Finding food was the hard part.

Legion was normally a swarm: a huge swathe of several thousand tiny mites, each with their own eyes, their own energy, to help search.

But now, she had no swarm; and the Queen, in order to rebuild had to find that food on her own, in order to feed the new generation. A dangerous conundrum, really, given that with only her own tiny body, she had a thousandth of the situational awareness. It wasn't lost on her, either, that even her intelligence had been dimmed; without the thousands of extra minds constantly calculating and gauging, consulting and deciding, her thought process was notably slowed.

She had fled through three caves, now, searching, hunting, weary; she had found nothing, no food even for herself. She had gotten lost in her search for Eridanus, knowing full well that the plants there would have rotting fruits, at the very least, and thick foliage, rotten trees, in which to hide. That would have made a perfect hive location, but sadly, alone, her navigational skills were... apparently broken.

Which had brought her here and now, angry and bitter but wholly forlorn, her fury at Mother fighting her sorrow at the loss of her entire family, she bobbed and buzzed from place to place in search of some form, any form, of sustenance.

It was when she'd paused, perched, near the Generator--drawn by its quiet rush of water and slosh across its wheel--that she remembered.

"I can make food," she realized, and took her forelimbs from where they'd been washing her face.

She lifted off, again, after a brief rest, and searched here and there until she found a crevice not far off--crumbled stone and would, enough to hide a small hive, for a time. Long enough to feed them. It was off the ground, and so--she hoped--safe from foraging rats, or rather, safer than it would have been on the ground, at least.

Will I be strong enough, alone? she wondered. She wasn't sure how much of her magic came from her, and how much from the hive--but her first straining attempt netted her nothing.

The Queen did not try again for long minutes. Instead she spent time clearing out the smallest debris--the bits of dust, mainly--from the tiny crevice and then resting deep within; it was minuscule. She hoped that a rat would not be able to squeeze into its depths, but she couldn't be sure about that.

In any case, she was too small alone, she found, to clear out the larger pebbles. This was... depressing, to say the least, and again she sat quiet, remembering and mourning the thousands of faceless family she had lost. Nameless, not individuals--but all a part of her whole, all a part of her, each kind and guileless and gone forever.

With these thoughts in mind, weary and drained, she slept for a time.

When the Queen awoke, it took her time to remember where she was. And when she did she flitted out, quiet, observing.

Still alone, she noted, with relief, and retreated back into the tiny space. Outside, as she washed her antennae, steeling herself for another attempt at magic, she could hear the gentle swish and thud of the Generator's wheel. It was soothing, somehow, and helped her focus on the task at hand--as did her determination.

She would raise her family once more, but this time, they would not wander innocent and vulnerable; they would fight. They would find Mother's fungus, and root it out wherever they found it, and destroy it. That was her promise--not only out of hatred for the thing, and its betrayal, but over her rage, the injustice, for the loss of her family.

An algid sweep of air curled into her tiny place.

It seemed suited. Cold. Lonely. Bitter. Alone.

Depression threatened to overwhelm her, pouring up like the swell of the river below. Memories of a thousand sparkling eyes, looking to her for guidance--and there wasn't guild there; she'd fought that off. They'd all fallen for Mother's lies, not her alone; it'd never been her alone. She was the mouthpiece; she was not the hive's controller.

But what good is this magic-? I should have used it; I should have practiced it. We will develop it, she decided, stubbornly, when we are whole again. When we are new, she corrected herself--for the new swarm would not be the old. They were dead. They could not return to her.

She struggled again with her magic, only to find that it did not respond; and for a time she gave up, and rested again.

Hours passed.

The tiny, single mite sat glaring at the empty crevice, willing a banana into being, and failing.

A strange concept; a strange sentence, were one to see it without context, perhaps. But Legion did not care. Or... the Queen did not care; for without her swarm, she was most certainly not Legion.

It is only a single fruit. She paused, annoyed. Maybe I can't make it when I'm alone--maybe it has to be smaller? she reasoned. She tried to imagine, then, not a large, fat fruit, but a small banana, an inch long perhaps, suited for her tiny nest.

This, at last, seemed to work; a small yellow fruit, barely-visible in the darkness of the hole, popped into being. Weary, the Queen first spent time opening the thing, slowly nibbling through the tiny peel to get at the sweet moisture beyond.

After she'd eaten her fill, she rested once again, sleeping away the hours.

__________

Awakening well-rested, the Queen at last turned to the task at hand.

