The Hive Queen harvested one out of every seven of the mushrooms present in the cavern, which made a noticeable but not overwhelming difference in the total number of mushrooms available. Rather than head back to the area of her birth to eat, she decided to have one of the bodies start to carve out an area within one of the tunnels connected nearby. It would certainly take a long time, but once it was done it would be her new home. The instinctual urge to go back to her birthplace had already grown weaker since her increased intelligence, but she knew that if she fed the urge it would eventually regain its strength until it was practically irresistible. Though, before she truly set about carving the new area from the tunnels, she divided the spoils between both bodies until the physical hunger was satisfied. The instinctual hunger that always plagued her however, seemed only momentarily dulled.
While one body dug out the seeds of a new home with claws and spit, with the Hive Queen ensuring she got into a rhythm that required no conscious focus to keep going, she had the other body simply lie down. It was counterproductive for the goal of creating a new home, but she needed something that would cost minimal, if any, energy to be spent if her idea ended up working. Now that a decent, if temporary, source of food had been found, the Hive Queen wished to start actually peering into the vast intricacies that made up her own essence. The Hive Queen already knew, instinctually, that she could modify her own essence and even incorporate sections of essence that the food had, but that meant nothing if she didn’t have a clear understanding of what each section of her own essence did. It would be unfortunate if she merged essence from a creature who had something beneficial only to end up dead due to her merging it with the essence that told her heart how it was supposed to work. The Hive Queen didn’t know how likely such a thing was to happen, but she refused to risk such things without at least attempting to piece together what her own essence meant.
Opening up her conscious mind to the repository of knowledge that contained all known pieces of essence was something almost frightening. The first time she had done so, she had not had the true time nor been in the right mental state to actually comprehend what she had at her disposal, nor its true scale. It was no mere instinctual knowledge or urge like the ever gnawing hunger or the desire to retreat into her birth crevice, though it seemed to draw part of its power from the same tainted source. Instead, it was as if the Hive Queen’s mind was sucked into a place connected to her own as though there simply wasn’t enough room inside her mind to truly comprehend everything. She had impressions of some grand, nearly empty cavern large enough to fit a thousand of her bodies end to end without getting cramped, the entire structure seemingly made out of nothing other than her own mind and an energy that was achingly familiar to whatever she had connected to shortly after gaining actual intelligence but if it had been tainted by something acrid and hateful. The Hive Queen immediately knew that it was the tainted energy that enlarged the space to the immense size it was, the walls were almost entirely made of it after all.
Due to the majority of the boundaries being composed of the tainted energy, it gave the entire cavern an oppressive feeling. The very air tasted of hatred, and was weighed down by something acrid and spiteful. The smell that pervaded the cavern was that of fouled flesh, as if it had been left to rot and bloat in the light and muddy soil, and the sounds from beyond the walls were that of an ever beating heart. The entire place filled the Hive Queen with some amount of dread, awe, and a vague feeling of comfort. The comfort came from the connection to her own instincts, the ones that she could now ignore with some effort, it called to that same part of her. Though at least unlike the others, this didn’t seem to have any real negative downsides to it. Other than the rather nasty atmosphere, which was not very pleasant for the young Hive Queen. She would, of course, deal with such trivial things, as it was necessary for her growth.
Far off in the back, was a rather small pile of gently glowing spheres, with all but one being unmoving. The largest of the spheres, and also the brightest, had contents that seemed to writhe around as it sat on the ground. As the Hive Queen approached, with difficulty as it required constant mental focus on moving forward to even slightly budge from her position, she saw what each sphere was made of. The larger, writhing sphere was her own, current, essence. The others were mostly the essence of the mushrooms and two of the orbs contained the essence of the small creatures she had eaten. Moving her mental hands over to one of the orbs containing the essence of the small creatures, the Hive Queen attempted to touch the orb. Only to have nothing happen, and her mental arms to simply go through the orb in its entirety. The Hive Queen kept trying for what must’ve been hours, as her mental apparition grew ever more tired and strained as she tried to brute force her way into accessing the orb of essence. Which made no sense to the Hive Queen, she had so easily accessed this the first time she had tried!
