Unlike Any Other

Asides from objective intelligence, one could find constants that defined sapient species. Language was one such constant. Another was tool use. Another still was the ability to form diplomatic relations with other beings. Something else could be found as well—something far more basic.

Pride.

The same sort of pride that one experienced after a job well done, or that of seeing their offspring gradually maturing into adults.

The latter type was the pride currently flowing through Chrysalis at that moment.

She stood towering over the three nearly-complete cocoons that her latest batch of offspring had spun themselves. The monarch had always felt proud whenever her children survived the larval stage and were ready to advance into their next stage of their lives.

Yet these three were noteworthy compared to the countless other hatchings. At first, Chrysalis had nearly panicked when there were no other eggs to lay after the third. A regular session would produce at the very least a baker’s dozen. She had initially considered the low yield as a sign of growing infertility. In fact, that whole gestation period had felt different from all of the other times. Something was off.

And yet… it also wasn’t.

She had begun to suspect that nothing had gone wrong soon after her initial panic, as there was something within the changeling queen that kept her collected whenever she would think about the scarce numbers. In her attempt to understand why this egg laying was different, Chrysalis dove into the few written scripts that the Hive conserved. And in there, she found a possible reason that was both wondrous and miraculous.

Once the three larvae had emerged, that possibility had become a certainty. The queen had given life to three changelings marked for greatness. The blue stripe along the bulby backs of the three larvae confirmed it.

Chrysalis had entertained the possibility that at least one of them would become a queen, as Chrysalis herself had been marked before she formed her own cocoon. At least, that’s how mother had recounted the tale. Again, instincts told her that regardless of their fates, these changelings would never be queens. A tinge of disappointment did touch her when she had realised this, but if mother hadn’t omitted anything to her, Chrysalis had outdone all of her predecessors.

Three changelings that were destined for great things.

Knowing that, watching these otherwise unremarkable larvae doing what larvae did was certainly odd. There was nothing in their behavior that made them distinct from what Chrysalis had observed so many times before; there was nothing asides from that stripe of theirs that told her that these three little creatures were any different from any other changelings.

After a month of near continuous feeding, they were ready for the next stage. As she watched, two of them were now fully encased in their protective cocoons. The third was still finishing up.

Chrysalis’s fanged smile spread along her snout. This last larva had always been slow in its every action: slow to hatch; slow to eat; slow to rest. Whereas the other two had taken the necessary amount of time for all of their actions, this one seemed to like to take its time.

That in of itself was indicative of a level of intellect that would be uncommonly high in adulthood. Chrysalis had observed the trend far too many times for the circumstances and results to be mere happenstance.

The smile grew some more; if this one was already going to be a great changeling, just how much would it achieve once it emerged fully as an adult?

For a moment the weaving ceased, and Chrysalis felt the curious eyes of the larva upon her. “Go on,” she said with the appropriate pheromones. “You’ve almost made it.”

The larva lingered for a while longer before resuming its task. Its pace was slow yet meticulous. Just as the little one was finishing, Chrysalis leaned in to kiss the as-of-yet uncocooned bit of chitin.

It seemed to pause once more at the contact, but the larva promptly continued. Soon enough there was nothing except for a sticky cocoon to see.

The queen let out a slow sigh. There was nothing else that she could do for now. It would be two more months before she would be able to see her children once more. Chrysalis knew that the wait would be both excruciating and worth it. She had experienced this before in every other batch, but this one felt far more important than the others.

Were she to be asked if that meant that she loved them more than her other children, she would have pounced on the idiot asking such an absurd question, fangs at the ready. Of course the queen loved them just the same! She loved all of them!

Still, that didn’t mean that the pride right then was not marginally greater than what she had felt for her other children. Her smile returned: could anyone really blame her for that?

Chrysalis let out another sigh as she watched the cocoons being collected by nurse drones and workers to be taken away to a more suitable chamber.

Her anxiety must’ve been palpable, because one of the nurses approached her. “Do not worry, my Queen. We will be more careful than we’ve ever been before.”

Part of her wanted to insist that the worker was not to treat the cocoons as something more than she or her podmates had handled before, yet, as Chrysalis parted her lips to say so, she relented. They were more important than any other cocoon.

Firmly rooted on the spot where she stood, her gaze followed the last of the cocoons leave for the appropriate brooding chamber with a sense of longing.

So begins the wait.

Many changeling scholars have often pondered about the processes that a larva undergoes inside of the cocoon. All that was known about them for certain was the end result: a nymph that after a few hours would wear the same colors as an adult.

Vivisecting a cocoon that was still transforming the larva within was unthinkable. Not even those of other hives were exempt from the taboo of infanticide.

As such, the mechanics of the metamorphosis could only be hypothesised. Chief among the few theories was that of a complete deconstruction and reassembly of the being inside. This school of thought prompted many debates on whether or not the larva as a person died in the process. Biologically it was nearly universally agreed that the larva never ‘died’, but the crux of the philosophical discussion revolved around the character of the larva.

Even at emergence, larvae had been observed to display quirks that could be described as character qualities. While most of these could be classified as general aggression for dominance, there were cases of altruism and even timidity. As a general rule, these ‘attitudes’ carried over to the nymph stage, suggesting a continuation of the same ‘person’.

There were, of course, exemptions. Sometimes seemingly meek larvae would grow to be great warriors, while other times what appeared to be a strong-willed larva would become highly subservient as an adult. Furthermore, if the metamorphosis was similar as those studied in other arthropodal species, there was evidence that the larva’s body was essentially destroyed before that of the nymph was formed.

So the question remained unanswered: did the larva ‘die’ as a person, or was it preserved in some other way?

Such queries didn’t concern the larva currently inside its cocoon. It allowed itself to slowly fall apart into a mixture of dissolved flesh and juices, as it knew that it was simply meant to be. It could feel its abdomen lose its physical form, feeling neither pain nor fear all the while. It might have known that it was an individual, but it hadn’t yet formed an identity; it simply had not mattered.

The head was the last structure to melt away. In truth, a hint of trepidation had crossed the larva’s mind. It knew that this was supposed to happen, yes. However, what would happen to it? It’d change, of course, but would it still be able to recall its life before the cocoon once it emerged?

These considerations were brief. The larva’s consciousness winked out peacefully as its brain dissolved into a mess of grey matter.

Some time later, there was once more the spark of intelligence. With a new brain taking form, recognition slowly returned. The being currently inside finally had something resembling an identity. It was no longer the larva of before, as it could not recollect anything prior to its transformation.

It still had memories, but they were of a life spanning many years. Far too many for them to belong to the little larva that it was before. As the being came to, it had several questions in mind:

What happened?
Where am I?
Did I die?

Sensation returned in full force, though not in the entirety that it—no, he was familiar with. Albeit muddied and blurred, he still had his thoughts and memories of another life, but absolutely nothing else.

This realization terrorised him.

Physically, the being forming within the cocoon did not react. It was still only a brain, after all. There were no limbs to flail about, no eyes to flicker this way and that, no skin to feel goosebumps, no lungs to hyperventilate with, no mouth to scream with. The form didn’t have the appropriate organs for him to piss himself in fear.

So for a long indeterminate amount of time, he did the only thing that he could.

Monty used the voice of his mind to scream himself raw.