Should I begin by disclaiming how deeply miserable I am to be retreading these roads? I’ve always found something innately pathetic about explaining myself. The concillatory gesture, prostrate before the judgment of another.

Victory, after all, is self‍-​evident. If my story was one ending triumphant, why would I stand here preparing my case as if awaiting a capital trial? Yet if my story truly met a dire end, would I even persist to speak it?

So much is prefigured even in the manner in which I speak, the subtext that dwells and wriggles like so many parasitic worms, an infestation of meaning. And this text is not even the primary host. What was I, but a vector?

To whom shall I address this? The knights who drag my body back for a trial before the president and king? My children who’ll bear my curse and praise me like a goddess? The friends I’ve lost and discarded, all those wondering where it went wrong, what could have saved me? The historians eager for a primary source? Myself, always the fairest critic?

I contemplate the tedium of recounting my life from childhood on, and I fear this endeavor will find its end on this very first page. Must I recall every detail, set the scene and tighten the pace to keep you entertainted? Must I hone my rhetoric to some particular end, convince you of my innocence or divinity? I’d prefer the rack.

But I suppose there is one exception. I’ve felt this angst before‍ ‍‍—‍ a pressing need to say anything coupled with the utter inability to articulate that anything to some impressive standard. And yet, there was someone who listened‍ ‍‍—‍ patient through the rambling, attentive through the confusion, always poised to ask the right question that proved she was listening.

I could say anything to her, and she always seemed blessed to hear it.

Of course, writing “reproductive system” instead of womb immediately prompts one to imagine the alternative. I’m skeptical it would be effective, but there’s something to imagining maggots infesting a member. They divert the bloodflow to feed on it, which has side effect of leaving it swollen permanently hard. Impossible for the host to ejaculate due to the worms plugging the hole, so instead it’s left leaking slime and seeing larvae wiggle up and down the length, thicker than the veins, feeling them crawl in and out of the balls and slit, repeatedly pressing against the prostate. The host certainly wouldn’t be allowed to even squeeze it without being bitten for threatening the larvae. Even touching something so senstive and inflamed would be borderline painful. But you could still encourage them. Imagine how you’d shiver as you drizzle honey over your length to feed them those sweet, concentrated calories‍ ‍‍—‍ then as they start squirming in excitement you’re whiting out from pleasure… What was I talking about again?

“Ever seen a chrylurk?”

In front of the crouching vesselblade, a transmutation circle splayed out. Blue‍-​white dust there on the ground‍ ‍‍—‍ dry stuff, yet it seemed to take cues from glue. The alchemy‍-​chalk had as much carved lines in the dirt as inscribed them. That had to weaken the effect, I thought.

Then two fingers snapped, summoned that spark, and lightning‍-​glow seared an afterimage on my eyes.

But I guess that’s just skill.

Argent, the vesselblade, was a Conjure‍-​class Shatter‍-​grained‍ ‍‍—‍ the rarest emyra type you could get without getting immediately marked for containment. I knew that, and I’d seen his inmut before. Yet, when the glow gave way to mist of frozen air, and linked chains of ice extruded like grasping fingers, I still gasped.

Each sickle‍-​curve had a crystalline brillance, briefly catching the sunlight before releasing sparkling distortion. Shattergrain. He had that in common with Grand‍-​sage Luca. With all the giants that had wrought modern alchemy. The blue‍-​white dust of our chalk was but tiny shards grounded from a crystalline transmutation just like this.

And me? Enchant‍-​class Clay‍-​grained. Only the most common emyra in the whole world. Seven times more of me than there were of him. Maybe I should feel resentful.

Then he glanced up from where he’s crouched, face pale between black locks, and he smiled gently at me and I smile back.

“You there, Emil? Or are you saving all your focus for tomorrow?”

Right, his question wasn’t idle. His transmutation wasn’t idle either, he would say. It was practice, training‍ ‍‍—‍ even if it was clear from the way he spun the sickle‍-​chain, letting it loop around his fingers, that he also just enjoyed the way his inmut felt.