After calming herself down, and retreating from the mental space to relax her mental muscles, the Hive Queen tried to think if there was anything different. Other than truly comprehending where such information was actually stored, because it most certainly wasn’t in her mind. Connected to it? Yes. In it? No, or at least not in its entirety. But what was different? After pondering for a little while, she came to a conclusion. There was none of that presence like there had been immediately after her previous attempt. It was the only real difference she could pinpoint, other than location, and she refused to even test if giving into her base instincts would solve the issue until every other option had been tried. She had not gained the ability to actually comprehend what she was doing to just go back to using her instincts and urges for everything. No. She would figure out exactly how to crack open the orb and read the information inside. She already knew what everything did, intellectually, but she wanted to attempt making modifications to something that wasn’t her own essence before she even dared to attempt to parse her own. Her notion that her essence was difficult to parse was a vast understatement, it was as if there had been seven different modifications to the essence, along with an eighth that was dedicated entirely to making everything actually function and not just tear itself apart in an orgy of cancerous growths and failed replications. Each and every modification seemingly attached itself to random parts of the essence and modified it, then the final modification attached to seemingly random parts of those modifications and somehow harmonized them all. From what she had gotten from the other two essence types she had eaten so far, such a thing wasn’t supposed to be possible, and yet, her own essence was proof it clearly was.
The Hive Queen, after letting her mental fatigue fully subside, once again entered that mental cavern and approached the orb whose contents she wished to modify. After once again trying, and failing, to grasp the container with her mental appendages she tried to probe for the presence that had so thoroughly pained her the first time around. There were no words to describe the feeling of doing so other than exhausting, for the Hive Queen was not simply thinking about trying to find that presence again, but had to actively push her mind outside herself. It was similar in nature to accessing the mental cavern, but without the innate connection she had with it. After several agonizingly long minutes, the Hive Queen felt the slimmest of connections form between her mind and what she could only describe as a fundamental aspect of reality. It was a rather inert connection, as if it was waiting for her to make the first move. The Hive Queen first posed a question over the connection, asking why she couldn’t access the knowledge contained within the cavern of essence.
The response was…odd. Emanations of concepts, ideas and things her mind was simply incapable of perceiving much less understanding permeated through the connection. The connection filtered it into something the Hive Queen could at least somewhat understand, even if it was a bit of a struggle due to the thin connection doing its best to muffle the information. The information was certainly a bit disheartening, though she wasn’t entirely sure she fully comprehended the answer reality gave her. If the Hive Queen was understanding it right, reality itself had put a “child safety lock” on her mental space due to her original foray into it having almost modified her own essence unintentionally through sheer carelessness, and it would stay on until she had the ability to open the orbs herself. It didn’t matter to reality how she opened them, only that she showed the ability to do so. The Hive Queen knew there was more to its response, but she was unable to parse it through the mental noise and growing strain that tugged on her mind. The longer she held the connection, even one as thin and murky this was, the worse the mental strain grew. It was not a pleasant experience, and made all of her eyes feel like they were going to pop out of her skulls as they pounded with pain from the inside out. The physical symptoms were combined with mental fog and a slowing down of her mental processes. And before she even realized she had pushed too far, the Hive Queen fell asleep. The body that had been digging simply slumping over where it was, in a horribly uncomfortable position that would not be pleasant to wake up to.
Upon waking up, the Hive Queen’s mind felt thoroughly refreshed, even if one of her bodies was not exactly in a state of good comfort. After having each of her bodies eat another couple of mushrooms, and rocks, to satiate her hunger, the Hive Queen had both of her bodies work together to dig out the area that
would be her new home whilst her mind pondered on the matters of her previous awakening. By its own admission, the presence didn’t truly care how she went about removing the safety measures it had put in place. Which immediately gave the idea of simply asking it to remove them, but that felt cheap to the young Hive Queen. The entire thing seemed almost like a test to her, like it had been set up so that she would get access to it the moment she could prove that she wasn’t going to accidentally ruin her own essence. After some deliberation, and metal rich rock eating, the Hive Queen decided that she would try to open the orbs herself a couple of times first, and if she failed after three tries she would try to ask the presence. First however, she wanted at least enough space for her two bodies to get somewhat comfortable in, just in case she pushed her mind too far again.
Once a small area was carved out in the tunnel, she put both her bodies inside it and settled herself into comfortable positions. Was the space still quite cramped? Yes. Would it work, and would it make it harder for anything else that might exist in the tunnels to actually get to her? Also yes. The area that she hard carved required her to lie flat on her stomach and then shimmy through a tight space before entering a small circular room that allowed her to at least sit cross legged. She had wanted to make it even bigger, but keeping such a small entryway made it extremely hard to properly move out the stones she cut from the wall unless they were small enough for her to hold in one of her mouths. After what felt like an eternity, she had been able to carve out this small room, and that was good enough for her right now. She wanted to get started on trying to figure out this puzzle the universe had seen fit to give her.
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Pulling her mind into the mental cavern, she was once again inundated with the taint that permeated the area. It was just as unpleasant as she had remembered, and coming back to it after being so long without it made it even worse than the last time. She put such thoughts out of her mind, and continued onwards to the orbs once again, this time selecting one of the mushroom orbs as she had more of them and if one broke it was of no major consequence. Once again, her mental appendages simply slipped through the orb, unable to even make contact with the thing much less actually grasp it. After several tries, each using a different angle or method, with one attempt she had even attempted to bite the orb to see if her acidic saliva had somehow managed the transfer to mental space and melt the orb. It had not. Once that failed, she rested her mind for a while, taking a step back and trying to think of how she might go about stopping herself from opening such things. It didn’t help much, as she didn’t know any of the rules the mental space actually operated on, but it did give her an idea.
