Most people say I’m wrong, but I don’t think the Ascendants hate each other. I mean, they might hate each other’s factions, but how can you truly hate someone you’ve gotten to know over millennia? Even if they’re the bitterest of rivals, they must respect each other and with that much time…they’ll know every pain they share. –Baral Yned, Famous Historian and Writer in the Phoenix Empire

* * *

The hours passed in silence broken only by the buzzing of hornet wings as we travelled through the blue-tinted forest. My anxieties mounted higher and higher with every ray of sunlight that faded into the coming night. Stars began to twinkle, but my other half remained hidden, solemnly turning its face away from the horrible monster that would soon grace the earth.

“We’ll stop here for the night,” the commander ordered. “Three days remain until we reach the nest. We shouldn’t keep the Queen waiting.” Dutifully, the rest of the wasps set about the various tasks of bringing firewood to the enormous tree we took shelter beneath.

If there was any time to sneak away, now would be it. The hornets didn’t have particularly good vision, relying on their compound eyes, and that vision would only get worse as the night wore on. However, if I could slip away while they were distracted, then take advantage of the cover of night to hide myself from them, just for a little while, then I might just keep my secret.

I should tell the commander, though, I thought to myself. In fact, I longed to tell them the truth, to ease their fears so that they wouldn’t worry for the entire two days I’d be in that horrible form. But, if I did…

They wouldn’t understand. No, the less they knew the better it would be for negotiating with the Queen. It was going to be difficult enough to get hornets and bees, natural enemies of the wilds, to get along long enough to take on their common foe. The last thing we needed was a complication regarding the negotiator. I’d come up with some sort of excuse as to why I was missing for a few days, and that would be that. Maybe I fell and hit my head or went sleepwalking...completely believable excuses.

The scouts buzzed away, leaving me alone with the commander. They stared at me with their big black eyes as they sat on a log. Their wings drooped wearily along their back. It was something I’d noticed over the journey. The commander’s body was bigger than the regular scouts, probably enlarged due to qi intake, but their wings were smaller. It accounted for their slower speed, not that they were slow. Advanced as they clearly were, the commander was still far faster than I was, but they still lagged behind their kin. Only in the quiet moments, when the other hornets weren’t watching, did they show any sign of the struggle, and, for that, the hornet commanded my absolute respect.

My heart twisted softly at the betrayal of trust I was about to commit. Battle forges the strongest brothers, but this was a necessary deception.

“I’ll be back,” I said, rising to my feet. “Just need a moment alone.”

The hornet commander bowed their head and continued guarding the camp. That they didn’t ask questions just made me even more uncomfortable, but I slipped into the forest all the same, telling myself over and over that it was for the greater good. It would only be two days. In that time, I’d come up with a believable excuse, and then, with my unparalleled wit and charm, I would speak with the Queen.

I walked far enough that the sun had fully faded below the horizon before I even considered looking for a place to lay low. After a bit more searching, I found a quiet nook beneath some tree roots next to a peaceful lake. It was perfect. I’d hear the hornets coming long before they arrived, and I could hide from them amongst the reeds, diving under if they approached too closely. There, I nestled beneath the roots and waited for the change to take me.

I didn’t have to wait long, but, thankfully, the void was gentler in twisting my body this time. The chills and fever were short-lived, and I managed not to cry out as the chains wrapped their unforgiving shackles around my neck and wrists.

However, every one of the bandages wrapping my left leg were shredded, much to my chagrin. It revealed the cursed shackle that was burned into my flesh, even during other nights of the lunar cycle. Every Void-touched had such a mark somewhere on their body. It was the one thing I could never hide in this form, and every attempt to cover it only led to greater destruction. It was the mark of my sins, the shackle of history that would never let me forget what I’d done and the lives I’d destroyed.

Shadows wrapped around me like a blanket as the ghost wisps watched over my hiding spot. I settled down to sleep.

* * *

I dreamed of home, of sitting in the garden outside our tiny home with my sisters. My head was in Aya’s lap as I read a book to her. She was never good with her letters, but reading aloud always made her feel better. It was one of the only books we had, left to us by our late mother. As we read together, our little sister, Chouko, played in the flowers, befriending the bunnies who lived there.

Aya hummed a song, a melody that I only barely remembered, and Chouko definitely didn’t. It was a lullaby, another gift left to us by our mother. It was a reminder of happier days, one that filled me with so much warmth and peace that my dream-self stopped reading to simply listen.

It was so real…so warm and soothing…

* * *

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My eyes snapped open, and I listened. That song…Aya’s song…it drifted on the wind around me, but I was back in the nook by the lakeside. A fleeting hope filled my heart, and I scrambled to my feet.

Ghostly wisps blew lazily on the winds, but I couldn’t tell which ones were mine, and which ones were not. The voice, that singing voice, it was the Flower Maiden. I should have recognized her song before, but there was no mistaking it now. She was singing Aya’s song. If her wisps mingled with mine, then she was here. She was close.

I’d given up hope of ever seeing anyone from my time again, but if Aya had been raised as a shade, then there was a chance…a fleeting chance…that I could see her again. I spun wildly around, trying to pinpoint the source of the singing.

