queen, who is only capable of such an incredible feat due to her innate mental strength and high-level class. She then uses them like one massive, living tool to see to all the menial tasks required to keep the rest of the hive functioning.”
As soon as the words ‘high-level class’ left her mouth, Vin knew exactly where she was going with this. “So when the Great Reset hit…”
“That giant, living tool, which actually consisted of tens of thousands of not fully developed trogums, suddenly broke out from under the queen’s control, awaking from what had essentially been a dream their entire lives.”
“Dear God…” Vin muttered, looking at the trogum currently a few feet further down the tunnel, still carving perfectly identical line after line into the wall with its rock. “I guess that explains the weird actions… But why the names?”
“These people didn’t even have a concept of identity before the Great Reset,” Shia explained, looking sadly upon the line carving trogum as though the sight broke her heart. “No concept of ‘me’ or ‘you’ or even ‘self.’ After the initial chaos, of those that survived the first thing many of them did was latch onto something that would give them both a sense of identity and a purpose. They’d never had their own goals before, or even a name, which is why they find such importance in having both now.”
“That explains The One That Paints In Red’s outburst when I shortened their name…” Vin stood there silently, watching the trogum continue carving away at the tunnel wall as if nothing else in the world mattered. “They don’t care that they’re not really doing anything?”
“As far as they’re concerned, they didn’t even exist before the queen lost control over them,” Shia explained. “They lived the same lives, shared the same thoughts... They were one singular entity, until all of a sudden one day, they weren’t. Their seemingly random chosen action is something like a life raft they’ve latched onto, it’s how they make sense of being them, after never having had to worry about it before.”
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They stood in silence for a minute, listening to the sound of dripping water from the ceiling and the rough, scratching of a rock on the tunnel wall.
“So the elites… Like Guardian and the other one. They’re more like you and I?”
“For the most part, if not quite as intelligent,” Shia nodded. “They’re still connected to the queen’s hive mind and would give their lives for hers in a heartbeat, but they are grown enough to have their own sense of identity and their own lives. Most of the elites ended up perishing during the civil war, and of those that remain the majority are with the True Queen.”
“Wait, yeah, what the hell is up with that?” Vin asked, turning back to the elf. “How can there even be two queens in the first place if only one rules the hive?”
“The True Queen is growing old…” Shia frowned, rubbing her head like she was struggling to remember something. “…she was training the Rebel Queen to take over for her… Like I said, controlling the castes requires a pretty high level. But the Rebel Queen was still pretty early on in her training when the Great Reset hit.”
“And suddenly, you’ve got two equally powerful queens, neither one of which is strong enough to maintain the hive mind,” Vin concluded, the pieces falling into place. “I guess that explains the conflict. So what, each grabbed control of what they could and fought it out, and the Rebel Queen was forced to flee?”
“No…” Shia groaned, scrunching up her face. “For some reason memories containing the True Queen feel harder for me to access… As if the True Queen damaged them in some way when the Rebel Queen fled. From what I can gather, after losing all her power, the True Queen asked the Rebel Queen to work with her… Despite their low levels, working together, they would have been able to use their natural mental strength to maintain at least a fraction of the hive mind. But the Rebel Queen didn’t want to.”
“For the first time, after witnessing the common caste wake from their joint dream and come alive, the Rebel Queen realized what they’d been doing. She no longer viewed the common caste of trogums as a tool to be used for the betterment of the hive, and she refused to help the True Queen enslave them again.”
“I bet that went over well,” Alka snorted, finally chiming in as she continued to watch the scratching trogum in the tunnel outside.
“It went pretty much as you’d expect,” Shia sighed. “Once she realized the Rebel Queen wasn’t willing to help, the True Queen turned on her in an instant. The Rebel Queen was forced to use her diminished power to drive part of the hive into chaos, giving herself a chance to escape. A portion of the elites ended up siding with her, and many of them gave up their lives in the ensuing battle while the rest corralled the panicking common caste to follow. They actually do have an underground city and everything that they were forced to flee, these tunnels are just a refuge to hide out in.”
