One thing was for certain: after today, Percy would never look at a bug the same way again.
The creature standing before him towered over the largest buildings he'd seen on Remior, save perhaps for Phoebe's temple at the foot of the Oracle Mountain, or the headquarters of the noble Houses. The gargantuan insect was nearly thirty metres tall, and over twice as long from antennae to stinger. Her membranous wings were folded neatly behind her back, though Percy wouldn't be surprised if they could stretch even wider than her body.
Overall, her appearance was rather similar to that of the smaller bugs: a black, glossy carapace sprinkled with colourful dots that resembled stars – the very reason for the name of their species. However, there were a few differences that set the Queen apart from her offspring, outside of her size.
A golden watermark pattern covered her entire exoskeleton, rippling through and around the stars, making the creature's chitinous exterior resemble a galactic nebula. Percy guessed that the Queen owed her strange markings to either her royal lineage or her Violet grade. Or, perhaps, the two things were one and the same, but he knew even less about the hive's innerworkings to tell with certainty.
Another feature – which the smaller bugs might actually share with their mother, but which Percy hadn't noticed in the past – was a series of jagged ends lining the sides of the wasp's limbs. Each was sharp enough to slice a person in half for the crime of merely walking into it by accident. Not that the Queen needed the dagger-like protrusions to kill someone – her limbs were already wide enough to flatten a grown human with a single stomp.
Of course, Percy's eyes captured a few more details than his "companion's". He could clearly follow the bright Violet lines spreading through the Queen's circulatory system, her soul burning beneath her flesh like a silver inferno as an ocean of ink-coloured willpower rolled and tussled violently within her frame, barely contained.
'I have to give her credit for suppressing her domain, at least. She's more polite than most humans I've met,' he noted.
Curiously, Percy didn't feel very tense under the creature's scrutinizing gaze. Perhaps he should have been more wary of the monster, considering how much larger and stronger it was than the Starry Knight that had nearly claimed his life a few years prior. Then again, his confidence wasn't unfounded either, given how much stronger he and Micky had grown since their frantic escape from the Guild.
Even so, the elemental body stepped closer to the human, ready to meld into his Cloak at a moment's notice. If the colossal insect was weaker than Deimos, they might be able to take it down without going all out, but fighting their way out of the hive was bound to be even harder.
"Greetings, Your Majesty," Percy said, bowing his head slightly. He had no idea whether the creature could even understand him, let alone appreciate the gesture, but he genuinely felt like reciprocating the Queen's excellent manners. "I must thank you for your hospitality, and for giving us the time and space to recover before our meeting."
No response.
The wasp didn't so much as twitch. She was still looking at them unflinchingly, their figures reflected countless times across her compound eyes. The other bugs stopped moving at once, however, halting their incessant buzzing and plunging the chamber into silence so deep that one could hear a pin drop.
Yet, one of the creatures did move, a shape slowly approaching by the corner of Micky's vision. It was an elephant-sized bug – a Starry Knight – its rhythmic steps echoing through the vast chamber. Walking in front of Percy, it stopped right between him and its mother.
Percy had no idea what the insects were up to, so he just watched with curiosity as the Queen raised her forelimb a few metres above the crystalline floor of the cavern. Without the slightest warning or hesitation, she slammed the colossal limb down at her subject, sending a tremor through the hive as she crushed the entire lower half of the bug's body into goo.
The gruesome sight cause Percy's eyes to widen with shock. On one hand, the Queen's blatant disregard for the life of her own descendant wasn't necessarily a bad thing – it likely meant that she didn't care as much about all the other insects he and Micky had slain in the past.
On the other hand, it was a clear indication that she wouldn't give a damn about a human's life either. The only reason they were still alive was because she wanted something from them, so they had to make sure the negotiations reached an amicable conclusion if they wanted to leave this place peacefully.
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'What did she do that for, though?' Percy wondered, a frown forming on his face as the Starry Queen made no further move. It wasn't until a few seconds later, when she slowly pushed the still-twitching body of the dying Starry Knight toward him that he realized what she wanted. 'Don't tell me… does she expect me to put a clone in this thing?'
As cruel of a move as it was, he had to admit that it was chillingly practical. Violet beasts were certainly intelligent enough to communicate with sapients, but it didn't look like the Queen possessed any serviceable vocal cords, nor did the mental field that she used to convey her commands to her subjects seem to extend to anyone else.
