The winter season came to the Colony then. Every tunnel both high and low suffered from the Wind God reaching in from Outside. Skith felt a low drumming at all times from the higher tunnels where the air was colder. The fearless foragers walked without comfort through the Colony's tunnels, waiting for the days when the sun would come again and they might return Outside.

  And while the lower tunnels were spared the cold, another evil came to Skith. Death-smell was among them always, and there were many who died without wounds. Skith learned from Akkis that a sickness had come to them, a curse from a single small piece of the God of Death and Eating. Those who were unclean suffered most; their legs became weak, and foul lymph squeezed from between the plates of their armor.

  Skith and Akkis and all who still had the strength to do their labors walked to even the furthest tunnels doing them. They had taken upon themselves a labor of tending to those sickened, and Skith found little comfort in it. Being always among death-smell brought learning to her that seemed to be evil. So many days of discomforted labor brought unease to the lower tunnels. Skith had never smelled such a cloud of it, and she found that her own scent matched it. She tapped her feelers sharply on the walls of the tunnels with many others beside her. But their tapping would not be answered. It could not drown out the drumming that came from above, and Skith's thoughts often climbed upwards to the eggs she had not tended for many days.

  Only Akkis seemed unaffected by the unrest among the lower tunnels. Skith learned much from her as she followed behind, having taken up a small labor to behave more like Akkis who walked among the death-smell with strength in her legs. Many times Skith was unable to approach the sick and dying, so foul was the stench that seeped from them, but Akkis approached without fear. She and others who had lived for many seasons took upon themselves the labor of disposal, for the dead could not be left to clog the tunnels.

  “You will not join our labors with unsteady thoughts,” said Akkis to Skith. “You will tend to those who the God of Death and Eating has not yet come to. They will learn your name, and so they will tend you in times when you are weak and they are walking. Learn that while this winter is harsh, the spring-season will repel it.” Skith agreed, but the troubles in her thoughts persisted, and they returned often to the higher tunnels, and they stayed there longer with each day that death-smell remained upon her feelers.

  One day while Skith and Akkis cleaned each others' armor, Skith asked, “Why does the smell of fear not cling to you, when so much death-smell is laid on your armor? You will share to me what learning makes you steady when evil surrounds you.”

  Akkis disagreed firmly. “It is learning that will bring you no comfort. You may not smell fear upon me, but learn now that it is buried, and is not killed or repelled from my insides.”

  Skith asked her question again, on four days that came after, and each time Akkis's answer was the same. Skith then took upon a labor to learn what Akkis would not share to her, so that she could join her leader's labors and follow her deep into tunnels thick with evil scents.

  Skith followed Akkis, with skill she had gathered in the pit, for the shadows where she walked had become thick in the lower tunnels. Akkis and four others carried two who had died, and Skith watched them with her feelers curled away from the potent death-smell. They came to the pit, where Skith's fear was loud, and the dead were thrown into its dark. Skith straightened her feelers, eager for the joyful scent of completed labors to give her respite from death-smell. But the scent she had expected did not meet her feelers, and so it seemed that Akkis and the three others were still doing labors.

  Skith followed them to a dark, cramped tunnel that had been dug roughly, and its dirt was not stamped flat. There, Skith saw Aik who had five legs, along with Tikka, and Skatt and Tati who labored together often. They dug away a pile of dirt that hid a trove of rotted sweetpinks, and Skith watched, with all her thoughts summoned behind her eyes, as they drew the fouled juice from them and shared it among themselves. Skith felt a tremble in her middle, and eagerness to learn of secret tastes, but the stinging scent of the juice drove her away.

  When she found Akkis again, she asked her questions once more, and this time Akkis gave a different answer, soaked as she was in the smell of the rotted sweetpinks.

  “It seems to me that you have made it a labor to draw this learning from me,” said Akkis, standing with a strange unsteadiness. “I will tell you, because I have learned of the evil that comes from a hunger for learning that is not sated.”

