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Okay, so Queen Elizant finds out that Leif is dead, because the cordyceps controlling him was removed by the orders of Queen Bianca.

The Bee Kingdom is doomed to a war with the Ant Kingdom. What's worse for them, I'd bet Venus would turn her acolytes against the Bee Kingdom because she really cared about Team Snakemouth, and if Acolyte Aria can fend off a Wasp invasion single handedly (using Venus's assistance, probably), a team of acolytes could destroy the Bee Kingdom.

And the Ant Kingdom would probably call for assistance from the Wasp Kingdom, a kingdom of which Team Snakemouth had a very profound effect on due to the three ridding them of Queen Vanessa's usurper, Hoaxe, so I'd think the Wasps would readily take on the Bee Kingdom as well.

Queen Bianca has got a lot of explaining to do. Maybe abdication is necessary as well.

MKB Chapter 4

When you are lost, the best thing to do is stay exactly where you are.

Content Warnings: Graphic description of injury, Unreliable Narrator, Field Medicine, etc.

(Read Below or on AO3)

You are Vi, and when you were a young bee, after your first flight lesson, the caretakers always said that if you got lost, to fly way up high, above everyone's heads, and the adults would know you were lost and help you find your caretaker. Or if you were alone, it would make it easier to find you, to just stay right there, and hover in place as long as you can.

Kabbu always said that if either you or Leif ever got lost, to just stay where you were, and he would come find you. Leif had asked what Kabbu was supposed to do if he was the one that got lost. Kabbu said that he would wait for the two of you to find him of course, that you would find him just as he would find you.

You'd said that was dumb and none of you were ever gonna get lost because you're all adults, ignoring Leif saying you were still kid, besides, you guys are never more than 15 feet apart anyway. How could you lose a member of your team if you're always up in each other's wings?

You are lost and you really don't want to be found. Your feet stay close to the ground and your wings quiet and still against your back, the edges brushing against the straps of your makeshift bag.

The bag is heavy, half full of, of what's left of Leif's body, and the remains of your secret stash bag. It's easy to ignore the way the straps dig into your neck, the gaping hole in your side hurts way worse.

But it's fine. You wrapped it up in strips of the tarp you'd made earlier today. That was just hours ago. You'd planned on using them to "tie up" Crow, or maybe to make bigger straps so Kabbu could carry Leif all the way back home.

Keeping you from bleeding out is a pretty good gig for some scrap fabric anyway. Even if it's the wrong kind of material, and you couldn't get the bandages right even though you watched how Leif got bandaged really closely every day for an entire moon.

It's probably easier to do on someone else.

You wrapped your leg pretty good though, with sticks to keep it from warping and the pipe makes an okay cane.

You are going to be fine. You are Vi of Team Snakemouth, a Royal Blade of Queen Elizant II, of the Ant Kingdom. You have fought and killed beasts and fake kings and you won't be killed by a little mortal injury, you're better than that.

Leif is heavy where he hangs out? Rests? In your body. It's an uncomfortable sensation, like you've eaten too much, but bigger, inside your chest. He’s still and quiet and hasn’t spoken or moved or anything. He’s probably just sleeping, and you don’t have time to wait for him to wake up. You have places to be.

You walk into the dark and hope that you're going in the right direction.

Bright sunlight stabs through your eyelids. Your entire body aches. You're freezing. You're tucked between some blades of grass, guess you fell asleep.

"Leif?" You whisper.

He doesn't respond this time either. No taps, no kind of movement at all. Or maybe he is, and you just can't feel it through the pain. The memory of pale fungus pressing against your chitin- and the strange sort of heaviness in your chest both remind you that Leif is here, with you.

Hopefully.

The sound of wings in the distance doesn't really let you dwell on it though.

Why couldn't Bianca just leave you alone? Hasn't she done enough?

It's not enough to have the guards beat up your family. To take them both away and let HB dissect Leif like some kind of- science experiment. To give the guards permission to use lethal force.

Does she want you dead that badly?

You don’t want to think about this anymore.

You grab your pipe and Leif's… remains, peek your head out, and well, the grass in the grasslands is thick, you can't really see much of the sky, but they can't see you either, and that will have to be good enough.

You avoid clearings and stick to the shadows, even though you'd really like the feeling of the sun on your fur. But staying uncaught and alive is a little more important than the chill.

No one is going to rescue you, you are alone, you have to make all the important safe decisions yourself. You will save yourself and Leif. You are the royal blade of the queen. You have saved several kingdoms many times over.

