“Thank you for your service Dr. Davir. May eternity greet you gently and grant you the rest you have been denied by your work. The future will rember your deeds and your sacrifice. That I promise.”
- A714-24S, presud host computer of Dr. Davir’s laboratory.
A roar shook the world, stone crumbling underneath us from the sheer force of it. We were angry, angry at the interlopers, angry at those who dared to soil our world with their filth. And that anger fueled our hunger.
As one we moved, a horde of trillions, devouring everything in front of us, crushing the antithesis that tried to arise to our might. Billions died, and billions more were born, an ongoing slaughter of blood, gore, and alien flesh. Nothing survived our will, even less survived .
It took a mont to internalise the thought, and only vaguely did I return to myself, erging from the chorus that was orders of magnitudes bigger than my own. It dwarfed and my Hive and made feel insignificant. Seven hundred voices against a number that made the very concept of numbers aningless.
We were Myriad, in all her glory, but next to this swarm we were not even a footnote in history. We weren’t even acknowledged by a fraction of the Hive that we now embodied.
We weren’t even food to them.
The rest of us were with , muted but present. They experienced it the sa way I did, but at a remove. Not sure how Kaysa managed that, or what exactly they went through, but it must be quite the experience if I was anything to go by.
Kaysa had ntioned the human form of a Hexclaw Hive-Queen, which alone was quite impressive. It was the combat form I planned to take, specifically because it was tailormade to fight and to stamp out antithesis. With its many limbs, each a weapon in its own right, it was a sight to behold.
But next to the body I currently inhabited it was not even comparable to an ant.
This was , a Hexclaw Hive-Queen in her pri, with the force of nature that was her Hive behind her. I knew it was stronger. Kaysa had said that my own form would not be the sa as the one of a true Hexclaw Hive-Queen. But to know it and to see it… It was such a massive dichotomy that it was beyond description.
This was it. The true might of an alien race purpose built to crush the antithesis under foot, razing their armies and hives to the ground and leaving nothing but bare rock in their wake.
Even a fraction of this power would be enough to end human civilisation, raze the earth, and then shatter the ground beneath. Without even expending any effort at all.
Hell, even disregarding the swarm that was at my beck and call, the overwhelming force of pure hunger and destruction that crushed any enemy without any hesitation, my body alone was enough to easily flatten any city.
A body the size of a skyscraper moved faster than anything this size should be able to, smashing a dinosaur looking antithesis that I belatedly realised was a model Thirty-Three into paste. I didn’t even realise that it was there. I hadn’t even felt the resistance the body of the antithesis was putting up. If I hadn’t seen it happen I wouldn’t even have noticed. These things that could bring doom to entire cities were nothing but cannon fodder to .
I inspected myself as best I could, a terrifyingly large creature with the body of a spider mixed with a praying mantis, but much, much more alien looking and with at least two dozen limbs. Covered head to toe in black chitin thick enough to serve as bunker walls.
The limbs moved easily, as if I had been born this way, most likely because Kaysa was helping with the simulation. It was terrifying how easily I could deal with models that on Earth might spell the end of civilization as we knew it.
And I didn’t even need to try.
With numbers as large as this, a chorus that dwarfed any and all conceivable size, and an equal number of antithesis on the other end of a battlefield as large as a country, any kind of applied organisation was useless. But we didn’t need it. We were one, one swarm bigger than the entirety of human civilisation, and together we moved in harmony.
Forces clashed, drones I only now realised would be as big as a bus, making even my Najav recoil in sha, fought against antithesis in the twenties and thirties, and simply overran them. Billions of us died in a battle that spanned the width of Nebraska with ease.
Yet for every one of us that died, two more were born by Broodmothers the size of stadiums. Everything was supersized, every tric by which this Hive worked was orders of magnitudes bigger than I could muster, and I was right there, in the middle of it all, squashing antithesis bodies like ants.
It was a feeling that I could not put into words.