  “This may be strange to your thoughts, but our Colony is not alone. There are other chambers, other tunnels, with Queens and daughters within them. I have spent two seasons Outside, where other colonies sit under the sun's gaze beside ours. I will ask you, Skith, what have you learned of venom? What have you learned of the welling behind your jaws that comes when your fear is freed from the grip of your thoughts?”

  “I have not seen it, I have not smelled it,” said Skith. “I have learned only of how my namesake used it in the Replete's story of the first foraging, when she summoned it to defeat the God of Death and Eating.”

  “There is a use for your venom that is not learned from stories. If your venom passes from behind your jaws into the armor of a sister, she will surely die. There is war-making to do Outside, and I have learned of this labor. It is not only the God of Death and Eating who hates the Queen and her daughters. I have walked in the tunnels of a Colony that was not mine. I have brought up my venom and squeezed it into daughters of a hateful Queen who sought to do the same to us. The fear from those days has not left me, but it no longer travels from me. I have buried it beneath many labors that I have done since, and much good was buried beside my fear.”

  Skith said then, “You will share this skill with me, and I will learn it. My fear brings much trouble to me, and I would have it buried where it cannot disrupt my labors.”

  Akkis disagreed. “This skill has brought me no comfort. Never again may I sleep-travel, for I have buried much fear, and it is not safe for my thoughts to go digging. It is better to let your fear escape you into the air, so that your sisters beside you may smell it, and labor in banishing it.”

  Skith took this learning, and said, “I have learned your name, and you have learned mine when it was made. I will banish your fear, as I banished my own when I climbed from the pit.”

  Akkis said nothing then, and rotten sweetpink juice dripped from her jaws. She told Skith, “You are a strange sister, Skith. There is much in the pit that you have brought to the Colony. It seems to me that you may have some skill in the banishing of fear that I do not. I will tell you then of a fear that I found in the strange Colony Outside.”

  “When I was there, in those halls that were dug by daughters of a strange Queen, with my jaws dripping venom and my armor slick with the lymph of those whose armor we had split, I came across scents that I had learned of. I expected to find only evil and its strangeness in those chambers, but instead I found familiar things. Behind the death-smell, behind the fear of the wounded, I smelled Iki-Ikas. Behind the soldiers whose legs we had torn, whose armor we had split with rock-breaking grip, I smelled Rakkitik. I smelled Hiyiki-Haka behind the nest-keepers who drove us back from the Queen's chamber even as we tore their conduit-lines and carried away their food.”

  “And their Queen?” asked Skith. “Did you smell the First Queen Atiati-kikitia?”

  “I did not walk into the Queen's chamber. My thoughts were stiff with the evil of it. But many of my sisters did, and we who stayed behind did not search their thoughts after. Now our Colony has plentiful stores, much of it being food that we seized from daughters who clung to their Queen and did good labors for her. I cannot walk in the higher tunnels now, for in doing so, the scents of my sisters will come to my insides, and those buried days will be drawn upwards. I cannot refuse the learning I found in that Colony Outside, and it is learning that makes all the daughters above smell as enemies to me, and my enemies as sisters to me.”

  Akkis probed Skith clumsily with her feelers then, and said, “You are strange, Skith. Your smell is not of the Colony, and that is why it brings me comfort to lead you and share learning with you who has come from strangeness, with strange scents.”

  Akkis smeared the kissec she had left in her sharing-stomach over Skith, for the comfort of a familiar labor. It was fouled by the rotted juice that she had taken from the sour sweetpinks. Skith was not comforted to be covered in the stench, and she felt her thoughts again travel to the higher tunnels. She asked Akkis, “What of the eggs in their egg-chambers? What was done with them in the labor of war-making?”

  “We brought them here,” said Akkis. “They grew, and learned, and they have now the smell of the Colony upon them. They labor now for a Queen who did not birth them.”