You are hungry and cold.

You think that if you had to die, you would rather die out here in the grasslands with Leif, than in the hive.

They'd take you to the lab, and hold you down and HB would cut you open too. She would take Leif from you again, but it would probably hurt less than getting him in you in the first place. The knives in the lab are much sharper than Kut's knives you think.

HB would slice you up like a berry, it wouldn’t take long, she had Leif all quartered and preserved in just a few hours. She'd take Leif and you'd be alone and then you'll die too.

Would you get a funeral if that happened? Sick bees don’t get buried in the hive, their bodies get taken far, far away.

Or will they keep you in a jar? Maybe HB will put your corpse on display right next to Leif's. Will Kabbu and Jaune's last sight of you be with your organs on display?

Would they let Kabbu bury you and Leif? Maybe since you have Leif they’ll let Kabbu take your body when you die.

You hope you don’t die, Kabbu already lost a pair of friends. If he lost another he might dig your graves and lay down with you.

But then who would perform the rites? Kabbu did some kind of mixture of ritual from the north and from Venus's following for his friends.

Venus better not have anything to do with your funeral.

Roots all over and knowledge of like, everything ever. But she doesn’t answer you either, and you doubt she has as good an excuse as Leif does. What good is a god if they aren't there for you when you need them?

Or maybe she is here, and is just waiting for you to die. Maybe she didn't like Leif once she knew he was something else. She hates you too now, and is just another person that wants you dead.

There are roots all over the ground, you’ve been carefully picking your way through them, using your pipe to catch yourself when you trip. They don’t look like Venus's roots.

Maybe Venus just sits at the top of her mountain and is watching you like a play. Or maybe she isn't helping cause she knows you don’t have any money. Maybe she’s mean and awful just like you and only helps for the reward.

Maybe she's scared of all the bee soldiers too. She only appears when you all are alone, far from prying eyes. The guards may be even closer than you think they’ve been.

Tons on the ground and even more in the sky.

That tree looks kind of familiar. Oh. You really hope that you’ve at least been walking in a straight line.

Here lies Vi of Team Snakemouth, died of walking in circles like an idiot.

You've been walking for hours and hours and you are still freezing and everything hurts and you might just be lost.

You need a break. Just a quick lean on a small tree, a chance to stretch out your back. The pipe you stole is a bit too short to be cane, and through all the pain, you can still feel how tight the muscles in your shoulders are from being half crouched.

You set the pipe and Leif down on the ground and gently stretch as far as you can. Which isn't very much. What little you can do pulls at your matted fur and brings sharp, stabbing pains into your side.

It's fine. You're fine. You have to be. You lean your head back against the stem and just, just breathe. Rest your eyes for just a moment.

It would be peaceful, if you weren't exhausted, thirsty, hungry, and maybe dying.

You don’t sit down. You're not sure you'd be able to make yourself get back up again. You don't have time for a nap.

"At least you're here with me." You say.

Leif doesn't say anything.

You're woken up out of half-asleep daze, by the familiar sounds of someone hacking at shrubbery to make a path. It sounds like Kabbu. It's only been a day since you last saw him but it feels like years.

When you peek around the flower stem, it's not green you see, but bright yellow and shining silver.

You slam yourself against the stem, crushing your wings against the rough surface. Your hands are gross and covered in blood and dirt but you don't know how else to muffle your panicked breaths.

You don’t dare move. You hold yourself against the tree, and you don’t stop, even though it makes your side and your leg hurt.

You don't move even after the sounds of footsteps and falling branches leave your hearing.

You don’t move for a long, long time after.

Eventually you let yourself slide to the ground, silent, dry sobs wrack your body. There's no tears, you’ve cried them all out.

You are so so tired. Your entire body aches and every movement just makes it worse.

The sun is high in the sky and you are so very cold.

You are Mothiva. You barely got sleep last night, and you aren't really looking for team snakemouth so much as you are just barely managing to keep Zasp in your sight as he marches ahead.

You’ve been walking along the river all day, Zasp is convinced that snakemouth is avoiding the main pathways. He's likely not wrong, bee soldiers are patrolling the paths to the swamp and the wasp kingdom.

The river is particularly rough here, loud and wild as it tumbles over it’s rocky bed. Ooh that’s a good line, you make a note to save that for later. At least this mission won't be a total loss.

Zasp stops. Maybe he's finally gotten tired and you can take a break, but he's probably just waiting for you to catch up. Again. It's not like you're slow either, Zasp is just freakishly fast.

