“I seek shelter and story,” he said.

Drusk didn’t know where to look when addressing the insectile race. Their eyes, black oblongs with no irises, were nearly as long as their triangular heads. They didn’t move or blink. Their mouths were offset by mandibles, and while they had evolved to speak the common tongue, the structure didn’t lend itself to any expressions of joy, fear, or anger.

Still, Drusk sensed confusion in the two guards, who turned their heads toward each other, conversing in their language of buzzes, clicks, and pheromones.

“Have you done something to deserve the Balancers’ attention?” Drusk asked. He didn’t enjoy asking the question, or the threat it implied, but it had been a long night.

“Not that we are aware of, Balancer,” the larger guard said. “Please forgive our reaction. You are more than welcome to stay, and if we hurry, you can hear some of the princess’ tale this night.” He spoke the common tongue better than Drusk had ever heard from their kind with only the slightest buzz underlying its words.

Imena rounded a corner inside the hive and stood in a pool of yellow wisp light. She mouthed, “What are you doing?” and beckoned him with a wave. When he mouthed the same question to her, she slipped between the two guards to stand at his side. He gave her a questioning look, but she merely shrugged.

Two steps ahead, he thought, try a dozen.

“Should I ask her to wait outside?” Drusk asked, angling his head toward Onyx.

“I don’t...that is to say…” The guard looked to his companion, a female unless Drusk was mistaken. The kilkinteth were more than welcome to reorganize their social structure any way they saw fit, but Drusk had never imagined the princesses engaged in guard duty. Unless she wasn’t a princess. She had the bristly hairs of a female across her head and between the segmented shell that covered the rest of her body. The hard shell was a trait reserved for males. Drusk had never seen anything like it.

She rubbed one set of arms together to produce a high note of anxiety.

That reaction to nightwings was one thing Drusk was determined to change. Already he had bred several generations, each smarter than the last. The Speakers and other Balancers wouldn’t approve, but Drusk had long since stopped concerning himself with their uneasy feelings.

“Make a decision soon either way,” Drusk snarled. “Onyx is a bit of a glutton, and seeing as she’s just dined on what’s left of a werewolf, she’s starting to get heavy.”

Drusk sent a visual image to the bird of a much fatter Onyx weighing down his arm. She, in turn, sent him an image of her feeding upon what looked like his dead body. Not one to be outdone, Drusk offered her a picturesque cottage interior, snow falling lazily outside the windows while a fire burned in a hearth. A table was filled with festive food and drinks. Centermost on the table, Onyx had been roasted to a golden brown, steam rising from her flesh as Drusk began to carve with a great smile on his face.

“Be nice,” Imena said in a low voice, responding to his words rather than the private conversation between him and Onyx.

“This is me being nice,” he said in return, offering her what he knew would be a menacing smile.

The kilkinteth stared at him, obviously unsure what to think about his last comment. Drusk turned his predator’s smile on the little bug, which blanched, fluttering its wings and exuding pheromones full of panic and worry. Pheromones leaked from the kilkinteth. She smelled like strong black coffee, of fear, and it set his heart racing.

Imena’s words coupled with the pheromones struck him like a slap. Guilt swarmed within him like a plague of rats. They gnawed at him with sharp teeth, so Drusk countered with anger. The familiar emotion swept through him like a cleansing fire.

The druí Tenders said anger was one of Unmaker’s fingers with which he gripped men’s hearts. It wasn’t the whole truth. Anger was a natural emotion, the same as joy or sorrow. Excessive anger, on the other hand, would draw Krachnis’ attention. Allow enough of Unmaker’s fingers to wrap around you, and he could reach into your mind, tempting you to darker deeds. Theologians argued whether men were truly responsible for their actions at that point.

Drusk found all the religious nonsense to be convenient excuses for bad behavior. It was easier to blame an unseen force than to face the monsters that lurked within. By their reasoning, a father who beat his children didn’t bear any more responsibility for his actions than a sick child with a runny nose.

A few nearby kilkinteth turned in their direction, drawn out of side rooms by the sudden rush of pheromones. Drusk noted with increasing curiosity that there were several more females among them. When the guard felt its fellows’ eyes on him, she stilled her wings, reined in her pheromones, and motioned for Drusk to enter the hive. She remained at her post, and the male guard accompanied them.

“You can call me Anders,” the guard said. “I’ve never heard that curse you used. By the abyss?”

Drusk muttered the curse once more beneath his breath. He had picked that one up in the Halicite caverns. He’d have to stop using it, lest it remind certain parties where he had been the past decade. At his side, Imena shook her head.