“Aya!” I called into the woods. “It’s me! Please, I need to see you!”

The song began to fade and, with it, the wisps that drifted over the calm lake thinned. Panic filled my heart. I wasn’t going to let her go, not again! I ran into the woods, picking my best guess at the direction she’d gone. The song faded even further, then disappeared altogether, leaving me alone in the dark night.

I sighed. It was probably just my imagination. Heavens know that my sanity teetered on a thread after so long in the Labyrinth. Odds were good that it was some remnant of the dream, a fragment of memory that made it into the waking world.

“I knew I couldn’t dream about something so nice without there being a catch,” I muttered to myself as I walked back to the lake. Loneliness and loss made my heart ache. It was a fleeting hope, one that had been blown out like a candle’s flame.

I stepped through the underbrush and back onto the lakeshore, only for my skin to prickle as an unexpected light waited for me. It was…sunlight. The rattling of my chains alerted them to my presence, and the light dimmed to reveal the hornet commander.

“There you are,” they said. I blinked at them in shock.

“You found me?”

The hornet nodded. “I thought I’d lost you in the darkness, but the Shade of the Flower Fields pointed the right way. After that, I followed the scent of my pheromones on you.” They cocked their head to the side. “You…look different? Why?”

“I…uh…it’s a long story.”

The hornet lowered their wings and looked at me expectantly. My ears grew warm, and I nervously tugged on one of my chains.

“I was cursed.” That was a close enough approximation of the truth. “I trusted someone I shouldn’t have, and now I become like this on the new moon and the days around it.”

The hornet seemed to light up in a way I’d never seen from them before. “Like the werewolves of the southeast continent!”

The…what?

Since when was there an island in the southeastern sea? And what on earth was a werewolf? Most important of all, how did a lesser spirit hornet know about it?

“Mother told us about them, in our inherited knowledge,” the hornet explained. “She was once visited by travelers who came from a far away continent to the south and east. They came with tales completely unlike those of the locals, and one of them was a tale of a curse where people turned into savage wolves on the full moon. They would rip and tear and-” The hornet was cut off by a buzzing mixture of exhalations and violent shudders. It took a moment for me to realize that they were coughing.

“Are you alright?” I asked once the bought had passed.

“Yes,” they said dejectedly. “Talking is hard.”

Suddenly, the shift in demeanor made sense. If talking was normally difficult, then it explained why the journey here had been so quiet. The scouts only shared bits of gossip, but never in long bursts. When excited, the commander had thrown caution to the wind to speak as much as possible, only to be silenced. It must have been a drawback to being a spirit beast, a creature with the intelligence of a human, but in the body of an animal. They didn’t have proper vocal cords with which to speak.

“It’s alright. I’d never heard that tale before. Your Queen must be very worldly to have learned of it.”

“Why did you run?” the commander asked. I figured there were probably more things they wanted to say, but the limitations of their voice kept the statement clipped and short.

I looked away. “Didn’t think you’d trust a monster.”

“I see no monster.”

“Can you actually see me in the dark?”

The commander’s antennae twitched in irritation. Without warning, a brilliant flash of sunlight illuminated the lake, burning my skin before it faded back to darkness.

“Point taken,” I gasped.

“I brought you back to see the queen because you are a capable fighter.” They paused for a moment to rest their voice. “That you would fight the spiders on the villager’s behalf speaks highly of your character. Cursed or not, you are a good person.” The commander shook their wings and stretched every leg but the one that was crushed in the battle. The other hornets had tried to help, but the commander had shooed them away whenever the subject of first aid had come up.

Finally, they took a deep breath. “But what do I know? I’m just a hornet scout.”

“The fact you know of a continent I’ve never even heard of speaks greatly of your intelligence. You apparently know more than me.”

The hornet looked up at me, and there was a slight twinkle in their eye. If they’d had a proper face, I was certain they’d be grinning at me.

“If it’s alright with you, we should move on in the morning,” the commander said. “The nest will not judge your appearance in this form, you have my word.”

A part of me wanted to stay by that lake until the new moon had passed. There was safety in solitude. I couldn’t hurt anyone if there was no one to hurt. Yet, two days may make the difference to the people of Heimian. Especially since I would almost certainly need to return to Pollen with news of my meeting with the hornets before returning to the human village.

Once again, I found myself wishing for my old sword, Eclipse. Eclipse might not have been the fastest sword, by any metric, but flying by sword was certainly faster than walking, no matter how you sliced it. Alas, Eclipse was broken and likely taken as a trophy by the Sword Saint. That seemed like the sort of thing he’d do. If he really was dead, I probably would never see Eclipse again.

With the people of Heimian in my thoughts, I nodded to the hornet commander.

“Before we go, though, can you tell me your name?” I asked, not for the first time.

“In due time,” they said…not for the first time.

I stood and followed the commander back to camp. The other hornets were still waiting, and they made no comment as I entered the firelight. Perhaps it was because they were simply unemotive insects, but not one of them even looked at me strangely before I laid down on the grass, pillowed my head on my clawed hands, and went to sleep.

In the morning, we once again set off for Hanai to meet the Queen of the Hornets.