‘These short story extra chapters are unrelated to each other and they’re something like ‘what if scenario’s’. A beta reader got confused about it so I just wanted to clarify it to the readers’
Metamorphosis- The Path of the Queen
‘How successful have my daughters become?’
The Queen thought as she gazed at her working daughters; from the smallest to the largest, they were hard at work; digging, hunting, foraging for food, caring for the young inside and conquering the landscape above us.
‘How numerous have we become?’
From a small group, enough to fit a small puddle to a colony as long and large as a mighty river ever flowing from the her home throughout the outside world.
‘How unstoppable have we become?’
Enemies that used to be the same as us, gone, defeated a long time ago. Their soldiers killed, their queen’s dead, their bodies brought in as food, their children captured and raised to work as slaves and workers.
A sense of glee came from the Queen as she relished the feeling of her success and her colony; she had done her role and did it splendidly. The colony, through her careful observation and large varying diet of insects and small mammals as an excellent source of gene pool, slowly transformed the bodies of her offspring and her own little by little, batch by batch.
The Queen’s mellow mood came to an abrupt halt when a group of her daughters carrying unhatched children marched towards her.
‘Another failed batch? It can’t be helped, mistakes can also be made.’
Her daughter’s dropped the unhatched eggs in front of her and proceeded to leave, they have more work to do. The Queen picked up one of the eggs and casually took a bite.
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The colony behaved erratically and the Queen took note of it. She knew that something big was happening or have already happened outside of the nest.
A river of her daughters’ went flooding in the colony, they carried with them the dead and wounded bodies of their siblings. As her daughters laid down the dead and the wounded, the Queen got to work. She noticed that most of the dead died from trauma and large punctures and cuts to vital parts of their bodies, huge slash marks were all over their bodies, the slash marks were singular and the punctures around their vitals were too deep. Whatever the creature or creature’s her daughters faced must have some really sharp singular claws and stingers. Anticipation filled her as she had not seen wounds like these before, it must be a new creature. After her observations were done she began to rip off the limbs from the dead. She then cut them open and harvested their still usable organs.
‘They don’t need those anymore.’ A quick thought to herself before continuing on.
It was time to pay more attention to the living. Her injured daughters had large cuts and deep punctures on their abdomens. The Queen cut open the bellies of the injured and proceeded to fix and repair what needed to be fixed, she spat out acids and disinfectants, removed debris, replaced damaged organs, reattached limbs and seared all wounds shut.
Once the flood of wounded began to dwindle and finally stopped and everyone was more or less patched up, the Queen relaxed and wiped off the blood and fluids that splattered her face and body, The fight must’ve been hard. Whatever her daughters fought, must’ve been formidable. Her anticipation grew even further.
The Queen waited for the the rest of her daughters to arrive, and sure enough they did. Carrying creatures the Queen have not seen before and some were still them were still alive, it was a good thing that her daughters finally learned to specialize and use their less lethal siblings to capture and keep some of their prey alive . Their captured prey would last longer in storage and the Queen would have something amusing to watch and play with.
The creatures her daughters captured did not look much. From the amount of wounded and dead daughters her children brought it, the queen thought that the creature’s would look extremely strong, they did not. The queen edged close to the most lively of these pudgy squishy looking creatures. It was struggling hard, thrashing with it’s four squishy appendages, red slimy fluid oozed out of the place where her prisoner daughter’s mandibles held its limbs, but still the creature struggled.
Disappointment washed over queen as she continued to observe the creature, it had some sort of weak claws on the ends of its smaller elongated appendages, but they were so thin and useless looking, it wasn’t the sharp claw the queen expected. They were a lot bigger than a handful of her daughters combined but the queen still considered them as one of the weaker prey. The queen wondered how they were able to do such damage to her daughters. They did not have stingers nor any wings. Their mouths were so small and their teeth not so sharp.
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The Queen thought them as strange. They were hairy but only in some places like the head and chest area. Skin from a different animal covered parts of their bodies, it was a very odd. As if noticing that it was being observed the creature stopped struggling and darted its eyes to the queen.
The queen stared back with intrigue. But just as soon as it stopped, it went back to struggling. A tap from behind directs the Queen's attention to the daughter’s behind her. The Queen looked on with curiosity to what they were carrying between their mandibles, a team of her daughters stepped forward carrying the first item. What they brought was a long stick with either bone split bone or jagged stone stuck to one of their ends, the queen looked in confusion as her daughters brought similar items in front of her.
Just as the queen was about to touch the strange items with the use of her antennas a ripping sound emits from behind her and she feels a force from behind her and she gets flung forward landing on top of one of her daughters. A primal scream erupts from the creature as it flung himself at one of the items.
The Queen watched in awe and terror as the creature grabbed hold of one of the items and stood up. The creature stood tall, towering every living thing in the colony, including the queen. The creature did not look to big before it was brought in lying down on its back restrained and carried, but as it stood a sense of foreboding came within the queen’s heart.
The creature, swung cleaving some of her daughters in half.
It’s eyes then It glinted with intelligence as it apprehended the her. Terror filled the Queen as the creature charged towards her cleaving any of her daughters that was in its way. The queen buzzed for help in a moment of panic, it stopped charging as if noticing the shift in the air. Moments later a swarm of her winged daughters swarmed forth from within the queen’s colony.
Screams erupted from the creature as stings pierced flesh. It struggled and struggled, grabbing and pulling away any of her daughters away. But it was of no use, overwhelmed it died twitching on the floor.
Once clear that the danger was longer present, the queen gathered her wits and buzzed her small winged daughters away from the corpse. Her disappointment, now gone and replaced with curiosity and wonder but fear still lingered. With a flick of her antenna towards the largest creature that was still alive, her daughters went to work killing the creature the queen pointed at. It was a countermeasure, these creatures must not be underestimated. One by one she killed them. She didn’t need all of them alive, she only needed one. She had strong urge to consume them immediately but refrained as danger was still present.
The queen was now in front of the last creature, the smallest and weakest looking one of them all, it was probably a youngling. The creature had the same size of the queen much different from the rest , it assured the queen that it won’t overpower any of her daughters. It trembled and oozed water out of its eyes. Even without having met this specie yet, the queen knew that the creature was afraid. It did not struggle and it did not seem like it was going to fight, it had already surrendered and have given up.
The queen leaned close right in front of the creatures face. Both of our eyes met, her eyes was still trickling with fluids, an unexpected urge to drink the fluid urged the queen. Unsure were the urge came from she, soundlessly followed it. She flicked out her antenna and swiped of a trickle. Still looking at the creature she put her antenna in her mouth. Like a dam cracked open, thoughts and emotion flooded in and overcame the queen. The queen stood motionless, stunned.
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Info Section
[8/4/16 2:30:50 AM] Jxxxxxx [jxxxx]: @Manic_Design a reader is pissy at you for wasting your story's potential. He just wanted you to know that.
{So, I heard a guy that has been reading my fic is a bit ‘pissy’ for wasting my stories potential, don’t be too mad man. I still plan to continue the fic albeit on a different title. Let me just finish these special chapters and finish the epilogue before I myself can move on.}
So, what do you guys think of this separate/ unrelated story?