“Is it truly safe?” Anders asked, pointing to Onyx with his spear without turning around. It was disconcerting to know the guard could see everything around him no matter which way he faced, his field of vision a sphere broken only by his own body.

Drusk stared blankly at the kilkinteth, biting back a less than pleasant response.

“It must be, else why would you bring it inside?” Anders decided.

As they entered the hive, another guard arrived to take Anders’ place outside. Drusk could faintly smell the pheromones which had summoned the new guard. Only another Balancer would be able to sense the pheromones. Not even the Speakers knew that particular secret.

“You seem unusually flustered for a kilkinteth,” Drusk said.

“Severia is changing, and we change with it,” Anders said, motioning for Drusk to peer into one of the first rooms they passed.

It was a large chamber, an auditorium of some sort, where Drusk saw something he’d never expected in a kilkinteth hive–a chalkboard on one wall. Though the room was empty, simple diagrams of various vegetables and farming equipment covered the chalkboard. Drusk could almost imagine kilkinteth listening to a dusty-colored teacher, exuding pheromones which would force the students to pay attention.

Aside from the classroom, the hive looked similar to others. Most of the halls which branched off the main one were much too small to accommodate his size. A mountain hob might barely fit through the tunnel. Then again, the hive was hardly a permanent structure. In the same way hobs were constantly redesigning the stone of their dens, the kilkinteth could quickly expand, lengthen, widen, narrow, honeycomb, striate, bubble, and disassemble their hives.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

They traveled leisurely down the central hallway and passed guards stationed at doors with heavy stones rigged above them, ready to drop at any sign of danger. All the bugs they passed spoke the common tongue, greeting them in an unexpected display of hospitality.

Like all large cities, a hive never slept. Despite the late hour, there was an ever-present buzz of wings echoing from side chambers and reverberating in the very walls. Workers flew past his shoulder with quick greetings and bobs of the head. Drusk knew most of the kilkinteth he encountered were going out of their way to catch a glimpse of him. As odd as they were to him, he was equally fantastical to them. Since they only lived a few months or a year at most, none of these kilkinteth had ever seen a Balancer and probably never would again.

Despite their long-held status as being lesser than other races, they still tried to accommodate the occasional humanoid visitor. Anyone who imagined a kilkinteth hive to mirror the hexagonal patterns of lesser bees and wasps would be partially correct. Like any race, the kilkinteth could be nostalgic, so the first few chambers he passed had six-sided entrance holes--one at waist height and another at eye level. The rooms glowed with kilkinteth honey and promised a sticky welcome for any who ventured in. Though not as sweet as the honey produced by bees, kilkinteth honey had a richness to it, and they were always experimenting with ways to produce new variants.

“How old do you think he is?” Imena whispered.

Drusk studied Anders’ shell. It was indented and worn in places. The insect had seen battle. Still, it shone with a glossy sheen that spoke of youth.

“I’d wager you’re a few months out of your larval stage,” Drusk said.

“Nearly three years,” Anders countered. “As I said, we change.”

“Drastically,” Drusk said, biting back another of the burrower curses he had grown so fond of. “It’s been some years since I last visited a hive, but I see what can only be females in various roles. Are there so many princesses in your hive and have they grown so tired of collecting stories that they would rather harvest honey or guard a hallway?”

“It has been this way since I was a larva. Well, really, since before then,” Anders said. He had been speaking loudly to be heard over the background buzz of the hive, but his voice was much lower, obviously uncomfortable.

Before Drusk could press the issue, Imena whispered in his ear again, “Ask him about their skill with the common tongue.”

It was often like this when they walked among other races. One moment she was as poised as a queen, the next she was one of the deadliest women in the Radiance. Take her to a hob den, wodenlang grove, or kilkinteth hive, and she became withdrawn and shy, barely reining in enough excitement and wonder for a village’s worth of children on a festival day. With ants in their pants. And hair aflame.

“I’ve never heard so many of your kind speaking the common tongue,” Drusk said, changing the topic. “Is it something unique to your hive?”

“I really shouldn’t say anything without the queen’s permission,” Anders said. He silently communicated with pheromones. They smelled like burnt bread and drew a kilkinteth from a doorway near Drusk’s head. After a few words, the messenger sped away.

The pheromones were the kilkinteth’s most closely guarded secret. The Balancers had learned of it long ago and had watched the kilkinteth’s growth closely. When the industrious insects reached a level of equilibrium with nature and the other races, the Balancers agreed amongst themselves to keep the secret and would continue to do so unless it became a weapon. Any hive that used the pheromones to unbalance the world around them would be warned to stop. If they didn’t, they would be swiftly destroyed.

