Chương 498: AF Chapter 497 – The Exodus of the Olthoi

I could sense the Mother Queen reaching out into the structure of the magic of the Gate, making sure it was going to stay open. Any attempt to close it She would interfere with and then keep it open with Her own power. Far from trying to thwart Her, I stepped aside mentally and guided Her to the appropriate nodes, letting Her sense the power being drawn in steadily and true to draw the energies through, automated and clean… and tied to Her own presence. I did obfuscate HOW I was forming the Gate.

The last thing I wanted was a Mother Queen able to bring the olthoi to new worlds anywhere and everywhere She wanted to. The simple fact that the olthoi knew how to come to this world in the future if they so desired was dangerous enough. Thus, She never saw the Gate form, only it in operation, a conjoining of spaces held together by Valence IX+1 magic, and the whole reason I'd made Seventeen before completing all my Nines.

She analyzed the Gate's operation, could find no treachery involved with it, and I basically left her influence there to maintain it without a care. It would open and wouldn't close as long as a Matron Queen was within its Pyramid Power Field, which basically covered this whole island. They could sense it from a long way off and use it to bring themselves and their hordes home.

There were spells I could have used to eavesdrop on Her telepathic communications, but I refrained, more keeping an idea on the whereto and intensity than any details. It was quite plain she was pspeaking with Matrons in the Olthoi North, and others in more distant places, far across the oceans. She could also receive from Her daughters on the other side of the Gate, as long as the olthoi were flowing through it, so She was aware that it was indeed Her home on the other side.

She doubtless knew exactly where they had ended up, and was taking steps to secure the area for Her return. I just waited patiently as olthoi streamed by below me. There was an adjustment in the flow of olthoi as newcomers began to arrive from the hives on the island. They were apparent because they were carrying grubs, eggs, and larva spun up in gooey membranes for this trip, ushered on by with their loads past thousands of waiting lesser olthoi.

The olthoi rings around the Pyramid were basically down to Summons when the first of the external Hive Matrons arrived. She was purple with yellow markings, just over twenty feet tall, and another solid line of olthoi scuttled behind her. Her Brood Guard headed them, her Soldiers followed, and then the lesser olthoi carrying the eggs and young trailed them as she watched them pass under her keen eyes, giving us bipeds curious glances that nevertheless soon returned to managing the olthoi under her command.

When the least of them was going through, and another Matron Queen was pulling up behind them, doubtless having had to follow through the same underground passageway, she swung silently into the flow and strode home into a world she had not been born on, yet was still calling to her. The second Matron Queen, this one in black and red trim, took up her place, and the flow of olthoi continued.

"I WILL NOT RECALL ALL MY DAUGHTERS." I opened my eyes to meet the challenging stare of the Mother Queen, waiting for my response to the chitter-telepathy my Whiskers of the Wild translated perfectly.

"The Paradox Queen? We are aware you cannot allow her or her mutated Bloodline to emigrate, no more than you could the Lightning Queen. Eventually their children would replace your own, and you are not willing for that to happen." She seemed slightly surprised that we had anticipated that.

"YOU ARE ALREADY TAKING STEPS TO SLAY HER…" I could only nod.

"She will be dead within a day of your departure, Mother Queen." Her head moved only slightly.

"IT IS THE WAY OF THINGS," she murmured with cold practicality and ruthlessness.

"ANY SIGN OF WEAKNESS CAN BE AN EXCUSE FOR A SUCCESSION BATTLE, AND THOSE MUTATED BY THE AETHER-CRAWLERS ARE NOT WEAK." By that statement, I guessed that the Paradox Queen was the strongest of Her daughters. I glanced down at the Gate under the archway beneath me, considered the Mother Queen, and sighed. Magic rippled around Crown, drawing Her alert attention. I extended my Staff out towards Her.

"Allow me to touch your lost eye, Mother Queen," I said quietly. She stared at me for a long moment, considering the danger of the offer, while her third daughter also looked at me, wondering what I planned to do. I waited patiently, and after a long and breathless moment, She scuttled sideways up the side of the Pyramid.

Her long and narrow head, the chitin of her mouth like razored clamps, extended up to my Staff, while her lesser claw came up gently and touched Crown to center my Staff's position, turning her head so the tip came up to the empty socket of the eye that Elysa Strathelar had shot out so long ago. Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!

Magic flared, Holy and pure, and the Queen Mother trembled at the touch of alien forces far more gentle and profound than any others that she had ever touched before… and definitely harmonious with the Words I had Spoken earlier. Regeneration went off, juiced with a whole bunch of Kickers. Normally it might take an hour to regrow an eye, complex thing that it was. With all the Holy and Healing Kickers I had, it was just a question of mass, and even an Olthoi Queen Mother's eye wasn't all that large.

Silver Light swirled between motes of Gold and Radiance, and the Queen Mother drew back sharply, hissing in quiet surprise. What She was already seeing was Her business, but one eye was black and gleaming, and the other was shining silver with its own Sight responding to Her power and will.

