A Sculptor Most Delicate (2026-03-02)
Shell-sculptors had the sharpest claws of the chrylurk castes, and this one had a whetstone upon the table, honing the edge further, even as R-15 walked in. She, a surrogate clad proudly in ceramic carapace, paused at the threshold to the chamber, tugging on her invisible bindings to the rest of the hive as if it would pull her from some terrible drop.
—Sit down, sister! (the shell-sculptor sent, eager antennae already perking up at the promise of being helpful) This one has been told just what you need!
—Tuned (she acknowledged).
Her tugging on the lines ceased, unable to overcome the gravity of her appointment: six legs ferried her inward, and she lay her ceramic-clad carapace upon the cool clay of the sculptor’s workbench.
All was lit apale in the sharp light cast by the sculptor’s swarmling shimmerbugs, perched and casting beams with reflective inner elytra. All was lit, save for the shadows cast by the chrylurks themselves
R-15’s forearms folded, hugging her thorax.
—Would you like a full exfoliation?
—That wasn’t the order given (she sent).
—You’ve worn this shell for a month, this one would love to provide you a fresh coat!
—It has served me well. That won’t be necessary.
—Tuned (this one hummed resonantly as she acknowledged. It would respect her needful sister’s wishes. Clearly a delicate claw was called for!) Then you’ll just be needing a replacement thoracic plate?
Head still, her antennae bobbed up and down, nodding affirmative.
—But this one needs to see your thorax for the work! Can you move your arms, please?
She wasn’t frozen. Her arms did twitch, initiating slow, unsteady motions. But the sculptor was watching closely.
So this one rose, shifting weight from six legs to four. The sculptor caste had sharp claws, suited for their duty, but the pads of the second pair of limbs were soft. This one brought tarsi down high on R-15’s thorax. A gentle weight lending comfort.
—You just returned from a duty in the mortal city, yes? (the sculptor sent, admiration undisguised: hatched in the hive, this one knew the exscient primarily as what one sculpted shells to hide and defend from.)
Antennae nodded again.
—And you visited this one first thing upon returning. You seek repair — you flinch from damage caused. The cracks.
“I failed,” she said. Words issued from the mouth, a whisper.
—We are bound (this one sent, confused and speculating. Had it been an attempted courtesy, to spare this one bearing the full tone of guilt that could not be muted through their harmonic connection? This one continued:) Loud, brutish breaths befit the exscient! You are home now, sister.
—Enough. This is not necessary (she sent). I ask that you fulfill your duty.
—One molds what is soft, one mends what is cracked. This one serves in tune!
—Together bound, and yet this one taunts me with semantics.
—Bound, yet you insist my sister has failed.
—I… (the transmission trailed off; further deflection was moot.)
R-15 felt the buzz as the sculptor probed her deeper — her spiderlice did not keep secrets from the hive, and answered each subverbal question. She was known in depth, as if she were one of the sculptor’s shimmerbugs.
—Your womb is emptied, and your gullet drips with nectar fresh from the reaping! Was that not your duty?
Finally, after all this prodding — after the sculptor might well have read the information off her lice-woven record — R-15 spread her forearms wide.
Her thorax was cracked, a with dark splotch in the gleaming ceramic, shards missed and replaced with dark, coagulated hemolymph — victim to a savage, sanguine caulking.
“I miscalcuated my thrall’s dose, and it had worn low by the time I returned. Without my venom to stabilize its mind, I was attacked,” she spoke calmly — but that she spoke at all belied that she was too disturbed to commit it to honest record. “Such performance is an insult to our queen.”
—How many thralls have known your parascixion? (this one sent, knowing they both knew the answer. One waited, but eventually had to say it:) Just the one, yes?
—I submit, once more, a request that you fulfill your duty, sculptor.
One lifted slender arms, and flexing a tarsi bearing scalpel-sure anatomy. One’s ceramic gleamed in the shimmerlight of the workroom. Despite all the argument, one’s mandibles grinned eagerly at the prospect of playing with exoderm—purpose, pure and simple.
—This one shall peel you bare and restore your beautiful barding, sister (this one sent, with one sly thought a twang in the harmony) But one must make a request of you in turn.
—Which is?
—When you report to Her, ask how She fared with her first thrall!
Headstrong Hunter, Patient Weaver (2026-03-03)
Among branches overlooking a scarcely-trod dirt road through the woods rose the perch of a pair of chrylurks, silent sentinels, listening intently to the clanking of a pair of vesselblades amarch — gilded knight’s armor reflecting the night. The hunter tensed: and she thought of her Fione and she readied her claws.