The messenger returned and spoke a few words. Before leaving, it paused for a moment to consider Drusk with its too-large eyes. He pointedly ignored the creature until it had satisfied its curiosity and departed.

“Her majesty has heard my inquiry and given permission,” Anders said. For the first time, he seemed happy, unconsciously rubbing two of his arms together. “The kilkinteth will soon be granted inclusion to the council of elder races.”

That simple but momentous statement explained all the oddities. The kilkinteth had struggled for so long to maintain their unique societal structure while making small concessions to the council, which always asked for more and made no promises about adding a kilkinteth seat to the ruling body. It also explained why Anders had been so flustered. It must have been nerve wracking for a simple guard to choose his words so carefully lest he give away any hint of such a large secret.

“That’s wonderful,” Imena said.

“The webfooted will be disappointed,” Drusk said, then grunted as Imena’s elbow slammed into his side. Webfooted, or swamp hobs, considered kilkinteth to be a delicacy. Before the insects had gained sentience, that hadn’t been a problem. But when the kilkinteth had become a lesser race, officially protected by the Radiance and its laws though unable to participate in its system of government, the webfooted had continued to hunt their favorite snack or had employed others to do so. There had even been rumors of a hive queen who birthed mindless drones for an illicit supply.

“Are you alright?” Anders asked, wobbling his head around as if searching for the sign of Drusk’s sudden discomfort. Even Onyx peered at him, sending a quick burst of concern. He massaged the space between two ribs with his free hand. At his side, Imena took in their surroundings with a slight smile.

“I might have overexerted myself while hunting earlier,” Drusk explained. “So the female guards and workers, that classroom we passed, your fluency in the common tongue--even your longer lifespan were all changes to appease the council?” Imena’s questions had been astute, replacing Drusk’s earlier anger and guilt with a much healthier curiosity.

Before Anders could respond, a story reached them from the room ahead. Though it was a kilkinteth speaking, the storyteller altered her voice with such skill, one could believe several creatures spoke instead of a single being.

“‘As the eldest of races, is it not our duty to guide the others?’ Lan-tenth asked.” The character’s voice was high and urgent.

“‘They are too susceptible to Earthshaker’s influence,’ Bell-third said, rattling her hairy head.” The storyteller dropped to a low octave and spoke slowly, imbuing the words with patient wisdom.

“‘Which is exactly why we must help them to overcome their own limitations,’ Lan-tenth demanded. Only a few of the assembled grocklins chittered agreement.

“‘No, better would be to allow them to grow and mature naturally,’ Grin-first piped up. The eldest of the skygazers, his voice carried great weight.”

Anders motioned them forward. “Please enter,” he said, speaking in a hushed voice.

Imena was quietly clapping her hands like the little girl she must once have been. She slipped around the corner while Drusk sighed. Stories were all well and good, but the Balancer preferred tactical information or reports of monsters loose in the land. Things that mattered in his life. Things he could track and hunt. But Imena thrilled at all kinds of stories, often riding her dreshen with a book held in one hand and the reins in the other. So Drusk tolerated the stories because doing so meant he could watch Imena enjoy them.

The room he entered was smaller than he had anticipated and glowed with soft white wisp lights. Kilkinteth usually told their stories in a kind of auditorium with seats for humanoid visitors. He had to duck his head under the doorway and had expected the ceiling to rise up further than it did on the other side. Instead, he remained bent over, trailing a hand across the ceiling to help balance himself as he shuffled in an awkward squat to where Imena sat against the wall. Onyx, meanwhile, glided to the floor and hopped her way over.

Though the kilkinteth had bred females for jobs long reserved for males, Drusk was happy to see the storyteller was a princess. As a Balancer, he preferred the world to change slowly, and the kilkinteth were prone to the opposite. The princess’ audience therefore rankled him.

They were kilkinteth children. Like all insects, the kilkinteth were born in a larval state and slowly changed into fully grown adults, minus a molting or two. But the group gathered before the princess were half the size a post-larval kilkinteth should be. Even the tallest among them would have to peer upwards to look Onyx in the eyes, and she had been bred small among nightwings. It seemed the kilkinteth were slowing their own growth cycles in order to more closely resemble other races.

Drusk took in the kilkinteth children, knowing they were doing the same without having to turn their heads away from the princess who had paused in her storytelling. The princess’ markings were different from all the other kilkinteth. She lacked a hard shell, her body covered in bristley red and orange hairs with a few thin black stripes around her torso. With no more than a nod to acknowledge their entrance, she continued her story.