Chapter Text
Hornet knew that strangers had entered Hallownest almost immediately.
There was a part of it that was second nature to her- as her dying kingdom’s sentinel. A sensory organ that trailed throughout the abandoned footpaths, sensitive to the presence of unfamiliar bodies. Countless years of surveillance made such a matter trivial.
… In her past, the matter would have unnerved her. Before the fall of the Radiance. Before the infection receded, that sweetly-smelling blight cut at the source, to haunt her kingdom and rouse its dead no longer. But with the state Hallownest was left in- unsightly as it was, compared to its prime- it was hardly dangerous… Anyone who dared to brave the wastelands would likely survive Hallownest’s dangers. And if they couldn’t, it would not have been her problem. Not anymore.
Strangers- foreign though they were- hadn’t been the issue.
But these ones had been hunting her. As a hunter herself, it’d been easy for Hornet to notice the signs. They disguised their trails well, but not well enough. And truly, it had been a they- multiples- different scents, different claw marks, different signs left behind…
How many there had been, Hornet could not say. Only that they drifted the same routes that she patrolled. Nestled themselves into nooks and crannies that only she should have known- shortcuts that should have been wholly invisible to anyone knew to Hallownest’s weathered roads.
… The last time she had been tailed, it’d been by little Ghost… Although they, at least, had the decency to show themselves. Or perhaps they simply lacked the talent to hide.
Regardless, over the past few days, Hornet was beginning to learn what it felt like to be prey. And she had learned she wasn’t fond of it.
Such displeasure reached a boiling point at Kingdom’s Edge… The wind that blew in from the wastelands had been particularly strong that afternoon. Thank the gods for it; had it been drifting any weaker, or in any other direction, Hornet may not have caught the scent of her pursuers when she did.
She turned so sharply that her cloak snapped with motion, blade lifting to be level with her eyes as she thrust it at the figure behind her.
… She had expected the tip of her needle to be at about mask level… At best, somewhere near the neck. Not yet an attack as much as it was a warning.
She had undershot. She had severely undershot.
Hornet had to lift her head to make eye contact. The edge of her blade pressed only a bit above the hip of the wasp she threatened. Tall as she was- and so bold and brightly colored- it was a surprise that Hornet had not caught sight of her until now.
At that moment, the stranger wanted to be seen. Even if that meant being held at the point of a weapon generations older than she. Her pointed mask tilted down to scrutinize it, as if the active threat had been of idle fascination.
“Impressive blade.” She observed. The language, thankfully, had been one Hornet could parse. But the inflection had been utterly foreign to Hallownest.
“You are her, then. The wasp-blessed, though not wasp-born. Trained in the nearby hive.”
Setae bristled beneath the collar of Hornet’s cloak. Though she had known she’d been trailed, the knowledge hadn’t soothed the foreign unease. Nor did it ease her growing irritation… Either stalk her like a beast, or speak to her as an equal. To flit between the two spoke to a disrespect she was not inclined to tolerate.
“For what purpose do you seek me?”
If the bug would not regard her properly, then neither would she.
The wasp’s antenna twitched. A bug of modest observational skill would assume she had been irritated. The firm grip on the club at her side would have easily bolstered such a claim.
But Hornet was vigilant in ways common bugs were not. Enough to discern irritation from preparedness. The howling wind betrayed the presence of reinforcement, a foreign scent that danced along the edge of the clearing. More flecks of gold and yellow in the corner of Hornet’s gaze.
“Wasp-Blessed.” The club raised lazily, pushing Hornet’s needle to the side, “You will return with us. Whether with grace or by force matters not.”
“You believe me to be ignorant of the troops that accompany you?”
“All the more reason to come on your own terms. It would be a shame to crack your caripace so soon.”
Hornet’s grip tightened. Her jaws worked against each other. She pondered, briefly, what it might feel like to split open the shell of such a willowy bug.
“You would threaten me on the soil of my homeland? I have martyred bugs for less.”
“You would resist?”