—Halt, sister (sent the weaver on the other branch.) Remain quiescent.
The hunter stared down the length of the dirt road — a old cabin with but a single inhabitant lay at the other end. The hunder knew it well.
—I saw those swords (replied the hunter.) The exšh’t brutes will kill her. We have to—
—Observe and report (the weaver strummed gently, stiffly.) We observe and then we report what we observe. We didn’t expect compleat vessels so close to our hunting grounds. We didn’t know — next time, we shall.
—Next time? Next time? What about now! What about my Fione?
It was rhetorical; the hunter was already dropping from the branch — but to be a weaver was to master silk like innumerable complementary limbs. Well within her evanescent abilities to suspend the brashly falling chrylurk in ropes that might well have coalescenced from the air itself for the very suddenness.
—I would not cross my stinger with that vessel (sent the weaver,) and it is my role to equal the compleat. Where I would flee, you must follow.
—Your role is callous. Your webs are dead and calculated. You’ve forgotten what’s it’s like to infest and grow.
—All this passion is sung to me on the webs you call dead (the weaver noted.)
—I’m not done! (the hunter sent while still twisting in her bindings.) She told me she understood purpose of our hive — she believed, she loved. She was almost parascix!
—Exscient (the weaver sent, leaving it deliberately ambiguous whether that was meant as an solemn affirmation or scathing negation.) An excoriating agony shall gnaw within the flesh of every vessel for their crimes against us. Such was always their fate. Do you understand, hunter?
—She might as well have been parascix! She was us. I won’t abandon her. She is mine.
—And if you forget yourself upon the vessel’s transfigured blade?
—Then the hive would lose two, tonight (at length the hunter says). But if I defy your fatalism, the hive saves two. On average, letting me go makes no difference.
—You called calculation my role. Do not arrogate it, it ill suits you. You would doom the hive itself with your reckless, and we would save far more than two swooning lovers with this caution. We observe, and we report. You are a chrylurk, sister, we are patient. Our way is to hide and rot unseen.
—But—
—And if she understood like you claim she does, then she knows she does not die should her queen live. Sacrifice would be her role, just as it is for us all.
—Damnable weaver. Always an answer for everything.
—One way, I suppose, to say that I know what you do not (the weaver sent, knowing the hunter’s acquiescent had been clear in the harmony between them — even if the bug was too proud to spell it out.) And I’ll give you one more, because we are bound. You drank her dreams. Her flesh may be forgotten to us, but she has already found her way into you.
—I… I’ll miss her. But you must be right. I have a role. I can’t save her if it means forgotten what I’m saving her for.
—The words you’ll looking for are: “Thank you, O wise weaver.”
—Maybe if let me go (the hunter sent, still suspended mid-air in the weaver’s binding.) I am glad you spun sense into me.
—I’m glad, too. Otherwise I would have saved the vessels the trouble and killed you myself.
Between Contempt and Hysteria (2026-03-04)
—O Sister Contempt, fifth hunter! Where are you? (came a pulsed message, proxied by an operator, originally sent by Hysteria, first architect.)
Contempt tensed. A cool breeze tassled her silk-hair as it dangled in the grasp of gravity. Her legs clung to the underside of a thick supports meeting in a cross. Were they roots? Blight’s mycelium? Whatever it was had been encased in exoderm.
Unsuprising the hive hadn’t cached her whereabouts — not least for the fact she had picked this nook because it was one that few bugs frequented. Hunter fifth in caste might be distinguished in an elder hive — but fifth of six hunter meant only her kindred (asleep in the warren, she missed them) ever really spun her any mind.
Particularly when first hunter Despair still boasted of the compleat knight zhe had made parascixe.
By contrast, Contempt’s recent hunt was a courier (lean, but such sweet blood) — and she’d lost a raptorial forelimb for her trouble. A hunter missing a raptorial? No one wonder no bug spun her any mind.
—Line? (sent Hysteria, not proxied this time, but no more scrutable; she had that characteristic opacity of the royal castes.)
—Bound. (answered Contempt’s lice reflexively.) To what trespass does this one owe the touch of an architect’s silk and mind?
—May I make a physical inquiry? (Hysteria sent, still opacity to scrutiny, but revealing a glint of restraint. The hunter could refuse, and the architect would not insist.)
But restraint should have been obvious. The line was bound — had Contempt broken accord and earned royal ire, then it’d simply be a matter of following the tug of serivane between them. No escape.
