Dismembered bees and fireflies barely stood. Some had two legs left, some three. Others were left limbless, awaiting their demise. The King had died, only accidentally impaled by one of the elites who had gone blindly berserk. He died courtesy of the elite's well-sharpened stinger that left his body and became the King's pulsating demise. The Queen survived, and only a few of her servants were in shape to help her reform the colony back on its feet. However, for the bees, it's safe to assume that the larvae and their caretakers will rebuild the ghost town that is the bee's colony.
The battlefield is now calm, and the only positive outcome was an unexpected yet graciously extended truce for the fireflies' side. The entirety of the river and its waterfall are now firmly under the fireflies' grip.
The buzzes of the two sides turned to scattered and faint ones, and a dominant voice in the dormant battlefield was the weakly wailing Wolfheze, and he had been resting against the bark of the tree, surrounded by dead and dying insects. It had been a better part of an entire starset, and his weak sobs and incomprehensible monologues were nonstop, then turned to a nasal babble. By heart and metaphysical understanding, he knew that the puerile is truly a child in an adult's body, stripped from all memories and mannerisms.
Arnitikós had been residing in the deepest cranny within her caverns, lone and mourning the losses. Lamenting the short-lived memories of Narïah in the dark and the grace the fireflies landed on her. She held weak disdain towards the angry stranger and the no-name bee that took the life of the little firefly. She leaned fetally against the cranny's rough walls and droned in a low voice, a tone of ancient times, infused with sadness of ages that came and went in her lifetime. From infancy to Laniakea, to the dormancy of the Annulus, and now, here, in Sciriala, the new world.
Yet amidst the moans of the dying bees, one emerged, and the first thing it saw was the degenerative state of Wolfheze; his eyes were lifeless, and he breathed faintly. The bee weakly flew to the level of the man's head, and it called, 'Sir Wolfheze? Sir, it is me, Safir-Flavum.'
The blonde muttered:
'From ice emerged a false hero provoked by another of an older world. Escaping the comfort of hunting ice and rock till the hands fray and are bit by frost. My love, my world, my name is Wolfheze, son of Elst and Haldren, from The Hope I do come. This world seems dangerous, th e end less c y cle of p ass ed dow n pa in fro m on e wo rld t o a n o th e r fr o m o n e m a n t o a n o t h e r c a us ed b gy hunm blir gat turm a k u mena thr on r ha un t alsu aa. . el ias. . .'
The now-former ambassador felt intense discomfort resonating from the blonde. It affected him rather painfully for its size and fragility, and it almost fainted; the bee even sweat, barely staying midair. 'Stop it, Sir! It's paining me!'
And life returned to the blonde's eyes: it was encircled in black, and the more metaphysical episodes occur, the rings grow darker and broader.
'Safir!' Wolfheze snapped in sudden alert, 'Are you alright?'
The bee rubbed its head and looked up nervously, 'Well, Sir, now I am. Quite the thing that was.'
'I seem to have lost integrity,' the blonde brightly looked up at the bee, but also sadly, 'my brain is beyond repair, Safir-Flavum, all thanks to—'
Wolfheze stood on his two hurriedly. It made him dizzy for a brief moment, but his first reoccurring thought was the existence of Arnitikós in this land or rather plane of existence, and around here, somewhere, he could deliver the punishment to his bane, 'Where is she?' He asked, scanning the horizon in a squint. The star had set, and the twilight was ever-fainting.
'Your feral lookalike?' Said Safir-Flavum.
Then a deep feminine voice intruded, 'That feral lookalike is off your limits!' said Fiorā, Queen of the Fireflies.
Wolfheze was outraged by her presence, 'I can turn you as flat as a leaf.' He threatened.
'Careful, m'lady.' One of the Queen's combat advisors said, 'This biped is of strength beyond our swarms – we are outmatched. We cannot even flinch him!'
'And to that, I'd agree on.' Said Wolfheze, marching to the cave's entrance.
The fireflies gazed at the helpless bee, and he could only smile sheepishly and follow the blonde through the darkening entrance.
Droplets of water fell, echoing the high roof of the cavern. Covered its ceiling a bed of stalactites aiming down; some were of the length of two trees. But the very thing that made navigation for any treader is the scattered dots of bright yet soft blue. They were fireflies! A distant relative of the ones from the river. It has been said that they never leave the caverns, and their way of communication is by the flickering of their luminous bellies. And they were illuminating the caverns it did. It took Wolfheze and the bee quite a while for their eyes to adjust to the dark and the faint light. At least for Wolfheze, since the bee, as countless eyes it may have, was mostly blind, thus taking a seat on the man's right shoulder. The blonde trod carefully as his pupils adjusted better.
'Come out,' he called, 'a settlement awaits you!' His voice echoed among the unending sounds of falling drops.
'Mister Wolfheze, I humbly think disturbing my distant, luminous cousins is unwise.' Said Safir-Flavum concerningly.
'Shut it.' Wolfheze turned him down.
'Oh, red-eyes?' Wolfheze called childishly in an unforgiving tone, 'Come out now. . . we're old friends!'
His wrath was taking the best of him. Unlike the approach of Elias Libra-Lockwell in the Annular days, Wolfheze is now purely driven by hate and vengeance. Only when his past life was barely escaping mundanity, every moment of joy he experienced being in the company of people he adored while despising others is now gone. He is unsure if they're dead or alive. But being physically and metaphysically disconnected from them imposed a great sense of isolation. He resides in a humanless world now, surrounded by vocal creatures of sentience, all playing war games.
'By ice, Arnitikós! Show yourself!'
As Wolfheze stepped deeper into the cavern complex, a faint lamenting voice came to be heard, and it grew closer with every step. It was nasal, slow, and grievous.
While she lost the ability to speak, some instincts cannot be hidden, in this case, some mumblings of her ancient tongue, quite incomprehensible, even if a listener understood Consistorious; her mumbles were a mess.
'I can hear you.' Said the blonde, threatening.
She was surrounded by a flock of fireflies, all in blue light. She faced the rough walls, lying on her left shoulder, and kept lamenting.
'Come here, you—' And before Wolfheze could expose her face, only touching her shoulder to spin her back to him, had sent jolts up the man's spine, and he entered the metaphysical realm of visual memories. His eyes lit blinding white, and so did his surprised mouth. Safir-Flavum was also pulled into the shock's grasp, and now they both are witnessing vivid visions.