In other words, the simplest way to speak to Percy would be to have him enter one of the insects' bodies, tapping into their network. And… judging by how thoroughly she'd injured the creature, she'd clearly figured out the basics of how Percy's bloodline worked too.
Swallowing hard – mostly due to the Queen's callousness than genuine fear – Percy ignored her offer entirely, walking around the Knight. Not only did he have no intention of sharing the wasp's agony just to chat with its abusive mother, he also had a much better way available.
Approaching the Violet beast, he cautiously lifted his arm, placing his palm against the pillar-like forelimb gently, so as to not startle its owner. The chitinous exoskeleton was still covered in green mucus – which was rather unsettling. Percy had to put genuine effort to avoid gagging, unwilling to offend the Queen so soon.
Pushing his soul to the very surface of his skin, he used a sliver of grey mana to attach it to the Queen's. Percy had already upgraded his Soul-to-soul spell to Refined, but he could obviously still access the original, less intrusive version of his Spectral Art. The giant wasp shuddered for the briefest of instants as their souls connected, though she didn't pull back.
'You don't have to sacrifice your subjects just to talk to me,' Percy said, as Micky tossed the spasming remains another glance.
'A small loss,' a feminine voice responded, cold as ice. 'I agree that your method is more convenient though,' she added.
'May I know why you've gone to so much trouble to bring us here alive?' Percy asked, cutting to the chase.
A faint chuckle echoed in his soul before the creature responded. 'Bold of you to ask me that, after breaking into my home without permission, slaughtering thousands of my subjects, and then even having the gall to return. Maybe I just wanted to gut you two personally and take my time savouring your innards.'
Percy shrugged, not intimidated by the creature's empty threats in the slightest. The Queen had to know how risky it would be to attack him. Besides, he doubted that she'd gone through such lengths just to threaten them. Still, he opted to reply a little more diplomatically than that, to hopefully ease the tension in the room.
'I do apologize for our transgressions. It was never our intention to stir such a mess last time. We merely wanted to pass through the tunnels to escape from the Guild. We would have left peacefully had your children allowed us.'
The Queen clicked her mandibles in annoyance, though it sounded more like a couple of boulders grinding against one another.
'And what about today's mess? Or did you forget about that chasm you've carved into my hive? My children are still trying to fill up the hole as we speak, but that strange ice of yours isn't making their job easy…'
Percy flashed the Violet beast a sheepish grin, scratching his head as he recalled doing something of the sort during his battle with Deimos. Too much had been going on in his mind at the time to worry about that.
'Well, I'm sorry about the hole too. As you can imagine, killing Violets is messy work,' he replied pointedly, his meaning clear. That said, he didn't want to provoke the bug too much, so he rushed to change the topic. 'Anyway, I'm sure you didn't bring us here just to chastise us. I suppose it's safe to assume you want something?'
Percy doubted that wasps could exhale, but he was also rather certain that what he felt surging through the Queen's soul was as close to a sigh as it could get.
'It's not merely a question of what I want. It's just as much about what you want. Or what you should want, at any rate.'
'I'm not sure I follow,' Percy replied.
It was admittedly just speculation on his part, but he'd been operating under the assumption that she wanted him to teach her Circulation. Of all the things he'd revealed during his previous visit, he thought that it was the one most likely to have piqued her interest.
That was especially the case, if the Queen had realized that the boosting art could be used in reverse to preserve or even restore a beast's stamina. Of course, she hadn't seen Micky use Hibernation or Regulation – since the crow hadn't even invented those spells yet. On top of that, she would probably find it difficult to replenish her beast mana without a second affinity to draw from. Even so, Percy wouldn't be surprised if the centuries-old creature had recognized the spell's potential at a glance, beast or not.
During today's meeting, Percy's hope was to exchange Circulation – and maybe even the Moirais' Decree, if necessary – for an egg to place Nephthys in. Or at least, that had been his goal before listening to the Queen. Suffice to say, her following words shook both his hopes and assumptions to the core.
'Then I'll make it clear for you. Unless you find a way to help me, not only is my hive doomed to die out, but with it, so is your entire world…'
Percy had no idea what the Queen meant by those words, though he didn't rush her for an explanation. Luckily, the colossal bug didn't keep him waiting for too long.
'One of your people broke the ancient pact between my kind and yours, placing both sides at great risk.'
'Pact?'
