Nomada was dizzy, her feet swelled, her fist was bruised and cut, but worst of all, she was unsatisfied. Mellifera was going to save this asshole, and he wouldn't get the retribution that he deserved. She was filled with frustration.

She tried to look at his bruised face to feel some sense of pleasure, but her vision was blurred with tears as they moved like the wind from tunnel to tunnel. There was an immense suction force pulling her hair towards Mellifera's back, but Mellifera's natural strength resisted it. They kept moving forwards somehow. What Mellifera was running from, Nomada had no idea.

Her eyes cleared as they left the tunnels. They came to another room full of silk. The room was large but low, seemingly able to fit hundreds of people. However, it was empty. Not being lit by the Needle like the main hall, it felt like Nomada had just gone from midday to dusk.

Mellifera dropped Nomada and the boy who called himself Fila Fall to the ground. Mellifera's face was still covered by her exoskeleton, but her attention was clearly focused on the boy lying on the ground. She stared at him for many silent moments, but it was hard to tell what she was thinking as the exoskeleton made her eyes look like that of an abyss, unfeeling and dark. It was hard to tell what she was thinking, even with her regular eyes. She was ever the politician.

"Who are you?" Mellifera asked.

"Fila," the boy responded.

"From which family?"

Fila looked at Nomada briefly before saying, "Fall." He raised his arms as if to prepare for a punch or kick. Nomada snorted. That was not Mellifera's style. She did not need to punch or kick to hurt. Her words were enough.

"A Fall you say."

Mellifera lowered her face plate and bored her eyes into his. She shifted her gaze to his hands and asked, "And the glove?"

The boy peered out from his raised arms, seemingly surprised that he was not attacked.

"My mother's," he said.

Mellifera smiled. Nomada could barely contain her excitement. Mellifera never smiled. She must have figured out that the boy was a deceiver like Nomada originally did. Mellifera only said that she wanted to save the boy's life, not the reason why. Nomada wondered what Mellifera had in store for the boy. An unarmored boy like him putting a Red's life to threat is a great crime that Mellifera could not ignore.

"My flesh and blood!" She pulled the boy up and embraced him. Nomada was dumbfounded. Mellifera did not embrace. Nomada herself could count on one hand the number of times she had been hugged by Mellifera. Actually, on one finger.

"The Falls still live!" Mellifera exclaimed, spinning the boy in the air. The boy seemed deeply uncomfortable in the hug. "The Falls still live!"

"The exoskeleton... You're squeezing me to death."

Mellifera let him go. "Ah, my apologies."

Nomada could take no more of this.

"Your apologies?? This boy tried to kill us. In fact, he tried to kill me. Twice. And you apologize? This boy is clearly lying about his ancestry so that he doesn't come to harm. He knows we are of the Apis and would not harm a Fall. The Falls are meant to be noble, gallant, the best of us. He is not a Fall. He is only interested--"

"Nomada," Mellifera snapped coldly, "You forget yourself. This boy is the son of the Queen and is to be treated as such. Look at the boy's eyes for Poda's sake, we have the same eyes. The same eyes that his mother had, and his mother's mother, and probably the first Queen of Nitich herself. I would recognize as Fall even if I was half-blind. This boy is Ceratina's son."

"You're a Fall?" Fila asked.

"A former one," Mellifera said, "Now I'm an Apis, like your second-cousin over there." She pointed her head at Nomada. "I raised your mother as her aunt, as tradition demands. Is your mother..."

"She's dead," Fila said curtly.

Mellifera looked to the ground. "I see. Well we already suspected as much." Mellifera smiled softly. She then laughed, "But the Falls still live! We must tell the other families, we must tell everyone. With this Nitich can be rewoven once more. We need to get out of here at once and return south to The Hives."

"With all due respect," Fila said, "I'm not here to lead your people or anything like that. I only came here to get to the Needle and get my exoskeleton."

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Mellifera began to pace around the room, "We must first tell the Blattodea, the Odonata, The Reef. We'll rebuild our cities. Poda has not abandoned us after all. I knew the falling skies would not be our end. We are still blessed!"

Fila walked over to Nomada and whispered, "Did she hear me?"

"In all of Nitich, there is surely no woman or man who cares more about the Queen than Mellifera. If the Queen served a Nitich a plate full of her shit, any decent Nitich would eat it, albeit begrudgingly so. A good Apis would lick the plate clean, of course. But Mellifera would thank the Queen for the meal afterwards. So you will become nothing but a vehicle for the next Queen. You will lead nothing. You will be nothing. The one who will lead us will be your daughter. You will be nothing more than a placeholder, a face for people to use," Nomada whispered back.