While we were powerful and nigh inexhaustible, with Warleaders and Feastmasters, Broodmothers and Princesses, Champions and Infiltrators, so too did the antithesis have their elite. One of them was visible even from this great a distance. An antithesis so gargantuan that it could easily et my own height, and just as wide as it was tall.
It was flinging sacs the size of houses across the battlefield, leaving millions dead, spreading a gas that almost instantly killed our forces, and leaving behind roots and vines that sapped those that survived dry in a matter of monts. And they grew quickly.
Not to ntion the sheer size of its ten massive limbs, oriented with almost radial symtry, crushing anything underfoot with no regards for friend or foe. And as if that hadn’t been terrifying enough it was covered, head to toe, with quills the size of ballistic missiles. And with the sa impact as one too, considering what happened whenever it shot one of them out.
That is a highly adapted version of a model Fifty-Four-H. This specific variant is mostly found on this world, or worlds like this with large numbers, as they can deal particularly well with swarms and Hexclaws.
Fifty-Four?! What in the fucking hell?!
As if to prove Kaysa’s words, the thing did… sothing. I could see a small ball of fire in front of… was that its mouth? I wasn’t sure, and suddenly a wave of fire raced across the battlefield, exploding any and all Hexclaws and a good chunk of the antithesis forces with reckless abandon.
This variant has a neurotoxin specifically tailored to work against Hexclaws. It can spread incredibly wide and quickly with the use of seeds and the quills on its body. The neurotoxin in question hampers the Hexclaws ability to adapt, inflicts inhumane levels of pain, and ignites easily. In addition to that it can birth high level antithesis quite quickly. It is, for all intents and purposes, the antithesis answer to the sheer number that the Hexclaws have on offer.
If I had a jaw it would be hanging to the floor. As it was, the giant Hive-Queen body I inhabited had its massive maw that opened four ways open in disbelief. Now we also knew why it threw those sacs.
That said, you don’t have to worry, a Hexclaw Hive-Queen can deal with them quite handily. At least if they are as powerful as this.
Those words finally pulled back to the battlefield at hand. The Fifty-Four-H had completely annihilated huge parts of our forces. It was ti for to join the fray, even if it ant dashing straight through burning lands and scorched earth.
It made smile inwardly. I might never be able to reach this level of sheer destructive force, but I would gladly go ahead and try what it felt like.
With a roar that shook the earth I signalled my own involvent, the flood of Hexclaws in front of parting like the sea in my wake. Despite the sheer mass of this body I was fast, faster than I had any right to be. And I revelled in it.
Leaving the smaller fry to the Warleaders and Champions, I made straight for the model Fifty-Four-H, letting out another challenging roar and imrsing myself completely into the chorus and its insatiable hunger.
With the force of a bomb I impacted into the model Fifty-Four-H, the couple of miles between us gone in what felt like monts, and with strength that was beyond my imagination I forced the much larger and much more massive alien to the ground, pinning it there with six of my limbs, before I started going wild with the six main limbs that my body boasted. Blades the length of airliners cut through antithesis flesh with the ease you would imagine from a hot knife through foam, easily leaving deep gashes both in its quills and its flesh.
It replied in kind, a veritable flood of quills hamring against my chitinous armor, seldom finding purchase. Where they did an excruciating pain started to spread quickly and I roared straight into its face, before I sank my teeth deep into it, as much as it had one.
With a violent shaking of my head I dislodged a huge portion of flesh and devoured it, tasting the strange aroma and relishing it. Of course I wasn’t sitting still, my limbs moved in tandem, cutting more and more deep gashes into it, finally bisecting a limb which fell to the ground and shook the earth.
Just as I was about to take another huge bite, the back of the thing shrank, then exploded into a mass of gas and quills, sending sacs everywhere and roots quickly grabbing at . At the sa ti a number of strange antithesis was sent into all directions, much smaller but still larger than my normal drones.
