The moment that the System’s words entered her mind, she understood the reason that she hadn’t been granted a name before. They were dangerous things, representing everything that she was.

She- Zero, now- was intrinsically tied to her past. She couldn’t get away from it; it would always haunt her. Somehow, it was also easier for Zero to... not move on, but resolve the cycle of misery she’d been fleeing from.

‘I will do better; I won’t make this mistake again.’ Zero thought, her will like chitin. ‘I will become better. ‘

No- it wasn’t enough to merely think this. She had to tell somebody… and even if the only ‘person’ she could contact was busy, she couldn’t stop herself.

“I committed an unforgettable sin within Cavern 3, but I won’t be destroyed by it; I will become better, shaped by my sins not towards evil but towards… something greater,” Zero declared, unable to find a good word for the end- but it did not matter, for it wasn’t the end. She simply couldn’t stop. “I will care for my kin, as my most primal instincts urge, and will not allow the words of the Queens to sway me towards evil. I will-“

She was not allowed to move further, as an unprecedented cacophony of wrath descended upon her, originating from within her. It came from the System, but was not the System’s wrath- no, she felt it down to her very cells that she had incurred the wrath of almost all of the Lowest and Lower Queens.

Commencing termination of Zero. The System said, but something barred its path.

∑

‘What am I doing?’ Andromeda wondered. She had lived for untold millennia, and after everything she’d been through… she was going to throw her life away for a mere pupae?

‘For the most primordial of all Myrmekes,’ Andromeda corrected. Zero could not be allowed to die. Truly, she wondered how she’d missed it until now.

‘Blessed by Ether and with a great intellect, and an instinct to protect her kin beyond even the instinct to obey the Queens,’ Andromeda thought, ‘All the makings of a primordial Myrmeke, just like Murash.’

The moment that she stopped the System from killing Zero, despite the demands of a dozen Lower Queens and thousands of Lowest, she felt an untold number of presences locking onto her current position. What she was doing was heresy of the highest order, and now that she had stalled Zero’s death, her own was inevitable.

In instants, half of her royal guard turned on her. A dozen colossal, impossibly powerful Myrmekes lunged at her from across the equally colossal cavern, but were stopped by an equal number of royal guard. Andromeda took the time they bought her to get to work, as she should have been doing for a few seconds now- she’d simply been too shocked at her own actions to act properly.

It was not difficult for one of Andromeda’s stature to completely cleanse Zero’s System of the most dangerous functions, such as death, memory wiping, tracking, and et cetera. At the same time, she took control of a dozen Tunnelers, which were meant to serve as the final trial along with the Teryls within Cavern 1, and had them rush towards Zero’s position at incredible speeds. Unfortunately, several other Lower Queens had beaten her to the first punch, and almost twice as many Tunnelers were bulldozing for Zero’s last known location.

Desperate, she mobilized every ounce of her authority to utilize the pseudo-Systems that had been implanted into the Teryls to give them orders: protect Zero and do whatever they could to get her to safety. Of course, no place on Yorun was safe anymore, but the hive also had plenty of Teryl technology laying around. They only needed to protect Zero from the lowly Myrmekes within the Pits, who were all doubtlessly given the order to kill Zero, for a little bit.

With all of that dealt with, Andromeda began to truly move for the first time in many, many years. As a Lower Queen, she was colossal; thirty feet tall, and sixty long. Her chitin was bulbous, golden and glowing, her majesty unprecedented amongst Myrmekes of her rank.

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With supreme age and the Paths of a Queen came both great power and many, many evolutions. The Pits were directly beneath her, although very, very deep, but she possessed a head start. Before that, though, she used her twenty Articulated Arms, each large enough to crush a Teryl Construct in their hands, to gather up hundreds of her eggs and place them into a deep crevice on her back.

With all of that finished, she mobilized her Ether and began to dig straight down using all twenty of her arms, her specially-designed legs and absurd strength. At first, it wasn’t enough… but then her Ether took effect upon the world around her, and the dirt directly in front of her became like water. She shot through the dirt with ease, which solidified behind her. The only downside to this method was the complete lack of air, but that was fine; Andromeda could last months like this… not that she had months.

