A Hive of Bone and Chitin [A Biomancy and Hivemind Litrpg Adventure]

Hair rippled with the wind. Thousands of sensations, smell, vibration, and more all crystallizing into a singular image of the world around it. And a hint of something else in the distance. A target. A resource. Medea stalked forward silently. Flight was too noisy and the target was too quick. It would have only one attempt at capturing it. It must not fail. Not when the Hivemother needed it to succeed.

The Hivemother was injured, not just in body but closer to the same manner that it, and all its kin were branded by the heavens. Unlike it, the Mother could recover. Unlike it, the Mother could break the limits imposed by the Heavenly Ones. Unlike it, the Mother must not be allowed to perish. Medea had been too weak and abdicated in its duty.

Its kind had let weakness fester in them after the First Mother had departed. The Great Work was not yet done and they had betrayed the task. If the FIrst Mother decided to eradicate all of her children for this crime then Medea wouldn't think that it was undeserved. Not that it mattered, the first Mother was not its mistress anymore. The new Mother had a novel almost impossible task of her own, another Great Work. Medea was just a tool to see it to completion. A tool that had proven itself inadequate multiple times and yet, the foolishly generous and kind Mother hadn't had Medea harvested to birth better tools yet. Foolish, so very foolish, and yet Medea was a coward who couldn't quite bring itself up to broach the topic. A fool and a coward.

The other swarm node was even worse, a snivelling feral weakling with only the flesh of a true Lady of the Night to its name. It was not even worthy of being a node, a simple spawn of Medea that was on the verge of becoming a node had to be fused with it to push it to that point. It was necessary that the swarm nodes be filled but Medea held no attachment to its spawn, or anyone other than the Mother, and the weakness was not acceptable.

Thankfully the Mother was not entirely blind to its shortcomings and was deliberately keeping distance from it so that if it truly failed to become worthy, it could be eliminated. She left it with the woman with the taint of the phoenix. That was wise, the woman had the ruthlessness that Mother still lacked. Mother will learn what the woman who visited Mother every day had internalized to her bones already. She would not object if it came to killing the moth even after helping it grow every day. Perhaps the Mother didn't do it consciously but Medea saw how the pieces fell and understood the plan even though she didn't.

The target came into view. A raven with pitch-black feathers and an odd number of legs. Three. It was not food. Medea crept closer until it was in range. Panels of chitin slid to reveal the vortex of its mouth, except the rows of spinning teeth were silent and immobile. The world stilled as Medea calculated the ideal striking range. Silence and stillness. That was what everything was all about. Running away from it. From death. Perhaps death was better than what the raven was going to experience. Medea did not care.

Five barbed tendrils of flesh shot out from it and wrapped around the raven. It squawked in surprise before releasing a corrosive darkness that burned Medea's tendrils. The cloud blocked sight and felt like weak acid on skin. Still it squeezed until the raven's fluttering and cawing ceased. Stillness and silence. Tonight the raven couldn't escape either. The tendrils reeled themselves (and the unconscious raven) back to Medea. The new flesh was a gift from the Mother, flesh she didn't want anymore. The flesh was not to be wasted, even if Mother wanted to go back to the inferior elvenoid form.

The bird disappeared inside Medea, deposited into a special chamber. Internal cilia and feelers examined the prize in curiosity. The raven was exceptionally weak and not even a true umbral pseudo-elemental but it was a beginning. The feathers had a skill mutation that let them produce that corrosive cloud of blinding darkness.

The first Mother's digestive methods wouldn't be efficient for them but the new Mother's grafting was something else altogether. She could graft things onto her servants in a way that completely circumnavigated genetic information loss. The loss was negligible in most cases but not when it came to pseudo-elementals. Medea had to eat a very powerful worm to get an inferior version of its affinity but Mother could now mitigate that loss as long as there was a physical organ that could be transferred. Not every pseudo-elemental had those. Still a limit but a different one. First Mother's methods were refined over a thousand years and could assimilate anything even with the limiter of the heavenly ones in place, Second Mother's were unrefined but were unbound. Medea sent a pulse over and Mother answered.

'Mother, this one has acquired the avian.'

'Oh? Perfect.' Mother sounded distracted. Worrisome indeed, considering her multitasking abilities. Then all thought including worry became alien as Mother took over and it ceased to be separate from its other once again. It was what it always was, just a limb controlled by Mother.

The cilia and feelers moved with a will unlike Medea's and nerves and vessels extended and pierced into the bird. Mother could do anything using the touch of her nodes that she could do with her own touch and that included the art of flesh painting that she called biomancy. The bird vascularized and lost form. It changed to become an organ kept alive in a coma by Medea's own internals. Then the cilia-fingers of Mother moved along like food that was alive and trying to crawl out of its throat and shredded the bird's brain. Pieces of grey tissue drained down to a hole to provide Medea sustenance. Mother let go and Medea was itself once again. Medea shuddered. Mother was above all but if Mother wished, she could kill Medea with a thought. Once again, Medea's weakness and failure to protect Mother rose to the forefront of its mind. One more ingredient down.