  Skith's feelers tapped then, for her thoughts were stirred. An eagerness to go to the higher tunnels had brewed in her upon hearing of the eggs stolen from the colony Outside. In her mind she saw the eggs being carried out of their comfort and into the harsh Outside. It seemed to Skith an evil thing.

  “I will go to the higher tunnels,” she said. “My thoughts will not leave the egg-chambers and my labors there.”

  But as Skith made to leave, Akkis clenched her jaws on Skith's leg. “You will not!” said Akkis. “It is winter!” A hot and unpleasant scent was all about her, tinged with the sting of the rotted sweetpinks. “The soldiers will catch you, for they are watchful in this hungry season.”

  Skith was fearless then, for she was prepared with her learning of sound and speed from the pit. But there was fear around her, thick wafts of it that pumped from behind Akkis's clamped jaws.

  Skith could not hold back the welling behind her own jaws. Wreathed as she was in fear and feeling her legs restrained, her learning of the pit rose within her. Drops of venom came forth, and Akkis released her quickly, her feelers high and her jaws shut. Skith fled from her leader then, and Akkis, trembling as she had not done with death-smell around her, watched her follower disappear into the tunnels that went upward.

  As Skith climbed higher, the air bit her with cold. It made her thoughts and her walking sluggish. The drumming in the walls grew louder as she neared the center, where the conduit-lines were crowded on all sides with workers to clean them and soldiers to guard them. It was a frantic labor that found no completion. The small beasts that walked underfoot were missing, and the air was stale around her feelers. It made the higher tunnels seem hostile to her like the deathless winter mountains that her namesake had traveled in the Replete's story.

  Her eagerness to see the egg-chambers had soured. It seemed then to her less welcoming, and filled with threat, promising no comfort as her labors had always done before. It was a hunger now, and she feared that the God of Death and Eating had found a way inside her. The learning of war that Akkis had given her wormed between her thoughts and tugged at them, changing their shape until she watched the workers around her in the manner that she remembered watching the dark shapes in the pit, where fear traveled without trouble.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  But she would not let that fear inside, for she would not let it foul her good labors of egg-tending that she was eager to do. And as she approached the egg-chambers, she found great comfort in the tiny songs she could hear from the chambers beyond.

  But as she neared them, she was met by workers who repelled her. She said to them, “I will pass! I am Skith, and you have learned my name. I am skilled in egg-tending, this you have learned.”

  But the other workers who tended the eggs still repelled her. Their feelers recoiled from her armor. “You will leave us,” they said. “Your smell is fouler than Skith's, for there is death smell upon it.”

  But Skith would not be sent away, such was her hunger to return to her labors. She climbed them, and they made to lift her and carry her away. Skith's jaws clattered, and they did so hatefully. The drumming in the walls grew stronger, and warnings were given of an intruder in the egg-chambers. A smell of alarm erupted among the other workers, and the eggs' songs went silent beneath it.

  Skith was frantic then. She made for the eggs, in order to feed them and feel the completion of her labor, but the workers gripped three of her legs. Her own smell of alarm rose to meet theirs, but it was weak beside their smell that was made by so many. Venom welled again behind her jaws, and the workers released her with lifted feelers and open jaws.

  “Impostor! Impostor!” the workers cried, and many more feelers raised in the passage outside. “Smell its venom! An impostor has come to the egg-chambers!”

  Skith's thoughts had become a terrible spiral. The alarm scent raged in her mind like a thrashing spider's legs. She had learned to fear those threats that could bring such an uproar to others, a fear that turned inward, bit deep into her thoughts and disordered them further. She clung to the roof of the chamber and leaped free of the workers and their grasping jaws. A swarm greeted her outside, but few would dare approach an impostor with venom-soaked jaws.

  Her learning from the pit came to her again. The threat before her was too large, too loud to hide from, and she thought only of speed. She fled to the lower tunnels even as they bit at her armor, for speed was all that would serve her now. She spilled out the food in her sharing-stomach that was a weight that slowed her. Her legs were imprecise, and they tore hunks of dirt from the tunnel walls. Lines of pain bloomed along her armor where she had been bitten and scraped, and her thoughts pressed tightly against them.