“I’ve read the manuals,” I said. “Studied the diagrams, the methods. I know what we’re up against.”

He laughed once. “Can count on you to do the reading, I know.”

It’s more than reading, I don’t say. It’s taking notes, it’s practicing the remuts. You don’t learn anything if you just read about it.

It was just a word. Just a sentence, not worth clarifying. Wait, just one sentence? Did he say anything else?

He’s looking at me, an eyebrow quirked. It really looks like I’m not paying attention.

“Sorry, can you repeat that?”

No sigh, no cringe. He said, “It’s different, meeting a bug in the flesh.”

“I’ve met iatrogos,” I said. Then I heard what I sounded like. “Not what you meant, I’m sorry.” I’m not a bigot, I didn’t say, because that wouldn’t have helped.

“Not entirely irrelevant.” He swung his hand sharply upward, and the chain jumped back and forth. Pendulum. “Some react badly to both. Eyes, chitin, segments, freaks them out.”

“I like it,” I said. What did I mean by that? “Not the problem with chrylurks.”

He nodded. “The appearance is one thing. You can be prepared for that and still get caught bad by the speed, or the ambush tactics. It’s hard enough to win against a chrylurk in a fight, but the real danger is that you’re hers before you even have a chance to fight.”

I’d heard the phrase before. The lose condition against a chrylurk wasn’t that you’d fail, or that you’d die.

It was that you would become hers.

“Most chrylurks we catch early in the lifecycle, when there’s just one to deal with. We aren’t that lucky here. It’s a budding hive, but a small one.” Then he paused, as if catch himself. “But you know this. You read the summons.”

I did. “You’re going somewhere with this, I don’t mind.”

“Teams are selected for a reason. You were selected for a reason.”

The emphasis. There had to be a reason, because I’m not good enough to merit inclusion without question. He’d never say it, which is why I had to think it.

“I think I figured out why. Maybe the full brief will say it outright, but I would understand if they didn’t‍ ‍‍—‍ bad for morale. But it’s your inmut.”

My innate transmutation. I stiffened and looked down. My eyes fell to the sickle‍-​chain, the brilliant crystals. He had performed his innate transmutation with the gravitas of doodling on a page. Right now he was playing with it.

If I played with my innate transmutation, things would simply die.

“I don’t want to use it,” I said. I wasn’t practiced with it. I had the most boring, most statistically unremarkable emyra affinity‍ ‍‍—‍ so of course the unique thing about me is that my inmut is lethal to the point of uselessness. On paper, it might sound powerful. But how do you train anything like that?

I kicked some dirt, and the spray landed over the transmutation circle. His circle. It was practice, he’d say.

“Our mission is to neutralize the hive. Contain the spread of chrylurks by any means possible. With more than one of them‍ ‍‍—‍ with a hive, even if it’s a small one‍ ‍‍—‍ the possibility that we don’t make it back is so much higher.”

“They wouldn’t assign us a mission we couldn’t do,” I asserted. There was something in my tone, I could tell by how his face shifted. I crossed my arms.

Hand went up‍ ‍‍—‍ just one, since the other was occupied. “They wouldn’t,” he said. “But the strategists have to assess the risks and mitigate them. And if the risk is that we become hers?”

I won’t do it, I didn’t say.

He finished: “I think you’re meant to kill us.”

Parasitoid that runs her stinger‍-​ovipositor into your soft, fatty tissues, piercing you again and again up and down your paralyzed body. Making your flesh bulge with her eggs, pockmarked with holes leaking blood and slime. Wet pussies torn open, each with their own fertilized gore‍-​wombs. Each is sealed back up, sutured with silk, glazed with sticky secretions, in bandage‍-​chastity.

It makes you flush and swoon‍ ‍‍—‍ because you’re feverish, flesh pale and sweating, immune system failing in the face of the new gifts in your veins. But even that resistance serves her‍ ‍‍—‍ your body cooks itself to warm her eggs perfectly.

