This is it.
This is it...
I have no eggs inside of me that can birth a queen. They're all for purebred warriors. This pile of mangled women is proof of that. None of them agreed with the eggs in my carrier organs.
A snarl comes to my chittering lips, and I press my foot down on the neck of last whimpering failure. She cracks against the stone, and my staff grip tightens, an odd irony to my efforts. Wood is holding up better than the very body of a human being. But again, it is the fallen trees that have allowed us to hold back this siege for as long as we have.
Though, I suppose now it doesn't matter. The siege is pointless, holding out for anything is pointless. Each day my hopes have slipped away, and the reality has settled in. Fermenting, growing strong. Whatever the mortal body I took wants to call it.
I tried to take the leader, the female. I almost had her, too. But, as it became clear none of my eggs were going to work on her... I gave up. I've just given up and I feel empty. Shallow and aimless.
My instincts aren't there anymore, it's like I've got one instinct that's entire purpose is to... Announce my failure, leave me empty. All I have left is the memory of it, the memory that I failed my hive? Did I? The Pestilence wiped out the hive, took the queen. If all I have are warrior eggs, than I was never expected to do anything more than stock up our workers and the namesakes...!
It's not fair.
It's not fair...?
My head angles away, shaking and shivering as my jaw chitters away aggressively. No, the fairness does not matter at all. In fact, life has never been fairer to me than these recent days. The hive was doomed anyhow, this whole affair only let it leave my mind quicker. And now, now I'm in the last dying throes of my hive. The warriors are falling, and I could perhaps make it happen quicker by giving the right order.
Just give that order, and it will all be over. The warriors will rush into battle, fall in it and... Quiet. It will all be quiet. The organs within are dying, they're losing their purpose. Every death that happens is one less buzz, one less bit of electrical activity. My synapses are not bridging at all.
Perhaps... Perhaps I will. Perhaps I must. I will.
"Go, do battle... Protect the growing queen and leave me as the last line of defence." I speak, hearing the hive's remnant howls race through the crack in the mountain. However, unlike the mortals cheer if they breach the hives I've founded over the years. How they rally in defence of their homes from us. Performing what is necessary for their lives as I have done for the lives of my people...
The hive remnant is not like that. There's no moral weight to their actions or wants. It's just that, they're animals doing as their controlled instincts tell them. It's what makes me different to them, and it's not just my ability to sit here and ponder. Though, to think really does make me what I am.
I think, therefore I am... In a way no osibindah will ever be. Not even the queens are as independent as we earth shamans are. Only we have the gift of magic, even with how the queens also hold the ability to speak.
And soon, so very soon, I will be as independent as any life outside of a hive. A new experience and I will take to it with the perfect moment of selfishness. He's still here, still within the mountain. Still weak and ready for my killing blow!
"I AM COMING FOR YOU!" I roar, turning towards the break in the mountain with sadistic glee. Yet, I do not take my steps forward. I stay, lingering and fighting what little remains of my instincts. The hive remnant must die for my sake. They will die to the last bug, leaving not one chitter or... And I... I will be free. Free to pursue my quarry, my prey and my target.
I stay, I stay and let more and more of my hive vanish. Only shuffling forwards to ease the pain and burden on my spirit. My actual spirit, not my hive mind instincts. My spirit.
I slowly make my way into the light, looking around the strange daylight as the battle goes on around me. Arrows fly, spears thrust, lives of all kinds die. All for the sake of freeing those who are captive. The many mortal lives we have taken to be ours, my hive remnant, so that I may be free of this pain.
It gnaws at me, demands me to act, and all I do is call upon a feeble pebble. It floats before me, splitting up and coming back together as I want. Thoughts of spikes cross my mind, and I throw them ahead but half my body. Then I pull them back.
Doing only so much as to ease the pain, but I can't remove it. It's begging me to fight, to protect the hive. And while my heart thinks one thing, my mind knows something else. The hive is gone, there is no protecting it at all.
It must go for my sake, I want it to go for my sake. All so I can live the truth and reality of this world all the sooner. The world is a lonely place, and for an osibindah, that is unthinkable. We must always have purpose, and my purpose is here. Hunting down that one who never submitted... The one who could have succeeded me, from what I saw.
All he will succeed me in, is meeting Death himself. All he will succeed me in is dying before me, leaving me to live my life as I see fit. Free of my instincts, free of what has driven me for so long. I will be able to live a life... Like a mortal normally might?
I don't know.
A smile comes to my chittering lips and I bare my teeth at the challenge, "I do not know."