  The workers chasing her did not follow into the warmer tunnels below. But when she stopped to settle her thoughts, a terrible and familiar smell reached her feelers. She saw a soldier that still followed, and it was the soldier named Rathak who had chased her in the autumn-season. The drumming from the higher tunnels pounded through the earth behind her as she approached with jabbing feelers.

  “Impostor!” said Rathak. “I have found you freshly! I will kill you and you will no longer hide your threat from my Queen and Colony! You will not escape me, even in the darkest tunnels that no other soldiers dare enter, such is my skill and my eagerness to feel your armor cracking!”

  Skith fled, and she was followed. She had learned the shape of the lower tunnels, and she took many twisting paths through new and roughly dug tunnels. But she could not escape Rathak, and her learning from the pit would not serve her. Skith could not rely on size or on speed, for Rathak was larger and had long legs that carried her swiftly. Nor could silence hide Skith, for Rathak had learned her scent and her thoughts gripped it tightly.

  Skith fled deeper, along forgotten paths, and she became covered in earth that was warm and wet. She slipped into small tunnels that Rathak could not enter. She ran across loose mud that Rathak sank into. She hid amongst the beetles that ate in the dark, and Rathak could not place her among so many things that were small. But Rathak did not tire, and she sang her terrible songs that are shared between soldiers to make Skith despair.

  “You will not escape me,” said Rathak to Skith who was out of reach. “I have learned of your kind that walk among the daughters of the Queen; your kind that masks your scent to trick us; your kind that whispers evil to the workers as labor to the Gods Outside. I have made it my labor to lift you and break you as I have broken many others with scent like yours!”

  Skith could not speak, for she was very afraid and her jaws were clogged with venom that spilled freely and prickled on her tongue. Rathak said to her, “Bring your venom! Beneath it I smell the fear upon you and I feel none! I will pull off your legs and I will break your head between my jaws which have no need of venom! I have within me the strength of Rakkitik who is mightier than any threat!”

  She heard the voice of Rakkitik in Rathak's soldier-smell, and it was far louder than the voice of Iki-Ikas who is within all workers. All the piles of learning within her were falling down, and she was ruled by a fearful voice that sent her to be among more workers that could drown out Rakkitik's commands.

  With Rathak precisely following, Skith led the chase back to familiar places. She came upon Skatt and Tati who labored together often, but with Rathak's smell about them they bared their jaws at Skith and would not let her approach. Many others who had learned of Skith's name did the same, and Skith found no comfort among them until she came across Aik who had five legs.

  The rotted sweetpink smell was strong about Aik, and when Skith approached her, she did not bare her jaws; such was the confusion in her thoughts that were made imprecise by rotting juice.

  “The pit,” said Aik to Skith. “You should go there. It is where Akkis labors to find you.”

  Rathak appeared from the darkness beyond, and Aik cowered before her soldier-smell. Skith fled onward, stepping over many daughters who lay still around her in sickness. Rathak stepped on them as she pursued, and Skith heard armor cracking behind her.

  When Skith found the pit, she thought that she should enter it, and hide in it. No soldier, no matter their skill, would follow her there, this she had learned. But Akkis stood at the pit's edge, and her comfort was potent upon seeing Skith.

  “Why are you afraid? Why does your venom pour from your jaws so?” asked Akkis. There were many other workers around her, all of them in the labor of disposal, pushing the empty armor of the dead into the blackness of the pit. “Why do we hear drumming from the higher tunnels?”

  Skith's venom drooled from her, and Rathak entered the chamber before Skith could answer. Akkis and her sisters raised their feelers at the alarm-smell, but only Akkis had her jaws bared.

  “I labor for the Queen!” said Rathak. “I have found an impostor, and I will kill her, and her venom will go into the pit!”

