Path of the Hive Queen

It was night, and it was day. The sky was a glittering tapestry of stars in the darkness, twinkling down at her. The world around her was still bathed in light, everything was clearly visible except it was all ill-defined and vague, a painting half-drawn, a dream unlived.

And then it wasn't. The scene was a picturesque mountain glade. A waterfall burbled along, falling over a rock face at one end of the clearing. The other side descended into a copse of trees, evergreens reaching their arms toward the sky. Wildflowers dotted the vibrant grass, in eye-watering colors. Beyond the glade a forest stretched into the foothills, and on the other side mountains towered over it, racing each other towards the sky.

It was dimly familiar. She couldn't say why. It was barely coherent enough to seem like a real place, and holding on to any kind of thought was hard, here.

Janis crouched down, reaching for the nearest pretty flower. The blue petals shivered under her fingers and she laughed, delighted. It was a very pretty blue. Almost the same shade as her eyes! Carefully, she scooped up the flower, putting it into her hair. Her lover would like the look, she was sure. She just had a bit of trouble thinking of her name at the moment.

Whatever. Janis kept going to the next flower, which was a pretty red. Then a nice orange. Maybe she could make a flower crown and bring it to her. She'd done that as a kid once, right? Kiara, she remembered after a moment. That's who I was thinking of.

Janis paused, looking around the clearing. Maybe she shouldn't empty it of all the pretty flowers? That seemed kind of rude, now that she was thinking about it.

Where was everyone else, anyway?

She knew she hadn't been alone, though she was having trouble remembering recent events. Well, actually, no, she had been kind of alone recently. Weeks, really? Right. She'd been kind of empty — her mother(?)/sister/ruler/friend/mentor wasn't with her, so … yes, she'd been sort of empty. Not really lonely, but not not lonely, either. Anyway, she'd had other siblings with her, right? Then why was she alone now? She sometimes wanted to be more alone, with everyone crowding around her head all the time, but not like this and she didn't want to be alone right now.

"Oh, poor dear," someone else said.

Janis turned around, happy that there was someone else. She squinted at the other person. They looked kind of odd. It was probably just the light. Why couldn't it decide if it was day or night? She dismissed the thought.

"You're alone, aren't you?" the other woman said, coming closer. Well, floating closer. Same difference. "I wonder where you are. It's rather hard to sense even if you almost pulled me in here." She reached out, touching Janis' cheek with a finger of whispering wind. "… You do remember who I am, don't you?"

"Sure I do," Janis said, indignant. She paused. "… Grandmother."

"Very good, kid," the elemental praised. "You're getting more coherent. That's good, but I'm afraid it won't be enough."

"You said I pulled you here," Janis remembered. "Why?"

"Well, it's not quite true, but true enough. You have some latent psychic power, even if it's all bound up in that Hive of yours. But that connection can also work as an amplifier. You're in a very peculiar state right now, and your unconscious is active in a way that isn't normally. It's a liminal state that is conducive to metaphysical events and connections. But don't worry if you don't understand it right now; you're clearly not in the best shape for the theory of psychic resonance."

"Wait, you're psychic?" Janis scrunched up her face. "I don't remember you being psychic. Do I?"

Volance smiled. "I'm not quite psychic. But air is the element of the mind. Perhaps it's more accurate to say I'm psychic in certain, restricted ways. I couldn't control a fly, but I can sense psychic presences."

"Alright," Janis said, shrugging. All of this didn't seem that important, really. "Are you going to stay?"

"I can't," Volance said seriously. "And you shouldn't stay in this state, either."

"Okay, then where should I go?" Janis frowned. "The mountains? I don't think I like climbing."

Volance sighed softly, like a small breeze. "No, not the mountains. They're not real, but you know the real mountains have strong monsters. You should try to wake up, and if you can't simply do that, then go and walk. Perhaps you have someone you want to speak to? Someone strong and safe," she emphasized.