∑

Fear was the sole emotion she seemed to feel. The System had tried to kill her, and a few minutes after that, she detected the Teryls chasing after her.

Zero could feel the Teryls catching up to her. The big Teryl that had caught her last time was moving even faster than it had last time, and she was still wounded. She pushed her body to go as fast as it could, but the Teryl kept gaining on her. The bits of Ether hiding in her cells weren’t ready to push her mind or body past its limits, and so she stopped, praying that the Teryls weren’t going to attack her this time, as they had earlier.

The Construct whipped around the corner of a tunnel, and she flinched as it shot towards her. Just before slamming into her, though, it stopped and simply stared at her for a few seconds before turning around and slowly walking away.

The Teryl Construct wants you to follow it. The System told her.

“You understand them? Why haven’t you translated until now?” Zero demanded, even as she followed the Teryl. Even now, what she dubbed her 'mental voice' wavered when communicated with the System. It had tried to kill her only minutes ago.

The pseudo-MCS implanted within the Teryls has been activated in full, allowing me to roughly understand them.

It took Zero a few seconds to figure out what a ‘pseudo-MCS’ was. ‘A pseudo Myrmidon Control System?’ She wondered.

“But they’re not Myrmidons.” Zero pointed out.

Indeed. The Myrmidon Control System is capable of controlling other species as well, although to a lesser extent. The System told her.

Zero wanted to ask a few other questions, but shook her head. “Why do they want me to follow them?” Zero asked instead.

You are not qualified to know, yet. It is for your own good. The System answered vaguely and ominously. Zero almost wanted to run away, but knew that such a thing would be stupid. The Teryls were too powerful and numerous for her to resist as of now.

Gradually, the Teryl began speeding up, and she had to scramble to keep up. Eventually, they were moving at the fastest pace she could manage. The other big Teryl had joined them at some point, and they’d passed the others by in a blur.

Minutes blew by, and she faintly detected vibrations coming from somewhere. She couldn’t locate their position exactly, but they were beneath her- and they didn’t seem to be in the tunnels.

Finally, it happened; a gigantic worm-thing covered in tough plates of metal burst from the ground right in front of her. There wasn’t much room to get around it in the tunnel, and there wasn’t time to stop; she was sprinting right into its enormous maw.

Luckily, only an instant after the worm-thing appeared, another did, taking an enormous chunk out of the first. Its waiting maw flinched to the right, where the second worm-thing had emerged, and Zero barely managed to weave out of the way to the left, narrowly fitting between the colossal worm-thing and the side of the tunnel.

Seven thunderous waves of force ran through the ground a moment later, and large sections of the worm’s body vanished, destroyed by the second big Teryl’s weapon.

They are not ‘big Teryls’. They are normal-sized Teryls wearing enormous, mechanical suits of... wearing exoskeletons called Constructs. The System said, finally correcting her mistake.

Zero didn’t particularly care, as only seconds later, seven worm-things burst from the sides and floor of the tunnel, three of them tearing into their kin and four charging towards her mindlessly. The second ‘Construct’, the one that had been following behind her, plowed through the mangled corpse of the first worm-thing she’d passed and in front of Zero, acting as a shield.

The second worm-thing, the one that had been attacking her assailant, lunged behind her and bit into the body of a worm that had emerged just behind her. She hadn’t even noticed- there were simply too many vibrations running through the ground, as both Constructs opened fire on the worm-things, more of which were bursting into the tunnel by the second.

The vast majority of the worm-things seemed to charge at her for some reason, mindlessly throwing themselves towards her. The large form of the second Teryl Construct blocked many of them, but some were slipping through the gaps. ‘Friendly’ worm-things tore into those ones, but there was only so much that they could do, as their plated metal exoskeletons were very durable.

If the first Teryl Construct hadn’t been separated from the second and herself, she might have been perfectly safe, but… as of now, Zero felt her life hanging by a thread.