The Queen nodded mentally. 'Well, it's more of an unspoken deal than an explicit contract, but your ancestors understood a long time ago that they need our help to produce new gods. Meanwhile, my predecessors also realized that we need your gods to defend our world from outsiders, since producing our own deities ranges from impractical to downright impossible.'
Percy couldn't help but raise an eyebrow at the revelation. All of this made sense, of course, but he hadn't known that humans and wasps had been operating under a mutual agreement all this time. Then again, it would have been stranger if the two sides had failed to reach some kind of consensus after coexisting for so long.
'If that's the case, why do my people hunt down your children? Couldn't you just offer us the nectar we need for our advancement, skipping the unnecessary bloodshed entirely?' he asked.
'There are many reasons for this arrangement. Rest assured that I'll explain everything about my hive's inner workings in excruciating detail. There's simply no way around that – not if you are to do what I need you to do. However, you should first understand what the problem is before we discuss anything else.'
Nodding, Percy gestured for her to continue.
'Long story short, we were supposed to limit our expansion to within the Fungal Spire's range. It's not like we ever wanted to move elsewhere anyway, since this is the only place on Remior with enough mana to support our needs. In exchange, your people were supposed to never step foot in our tunnels, and to only collect the nectar they need by hunting the tiny fraction of our kind we send outside. For as long as we can remember, both sides have honoured this arrangement religiously…'
'…until we didn't,' Percy said, completing her sentence for her.
'Indeed. A powerful mage broke into my chambers some time ago, stealing something that we cannot survive without. And I doubt I need to explain the consequences of our impending extinction.'
Percy frowned. He'd come here seeking a body for Nephthys – the last thing he'd expected to hear was that Remior's survival was at stake. Just who would have done something so despicable?
Well, okay… that part wasn't so difficult to guess. There simply weren't that many people capable of doing this in the first place. After all, they'd have to break into a hive teeming with Green and Blue wasps, stealing something of immeasurable importance from their Violet ruler.
Besides, Percy already harboured some guesses as to the culprit's identity, due to the things he'd learned while helping Nesha snoop around Twilight City, trying to figure out the reason for her family's destruction.
'Was it a man with a White core by any chance? When exactly did this happen?'
'He was,' the creature confirmed. 'I'm not familiar with how your kind keeps track of time, but to me it still feels rather recent…' she added. 'Let's see… it happened enough time ago for two Red wasps to have evolved all the way to Green, one after the other.'
Falling silent, Percy took a few seconds to run some calculations in his head. Micky had spent a couple of decades to reach Green, which would translate the wasp's example to roughly forty years.
However, the bugs probably advanced faster than the crow had been able to, considering that they spent most of their lives in such a mana-rich environment, stuffing their faces with nectar every single day. How much faster, Percy didn't know, but if they were about twice as fast as the bird, the timeline would match the reports of Machaon's brief tenure in the Alchemists' Guild.
'I think I may know who it was. But what exactly did he take?' Percy asked again, struggling to imagine what could be so valuable to the Queen.
'An egg,' she replied, causing him to swallow hard. Wasn't that exactly what Percy himself had also come here looking for? Though he doubted that the Violet beast was talking about the egg of a regular wasp – they likely had millions of those, so it wouldn't make sense that losing one would be such a big deal.
Sure enough, the Queen confirmed his assumption. 'This was my heir's egg. Each Starry Queen can only ever lay a single egg that carries the royal lineage. Without my daughter to succeed me, our hive will die out as soon as I do. And I cannot give birth to another princess – only my daughter can.'
Percy frowned, finding this whole thing completely impractical – if not downright ridiculous. How could the wasps' biology have evolved in such an inconvenient way that the future of their entire species would hinge on the survival of a single member?!
Then again, it made sense if he thought about it. Magical beasts didn't have to worry about diseases or miscarriages – or whatever the word was for inert wasp eggs. For creatures like these, every single egg was all but guaranteed to hatch into a healthy specimen.
Since the bugs had no predators or external threats either, the descendants of the Starry Queen were normally as safe as one could be – hidden in the deepest part of the hive and guarded by countless powerful beasts.
Leaving aside the extremely unlikely scenario of a rogue White foolishly ruining everything – which was admittedly a blind-spot in the creatures' evolution – the only thing the hive had to worry about was infighting. Had the Queens been capable of producing multiple successors, the princesses might tear each other – as well as their entire hive – apart. Viewed from that angle, their inability to give birth to a second heir might serve an integral purpose.
