1. Individual's Collective

Ants. I didn't understand them before. How can such mindless, weak, and insignificant creatures find themselves a place in this world?

I saw a lot of them on the forest floor, they followed an orderly line, with a few scouts that deviated from the rest.

Whenever I watched insects like them, I often wondered what I am to their eyes.

Could they see my looming form above them, observing their every little movement? My naïve self couldn't tell.

I extended my hand, a dark scythe blade, and landed it near them. I waited... until finally, one brave adventurer stepped onto it. I raised it close to my face.

The little creature on it crawled around, looking for something before halting. It appeared to face me, with its two soulless black dots for sight.

I stared back at it, with my own compound eyes. My antennae mimicked the ant's own. I admired its form. Its carapace was as dark as mine. Its mandibles are as stiff as my mouth-pincers.

I felt excitement, thinking the creature could see me, the same way I could comprehend it. But I would only be disappointed. From the ant's almost blindness, I was nothing to it but a giant blur. But I didn't know that, so I hoped that it would at the very least react, unlike all the others.

The ant turned, and searched on my scythe again. I was just invisible to it. Its obliviousness, and carelessness, I found too familiar. A creature shackled by permanent ignorance. I felt ashamed to have expected so much.

It annoyed me.

I pushed the ant into the soil and squashed it. I wiped its splattered corpse off to the grass.

I looked at the rest of the ants. They continued on with their thoughtless existence. The death I had caused had no bearing on them.

I looked around and noticed myself dwarfed by the countless trees that surrounded me. Each one of the house-wide pillars of bark that made up the massive forest reached heights over a hundred men tall. Surrounded by such ancient, vine entangled, and oversized trees, I appeared like a real centipede, one that wasn't as big as a human. One without mantis-like scythe claws that could cut even stone.

The heaven of leaves far far above curtained the sunlight so dim it could barely touch my antennae. There was a cacophony of screaming and screeching birds that echoed from the endless trees, yet I saw not a single one in view. An unpleasant feeling came to me, and a thought. Was I just another ant? Surrounded by massive plants, with a watching monster that I can neither see nor comprehend?

I clawed the thoughts off my mind. I found no time for fruitless worry, I had to serve my mother.

I took off into the forest and searched for a hunt to satisfy my matriarch. I saw silhouettes of monstrous beasts, reptiles, and avians from afar, even from the branches high up. Many ignored me, but some watched out of curiosity, others caution. I entertained none of them.

Perhaps they could have been my prey, but I preferred to avoid risky endeavors.

There, between the trees, among the shrubbery, a heavy creature marching in the forest. It was a giant beetle, with a carapace of what appeared to be hard rock. I, a silent black centipede, lurked below the plants closer and closer undetected. My scythes slowly raised as I readied to pounce.

Suddenly, the stone beetle stopped, sensing my presence.

I gave it no time to prepare. I leapt at it and landed on its back. I unleashed a storm of scythes upon it, yet the stone armor proved thick. No matter how deep the cut, the monster was unhurt. It jumped and tossed like a ridden bull. But I held still, unshaken off.

I crawled closer to its head and coiled myself around the creature's neck. My countless legs scratched its armor as I spun tighter and tighter around it.

It rammed itself at the nearby tree trying to flatten me, but it soon realized it had underestimated my exoskeleton, harder than mere stone. I tightened more and more around its neck where its armor is thinner. Then I saw it, it began to crack.

I pulled away, and lanced my two scythes onto its neck, ripping off shards of armor. Then, with one quick slice, Its head fell, and after, its decapitated body.

I crawled off its corpse and towards its head. The head snapped its mandibles in the air, and waved its antennae in a panic. It's still alive.

I took the head and stabbed a scythe up its throat hole, deep enough in its mind that I touched the back of its eyes.

I pulled on something, and witnessed the beetle freeze stiff. Its eyes went cold. I ripped the object out of its head.

I raised the object up with both scythes, to get a better view of it using the filtered sunlight above.

A transparent orb the size of an eyeball, in its center a silent lightning, zapping desperately in a pointless attempt to escape its tiny prison. The erratic power within it was the monster's soul.

This monster core, even I had one.