"No weakness when you return, as when you left," I said simply, and returned Crown next to me where I floated above the Arch. The Mother Queen did not return to watching the flow of olthoi still scuttling and racing through the Gate. Instead, large paces took her up the ten-foot blocks with swift and lethal grace despite her size, and in seconds she was up there at the top of the Pyramid, looming fell and terrible over the simple Altar that waited at the cap of the ziggurat.

Her gaze was deep and fathomless as she stared at the Altar that was radiating a connection to a Divine entity far greater and more profound than any She had ever imagined was possible… and one possessed of great benevolence and potentially limitless wrath when that benevolence was betrayed or ignored. Her new Silver eye turned to study the bipeds upon the walls surrounding the Pyramid, fascinated by the constant flow of the olthoi past and into the gate. She saw Colors of the soul no Olthoi had.

Bright and shining, Colors that glittered with beliefs no olthoi had, and which drew strength from strengths, emotions, and beliefs that had no relevance to her or her children. Her children, who were all the same unwavering shade of Brown. The same Brown as on random base insects, or the birds flitting by, or on the fish beneath the surface of the waters she could easily see from here. The Colors of animals, those who would never be more than what they were.

What the Mother Queen of the olthoi thought of that as She watched Her swarm returning home was for Her alone to know.

It took almost exactly twenty-four hours for the olthoi to vacate all of Dereth and enter the Gate to their homeworld. Those adventurers at work in the Elemental Fields watched them stream past, leaving the Summons standing there blankly on their Spawn Points, irrelevant and useless in the end.

Their concealed tunnel under the waters admitted them in their thousands, and they vanished quietly and smoothly into the darkness, each Matron Queen waiting for the swarm of the one before to finish entering before leading their children after. The Mother Queen watched as we undertook the Salute to Aethra and the Salute to the Silver Queen, while her children passed below. But at last the dawn neared, and the last of her daughters had turned and entered the Gate. No Summons had followed the olthoi.

They were not Her children, and not even as valuable as drones. They were just things, tools to be used and expended, and not thought of.

"Before you go, Queen Mother, join us for the Salute to Aru, if you please." The Queen Mother considered me, Her homeworld calling to Her, but She had seen the Salutes go out, the profound and impossibly subtle power to them that spoke of things beyond the olthoi, and Her curiosity was piqued. The sun was no friend of the olthoi, who preferred the dim and darkness, the cool and slightly damp.

Bright lights on the olthoi homeworld were rare, and indeed the sun was one of the great dampeners on the attempts of the olthoi to spread their ecology here. Still, the Queen Mother stood at my side and above me as we all faced the east, and the dawn lightened on a new day for all of us.

"Dreams of the wind at dawn, A new day has begun. Light chases back the dark, and the future lays before us. Will it be something bright and new? Walk the road before you now, and leave the night behind, Today is a new day, and the light comes to warm you all. Let go the shadows, and behold the sun! The Light has come, as ever it must. Behold the new day!"

None of us had ever heard music coming from an olthoi, but as the first rays of the sun streaked past us, the Mother Queen spread all of Her limbs magnificently wide to receive it. The morning breeze blew past her, and the wind played over all Her barbs and razor points with a gentle song that was completely at odds with gloriously primal and barbaric image of a deadly warrior queen of intelligent insects.

If the morning sun glittered off black scales with the glitter of distant stars, perhaps it was merely a trick of the light. The Olthoi Queen slowly lowered Her limbs, and that Silver eye glittered in the darkness of Her narrow crested skull, like a star on its own. Her gaze fell down on me, and then her razored pincers descended to fall upon my shoulders with shocking gentleness.

"MY CHILDREN WILL KNOW YOU, CHILD OF HEAVEN," She stated, and then she was bounding down and over the side of the Archway, racing through the Gate standing there to receive Her, and Her world, Her home, was open to receive Her.

"What was that all about?" Kris asked me, as we watched the Gate shimmer and unwind, reality respinning back to absoluteness about it, and the energies surging through the Olthoi Pyramid below us went quiet and passive, possibly never to be used again. There were a whole lot of interested eyes on me as I stepped to the edge of the Arch and looked west. I slowly turned north and spun clockwise, looking out beyond the horizon.

"Och, ladies," the Mick spoke up, Queen Elysa, Lady Vundanewall, Princess Fan, his own Bunita, and Kristie all standing nearby.

"Look at that expression on her face. That be the very definition o' a mixed blessing if I be ever seeing one, aye?" My eyebrow twitched, and the dastard smiled without an ounce of sympathy to boot! Kris looked out at the horizon, spun in a complete circle.

"Oh, shit," she said brightly.

"The rest of the planet. There's more Matron Queens out there, who came after their mother… and they can't get home without you!"

"She must've told them I'd be coming to send them home too…" I whispered unwillingly.

"Gor, so hard to be such a decent person!" the Mick laughed, and the bastards all laughed with him.