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'Fine. That answers what the problem is, but it doesn't explain why that bastard would do something so vile,' Percy said.
The Queen shook her head, however. 'Actually, his motive is the one thing we don't have to wonder about. Wasps with the royal lineage produce a denser, purer variant of the nectar that you've no doubt collected from my other descendants. It's called the royal jelly, and it's twice as effective for cleansing one's core.'
Both of Percy's hearts skipped a beat upon hearing that, a trace of greed worming its way to his eyes.
'How can this be?!' he asked, finding the notion difficult to accept.
A resource twice as effective as the nectar would translate to halving the time to each advancement – provided that it could be brewed into an elixir, of course. If that was the case, didn't that mean that Remior had technically possessed a path to godhood for Yellow-borns all along?! Shouldn't their world have already been a greater spring?!
'I know what you're thinking, but it's not as simple as it sounds,' the Queen said, dousing his excitement. 'Royal jelly is twice as effective as regular nectar, but extremely inefficient to produce. Excreting it consumes over a dozen times as much ambient mana as the same amount of nectar. Our hive wouldn't be able to sustain itself if every ordinary member generated the jelly. That's why it's exclusive to the royal wasps. It's a scarce resource that we strategically invest in our own development, and to accelerate the growth of certain other members of the hive when necessary.'
Okay. That made more sense. So there just wasn't enough royal jelly to go around. If the Divine Order really wanted a Yellow-born to reach the Clear grade, maybe they could forcefully extract enough for a single person, but that would come at the detriment of the hive's development. All things considered, no individual was worth compromising Remior's only source of nectar, no matter how talented they were.
'Somebody should try telling Machaon that,' Percy thought, his frown deepening.
Evidently, the leader of House Asclepius didn't give a shit. He'd abused the power and trust that everyone had given him, selfishly putting the whole world at stake just to reach his own goals. In a disturbing way, Machaon's ambition reminded Percy of his own. Didn't he also dream of attaining divinity? And wasn't he willing to go to great lengths to achieve that?
'No. I'm nothing like him,' Percy reassured himself.
There were certain lines that he simply refused to cross. This was why he hadn't dared to steal his family's tree to awaken his second core all those years ago. Instead, he'd opted to search for an alternative source of life mana to repair the Moirais' Decree.
And, while he'd also been planning to steal an egg from the hive, Percy hadn't even known about the royal lineage or the jelly. It probably wasn't an accident that Remior's upper echelons kept that sensitive information under wraps, but Percy wouldn't have considered pulling the rug from under everyone's feet even if it had been common knowledge. And this was despite him being a Red-born – not a Yellow-born – thus needing every single advantage that he could get to reach the end of the Colour realm.
He'd only ever wanted to grab a regular egg – one out of millions. His goal hadn't been to accelerate his advancement, but merely to establish his personal source of nectar, so that he wouldn't have to constantly search for more.
Clearly, some people didn't have the same moral scruples as him.
'Now what? Can't we get your daughter back? Asshole or not, he has to have kept her alive, right? He'll need her to produce royal jelly for thousands of years before he becomes a demigod,' Percy reasoned.
'Honestly, I don't know,' the Queen replied. 'Naturally, it's in his best interest not to hurt her, but that doesn't mean he's been able to keep her healthy. Royal wasps are born at Orange, not Red, and require a lot more mana than regular wasps to survive. And that's without somebody stealing their jelly. Even if she hasn't died yet, I wouldn't be surprised if her growth has been severely stinted. I doubt she'll be able to survive long enough to reach the higher grades outside the hive's special environment. Even I struggle to sustain myself at Violet. This is the main reason none of us ever attempts to reach White, despite having a long enough lifespan for it.'
'There's still a chance though!' Percy protested. 'Raise a fuss! Try to get the gods' attention! If they realize what he did, they'll get your daughter back in a day!'
The Queen mentally sighed again. 'Perhaps. Your gods are notoriously difficult to reach, however, and our kind cannot communicate with your people as easily. Whenever I tried to reach out to the Guild's elders, your hunters just slaughtered my children as usual. If the situation persists, I am inevitably going to take more drastic measures, but I was hoping to find another solution. Especially since I don't know if my heir will be healthy enough to lead the hive even if we do retrieve her.'
'What solution did you have in mind?'
