FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

The spider slings Tik Tik down from a high precipice, sending the kobold tumbling through rotten and desiccated honeycombs. She wriggles against the bindings, growling and grumbling in a futile attempt to escape her current predicament.

Soon, a head pops up from a comb, a worker bee with one antenna missing, buzzing and chittering. She climbs up and approaches the kobold, clicking and tilting her head in a curious gaze.

"Hey, you!" Tik Tik snips. "Release Tik Tik. Let me out of here!"

The worker soundlessly leans in and snips at the strands of silk, breaking enough away for the kobold to get herself free.

"Ah, thanks!" Tik Tik pants, standing tall in the dark corridor. "Where are we?"

"Queens," says the bee, pointing two hands down the wide corridor.

Tik Tik adjusts her gaze to the dim light, finding in this expansive chamber enormous mounds that stick out of individual cells. "There are so many."

The bee clicks and digs herself back into one of the cells.

"Hey, wait!" Tik Tik calls out, scrambling over towards the burrowing bee. As she reaches the cell, she stops.

A click. Followed by a crack.

Tik Tik spins around, facing one of the mounds. A hairline fracture traces down the top, expanding exponentially, when it suddenly shatters!

Emerging from the expansive chamber is the jelly-dripping form of a large and imposing bee queen, her eyes glowing red as she stares at the kobold, her wings fluttering the life-giving substance as her antennae rise in a stately crown.

"The queen is dead," the queen speaks up, her wings dried and widespread as she stands up. "Long live the que-"

The newly emerged queen stands still, her mouth agape, her arms shuddering. She coughs, and jelly, mixed with some unidentifiable effluvia, spills from her mouth before she falls to her knees and then collapses, all life disappearing from her compound gaze.

Standing behind her is another queen, holding a spear in her hands, her eyes blue. Her head tilts from one side to the other as she slowly approaches the kobold, gripping her goo-soaked weapon tightly and stepping on the fallen creature. She pokes her again with the spear, nods in satisfaction, and whispers, "Long live the queen."

She walks through the field of mounds, plunging the spear into another, unhatched one, a scream rising from the unhatched creature within.

Tik Tik snarls.

Another queen emerges, pulling from her home a waxy rapier. She leaps for the older sister, thrusting forward.

The blue queen spins around, parrying the blow, flying through the air and dropping down toward her with a plunging attack! The two are nearly silent, parrying, thrusting, dodging, and stinging, save for their buzzing communication.

Tik Tik rushes toward them, throwing her hands forward, thrusting magical energy at them. "Stop!" she roars out, her tiny voice reverberating throughout the hall.

The two queens tumble and fly, catching themselves and facing the kobold momentarily, twitching and flitting about.

"You can't hurt each other. Your colony is dying. It's the wasp's fault."

"I know!" Shouts the spear-wielding bee.

"Glory to Vaspaja!" shouts the rapier queen, thrusting her weapon again at the other fighter.

Tik Tik covers her head, shaking and shuddering. But she dashes between hatching mounds, where new queens emerge like a veritable army of bees seeking to take over this once-beautiful place's remains. She conjures a disk underneath herself, rushing towards the furthest of the mounds, placing her hand upon it, and letting her arcane energy flow.

The cocoon shatters, and the queen, slightly smaller than the others but nonetheless mature, falls into Tik Tik's grasp.

Her wings flutter, spilling jelly over the kobold, and she stares up at the kobold, sighing, "Tik... Tik?"

"Pleasure to see a friendly face!" Tik Tik smiles. "You must be a real new queen!"

The queen's fuzzy body shudders, and she clings to the kobold, sitting on the disk. Her stripes are faded compared to her sisters, a black and white instead of a cheerful yellow. And like some of the others, her eyes are red.

"You must hold the will of the colony," Tik Tik says, holding close to her. "Tik Tik won't let you die out. You will be the last queen standing."

"What? No. I can't fight against them, look!"

A giant queen rises, raising her hands high into the air. Honey flows up from the ground and swirls around her hands before she launches it forward into a tidal wave of destruction among her siblings.

In response, a horde piles upon her, sending her crashing into the sugary nectar. She sinks into the morass, reaching up and grasping, but soon is covered by the sugary sweetness.

The pale queen whimpers, clutching close to Tik Tik, nuzzling against her side. "It's not fair. How did we miss this? How did we allow this coup to happen?'

"This is no coup," Tik Tik says, frowning as her disk rises and travels down one of the many now-empty corridors. "This is sickness, and it killing the colony from the inside."

Soon, Tik Tik dissipates the disc and motions the queen into one of the cells. "You need to hide out. Tik Tik will find Vaspaja and get back at her."

"You can't stop her!" The queen whines. "She's everywhere. She's inside us all. She's... she's inside me."

Tik Tik frowns, pressing a hand upon the Queen's abdomen, squeezing and prodding at her fuzzy exoskeleton.

"You got egg?"

"She stuck it into my cell. I ate it like all the others who look like me." She says this, her hands running down past her eyes. "Soon, I'll be one of them, just like my mother. Just like everyone else."

"Not if Tik Tik can do anything about it."

"What can you do?"

Tik Tik grabs the queen's cheeks, and the kobold presses her snout against her mouth. The trembling and sobbing creature wraps her arms around Tik Tik, letting herself melt into that kiss.

And even if it's just for a few moments, the two have a moment to relax before the battle begins in earnest.