Janis frowned. The wind was picking up, and it was starting to feel cold here. "Alright, if you're going to be mean about it," she muttered. "Then I'll leave. See if I come back."

"Janis, be careful —" Volance started.

"Too late! Bye-bye, I'm going exploring!" Janis smiled and skipped away. The gravity was weird here, and she could do great bounding leaps.

Too great, maybe. Her last skip carried her up and away into the air, and then she came down again and dropped beyond the glade.

"Now, who's strong and safe?" Janis mused out loud, looking at the world passing by around her. It was starting to spin, as if the colors of the forest were blending into each other. "Regina? But she's, like, busy, right? Maybe —"

She finally impacted something, and the world around her shivered. Janis sucked in a breath, but she couldn't breathe, and there was no air, and she didn't need air, and the world around her was solid and there was no pain. It was confusing. She blinked against the scene she was now in.

She stood in front of a temple. A big one, though she hadn't really been in many big ones, probably, so maybe it wasn't that big. It was on a small island in a lake and was familiar. Except it was still strange, because she was pretty sure it shouldn't be this weird — the stone was blindingly white, there were spires on the temple and some of them twisted and changed into what she vaguely thought were called gargoyles, and the water in the lake had weird patches of darkness, and there was the humming of a beehive coming from the temple. Janis liked bees, though, and she wasn't afraid, so she walked into the temple. The doors melted out of her way as she approached, then reformed behind her, but now they were made of glass.

There was a large bloodstain in front of the altar. Janis cocked her head to the side, eying it dubiously. How did that get here? It didn't seem like part of the decorations, who thought bloodstains looked good? Not her, anyway. And she had the vague impression that the owner of the temple wouldn't approve, either. Hang on, did temples have owners? Patron, maybe? Keeper? Wait, the gods were kind of evil actually, so she probably shouldn't care about their opinions, but she liked the keeper of this temple, right?

Janis shoved the altar. It didn't budge. She stepped around it, holding her nose, then walked past it to the opposite wall of the temple. It seemed solid, but one push opened a door through it. Behind it lay another scenery that didn't seem to fit the island she'd just been on.

Janis sighed. "Isn't anyone home?"

"It's good to see you up and about, Janis," someone responded. "Please stop demolishing this temple though, I don't want to have to simulate a collapse or drag you out of it."

"Why would you have to?" Janis asked.

The other woman laughed. "Good question! Of course, I wouldn't have to. Perks of the job. But I don't think that's what you meant, kid," she winked at her.

Janis frowned. The visitor looked human. They had fair skin and eyes that verged on silver. Their hair was long, worn in a weird style that had it put up on the right side while falling over her neck on the left, with silver wire threaded in it in the front. It was either a very pale platinum blond or just white. And they were wearing some kind of weird mage robe. Overall, she seemed familiar but Janis just couldn't put her finger on it.

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"Do you know me?" she asked.

The woman smiled, showing brilliant white teeth. "Of course I do. I'm here to check on you, after all. And you know me too, I just look a bit different now, I suppose."

Janis shrugged. "That's fine, I guess. Do you know how I can wake up?"

The woman's expression turned serious. It was like someone had flipped a switch; or dropped a mask. "You should be able to do it on your own, but you might need a little push. Your recovery has progressed well; it's why they've now taken you outside of the immediate area of the suppression effect. Now you simply need to finish reintegrating your body, mana, mind and soul properly."

"Oookay?" Janis said dubiously. "Sounds complicated."

"It's easier if you remind yourself of who you are and where you come from," the other woman suggested helpfully. "Also, let's sit down, alright?"

She led her outside to a sandy, beach-like part of the lakeshore. They settled down on a bench.

"But, who I am, and why where I came from? Why not where I'm going? Isn't that more important?" Janis asked.

She sighed, but was still smiling. "No doubt you're air more than fire, always with the questions. At least you're not bouncing around everywhere. But it's a good point. What do you think?"