'Well, my first idea was to forcefully lay more royal eggs and hope that one would be lucky enough to survive. So far, it hasn't worked. I've only managed to drain my strength and cut my lifespan short.'
Percy swallowed hard upon listening to the desperation in the creature's voice. If the wasp in Machaon's possession was indeed dead or irreversibly damaged… and if the current Queen also died… humanity would be screwed!
Their existing gods wouldn't be affected, and a few of the Order's demigods might attain divinity too, but that would be it. With every god that died, Remior would forever have one less, until they were back in the same primitive state as Sol's people, struggling to protect themselves from demi-humans and beasts!
And that might actually be the best-case scenario. Percy had no idea how Remior's relationship with other worlds looked, but if they had any enemies that knew of the planet's location, they would surely pounce the moment they sensed weakness, enslaving them like Micky's people!
'Any better ideas?' he asked, his heart now racing with worry.
'I could make a push to White. For a long time, I've been balancing my consumption to sustain my core without cleansing it as much, but I bet I can get there if I really try. No Starry Queen in history has ever dared to evolve into an Empress, yet I think that the promotion might replenish my strength and reset my ability to give birth to a new successor. Of course, I'll definitely starve to death not long after my advancement. It's either that or starving out the rest of the hive, which is unacceptable. But there's no guarantee this will work, so I've been saving it as a last resort.'
That… sounded even scarier than just laying eggs by the dozens and hoping for one to hatch. If the Queen attempted this, there would be no going back. But the Violet beast wasn't done.
'I was torn between launching an all-out attack against your people to catch your gods' attention, or ignoring your kind entirely and gambling with my evolution. And there was also the option of doing both – reaching White would improve my ability to make noise, and eating hordes of humans would buy me some time before I ran out of food.'
Percy's eyes widened with horror as he realized how dangerous an all-out invasion would have been. An endless army of powerful wasps led by a White-cored Starry Empress… no matter the outcome, this would have been catastrophic for Remior.
By the time the gods stepped in to stabilize the situation, the damage might have been irreversible. Even if they managed to restore the hive to a functional state, how many people would have lost their lives in the conflict?
'What stopped you?' he asked.
'You did,' the Queen replied. 'Watching you, I realized that there might be another way out of this mess.'
Percy didn't need the Queen to complete her explanation to know what she had in mind – her meaning was already clear. As luck would have it, the two had actually wanted the same thing all along! If only she'd told him the last time he was here – instead of trying to have her children kidnap him – they could have avoided so much trouble!
'You seem to have figured it out already,' she said, before pointing at Micky with her other foreleg. 'Indeed, I want you to do the same thing you did for that creature, to help me produce a new heir.'
Percy didn't bother correcting her. Obviously, the wasp only wanted him to turn one of the inert eggs into a regular familiar – she likely had no idea that Micky had already fused with him and turned into an aspect. Still, there were a couple of things he didn't understand.
'How did you even learn about him? I'm sure you've observed us through your subjects' eyes, but you never witnessed Micky's creation.'
'Correct. In fact, I didn't see you possess the wasps either. There are too many wasps in the hive for me to control at once, and the weaker ones have rather undeveloped minds too, which makes sharing their senses difficult – if not downright unpleasant. Most of the time, I just send them vague commands en masse. Things like "harvest mana outside" or "attack the intruder".'
'Then how?'
The giant bug sent Percy the mental equivalent of a shrug. 'I did notice that something strange had been interfering with my control over the Starry Soldier for months, though I couldn't have imagined that it was somebody deliberately getting in my way. I'd simply assumed that it had been a defective wasp. I only realized that it was you after I took control of that Starry Knight. Sadly, the Soldier had already been destroyed at that point, otherwise I could have taken advantage of our mutual connection to reach out to you.'
'So, you did the next best thing and tried to capture us alive,' Percy replied.
'Yes. Looking back into the signals I'd received from the Soldier, I was able to infer how you'd injured and possessed it. And I could tell how the bird differed from the others at a glance. The wasps had merely been your minions – temporary shells you had to constantly coerce to do your bidding. But not the bird. It's a permanent creation with its own personality and better growth potential. I admit that I have no idea what happened to it in this most recent battle, but it has confirmed my guess that you can even bring creatures back from the verge of death.'
Okay. The Queen had clearly noticed that a few things had been off with "Micky's" behaviour since she brought them here. Perhaps they should be more cautious while negotiating with the Violet beast. She was far sharper and wiser than they'd given her credit for. Either way, their condition didn't really affect the situation much.
