The Life of a Brood Mother Ch. 1
I do not own any of the characters(excluding Ta'yura), worlds, races, or other things in this story. The things mentioned above that are in this story are the property of Blizzard Entertainment.
A consciousness came into being within a new body in the swarm, an important body that was meant to make the collective mind stronger.
It opened its chitin covered eyelids for the first time and looked around itself, it saw a thin membrane laden with veins and filled with a fluid that also filled its breathing holes, but those holes were not breathing at that time and it moved them in the motion of breathing, expelling a small amount of fluid back into the sack of flesh it sat inside of . It moved the muscles in its three fingered hand for the first time it could remember, and moved the talons on its back in a fashion that looked like it was designed to kill what it swung them at. It looked behind itself and saw a body that was thick and had a transparent exoskeleton through which it could see bulbous tumors that had claws on their undersides and pulsated with the rhythm of its heart beat. In the same area as the tumors it saw multiple sacks filled with viscous amber liquid. It saw six talon tipped legs that had a webbing of armored flesh between them. It looked down at its upper thorax and saw a slender body with a thick armored carapace. it moved its hands behind its head and felt a large number of thick nerve filled tentacles hanging out of the back of its long spine covered head. It looked up at a light it saw above it, It felt that this light was where it needed to be. The fluid that suspended it within the membrane of flesh began to slosh around as the sack moved up toward the light. The creature within the sack began to feel every muscle in its body and used them to thrash about because it had never known movement in its short life, then suddenly a voice came into its head, "There's no need to be frightened my daughter." It soothed as the membrane that the creature had known for its short time of knowing began to break apart and the tendrils that were moving the sack started to move it upward more quickly. The creature sensed the voice was one of benevolence toward it and stopped thrashing almost immediately. The tendrils started to slow down in their ascent and the creature standing upon them looked up at the light above it again, she realized that it was a portal to the light and stood upon the tendrils for a short while before that same voice came back into its mind, "Yes Ta'yura, that is the outside world. The world that you should be in instead of that dark birthing chamber that you have lived in for all of these months."
The creature thought to itself, "Ta'yura? Is that what I'm called?"
"Yes my daughter, your name is Ta'yura. And I can see that your mind has developed wonderfully. You will indeed be worthy of commanding your own brood." The voice of that same benevolent entity said to her.
"What am I?" Ta'yura asked
"You are a Brood Mother, a very powerful queen of my swarm. Now won't you please come join all of your brothers and sisters in this outside world?"
The Brood Mother quickly obliged the voice and used her spider like lower body to latch on to the fleshy wall of the birthing chamber that she was in and climb out of the portal to the outside world. She immediately regretted doing so, this new world was so hot and dry, it was unwelcoming. She did however notice that the ground was just the right consistency to make her feel at home. She then noticed the rest of the new place she found herself in, there were towering spires of flesh and hulking behemoths that walked about searching for foreign beings in this place. The Queen curled up a little bit and hugged the soft welcoming ground.
"That is called the creep Ta'yura, your body can produce small round creatures that burrow into the ground and generate more of it. If you really do like it you can cover entire planets with it." That same voice said. But this time, as Ta'yura had noticed, the voice had said that, not thought it. She looked up and saw a tall thin creature that had a very shapely body and a face that was very different from any of the other things she had observed performing their tasks in this new world she found herself in, the being also had bone-like wings with viciously hooked, sharp claws at the ends of them.
"Yes, my daughter, behold me, I am your mother. I am the Queen of Blades." Said the entity out loud to her newest addition to the swarm. "Now," she said, "I have given you control over a hatchery I have just ordered a drone to morph into over to the south of here," she pointed to her right, "near by a recently solidified flow of liquid minerals. I want you to perform your first test for me."
The new Brood Mother developed a somewhat uncertain look on her face, "But, how do I do that?"
"Well now it wouldn't be a test if I just showed you how to do it, if you can figure it out on your own then you pass...but if you can't then you aren't worth the time or effort of keeping you around."The Queen of Blades got an angry look on her face and pointed to the south again, "Now go and prove yourself of being a Brood Mother!"
The Brood Mother looked to the south and saw a mound of flesh off in the distance, then looked back up at her mother and nodded her carapace covered head at her and said, "Then so it shall be mother." with no hesitation in her voice.
The Queen of Blades smiled at her and said, "Good you're learning quickly." then watched as the new born Queen too her first slow steps off of the creep and moved toward the hatchery in the south.
After a few minutes of walking on hard, hot, ash covered ground the queen got to the hatchery and stared up at it, then, after a few more moments looked down at the ground at the base of the hatchery and saw three small worm-like creatures moving around and probing the thick sulfurous air with their forward antennae. The Brood Mother immediately realized that these were larvae, the infant stage of her race, and knew that in order for them to do anything other than wander around the feeding hole of the hatchery aimlessly she would have to give them the proper growth stimuli. she moved over to the hatchery and touched it with her three fingered hand, the larvae did nothing but the hatchery's chitin grew soft and allowed the Queen to probe its mind. The Queen instantly knew everything that the hatchery knew, it saw and ancient world covered with enormous insects, much larger than anything she had seen in this place, and it saw starships coming down from the sky and exposing the smallest life form on the planet to crystals. She saw a gargantuan mass of flesh and shell called the Overmind standing over the swarm and telling it to assimilate all that stood in their way. She saw billions of creatures on countless worlds falling before the might of the swarm. She saw the Overmind being killed by a starship coursing with energy and felt the entire swarms pain at that moment. She saw the Queen of Blades rise up after the swarm had nearly torn itself apart and reunite it under her control. Seeing all of this was like remembering a dream that you have been trying to remember for her entire life. She knew immediately what needed to be done in order to make happen what she wanted to have happen. She stepped back from the hatchery and touched one of the claws at the end of her abdomen to the creep that surrounded the hatchery and sent a short pulse of psionic energy and pheromones into it and immediately after one of the larvae wrapped itself inside of a cocoon and the hatchery made it apparent where it wanted the soon to hatch drone to go.
