Memo had to wince against the noise, too; the noise and the smell, burning sugar, burning everything. He turned away from the sight of the fire and the bees that plummeted, blackened and smoking, to put his own hands over Alex’s where they were covering his ears.

He had a feeling everything was going to get worse before it got better.

Praxidike was almost overcome with so much rage she could not breathe. She was rapidly dodging poisoned spikes longer than 2/3rds of her body, trying to line up an attack but unable to stay still long enough to do so. Part of it was the innate, instinctual burn of the enemy queen in her blood; there were not supposed to be two queens in such close vicinity; part of it may have been the Primal Energy in the air.

A lot of it was her inability to fathom stupid questions.

Kyouya’s aerial ace was, as always, a direct hit. It caught the side of the Primal Queen’s face, opening a rift above one mandible. Blood the color of pale straw oozed from the slice. On a normal Vespiquen the blow would have taken off her head-- on one this large, however, it was merely a cut.

Still, it gave Praxidike enough time to focus a power gem towards the enemy queen, the red crest on her forehead glimmering and refracting, until a ruby-red beam shot forward. It struck the enemy queen in her corseted midsection, blasting away chunks of comb and flesh, blowing out a portion of her aortic chamber (which was located at the junction of waist and hips, and not in the chest, such as in vertebrates). Yellow ichor splattered against the back of the hive, and the queen screamed.

The shrill cry echoed amongst the Combee, who reverbed it like an amplifier. They began to break off in almost living tendrils to go around the flames. Only a handful managed to make it before Gabriel’s rocks piled down, crushing them flat and sending spurts of yellow blood out along the stones.

Sibella rose up and then flared out, pirouetting down and spitting fire the entire way. The spiral of flamethrower channeled through Gabriel’s rock slide, superheating the stones and creating an oven effect that roasted the bees alive.

Still, they screamed.

Alexei Ivanov

☉

“It’s the honey,” Memo said, smelling it on the air, too-- the thick scent of caramel that had gone too far and burnt. “That’s the smell of the honey burning.”

“She’s the size of a house!” Praxidike shrieked, her head echoing with the screams of the ailing queen. She fought through the stunning noise, rushing forward, blade of air forming around her two golden claws. The Primal Queen heaved forward. Their two attacks, fell stinger and air slash, arched towards each other in opposing crescents, Praxidike aiming up into the opened wound in her chest, the enemy queen aiming down at where Praxi’s arm met her body.

“Yes,” Sibella purred, snagging a stray bee out of the air and crushing it against the sticky, melting expanse of the hive. She winced, the screaming of the Primal Queen reaching a fever pitch, her sensitive ears pinning back against her neck.

Alexei Ivanov
my pokemon's speech colors changing? more likely than you think

☉

Praxidike’s attack cut more flesh from the queen’s body, leaving her connected from thorax to comb dress by a mere stripe. Her own strike dug deep into Praxidike’s shoulder, making her right arm go numb. She shrieked in pain as golden ichor began to seep around the wound.

Moments later Kyouya came careening in and bisected the Primal Queen neatly in half, sending her bottom part falling to the hive floor where it hit with a wet-sounding slap. She was a hovering, leaking mess of entrails, yellow blood, and honey, shreeing her pain into the vast void.

But she was still alive.

“HOW?” Praxidike shrieked, breaking her own rule of not asking stupid questions.

The Primal Queen had one final trick up her sleeve-- an all or nothing, for the future of the hive. The pitch of her screaming changed, from high and pained to something more warbling. On all sides of Praxidike and Kyouya, combs began to wriggle and burst as new Combee-- some only half-formed-- awoke. They paused only slightly to get their bearings and buzz the wetness of birth off their wings.

Soon the queen’s cavern would be home to another swarm.

Alexei Ivanov
her final form

☉

“Shut up!” Praxidike screamed, while she worked to carry out his (admittedly very solid) plan. She struck at the Primal Queen’s face with a slash, using her left arm, as her right one hung limply at her side.

Kyouya’s final aerial ace hacked through the Primal Queen’s jaw on the diagonal. One-half of her mandibles remained attached to her jaw-- the other half, along with the rest of her head, went flying off, to splatter wetly to the floor.

Finally-- finally the Primal Queen stilled. The last third of her still airborne slumped and tumbled. The half-formed swarm immediately became aimless, milling around harmlessly as the confused newborns they were. Some of them began to bump curiously into Praxi, asking if she was their new queen.

Outside, the swarm was greatly diminished; their drive to attack also faded, now that the Primal Queen’s hivemind had been silenced. The survivors began to peel away. Others that had been injured gave up and died. Such was the nature of bees.

Sibella pulled one sticky claw off the side of the hive, wincing at the noise of the stretching sugar.

“I believe it’s over,” she said, feeling safe enough to let her ears lift from where they’d been flattened against her neck.

Memo echoed the sentiment.

“I think… I think it’s over.”

And he started running towards the hive.

Alexei Ivanov
my pokemon's speech colors changing? more likely than you think

☉