The Demon Crown

EPILOGUE HALEAKALA, MAUI Σ

She knows it is time.

A biological clock, fueled by hormones, triggers her new body to writhe in its black chrysalis. Mandibles reach up to snip at the cap of silk she had spun as a larva. A hole is chewed through, softened by saliva steeped in the queen substance excreted by glands in her maw.

One antenna uncurls and extends out, probing the world beyond. Fine sensillae test the moist cool air. Once satisfied, she batters her triangular head through the opening and uses hooks in her forelegs to split the pupal case. The thin chrysalis crumples under her weight as she wriggles around and perches there.

She pauses to groom herself in the darkness, readying herself to be revealed. She cleans her unblinking black eyes and brushes each antenna with fine combs on the underside of her forelegs.

All the while, haemolymph pumps through the long veins of her damp and crinkled wings. They slowly spread and expand. Once the wings are draped long and sturdy, she flutters them dry.

Only then is she ready.

She crawls off her perch to the damp rock of the tunnel. It is here she had spun her cocoon months ago, safely hidden in the dark. Now she follows the rock, escaping away from where she had come, seeking a new home in a new direction.

Her abdomen is already heavy with eggs, pluripotent clones of herself, capable of becoming every caste of her new swarm.

She carries the very future inside her.

As she travels, she leaves an aromatic path in her wake. The alluring scent will draw any of the old swarm still in the area, a sweet trap that will kill, erasing that genetic lineage behind her. Only her code must survive, unchallenged by the past.

She moves relentlessly. She will not stop until she has found a suitable home. But as she continues, the stone under her feet grows colder. Still, she presses onward, driven by a millennia-old drive to survive. She smells fresh air far ahead, promising a new opening to the upper world.

Before she can reach there, the stone grows a layer of ice.

She pauses, casting out her senses in snaps of her hind legs and testing the air with her antenna. An image forms in the knotted ganglions of her brain.

The tunnel ahead shows ice covering every surface. Drapes and spikes and waves. Despite the danger, she continues forward, unable to turn back, incapable of defying her genetic instinct. She heads into the cold, timeless and patient. She will not change. Instead, she will wait for the world to do so.

If not now, her time would come again.

Knowing this, she marches into the cold tunnels, until her wings frost over and her legs stiffen. Her body grows cold. She only stops when the pads of her feet finally freeze to the ice.

There, she will remain.

There, she abides.

Awaiting her chance to rise again.