Chương 208: 196. The hive

"Thalyssa," I said in greeting.

"Just call me Thal," she said with a wide smile. The joviality in her voice threw me off more and more. This did not feel like a conversation with a divine being, but more like a normal chat.

"I apologize if it's not my place to ask, but why do you… look like that?" I asked, directly voicing what was bothering me.

"Like what?" she said, tilting her head like a curious animal.

"Well, last time we met, you were more… mature." I tried to describe the change in the least offensive way possible.

"Oh, that old hag? Sure, that was me. In a way. But also wasn't, so no worries." I grimaced. Thalyssa was technically an avatar, a celestial being holding part of the god's divinity, and that didn't make her way of speaking any less convoluted.

"Okay. So are you the real you, or are you someone else right now?" I tried.

"Who am I speaking to?"

"Of course I'm me. Who else would I be?"

"That old—never mind." I gave up.

"Hehehe." A clear laugh sounded as she covered her mouth with her skeletal hand.

"You single-minded creatures are so confined to your linearity. It is me at the beginning of the cycle. Last time, you met me at the end. After a long time of destruction, now I am to be reborn, to flourish, to age, to die, and be remade." I nodded.

"So you know my purpose in coming here?" I changed the subject away from the riddle-like question of the hive mind's identity.

"Of course. You want to know how to kill my kind." I winced at the directness. Last time I was here, she had spoken in an extremely measured manner, mostly in half-riddles. I wasn't prepared for this.

"Well, not really kill," I said slowly, picking my words.

"I want to know what I am up against. How to fight it and find it. I'm sure there must be a scholar who knows of the creature. Someone among… well, you."

"There sure is!" We waited in silence for a few seconds until I finally decided to speak again.

"Oookay. And could I speak to them?"

"There's nothing stopping you," she said, dematerializing into a green cloud of spores only to rematerialize behind me.

"Or maybe there is. It depends on what you consider an obstacle. I'd say there are none; you'd probably rather die." She rematerialized to the side.

"But you know, there is a very easy way of knowing what I know."

"I'm not becoming a part of your collective." I shook my head. Her smile fell as she once again rematerialized, this time away from me.

"Why not?" she asked, her voice suddenly composed of countless others.

"Am I not a powerful enough god? Are you not here to seek knowledge? Do you not seek to be a part of that which understands, which comprehends?" I only smiled at her sudden change, but deep inside, I coiled my mental strength, readying myself to rip my consciousness out of here.

"I'm still alive and kicking. And my soul has a destination, I'm afraid."

"I know," she said once again in her own voice, rematerializing in front of me.

"I was just making conversation." I sighed, relaxing my mind slightly.

"I could guide you to one who knows. Come." She turned her back on me as she began walking deeper into the fog. But I didn't budge. After a few steps, she turned around, looking at me, surprised.

"You're not coming?" she asked.

"I'm not going any deeper."

"You know I'm not going to hurt you. I granted you permission for the knowledge. I would not break the ancient vows. You're not that important," she said with mock offense. But I still didn't move.

"You might not hurt me, but if I lose my way, go too deep, and never find the exit, it's technically my own fault." She chuckled, smiling even wider still as she covered her mouth with the skeletal hand, like a child caught in a lie.

"Well, I sometimes forget how paranoid you single-minded things are about your existence. But fine, fine," she said, returning to me.

"I can point you to a much younger soul. But…" Her face fell, suddenly becoming a mask of seriousness.

"I want you to do something for me."

"I'm all ears."

"The creature's body. The queen. I want you to bring her to me, still alive, right before she dies." I frowned at the request. Killing an enemy was one thing; defeating them while keeping them alive was another.

"Define alive," I replied slowly.

"In one piece. You're not to shred it to pieces or let it decay. No twisting of its shape. No feeding it to your gods." She began to list all the ways of killing or maiming the queen I was not allowed to use. My face fell with each new description. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

"What do you want me to do, bore it to death?" I finally snapped. The child rematerialized right in front of me, slightly too close for comfort.

"Well, Samuel Alhazred, heir of the void callers. Grandson to the Butcher of Atlas. I would imagine someone of your heritage might FIND. A. WAY." She spoke once again through thousands of voices echoing all around, the sound threatening to split my head.

'Fuck,' I scolded myself. Her image and behavior threw me off so much that I forgot for a second I was speaking to a shard of a god.

"My apologies," I hastily said.

"Forget it. I was just playing," she said, once again jovial, rematerializing a few feet away.

"I need you to bring me the queen barely alive. That's all." She was back to her happy mood, but I wasn't buying it this time around. This was a queen of one of the world's most ancient hives, appearing as a child or not.

"But please do understand, this is a big ask. It's hard to barely kill something and then transport it all the way to the Appalachian forest." She nodded in agreement.

"I do not ask for a great feat without a great reward."

"I don't want to walk into a lair of a hive mind and then find myself without options for a tough fight," I said, readying a flowery refusal that would hopefully leave me in one piece.

"I offer ancient knowledge in return."

"What knowledge?" I shot back immediately. The avatar looked at me with a frown.

"Strange creature you are. You were ready to refuse me just a second ago. But now you are willing to risk death, a death you want to avoid so much that you refuse to become part of me. Reckless and strange," she said. I just remained silent before the creature spoke up again.

