Chapter Text
Hornet, the daughter of beast and wyrm, had inherited her mother's curse. She had known it for a long time.
Herrah the beast, could not have a viable clutch. Not without godly interweaving. Hornet was an offspring of a beast and a god.
She had inherited a lot of traits from her parents. Art of the silk from the weaver's side and long life for the wyrm's side. She had ended up inheriting her looks to her dismay from her father, looking a lot like her half-siblings. She also inherited her mother... But not the good side...
Hornet had had many mates throughout her elongated life span. She had paired with multiple bugs throughout everything. She's had few clutches...
Not one of her eggs had hatched.
Not one egg had ever been viable.
Hornet runs her claw on top of the soft membrane of one of her eggs.
No movement, no smell, no presence, no nothing. There was nothing inside the egg, and there would be nothing. The egg was dud as can be.
She shovels and fishes the egg from the sling she had fashioned to transport the eggs. Carefully, she sets the grey egg along the other eggs.
In the crack of the rocky side of the cliff, she had decided to fashion a tomb for her children who never were.
A weaver would typically eat the non-viable eggs to regain her strength, but Hornet never could bring herself to do it. In a way, she still held foolish hope the eggs would hatch someday.
She uses a small amount of silk to tug a carpet of moss in place to hide the eggs. She steps back to examine her handiwork. Hornet nods to herself, satisfied with her work.
The needle pierces the air as Hornet takes her leave. Marking the place carefully in her vast memory. She doesn't look back.
She doesn't think about the eggs hidden in the wall. She doesn't waste time on wistful thinking, not when she has much bigger things to worry about. Like the rosaries, the haunting and her escape from Pharloom.
Hornet doesn't think about the eggs until she catches the haunted bugs acting oddly.
They seemed to be migrating like the pilgrims.
Hornet doesn't give them any mercy. She slays them as she did to all the infected back in Hallownest. Their grey innards decorate the ground. One of the three haunted bugs starts to beg for mercy. But not from her.
"Please forgive us for our sin o' Pale being..." The pill bug mumbled discohentry as his hemaglyph wet the ground beneath. His white eyes stared into nothing. "Of not finding the pale egg..."
Hornet tilted her head. The pale egg? She hadn't heard anyone talking of it. Would it be like the black egg?
"Destroy the egg... End the Pale legacy." The bug continues as his limbs spasm in death throes. Then he falls silent as his soul is finally free.
Pale legacy? Like Pale King? Eggs... Her eggs would be Pale King's grandeggs.
Hornet bolts. Her claws dig into the moss as she goes on all her legs to gain even more momentum. She leaps and tears through the way to Moss grotto. Everything in her way got a slash from her needle, but she didn't stay to finish the fight. She needed to check on her eggs.
She slides the last turn to the hiding place.
Her vision fills with red when she sees four haunted pilgrims standing around a grotesque scene of her destroyed eggs.
Her eggs had smashed to bits. Their spoiled innards were splattering the ground and the cloaks of the bugs. The egg membrane was torn, and on one of the staff, the shell had stuck to it. The air was plagued by the strange smell of Paleore.
Hornet hisses and lunges.
First haunted pilgrim gets pierced by her needle before he even manages to react to her presence. She kicks the bug off the needle. He rolls in the nearby bush.
The second haunted pilgrim gets her head smashed in as Hornet slams the needle's dull side into the side of her head.
Third haunted pilgrim. The one with eggshell stuck to the staff tries to hit her with it, but Hornet has her rage on her side. The haunted husks didn't have a chance. Hornet punts them through the air and on the wall.
The last haunted pilgrim. Got its head removed and tossed after the first haunted Pilgrim.
Hornet is left to stand in the slaughter field. Upon the remains of her eggs.
The hemaglyph stained her cloak and needle. The smell of the ore made her head spin.
The eggs had been destroyed, smashed to bits. Hornet had been late.
She looks to her feet. Not that there had been much to rescue. The eggs had never held life in them.
She stepped over the remains of her eggs to inspect the dead bugs. Nothing special in them. All the classic signs of haunting are present.
The tracks were strange through. It was like some critter had come through the bush, but never left. The critter had rolled on the ground, and the impressions had a rusty ore smell on them and egg fluid.
Hornet kneels.
The tracks didn't belong to the pilgrims or any other creature in Pharloom. It smelled like a new hatchling, and the prints matched one. There were even a few impressions of heads among them. A head that reminds me of Hornet owns. And it had crawled from the eggs.
She starts to track it down.
She follows the clumsy trail out of the grotto and into the neighboring one.
Hornet sees the one who left the tracks. She froze in the bush she was using as cover.
The being was beautiful.
Head like hers. Bibettal form. Pale, almost translucent chitin. Black eyes judging like wyrms. It was dirty. Leaves and dirt stuck to its body and horns. But it was beautiful. If it were not turn out to be a faux, it would definitely be her child.
It spots Hornet. It stills for a moment. Then it bolts.
It moves on all four. Not even trying to stand. Like a weaver would.
Hornet lunges after, but there was a hole in the stone through which the child happened to dive in. She shoves her hand after it, trying to get a hold. But the hole was long and narrow. The hatchling was out of her reach.
Hornet calls upon it. "Come out, my child, your mother is here."
The hatchling doesn't obey.
"Please, my hatchling, come out. Mother will get you something to eat." Hornet tries to pursue the hatchling.
It doesn't work, and Hornet has no prey upon her to try to bribe the hatchling out. She glances around. There was nothing to eat anywhere near, and she couldn't leave the new hatchling alone. Its shell was not even hardened enough to survive exposure.
Hornet had no choice. She spins a thin strand of silk and tosses it in the hole.
Seasons of experience make the task easy. The hatching is snared easily, and she reels it in. It obviously resists with hissing and spitting, but its claws are not hard enough to hold on to the hole's walls. The smell of ore was strong.
Hornet got her child in her arms.
They freeze as she examines them. It was dirtier than she thought. But under the stickiness of the egg fluid, she could feel the short fur of a spider along the abdomen. The pale shell had red veins running under it. Hornet had never seen a bug have them.
Was it a parasite or a developmental issue she didn't know.
Hornet cradles her child under her head. Their smell wafted through her senses. It was her smell. Her grand and awaited child.