Iatrogyne—Angels with Buzzing Wings
In the Zochei Colony, the largest wasp habitat of Alienage Reserve #14, Nua serves as page and handmaiden to her princess. Every day, she courts suitors on behalf of her princess while doing all she can to justify her lady’s lapses in duty. Until one day, a corpse lies in the princess’s chambers—a suicide most implausible—and Nua is the number one suspect.
With the help of her lady’s most loyal knight, Nua must escape her execution and uncover the truth. But first, they have to face down the dangers of the alienage beyond their colony. In this walled reservation, bugs have long been divided—can they inspire allies among the other races and master powers long forbidden to them? Somewhere in this walled reservation, among its forsaken shrines, lies the secret purpose behind her princess’s fate, her colony’s takeover, and the creation of their kind.
To save her allies and escape the worst the alienage has to inflict, she must decide whether she can preserve the bright-eyed innocence of a loyal handmaiden, or become that monster feared since the days of plague. Every one of her allies wants something different from her.
Only one thing is sure: when she returns to Zochei colony, there will be blood on her stinger.
- Prologue: Zochei Colony
Nua tries to arrange a date between her princess Jiubei and a drone, doesn’t work out, ends up hanging out with the princess just like when they had first molted teneral. (“I missed this. So much.”) Jiubei hates how much the princess stuff has come between them, how she has to find drone to fuck when what she really wants is… but she trails off and doesn’t say.
Nua finds T’ren guarding Jiubei’s chambers as usual and strikes up conversation, trying to figure out how to make Jiubei happy. T’ren thinks the princess should just lock in and focus on her queenly duties, and Nua argues this is cruel and insensitive. Upset, Nua disengages and decompresses with some alone time, pollinating some shrine-roots.
Jiubei wants to go for a walk, and orders Nua and T’ren accompany her. On the the walk through the Zochei gardens, Jiubei opens up about trying to run away with Tiaxiara as a child, and how badly it went. Am I even cut out to be a queen, she asks? And both Nua and T’ren flatter her. Jiubei frowns, looking unconvinced.
The group encounters Tiaxiara in the gardens, as if she was expecting them. She asks to speak with her sister alone, but Nua is curious and wants to listen it. T’ren adheres rigidly to her oaths, but grudgingly agrees that their princess probably wouldn’t be upset if Nua eavesdropped.
Jiubei has asked her sister the same question — am I fit to be queen? — and Tiaxiara is much harsher, confirming that Jiubei would be a pathetic failure of a queen. Nua is too outraged by this to keep listening.
She runs away to her safe space to calm down, gorging herself on shrineroot nectar; when she returns to her princess, Jiubei is hurt and frustrated that Nua wasn’t here when she needed her. She yells, and Nua meekly accepts it. Jiubei catches herself, apologizes, and they do something else they used to do as children — cuddle together. But suddenly, Jiubei asks Nua to leave. Confusing, but it’s an order, and she goes to bed alone.
- Wilds of Alienage #14
When Nua arrives at Jiubei’s chambers the next day, guards are swarming all over it, and she’s told to not to meddle in their investigation. When she goes to find T’ren, she’s not on duty (she’s always on duty), instead she’s in the mess hall, playing cards (she never plays games). When Nua asked, T’ren finally explains: Jiubei is dead. She killed herself. Nua starts spiralling, hyperventilating, but they’re interrupted by one of Tiaxiara’s guards, gruffly informing them that the other princess will to speak to Nua. When Nua says now isn’t a good time, they say it’s not a request, and restrain her, dragging her to Tiaxiara.
Tiaxiara explains the irregularity of the evidence. How Jiubei died to a poison only a worker very acquainted with the greenhouse stock would be familiar with (how often does Nua go there to relax herself?) How in her suicide note, Jiubei left everything not to her mother, not to her sister, not to her colony, but to you, Nua. A simple handmaiden! She talked to me, you know. Expressed frustration at how no matter how many drones she courts, none of them seem fit to date. She told me she might never find a mate, let alone a proper harem. But do you know what I think? She left the selection of her suitors to one bug — what’s more likely, that no drone in all the bachelors of Reserve Fourteen are good enough for my sister, or that a simpering little servant thinks her sabotage is clever?
Nua is thrown in the dungeons, and she cries. Did she poison her princess without realizing it? Has she been saboging her all along? What will she do without her beloved? Her angst is interrupted by a guard opening the cell — T’ren. According to the note, everything that beloned to Jiubei is Nua’s now — including her knight. Tiaxiara contests that — but T’ren doesn’t believe the accusations, and isn’t beholden to Tiaxiara.