"There is someone. A part of me. A scholar from my younger days. A greater part of an even greater whole, whose knowledge might be of interest to you," she said. I frowned. Overall, the avatar didn't readily offer information. That which died with the previous cycle should stay in it. But someone from her old days? That would be thousands of years ago. Many mycanoid scholars had tried to get to the more ancient and esoteric knowledge.

Many had tried to recreate old magic or relearn events of the Great War, but to no avail. The avatar rarely helped, so this was suspicious.

"I'm grateful for the offer, but you can't let me learn spells or concepts. You can't reveal secrets of old. You might point me to someone, sure. But someone that old would be so close to your divinity that even getting there would kill me. Am I missing something?" I asked.

"Oh, this time around, I can just tell you the knowledge directly, no need for a trip into my bowels. For a gift to the hive, the hive can give back, no rules broken, no gods offended. And it's no great secret or mystery; I offer just a simple story."

"Why would I risk my life for a story?" I asked.

"A tale of a strange being. Sad and tragic. Yet beautiful, though its end is still not written," she began, only to fall silent, waiting for me to bite.

"And why would such a tragic tale interest me?" I prompted, but only got silence in return.

"Fine. If it's really of interest, I will take the job," I groaned.

"But only if the tale is of interest, which you still haven't proved."

"Right. Well, the being in this story was known for something rather strange. You see…" The avatar paused, looking me in the eyes.

"She had two tongues." My brain came to a screeching halt. I did not see that one coming, nor did I think my heritage would come up in a deal with the hive.

"And what was that being?" I asked, but it only earned me a chuckle from Thalyssa.

"Interested?" she asked. I sighed and nodded, not trying to hide it.

"You got yourself a deal."

"Splendid," the child said, clapping her hands.

"Well, then, do you see that mycanoid?" she asked, pointing to one of the bodies standing to the side, away from us.

"That's Furan'ar. Go ask him about his cousin who really liked history, and he will point you to Germs'ar. Then ask Germs'ar about his brother. Then ask the brother…" I listened through a long list of mycanoids whom I would have to ask for directions to get to the one who could tell me what I needed to know about the hive, all the while wondering why she couldn't just lead me there.

"And so you ask Hertun'bar about that book he found in his father's possessions." She finally got to the end of the long list of instructions.

"Right," I agreed, and before I could ask if she could just point me in Hertun'bar's direction, she disappeared into a cloud of spores. I clicked my tongues. After waiting for a few seconds, hoping she would return, telling me she was just kidding, I finally walked to Furan'ar to ask him about his cousin. The conversations were a pain as I jumped from one barely conscious mycanoid mind to another, sometimes having to try a few times with each as they seemed, well… senile.

But after talking for Abyss knows how long, I was finally pointed in the direction of Hertun'bar. It took me a good long walk in the fog until I finally saw a silhouette before me, right in my path. There was one issue. It was the silhouette of a child, not a mycanoid child, but the young Thalyssa herself.

"Um, hello?" I asked, weirded out as she stood directly in my way.

"Heeello," she said, not budging. Her voice was calm and even, akin to the voices of the creatures I spoke with just a few minutes ago, even stretching the beginning of the sentence. I waited a second for her to speak, but she just stood there like a statue.

"Right," I began and decided to try to walk around her, hoping not to lose the straight line in which I had been pointed.

"Aren't you going to ask me?" she asked.

"Ask you? … Wait, are you pretending to be Hertun'bar?"

"Preeetending? I am Hertun'bar." I looked at the avatar, trying to figure out if it was her fucking with me, if it was the god fucking with me, or if she was being serious.

"I'm pretty sure Hertun'bar's a mycanoid."

"Aaaren't I a mycanoid? Mycanoids, actually. Quite a few."

"Mhm," I groaned, taking a deep breath to steady my mind.

"So now that I've had a nice walk, can you tell me about that hive?" I asked.

"Whaaat hive?"

"There…" I began, but after looking at her, I noticed she looked genuinely confused.

"Right. Could you tell me about the book you found in your father's possessions?" I asked Hertun'bar, and he, she, or it responded with a firm "Sure." After a quick talk, it soon turned out that Hertun'bar was an old mycanoid from around 1500 who found a study on hives, a book dating back to right after the war. The tome died with him, sadly, as he didn't take proper care of it, not realizing its worth, thinking it was a fake.

But thankfully, if one can call it that, he died shortly after reading the thing, so the knowledge was "fresh" in his mind. The tome mentioned the very hive I was most likely hunting.

"Iiit's called Talapir. A rather strange type of hive. Unnatural even."

"Unnatural how?" I asked.

"Theeere was a similar creature once." The avatar's eyes lost their focus for a second.

"A great hive called Mothma, a creature close to…" The girl's face twisted in anger.

"Me, to us," she said in a thousand voices, only to return to the even tone of the dead mushrooms.

"Sheee was a hive of life and death. Her children would turn into butterflies, only to die a few days after birth. From egg to bug, from bug to butterfly, and then to the cycle's end, from end to a new beginning. She was a great creature of death, change, and renewal. But before the war ended, she disappeared from her underground lair. And the Talapir appeared. It was similar to Mothma, but as if stuck in the cocoon, unable to change, the idea of its life twisted and corrupted.

Her renewal taken from her and made into a mockery." She stopped speaking before her face shifted again, but this time, for the first time, it showed deep sadness.

"I think she's in pain," Thalyssa said in a low voice, back to her own personality.

"I want her to rest here, part of the greater whole once again," she finished, looking at me with great suffering written across her face.