You’re weakening, but not from hunger; she chews up meat and spits it into your mouth, maxilae shoving it down your throat if you dont swallow, and her drooling maw is your hydration.

Time passes in a nightmarish haze, but you’re wide awaken when the eggs start wiggling inside you. She seems impatient for it, groping you with chitinous limbs, fingering your swollen gashes. The sharp tip of her ovipositor everts again, and once again wets itself with your blood.

You think it’s torture at first, a thousand slow and hateful stabs to make you suffer, but she’s so careful, so precise. Each scarred, egg‍-​laden hole is carefully surrounded with a trypophilic halo of pits‍ ‍‍—‍ vents for her children to breathe, you realize.

You don’t sleep that night. How could you? The wiggling continues, at first tiny kicks, and then a sustained rhythm getting more strained and anticipatory. You feel your heart beat in every slit.

You’re waiting, and it doesn’t happen‍ ‍‍—‍ nothing tells you the transition from one agony to another is complete. Your whole body is crawling with the movement of something alien. Then you realize these can’t all be the twitches of eggs not yet hatched‍ ‍‍—‍ they have hatched, and your her children are already stirring.

Breaths turn sharp, and then into screams. It hurts. Dozens of worms writhing, widening their wombs, mouth finding the walls and ripping off muscle fibers or slurping into fat deposits‍ ‍‍—‍ devouring you from within.

And then you see her ovipositor is out again. Its narrow, leaking tip is lining up with one of your sealed gashes. With a thrust, the bandaged is torn through, scar‍-​chastity violated, and slime lubricated chitin is rubbing against your insides. Sawing back and forth until it finds something‍ ‍‍—‍ the grub who calls this lesion home.

She’s woundfucking you, while silencing your screams with mandibles clamping your tongue and maxillae exploring your mouth.

And then, with a shudder, you feel something cool against your feverish flesh, leaking in from her ovipositor. She pumps slime into your wounds. Maybe she knows your flesh can’t nourish and sustain her young entirely, or maybe it aids in your digestion, or maybe‍—

You were dreadfully sure you couldn’t endure her fucking every pussy she’d torn open. But now you can feel her slime numbing the pain of her thrusting and her gnawing young to a dull ache.

You gasp when her mandibles release your mouth‍ ‍‍—‍ only to immediately yelp as she bites down on your neck, and you can feel the buzz of venom delivered. Only this isn’t venom, is it? Not what paralyzed you. This feels…

You heart beats faster, and your muscles release. A breath you didn’t know you were feeling leaves you. You feel at peace‍ ‍‍—‍ you feel as one. The mother above you with antennae atremble and mouths drooling excitement, her hands unable to resist palming your sweaty, bloody, lively flesh. The grubs inside you are mindless but for their hunger to relish the nutrients you are utterly replete with.

It’s beautiful what you’re apart of, isn’t it? Life in its most lurid cycle.

You’re moaning when she rips open your next womb, pumping you with more trophic slime to feed and digest and numb you. You’re mouthing pleases and thank yous‍ ‍‍—‍ for the children, for the dripping loads, for the venom‍-​injection that cleared your mind.

You wish you had the strength and movement in your paralyzed limbs to service her, repay even slightly. Stroke that ovipositor and help it align and enter smoothly, grope that fat abdomen and its soft cuticle, to hump the strong legs that pin you down.

As she gets ready to woundfuck you again, you kind of want to feel that ovipositor in your mouth, stinger pricking your throat as she rams it in, her pleasure twitching up and down the length, and taste that slime, nourishing you like just like one of her children. Maybe if you’re good, she will…

Most of all, you can’t wait for the next injection.

Can you imagine enduring the high coming down, your limbs hollowed out flesh outweighted by those annelid grubs?

No.

You just have to be a good little eggsack.

That isn’t cum, dripping in thick, sticky lines from the swollen tip of her abdomen. You can tell by the smell: earthy and sharp like a musky flower luring you in close for a deeper whiff (choke on her pheromones), with a salty note that promises it would be so delicious if you just give it a lick.

