I'm using this thread to write out the emergences of both Sergei and Legion post-Mother-cleansing. They do NOT interact but in the interests of not spamming up the board, they'll both take place here.

The first thing he noticed upon waking was the silence.

The second, as his mind swam up from dark nothing, was the pressure all around him.

He had been asleep, and his body resting, content in the stillness of the chrysoprase. Now, of course, it was suffocating, and languid grogginess abruptly gave way to claustrophobic panic.

Kicks--feeble; clawing... and why were his arms--his forelimbs didn't feel right, but the bear hardly had time to pay attention to that. Claws scuffed and caught on the chrysoprase--thinning, now, ready to spill him forth, but trembling limbs found no purchase. Small, dark eyes widened, staring into the translucent blue-green, choking liquid driving Sergei into further panic.

He tried to cry out, but only a single muffled cry escaped, and then he had no air.

Hind legs why do they feel- kicked, lashed out, and again, he could not get free.

Fear turned into terror.

Ursine jaws gaped wide, nostrils flaring, fighting to take in air that was not there. Thick canines scraped ineffectually across the crystalline surface.

The chrysalis was cracking--he heard the water-muffled snaps of stone--but his vision was beginning to gray.

One last great kick of his legs and the stone snapped, the water poured forth--and mud began to pour in, but now he was shoving up, pushing out-...

...falling over-

I fell-

Sergei grunted, expression one of comical surprise as he toppled over into the mud. Legs are too long?! he thought, baffled, turning to peer at himself in between chest-heaving coughs.

His body was different--subtly so, but it was there. The legs longer. His forepaws, as he examined them--he found that they had thumbs. His chest felt a little broader, his forelimbs off to the sides a little more... less suited to bearing his weight.

Okay, so he had changed. Strange. Frightening. But-...

The silence.

Mother-?

...Silence. Unending silence.

Memories. They flooded his mind, abrupt, his small, dark eyes again springing wide. They had fought. He had fallen, slipping helplessly down into the maw of the earth that had opened beneath him, gripped by terror. She had-... she had abandoned him-?

The bear let out a horrific cry, a moaning, keening wail, and turned, this way and that. But he was alone in the swamp, no sign of the others, of Mother. And suddenly the memories of Mother--they held new clarity. He had been content enough to serve... but what had she done for him? Had she truly ever loved him? Yes! he insisted to himself, distraught. He knew-... He knew. But he couldn't face it.

Too quiet-!

Sergei spun again, shoving up onto his back legs; and this felt natural, better, easier. He could see farther, this way. Stepping through the muck was harder-... but these thumbs?

For a long moment, the bear stood staring down, flexing his hands, his fingers, examining his claws. I wonder-

Fragmented thoughts, confusion, fear, took a back seat as he focused: focused on what lay before him. One step at a time. One step--he nearly fell again, stumbling, one foot before the other, forelimbs in the air. It wasn't the first time the brown bear had walked upright, but it felt odd, now, unbalanced. It would take getting used to.

But a thrill filtered through him as he bent over, and did not fall; as he picked up a piece of his own chrysalis shard, and stood back upright. As he turned it over in his new hands, examining it, feeling its heft in his clumsy new thumbs, running rough finger-pads over it.

This-... This could be useful.

Sergei stood straight, and looked around him.

He had half a mind to stay here--depression, misery, bitter grief at his sudden loneliness. And yet he wanted away; away from Mother, if she still lurked here. Away from those who had called themselves his "family."

A pang of pain shot through his heart at this, so stark that for a moment he thought he had been injured--but it was betrayal, a sense of wrong at the hands of one he'd trusted. One he'd loved.

Another quiet moan escaped him, the huffing, sad cry of a hurt bear.

Sergei leaned down, gathering up chunks of his stone. He would use them; he didn't know what for, but right now he felt alone, and lonely, and they were the only part of him left in this world. He would take them with him, and keep them a part of him.

Quietly the bear turned, and began to pad off through the swamp. It would be awhile before he could find Cetus' exit. And he had no plans as to where to go. But here-?

No.

He couldn't stay here any longer.

exit Sergei

Not far off--a hundred yards, perhaps, away--a miniscule, nearly microscopic speck of Titanite had cracked apart. A single, tiny, dust-colored mite crawled from the shard, paused, and fanned its wings.

She was a Queen, glinting faint with that royal gemstone that only she, of all her swarm, had carried. And she was truly, terribly alone. For a time she sat still, drying her wings, quiet in consideration. Nothing disturbed her rest; the mist and darkness, the mud beneath her tiny stone, were shrouds against wanderers.

There was no hive, now--no Swarm--to consult. There were no longer a thousand thoughts, handling a thousand ideas, consulting shared memory and offering ideas, rapidly moving through thought in the way that the many brain cells of any other Greater might do.

We served.

She remembered this, slowly, with wonder, with bafflement. Why had they served?

And she remembered: the flush of pleasure when a Lesser was infected. The slow burn of exquisite approval when they planted a new seed of Mother's hive. But where was that sense of duty now? Where was that flush of chemical reward..?

Slow realization trickled in.

We were used.

The mite Queen's wings vibrated, briefly, as if in thought, or anger. But she did not fly off; not yet. Instead she sat upon the shard, and her forelimbs--dark and spindly--came up to methodically wash the droplets of fluid from her eyes, her mandibles. Slowly. Deliberately.

"My family was used."

Memories of them all--a swarm of nameless individuals, yes, but each of them had made up the innocent kindness that had been the being known as Legion. Each of them had been like a tiny glinting shard, a single facet, of a larger mirror; of myriad identical ripples across a lake. All of them had been kind, in their way. Earnest, loyal, selfless in their service to the Hive.

And where had she led them..?
"We led ourselves," she corrected herself. Grief was one thing. Self-pity, another. "They--we--all fell into 'Mother's' trap."

A brief memory seared through her mind--the swarm, all around her, buzzing in desperate, angry defense of the Hive; the flash of brutal heat, and the withering mite-swarm falling from the air, dying, and dead. How many of them had died only after she returned to her stone-? Without her magic to sustain them..? How many had died slowly, cut off from her, from Mother, from one another..?

Grief swelled, and flourished into rage.

The forelimbs stopped cleaning, and lowered to the stone.

FALSE QUEEN, the Queen bellowed in her thoughts, alone. She raged against the silence, against the betrayal, against the deaths of her true family.

I will rebuild this swarm--and no longer will we be your playthings. Nor will anyone else! I will be sure of that. And how strange, to be I, and not we- We will come for you, false Mother, liar-in-the-nest, lurking usurper, foul-minded parasite! We will come for you, and we will destroy you. We will be LEGION.

The mite shifted, a minuscule and inconsequential thing, barely a speck in the vision of a larger being, and lifted off into the air. A moment later it was gone into the mist, insignificant in its passing.

exit Legion