'Whatever the case, I hope you can do something similar, to breathe life into one of the inert eggs. If I'm not mistaken, turning one of my offspring into a permanent subordinate has been your goal too, right? It's why you infiltrated my hive the last time, and also why you returned to this place now.'
'It is,' Percy admitted, still finding the Queen's willingness to cooperate difficult to believe. 'Aren't you worried about placing your hive's future in the hands of a complete stranger though?'
'My hive's future is already bleak. I would be a fool to worry about my unborn daughter's allegiance when I cannot even grant her a life without your help. Besides, I very much hope that our arrangement will be temporary. You'll foster my successor for a single generation, until she can pass the hive to a child of her own. After that, you and your kind will leave us be and never disturb our home again.'
Percy sighed.
Under these circumstances, he had no reason to decline the Queen's generous offer. If anything, this was quite the opportunity for him too, in more ways than one. Not only was the Violet beast willing to give him exactly what he needed, but the princess would make for an even better familiar than he could have hoped for.
With a single move, he'd be helping Nephthys and the Amenthei, saving Remior from certain destruction, as well as gaining leverage to prevent the other Houses and possibly even the gods from bullying his loved ones. Finally, he'd obtain his personal source of not just nectar, but royal jelly – assuming that he could find a way to take advantage of it without compromising the hive's survival.
'I'm more than willing to try, but I can't promise results. I've only ever made a single familiar before, and it was completely by accident. At the very least, your eggs need to have some life in them for this to work,' he said, before scratching his head. 'Also, I have to fuse a different soul into your daughter's body. I already have someone in mind, but I need you to understand that your hive's future will ultimately belong to her. I've already explained how important the Starry Wasps are to her, but she only ever agreed to be placed in the body of a regular wasp.'
'If she was willing to be reborn as a lowly Drone, finding herself inside the body of a Princess sounds to me like a bargain,' the Queen insisted, some irritation flaring through their connection.
'I can't deny that, and you can rest assured that I'll let her know how much is depending on her. Still, I can't guarantee that she'll be willing to give you a granddaughter, and I'm not going to force her,' Percy replied, standing his ground.
He knew it wasn't ideal, but he couldn't help it. He'd have to hear the goddess's opinion before committing to anything else.
'I understand,' the Queen spat a few seconds later, not sounding very pleased.
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Percy continued, however. 'Even if we fail, it doesn't mean that there's nothing we can do. I would ask you to give me a regular egg to put my friend in. In exchange, I swear I'll do everything in my power to reach out to the Divine Order in your stead, to get your other daughter back. I don't know what state she's in, but anything is better than nothing.'
The Queen remained silent, but Percy could tell that she was in agreement. Pulling her leg back, she severed their connection, slowly turning around. Each thunderous stomp of her colossal limbs sent a tremor through the cavern as she entered one of the wider tunnels, motioning for him to follow with her antennae.
As they walked through the long corridor, Percy had Micky examine the pyramid again. Unlike the previous time they'd checked, there was now a giant crack that had nearly split the structure in half, revealing Nephthys's wisp.
The radiant soul that had once struggled to fit within the shrunken pyramid now only occupied a fraction of its volume, several thin tendrils stretching to every corner to keep the object from falling apart, and to shield her subjects from harm. Their own souls were barely perceptible – mere dots glinting faintly within the goddess's wisp. And if that hadn't been enough, Nephthys's soul appeared to be evaporating even faster without the pyramid's protection.
"Please hang in there just a little longer. We're almost there," Percy whispered, fully aware that the goddess probably couldn't hear him.
The Queen brought them to another chamber, this one even wider than the last. There were fewer exits – though still dozens of them – and fewer wasps too. But there was something else here.
Two colossal pits had been dug into the floor; each filled to the brim with green goo. And Percy noticed piles upon piles of spherical objects faintly visible beneath the surface. Each was about the size of an apple, though their glossy shells were pitch black, with countless colourful dots adorning them – much like the wasps' carapaces.
The eggs in one pit appeared slightly different, however. Golden watermarks rippled around their surfaces, giving them a pattern resembling the one on the Queen's own exoskeleton.
Stopping at the centre of the room, the Violet beast waited for Percy to reestablish their mental link – something that he didn't hesitate to do. Only then did she explain what they were seeing.
