"H-How are you in my head!? GET OUT OF IT!" I asked in terror while slowly backing away from this monstrosity. Breathing in deeply and letting it out even harsher as my limbs steadily got weaker. This thing wasn't doing anything to me. But, the way it so easily spoke to me inside my head, it broke me.
"Do not fear," its voice began to say in my head with the echoes of painful screams, "if your home has been lost, I shall let you join mine, dearest cousin." the voice explained as my eyes leaked.
"No... I don't want to. I won't!" I told it before bashing my head between my claws. Collapsing down with a shudder as the voices failed to dissipate. They just got louder and louder each time. The screams too, the longer it was in my head the more screams I heard. I just wanted the quiet that I hated so much in places like this.
"Join our home, dearest cous- AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" it began to say again before I suddenly crushed it under the weight of my magic. Screaming from the floor before breaking down into tears as a sudden wave of buggish roars filled my ears. And at that moment, it seemed like pandemonium had been created. The weight of the oncoming rage was shaking the tunnels.
"I want to go... Home..." I began to say before my mind began to fill with a different terror. One of fire and melting stone that always was out of reach. It was all too much for me to handle right now. So I just roared in fury and hammered away at the ground, just daring the bugs to come.
All I could soon think about was anger and I just kept on roaring until my throat became dry. With my rage quickly moving on to being expressed with snarls rather than such boisterous noises. And when the first bug came into my sights, I charged at it. Smashing straight through it in a shower of gore and moving on to the next one I saw.
I tore them apart with my hands, piece by bloody piece. I smashed what fell down with my feet and made it into the finest bloody mush. I barrelled through them as if they weren't there. I killed and killed until I had brought myself to a dark tunnel littered with clean bones.
"MOMMY! MOMMY! MOM-" I heard a child scream out in utter terror before it quickly shifted to pain. There was also a noise that made my stomach churn and tremble. It was a sudden, wet noise that kept on going without pause. And as I just wanted the noise to stop, so I charged towards it and tore down a wall.
Leaping at the first bug I saw and the next and the next. Cracking all of their skulls wide open until I was the only one left standing. A pool of yellow and red blood at my feet while my magic lit the area up. And when I saw what caused the screaming, I covered my mouth and suddenly switched my magic to a more gentle flow.
Shivering and crying until the little, terrified children in this chamber went quiet. But they still made noise, some were crying, some were whimpering, others were still in pain. The ones that made no noise, however, made me gnash my teeth with rabid fury. Yet, as the crying picked up, I began to emulate it more before I collapsed yet again.
"BE QUIET!" I would yell at the children before I clawed away at some blood-soaked mud. Twisting apart nearby bug limbs until I was just scraping my claw tips against one another. And with each breath I took from this foul place, the sicker I became. Until, my body just seemed to have enough and I went numb, at least, for a little bit.
"W-Wh-Where's mommy?" probably one of the youngest asked me as they clutched onto a likely dead sibling. And, when I saw that lifeless body, I scurried on over to the younger one and took them away. Letting them scream into my arm and wail against me before my stroking somehow got them to be quiet.
"Okay... All of you... We're going to play a game..." I said to them with uncertainty as I treated this little girl like a toy. A toy for a little kid scared of the dark...
"Game?" many of them would repeat with uncertainty as they moved away from me. Some, however, would squeal right on over when one of those strange, bulbous, wiggling things came by. And when I saw it, I hopped to my feet and clawed at the dirt ceiling until it was hidden behind it.
"Yes, the game's called... Friends and Hole Finder..." I muttered as I got my thoughts in order. The ones that terrified me were set aside and what I needed to do took the forefront. I needed to get out of here and find the other two. I needed to rescue Einervaenae and Larishazza from the osibindah hive, just like I did myself a long time ago...
"I-It's not safe with you..." a child then mumbled before I nearly ran them down in a fit of rage.
"I WILL KEEP YOU SAFE! I AM THE SAFEST PLACE HERE!" I roared straight into his face. Blowing out my scorching, fury-tainted breathes as he suddenly started breaking down into a fit of crying. Upon seeing those tears, I would move back and put the child I was holding down. I would shake my head and stumble away from them.
I couldn't save them, I was too much of a coward to save them from a place like this. They'll just have to follow me out like the others did last time... I did not have the strength to save these kids... I didn't!
All I might be able to do is hide them behind walls of dirt and hope for the best. But, as I moved to claw up at the dirt above me once again, I stopped. I stopped and looked at the mess I caused and I tried to stand myself up straight. I did this, I killed these monsters and my magic had healed those it could even if so many were now irreplaceably scarred.
It was as I thought on this that I began to treat this with more rationale. However fleeting it might as well be given even the most distant echoes made me jump. Yet, somehow, just by chittering my jaws a little louder, I could drown them out. So now I only heard what was closer.
And there was so much pain and suffering close to me. I could hear more screams, more cries and more fear. I heard the crunch of bones and the squirt of blood, the howls of pain that suddenly went silent... I heard it all.
"Wait, right here... We will play the game in a bit." I told the children before I ran away from them. Charging down the hallways of this evil place and silencing it systematically. Some were just people like I used to be, others were broken far more than I'd ever be. I interrupted vile acts in progress and prevented more from happening.