Instead of marching on when you finally catch up, he signals you to stop. Man you hope it isn’t another pair of bee soldiers, apparently you need 'the utmost discretion,' as if anything involving you or the snakemouth idiots has ever been discreet, or even subtle. Standing still until you can't hear bees flying or stomping through the underbrush is boring and awful.

You peer around Zasp to see how close the soldiers are- it's Vi.

It has to be, even though you've never seen her more than 5 feet from the rest of her team.

There's no other kids who would be in the grasslands alone.

No other kid would point a knife at explorers.

No other kid that two kingdoms are searching high and low for.

A mission that had to be handled quietly. Orders to bring back any member of snakemouth who could still be found. Rumors of team snakemouth running from the bee kingdom. Escaping even.

Something awful has happened to Vi, and you really don’t like the picture taking shape in your mind.

She's looking right at you, but she doesn't seem to actually see you. She stares straight ahead, and doesn't react when you wave your hand in her direct line of sight.

Zasp’s got that 'you handle this’ face. Absolutely not.

Zasp is horrible interacting with like, everyone, but Vi hates you. You are 100% sure that the sound of your voice will send her into one of her usual tantrums, but you really don't think her body can handle one, based on the massive amount of bandages.

Zasp seems to get the idea. He crouches in front of Vi, hand open and low. Vi doesn’t appear to notice.

"Vi?" Zasp whispers, but Vi startles violently. Flinching back and ramming her body into the bark behind her. Her eyes finally focus on Zasp, her grip on the knife somehow gets tighter.

"It's okay." Zasp reassures as he inches forwards, repeating the same phrases he's heard you say a thousand times. "It's okay, Vi. We're here to help. It's going to be alright."

Vi's eyes never move from Zasp, as if she's in a trance. She doesn’t react when he reaches towards her.

The moment his hand touches her, she rams the knife towards Zasp.

You jump forward, grabbing Vi by the waist, your hand presses against something warm and squishy? Her chitin caves under your hand. Vi screams and bites, slipping from your slick grip. Vi buckles under her own weight, slamming into the ground with a shout that's quickly muffled by shoving her fist in her mouth.

You're covered in her blood.

Vi pulls herself up, you jolt forward, reaching around to grab her wrists, pulling her tight against you. Vi kicks and squirms but you don't dare let her escape again, and after only a several long seconds she gives up, stilling. She's still tense and even half out of her mind, you don’t doubt she’s just trying to get you to let your guard down again.

This close you can feel the way her blood in her fur crunches under your grip.

Zasp finally pulls himself up and the knife is sticking out of his arm.

What kind of knife is actually capable of piercing hard, healthy chitin?

"Do you have a good hold on her?" Zasp asks, as if he doesn't have a knife sticking out of his arm, blood dripping down his arm and on to your bag as he looks for something.

"Uh, yeah? But-"

"Good." and then he pulls the knife out of his arm, a horrible sucking noise following. Your ability to not gag is truly impressive considering the circumstances. He quickly runs drinking water over the wound before wrapping it quickly and efficiently.

The moment he's done he squats in front of you, looking over Vi.

"Vi, can you hear me?" Zasp asks.

You roll your eyes, she's clearly out of her mind, regardless of whether she can hear what you're saying. Zasp glares, but you're not wrong. Vi clearly isn't herself, she literally just stabbed him.

Zasp helps you stand up, "We need to clean her up and take a look at what's under those bandages-"

Vi thrashes suddenly, you nearly lose your hold on her.

"Urgh! Vi! Vi, calm down. We are trying to help you!" The words slip out of your mouth before you can stop them, Vi always seems to bring out the worst in you.

But wonder of wonders, she actually calms down.

"Mofiva?" She slurs, a quiet hoarse whisper you can barely hear over the sounds of the river.

"Uh, yeah?" You reply. Vi leans back as far as she can to look at you, she stares at your face for a solid five seconds, and then just bursts into loud, ugly sobs.

You look at Zasp. Zasp shrugs. Okay cool. Well, at least she's not trying to run off? And sobbing kids is definitely back in your realm of expertise, if nothing else.

"Hey Vi," you say. "Vi, look at me please." You release your tight grip into something more like a loose cradle.

She turns and she looks so much worse this close. She's missing an antenna, her face is covered in blood and dirt. The fur on one side is burnt together and it has to be pulling at her chitin every time she moves. You swallow back the bile creeping up your throat.

"We need to clean you up. We have proper bandages and can make sure you don't get infected."