The queen having done that decided that the creep around this particular hatchery was limited at best. She thought back to what her mother had said, "...your body can produce small round creatures that burrow into the ground and generate more of it." and decided to do just that. She thought into her memory and looked back in time and saw many other queens, that were similar to her but very different in their own respects, laying those circular tumor-like things that she had seen in herself only a about an hour ago into the ground and allowing them to begin their life cycle. She looked back and saw the same little tumors sitting inside of her, waiting to be laid into the ground, she contracted her muscles and a thick green lubricant came out of glands inside of her and a chitinous sack of flesh enveloped the tumor that resided in her abdomen. Her muscles contracted once again, but this time a different set of them. she knew that she was going to birth the tumor onto the creep she was standing on so she raised her two hind legs a small bit and arched her abdomen downward, the tumor forced its way out of her and planted itself on the creep. She resumed her normal standing position and the tumor on the ground pulsated and writhed, it waited about 3 minutes and then the spiny sack that covered it burst open and revealed a much, much larger version of the same tumor. the tumor hopped about on the creep for about 30 seconds and then, finding a good position for its claw feet to sink into, burrowed itself into the basalt beneath it.
The Queen marveled at the tiny creature she had birthed, but before she got too lost in thought she heard a sshht sshht sshht dutat dutat noise behind her and saw that the drone she had ordered to be morphed from the larva feeding from the hatchery had hatched and was already doing what its DNA had programmed it to do. It was mining blue crystals from the solid blue river near by the hatchery. It brought the minerals back to the hatchery, the hatchery took the minerals from the drone without missing a beat and began to take them up into itself to be digested. The hatchery gave off a pheromone that signaled that it had a certain amount of minerals inside of it. The queen took note of this and realized that it would be a little while before the larvae would have enough of the materials to form the cocoon and be able to morph into another drone. So she decided to see what had become of her first offspring.
She moved over to the creep tumor sitting in the ground, she saw that it had become swollen and had six sacks of fluid jutting up from the top of it. She had begun the understand the pheromone signals that the various creatures around her were giving off and knew immediately that the creep tumor was ready to generate more of itself. She told it to make another one of itself on the far right side of itself. It did exactly that, a small envelope of flesh popped up on its right side, just where queen had told it to be, and began to get larger, just like the one she had laid. The Brood Mother looked satisfied and looked back at the tumor, but was confused to see it still had three sacks of fluid jutting from the top of it. She thought back to her memory and saw thousands of the same things but each only had three fluid sacks where as hers had six. She looked back at the tumor sitting in the rock, it was still giving off the signal that it was ready to generate more of itself and so she shrugged it off and decided to tell it to make another of itself to its far left this time. It did as it was told and the Queen once again looked satisfied. She moved back to tend to her fledging hive cluster farther.
The Queen of Blades smiled a contented smile to herself, "So that's the mutation that Ta'yura has. A rapid genesis tumor, a very useful mutation for infesting Terran worlds...maybe...just maybe." She laughed to herself for a short while and then said to herself, "That Abathur, always thinking of the most interesting things to give to my Brood Mothers." She paused for a moment and thought to herself about how she had threatened Ta'yura. "I do hope that she's not afraid of me," she paused another moment and then laughed out loud and the prospect of any Zerg feeling fear. "I think I'll got check on her progress...I can tell that she's already figured out quite a plethora about my swarm." With that she stood up from her fleshy seat inside of her hive and walked out into the heavy air of Char. She gave a Hunterkiller a stroke on the head as she passed by it, and then walked on toward the south.
Ta'yura was making very good progress with her hive cluster. It turned out that the hatchery was placed in a very good location, it had 5 vespene geysers and the mineral river provided almost endless mining for a large number of drones, who were undoubtedly contented to have such a bright future in front of them. The hatchery had already mutated into a lair and the queen had created the necessary structures to unlock the genetic codes for Banelings, Zerglings, Roaches, and Infestors, as well as a triplet of evolution chambers with which she was fiddling. She moved over to the infestation pit and began plucking away at its throat and organs, trying to find a good gland or two that she could make the Infestors more powerful with. She paused momentarily when she heard a sharp clacking behind her that suddenly became a soft padding noise. She turned around to see the Queen of Blades standing on the edge of the creep looking at her quizzically. Ta'yura moved away from the infestation pit and toward her mother, "Hello mother, I've been looking into making the infestors' muscles stronger and their metabolism better so that they can launch a capsule of fungal spores as soon as they hatch."
The Queen of Blades looked at her with intrigue, "Well that's something I didn't expect from a brood mother of your age. You're already so inventive and so quickly learned." She looked her queen straight in the eyes, "I just hope you don't die, it'd be a real pity to lose such a promising member of the swarm."
Ta'yura looked up at her mother and asked somewhat stupidly, "So, does that mean I passed my test?"
The Queen of Blades just laughed, then looked back at her daughter, "Yes, with flying colors."
Ta'yura looked very happy to hear that. "So, what now? There must be more purpose to you creating me than just building a small hive cluster on this planet."
"Yes there is my daughter, but I will tell you that tomorrow. For now just order one of your drones to make a spire and get a hive up and running, and then take a good long rest. You have completely earned it." The Queen of Blades leaned over and hugged her newest daughter, then gave her a soft kiss to her chitin covered forehead, "You are going to be a great member of my swarm."
With that the Queen of Blades departed, and the Brood Mother told her one of her drones to create a spire and morphed the lair into a hive. As soon as that completed she walked inside of it and slept.