Hornet’s needle swung readily to her side. The whipping of its edge against the air punctuated her snarl.
The wasp hummed mildly.
“So be it.”
The events that followed had been something closer to a blur than a battle. Which, yes, had been to say that the memory of it drifted like a fog in Hornet’s mind, loose and intangible, spilling between one another.
But it had also been exceedingly literal. The wasps had been fast. They moved faster than Hornet imagined bugs of their size could move. Faster than she had ever seen any bug move.
And perhaps- had she been fighting the club-wielder exclusively- there would have been a part of Hornet that found the fight enthralling. Being forced at last to play to her strengths, to her swiftness, to her lethality at a myriad of ranges. She could not even recall the last time she faced an opponent who rivaled her in talent and build in equal measure.
A pity she had been outnumbered. It deeply soiled the experience.
Hornet had never deigned to entertain the Colosseum above them, but she could only imagine a fight within its grand arena must have felt quite like this. Violent jabs and strikes, focus split too thin, bothering oneself not only with their quarry, but with the countless weapons to evade, and the specificities of each wielder.
When she leapt back from an axe swung wide, an arrow bit into her shoulder.
When she parried the swing of a nail that threatened her leg, the edge of a lance grazed her midsection.
Doubtlessly, they were the least organized band of warriors Hornet had ever laid eyes on. Nothing like father’s knights, or the Deepnest scouts, or the warriors of the Hive. But what they lacked in uniformity, they made up with utter unpredictability, to the point where it was difficult to imagine where the flaw lied in a team so diverse.
Harder still to imagine when something pierced one of the seams of her chitin, flooding the flesh with what she quickly identified as some manner of venom.
Hornet willed herself to thrash, felt the weight of a wasp being pushed away from her. But the toxins punished the movement, swift and merciless, and soon even tilting her head had become a sickening affair. Her legs shivered, desperate to retain a sturdy posture, but pulling them from the ashen ground beneath her feet had become too difficult an affair.
Something struck the back of her head- the sensitive point of the skull at the junction where her horns met. Something smooth and firm, evocative of a well-fashioned club.
Aside from sudden darkness, she recalled very little else.
The first time Hornet awoke had been the most unpleasant. The fog of her mind was not fully abated, but diluted to the point where she could think with some coherency. As consciousness returned to her, so too did the pain of her prior battle. The recollection forced what was meant to be a snarl from her throat (although it did not come out quite as threateningly as she had pictured it).
The muzzle wound around mask and jaw hadn’t made it any easier.
By the time Hornet found the strength to pry her eyes open, three things became abundantly clear:
Firstly, she was bound. Her arms were fashioned behind her back, legs tied together, cords bound around chest, neck, horns. The braids (organic, though from what material Hornet could not parse) held her fast to what felt like a branch, or a mast of some kind. Difficult to tell, when she could not crane her neck to see.
Secondly, her possessions were gone. There’d been no sign of her needle anywhere. And though her hands had not been free to check, the weight of her cloak was a thorough indicator that her pockets had been relieved of their prior contents.
Thirdly, she was far from Hallownest. So far, she could not catch its silhouette behind the shifting dust and sand. So far, she could not pick up the scent of its foliage, its beasts, its denizens- what few of them even remained.
She was far from Hallownest, and only getting further. Somewhere ahead of her, she could hear the gravely snort of some kind of yokebug. The procession of heavy clawsteps implied there’d been more than one… Enough to carry a few wasps, their supplies, and their quarry. Enough to tug the rattling dray she’d been carried in.
Cloth bundles had been stacked on either side of her… Delirious as she was, Hornet could not quell the new spark of rage upon the realization that she’d been stashed alongside cargo. Would a cage have been better or worse, she wondered…? At least she would have been treated like the conscious, living threat she was, as opposed to the carcass of a fresh hunt.
Her claws itched, tensed, struggled to curl to the ghost of her needle. The ropes which restrained her were quite impressively woven, but they would not restrain her at her full strength. To set herself free would be child’s play. All she needed was time.