I disregarded the vines and roots, simply ripping them apart when they tried to entangle , jumping up and on top of the massive alien, and started to rip through the opening on its back and deep into its insides.
With a deep breath I kindled my own weapon, an ability I hadn’t even realised I had until that very mont where it would be the most powerful tool at my disposal.
Blue-white flas burst out of my mouth and straight into the inside of the antithesis, lting everything including my own tal teeth and the insides of my throat and mouth easily.
Finally I relented, when I could feel the with tal enhanced bones of my body slowly starting to give way under the imnse heat that my fire produced, and within monts everything started to knit itself back together. It wasn’t instantaneous, but it would hardly take more than a few minutes. New teeth grew back, pushing out the old and ruined ones.
The model Fifty-Four-H fared much, much worse. Its insides were boiling, being cooked alive by the still imnse heat that my breath had left behind. Parts of it had started lting off entirely, leaving it looking like a half-dead corpse.
I didn’t give it any ti to recover and took another massive bite out of it, diving right back into the fight without even a mont's hesitation. The thing was massive, thousands of tons of biomass, but even that was not enough to withstand my onslaught for long.
It did manage another spark before it died however, bathing in liquid fire and burning another massive chunk of the battlefield once more. Screeching in pain I redoubled my efforts, more or less crawling inside of it, heat be damned, and started to slash everything in its body to pieces until it finally lay still.
I had won, and all it cost was so biomass and a little bit of pain to go along with it. I hadn’t even suffered any significant wounds, most of my wounds had been self-inflicted.
Raising my limbs into the air and holding my head high I roared my victory to the world, and with the chorus roared as well, consud by the flow of battle and the excitent of a fight won.
I felt… Powerful. Utterly without equal. I was literally the king of the world and my will was absolute. There was nothing that could stop , I could deal with things that could destroy entire countries, maybe even continents, without suffering any significant wounds, and the remainder I did to myself.
There was nothing that could stop and it was… an addicting feeling. I had fla breath that could lt tal with ease, asuring easily in the thousands of degrees, blades that could hack even high level antithesis to pieces, and a Hive that would devour entire worlds.
I was the Devourer of Worlds. And it felt amazing.
When I finally ca down from my high, I also realised how completely terrifying it was. This body that I inhabited could take over the Earth and crush it without anything to stop it. There was nothing we had on offer that could make a significant dent in its defences. Maybe if a majority of the Samurai worldwide worked together, but even then I wasn’t sure.
Silently I was glad that I could not achieve this level of power. Anyone who could would be a danger to everyone. I could get a fraction of it, yes. But that was far in the future.
Observing the battlefield, my swarm, the uncountable number of dead and those freshly born made realise that this Hive was different. They didn’t lose voices when their bodies died. It would simply find a new body to inhabit. My forces were vast, as I said beyond comprehension, but even those forces, those billions of Hexclaws, trillions of them, was only a fraction of those that could be. A tiny fraction of what this Hive could do if they ever wished to.
“Kaysa,” I asked, in a voice not of this body, simply a digital application of it, “Can you disable the limiter on the chorus? I want to see it. Want to feel it.”
Of course. Let know when it’s too much or when you are done.
And with it my entire being changed.
We had been many. A number larger than we had words to call them. But we had been nothing in comparison to the true extent of the Multitude.
I felt them. Felt them all. So different than anything I had ever experienced and it was… mind boggling. Nothing I experienced this morning could be truly described. It was… such a magnitude, it simply left speechless.
And all of them only had one goal: To satiate a hunger that was so primal that no amount of food could ever hope to put a dent into it.
Hexclaws were terrifying. And yet, it cald to know that I was not like them. The Devourer of Worlds, the largest sapient swarm that the protectors had found, would be our basis, yes. They would be what we would build our strength on, the forebears for the might we would bring to annihilate the antithesis that invaded our ho.
But they would not be us.
We were Myriad. And we were different.