This is vermincholie, and just one drop could be enough to turn you into her thrall. Infested, fattened, and bleeding for her. Just one drop‍ ‍‍—‍ but a hole pumped until it’s gaped and overflowing is how she makes sure it takes.

Where it falls on your skin‍ ‍‍—‍ where she glazes you‍ ‍‍—‍ it hardens to something membranous and stiff, like wax scales. Your flesh prickles, by turns numbed and radiating this throbbing, pleasant warmth. It takes after chrylurk venom in that way.

It numbs you (a soothing lie) because the accurate reading is excruciating. It takes after venom‍ ‍‍—‍ as a tranquilizing painkiller, yes, but also as a digestive enzyme‍-​stew. Her vermincholie sinks into you like burning acid.

Chrylurks do not cum; their reproduction has no need for the male sex. Her genes spread in a viral payload; her oozing discharge is infecting your cells.

Even the female sex is optional; her virus alone could make a womb of its host tissue, recapitulating evolution and as if by spontaneous generation, turning vermincholie into vermin proper: now beget the wriggling worms of her larvae.

The secret of chrylurk reproduction is that one drop is all it takes, so when she runs you through with her ovipositor and makes you bulge with eggs, this is largely an excess‍ ‍‍—‍ an indulgence, even. A chrylurk egg is just vermincholie held secure, the jelly‍-​like yolk serving to nourish vermin that could very well survive without it.

So tomorrow, when she bends you over again to pump you full and numb and hers, she’s simply spoiling the young you’re host to. Like a mother breastfeeding her babe, a chrylurk fucks their thrall.

Swaddled in silk, woven ropes cut into flesh. A hoarse throat whimpers. Things squirm between muscle‍-​fibers. Numbness fades like walls eroding. Bone‍-​gnawed agony.

Segmented fingers groping, squeezing, callously curious. Stridulations faintly‍-​familiar formants. “Shush. Enough.”

A fang punctures flesh already blood‍-​caked blood. More stone for the castle walls. Hoarse moans now.

I arose from a burrow hastily dug in the earth. Cool dew slicked the grass, and feeble dawn light was scattered dimly over the lands. The air lay, even from wind, and in this atmosphere a waving antennae catches naught save the waste of wild animals and the desperations of flowers.

I’m alone, then. Still undetected. My fangs salt with a fraction of my satisfaction. A lifted labrum reveals a glimpse of my proud dentation grinning. I was so sure last night’s stunt had ruined everything.

Let’s how far my prey’s gone now. I turn and brandish tarsi sticky with webs and crawling with spiderlice. I draw them across the mouth of my erstwhile burrow, forming a quick vane‍-​web, and in my lurking heart stirs sanguine power.

When the knights come face to face with an insectoid maw, enhaloed with webbed horns and blood‍-​sucking tendrils, Mikalam assumes the bestiary (memorized to the very last detail) would not lead her astray: chrylurks lay parasitoid egg inside their prey‍ ‍‍—‍ and the sole survivor had fled unpenetrated, though stinger‍-​grazed.

When her flesh swells with pus‍-​leaking sacs, Mikalam realizes the grimoire was incomplete: an egg squeezed into mortal flesh was sufficient, but mere exposure to its verminous secretion had infected her.

When a traveling merchant, law‍-​bound to aid any knight, asks if she is well, Mikalam decides to give an incomplete answer.

“You’ll relent to it, exšh’t.” The insect’s voice was wheezing through a orifice unused to breath, unsuited for it, mouthparts scraping and chirring. Hungerless.

Tied down, bound and swaddled in that damnably strong silk, no escape. It pried lips open, projecting that mouthful of chitinous tendrils and tubes. Vomiting something rotten‍-​sweet and mold‍-​sour into those lips.

Spat it right back up.

“Spoon‍-​feed me, pour it down, anything else!”

“Why? You’ll relent to it soon enough.” Then it pushed those tubes deeper.

Spat up again‍ ‍‍—‍ mouth pinched shut now.

