The Legacy of sKeth

sKeth was never seen by the members of the Cartographers' Guild again. Removing her from her hive on Oasis was a monumental labour for the Swarm – a hundred thousand tiny bodies carving their fangs through sKeth's very being, resecting the biological core from the embodied hive.

The thirty minutes it took her to be loaded onto a spacecraft were perhaps the only time the Queen knew fear. Fear was not a useful emotion to the Swarm – they much preferred rational concern – but emotion was writ too deep into their ancient brains to excise entirely. She waited, trapped in concrete, as her body slowly heated until it became uncomfortable. She was at the mercy of her sisters. She would never be whole again.

She never showed that weakness. That loss. That regret. Not even to her own brood. They were a part of her, but a part of her that would benefit little from knowing that she had wavered. Still, when her mind-chamber cleared and she had a moment of privacy, she would look upon the small chitinous phials flooded with royal hormones to produce her daughter-queens. She would use the voicebox she was given by Kaph to speak with the new ones, and she would whisper in a language alien to her.

“may you grasp… what i could not.”

millions transform
a barren world
few hardy plants seed
biproducts release
begetting more crops
life sustaining life

her heart at the core
excavated
from where it took root
salvaging enough
to pollinate void
enacting her drive

[yet incomplete]

Written by Oli J.