When T’ren escorts the princess, her favorite topic of discussion is you. When admirers approach her asking what gifts she prefers, do you know what she says? Ask Nua, she knows me better than I know myself. And… No, it’s not my place to speculate. Come.
T’ren puts Nua in a bag and carries her around. Their destination? Jiubei had told them about it earlier, the secret passage out of the dungeons she’d taken with her sisters years ago. When they emerge at the exit, they discover clear signs that this forgotten exist had been used. Recently.
It’s as I suspected, T’ren says. My lady didn’t kill herself, and you didn’t betray her. You’re being framed for a murder that didn’t even happen.
What now? “Now, we avoid being captured by the colony’s patrols. I know how they operate, at least. But… if you know her as well as she says, where would she run off to?”
“I don’t know! Why would she ever do this? I don’t know everything about her. She said some things that don’t make sense…”
“Do you think she wrote the note?”
“Maybe… yes. With all due respect… her majesty hates her responsibilities, and she… she gave up running away, she gives up on all her suitors, she gives up in the games we play. This would really be giving it all up, wouldn’t it?”
“You think… she really ended it all?”
“No, but kinda of? I overheard her conversation with ’Xiara. Her sister thinks she’d be an awful queen. We tried to reassure her, but I think she wanted to hear that it was hopeless. And knowing it’s hopeless… faking her death means giving up on being queen.”
“But where did she go! If she gave up the first time, why would she think running away will go better now?”
They have more pressing matters. They evade the patrols, and hunt food. T’ren tries to teach Nua how to prepare it, but the corpses of game are icky. While sneaking through the forest, they find fresh tracks. Could this be the way Jiubei went? As T’ren follows the tracks, she concludes that Jiubei didn’t go alone. But who was with her? Other wasps, but who else could have been in on the conspiracy?
“If there’s one thing I know about Jiubei, she couldn’t live without servants and privileges. Do you think she defected to another colony? Did they abduct her?
The the dark of the reserve’s wilds, there’s no answer but the calls of wolves.
Days later, T’ren is sick of doing all the work to hunt, cook, and navigate. You expect me to treat you like the princess, but you aren’t a princess. You’re a worker like me, act like it. Nua cries. She’s just a handmaiden, this isn’t what she’s supposed to do! “Tough shit, but this is your life now. Live it.” Nua keeps crying, and T’ren can’t take it anymore. “You want to be a handmaiden so bad? Go back to the colony and die like one. I’m going to find Jiubei, and I’m not going to let you hold me back.”
“And if you find Jiubei? Do you think she’s going to be happy to see you if you left me to die?” (What she doesn’t say: I’m her favorite. I’m the one she left everything to.)
But T’ren’s face twists in disgusts. “I don’t care. My duty was never to make my queen happy. It was to defend her domain and secure her future. Maybe Tiaxiara was right about one thing. Maybe you were sabotaging my lady.”
Alone, Nua wanders the wilds. She’s unable to do anything to secure herself a camp or a meal. When a predator circles, thinking her easy prey, she finds the strength inside her to claw back, to sting it, but she’s still gruesomely injured in the process, and her vision fades as she bleeds out.
Nua wakes up in a cabin lit by bright lamps. She overhears bugs arguing. “I think we should have waited for her to wake up.”
“Why waste the time?”
“To ask first? To let her choose? You can’t just—”
“What was she going to say. No no, I’d rather die? Ba. Nonsense. Choice,” the other voice spat. “Bugs can’t choose what’s best for them.”
“What about my choice?”
The other voice gets quiet. “Daughter, you know that’s different.”
“It’s not…” But it wasn’t spoken in the tone of rebuttal, but resignation. As if the word ‘daughter’ had taken all the fight out of her. Nua’s antennae are working, and that prompts a startled “Oh, you’re awake! Hi hi hi! I’m so sorry about your dress. You looked pretty-pretty in it, but it was ruined. Are you a wasp princess?”
“Um. No, just a maiden.”
“Oh.” Why did she sound disappointed? “But um. Moving on, your dress wasn’t the only thing ruined. Your foreleg… we had to amputate it, I’m so sorry.”
