Work Text:
Submerged. Darkly lit. Clutches of embryos gestate in their leathery wombs. Miniscule specks, no larger than your smallest fingernail, gently squirm and float about in their own fluids as they eagerly await life on the outside, longing to become part of the greater whole. One in particular is not like the others, as it will be the focus of this narrative.
It writhes about as it grows, changing over time into a more complex being, it's molecules stapling together by choice of the universe. It so desperately wants, but it knows not what for, poking at the walls of it's cell with tiny horns, trying to break free. Prodding, piercing, and finally tearing, a hole into the shell that for so long defined the bounds of it's universe, squirming out through glistening amniotic fluid and onto the cold cave floor, a new larva added to the ranks of an ever growing system.
The larva sends signals of pheromones to one of the many drones living at this particular compound, rudimentary eyes detecting the light of a torch as it approaches. The larva is lifted and brought above ground, it's world rapidly expanding as it takes in every color yet unseen. Soft pinks, blues, yellows, still only splotches of color to it's feeble mind, but so, so beautiful. Like all the others, it cries.
Above ground, the larva will be raised with an efficiency that most would consider machine-like, had it not been entirely organic. Regular feedings on the hour, constant exposure to sunlight, occasional draining of excess fluid. It is during this stage of it's life where it will begin to truly perceive the world around it, redefining itself as something more than a lowly bug or monster.
For reasons it cannot yet understand, this particular larva will become invested in an outside force, a tall, slender woman clad in red garb, wearing the skull of some creature as her crown. A foreign presence, but one that is welcomed by the hive. It looks on curiously as she communicates with another of it's kind, a particularly weathered looking drone.
The individual's appearance would have long lasting consequences, as a blurry shape imprinted into it's brain, closer to some primal feeling than anything. Even as the larva pupates, and even still after it hatches from it's cocoon as a freshly matured drone, the feeling only burns brighter at the back of its head. The drone will chase that feeling to the ends of the shabby planet it now inhabits, finding new ways to experiment and reform itself to get closer to it's desired shape.
As time wears away and polishes the drone into a smoother form, it develops a taste for watching the night sky, observing the movement of the constellations, and especially the phases of the moon. It is during one of these prolonged sessions of stargazing that the feeling catches up with her, all at once, the beauty of the crescent moon, the twinkling stars, flowing into and through her, an overwhelming realization that pierces her through her like a cosmic javelin. "Of course.", She whispers to herself, and the many siblings with which she is linked.
Her name will be...
Decres