"What matters isn't where we come from, but where we want to go," Janis replied.

"Nice quote. But do you think so, too?"

Janis hesitated for a moment, considering it. "Of course. Your past is important, but it doesn't define you. You can always choose to do things differently. We're all born the same, our stations in life aren't, you know, fore-ordained. The freedom to choose who you want to be is really important."

"Some people would say where we come from is vital," the other woman prodded. "That the lifestyle or culture we're raised in always has an indelible impact on us, and we can never get rid of it, no matter how much we try. But that we won't want to, anyway."

Janis shook her head. She was starting to warm up to the discussion. "That's just what other people might be doing. Sure, you get lots of internalized biases, but that's always true. It's not like everyone has the same experiences even if you say they live in the same culture, either. It's kind of arbitrary. You can take it or leave it."

"Everyone for themselves? Not a very human outlook," she mused.

"I'm not human," Janis stated. "And I never much cared for the culture, anyway."

Leian cocked her head, regarding her intently. "Yes, I see. What is your culture, then, Janis? Your people? You've integrated into the Hive, but you weren't born one of them. Forget about Regina, what is your cultural identity?"

Janis fell silent for a second. She had honestly never really thought about it so explicitly before. But the answer was pretty clear to her, anyway. "It's still the Hive," she said. "It's what I choose to identify with. I might not be a Progenitor, but I can still adopt what I like about their culture. Or leave things out. Yes, I've integrated into the Hive, but that doesn't really mean I've given up anything; I didn't really belong to anything before, so there was nothing to replace."

Leian smiled, a little sadly, Janis thought. "Nothing at all?"

"Nothing I particularly want to keep," Janis answered. "I never identified much as a Cernlian. Why would I bond with a place where I'd always be a second-class citizen? I'm not human, even if I might have passed as one. And maybe my people, such as they are — maybe the demihuman descendants of elementals in the region did have their own traditions, a few, but they were too scattered … and my parents died when I was still young, so they didn't get the chance to pass on everything to me. No, I'm happy with being Starlit even if I'm not physically Hivekind. I might be different than them, but at least I'm not the only non-Hivekind and they don't exclude me or anything."

Leian smiled again. "A good answer, kid," she said. "I daresay you know who you are and who you want to be to a decent degree."

"Thanks, I guess," Janis replied. She looked around. How did they get here, anyway? She remembered everything, but she couldn't for the life of her figure out what it all meant. Had this been some kind of representation of a real place, or had Leian pulled her into another dimension or something?

Regardless, she was grateful to her. She looked back at Leian, making an effort to meet her eyes. "Truly, thank you for your help."

The goddess was no longer smiling. "Really, I should be thanking you. Not everyone would have the grit to cope with this as well as you have. And in the process, you have pointed me to something potentially catastrophic that I would not have known about. Even if it wasn't by your own actions or intentions."

Janis had to search her mind for a moment. She was getting better at thinking clearly, but it was still hard. "Because of the curse?" she hazarded. "Soul magic?"

Leian turned to look at the temple. It had faded into the background for Janis, but now she realized that it was still there. It had never gone away, and it still loomed over them. Suddenly, it looked dark and forbidding.

"It's interesting that you were drawn here," Leian said. "Because this isn't my temple."

"It isn't?"

"Not truly. Not even as a full representation, the way these things go in liminal psychic spaces like this. It was clearly colored by your experiences and expectation, so there are some similarities, but it is an unholy mixture of several elements." She smiled briefly. "Unholy, hah."

"Then another god was involved? Wait, is that who cursed me?"

"The curse on you carried traces of both Deirianon and Etainas that I could detect," Leian explained. "Most likely, more than one Champion was involved somewhere along the way. Regardless … your soul, and arguably your mind, were recently in heavy contact with mana of a different origin. It left a faint imprint, even if it's gone now."