… But to fend for herself- unarmed- against the same band of warriors who stood their own with her blade in hand… That had been a significantly taller order.
And even then, if- by some miracle- she cleaved them apart with fang and claw, what of the after? Perhaps she could commandeer the supplies, the rations, the beasts which pulled the wagons… Provisions would aid her, but they alone would not return her home. Even if she found her compass amidst her stolen things, what use would it be, without knowing what direction home even was?
Hornet was an old thing. Older than her captives. Older than their wagons. And with that age came a patience only time could forge.
And though her mother’s half urged her to bare her teeth- to wriggle loose and way waste to those who dared to wrong her- and her father’s half coaxed her similarly- to make such bugs regret tampering with such an oppressive caste- Hornet swallowed them both.
She had lived, endured, and waited for countless years. She would not crack under a fraction of the time.
She did not have a convenient way to count the stretch that followed… Over a week had been her best estimation, though she wouldn’t have bet an excess of geo on it. Regardless of the specifics, it’d undoubtedly been several days. Several days of rocking back and forth on rickety wagon wheels, and of repeated knockings of her wooden post against the back of her skull, and of bindings shifted against overly-irritated chitin.
Several days of regaining her strength, and several more spent forbading herself from using it.
The whipping of wind and biting of sands aside, rest had not come easily. Sleep was a comfort she weaned herself off of in the early days of Hallownest’s decline. In the face of such a dreamlike plague, sleep was a vulnerability of body and mind alike. She could not stave it off forever, of course… But as long as instinct compelled her, she could shrug off the need, even involuntarily.
As such, rest came in small bursts… Fleeting moments of unconsciousness. Her eyes would narrow, then blink, then shut for far too long. Then, panic. Adrenaline. Reflex. The same cycle that kept her alive through her kingdom’s fall. Far from a refreshing pattern of behavior, but there’d not been room nor will to unlearn it.
During her waking hours (- in between imagining how she would fell whatever leader or sovereign or prison guard she was being dragged to-) Hornet brushed up on her language comprehension. It had been far too long since she’d learned one from scratch, a fact made abundantly clear by how she struggled to retain and recall the native dialect of her attackers.
… They spoke unlike any bug Hornet had heard before. Their accents were a strange blend of articulate and harsh. Consonants fell from their mandibles with a sharp conviction- as if every conversation had been a battle of wits and word. Certainly a contrast from the palace demeanor of her youth, or the kingdom’s idle chatter, or even the untamed chittering of the Deepnest.
Eavesdropping kept her mind sharp. Even if none of the words were of any use to her now, every fraction of their language had the potential to aid her in the future…
(She held tightest of all to their word for ‘weapon’. Or, rather, to the word they used most frequently in relation to weapons, and thus her best estimation for what ‘weapon’ had been. Though she could not practice how the word felt on her tongue, she committed every syllable to memory. During quiet, sandswept nights, she imagined her claws to the throat of a wasp. Of uttering the word until they understood. Of finding her needle with their guidance, and of putting it to use.)
Those images kept her company when the hours grew long, and her bindings unbearable, and her patience thin.
Even through her ferocity, the sight of civilization on the horizon had flooded her with relief… Whatever it was that had awaited her, she would be left in suspense no longer.
The settlement was small from a distance… A gray-brown fleck amidst an endless sea of yellowed grass.
Then, they drew close, and Hornet realized that it had simply been small to begin with.
None of her daydreams had featured this supposed wasp homeland in any sort of clarity, so it was not as if she had particularly vivid expectations. But a part of her had figured that such powerful opponents- loath as she was to confess such a thing- would come from someplace a bit more… impressive.
Large mounds of well-sculpted clay and earth dotted themselves along the territory, rounded domes that reminded Hornet a bit too much of Dirtmouth… Burrowers, perhaps, these wasps. The modest exterior protected their expansive domain beneath the soil. Begrudgingly, she could agree that the decision was probably wise… With lands so obscenely flat- devoid of rock, or ridge, or even foliage beyond the rolling waves of grass- anything more impressive than their erected watchtowers would be near-painfully exposed.
