City Of Sin

21-30

Responsibility(2)

The broodmother was laid on its stomach in the forest nearby, its shell creaking and cracking everywhere as it grew once more. Its swollen abdomen had grown relatively smaller, implying that it had already consumed most of the stored food. This growth spurt put the creature at more than three metres long, and about as tall as an adult human. However, its limbs, pincers, and head had little changes to them.

The broodmother staggered forward, leaving three translucent oval eggs behind. They started pulsing the moment they touched the ground, and one could see beings within rapidly taking form and growing. Pincers pierced through the eggshells, and half-metre-long worker drones that looked like the young broodmother crawled out. There was about ten minutes of difference between the creatures being laid and breaking out, and just like the broodmother the first thing they did upon coming out was to consume their shells. They then shook their bodies as their outer shells hardened, growing to near a metre in length by the time the process ended.

The worker drones spread their wings and flew out, soaring in a circle around the broodmother before swiftly heading into the depths of the forest. The broodmother itself lay quietly in its position, looking like a black rock under the night sky.

The weather remained pleasant, with stars littering the sky. The moonlight itself was dim, but there seemed to be a thin veil of grey shrouding the forest. The broodmother suddenly moved its body at one point, withdrawing into the shadows of the trees as it was put on guard by human voices in the distance. However, it smelt something familiar and opened up once more, laying down quietly in the forest again.

Hundreds of metres away, an open space in the forest was illuminated so brightly that it practically looked like day. Ten of the prisoners had dug two pits, one large and one small. They moved their fallen comrades from a cart into the larger pit, supervised by two Archeron knights in full armour. The two titled knights and the novices were placed in the smaller one, obviously with preferential treatment. This wasn’t just in line with the traditions of this plane— it followed Norland customs as well. Nobles and commoners were different, even in death.

The bodies were quickly buried, and Flowsand had the knights escort the prisoners back, saying she still needed to pray for a while. The day’s battle had left her status second only to Richard in their eyes, so they agreed. Almost all of them owed their survival to her, and now they only felt safe when she was on their side.

Flowsand stood quietly in place for a long time, watching as the footsoldiers and slaves disappeared from sight. She then opened the Book of Time, flipping to a page with an intricate illustration recording stories of the Eternal Dragon’s priestesses wandering the planes. They spread the Dragon’s teachings, searching for and curing a magic plague called the Paling Decrepitude. There was a strange spot of light in the picture. Flowsand looked at its location, and headed deep into the forest…

A bear roared out somewhere in the woods. One of the workers flew over to the broodmother and threw a rabbit towards it before returning, while the shrubs rustled as another dragged in a grey wolf larger than the drones themselves.

A furious snarl soon erupted nearby as a plump black bear charged out, another of the workers flying not far ahead of it. The bee-like creature flew along leisurely, always low enough for the bear to attempt clawing at it but still able to soar and dodge them by a hair’s breadth. The bear itself had an obvious injury on its head, evidently a result of a fierce bite from the drone.