Then fangs bit, venom cold, and muscles slackened.

Relenting to it.

Clad in my waxed canvas armor, I gazed out over the wharfs’s edge. Beneath the skin of the rain‍-​wrinkled lake, water had turned brown from the creek’s muddy inflow.

On the temple beds, attended by masked and gloved physicians, the fever‍-​faced and gaunt fleshed patients moan for a miracle. Walk astray near stagnant puddle, and blood‍-​sucking blightflies left larval gifts.

It took days for the sun to expel the storm‍-​clouds, but I returned to the lake as soon as it shone bright and clear. Those rays descended through waters like foggy glass… but they were blue‍ ‍‍—‍ mud buried below, forgotten.

Most new parasitic hiveminds fail. Five years‍ ‍‍—‍ that’s the mantra Grandmother repeated. She’d traveled above and below the rim, braved the wilds and the cities filled with hateful humans, seeking out her own kind, surveying the truth.

Large hives lasted generations, queens handing off rule to “daughters” who were just themselves in new flesh. The newer, smaller hives‍ ‍‍—‍ so often just cults or petty gangs, if not just messy polycules‍ ‍‍—‍ all shared a fate, a doom. When Grandmother made her second pilgrimage five years later, they were, eleven times out of twelve, gone. You can’t even find the graves.

Chrylurks hated her. (They are a hateful species; it’s a virtue they praise highly.) Hives ought to keep to themselves‍ ‍‍—‍ and who was Grandmother, that she was entitled to know they even existed? To proclaim that their children were surely doomed?

Given those odds, that old bug decided she would have a successful daughter hive‍ ‍‍—‍ by flooding the world with larva, brood after brood. If prying into the secrets of every hive wasn’t bad enough, now she would cost the hives their masquerade with this greedy, stupid proliferation.

Of course I hate my grandmother. She only cared about her own legacy. I starve and struggled, fucked over by my own cutthroat sisters. But I won’t die just to spite her.

I will call you Iza, because that is not your name.

You stand with her where two willows sprouted on a knoll. Sawgrass climbed over moss and clover to scratch at your ankles. The tall grass only extended so far.

A fence cut across the knoll’s gentle rise. Past that, the grass had seen the scythe‍ ‍‍—‍ no one worried of scratched ankles in the graveyard grounds. A memorial for soldiers.

Tirulin leaned against tree bark. She’d spoken of the the shade here, mentioned the view. Given how willow leaves fell, seeing anything from underneath meant tearing a window. She gazed over the rows of gravestones with a slight smile. An ant crawled from the oak to her fair skin and wandered unswatted.

You watch as another ant followed its trail.

“Look a little lower and you’ll see something real nice.”

You glanced down‍ ‍‍—‍ then away, sharply.

She snorted.

To the left lay the graveyard and its monuments to death. You casted about for something to look at besides the two unlucky sights. A bit above your eye level, a black dot descended. Peering resolved it as a spider abseiling down from a web spun between low branches.

You watch the critter land on a leaf, securing the web, and promptly skitter on in the next step of its architecture.

“She remind you of anyone?” Tirulin asked.

“Should it?”

“You ever see what spiders do? Little fly hits their web, struggles a bit, and that just lures them closer. Hungry. Can’t escape, no one to blame but themselves.”

“It could blame the monster that laid the trap.”

“Not much of a trap, out in the open, is it? I’d call it an invitation. The struggle is invitation in return. You ever think it’s a bit romantic?”

You sigh. You roll your eyes. “Anyone who’s ever opened a book would tell you that you might as well have asked me if I noticed summer nights are shorter. Yes, there’s plenty poems about the spider’s web. It’s nothing new.”

“I won’t claim I’ve ever opened a book. Nothing new, huh? What would impress you, then?”

You glance at the challenge in her frown. Mouth open, but first only a hum of thought. You glance away, gaze drawn to the gravity of the grave. You linger to regard the narrow plots afford to each. A noble idea, comemorating the fallen, but so many had fallen‍ ‍‍—‍ so many for so small a graveyard as this town could parcel out.