—I am hanging in the vomitorium of the upper gymnasium.
For now, the hunters all trained in the main stadium — the masons had not yet reached an accord for how to lay out the new gymnasium. Contempt had no idea what there was to debate, mainly because she not have interest in learning. Not her role.
—Hello again, Sister!
With a quiet yelp, Contempt flinched. She fell from her underperch on the cross-brace, though she retained the grace to put three legs below her. Antennae flung wildly about as her apertures widened. Still she seemed alone.
—Ah, here I am (sent the architect, voice proximity-clear.)
The light of a shimmerbug spreading its wings flared to life — that swarmling perched on veiled head of the architect. The shadows around her fell away like a pool of water.
The architect was a tall creature, looming with gentle bulk over the lithe hunter — for all her keen vision and intelligence, her kind was ultimately an exaltation of stone-hefting masons.
The hunter brought two hands together and inclined her deference.
—You move like this is mortal territory, your honor. (Contempt couldn’t help but comment.)
The hunter knew she had not failed to rake her gaze over that corner of the gymnasium behind her, so how had such an unmissably vast bug eluded her? Evanescence of the light itself!?
—A rather discordant habit, forgive me.
A habit!
Of the two of them, Contempt had spent far, far more time in mortal territory, hunting the exscient; her grace Hysteria was above such concerns. But of course, an inclination toward her stealth sprung from the same spring as the opacity of her line-harmony.
No, she didn’t move like this was mortal territory; she had all the occult flair of a chrylurk that crossed with her own kind. There were other hives, other queens — a task fit for a royal to meet them with diplomacy and dagger.
—You are above forgiveness (said Contempt, after puzzling how she could respond in accorrd.) Your station in the hive is profounder than I grasp.
The architect flicked her proboscis upward, lifting her veil, and Contempt saw the shiny curve of her fangs grinning at her.
—Once more I elude you, O scixe girl (lilted Hysteria.) The habit is not my aloof nobility. Shall I be vulgar? I am fucking with you.
As would be your right. It would be as reflexive as her licenest replying “Bound!” — yet if the architect dispensed with formality, should she? Or was that too presumptive?
—Should I appreciate that? (Contempt said, by way of saying she did not.)
—Highly discordant! I daresay you are in error to humor me~ And isn’t that a delightful little trap?
—I suppose I’m thankful I have prey to toy with instead (Contempt ventured carefully — she imagined architect saw little in the way of violence. Perhaps that left nerves madly frayed.)
—You wound me! Good girl~
—What was your physical inquiry, your grace?
—Right! To tie this off, what I am getting at is that I simply love suprises. We grew dull when we let the harmony tell us everything in advance.
Do architects not like calculated designs? Contempt wondered.
—But! I digress! Scixe, you almost had me monologuing (Hysteria sent, and she bent her legs until she was eye level with the hunter, one limb snaking into her robes.) Tell me, you were the hunter who reeled in that runner, yes?
—Tuned (she said.)
—Slippery, wasn’t it? I heard you got all smashed up. Can I see your arm?
Contempt inhaled a deep breath, and then she slowly stepped forward. Her second, smaller pair of arms had been held in front of her, fidgeting and gesturing, while her larger raptorial arm had been folded up. Polite, that way.
Now, she rolled her shoulders and brandished her weapon, a limb sharp with spikes and a honed, cutting edge.
—There is a bit an issue (Contempt started.) Rather pointedly, you cannot see it. The result of my hunt is that it is not there.
Her stump was no grave disfigurement — her broken limb had been taken to a vat where nurses might coax the flesh back into order, at least once the hive had resources to spare. A hunter’s raptorial was not trivial to craft nor repair — in the whole hive there were only six of them, after all.
The architect had stepped forward too, hands of her second arms reaching out to touch the pull away the silk flap below her pauldron, exposing the stump. Fingers traced melanized scar-chitin. There was a nakedness in the lack of exoderm coating it.
Contempt looked away.
—You’re wanting on a grafter to weave some metamorphosis down in the wetrooms, right? (Hysteria sent idly, while she read the answer from the hunter’s record.) You think of decorum and a bug’s place often, don’t you?
The hunter’s apertures snapped shut and open, blinking at the nonsequitur.
—I want to preserve the accord.
—I know that, I’ve talked to you longer than a second! You wriggle so carefully in your place. It’s cute and it’s dull. But whatever. (Hysteria blew a puff of air from her abdomen, and so petulent a gesture contrasted with the royal being a giant next to the hunter.) I would say our flesh has its place, also. Where do you think that place it?