'Our kind can be separated into three main types. The first are the royal wasps like me and my kidnapped daughter. Only one can be born per generation, but you can clearly see all my failed attempts at producing a second,' she said, pointing at the piles of eggs with the golden markings. 'Wasps with a royal lineage are only considered mature after reaching the Violet grade, at which point they are known as Starry Queens. Like I mentioned earlier, they are born at Orange instead of Red, and are called Starry Princesses up to and including the Blue grade.'
Percy nodded. 'I guess the second type includes all the other wasps I've seen until now?'
'Indeed. Those make up the overwhelming majority of our ranks. From Red to Blue, they are the Starry Drones, Workers, Soldiers, Knights and Commanders. But what you might not know, is that non-royal wasps are incapable of evolving past Blue.'
Percy frowned upon hearing that. This was something that he hadn't heard before. Until today, he hadn't even known that the Queen came from a different caste of bugs than the rest.
The reason for their inability to grow past a certain point wasn't difficult to guess – it was probably the same one that restricted the Queen from producing multiple Princesses. Less competition for her heir. If every wasp had the potential to reach Violet, some might fall outside her control, challenging her rule.
Whatever the reason, it was his lucky break that the Queen had offered him a superior egg to fashion his familiar out of, otherwise he might have ended up stuffing Nephthys's soul into a defective body stuck at the lower grades.
'I take it the Drones hatch from this other pile of eggs, then?' he asked.
'Not quite,' the Queen said, shaking her head. She remained motionless for a few seconds, probably relaying a command to her subjects.
A few of the smaller wasps in the room crawled into the second pit, placing a few of the eggs without the golden markings onto their backs before carrying them out of the chamber and through some of the other tunnels. Only once they were alone did the Queen resume her explanation.
'There are tens of millions of wasps in the hive, and only a single Queen. Naturally, it would be impossible for me to lay all the eggs by myself. That's where the third type of wasps come in – they act as the intermediary between me and the rest.'
The Violet beast remained perfectly still, clearly waiting for something. The cavern shook again, another massive creature slowly approaching. Percy watched curiously as a second behemoth crawled out of a corridor about a minute later, a Blue star thrumming rhythmically inside its thorax.
At first, he thought this was a Starry Commander – the first of its kind that he'd ever laid eyes upon. But he soon realized that this wasn't quite right. This wasp had a very different body structure from the others he had seen, including the Queen. It clearly wasn't designed for combat or even moving around much.
First, the creature had no wings or eyes! Its frame was far bulkier than the rest, its thorax and abdomen almost fused into a single, bulbous cylinder that its six stubby limbs struggled to support. On closer examination, the wasp appeared too large for a Blue beast – it was still smaller than the Queen, but not by much. At the very least, it was far bigger than the creatures Percy had seen on Thess'kala. Finally, it didn't have a stinger either, but rather countless small holes spiralling all the way from where the stinger should have been, to about two-thirds of the way around its abdomen.
As if to demonstrate their purpose, the creature's body convulsed a coupled of times, squelching sounds emanating from the holes as they vomited countless small eggs. They were coated in a similar type of green goo to the ones in the pits, but these were smaller than the others, barely the width of two fingers. The creature didn't stop until two tall mounds had formed by its sides.
'These will hatch into Drones,' the Queen explained. 'As for the ones in the pit, they will hatch into the Orange versions of the Starry Breeders – much like my wingless daughter there.'
Percy nodded in understanding.
Each Queen could only directly give birth to a single Princess and countless immature Breeders, while the Breeders themselves would be the ones tasked with populating the rest of the hive after reaching Blue. In essence, all the wasps Percy and Micky had seen in the past – as well as all the bugs that the Guild's hunters harvested nectar from on a daily basis – weren't actually the Queen's children, but her grandchildren.
However, the Violet beast hadn't brought them here just to give them a tour of the hive. Turning her head toward the pile with the marked eggs, she spoke again.
'Well? What do you think? Is any of them salvageable?'
Micky walked up to the Queen, placing his hand on one of her legs to establish a new mental link with her, freeing Percy up to examine the eggs. Reaching the edge of the pit, he leaned slightly over the viscous fluid to scan the objects.
He took an awfully long amount of time too, checking the entire pile carefully from tip to base, making full use of his mutated eyes as he searched for any traces of life that he could capitalize upon.
By the time he announced his verdict, his heart had sunk.
'Every single one of them is dead.'