Chapter 1: Discovering Envoys

They appeared harmless enough. Two creatures just standing out there in the cold moonlight, staring at our outer guards with those big blue eyes. Then they started taking steps toward our home. We thought they were changelings. They looked like us, talked like us, and walked like us. But Chrysalis... she knew something was off. Their cries echoed from the throne room.

"I want to join you again!"

"I’ll be better this time!"

She asked them how many. How many stray changelings out there wished to join our glorious utopia.

"About a hundred of us. From the South. I’ve trekked a long way to get here!"

She called Boss in, the others and I kept our ears to the door.

"Barbarian, kill these wretches."

Boss wasn’t new to these orders. He was the Royal Executioner, her greatest general. It worried us when there was no screaming; he usually takes his time. After several minutes of silence, the Queen called for some lowly workers. Boss came outside and beckoned us along.

"Those defectors came from a hive to the South. We're to track them down and kill them all."

"An entire hive?" I asked. "By ourselves?"

"Exactly, Carnal," he assured me. "This will be so boring."

"Boring?"

"They just stood there like deaf, blind workers! Not even a scream when I ripped their wings off, broke their limbs... Nothing! It's like beating up a pony corpse!"

Our top assassin interjected. "A kill's a kill, a win's a win. Let's do this!"

"Hey," our cocoonist spoke. "Why did She ask for those workers?"

We found ourselves at the armory. Boss always made sure we all had the best weapons and gear, supplies lasting. For this mission we all had full royal armor, top of the line and making us all feel indestructible. We all got royal weapons, capable of shifting shapes to fit any scenario. As Barb shrunk his special halberd to the size and shape of a dagger, he cleared his throat to finally answer.

"The biggest fight these bastards put up is after they're dead." He led us from the armory to the Hive exit, explaining all the way. "For some reason, when their organs fail and their formlessness catches up to them, they don't just turn to dust like we do. They become this green sludge, like runny pony shit. And like all shit jobs in the Hive, we pass them off to those stupid workers!"

The two other assassins stayed to the back, quiet, as we finally reached open air. We all took off at once, and I stayed right behind Boss as we made our way south toward the enemy hive.

"Why didn't they ever use their wings?" I asked as we flew onward. "I never saw either of them fly. They even climbed up the cliff face to reach our entrance!"

"Who knows," Boss shrugged off. "Just one more advantage we have against them." He sighed. "They said there were a hundred of these guys... Maybe we'll get lucky and a few of them will actually make some noise when we flay their skeletons."

Soon we were in sight of the hive. It was a hole in the ground, and a lone changeling stood over it. Others flew up to it, burst into green flame as though changing forms, and went inside. As we approached, we soon realized that it was no changeling standing over the entrance.

It looked at us with two blue eyes, one naturally big and one a bead growing like a tumor from the base of its horn. Its face also sported an empty eye socket dripping with a green fluid. Only one fang protruded from its snout, with many unnatural edges and spikes. Where the other fang would have been, a constant strand of the green substance flowed to the ground, pooling next to the monster's hoof.

We stared at each other for too long. Not even Boss could come up with words for this freak. Looking behind me, the four others all had shocked faces with no sign of wanting to talk to this thing. Looking back, the creature turned its head slowly as it got a look at all of us. It raised its hoof, revealing that the back half of that leg was missing. It reached for its own mouth, collecting a large amount of ooze and interrupting the flow. It pulled the goop away from the source and stuck its hoof into its own eye socket. It twisted within the hole for a few seconds. When the leg finally returned to its side, the eye hole was now filled with light green. It blinked and crooked its head, causing a drop of green to slide from its empty eye back into its mouth.

It spoke with a cracking voice and a labored breath. "Who is... It that... Must... Remove... Your skin?"