"Wait," Janis interrupted. "Will that 'imprint' remain?"

Leian shrugged. "Perhaps for a while, but certainly not in the long term. And don't interrupt when I'm monologuing, it's rude."

"Sorry. Please go on?"

"Right. The imprint, it's … weird, for lack of a better word. And the way this place is expressing itself is also weird. If only I had access to better resources …" She sighed. "I never did specialize in soul magic. Or psychics."

Janis stood up, feeling restless again. She started to pace. "That's not comforting. Weird how?"

"You would need about two years of higher education to understand. Suffice to say there are patterns involved I haven't seen in centuries. For example, see that crown of spires?" Leian gestured lazily at the protrusions of stone twirling into one another on the facade of the temple. She'd thought they looked decorative. "Very reminiscent of a receiver array, which wouldn't be used in this context, but still. I haven't seen something like this since the Mesen. Which is not a comforting thought."

Janis clasped her hands together, looking at the building and then at Leian. She noticed it was getting darker, shadows swallowing the stone of the temple. "I see."

Leian gestured dismissively, sprawling a little more on the bench, as if she was demonstratively trying to relax. "It's not something you should worry about, Janis. Your priority is your recovery."

"Of course," Janis acknowledged. "Thank you for your help, I owe you."

"You don't." Leian straightened up. "It's important that you understand that, and I don't want you acting out of obligation, because I have another question for you."

Janis had a suspicion of where this was going. Leian must have wanted to study all of this more closely. "I'm all ears."

"You were touched by my mana, too, if not as closely. I already invested some of my power in your recovery. It will take some time, with or without it, but I may be able to at least speed it up a little. Of course, that will come with other things." She sighed lightly. "I'm talking about making you my Champion. You would get registered in the System and everything. It would also mean an investment of my mana which I couldn't give to someone else, and the expectations that come with it."

Janis chewed on her lip. She turned away for a moment, kept pacing. It wasn't what she had expected, but in hindsight, not that surprising. Their conversation had put a few things in perspective and she was pretty sure she knew what she had to answer.

"I'm honored by your offer, really," she said. "Unfortunately, I must regretfully decline."

Leian nodded, still quiet. "Alright."

Janis still felt compelled to explain. "It's not that I don't trust you, really. Under other circumstances, I'd be happy to say yes. But not like this."

"The war?"

"Kind of, yes." Janis ran a hand through her hair. "This isn't a war between different factions of gods. It's more than that. Making me a Champion would … it feels like it would kind of undermine our foundation, you see? It would seem like it would help to turn this into a conflict of Deirianon and his followers versus Alianais and you. But it's not, it's the people of the world fighting, it's us fighting against the gods' influence, and deciding the course of this era."

"I understand," Leian said. "You're the heir to the Empire."

"Yes, that's true," Janis agreed. "I can't be beholden to a god when I'm the crown princess and might become empress. This isn't something you can just walk back."

Leian finally rose as well. "As I said, I understand. I respect your commitment. But I think you should wake up now."

Janis smiled shakily. "Just like that?"

"Just like that." Leian snipped her fingers, and a flash of light erupted.

Janis blinked. When she opened her eyes again, the scene in front of her was dim. Rather than trying to focus on it, she leaned into the feeling, trying to find a connection back to her physical body.

She blinked again. The world swam around her. Something thundered in her ears, and it took her a moment to realize it was her heartbeat.

Janis was lying down on a soft surface. It was cool, and noise came from some distance away. She squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them again. She was in a room she didn't recognize, lying on a cot placed on a table, and the mana in her vicinity was weird. A few meters further down, there was a void that seemed to completely erase it.

She willed herself to relax, lying back down. Ah. I suppose this wasn't so bad.

Janis couldn't help but smile, even if she suspected it looked more like a deranged grin. She'd survived the curse, and whatever weird dreamscape that had been. It felt like taking the first breath of fresh air after drowning.