What? But Nua could feel her — she lifts her foreleg, and that’s not her foreleg. “What is—”
“My father, he, he’s a student of the old ways. Well, he says student, I say master—” (“There aren’t any masters anymore, they killed em all!” he calls from another room.) “—but the point is, he’s capable of miraculous things. Shrineroots willing, of course. Which… is the last the thing. Your arms comes at… a certain cost.”
“Slow down, back up. What’s going on?”
The two bugs — moths — are Mlinti Corak and Mlinti Penyi, living in the ruins of an old archive. Penyi was gathering herbs when she sensed Nua dying, and rescued her from being claimed by the wild. She worked with her father to heal her, but—
Nua interupts to ask if they’ve seen another, bigger wasp anywhere. But they haven’t.
Anyway, the pact that granted Nua a magical wooden replacement arm required a promise to the shrineroots, that they would banish a blight upon the local forest.
“Well… specifically that you would cleanse the blight. We can prepare you… but you’ll have to perform the ritual yourself.”
“But I… don’t know anything about shrineroots. I’m just a handmaiden.”
“You served your queen right? Cleaning, managing her affairs? I think you’ll do just fine as a shrinemaiden.” Penyi clapped her hands together.
“For your first lesson, do you know about the third plague?”
“Dad, she doesn’t need a history lesson — we don’t have that long to teach her!”
“This is a matter of basic education. Do you even know why we’re stuck in this alienage, cut off from the world that’s supposed to be our birthright?”
Like that, the father tells the story of the iatrogyne, the first swarm queen, and the plague she unleashed upon humanity as punishment for forsake their roots and polluting the world. “We nearly cleaned them off the land! This world was almost ours! But then those conniving monkeys manipulated the flaws in our will, told the weakest that the swarm queen was enslaving them. Claimed they could free us! And look at what that freedom got us.”
After being a captive audience for her dead, Penyi guides Nua through the meditations needed to begin interacting on the higher plane. She struggles with it, and starts to get frustrated, and looks for a place to blow off steam.
She finds a wild shrineroot, and pollinates it, sucking its nectar. But in the process, the shrineroot reacts with her new higher body. As if sensing the working she attempted earlier, the shrineroot guides the growth of her spell into a blooming form. Soon, Nua is mediating near a shrineroot every day, rewarding it with pollination when it helps her with spell work.
Penyi walks in on this one day, blushing in her eyes. Then she works up the courage to ask to join her next time. They pollinate flowers together (unknown to Nua, this is considered intimate among moths), and on impulse Penyi starts feeding Nua nectar, and then they’re licking each other’s hands.
When the day comes, Nua has to journey to the blighted shrine, penetrating a grove made perilous by its astray spells. There’s a bug’s corpse here, and their ghost is haunting the glade. Nua has to draw on the same well of courage she found when fighting the predator to defend against the ghost-possessed corpse, and finally at the heart of the glade, she runs her stinger into the shrine-root, releasing it.
Back at the cabin, Penyi is overjoyed at Nua’s success, patting her. “You’re such a good little maid, your queen would be so proud of you~” Nua leans into the touch, and Penyi coos further. “You’re so cute. This is a bit forward but um… I think I love you? Or like. I want to love you, I mean. Come sleep in my bed tonight?” Nua awkwardly says yes.
Her father gives a pained, unamused look, and asks to speak with Nua in private. But he doesn’t chastise her. “My daughter’s fond of you, and the story you told, to come all this way and endure what you have… I dare say a destiny is taking shape around you. I’d like Penyi to be there to record it.
“What do you mean?”
“When you leave, take my daughter with you, dazzle her with your adventures, she’ll love it. And… take good care of her, please.” He coughs. “I’m in rough shape, you don’t need to avert your eyes. I’ll be a husk soon, and that girl’s the only legacy I’ll have. And I… I’ve taught her enough. I don’t want her to see me off. Not till she’s stronger. You’ll make her stronger, yeah?”
“I’m not strong.”
“I don’t know about that. You think you’re the oh so perceptive, oh so sensitive type. But do you even know yourself? Ha. Maybe I’m plain mad. Whatever, just humor an old moth, okay?”
That night, Penyi cuddles up against Nua. Penyi’s very soft, and her antennae are very fluffy, and they rove all over Nua’s body.
Eventually, Penyi asks, “So um. Do worker wasps have… Sorry, I’ve just never done this with one before. Or well. I’ve never done this at all.”
“What’s ‘this’?”
“…Love? We’re. It’s why you came to my bed, right? To… mate with me?”
