The Burning Hive

Chapter 3

2 months after the burning of Bloodworm Hive

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Jewel had seen much in her life, a lot of it being things she would rather sooner completely excise from her memories than keep in her mind if possible. Such was life in the Hivewing Royal Family, especially one headed by her oh, so dear cousin Wasp. Being the new queen of the Hivewings didn't make things any easier. Only the presence of her mother had made things bearable, and even then it wasn't too pleasant at times.

Yet, almost nothing her incredibly messed up family had said and done could compare to the sight that stood before her now.

It was a massive husk, a blackened, smoking shell of a structure, one that looked all too ready to cave in if someone even so much as sneezed at it the wrong way. An extremely far cry from what had once given her cousin Bloodworm something to be disgustingly smug about. Even after these few months, even after she had made sure that what was still standing was reinforced as much as possible to allow for rescue and recovery work, Jewel understandably didn't trust how the wrecked hive was holding up now.

Ashes idly floated away from the former hive with the breeze, forming a dark, dusty cloud that hung oppressively over it all, before slowly, almost leisurely settling onto the ground around it, colouring its surroundings a lifeless dull grey, which was undoubtedly appropriate, given what those ashes probably originated from. But somehow, that wasn't the worst part of it all.

No, for Jewel, what caught her attention the most... were the sheets.

Row upon row, some even stacked onto each other, lined up perfectly for what seemed like miles, of white silk sheets... and beneath each sheet, under each clean piece of fabric... was a Hivewing that would never breathe again.

She stood there, frozen, seemingly descending into shock, absorbing this apocalyptic view, letting the staggering number, the sheer scale of covered corpses, with the burned-out remains of Bloodworm Hive as the nightmarish background, seer itself into her brain for as long as it would remember.

Jewel vigorously shook her head, tearing her eyes away from the horrific scene as she reminded herself of what she was here for.

'Focus, Jewel,' she scolded herself, 'you have to be there for your people, you have to be strong for them...'

Yet, looking at the devastation before her... she almost wished she had listened to her mother's advice of staying away until everything wasn't as fresh in people's minds as before.

"I am the Queen of the Hivewings now, mother," Jewel had said to her. "What kind of a queen would I be when I refuse to show up for when my people need it most? I've already put this off for as long as I need to, I don't see any reason to delay this any further."

Internally, she'd thought that Scarab had been trying to baby her, perhaps thought she wasn't up to having to see the aftermath of it all.

'Who does she think I am,' she'd scoffed in her head. 'I may be younger than most of my cousins, but I've seen my fair share of terrible things. I'm sure I can handle this.'

Back in reality, back in the present, seeing the aftermath now... Jewel silently admitted that her mother might have had a point. This was something that had never happened in the history of the Hivewings, ever. And the scale of the devastation she saw... the last time this level of death and destruction had occurred, Jewel was sure, was when Wasp had set out to completely eradicate the Leafwings...

Leafwings that, with the help of suffocatingly suppressed Silkwings, eventually returned to exact their extremely lethal vengeance upon their would-be exterminators.