Author’s Note: At last! The Super Sekkrit Project reveals itself!! This was a hoot to write, and a hoot to illustrate. I have never illustrated a story in this fashion before… it was a learning curve! Most importantly, this was play for me, keeping me sane while I study for my art teacher exams. I hope you all enjoy it as much as I enjoyed sketching it out. :-)
Fleet had been flying for a long time, the steady thrum of her wings eating up the miles.
The arid landscape stretched out below her, growing more rocky and desolate the farther she flew under the hot sun. A silver ribbon of a slow river meandered across the dry earth below, promising a brief respite from her travel.
Fleet was tempted.
She dare not. Her sword rested heavy in her grip. Too many relied on the outcome of this flight. Their screams haunted her even still, sharp as the glint of sunlight across the edge of her blade.
She flew on.
Minutes turned into hours turned into days, and slowly, far too slowly, the mountains of Calvarra grew closer.
Calvarra. The ancestral home of the Wasp kingdom and the seat of Queen Sybilla’s throne.
This is suicide.
The Wasps suffered no intruders. Warlike and isolationist, there was no guarantee they wouldn’t kill her on the spot without hearing her plea. It was a risk, but one Fleet had volunteered to take. The image of Stryk, her wings being chewed off and crushed by the club-infested Dark Ones as she bleated in distress rose to the front of Fleet's mind.
For Stryk. For the Colony, she thought. May the Great Song guide me.
She touched down at the mouth of the cave.
“What business have you, little bee, in the heart of our kingdom?”
Condescension dripped from the ice-cold words and Fleet sighed. Oh, Great Song, grant me favor…. she prayed. Two wasp sentries approached her from the depths of the tunnel, snapping their mandibles. The hot sunlight glinted off the tips of their spears.
“Mighty Wasps, I come seeking aid and an audience with Queen Sybilla, for–”
“We don’t just grant audiences with our Queen!” Their spear-tips edged closer, and Fleet had to fight the impulse to parry with her sword.
“It’s very important–”
“Go away, little bee, your business is none of our concern!”
“The Club has infected the ants!” she screamed, her voice ricocheted off the sharp rock precipice. The sentries stared at her as the echo of her words faded. “And they have come for us all,” she finished quietly, the bitter sting of loss and fear on her tongue.
The wasps flicked and readjusted their wings sharply as they considered her words. Everyone knew about the Club and what it does to gentle-insects. Everyone knew the horrors of it, passed down through the generations from the Time Before. Fleet held her breath. After a moment, the spear-tips wavered, then raised away from where they were pointed at Fleet’s body.
“Follow us.”
The Wasp throne room filled Fleet with a sense of unease. Where her own Queen's democratic chambers were light and cosy, designed to put all who entered on equal footing, the Wasp throne seemed intended to inspire fear. High, vaulted ceilings made Fleet feel miniscule and not at all like the adept warrior she was. Sharp stone stalactites descended from the ceiling, like teeth. In the shadowy recesses, Fleet could feel the eyes of thousands of wasps upon her, the interloper. She tightened her grip upon her blade.
At the far end of the chamber, the dais rose from the floor to meet a pair of stalactites, forming the throne.
“The whispers of my advisors tell me you come seeking aid, little bee. Tell me: why should I concern myself with your affairs?”
A hush fell upon the room as the Queen’s voice rang out. One of the wasp guards prodded her forward. Fleet took a breath and raised her voice. “Because, Your Majesty, the peril which threatens the Bee colony, ultimately will threaten your very existence as well if not stopped.”
Queen Sybilla regarded Fleet coldly from her perch between the stalactites. Silence stretched between them. When the matriarch made no move to speak, Fleet took a small step forward and pressed the issue. “Your Majesty, the Club has infected the ants. Even now they wage mindless war and destruction against my Colony, consuming the lesser hives, ripping apart the adults and murdering innocent larvae. The ants that fail to be killed go on to spread the plague – already some adult bees from the first skirmishes have had to be executed for signs of the Club within themselves. Without your help, there is no telling how far this may spread, how many lives may be lost.”
They regarded each other silently for a moment. At last, the Queen spoke.
“It is quite the risk to engage the ants.”
“It is, Your Majesty. That is why–”
“I will not risk the members of my hive.”
Fleet’s words died in her mouth. The cavern stilled, not even the rustle of wings could be heard. “Your… Your Majesty–?” she asked, not hardly believing the verdict and hating how small her voice sounded.
“I cannot risk my hive, little bee. Surely you understand, having faced the risks yourself.”
Fleet shuffled in agitation. No no no no…. ”But we are being slaughtered…! If the ants chew through our defenses, it’s only a matter of time before they end up on your doorstep!”
Queen Sybilla flicked her wings, setting off a mass rustling in the alcoves across the ceiling. “Then we shall deal with it at that time.” A moment’s breath, and then: “Be gone from here, little bee. You are dismissed.”
“You can’t do this!” Fleet bleated in distress as the guards who escorted her seized her as she lunged forward. She struggled and thrashed against their grip, surging toward Queen Sybilla as she pleaded. “Hundreds, perhaps thousands, could die! The entire of balance of life in Eiriven could be lost!”