Herdbeasts meandered the plains, similar to the ones that pulled the wagons… They trotted aimlessly, gorging on detritus, peering from wooden pens as their ilk plodded along the dry footpath.
(… Not yet… Not now. She was still surrounded. Still unarmed. The flare of her cloak would be impossible to miss amidst the grasslands, and she spied no paths or obstacles with which to shake a tail.)
A handful of the wasps began unloading their supplies. Their rations, after all, had lasted them far longer than they expected, what with their number halved. Some winced as they grabbed heavier bundles, every movement a reminder of the marks Hornet left on their shells.
The ones who seemed least ailed by their injuries had taken the obligation of Hornet herself. She tempered her expression, cold neutrality replacing the disappointment that threatened the surface… Another wise course of action that burdened her escape all the more.
Though she would have preferred to remain coolly impassive, she could not swallow her growl at the way they handled her. The rattling of the wagon had been consistent, at least. The uneven gait of the wasps, on the other hand, left much to be desired… Perhaps they were more impacted by Hornet’s treatment than they let on… Either that, or they’d been jerking her about on purpose. She chose to believe the option that best soothed her pride.
They sharply turned a corner, and even from Hornet’s supine position, she managed to catch a glimpse at the building they directed her towards… It looked much the same as the others, aside from size, wherein it triumphed rather dramatically. It’d been far more wide than tall, but nonetheless the tallest structure on the surface, second to the watchposts.
It had no door, per say. There was only a hole in the wall, large enough to accommodate the wasps without them arranging single file.
(Her first mercy, if not a small one. One less obstacle between her and the world beyond.)
There must have been some sort of divot in the floor- though with the line of sight she had, Hornet could not see it. But the pole she’d been mounted had been suddenly propped upright, sinking into the ground with a resonant thunk. If the blood had not been rushing to Hornet’s head at the time, perhaps she would have noted that the arrangement felt particularly sturdy. She would not tip, purposefully or otherwise.
She blinked white spots from her vision, squinting as she adjusted to the lower light.
The three wasps stood before her had been entirely unfamiliar. She would have remembered if they had been members of the party that captured her. She did not recognize the scars that littered their battle-scuffed shells, or the filigree on their weaponry that’d been absent from the others’.
She did not recognize the manner in which they stared at her, even bound and silenced as she was… Their honed gazes bore into her as though she were a fully capable threat. They looked at her the way the rest of them ought to have…
It coaxed a shiver down the length of her spine, hardly visible beneath the plush of her cloak. Her pale half could not help but preen.
… These wasps, whoever they had been, were warriors-above-warriors… They, at least, could recognize her worth.
“Text with Creator's Style turned off”
The voice of a wasp at her side- the club wielder; the one who beat the worst of the bruises beneath her shell- cut through the silence of the room. Her weapon thumped powerfully against the ground, and Hornet could have sworn there’d been a divot left behind that wasn’t there before.
“Text with Creator's Style turned off”
A bow of the head as the wasp stepped back, back toward the remainder of her party, beyond the radius of Hornet’s vision.
(She swallowed another snarl at the thought of the wasp- of that wasp in particular- leaving the room. Revenge was not something Hornet indulged in. She had long made peace with the fact that she may not receive it at all, with how ever-inflexible her circumstances became.)
(But it would be nice. Unequivocally, indisputably, it would be nice to split that carapace apart. And the closer that wasp moved towards the exit, the further that opportunity became.)
(She could feel her. Smell her. Taste her in the air, and all her fellow wasps beside her. She could not move. She could not strike. Not now. Not yet.)
(Beneath her skull, her teeth ground together.)
One of the Wasp Lords brought herself to move at last, stepping to fill the space her inferior once occupied, then further still. This one was not as tall as the others, but made up for it in bulk. She moved with a dangerous purpose, as if space moved around her, and not her within it. Hornet only stood a head taller than the hammer at her side, and she did not doubt for a moment that the weapon had been heavier. Regardless, the wasp lugged it in one claw, utterly unburdened.