On her second foray into the cavern, she spoke her intentions as she did the actions, and was rewarded with minor success after several attempts. Instead of simply passing through the orb, her mental hands had managed to touch its surface. It was an odd sensation, touching something exclusively with her mind and as such didn’t truly exist, yet it clearly did at the same time. The Hive Queen marveled at the smooth surface of the orb for a moment, before realizing that while she had managed to do the first step of actually opening the orbs, she probably had many more to go. At least she knew she was on the right track however, or at least stumbled onto a section of it. She continued trying this method for a while longer, before the mental strain started to get to the edge of bearable again, before she left however, the Hive Queen looked to one of the few patches of floor that wasn’t made of the tainted material and ordered it to become a stool. She promptly blacked out again as that single command put more strain on her mind than the last several dozen of her interactions with the orb.
Upon waking up again, after a much shorter period of time if her bodies’ hunger was anything to go by, the Hive Queen mulled over the information she had gathered. Re-entering the cavern, she was met with the image of a chunk of stone sized perfectly as a stool where she had commanded the floor. As she inspected the stone chunk for any abnormalities, she noticed that she could interact with it by default. She had no need for the complicated method she had been using to simply touch the orbs, it was as if it was truly real. Perhaps it was simply only the orbs that were under the protection mechanism, or perhaps the Hive Queen had stumbled into another pathway into achieving her self-appointed goal. Mimicking her previous actions, she approached the orb she had previously tested on, only this time she simply ordered it to enter her outstretched palm. At the cost of a sudden and massive increase in the mental strain she was experiencing, the orb flew up from the pile on the floor and right into her hand, going against all notions of gravity as it did so. She ordered it to open, but nothing happened. Disappointing, but not unexpected. Though this still didn’t tell the Hive Queen why it wasn’t working, just that it would require something more.
After spending the next several hours, with short breaks every now and then to recover from mental strain, tinkering with her ideas the Hive Queen had come to a conclusion. Simply ordering something to happen will make it happen, but only if one has the mental fortitude for it. A freshly rested mind could do far more complex commands than one that was already under immense strain. That discovery had directly led her to another one, which was one she honestly felt should’ve been obvious to her. The mental strain of an action is directly proportional to how much effort one puts into visualizing it. It was why she could make the orbs do all sorts of fancy tricks, like hovering around her or flying from hand to hand, but not opening them. She didn’t know how to do so, thus she was unable to lessen the cost of forcing it and even when her mind was fresh and recovered she lacked the mental strength to force them open. Though all the exercises had given her mental strength a bit more reserves to draw on, she clearly had much farther to go before she had the raw power necessary to brute force this puzzle. Which left her at a crossroads, did she stick to her original plan and reconnect with the presence and ask for its assistance, or did she continue practicing on her own. On the one hand, practicing on her own would certainly make her mental strength all the greater and would almost certainly lead her to the intended solution eventually. On the other hand, it was going to take immense amounts of time, and she might need the ability to modify her essence sooner than later depending on what other creatures lurked in the tunnels. So far, she had only found the two morsels she had eaten a while back, but that didn’t mean there weren’t others. Or that they would be as easy to kill as those two were.
In the end, it was the fact that if she was rebuffed for asking, she could always continue her personal practice but not the other way around that decided it. After once again resting to ensure her mind was as whole and ready as it could possibly be, she searched for that small connection. It was easier this time, not easy but still a noticeable improvement in just how quick she found and grasped it. She was able to make it just a slight bit clearer as well, not enough to make a massive difference, but just enough that she had a small amount of pride in doing so. She asked it for help in opening the orbs, or at the very least giving her the knowledge on how to open them herself. The response she received was simple, and impossible for even the thin and murky connection to distort. How. How exactly did she want reality itself to help her in this endeavor? Once again instinct gave her an answer, but instead of just one answer, it gave her two vastly different ones.