Vi's grip on your fur tightens painfully, her breathing is picking up and she's working herself back up into whatever panicked state you found her in.

"Vi, I hate you-"

Vi bursts into shocked, pained, laughter, and Zasp is definitely trying to kill you with his glare. But she's not freaking out anymore, and Zasp can chew you out later.

"But I would never hurt you, not outside of a spar. Zasp and I are here to help you. It's literally our job. And if that's not good enough for you, we are on orders from Queen Elizant herself to return you home-"

Vi tenses again. She’s going to pull your fur right out of your shell at this rate.

"-to the Ant Kingdom, and I will not let you ruin my reputation by bringing you back half dead and covered in filth, understand?"

You can always count on Vi to believe the worst in people, and reassurance that you won't hurt her because you have a paycheck and your reputation depending on her safety seems to do the trick. She nods, and pulls herself up to make it easier to carry her, wincing as she pulls on the crack that is likely hiding behind the mass of cloth on her torso.

She points to the sapling where she’d been standing.

"What?" She can speak, or, kind of. She managed to mumble your name but her throat might also be injured. But now she's resorting to toddler communication. Great.

"Okay," You look at where she's pointing, but honestly you have no idea what she's trying to say.

"Oh." Zasp says, "I see it." He pulls out a bag that’s nearly half the size of Vi, made of the same cloth as Vi's bandages, also covered in blood and dirt from some obscured place in the roots. There's… some kind of light tube like material inside. It doesn’t look like anything you've ever seen before.

"What in Bugaria is that?" It must be important for Vi to have dragged it with her through the grasslands.

Vi mumbles into your fur.

"What?"

"Leif." Vi says, muffled. What?

"Is he, uh, here? Sorry, I have no idea what you're trying to say."

She points to the bag. "That's Leif."

Right. So she calmed down, but still delusional. You can work with that. She doesn't fight you when you walk to the river, a nice spot with dense grass hanging over the bank. It should provide good enough cover while Zasp cleans her wounds and you try to get some of the mud and blood off.

You set Vi down and your pack down on a relatively clean looking boulder, it's about the height of your knee and good enough for some good old field medicine.

You grab a couple of rags and start cleaning Vi up as best you can, and it's not easy. Under the mud and blood, you find that her right side is covered in burnt fur and sore chitin from head to toe. The worst being hidden under the cloth, but you'll let Zasp deal with whatever cut she's got hidden under there.

Vi's drifts into sleep as you wipe her fur as gently as you can. Mud and blood softens and sloughs off under your ministrations.

You check underneath her fluff as you clean it, searching for an injury to explain Vi's new quietness. But her chitin seems whole and unbruised. Her neck fluff however, is burnt and melted together in huge patches, though it's clear Vi cut off most of the burnt stuff with her terrifyingly sharp knife, where did she even get that in the middle of nowhere? There's still plenty melted together, as well as something else, maybe some kind of necklace? That had also melted and got caught in her hair, closer to her chitin where she didn’t dare bring the knife. Good call in you opinion. If that thing could cut through Zasp’s forearm, she could have easily sliced the much softer chitin of her neck.

By the time you've finished cleaning up Vi as best you can without dunking her in the river, Zasp has already laid out antiseptic, clean bandages, and his medical knife.

Vi has definitely fallen asleep and doesn’t wake when you call her name or poke her. Well. Cuts hurt something awful to get cleaned and honestly you think she's suffered enough. Maybe she's so exhausted that she won't be conscious long enough for Zasp to clean up her injuries.

You settle down next to Vi and shift her into your lap, pulling her up and giving Zasp plenty of wiggle room to work on Vi's chest.

Zasp unwraps the cloth, but as he gets to the layers against Vi's chitin, the cloth has dried to Vi's fur, old blood acting like glue, each pull making Vi flinch. Zasp cuts along the underside of the bandages, trying to leave as much hair as possible. It's tedious work, slowly revealing layers of more melted hair and clumps of blood and mud.

He finally unravels the wound, a crack, along the upper right side of Vi's waist. It's large and ragged, the edges dark and swelling with infection, so strong you can smell it, the wound goes deep, past the chitin and muscle-

You swallow back bile.

Zasp cuts the rest of the bandages and it is not a crack, but an entire hole. Zasp keeps going and the hole gets larger and larger, by the time its entirely uncovered it’s at least width of Zasp's palm. Blood seeping from a latticework of- of something.

