Work Text:
Emilitia the Eternal
It was all so funny. Watching her neighbors run around like they were one of those mindless creatures with their head cut off. She wished she could just go outside and express her amusement at their frenzy, however, for as funny as this all was she was quite sure the moment she stepped outside their panic would wane and turn to disgust at her presence.
No, she was quite happy to stay in her fine abode while her fellow upper crust mates roamed their sheltered streets. Scared of the sickness threatening to reduce their world to rubble. Hilarious.
Within the long hours she had to spend in her home she had taken up quite a few hobbies. She was a bug of class after all, and the concept of bending materials to her will had always brought a sense of enjoyment for her. However, many ended being too tedious or demeaning for one of her stature, but some managed to keep her attention long enough to come to completion.
Not like she ever has guests to complain about the piles of odds and ends she keeps around her house anyways. All the more fun when she gets the urge and actually has the materials needed to complete whatever her brain had thought up.
A glowing, amber toned flower filled one of the many pots she had lying about near the windows. Sitting where it could receive some light refraction from the ever glistening rain pittering on her windows facing out to the rest of the city. Her entry may have been sheltered from the lower classes but the opposite side viewed the rest of the city from her elevated spot. Her other pots contained other various flora she had been experimenting with. The pots had to be acquired by means she’d rather not recall, as it only remained safe for her after the others went to sleep. That meant by the time she could sneak away from her home all the shops had closed and all that remained active were the night guard on the streets.
She wouldn’t be able to present herself to any stores anyways. With the upper class stores all but knowing her reputation and the stir she would cause for being a higher class bug to even shop within the lower class marketplaces.
No, if she needed to attain something she very much had to do it in a way that could threaten her livelihood if she were any other bug.
As the streets emptied she slipped on her hooded cloak and made sure she had everything she would need for a journey to the lower sectors. Where hooded figures were not questioned and bargains could be made with means other than geo.
Taking a look at her nailed shut door, to make sure it would hold until she got back, she drew her blinds and quickly made for a trap door she had to implement herself.
It was a short detour, one she hated to remember as creating it had caused dirt to get into the strangest corners of her carapace, in places she couldn’t get to as she washed, but it got her to a less traversed alley next to her house regardless.
Looking around from behind the architecture that hid her escape, she took stock of which guards were patrolling the streets that night.
The guards never bothered her, at least, most of them didn’t. While technically they were under no control but of Lurien and his geo, it was common practice to bribe the mentally weaker guards so that deals could be made and kept secret. Luckily, it seemed the guard roll was in her favor tonight.
While her upper classman had all but rejected her, her reputation was rather a good one with Lurien and the city in general. She had done the city a great service and Lurien had paid her respect in kind.
However, it would be Lurien’s favoritism that would put a figurative nail in her coffin. For as soon as the favoritism and respect was attained, her neighbors had turned jealous and angry. The respect of Lurien was not one easily earned, near impossible as many others' attempts at gaining it had all but been dashed in front of Luriens impassive disposition.
He had been given the title of Lurien the watcher for a reason. He was an observer. Rarely an actor unless need for him presented itself.
It wasn’t her fault she built a luxurious telescope so that he could watch to his heart's content.
It had been so outrageously boring since she had lost her means to tinker objects into having a purpose. To obtain anything as high spec as she needed she would have to go through a high class seller.
Her last attempts had been… disheartening to say the least.
No.
Amusing she reminded herself.
.
..
…
It was another long day of testing different nutrients for her flowers when she noticed there wasn’t nearly as many of her neighbors roaming about as she was used to. Hardly any who were out seemed to leave their general neighborhood.
Her curious mind begged to interact with her neighbors to find out why they had seemingly isolated themselves within the upper district, but she moaned the fact… Amused herself to the fact her neighbors were acting mindless again.
Forcing a giggle from her mouth she returned to observing the effects of the homemade nutrients she had concocted.
.
..
…
It was an interesting day when she watched one of her wandering neighbors suddenly turn around on their hindlegs and suddenly jump their wife. At first she assumed her neighbor had momentarily lost his ability to control his mating desires until she saw the bright orange glow coming from his eyes. His wife must have noticed it too, because she then let out an ear piercing scream. Its pitch ricocheted through her walls and reverberated into her ears, causing her to double over in pain.
The scream did not last long as the sound of carapace being crushed silenced the wife's voice.
The brief silence allowed her to shakily make her way to her window where she stood observant to the husband standing over his wife's bloody corpse with impassive glowing eyes.
Anyone who was still on the street broke into pure panic. Bugs screamed, ran, yelled for the guards, stood frozen with shock.
Emilitia, separated from the rest of the world in her abode, felt a twitch from her Chelicerae. Slowly she felt muscles start to convulse as air burst from her mouth at a volume she hadn’t used in possibly years. It bubbled from her lungs and for the first time since she had been cast out, pure ecstacy raced through her veins in laughter at the absurdity of life outside of her. Ecstacy at the misfortune of all her neighbors while she remained safe in her humble home.
Joy at the prospect of finally seeing her wretched neighbors facing karmic justice for rebuking her so.
She laughed as the guards slaughtered the husband in a similar matter he had butchered his wife.
She laughed as the rarity became a commonality.
She laughed as her neighbors dwindled to zilch on the streets while she remained safe in her home.
She laughed until there was no one left but the shambling husks of the city guards and other former upper caste bugs.
There was no going outside anymore.
Years passed, countless many, as it became prevalent to her that surely she had managed to stop aging at some point. Maybe somewhere along her mindless tinkering (as now she had all the supplies in the world!) she had somehow discovered immortality along the way.
Most likely not, but it was an amusing thought to ponder in the endless days she spent holed up in her home until she had to venture for supplies again.
Not that she needed to often, for she rarely felt the pangs of hunger anymore, nor the aching need to sleep.
Occasionally she would see something living pass by her home, but they were few and very far inbetween, and she never saw them again anyhow.
Most she saw always got skewered by what remained of the guards shambling husks.
It was on one of her better days, where she was able to just simply sit and laugh to herself, surrounded by her beautiful flowers she had breeded to perfection, that someone broke into her home by her secret trapdoor. She was initially startled that the dead corpses outside had suddenly sprouted a mind smart enough to actually think there way into finding her secret passage.
Her fear was quickly abated by the diminutive form that came to stand in front of her.
It surely was tiny, a wonder that it survived the giant bodies outside with the instinct of attack first, but here it was. A tiny white head with two horns and two pitch black eyes with a black body to match.
It stared silently up at her.
What manners, waiting for their better to speak first.
“Ah, what a surprise! It's not often I receive visitors. It's been so long. Ages even. I just hope my manners haven't left me. You've no doubt sensed my affluence. You're right to guess, I'm renowned amongst the upper caste of Hallownest.”
“...Well I was... once, until those cretins cast me out. Have you met them, my former fellows? That's them outside, their bodies shambling around all mindless and empty. And I'm still alive to witness their pathetic demise.”
She giggled to herself at the thought.
“...Ahhh, I'm just so happy. Fate can be a wonderful thing.”
That she was spared while her former caste mates were sentenced to be the very thing they feared...
“Isn't life just wonderful…”
So wonderful. It was fun to finally have someone to share it with!
“In times past I wouldn't have spoken with your likes, but now the rest of my caste are wonderfully, distantly deceased…”
“...If I didn't welcome you I'd never have anyone to share my happiness with.”
It was a fleeting happiness though, as every moment had been since her social estrangement.
No doubt this one too would meet its demise at the nails of the city’s guards. She’d outlive them too, as she did all the others.
.