Slowly making my way out of the winding tunnels that seems somehow familiar and new all at once. Home. Not home. Empty home. My feelers pick up the scents of the legion these tunnels used to bear. All I desire is to leave these silent halls. This place was supposed to hold so much life, the noise of workers tending to the structures and castes of soldiers patrolling the corridors. Yet all was still. A new scent, faint at first, wafted towards me as I followed the fresh air up and up to the world that awaited. The smell of old fire, soot, ash, and char lit up memories given to me by the queen. The now silent queen. I attempt to push down the tide of grief as I push for the surface dropping to lope on all six limbs as the scents of ash and fresh air grew stronger and stronger.
I emerged to look upon a new world the sun bright in the sky, it was blindingly brilliant, so much so it took me time to adjust. But when I did my senses were filled with death. I had found the absent legion. My family. Scattered and broken upon the slope of our home. Many crushed, so many more burned, in places their silhouettes were charred into the very mountain side. A gaping hole was torn into our home, not more than a few meters to the side of the entrance I had emerged from. Something colossal had destroyed everything I had known. Yet, the stillness and sounds of nature were all that remained after the destruction, that embodiment of a holocaust, had slayed us all.
All. Except one. I stood upon this ruined with such a mix of emotion is was paralyzing. Wracking grief at the death laid out before me, the exaltation of seeing the world for the first time and seeing the forest beyond our hill stretching into the vast beyond, and the debilitating sense of the alone. My memories gifted by my queen lit up inside my mind, in the way that memories old flare up when given reason to remember. I needed to escape the weight of all of this, no queen was here to guide my actions, no family to help bear this weight with me. My only desire was to flee.
And so I did. I raced away from that great swath as fast as my six limbs could carry me, the anguish dulled by focusing on the rhythmic pumping of my limbs and dodging the blurs of passing trees. After the sun had lowered considerably, I came across a slow stream of water. Dipping my head low to take in the coolness, I paused as I saw my face reflected back at me for the first time. Dark almost black chitin surrounded two opalescent multi-faceted orbs. I saw the waves of rainbow color reflected in those orbs that studied themselves so intently, my feelers still and my mandibles hang open in awe of such a sight. This was me. What I was. No longer the featureless little thing I had used to be, I run my hands over the ridges of my limbs and body.
I am torn from my reverie by the sounds of distress in the distance. Faint memories passed to me by my late family whispered "Screams of the four limbs". Though I knew I should move away from the danger, curiosity and hunger drove me on to investigate the disturbance.
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