  But Akkis said, “Smell now the scent of Iki-Ikas, who protects all those who lead! Skith is my follower, and she is no impostor, this I have learned! Her name was made in the Colony, and we daughters in these tunnels have learned it.”

  Akkis stood between Skith and Rathak, and seemed very small before the soldier whose jaws were as long as her feelers. Rathak's soldier-smell rolled from her thickly, and Skith trembled before it, but Akkis was steady.

  “Your thoughts are twisted by the impostor's evil,” said Rathak. “I will kill any who would protect one who labors for the Gods Outside!”

  Akkis raised her front-most legs in a spider's stance. The worker-smell was strong about her, for it was joined. “Come and take, you who bring death without fearing it. I will wound you in the taking!”

  Their armor clattered as they met. The crushing jaws of Rakkitik, bared then by her daughter Rathak, came together to hold Akkis, and held air only. Venom that was thick and dark lined Akkis's jaws, and she moved with learned skill between the soldier's legs. She bit at them and pulled them harshly to make Rathak stumble.

  The scent that poured from Akkis was an inviting one. Other workers smelled it and approached, finding a desperate labor that needed joining. The soldier-smell was not able to repel them, for it was Rathak's alone. Skith heard two Gods Inside in her thoughts. She heard Rakkitik, the God of Strength and Watching, being swallowed by a great bellow that was many voices, each having in them Iki-Ikas who had broken into many pieces.

  There were many workers that climbed on Rathak then. They held each of her six legs, until Rathak could not walk. Rathak's toothy jaws found workers between them, and any who were caught were broken into two halves and killed. But her skill was in lifting great weights, and she could not hold the many small workers who bit at her and held her still. Rathak strained against them, and two of her legs came free, and Rathak was then four-legged. She crashed onto the workers who held her four legs then, and crushed them beneath her, spilling a screeching alarm from them.

  Many workers who were weak with sickness died then in Rathak's jaws, and the living and the dead were flung into the pit and would not return. Rathak atop her four legs saw Skith then, and she became desperate to complete her labor before she was killed. Akkis leaped upon her then, wedging her jaws between armor. Rathak writhed and her armor's plates closed upon Akkis, and Skith could no longer be kept from the invitation to join Akkis in her labor.

  Skith drove her jaws into Rathak's eyes that were softer than her armor. It was a terrible learning from the pit that was nearby. She felt her enemy's feelers tapping wildly upon her, and Skith felt her venom passing into the soldier Rathak. Those feelers slowed, until Rathak fell dead upon the rough dirt at the pit's edge.

  The workers who remained quickly began to push Rathak's body, to be dropped into the pit. It took an effort from Skith to pull her jaws free. A noxious, blinding scent that was spilling from Rathak's wound covered Skith. Akkis watched her, with the hideous death-smell from Rathak upon her as well. She said to Skith, “We are marked, you and I. A soldier's death-smell cannot be cleaned.”

  Akkis moved quickly to Skith and made to share food with her, for Skith's hunger was obvious to all others. Akkis filled Skith then, leaving nothing in her own sharing-stomach, and she said, “You will leave. You must go Outside, for the scent of a killed soldier is upon you.”

  Skith despaired then, and disagreed. “I cannot leave my labors here. I cannot go without my sisters, I cannot flee and be away.”

  “Your labors have died with Rathak,” she said. “You will go Outside, where death-smell will not be strange. Go and find new labors, so that the learning you gathered here will not be lost.”

  Skith would not leave. The workers at her sides came at her, to repel her, for the labor of killing had faded and they smelled a stranger. Akkis reached her feelers out to smell the fear on Skith, and she said, “I will lead you one last time. There are older paths here that will take you Outside through entrance halls that are buried.”

  Akkis led Skith through old tunnels that were made in the earliest days of the Colony by daughters who had learned little. She kept her feelers forward, smelling for the bitter and familiar scent of Outside that would wash away the foulness behind them. She had many answers for Skith, for there was much learning still to share with her as she had shared her food. But Skith asked no questions and she followed in silence, and it seemed to her that she was walking in sleep-travel.