By the time the broader wasp stopped moving, Hornet could only catch a sliver of the back of her shell… But she had been close enough for Hornet to hear her speak.
Softer than she would expect, from someone of her size and presumed status. Hardly affectionate, but unusually warm.
“Text with Creator's Style turned off”
… There had been more spoken, but as much as Hornet strained, she hadn’t been able to parse it. By her best estimation, it must have been a dismissal, or a command. Feet shifted against hard earth, and one by one she listened as the warriors began to retreat. The taste of them in the air faded slowly, lingering somewhere behind her, as distracting as a breath on her neck.
Even without her sight, it became rather obvious when the last one departed. With Hornet as their only observer, the three higher wasps tempered what prior softness dared to show. All four knew, of course, how foolish it was to show one’s neck to their enemy. Even a bound one.
She felt Hammer’s skeptical gaze scratch against her chitin. The wasp huffed beneath her breath, as if whatever she had observed had been an affront to her dignity.
“Text with Creator's Style turned off”
(The bug was close. Not close enough, but all three had been drawing nearer. It had only been a matter of time before they aligned themselves just so-)
A different Lord- spear firmly in hand, perfect posture accentuating her already impressive height- pushed past, glancing at her fellows as she moved toward their prey. Her strides were even, confident, as if Hornet had not been a caged predator, pestered and hungry and scorned.
“Text with Creator's Style turned off”
(Hornet detected no fear in the air. No apprehension. It gnawed at her. Either these three were exceptionally strong, or terribly naive. It was only by her restraint- her mercy- that she had not snapped these binds the moment she’d been able. Even when her provokers drew close, ever so close, enough to-)
A claw reached towards her face, and Hornet stilled. Muscles tensed beneath cloak and shell, primed, taut like a string about to snap.
Spear gripped to a loose piece of her muzzle- a bit of slack cord that trailed from the back of her head- and tugged. It must have loosened the integrity of the knots, as the rope unfastened with ease. It slipped free of her shell and jaw, draping lifelessly on the floor beneath her feet.
“Text with Creator's Style turned off”
Despite herself, Hornet’s head jerked up. She hadn’t heard a word she could actually parse since the battle that got her into this mess… She hadn’t been expecting an opportunity for conversation. She hadn’t factored fluent conversations into any of her vindictive reverie.
“I speak commonclick, yes.” The words escaped before she could think better of them. Oh, what a relief it had been to open her jaw. To remember what it was her voice sounded like, despite the textured gravel of underuse.
“As well as hivespeak,” she continued, mainly to work loose the knots in her jaw, “and several others.”
“Hivespeak will not serve you here.” A sudden interjection from the last wasp yet to speak; she strode towards her with a new sense of purpose, until she stood shoulder to shoulder with Spear.
Physically, she seemed the least impressive of the bunch, of an average stature and build alike. But the structure of her arms betrayed her modesty: impressive muscle, almost certainly born from a mastery of the longbow in her claws. In lands so devoid of cover, Hornet imagined such proficiency could prove rather lethal indeed.
She did not want to test such a theory. Though, she was willing to accept that she may not have had a choice.
“I will speak in a language you can parse,” Longbow scowled, as if Hornet was meant to relish such meager generosity, “so you may understand your options thoroughly. You have two total choices:”
Sharp feet pierced at hard ground as the wasp began to pace. She traced the semicircle of Hornet’s vision, ensuring that their gazes kept affixed to one another.
“You may struggle against us, if you wish, and you will be cut down before a claw can be raised against our number. It would certainly make things easier for us. Or, you may relent to our will, and will be…”
… There was a pause. And Longbow stopped pacing, suddenly too occupied by her own mind. Mandables chittered beneath the privacy of her mask, fidgeting with a word that had no proper translation.
“-coupled,” (a grimace, as if the space had been filled improperly) “-to a warrior of our choosing.”