It's not muscle, you've seen muscle before, and even some organs on one unfortunate occasion. But whatever this is, it isn’t either of those.

Its pale, string like things woven together in a facsimile of cloth. Dark blood seeping between the gaps in the weave.

You turn away, gagging. Zasp wipes dried blood and pus away, Vi begins twitching and turning. You hope she stays under.

She doesn't. She bolts up, pushing you back and ramming her head into Zasp’s.

"Vi, Vi, it's just us, Mothiva and Zasp" You say, pulling her back to keep her from rubbing dirt into her open wound. "Remember? We aren't hurting you, we're helping! Stay. Still. This is for your own good!"

But now your voice just seems to make her panic more.

"Hold her down."

"What?"

"Hold her down, Mothiva. She's not listening and we need to get this cleaned and wrapped and get her to a proper medic as fast as possible." Zasp says, wrangling her legs underneath him so she can't kick him.

You shove Vi's wrists into one hand, and use the other to prop her up and hold her still so Zasp can work. Vi attempts at escape are weak but consistent, every movement accompanied by desperate, terrified sobs.

It doesn’t take more than a few minutes for Zasp to clean the wound, prep the bandages with antiseptic and wrap Vi's torso, but every moment feels like hours. Vi's panicked crying cuts deep into your chitin. You're tense with guilt even though you know that this needs to be done.

Zasp releases Vi's legs, easily avoiding her weak kicks, grabbing the injured one and makes quick work of cutting off makeshift bandages, removing something long and thin.

"Is that a stick?"

Zasp nods, running his hands along Vi's shin, gently wiping even more blood from her fur. No wonder she's acting crazy, probably doesn't have enough blood to get to her brain.

"Her leg is severely bruised, I believe she was trying to prevent warping of her carapace." Zasp guesses. It doesn’t look like it worked very well, the indents of the stick copied into the soft part of her leg, gentle warping curving her calf.

"Isn't that a myth?"

"Yes."

Zasp wraps the soft part of her leg in smooth cloth, to prevent tearing and lets go. Vi is tiring, each kick and squirm becoming weaker than the last. Eventually she wears herself out, passing out again.

You and Zasp clean Vi's blood off yourselves and repack your bags, Zasp transferring some from your bag into his. You let him, you're definitely going to be stuck carrying Vi all the way back to the kingdom.

You were right. You had to carry Vi until nightfall when you finally made camp. She was twitchy and woke frequently, when she was awake she said little and spent most of her time watching her bag that Zasp carried in his good arm.

It was simple enough to get her to rest, she's exhausted and burning with fever, all you had to do was lay her down in sight of "Leif." She'd passed out shortly after getting some food into her.

Vi lays between you and Zasp, shivering in the bundle of every blanket and cloth you had.

Zasp offered to take the first watch, which is great, because you’re already half asleep.

"The thing in her wound, it's the same thing that’s in the bag." Zasp whispers.

You are not awake enough for this.

He taps his fingers against his thigh, a nervous tic. "We were sent to retrieve team snakemouth from the bee kingdom outskirts, without alerting the bees if possible."

Oh okay he's not gonna let this go until he gets it out. You turn over so you can see him in the dim moonlight. He's tense, really tense, no wonder he offered to take first watch.

"Several moons ago, Leif had been stabbed by a scorpion, he had that same thing that Vi has inside her.”

Zasp continues speaking, as if he isn't just saying the most insane things you have ever heard. "I believe that the bees may have removed, whatever it is, from Leif. And it has either taken her or she has taken it."

Zasp doesn't lie. He doesn't guess, or when he does, he has very solid convincing evidence. The tendrils in the bag could easily be larger versions of the strange structure in Vi's wound.

Why did he wait until you were trying to sleep to tell you this?

"Okay. Okay. So. Leif is- presumed dead, and had some kind of… thing inside him." you venture. Zasp nods.

You let out a slow, measured breath. You'll process that later, Leif's not the first explorer you've lost. It is, however, the first occurrence of potential foul play from another kingdom. One war over, another might be on the horizon. You are trying very hard not to think about the mystery thing that he been inside two thirds of team snakemouth.

"Inside Leif, it was… active. It moved frequently, as if it were alive, and only stilled when Leif passed out." Zasp says.

You don't like where Zasp is going with this. You don't know what's worse, that Vi may have some kind of thing moving around under her chitin.

Or that the thing is already dead and rotting inside her.

#bug fables #bug fables spoilers #mkb au #i think that the bee kingdom is doomed #queen bianca when will you abdicate

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