“Oh. Oh. I though we were cuddling? I’m a worker. I’m not meant to—”
“I won’t tell your queen. It can be our secret.”
“I’m not a princess, though. Not a queen, not female.”
“But… aren’t all workers…?” She nuzzles up to Nua’s auricle, drops her voice to a sultry tone. “You’re a princess to me. I can make you my queen. Does that sound romantic?”
“Penyi. I… How do I explain… There’s a sickness we get sometimes, maybe other bugs do too. Terrible rot of the stomach, you wither and die, but there’s a tea you can brew that cures it. But you have to drink the tea for the rest of your life.”
(The moth’s voice goes flat. “I’m… familiar with the concept.”)
“If you don’t have the sickness, you can still drink the tea, but… it’s just hot, weirdly-flavored water. You could go your whole life without thinking of it, let alone drinking it.”
“I get it, you don’t have to — I’m not attractive to you at all?”
“You’re cute, but all I know about attraction is what I’ve studied in class.”
“W-what have you studied in class?”
“Which drones are handsome and… you aren’t, no offense.”
“The opposite, honestly. Thank you~” The moth pull away, and seems to slowly deflate for a time. Then, at length, she says, “And… I’m so, so sorry I did this to you. I knew workers didn’t mate… Well, my dad tells me good queen control everything, so… I thought this was one of them. That workers couldn’t love because they weren’t allowed to. Not that they… didn’t care. I can’t imagine what that’s like. The loneliness, the fire in my loins… every night, unfulfilled, for years. I dream of it, you just… don’t.”
“Well, I do watch, sometimes. It’s fun!”
“W-watch?”
“The queen’s harem makes it into a kind of theater or game. It’s like seeing a sport you couldn’t play yourself. The ones who can get good at it, and there’s a kind of drama to it, and well. The poses and faces they make… the artist in me can’t help but find it beautiful.”
“Your hive sounds so… strange. How often does the queen’s harem… do it?”
“Every week, when it’s breeding season.”
“Oh. Have you ever… drawn them?”
“Of course. It’s my duty to pique the interest of drone. So I tease them with art of my princess.”
“Roots… if I could watch it on stage every week, and find art like that… I would never find time to focus my studies.”
“Is it really that…”
“Yes. Did your princess never… couldn’t she have explained how much it aches?”
“She never liked talking about those things with me. And she… never seemed to like my drawings of drone suitors. Maybe she was like me?”
“I wouldn’t like drones, either.”
“Well, you’re a moth.”
“I’m attracted to ladies of all species. I— can prove it. You said you liked watching… do you want to see what you’ve done to me?”
A moment to think, then, “Sure.”
Penyi shifts under the covers to present the tip of her abdomen. “Before you ask, I’m not male. It’s… an accident of birth.” Then Penyi chews her manibles for a bit, and says, “But if you were a princess, I’d pin you down, and — I shouldn’t, sorry. I just— hard to control myself.”
“What if I were my princess?”
“Huh?”
“If Jiubei came to bed with you, if you had wooed her like no drone could…”
“Well… I’d beg permission. She’s royalty. I’d go slow, gentle… I’m not sure how long I’d last, otherwise.” A middle leg strokes her length, and she lets out a soft groan.
“Oh. At least we’d both be new to this…”
Nua reaches out to touch it, and Penyi shivers. “Nua… do you think… Um. You like drinking nectar, right? Do you want to try a different sort of bloom?”
Nua giggles. “When you put it that way…” The wasp slides down, tarsi rubbing the moth’s soft fur as her mandible nibble lower and lower. Maxillae palp her length, and she slowly works it into her mouth. Penyi sings a melody of moans, and Nua is experienced licking and sucking — when the moth finishes, she swallows it all.
“How… how was it?”
“Warmer, thicker, tangier.” Nua leans in close to Penyi’s faceplate.
“Do you think you’d ever… do it again?”
“Hm… Did you enjoy it?”
“So much. You were… I couldn’t have dreamed of that. But did you…?”
“When I was in school, I was taught the difference between wasps and bees or moths… was that we ate meat. If you enjoyed feeding me so much…” Nua giggles.
“I… might be in love.”
- Mujisala, A Hive Beseiged
- Shiverblade, The Hidden Fortress
- !Agarha Mine (That Which Lies Below)
- Infested Underworld
- Wilds of Alienage #4 (reprise)
- Zochei Colony (Tiaxiara’s Reign)
- Zochei Colony (Civil War)
- Epilogue: The Burning of Alienage Reserve #14