“That is your concern, not mine,” Queen Sybilla commented, and the host in the throne room began to hum in agitation.
Fleet squirmed as she was hauled backward by the guards who began dragging her roughly from the throne room. “We can’t stop this by ourselves!”
Queen Sybilla started snapping her wings, and the hum increased across the room, a feverish thrumming. “Get her out of my sight!” Sybilla commanded, and more guards leaped to assist with dragging Fleet from the room.
Fleet continued to struggle and bleat until they drug her into the tunnel system. One of the guards hissed urgently in her ear, “Do not make us have to sting you.” Seeing the futility of her situation, Fleet went limp. The guards renewed their grips and carried her up and out. With each step, the hum from the throne room decreased and grew faint.
Hope shriveled and died within her chest.
They dumped her on the rocks in front of the hive entrance. Dusk was falling over the Calvarran mountains. Fleet curled into herself as the night time chill grew around her.
They refused, she thought. The words created a litany in her mind, stealing her breath and encasing her with numbness. They refused, they refused, they refused.
What would be the fate of her hive? Her colony?
What would Queen Marget say?
Would Queen Marget be cut down by infected ants?
Would she die, screaming in agony, as the Club overtook her body, too?
They refused.
The chill bit into Fleet’s body and she curled deeper into herself. She watched, inch by inch, as the moon raised itself over the Calvarran summits, casting a ghostly glow on the exposed slate and remnants of late spring snow.
They refused to help us.
Sleep stole over Fleet like a shroud.
—---
She lay there as the sun rose and warmed her body; she did not stretch and shift as the air grew hot and her stomach rumbled from lack of food. Fleet was dimly aware of the passage of time as the sun slowly turned red and sank over the mountains, exchanging its’ place in the sky for that of the silvery moon. She watched the ocean of stars above her swirl and rotate, immersed in her grief, drowning in it as the sky lightened and the sun rose once more.
The sentries changed at the watch and one approached. It prodded her firmly with the ends of the spear. “Time to go, little bee. You can’t stay here.”
Fleet didn’t move.
The sentry prodded her again. When she didn’t stir, the sentry grumbled and returned to the mouth of the hive entrance.
They didn’t bother her again.
Part of her wanted to lay there until the wasps changed their mind, and part of her couldn’t stand the thought of heading home. What awaited her there? More ransacked hives and dead bodies? More distorted and deformed corpses sprouting the Club from every orifice and split in their outer skins? Without the help she had promised to bring, how could she return to that? How could she look Brash and Morse and the others in the eye, when they had put their trust in her and her alone, to gain aid from the Wasps?
Did she even want to return, knowing how bad it was likely to be? She had seen enough dead, seen enough killing, seen enough Club tortured bodies on their patrols through the forested regions to last her the rest of her life.
It was a cowardly line of thinking, and Fleet knew it. All she had known was service to the Queen and to the Colony, and for her to desert upon this failure was lower than low. She watched the breeze eddy the dust in front of her nose, around and around and around. It all felt terribly futile.
Fleet sought out that tender thread of connectedness with the Great Song, and followed it until it enveloped her. Oh, Great Song of Eiriven, what would You have me do? The shadows grew longer around her as the sun dropped behind the summits, and one by one, the stars appeared above her. Fleet inhaled and slowly exhaled, the peace of the Great Song stirring in her body.
She knew in that moment, she would go back. The knowing notes of the Great Song unfurled from the deepest parts of her being, bright and certain and stretching out before her to wind around the very stars themselves. She would go back.
It would be hard, but she would do it. And she would face whatever awaited her, come what may.
Fleet listened to the Great Song spin through the winding rotations of the stars across the sky, cascading through the mountains of Calvarra, and she was comforted in her grief.
On the morning of the third day, she awoke to find two wasps peering at her, their faces obscured by the slanted rays of newly-risen sunlight. Fleet blinked, and adjusted her body as she came fully awake. She reached for her blade. “You don’t need to get your stingers in a twist; I’ll be leaving today,” she said quietly.
“Lady Fleet–”
“It’s just Fleet.”
“Fleet, I’m Kovaren and this is Merrick–”
“I didn’t think guards and sentries were allowed to give out their names.”
The two wasps backed up to give her space as she righted herself and took stock of her surroundings. As she realized there were more wasps on the entrance ledge with her than just Kovaren and Merrick, she became aware of an agitated humming from inside the hive. She glanced quickly back at the pair of wasps.
“What’s going on?” she demanded.
They looked amongst themselves, and shuffled. Fleet noticed they all carried spears.
“We’re coming with you,” Kovaren, the bigger of the two, said.
Fleet froze, stunned.
“If you would like,” said Merrick.
“But we must hurry,” said a wasp from the back of the group. “The rest of the hive is not happy with our decision to abandon our posts.”
Fleet looked in the faces of the small host. All twenty or so of them returned her examination with looks of resolution. Slowly, Fleet turned to face Kovaren and Merrick.
“Then let us fly,” she said. “We haven’t a moment to lose.”