The Day of the Nuptial Flight Page 3

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  The screech of fuzzipillars woke me. They started in the darkest hour of night when no sky queens shed light and the aboveground hive was as dark as the catacombs of my former palace. For the first time in hours, my eyes felt at home.

  The fuzzipillars crammed under the overhang, squirming over each other like a knot of worms during mating. They knocked dirt into my tunnel and blocked what was coming into view.

  My antennae twitched, sensing danger, but the air was so thick with agitation it was difficult to hear anything else. Straining my antennae, the clack-clack-clack of arachnipede jaws echoed nearby. The fuzzipillar screams grew louder. They slicked their bodies with bitter juice, a defense that would repel some species of arachnipedes. Giant mandibles appeared above the wall. An arachnipede’s leg reached up and over, sinking into the dirt before me.

  A flash of light shot from behind our overhang, striking the leg. The arachnipede retracted, hissed, and sprang into the enclosure. The fuzzipillars, mad with fear, pressed as close to the wall as they could. The beam of light shot out again but missed. The arachnipede closed in.

  If only I had made my hole a little deeper!

  Another arachnipede climbed into the enclosure. The wall crackled with blue. Light shot out again. The taste of charred flesh met my antennae. The closest one reached under the enclosure and yanked out a fuzzipillar. I ducked my head down, unable to take in the sight of one of those gentle beasts being eaten. What my eyes didn’t see, my antennae did: the zip of the light passing above, the sizzle as it met arachnipede armor and ate through, the reek of death, and the blood of a fuzzipillar on the ground.

  Arachnipede feet scuttled away. The fuzzipillars continued to tremble in a tight bunch. I exited my hole. An arachnipede lay unmoving. The fuzzipillar it had captured shuddered on the ground, her sides lacerated where the arachnipede’s pinchers had pierced her. The poison was already taking effect.

  I recognized her scent. It was my fuzzipillar, the one who had brought me to this hive. I touched my antennae to hers and sang a lullaby, the last lullaby she would ever hear.

  The arachnipedes came twice more during the night. I dug my hole deeper into the earth.