'Do you want me to summon you now or you think you can find something else?' Mother sounded curious

'This one apologizes but this one hasn't found anything else that this one deems worthwhile. Still, if it pleases you then this one will hunt for a bit longer before being called back.'

The hunt wasn't productive to the degree Medea hoped. Medea didn't venture too deep inside the forest, it couldn't without running afoul of the hunting guild's new border enforcement, but it did find another raven by the time Mother called it back. That was a total of four sets of wings if one counted the two that the other swarm node already had been grafted with. The real work was always making the feathers somehow work with the butterfly wings after all.

'Mother. Shall I visit the light-shunned now?' An answer that was just pure emotion without words. Acceptance. Mother was too busy dissecting and grafting the ravens on to the squirming node to use words.

Mother couldn't move but that didn't mean the Great Work stopped. The next step was going to be torment for it but it had to be done. The thing had to be acquired even if Medea's existence balked at the idea. Mother occasionally superseded Medea's self to get around the limiter and this would be no different.

The light-shunned, the vampire, was named Runi and she was still in the city of the choked smog. The mad Wyrmlord was not allowed to escape so that it could regrow its strength and so no one was allowed to leave without undergoing a very expensive test. The junior trader and illusionist was not worth the cost for her employers. That was what the Mother had found out after spying on the vampire. Good. Going in blind in a negotiation was stupid even if she had been saved by Mother before.

The building was interesting. A house but with all windows boarded up. No glass. No way for any light to enter. And behind the house was a big square of glass with flecks of darkness fluttering inside.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

'Mother, are you ready?'

'Yes. Mitria let me repair a few of their old decommissioned fleshbanks. I have the mana for this.'

'There is no taking it back once we commit to this.' Medea argued but even it was aware that it was the limiter making it think so. Nonetheless, Mother answered.

'People already think I'm a strong biomancer or at least have the potential to be one because of that party. That Girt guy was after me for that reason. We might as well lean into it now.' Medea didn't have a counterargument. People respected strength and potential. Mother was already coming from a position of weakness after how thoroughly the light-shunned woman had demonstrated her indebtedness at negotiation. If she didn't scare them now then they would exploit her. It would waste a lot of mana and reveal cards that Medea preferred to be hidden but this was a battle, just of a different sort and Mother treated it as such.

'Back in my old world, we had a saying. Fake it till you make it. We will be faking it tonight.' Medea let the knowledge of that phrase flood into its mind. Mother was wise, wise and yet too sentimental.

A moment later, Mother took over once again. The thing that had been Medea idly looked through its skills and found what it was looking for. A passive skill called Wild Terror that let it know how to be intimidating to deter predators and break prey.

Two smaller spider-scorpions with the explicit goal of just making a loud buzzing emerged from its back. Extending one of its human-like hands, it knocked. Eventually, someone answered. The door swung open with a blast of cold air, a necessity when every vampire wore so many extra layers. A different vampire covered from head to toe in layers of cloth. Blackened glass covered his eyes. He stared at the creature holding up a card that Runi had given Mother during their meeting.

Medea opened its jaw and distended it as far as it could. It began to regurgitate a large wet tendril with a lump along its length. The tendril twitched and a slit opened up at its end. And the creature spoke.

"Greetings. Apologies for the form but I'm sure you understand how it can be sometimes. I believe one of your employees directed me here. May I come in?" The vampire nodded, expression unreadable. Not so far away, in a biomancer's clinic, a girl in a bed smiled.

"Runi! There is someone who says she knows you." Ylbrig's voice called out from downstairs and Runi woke up with a groan. She was not an evening person at the best of times and the party's stress had emptied her Umbrane to the point that it was still recovering so many days later. Still, there were only a few people who had known she could be found here that Ylbrig wasn't already familiar with. Mostly people from that stupid party. How many people had she even given those cards to? Ten? Thirteen? She didn't even remember. Still, she reluctantly crawled out of layers of sheets she was under. Cooling runes thrummed as she dressed up and made her way downstairs.

The thing that was sitting on the floor was odd. It looked like a spider-scorpion but larger than any she had seen before. Too many eyes that swiveled to face her. Far too many legs that spread and bent around it. Bent in ways that seemed like they were broken. The tail rested in a circle around it like a snake waiting in ambush.