“That’s one hell of a story,” Vin said, trying to even wrap his mind around what the Rebel Queen had gone through. “Where does the divine warrior come in?”
“The queens have had something of a shaky truce for the past few months,” Shia explained. “The Rebel Queen does not wish to force her people to fight, and the True Queen is not willing to lose any more of her people than she already has. From what I can gather from these memories, I think she's too old to produce more trogums in any reasonable number. Because neither queen was willing to move on the other, things have been tense, but stable. Until a couple of days ago.”
“It seems like the divine warrior stumbled upon the True Queen’s hive somehow, and ever since he has been working with the True Queen to track down and slaughter as many of the Rebel Queen’s people as he can. Based on what I was shown, this current series of tunnels is the third one they’ve fled to in as many days. He continues to find them, presumably thanks to the True Queen somehow, and all the Rebel Queen can do each time is flee to a different portion of their fragment as he has his hands full killing.”
“So, all we need to do is wait, and he’ll come to us?” Alka asked, finally turning toward the elf and flashing her a grin. “Sounds like we caught a break for once!”
“Perhaps…” Shia frowned. “The memories I have of the warrior are rough at best, as if they were passed from trogum to trogum before reaching the queen. The only thing each memory maintains crystal clarity of is the man’s glowing, golden sword. It seems all who have faced him have fallen to that golden blade, and none of the elites that have attacked him have ever managed to leave even a scratch on him.”
“I don’t like the sound of that,” Vin said, even as Alka’s grin began widening at the challenge. “Those two guards were fast. Even if they sacrificed their strength to obtain such speed, if the other elites are built the same, they should have still been able to inflict some damage on the man.”
“It gets weirder,” Shia said, scratching her head. “I can’t make out the exact words from the fragments of memory the queen showed me, but it seems the divine warrior is a bit… eccentric. Apparently, he has a whole speech he gives before every battle, and he refuses to attack anyone until he finishes his speech. Even if they don’t remember the words, the Rebel Queen is certain that the speech he gives is identical every time he shows up.”
“He doesn’t do anything but defend until he’s done talking?” Alka asked, raising an eyebrow at the odd behavior.
“Even weirder. He doesn’t draw his sword until he’s done with his speech. Yet somehow, he still managed to evade taking any damage.”
“That has to be part of his vow somehow,” Vin concluded, his heart racing at the realization they may have just stumbled upon the divine warrior’s weakness. “It’s weird, but Madam Trebella also mentioned something about him going on about declaring them all evil abominations before he attacked. If he has to give a speech before he can unleash his sword, that’s our chance to strike.”
“Can’t say I’m a huge fan of striking down a man before he’s even drawn his sword, but this guy’s killed enough people that I won’t object,” Alka grunted.
“So what’s the plan? Just throw everything we have at him while he’s monologuing?” Shia asked.
“Unless we can set up some sort of trap ahead of time,” Vin said, suddenly wishing they had Alice there with them. No doubt the Trapper would have had a fantastic idea of how to get the drop on him.
“Well, what if-”
Before Shia could offer up whatever her plan was, there was a loud clatter from out in the tunnel. The three of them turned to see the trogum that had been etching line after line into the wall standing there, shaking slightly, his rock on the ground. Before Vin could offer to grab it and hand it back to the being, it suddenly began screaming.
Turning, the trogum sprinted off down the tunnel, looking like it was fleeing for its life from some sort of invisible foe. That might not have been that far off, as Vin quickly realized he could feel the tunnel floor vibrating beneath his feet. Moments later, trogum after trogum sprinted past the entrance to their small room, all of them screaming in unison as they fled down the tunnel. Clearly Shia recognized what was going on from one of her new memories as the elf’s face paled.
“The Rebel Queen is ordering everyone to flee into the next set of tunnels,” she explained, her grip tightening on her staff as she fixed them with a grave look.
“The divine warrior is coming.”
live through it. The good news is Vin and the team may have stumbled onto the divine warrior's weakness. The bad news is they're fresh out of time to properly use it. Guess we'll have to wait until next week to see how the fight goes!
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