I do not know what life has in store for me, and there is so much for me to learn. I could simply watch a village and its daily life go on by. I could try and free other earth shamans of their narrow-minded confinement. I could even simply show myself to an idiotic or curious mind, sneak my way into civilisation as the mortals know it for nothing grand at all. Something simple and merely driven by curiosity for the world beyond a hive.
Without a need to butcher and destroy, what point is there? I did everything for the hive, all I do is for the hive. With each death of the hive remnant, that becomes less and less the case. Soon, all of this will be for me. Every fight, every meal and every night I sleep.
It's weird, really. Very much so. Weird in a way I struggle to think about or consider. Yet I can come to a conclusion.
My job as an earth shaman is to protect the hive, both in the literal sense of the rock and in the bloody sense of the people. I always had a preference for mountains with easy access to the surface. While many hives go deep underground, having only the barest tunnels for the sake of raids and living. I did not do that.
I chose mountain hives for their access to the surface. Instinct demanded and got what it wanted out of me, but I extracted what I wanted just as much. Clear skies and open views. Natural balconies and platforms for me to look out at the world from.
I saw the cities the humans built, the great camps galloped about by the kelbalids. I know the fruitful beauty of the aelenvari and so many more races. Dragons and wyverns have concerned themselves with my lookouts, my homes. I survived each and every one of them, winning through cunning and submission where it was needed.
Mountain after mountain, so many beautiful views. Views of the open world in all its glory and might. I needn't even remain in this continent. I might not be able to read, but I can see, and I've seen much of the world that lies beyond my life. Continents that have perhaps known nothing of what an osibindah is. Continents I can exist upon without ever having to hide myself.
Yet, just as that is that, there's a curiosity I want to act on. I want to walk among the humans I've come to fear, hate, respect and concern myself with. The ones I fight today and the ones I have fought for so long. Much like him, really... He's only still here with us living souls if he has done just that.
He cannot be here still if he hasn't lived among the mortals of this world. I will emulate his past for my future. And I will start by taking his life and leaving him with nothing more. His blood will baptise my ascent to the surface, my new life.
Now, soon, later, it matters not. I will leave this mountain. An osibindah shall walk away victorious, and I shall have it my way. My revenge will be satiated, and my freedom will blossom. So much will change, and so much will stay the same. I am the constant, the one constant to all of this.
"And none of you shall join me... None of you will ever join me at all." I chitter away, watching more and more of my hive remnant get run through. Arrows fill them out. Desperate hands pull away at their carapace, and axes chop limbs. Swords sever hearts in their entirety.
One sword in particular, the one person here of any power of note. The witch of this mountain land. She's coming for me, looking for me, and my fiddling is all but helping her. My armour and staff will all but confirm it.
A sigh parts my jaw open, and I look myself over, taking in the crushed helms of so many battles. Raids, ambushes, duels. The lot. I will need to leave this behind, the legacy of my past. My self-expression before I came to know what true self looked like.
I cannot roam free like this, dressed for the sake of inciting terror and reputation. I must simply be an osibindah who can speak, cast and think in the ways all mortals do. No matter how stupid, bright, dull or sharp they might be. I can think like them, and I'll show them the cunning I used to keep a hive around, to keep a lone life about.
And I can start with her... As she cuts down the last of the hive remnant.
"Free me, Witch. FREE ME!" I demand of her, watching with growing excitement and held-back instinct as the last warriors die. Osibindah cannot think, they cannot comprehend betrayal or anything like that. They simply do as ordered, what I order.
Each death brings me to what I want, what I want... What I want!
"KILL THEM ALL!" I roar as my ultimate order, for both the bugs, and the mortals. Kill them all, kill them all, and leave me with no hive left to defend. Free me of the responsibility, the burden!
I want it gone, and I want to be free... It's all I could ever ask of you, Witch Leader! All I want from you while we do not fight, and I want it now. My freedom, freedom from this and that and so much more!
She's giving it to me, yes... Yes! Give it to me! Give me my freedom!
"GIVE ME MY FREEDOM!" I howl with all the bestial might I can as I drum away with my staff. The very last vestiges of my instincts vanishing with each smashing slam. Then...
Silence.
Complete and utter silence, so much gained and yet nothing is there.
There is nothing and no one in my mind anymore. No other hive can reach me like mine did. It's all gone. Every single warrior is dead, and the workers were all left in the same sands as the queen was. Every egg is stillborn, and all my efforts are wasted.
But... "I am alive!"