Chrysanthemum created a rip in reality right where the torso of another rot creature was standing, neatly dividing it in two. The halves collapsed with a wet slap, ichor sizzling against the stone.
She hated this. She should be back at the palace, in the silks, doing the romance with the prettiest girlfriends. There was still so much more romance and face-smushing to do.
But no. Instead, she had to be here. Fighting the bad ones. Why? Because… because… ah! Because it was important. Yes, that was the word. Important! If she didn’t smash the rot creatures, they would make everything wrong and bad and drippy, and that would ruin everything. Everyone else was too weak to do it properly, so of course it had to be her.
She’d been gone twelve moons now. Twelve! And while she usually liked the fightings — the tearings, the crushings, the poppings — right now she wanted nothing more than to be tangled up in her girlfriends, soft and warm and making the kissings. Her thorax drooped at the thought.
But she was the queen. She had duty. And her duty was smashing. And slicing. And crushing.
Chrysanthemum clicked her mandibles in irritation as her flesh sacs bounced and swayed with every lunge. Annoying! Why did she even have them? No other swarm members carried such strange, heavy lumps strapped to their front. They got in the way of fighting, threw off her balance in the air, and made her feel… odd. Soft in a place that should be hard.
Sometimes she thought about using magick to just… squish them away. Smooth chitin again, like the rest of her sisters in the swarm. That would be proper. Efficient. But every time the thought bloomed, it carried with it a wave of disgust, as if some deep part of her hissed no, not that, never that.
And then there was the squishy cute girlfriend. She seemed very fond of them. Fond in the face-smushy way. And if the girlfriend liked them, well… maybe they were not so bad. Maybe they were even good. Useful, in a strange not-battle way.
So Chrysanthemum huffed, flared her wings, and decided they could stay. For now.
Another wave surged. These ones were shaped almost like hyoomees, but not. Their limbs were wrong— jagged where there should have been soft, some made of hardrock. Ichor bled from their seams, black and dangerous, bubbling like poison sap.
One lunged. She swiped with her claws and tore it open from throat to belly, ichor splattering across her chitin. Once, long ago, she might have worried about the infection. But not now. She was too strong. She was the invincible queen of the swarm. She was uncorruptable. (And also very cute. The girlfriends had said so.)
Her wings flared as she leapt back, the gust shoving defenders forward in her place. She couldn’t really fly — her abdomen was too heavy — but she could do the big jumps, and that was good enough.
She clicked her mandibles and began weaving another spell. A black orb swirled into being between her claws, humming with crushing weight. Yes. This would make many of the rot creatures dead.
And then maybe, maybe, she could go back home to the cuddles.
She spread out all four claws, each one sparking with threads of black magick. Focus. She needed focus. If she released the crushy orb too close, the defenders would be pulled in too, and she could not — would not — lose even one. Every drone mattered. Every defender lost now meant fewer claws and fewer claws to meet the next wave. That was unacceptable.
She shaped the spell, visualizing the open ground far ahead where the rot creatures were thickest. Yes. There. She bared her mandibles, hissed through them, and let the spell go.
The orb tore itself into existence with a shriek of air, small at first, no bigger than her palm. Then it began to swell, its edges rippling and shimmering like an impossible wound in the world. The air bent toward it. Sand and grit slid across the ground as if the stone itself had become a slope leading straight into the black heart.
Her defenders speared their legs into the ground, claws gripping hard. They knew this spell. They knew to hold fast.
The rot creatures, though, had no such discipline.
The closest were lifted off their malformed limbs, dragged screaming into the orb. Their bodies bent at strange angles, snapping apart, then compressed down into nothing, their ichor bursting like rotten fruit before being drawn inside. One by one they folded in, until there was no sign they had ever existed.
Then came the ones further back, some clawing desperately against the pull, others stupidly staggering forward as if marching straight into their own deaths. Limbs broke, bodies crumpled, screams went thin and high before cutting off completely as they disappeared into the pulsing dark.
The orb swelled larger still, the ground itself groaning beneath it, pulling whole boulders free and dragging them inward. It hummed with terrible gravity, hungry, relentless.
And Chrysanthemum, watching her enemies collapse into her creation, thought only one thing: The girlfriends would be so impressed if they saw this.
She released her spell with a sharp hiss, claws splaying as the magic snapped. The black orb shuddered once, then ceased its crushing pull all at once, flinging shrieking rot creatures away like ragdolls. Their twisted forms slammed into the ground and skidded across the dirt before going still. The sphere itself dropped with a seismic thump, the impact quaking through the battlefield. Dust and grit jumped from the earth, and cracks spidered outward from the crater it made.
It sat there like some unnatural monument, a perfect sphere the size of a builder, glossy and terrible. Nothing would shift it now. To drag such a weight would be to try to move a hill. No—bigger. A hillock, maybe even a whole hill if she was being honest. That sort of heavy. Unstoppable, immovable, and hers.
Her defenders tore their legs free of the earth with a sound like roots breaking stone, the ground itself sighing under their weight. Then they surged forward. Scythes gleamed in the dim light and swung with bone-splitting force, hacking apart anything in their path. The rot creatures that had survived the spell’s pull were scattered and disorganized, and the defenders pressed the advantage mercilessly. Their bulk was a tide, their momentum an avalanche.
Every swing, every step, was punctuated by the wet crunch of rotting flesh giving way.
Maybe she would be home sooner. Then she could do the romance sooner. This would be very good. Her mandibles clicked together in excitement at the thought. She hoped they were getting along nicely without her. Ooh, maybe they could even do the romance to each other if they wanted! What was the word… poly… poly… polytheromance!
Yes! A plan most devious. All would love each other in equal measure! No one would be left out, and there would be kisses and cuddles and warm sleepy piles. Perfect.
She let out a maniacal chitter, the sound sharp and echoing across the battlefield, making a few of her defenders pause mid-strike as if unsure whether it was a battle cry or some other command.
First though, she reminded herself with a huff, there were still rot creatures to kill. Many already lay splattered across the ground, their twisted husks oozing foul ichor, but more were gathering in the distance. Their uneven shapes swayed like diseased grass in a corrupted field, and the stench of them carried on the wind.
Her claws flexed. Her eyes narrowed. She could daydream about romance later. For now, the killing continued.
The rest of the day cycle continued. Always thoughts of the girlfriends. Always missing them. Always culling the rot creatures.
Oh...
Echoes of girlfriends past...
Oh hmmm.... I wonder if Chrysanthemum isn't actually some sort of *fusion* of Retania and the original swarm queen..... perhaps some accident when she first landed?