Her tiny mite body, the elongated carapace of a queen, had readied itself as she slept; she could feel that there were eggs, ready to be laid. She would deposit them, she decided, quite close by the fruit. It might be hours before they hatched; her regeneration, at least, of the swarm was generally swift. But still she'd need to feed them, to wash them free of bacteria, until they were grown. It would not take long--no more than a few days, she judged, to reform the swarm completely. But that assumed that they weren't interrupted, weren't found by rats or remnants of Mother seeking her out.

She wouldn't have that.

The Queen settled herself beside the opened banana, and began the slow process of laying the next generation of Legion's eggs: slender, off-white kernels not unlike wet grains of rice.

As the mite Queen would lay her first batch of eggs, a strange thing would happen:

The first time, it would be more than painful. Excruciating. Like her very essence were being torn from her body, tiny molecule by tiny molecule; it would start near her chest, a split in her body that oozed foul smelling black goo—the Oil. From within this split she would birth more flesh than was her own, and the split would widen, crack, expand to fit this new body that was not an egg. Though her body was tiny, a spec to any other eye, it would feel like she was turning inside-out until finally, as the grueling process subsided and a new mite lay covered in Oil at her tiny Queen feet, the split in her body would seal itself back up—glued together by the very black that had torn it apart.

The newborn mite, its wings drying as it attempted to move them, would crawl forth on its thin pinprick legs and feed on the first egg its hungry, feral mouth could find. It would not hear her. It would not know her. It was not a part of her hive, despite having been birthed from her.

Odd. Odd as it was, the Queen would continue to lay eggs. It was her purpose, her goal.

Every other egg or so—in total, it would be three-hundred of her five-hundred numbered clutch—would be birthed from her very body, each time less painful than the last, descending on a scale from flesh being flayed while she lived and breathed, to the equivalent of a fat-wrenching wound of a clean and deep gouge, and slowly becoming bearable until it might just feel like the sting of a papercut. Each just as draining as the last.

Unfortunately for the Queen, she would have no knowledge of why this was happening, continuously, as she laid her clutch. After her five-hundredth egg—almost perfect, yes, like a wet grain of rice—she would find herself magically and physically exhausted. As she would feel herself slipping back into the embrace of slumber, she would see her: the Queen she had birthed, not unlike herself, but gemless, feeding on that last white pulp. The last to be birthed.

Frenzied with her drying wings, the feral mite Queen would attempt to rally the legion of Oily mites behind her, swarming over the banana until finally they could collectively agree—she was their Commander, they were her Legion. She must go to them.

The black cloud raised into the charged air of Polaris and disappeared into its darker reaches.

She woke only slowly, the ache in her body second to the utter grief that filled her mind. At first, she did not remember why, and then-... A terrible nightmare. Half-remembered, monsters in the dark: oily mirrors of herself, ugly shadows of her family, consuming her eggs, leaving nothing of her new family-...

She tried to stand, and failed.

The odor of banana, of egg, of Oil, struck her sensitive receptors and she froze, multifaceted eyes glinting in the dim light.

That... was not a nightmare. The realization came with an upwelling of horror stronger than any emotion she had ever felt: terror, revulsion, agonizing grief, and the memory of the physical pain--her body tearing itself apart, skin and exoskeleton peeling away and what had been inside her?!

The mite's screams were too tiny to be heard. She scrambled up, now, the pain in her body intense, an echo--a memory--of the damage done the night before. Everything--Daughter, Mother, family, hive, monsters, Oil, the falling brethren, the dragon, her eggs, her body tearing itself apart--roared up through her mind all at once.

She spun, wings flapping in panic, her body careening away from the ruined would-be nest--and into the wall of the crevice, sending her spinning back across the rock.

There she lay, for a moment, dazed.

Briefly--instinctively--she saw two choices before her. Surrender--she could not bear what she had seen, now; it was too much--or rage. Her choice was instantaneous.

"WHO DARED TO DO THIS TO ME!?" It was not arrogance, but injustice, that fed her words. Someone--someone out there was evil. There was evil in these caves; evil, and it had come for her. It had killed her family... twice, now; and somewhere now there was a sinister echo of herself, leading a black Legion of its own.

She railed against the universe; but her voice was too small to be heard.

She wore herself out in moments.

Was it my own anger that made them? she wondered, crawling to the lip of the crevice. Did my fury break from me? Is hatred poison-?

That black oil; had it been rage?

Legion's Queen did not know. But am I even Legion, now-? And did she dare to try again?

She did not know, and she did not know how to even begin to address these questions. But she knew she wanted to be far from here--far from the sucked-dry remnants of what should have been her family, the consumed pieces of egg that were left behind, the tiny slicks of Oil to remind her of what had happened.

Another shudder of horror, and she took wing--clumsily, painfully, but desperate to be gone.

exit Legion