It even had wings that draped around and on to the ground like a diaphanous curtain, or one of those Khagran priestess dresses that had to be held up by servants trailing behind. An elongated torso and humanoid hands at the ends of the legs combined with that dress of pale membrane made it look almost like an elvenoid, if an elvenoid had been touched by the Unformed Chaos and not perished. And then the five long tendrils of flesh that emerged from its mouth surrounding a larger one. A very familiar tendril.

She stared. The larger tendril had eyes lining its surface and she swore that one lingered on her left wrist for a moment. She looked at it. It was gloved but seemed fine. No, it was slightly scuffed underneath the layering of her sleeves. How had that thing even noticed that in a second? She turned back to it and far too many eyes met two.

"You are that thing that saved me back then." It was not a question but the creature answered the same.

"Yes." Runi nodded and took a seat. When it became apparent that neither Runi nor the thing were inclined to start the conversation, Ylbrig cleared his throat.

"Ahem, I sincerely thank you for saving her. May I know what your name is?"

"Anya." Runi blinked. Wasn't that one of the girls she had met? As if sensing her thoughts, a tendril turned to face her. "And before you ask, yes. That was indeed me in that menagerie."

"I… see. Well, thanks again for saving my hide, Anya." Runi nodded tersely. The creature… the girl brought back bad memories that she wasn't really at blame for.

"Unfortunately, I was… injured during the party hence my inability to come in person. Be assured that I'm not infected by the dragon. You can even verify it by asking at the Security Guild."

"No need, I'm sure a kobold wouldn't be able to move around freely like this. But enough of that, surely you came here for business." Ylbrig waved it off and Runi shrank back into her couch while barely suppressing a yawn.

"Yes. Three things. First, I need the most toxic organisms you have available at the moment and that you can procure for me once the lockdown lifts. I'm not partial to the toxin delivery method or species as long as it is organic." As far as Runi knew, the most toxic thing they had on hand was a kind of petrifying gas producing slug. When concentrated, it was enough to trigger rigor mortis-like symptoms in living people that was permanent unless treated.

Now that the talk was business and the initial shock of Anya's appearance had worn off, things went smoothly with Runi and Ylbrig going through their collection as a team until they finally decided on three that the biomancer would buy. And as for payment?

The mouth widened and something red was slowly being pushed out of the thing. It was a small bottle of blood, wrapped in cloth to keep it from getting wet from the internal fluids of the monstrosity. It silently sat the bottle on the table and one tendril lashed out. Runi flinched as it went past her. Something was being wrapped by the tendril as it withdrew. A rat. Still alive and squeaking in terror. The tendril deposited the rodent to a waiting hand and the creature spoke.

"As you are no doubt aware, I am a biomancer of some competence and I'm only growing stronger by the day. I imagine that one day, you will be glad to have established a working relationship with me." As Anya spoke, the rat stilled and then bloomed. The flesh peeled away and bone flowed like water. The spine smoothed out and every other bone formed smaller spikes at one end. The spikes thinned and lengthened and even smaller spikes emerged in the patterns of a leaf. The flesh flowed over them until the creature was holding a rose. A rose of flesh and bone dyed crimson by blood. Then the flower swayed as if in the wind and shriveled and crumbled into dust that then coalesced into a seed. The seed turned into a sprout of bone until eventually a different meat rose rested where its predecessor had been. The demonstration was short and quick but it was mesmerizing nonetheless.

"This is a bottle of my blood. I've been informed that hemophages especially love it. You can have it tested for safety and then how much it is worth to you. I trust that you will be honest in your assessment." For a single terrifying moment where she felt like she was standing at the edge of a chasm, every room in the building rang with the buzzing and chittering of insects. Then flies, cockroaches and more all landed on the outstretched tendrils of the horror and melted into it. The unspoken threat was clear and Runi nodded seriously while Ylbrig stared stonily. A stray tendril pushed the bottle closer towards them. "We will negotiate the prices afterwards."

"Very well, I'll have it appraised. That's still just one thing. You mentioned three things." Runi asked while Ylbrig sniffed at the bottle.

"Yes. Secondly, I want a Night Empress moth like the one you had shown me earlier. Also any other creatures with darkness or sensory distortion powers." Once again, a small collection of four was agreed upon.

"This third one is a request that I'm less optimistic about. I don't even know if your company can get me one but I want you to still send out word that someone wants to buy a chaos-warped hawk wasp." As Anya spoke, Runi could have sworn she saw a flash of blue light flicker at the edge of her vision. There was nothing when she turned to look towards the flash.

"I'll try. I can't promise anything more."

"That's all I'm asking. For now, you can use the guild to contact me. Farewell. Good night, Ylbrig, Runi." A yellow portal roared to life and sucked the monster into it as a tangle of chitinous limbs.

"Yl, you know something?" Runi asked once the creature was gone.

"What?"

"I don't think I like this city." Ylbrig nodded and went inside to use a communicator rune. All the while the meat flower on the desk silently wept blood.