Each time it got quiet, I would hear more, I would hunt down more. Until I was panting to myself as I stumbled across a dry dirt wall. So many specks of brown stuck to me as I walked along the walls sluggishly. Nearly crossing the line and collapsing once again before I reached a dead end.
"Undwote, take your time, I beg of you..." I pleaded of the God of Death before I tiredly turned back around. Going the same routes again until I reached another dead end filled with the fleshless dead. A slight bit of anger kept on coming back each time as well. I just wanted it to end but each step revealed more that I did not want to see.
Yet, somehow, I found myself stumbling back to the children I left behind last time. And I only knew it was them because the little girl I picked up before was amongst them. A frail little thing with a distinct set of scars around her eye. Each one was as narrow as one of my disgusting osibindah teeth...
Or, rather, those of the ones I slaughtered when I found them here. If they were snacking or feasting, it did not matter, they were dead. That is all that mattered. But, to make sure it was true, even if most were completely gutted, I crushed them with forceful scrapes of the foot.
And when I saw the little boy again, the one I roared at with such hatred. I knelt down before him, and I held out my hand. Waiting patiently for him to take hold of it as I relaxed in the relative quiet. There was still dreadful noises coming from this place, indeed there was. But my rampage has silenced enough of it for now.
"I want to go home..." the little boy cried as he hid his face behind his tail while his eyes focused on mine. In fact, a lot of the children here focused on my eyes rather than my body.
"Yours are not the same..." one quietly pointed out while apathetically shoving a piece of osibindah skull my way. A slightly popped eye dangling from its somehow swollen eye socket.
"They're not..." I told them with a shiver as thoughts of that thing sprang to mind. Even though it got into my head, even though it spoke to me as if I was one of its own. I have done nothing that made me alike one of its own. Any of its children that I saw, I killed without thinking about it.
Gone were the days of when seeing the skull underneath the bug's wracked me full of terror. Now, all it did was fill me with a mixture of wrath, anger, fury and rage. All the same thing, really, but I was not sure what else to think of when I thought about what I have recently done. I tore them apart, limb from limb and ground them into the muck below that I made with them.
I then shook my head as I took a hand into my claw, "Come on, we got a game to play." I reminded them as I began to seemingly drag the children with me. Looking back with a frown at how some still breathed but did not move. Not even the tears of their friends and siblings got them out of those spots.
"NO! We can't play without them..." one of the smallest amongst them cried out as he stood still by what was likely an older sibling. And going by how the sibling had their eyes firmly locked on the open front of another child... I could only guess as to what was going on inside of their heads. And, with uncertain worry, I scratched my cheek before looking at the hand...
"Of course..." I mumbled before I quickly moved away from the kids. Worrying some with thoughts of abandonment before my magic encased them. And with a firm tug of the wrist, they stumbled about as I brought the whole chamber with me. Pulling it through the tunnels and picking up whoever else I could on the way.
Yet, with everyone I found, the magic had to be warped to greater sizes. It drained me more and more and my mind felt like it was suddenly about to break. I trembled and stumbled but the spell stayed up and active and I kept on moving until I reached a grand chamber. Similar to the one I once fell down in saving Vapooliar but damning myself.
"Drone, what is happening!? Why has the Queen gone silent!? What has happened to mother!?" a bug somehow asked me with fear in its voice as it stepped out of the dark and into the light. My light, the light of my magic that burned so bright behind me. But what was in its hands worried me. A crude staff made of mud-caked wood...
Something like that could only mean one thing, and that was that I had come across an earth shaman! And with this sight before me, I backed away in fear, much to its confusion. I panted and panicked until my own magic stopped me from moving. Looking back at it also terrified me, for it was a great big sign showing off how I would not be able to fight right now.
"Drone!" the earth shaman barked as it stomped on over and placed my jaw within its claws. Somehow, as well, despite it having no fire magic, its touch burned. No matter how thick my carapace got, I somehow felt every bit of its claws as it held on to my face.
"The Queen is dead!" I blurt out without granting myself the right of deed. I couldn't fight right now, not while my magic was focused so much behind me! I had to try and get past this earth shaman as is... Yet the mere idea of an earth shaman made me shiver, but to have one up close!?
"Dead...?" it slowly chittered out before it stepped backwards. Its claws tightly clenched its staff before it glared at me.
"What do you want...?" I barely squeak out under the pressure of being presented so vulnerably to the beast.
"Move aside, drone, I must see for myself if the hive is doomed." it ordered just before shoving me to the ground as it used its own magic to bypass mine. And as I laid on the ground, panting and heaving what fear I could out of me, I turned to the direction it came from. There was no light that way but it would take me far away from this earth shaman. The further I was from it, the better.
In fact, the further we all were the better. The last one I met could beat Vapooliar! I barely beat it because it lost its staff! And there was just no way I could get that staff away from it in this state! I needed to get topside fast and soon or there will be nothing but a Pack of Seven waiting for me!
"How did this go so wrong? How did it go..." I began to say as I tearfully brought myself up. Even with all the bursts of rage I have gone through, the slaughter those episodes entailed. I still broke back down into the mindset of a scared little boy. I thought I got over my fears of the bug, yet, somehow, here I was with a barely functioning mind.