“Fitting coincidence, isn’t it?” you started. “I think a new metaphor would suffice. You said it was an invitation to death? Inescapable, struggle only forces the inevitable? What do you call a soldier volunteering for war, then?”

She smiled with another snort. Her foot kicked off from the tree, a lunge forward to make you jump. She grabs your arm before you create any distance. “Cute. But I call it good riddance. Not much romance in it.”

You opened your mouth to respond, but she shushed you with her fingers. Dirt‍-​stained fingers. You pull back and spit. She wiped her fingers off on your dress before returning them to your face‍ ‍‍—‍ twisting your arm when you pull back.

“I wasn’t done, girl. Calm it,” she hissed. She flicked her eyes to the graves behind you. “I was saying‍ ‍‍—‍ well, how do you think those soldiers died? Bet you some of ’em got stabbed in the chest, bled out. It’s a pretty obvious way to go, if you ask me. Still kills you. Maybe I said something obvious. But I’m not opening a book if it tells me to do something cleverer than stab a man in the chest.”

“Will you let go of me?” you asked.

“Oh,” she said. “Maybe I’m not as obvious as you think.”

You pulled at your hand, but her grip on you tightened till it hurts.

“You’re the fly, girlie.” Another lunge: small motion this time, whens she was already standing too‍-​close. The fingers on your lips press. Push. You taste sweet and grime. Push became pull, yanking you head to the side. You feel this first, but this was incidental the intent of her lunge.

Wet teeth against your neck. Tongue, lips sucking. She bites and it feels like she wants to tear your skin off. But she doesn’t.

“That’ll leave a mark,” she whispers. “Say thank you.”

I awoke surrounded on all sides inside a hex‍-​slot lidded tight‍— like a coffin. Already I felt my scalp twitching to life: spiderlice summoned from their burrows by inquiring hivelings.

‍—Spare a moment before you yank my hair? (I wanted to sound idignant, not yearning‍— oh, to rise gently from my rest.)

The lid of cell pulled open in reply. Bright shimmerfly shined inward.

‍—O Sister! You’re on the next squad out! Hurry and eat before you leave.

I knew before asking‍— I wouldn’t return tonight.

Camping outside the hive, away from these snug slots‍— I already missed my coffin.

We slept in shallow caves‍ ‍‍—‍ fresher air, up here‍ ‍‍—‍ so I descended spiralling webs into the yawning depths of the hive. No reaction when I spotted my squad‍-​to‍-​be, hanging from webs by an tunnel’s arches.

Of the three of you, two stared, apertures narrowed and mandibles bared. The silk between you hummed with your discourse.

You stood clad in an ephemeral dress, and your tarsi rubbed along its smoothness. You gazed up at your taller sister, a clawtip poking at you. What the two of you argue over, I know not.

I found a line, and tugged.

‍—Line to Avarice (I send to you.) Line to Caprice.

‍—Bound. (Caprice answered.) Address me first, little sister. I’m our queen regent.

‍—I’m sorry? I meant nothing of it.

‍—Of course you mean nothing, (Avarice sent.) You need not bind to me. Or sing my name.

‍—Why not?

You had your fangs out, just like Caprice.

‍—You have nothing to offer.

A bladed raptorial through the air, and I felt the line between me and you severed. Avarice turned away.

You are Caprice, and you are growling at me.

‍—Both of you shut up (you sent.) Idyll, we were waiting on you. Why were we waiting?

‍—I just woke up.

‍—You can go back to sleep, then.

‍—I’m sorry? I came here as soon as‍—

‍—So it’s hive’s fault. No one woke up you up on time? I can see why it wouldn’t seem important. Do we even need you?

‍—The queen must have assigned me for‍—

‍—Did you already forget? I’m regent of this squad. If I said we don’t need you, then we don’t. Am I wrong?

‍—Clearly not, your majesty.

‍—Simpering suck up. Waste of our time.