—Our flesh?
—Biology, what else? The pulse in your veins. The prey you fuck. The arm you lost. (the architect sent, tapping one talon with a click.)
Contempt began to fear Hysteria was growing bored of her. Before she could puzzle out what was best to say, the architect signaled her:
—Let me help you out, not so scixe. I am gyne, royalty among our kind, and you are a worker. That much you’re very aware of. Would you say flesh is royal?
What kind of question was that?
The hunter thought. Gynes were responsible for growing the hive — they begot, and workers nourished what was begotten. All the separated her from the drones was her name; a gulf next to the higher caste. Queens, consorts, surrogates.
The nature of flesh was to grow, expand, beget. Was that the answer? That analogy?
But what about architects? What role did she have in the hive’s life cycle? Contempt did not know, just like she did not know what the builders argued about regard the gynmasium’s layout, and suddenly she was almost interested in knowing.
Why had an architect ever spun mind, touched her silk to a hunter — fifth of six! — like her? She squirmed in this alien attention.
Yes, Contempt was a hunter — at once it was clear: she was of flesh. Architects, by contrast, concerned themselves with the arcane realm of designs.
Contempt didn’t know the answer, not really. But was that the answer? The hunter was a worker, and the architect was not. Contempt was of flesh, and beneath Hysteria.
—Our flesh serves us but does not define our kind (Contempt finally composed her answer, airily sent. Her eyes drifted to the veil over the architect’s face.) Recapitulation, harmony, it’s deeper than our pulse and our… fucking.
—How diplomatically put (sent Hysteria, drily.) You found the answer that would satisfy me, and I dare say that alone spoiled it.
—You believe this is empty flattery?
—I know it’s flattery! We are bound, and you are not half as aloof as I am. You want to mollify me, like some dog nipping at your heels for attention.
—I’d rather say I want to entertain you. It’s clear you flagged me down for your amusement, nothing else explains this encounter.
—Guilty as charged (Hysteria sent, unabashed.) Forgive me? But I suppose this is the heart of it, then. You picked answer answer to entertain me — do you stand by your choice? Will you take responsibility? Shall you be my entertainment?
—I would have thought you’d find me dull.
—What is a chrylurk, that we cannot change your forms?
And at that prompt, she thought. O Contempt, fifth hunter of six. The gymnastium lay quiet, and dark but for the shine of the architect’s lone shimmerbug, but there was a phantom buzz of licenests fielding inquiries from the hive at large. A question on idle palps: What was the meaning of this sudden, mysterious meeting? None but her kindred spun Contempt any mind — but Hysteria, first architect?
And that, at least, was answer, wasn’t it?
—No (sent Contempt.) I have a role. I am a hunter. You said yourself that I was in error to humor you. Leave me out of your royal games.
The architect grinned. Her fangs alone were nearly as wide as the hunter’s head.
—It’s delightful parascixe, isn’t it? A simpering slave would say “Yes, of course I’ll serve you!” and I can imagine nothing that dries my loins faster. But your refusal piques me. And you know what you’re doing to me, don’t you?
—No, of course not.
—Mm, I want more than reflexive contrarianism out of you.
—I’m not sure what you want out of me, frankly (the hunter replied.) There are royals who could keep up. Have they all grown tired of you?
Huffs air, several — Hysteria laughed.
—So, have you not guessed what this is about yet?
At that nudge, the last lines of logic tightened — something had to have spurred the architect to seek her out, and what of all things was unique about the fifth hunter? But it was the first thing Hysteria asked her.
Earlier, the royal had snaked a large arm into her woven robes — at last, it emerged, and produced a work of such distinctly architect design.
—You gave a good attempt, but miscalculated your answer. Harmony? Recapitulation? Important, and perhaps a queen or weaver would argue most important. But if you seek to flatter, you must give face to what is beauty itself distilled into form: the work of exoderm sculpture!
The architect held out a acutely detailed carving: a raptorial arm rendered in the waxy clay of chrylurk secretion-crafting.
But Hysteria loved her surprises. And with the bright twang of evanscence, an invisible web caught and puppeted the world by her will — the highest chrylurk art.
The arm unfolded itself and exposed a metal blade.
—You lay idle here your seclusion because the hive is starving and can’t spare the calories to grow you a new arm. Such is the poverty of the flesh! But I am architect, of vision, of genius! So answer me, O Sister Contempt, shall we have flesh bow to the higher caste?