"Did you also not hear me?" He whispered back. "Am I secretly mute? I just said I just want to Metamorphosize and leave. I don't want to restore Nitich or threaten your clearly great position or whatever. Just help me get to the Needle and we won't ever have to see one another again. Can you convince your grandmother?"

Nomada sneered. "Convince her? She does what she wants and convinces you that it's actually what you want. Not even Poda herself would convince her. I'm sure whatever you'll do has evil intentions behind it, so I don't even want to help you."

Mellifera perked up and stared at the two of them whispering to one another. "The Needle! Yes we'll need that too so that the young can be trained and given exoskeletons like before. Poda has put everything I need in one place, she truly has not abandoned us!" Mellifera's smile widened even further. But as her eyes fell on Nomada, it faded. "Why did you not Metamorphosize earlier when I was keeping the kvesh at bay? I've told you a thousand times to take initiative. Fila Fall had the initiative to enter this place by himself, you should have done as he did."

"So she did hear me," he mumbled

"You told me to stay where I was! And I actually tried to get to the Needle, but the boy took the mana crystals I needed to do so,"

"I offered a quarter," he murmured.

"A quarter of what was already mine!" Nomada yelled.

Mellifera's head swiveled to the entrance they came from and sprinted between Fila and Nomada, pushing them to opposing sides of the room. She limboed backwards as above her came a lance of hardened silk that dug into the wall. Nomada looked at the dark opening, where a red figure was getting larger.

A spider in a red exoskeleton came riding in from its abdomen using the silk lance like a grappling hook that pulled her in. It was just small enough to fit inside the chamber, but still as big as an three tall men. It came crashing into Mellifera, pressing her against the wall.

Nomada recognized the spider as the same one that ambushed her and Mellifera yesterday along with the other Red kvesh. It was a figure that haunted her, reminding Nomada of her failure.

Mellifera pushed the spider off her to ten paces away. She sent three stingers at the spider's abdomen, but the spider shot threads from its underside that began as molten but hardened within moments in the air and whipped the stingers out of the air. Nomada recognized the trait as [Iron Threads], the ability to produce silk and harden or soften it at will. The user could even change its properties from sticky to viscous to dry. It was a tricky trait to deal with, and the spider likely had at least one more considering it was a Red.

Mellifera ran up close to the spider, attacking its legs with a sweep of her leg. The spider jumped to the ceiling and stuck to it using its natural sticky pads. The spider shot out more lances of silk at Mellifera from the ceiling. Mellifera dodged them with the grace of a dancer, twisting around each, and returning fire with her own stingers. Mellifera aimed for every part of the spider at once, but the spider's eight eyes kept it perceptive, being able to keep track of both Mellifera's movements and where the singers were coming from.

Nomada shook in anticipation. Mellifera only had to pierce the spider once with one of her Stingers, as her second trait was [Venom] letting her imbue the tip of her stingers with venom, killing the one hit within seconds. This was the Apis style, distant, effective, and venomous.

Mellifera's stingers forced the spider to the wall by the entrance of the tunnel, and aimed for the abdomen. It pierced through a thread that was still in molten form and plugged the spider's spinneret, neutralizing its main weapon.

The spider screeched as Mellifera continued the barrage, her exoskeleton thinning in the process, but the spider's plates being shattered and cracked with every hit. None of the stingers pierced through, but the spider was losing and had no defensive measures to use. The spider's hide turned white, and it faded from view as it turned into the same color as the silk. *So it's second trait was [Camouflage]*, Nomada remarked.

The spider pattered on the ceiling, and Mellifera closed her eyes as she focused on hearing it. She shot another stinger directly upwards, and another shattering sound along with a small whelp was heard, followed by more pattering. Then, silence. Was it trying to wait them out? Nomada searched the ceiling, looking for any signs of the beast. Then she saw it.

Flecks of the shattered exoskeleton were falling from the ceiling right above Fila's head. One particularly bigger piece fell on his head and he picked it out looking at it, then looking up. The spider dropped its camouflage and jumped down above the boy.

"No!" shouted Mellifera. But the spider did not eat or kill the boy. No it did something Nomada would have never expected. Something that made even Mellifera open her mouth in shock.

The spider pointed one of its serrated legs across Fila's neck and said, "Surrender or boy dies."

The kvesh spoke. The kvesh were not meant to speak, let along blackmail. How did it even learn Nitich? How could it? Kvesh were meant to be overgrown bugs capable of eating, shitting, and sleeping, and that's it. That's how it had been for the past 500 years of Nitich's recorded history. Then again, why had the kvesh not just eaten Nomada and Mellifera when they were first ambushed? Why did the kvesh of different species work together in the first place, they normally prey on each other? Nomada realized something that should have been obvious from the beginning. Somehow the kvesh got smart.