‍—Ease off her, O Cap.

There were three of you. I turned, and I stared.

You are Seduction, and your hair is a waterfall of color, your exoderm wax soft as plush, your chitin artfully sculpted curves. While Avarice and Caprice had argued, you leaned to kiss a replete, and saliver still dripped from your mouthparts.

Swift as I took in the sight, you’re darting over. Your antennae twisting around mine, two hairs of arms pulling me into a hug.

‍—I bet our real Queen knew I’d lose my mind if I were stuck with you two locking horns all day every day, so she gave me a cute toy to play wiht. (You gaze down at me, probocis snaking forward to wetly stroke my faceplate.) You’ll keep me good company, right?

I assumed you would benefit from my perspective. Or perhaps the Queen wished your endeavors witnessed by one most capable of compiling a transcription to silk. A scribe‍ ‍‍—‍ or bard, if you will.

I sent:

‍—Y‍-​yes.

‍—Good girl.

‍—What a waste of time (Caprice sent.) Let’s get going.

Avarice did not deem it worthy of comment

A cluster of five advanced into a forest, shaded by a canopy of leaves, dappling what little light remaind of the setting sun. Good riddance, I thought, prompting a smile‍-​flicker in our cluster.

Coalescing into a cluster brought a sort of security‍-​vulnerability. I could never decide if I preferred it. But of course, a sister thought, it’s not yours to decide.

The cluster allocated duties almost reflexively. One to scent the underbrush for game and check the traps laid this morning. Once to climb to the heighest branches of the tree, scanning for smoke from fires, while her swarm dispersed wide, keen for any faint hint of mortal prey.

Three to remain at today’s burrow and prepare for the journey onward. Beside me one worked to beweave the dirt to conceal our tracks; one drained venom from her fangs into measuring cups and mixed the contents according to a record only she knew; and lastly, I cut and tied the voluminous silk from my licenest, portioning it out to rope‍-​parcels to slide snugly into the empty slots of my sisters.

Outside a cluster, a coordinated effort like this invites speculation, even worry. How long would I have to work before we move? Where are we going next? Might we encounter trouble on the road?

Worry sprung from uncertainty; it was natural‍ ‍‍—‍ the mind needed to understand like it needed blood and breath. But these are worried duplicated. Were we not a cluster, each of us might ask the same question, minds working to reckon the same expectations.

Why waste the effort? Bound together, thoughts drifting from one to another, our navigator plotted the course, set the schedule, spared us the effort of redundant consideration. We didn’t even have to ask her‍ ‍‍—‍ the knowledge could be felt as surely as the ground under my tarsi.

Such is the security of a cluster. And yet I felt keenly vulnerable. Burdens were lifted from my mind, shifted onto the shoulders of my sisters, but my access to them flowed throught the ghostly wires of serivane between us.

Were the lines to go still‍ ‍‍—‍ fall severed‍ ‍‍—‍ then my knowledge of where to go, what to do, who I am would vanish like the vestiges of a dream already past. The steady, sure motion of my limbs toward my task would become bemused flailing.

The gossamer was us, me, and felt so frail. Suspended above a fate of grim forgetting.

The burrow was sealed, the dirt bewoven. Her task complete, I felt my sister’s limbs settle around me. She slumped into a hug, and the wet teeth of her proboscis grazed my smooth exoderm faceplate.

Not the only one still adjusting. An abdomen resting against mine fluttered‍ ‍‍—‍ a chuckle. Or spooked. Don’t want to lose you either. Lose us.

One thread is easily cut. The thought came from the sister on high, most of her attention still aswarm. But cut one thread and we are still here. You are abound, quite abound.

‍—And besides.

The one hugging me reached out, reached down, and traced a finger along the rope I was working with her claw sunk into the silk strands, split it. I hissed at you.

Several spiderlice leapt from your hair, rappelling down to the rope you vandalized, and the swarmlings chewed and spat on the damaged threads, replacing and repairing the cut with new strands.

‍—Can always stitch it back together, y’know?