It appeared so delicious, I wanted… I wanted it to become one with me, to absorb it and integrate its power. But I was still a foolish servant of my mother, and so, I simply wielded the orb between my mandibles. and headed towards my hive.

I passed by several trees, ignoring the suspicious gazes of greater monsters around me. None dared challenge me fortunately. Perhaps I was too weak for their interest, or they feared my kin.

Almost an hour of cautious travel had passed, and I noticed something. Crawling out behind a tree, a familiar face greeted me. A face exactly the same as mine. Black carapace, two scythes, countless legs. I met one of my sisters. I paused to see what she would do, but she simply moved past me.

I moved on, I began to see more and more of my siblings, on branches and the sides of trees. They were guards, watching the territory for intruders from the high ground. I moved deeper into the territory. I saw several groups of 10-20 of my siblings, organized hunting packs that I could not find a place in. They crawled towards or away from home.

I followed a group heading towards the hive, a number of them wielded cores on their mandibles, perhaps they had returned to surrender their catches too. I stood by several of them, yet they did not seem to notice me.

I witnessed between the trees a massive silver wax structure. The hive and home of my kin, the Scypedes. Hole entrances were scattered all around its waxy structure, and identical Scypedes entered and exited. My siblings were seen until the highest branch, they were peppered all where is visible, standing on the sides of trees, on boulders, and between the grasses and shrubbery. Serving as guards of the silver hive.

The pathways in and out the hive outside had been worn out for so long the grasses had formed a natural path, countless dirt roads from the distance all fall back to the silver hive.

With the group I followed, we entered the structure. Green bioluminescence scattered here and there lit up the pale interior, we passed by several chambers and organic corridors, until we had finally entered it. The Queen's royal chamber.

My mother, and matriarch, stood tall, four times my size and with two pairs of scythe claws. My emotionless siblings dropped their captured monster cores to the wax floor, and took off immediately. I was the last to surrender my catch, when I turned back, the rest of my siblings had already gone and left me.

The Queen leaned down and ate the orbs one by one. But left the one I provided aside. Instead, she used two scythes to grab the core and held it near her mandibles. She bit. And began to suck in the essence within the orb. I watched the electric energy inside the core dim as it gravitated towards her maw. Nothing was left but an empty round transparent husk.

But, it was not yet over. A needle from her mouth popped out and inserted into the orb, then from it a glowing liquid. She dropped the core to the ground. The fluid within the orb floated to the middle, and began to morph and warp into a lightning. Then mother vomited a sludge of wet nutritious goo at the orb.

The monster orb, surrounded by sustenance, began to absorb it all. Flesh emerged from the core as it constructed its body. Starting with the fleshy head, then long body, a pair of soft legs for each pale segment. A pair of limbs near the front emerged, which's stumps grew black scythes. From the scythes, the arms became encased in a black shell which regenerated and spread all throughout the soft body, giving it an exoskeleton. A giant black centipede, with two scythe blades.

I saw in front of me, a new sibling. As if the new Scypede hadn't just been born a moment ago, it immediately crawled out of the royal chamber.

The Queen noticed me. She looked at me as if there was something odd with me. She was right. Deep down, I knew I was supposed to be elsewhere, perhaps hunting alongside my sisters. But instead, I found myself standing in what felt like a dream.

It seemed strange, seeing my mother look at me like that. My siblings were emotionless, and mindless. They served the same master as I, yet they felt no different from ants. My mother was the only one who truly looked at me.

I didn't know what to do at that moment, she stared at me, as if waiting for me to do something. Then, a sound came from her. I didn't know what these sounds were.

"I... do... not quite... understand... too."

She looked at the empty space on her left, speaking to the air.

"Perhaps she... is..."

She looked back at me.

"No... I... will not." She looked into my eyes. "Deviant... or... not... she... is my... child."

She crawled closer to me and gently picked me up. She turned me around and around to see every inch of me, but found nothing of concern.

"See. A loyal... child... the same... as the... others..."

She softly placed me on the ground, and nudged me to go. As I left the royal chamber, she watched me with her emotionless eyes. But, despite that... her eyes... I will never forget, it was not like that of an ant.

As I left the hive, I promised myself to be forever loyal.