  They passed murals like those in the entrance halls. They had crumbled long ago, when the Colony was young and the Queen still walked. Little could be read from them, for the stories upon them had been learned anew and been changed. But Skith saw a strange thing on those murals, and amidst the evil that sent her from the Colony and the Queen she had first sought, she asked a question.

  “Who is the strange God I see carved on these ancient walls?” Skith asked. She looked past great Atiati-kikitia the First Queen, with the Gods Inside assembled around her, and with the God of Death and Eating and the Gods Outside as a cloud over them. She saw Hiyiki-Haka the Cradle God at the First Queen's side, showing the tenderness of the nest-keepers. She saw Rakkitik the God of Strength and Watching raised high on her legs in challenge to the evil above them without fear. And low on the ground was small Iki-Ikas the God of Rest and Searching, digging the first tunnels of the Colony while the others watched the sky.

  “There are the Gods Inside, and there are the Gods Outside, and there is something between them,” said Skith, and her gaze was drawn to something that was carved to be hidden between the trees that were behind the Gods. There she saw a ring of six eyes upon a shadowed head, and beside it were the shapes of many beasts that watched Gods Inside and Outside with equal suspicion. She asked, “Who is the God that watches from the trees?”

  Akkis answered quickly, for her thoughts were thickly upon Skith, gathering all that they could while Skith remained following. “That is a God whose name is learned by few, and buried by many. There are none in the Colony who hold her scent. She is Sikas Six-Eyes, the God among beasts.”

  Skith tapped her feelers on the worn mural where Sikas was carved, the God among beasts standing with legs bent and ready for fleeing. She stayed for a short time, searching precisely. “Perhaps Sikas Six-Eyes is a shape like mine, for I have been also among beasts, and I am also fleeing.”

  “I have not learned this,” said Akkis. “Sikas Six-Eyes does not tend to eggs, or to sickened sisters, and she does not follow a sister who leads as you have.” She made to share food with Skith, but this was not precise, because her sharing-stomach was empty. “You are of the Colony, Skith. Many have learned your name and you have done labors for the Queen.”

  Skith's discomfort and her fear roiled anew, and she said, “I have learned that I am an impostor. I have learned from the soldier Rathak of my threat. I am not like the daughters that I have I labored beside. I was not tended in the egg-chambers, and I did not taste kissec when I was soft. Sisters have learned the name Skith, and I learned this name also, because it was shared to me. The shape of a worker is a thing I have learned, as did Iki who was the God of Death and Eating in disguise. It seems to me that I am like to that sister who came from Outside, and I am to return there.”

  Skith's head was filthy then with crumbled stone and ancient dust, and so Akkis made to clean her once more. And while she cleaned, she said, “Akkis is to me also a learned thing. And as I learned, my thoughts carried the name Akkis deep among them, and their shape changed. You must learn many shapes, Skith, and wear them as the Gods do. I have learned that Skith is a daughter of the Queen, and she has a piece of Iki-Ikas inside her. I think that there will be others who will learn of the name Skith, and it will be the name of a daughter with a different shape and new labors that are joined by a number of sisters beyond counting.”

  Skith continued to draw her feelers over the faded mural while she was being cleaned. She asked Akkis, “Do you know a story of this strange God, this Sikas Six-Eyes?”

  Akkis had learned a story of Sikas, the God among beasts, long ago in her time Outside where the oldest stories are often found in still and empty chambers where the wind god walks. She led Skith onward through folding tunnels, until they emerged into the flat and bitter air Outside, where Skith's reaching thoughts were carried away by cold wind.

  “It is night, and the Sun's gaze is not upon us. Stand beside me under the gentle moon who keeps many secrets that she learns. She will not share the things she gathers from us with the Gods Outside or Inside. I will tell you a tale of Sikas Six-Eyes, and my labor of leading you will end.”