We knew emotion and we knew compassion. We were human at the core, we were not insatiable. We were restrained.
But to know what we could do, what might we could muster if we ever reached that far… It was both humbling but also motivating. It gave us reason to continue, to grow and to learn.
Taking a long ti to truly internalise this difference I wandered the battlefield, killing more of the xenos wherever I went, but not letting myself fall back into the flow of combat. This was a lesson to , to us. And we took our ti to let it sink in.
To see a true Hexclaw Hive-Mind was an experience beyond description. But it was also sothing we needed to see, even if we hadn’t known that before we had entered the sh. It put our own place into perspective, and it made it very clear that we were different.
Eventually we had enough. We didn’t know how long we wandered around, the rest of the chorus now also done with their fight and lost in contemplation, but it had to be so ti.
“Thanks, Kaysa. I think this is enough… I’ve… learned a lot today. What it ans to be a Hive-Queen and what it ans to be human. Shut it down.”
And with that we returned to our body, still seated on the chair in the wilderness of the Hexclaw howorld.
Taking a deep breath we got up, stretching even if we didn’t need to. Chloe and Jenna were still out, both looking kind of adorable. There was a mont of silence and we took the ti to really take it all in. To digest what we had experienced, and to think about it all.
“Might I inquire what your opinion is on the Devourer of Worlds?” Atlas asked, ‘looking’ at us.
We nodded, taking a few steps and glancing into the distance, admiring the beautiful alien forest, the sun high in the sky, and the rather peaceful, if barren, landscape in front of us. It was very different from the battlefield that we had experienced, but now that we had seen that, we could also see the marks of combat left behind on the ground.
This had been a combat zone before, and only with ti had it regrown and recovered.
“The Devourer of Worlds is powerful,” we said finally, “The na fits, definitely. They could crush Earth with only a fraction of their numbers. Hell, we are pretty sure they could crush this planet if they needed to. From what we rembered of the simulation we are pretty sure that they have so kind of space tech, so they could leave. It’s terrifying really what it can do, really.”
Taking a mont to think we continued, “It is… definitely a nice feeling. Exhilarating even, to be that powerful. Addicting may be the right word. That pure power, and the knowledge and certainty that you could do whatever you want, crush anyone under foot and there is nothing that anyone could do about it. In a way it might be the most exciting thing we ever felt. True power the likes of which no human could imagine.”
We shook our head, “But that’s not us. We are Myriad, we are human at the core. We do not feel that hunger, that deep insatiable desire to consu. We know emotions, we know compassion, we know what it’s like to be at the other end of that raw force. We know what it’s like to be helpless, to be a plaything for the world to do with as it wishes. And we treasure it. True, raw, primal power, it can be nice. And it can be what you need in specific circumstances. But that is not us. That is not Myriad. That is very firmly the Devourer of Worlds, and we would not change that for anything. We… We were afraid of what Chloe and Jenna might think about it all. But maybe, deep down, we were terrified of that most of all.”
With a sigh we continued, “Being a Hive-Mind… it opens a lot of doors. It’s the catalyst to power that no human could ever imagine. But we like being human. We like being what we are, and we like that we are not like them.”
One by one the rest of us appeared around us, the full swarm, as ager and small as it was compared to the mory of the planet eater that was the Devourer of Worlds.
“We are very glad that we are what we are, that we took this path and that it allows us to be the way we are. But we are also very glad that we are not different. For all our faults, all our mistakes and misdeeds, we are still human. This morning has put a lot of things into perspective. We don’t know how Chloe or Jenna might react. It might have made everything infinitely worse. But even if it did… It doesn’t feel as… overwhelming anymore. Because just as they learned about us, so have we learned about their own fears. Fears that they have for a reason. If we ever wake up like that, with that deep and primal hunger… Kaysa, please do both of us a favour and just end it, okay?”
“You won’t.”
Much to our shock the voice wasn’t Kaysa’s, it was Chloe’s. We turned as one to look at her, still sitting on that chair and looking at us thoughtfully, but with a small, genuine smile.