One part of her wanted nothing more than to just let the universe decide how it wished to fulfill her request, it clearly knew how things worked best after all. While the other part of her wanted nothing more than for her to enforce her will onto reality, give it commands with a belief so unfaltering that it had no choice but to obey. It was the only true way to interact with the universe and she clearly knew it. After all, hadn’t she already started doing such a thing with her orders? It was an interesting experience for the Hive Queen, having two wholly opposite instinctive reactions to something hadn’t been an issue for her until now. Deciding to dive deeper, she found that the first instinct came from the same place so many of her instincts did, that tainted source that gave her much but encroached on her mind and hovered at its edges at all times. The second instinct seemingly came directly from her essence, she couldn’t tell which part or why it came from there. Not with the orb still around it. But it did, which was interesting enough on its own, but it did also have merit. Speaking her actions and desires had been what first gave her a smidgen of progress. A command had been what gave her a stool to sit on and allowed her to practice with her mental muscles. If she chose to follow the first instinct, would the way the universe responded be wholly incompatible with what she had already learned? And if she decided to continue what she was already doing, what kind of order would she need to give?
After several moments, which cost her dearly in terms of how pained her mind was becoming, the Hive Queen decided to follow her second instinct and continue with what she had already learned. Perhaps in the future she would try the first instinct’s method, but she didn’t want to have possibly wasted so much of her time. The only real question would be, what would her command actually be? Quickly coming to a decision, because she wanted this pain to be over with as soon as possible, the Hive Queen sent a simple order over the connection. I have always known the way to open the safety, you stole my knowledge, now return it. The Hive Queen held on just long enough for her to receive the information before she blacked out, the combined strain of what she had done and then forcing herself to stay conscious being so horrible that both of her bodies had started leaking blood from their eyes.
Upon waking up, the Hive Queen immediately set out to eat some food, along with wiping the dried blood from both sets of eyes. The blood was a concerning sign, how close had she actually come to permanent damage to herself? Or had she already done so and she simply wouldn’t know until it was too late? That was a question that could only be answered later on, for now she needed to eat her fill of mushrooms and rocks to satiate her hunger. She would need to find another food source soon if she didn’t wish to eat every mushroom in the cavern. She had to leave some for more to arrive right? The Hive Queen felt that was correct based on her knowledge of the mushroom’s essence. Speaking of essence, she now had the ability to unlock the orbs. Create them as well, which she hadn’t expected. The orbs were a purely mental storage device of some sort, and anything put into them would be unchanging. She could also duplicate them if she really wanted to, though the Hive Queen had a feeling that would be quite difficult without practice with both the orbs themselves as well as the essence stored within one.
Once she had slaked her hunger and returned to her room, the Hive Queen once again entered the mind cavern. With a simple command she opened the orb of one of the meat creatures, now that she had no need to worry about destroying an orb and its contents, she would start with something closer to her own essence. After toying with the essence for a little while, both just because she could and because it was intriguing to watch how it moved, the Hive Queen got started separating the essence into categories. Namely, things she might want to incorporate into herself and things that were utterly useless to her. There were so many of the latter category she was kind of disappointed. She knew the creature had been easy to kill but still! The only thing the Hive Queen felt was truly worth incorporating into her essence was its hyper sensitive whiskers that could be quite useful if modified to grow between her keratin plates. She might have to tone some of the feedback down, seeing as she had eyes and the creature hadn’t, but what would amount to an extra sense could only be good!
After further tweaking the essence strands that determined both the sensitivity of the whiskers and where they grew, the Hive Queen decided to be smart about implementing it into her own essence. She would first make a copy of her original essence, and then only apply the modified essence to her smaller body. She could make another smaller body if she really needed, and if it died she could just eat it to regain the lost food. After several hours of concentration, commands and frustration, the Hive Queen was looking at two orbs representing her essence. One of them was connected to her larger body and the other to her smaller one, how they were connected she wasn’t entirely sure. That was a mystery for another day, because her skulls were pounding and she really didn’t want to black out for a third time…or would it be the fourth? Opening the orb for her smaller body, she merged the three strands of essence together, putting each of the new strands where she thought was the proper location. Then enclosed her smaller body’s essence back into an orb to let the changes take place, and promptly left the mental cavern in order to relax and observe the smaller body from both the inside and outside.
The good news was that it seemed to be working! The Hive Queen could feel the sensitive hairs rapidly growing and the itchiness that came along with it. The bad news was that she had clearly royally fucked up somewhere, as they were growing everywhere, including underneath her keratin plates. Which was both highly painful, and deeply unpleasant. But it worked! She could modify her own essence with what she gained from her food! Though…she probably should’ve saved a duplicate of her modified hair essence so that way she wouldn’t have to dig it out from her own essence. She should’ve also waited and fully explored her own essence first, even if it would’ve meant waiting for several hours to mentally recover first. At least then she might’ve avoided this mess. There was only one thing to do. The Hive Queen had the larger body strangle the smaller body until it passed out, and she immediately felt some relief from the pain and discomfort that body felt. Also a rather large decrease in mental strength and speed, but so long as she didn’t revert back to her original single body mental state, she didn’t care. Still, for all the faults, she had done it! She couldn’t wait for her mind to recover fully so she could start to fix the issues she had unfortunately discovered.