If Hornet were being honest with herself, she had no prior intentions of concerning herself with their terms, when they could not be bothered to consider her dignity. But the demand had been so sudden- so utterly unexpected- that it felt much the same as the club on the back of her skull.
A flit of hesitation- if only to endure what she had heard had been what was spoken.
“... You have kidnapped me from my homelands to make a mate of me?”
Surely she had been mistaken. There had been some sort of translation error- the wasp had wrongfully exchanged one word for another, and had yet to realize the mistake. She would rephrase, correct herself, elaborate.
She did not. Neither did the others. Behind her false sockets, Hornet blinked, utterly bewildered.
Of all the bugs in Hallownest- of all the bugs in the world to capture for such a purpose, they selected her.
Hornet valued her life a great deal, and as such, she found the restraint not to shatter her well-maintained composure. The animal cackle that churned in her gut did not make it halfway to her throat before she had stamped it out.
The journey, perhaps, had done more to her psyche than she expected. Enough for her to stare death three-times-over in the face and suppress, of all things, laughter. But how else was she to greet such a pungent irony? In a different set of circumstances, her own mother might have howled.
Her restraint, blessedly, went unnoticed by the leering wasps. Spear had been closest, and had cocked her head at Hornet’s words- as if the taste of them had soured the very air around her.
“Too gentle a word for this act, small thing.”
The words had all the makings of a threat, but the tone carried no bite. She spoke with a cold genuinity that Hornet could not help but respect. Intimidation could only get a bug so far; Spear seemed to know exactly how to toe the line- a talent her fellows hadn’t yet to master.
“But, small as you are, you have proven yourself a skilled opponent. Our scouts continue to lick their wounds even after the length of their journey. It would be a shame to disgrace their restraint by killing you here.”
… Hornet considered her options. She weighed each against the other, attempting as best she could to harness her father’s foresight.
She could stick to her original plan. She could break free of her restraints with ease. And perhaps- if she ensured that she was fast enough, astute enough, deadly enough- she would be able to cut down these Wasp Lords with only a few injuries to show for it.
Then, she would have to find her tools. Then, she would have to find her way home. And she would be a fool to suspect that her scuffle would not draw attention eventually, if not immediately. If she slayed what appeared to be the leaders of this faction, they would likely see fit to hunt her to the ends of the earth. So, then, she would either have to kill the remainder of this tribe, or foolishly hope they would fail to find her again.
All things considered, not one of her better ideas. But she could do it. If only theoretically.
A different plan, however, had begun to sprout within her mind. Perhaps not as alluring, but significantly more practical.
These bugs needed her. That much was exceedingly clear, as much as they tried to hide it. They would not stand docile before her- a murderer of her citizens, a prisoner, a trophy- if they did not require her services. If they had it their way, Hornet imagined she would not be offered even an insinuation of choice.
They needed her to play their game. Which she would not, of course. But she could easily pretend.
And if they assumed- wrongfully, foolishly- that they had won… If they figured they had triumphed against this feeble outside-bug, they would lower their guards.
That would give her room to find her tools. That would give her room to get her bearings. If she was wise with her time, that would give her room to find the lodgings of the wasp who dared to rally her kin against her.
Worst comes to worst, even if she ran out of time, her mother’s curse could buy her more to work with… And what a darkly resourceful thought that had been…
“... Say I agreed to these terms.” Hornet coaxed, careful to keep any hint of agreement from her tone, “What would be the conditions of this coupling?”
Despite her lack of explicit agreement, the air grew heavy with a newfound interest. Even Hammer- who seemed by far the most tumultuous of the lot- had quieted at once, her sudden stare nearly pinning Hornet in place. She seemed intent to speak, but Spear had found her voice first, seemingly rather anxious to interject.
“You would be deposited in the burrow of a warrior of our choosing, and retrieved the following morning.”
… As thankful as she was for her veiled expression, Hornet’s skull had not been enough to disguise the way she flinched.
That would not be long enough. That would hardly give her time to get her bearings. Hornet considered herself rather competent, but to plot and execute her escape over the span of a single night was-
“You hesitate, bug.”