It made us idly think that maybe Atlas had asked us this question specifically for her, and for Jenna, to hear our opinion. It would make sense, considering the calculated personality he seed to have. Not that it mattered much. Even if he did, it wasn’t sothing we would have wanted to hide from them.
There was a short mont of silence, before she spoke up again, voice calm with only a hint of hesitation in it.
“You are right. I have my fears for a reason, and you are correct that the Devourer of Worlds is terrifying. It’s exactly the kind of thing I feared you turning into. But I’ve also seen what you are like. We don’t know each other that long yet, but it’s very clear what your personality is like, and after this morning, I also know what your Hive-Mind is like. I’m not going to say that I don’t have any more reservations. There are still so things that will most likely only go away with ti. But one thing I know for sure: You aren’t a monster. You aren’t like the Devourer of Worlds, and you aren’t like what I feared you might be.”
We didn’t know what to say or how to react. For a long mont there was silence in the chorus, before it all devolved into a giant ss of differing emotions. Between the experiences we had today, the still present pain from the day before, and the fears we had harboured about their reaction, her words made us stumble over ourselves.
Then, as if on autopilot, we dashed for her, almost tackling her off the chair in a big bear hug. With an almost physical desperation that we didn’t quite understand ourselves we squeezed her tight, relief washing over us like a calming breeze. It was as if a weight had lifted from us, leaving us finally able to breathe again.
Chloe answered our hug with one of her own. “Hey there.” Her voice was only a whisper, but the support in it was clear and it was soothing.
“Thank you,” was all we could manage in reply, our own voice just as quiet, if not more.
“Chloe is right,” Jenna chid in from next to us. Her earlier enthusiasm of exploring the whole Hexclaw thing was mostly gone, and she was taking things a bit more seriously now. There was a certain thoughtfulness to her, plus sothing we couldn’t quite identify. It wasn’t bad, per se, but we also couldn’t pinpoint exactly what it was. Hesitation? No, that didn’t seem to fit.
“Earlier one of you said that they aren’t human. That they are Hexclaws. After experiencing this, I’d have to disagree. Biologically that is true, but that only tells half of the story. ntally you are still very much human, all of you. Different, yes, not only because you are a Hive-Mind, but that doesn’t change the fact that underneath all of that, you are still human and you care, as you said. Of course, the Devourer of Worlds might be at the other extre of that scale, but that doesn’t change anything.”
The voice in question ran towards Jenna, surprising even herself, and gave her another tight hug.
“Thank you… Both. We… We won’t say that we aren’t still a little anxious. As nice as it is that you understand how we work now, we too learned a lot of things. So of them have us worried. But we are very glad that we could share this with you. All of Us are.”
The last part was delivered by every single voice, the full swarm of Myriad. They might not be as comfortable with that, even with their recent experiences, but we wanted to let them know just how much we appreciated them.
To Our surprise and relief neither seed too bothered by it. Chloe smiled in reply, squeezing us gently, “And I’m glad that I asked. I will take so ti to really think about it. As I said, there are still so things I need to get used to. But it’s… It took a lot of my worries away.”
We nodded, fully understanding her. It would take so ti, but the weight that had settled over us at the idea of showing them what we were like, how we experienced the world, had lifted.
For a long ti the three of us and our combined Hive’s just sat there and talked, exchanging experiences and ideas. Chloe and Jenna both took their ti to really explore being a Hive-Mind, now with the contrast of the Devourer of Worlds in mind. That perspective gave them an even better understanding, and one they fully dove into.
We let them, gave them as much ti as they needed, answered any questions they might have, and generally just enjoyed spending ti with them in this way that wouldn’t be possible in the future.
Of course, unless we decided to dive into it again, which we might. It didn’t matter to Us. We were just so glad and happy that we could share this with the two people we loved most. It made the previous day feel so much less awful.
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