“Within my kingdom, such an engagement would be considered… hasty.”
“There are times where haste is called for.”
… How she hated to praise her father. How she hated to relish in his teachings. But the foolish wasp had unshackled her tongue from the will of her mind; with a single sentence, she revealed her people’s hand.
These bugs were not simply disadvantaged. These bugs were desperate. Desperate for what they assumed- for whatever absurd reason they dared think it- only Hornet had been able to provide.
She may have been bound, true. But they may as well have been in the flat of her claw.
… Hornet was beginning to understand politics. Worse still, she was beginning to like them.
“If I am to agree to such an arrangement, it would not be under the offered terms.” Hornet could not twist her neck particularly far, but she jutted it to the side as best as she’d been able. It was imperative that her distaste be inarguably clear.
“To defer so much agency for nothing in return is to die walking.”
The atmosphere in the room shifted in an instant.
Hammer snarled, a low and dangerous noise that Hornet imagined had been instinctual. Longbow seemed no better off, free claw twitching against the empty air.
As far as Hornet could parse, Spear seemed equally frustrated. But, unlike the others, she did a better job at swallowing it.
“Of all things, the pace bothers you so?”
The art of the bargain, so it seemed, was alive beyond the walls of Hallownest. Reveling in the newfound power she held over the room, Hornet allowed herself a moment to consider the question genuinely… This may be the only opportunity she had to tip the scales in her favor…
“I will relent on pace, or on preference. I will not relinquish both.”
Pace would have been preferred, of course. A currency as valuable as time held no equal. But if she could arrange a union with a particularly flimsy warrior, then dispatching them should have been significantly less of an issue. The time she would spend slaying them, she figured, could then be put to use in her escape. Considering the circumstances, it seemed a fair enough trade.
But judging by the reaction it provoked, Hammer had not agreed.
“Text with Creator's Style turned off Arragance!” Closer to a hiss, the heavy wasp shoved her fellow Lords aside, stamping forward, only daring to stop when her mask pressed firmly against the smaller bug’s forehead, “You weigh your pride above your hours alive, child?”
“Herrif.”
Spear’s voice- sharper by far than the weapon at her side- could have cut Hammer’s shell in two. And despite her visible frustration, she turned to meet her equal’s gaze.
“Text with Creator's Style turned off”
The words- whatever they had been- were enough. They were enough to coax Hammer away from Hornet’s post (though not without a parting snarl, low and vicious, beneath a bug of her supposed status). They were enough to extinguish the fire that took over the room.
The Wasp Lords conferred amongst themselves for a moment. Of course, Hornet allowed them… The part of her anxious to be let into the conversation had not overshadowed the rational half of her mind, who knew good and well that such privacy would ease their tempers. She needed them unsuspecting… Applying too much pressure would only serve to heighten their senses.
By the time their conference concluded, neither of the three seemed particularly happy about the conclusion they had come to. Feet shifted anxiously on the ground, masks tilted downward in something Hornet chose to read as deference.
Seemingly used to being the delegate of her group, Spear had been the first to break the silence.
“... Heed our adjusted terms, small bug. We will not repeat them. The ritual we shall offer is reserved for our own kin. To offer it to an outsider… Text with Creator's Style turned off It is unheard of. However- for a bug who has earned the title and favor of wasp- a further exception might be made.”
A step forward. Not entirely hostile, but clearly meant to intimidate… A grapple for power- clearly unhappy with the amount Hornet had already taken from them.
“We will select the warrior. You will share lodgings with her for seven days' time, after which your worth will be verified through manner of combat. Once concluded, you will be coupled. Is this understood and agreed to?”
Seven days time… Still a little tight for her liking. Nevertheless, more time at her disposal than a single night. To push her luck any further would be to risk the advantage she’d rightfully earned… By all accounts, it was a miracle she had even gotten this far.
She sighed. Composed herself. Swallowed.
“... It is understood.” Hornet stated, evenly.
“And it is agreed to.” Hornet lied.