After waiting around for more of the funny creatures to show up, and finally realizing that they were no longer going to show up after a true eternity, a full twenty-four hours, spent waiting, the child moved back to the familiar crevice she had been born in. She didn’t quite understand why she considered it a safe space, but she did and she had yet to be proven wrong in the assessment. Nearly halfway through the eternity she had waited, she had felt another impression form in the back of her mind, though this she could at least understand. It was the possibility to create another of herself, her body had finally processed everything and determined there was enough to begin. Though she had waited the rest of the eternity before giving up on extra meat and actually listening to the impression.

  Inside her crevice, the child gave herself over to her instincts after a couple of moments of attempting to figure it out herself. The child’s own stinger lashed out and impaled itself into her flesh, injecting something before it retracted itself. The child writhed in agony for a few endless moments as she felt her body drain away all the hard earned reserves she had acquired, leaving her even hungrier than normal. While the child desired nothing more than to leave her crevice to search for some food to sate the newly enhanced hunger, she could no longer leave her crevice, she was too big.

  The child’s stomach had swollen to an inordinate size, just large enough to prevent her from leaving the crevice, but not large enough to truly hinder normal movements. With nothing else to do, the child simply started licking the walls, using her acidic saliva to work the walls into something she could eat. Anything to slate the hunger that now gnawed at her. After another, even more boring eternity, the child once again felt great pain as their body began contracting. It took only minutes for the birth to finish, and if the constant of reality that was Magic could grin, it would’ve.

  I blink once. No, twice. I see myself, from myself, that I birthed from myself. Everything is…different. My mind is sharper, clearer, I am myself in a way I simply wasn’t before I birthed myself. Though this doubled hunger is not the greatest feeling, even if the hunger from my larger body is dulled slightly thanks to the rocks I had been eating. I can’t believe I went about eating them in such an inefficient manner though, simply licking the wall layer by layer instead of dissolving a chunk and ripping it off the wall. It’s so strange though, I clearly remember everything I did before this birth and even the reasoning, but it’s like it wasn’t me doing it.

  I move outside my crevice with my tiny body, weak and small as it is, it might be able to see if there is food in the tiny crevices, while I also begin carving chunks of stone out of my crevice’s walls. With my new mental clarity, I can piece together the differences in the rocks and what they held more of. With this information I can organize things in the future, along with easily tracking down the proper resources to restore my stockpiles. I take note of as many different stone types as I can as I trawl through the tunnels, building a mental map. While this new mental clarity is great, once I settle into a rhythm and no longer need to actively use my mind to work on the stone walls and run out of new rock types, it demands to be used. No more of the near mindless waiting I was so recently doing.

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  Though perhaps with this new clarity I can figure out what was at the back of my mind after eating those delicious little snacks. With only some minor mental effort, I figure it out quite easily. It was the very essence that made up the little critters, how it was used, what each section of essence equated to when given life. With some more effort, I mentally found the essence for the only other food I had found, and realized why it didn’t leave any impressions in my previous mind. It was so wholly different, if it wasn’t for some base similarities in the essence, I could believe that the treat was something from another world. With the little meat snacks, I can see where I might incorporate tiny sections into myself immediately if I so desired. Whereas I would have to redesign myself from the very foundation to incorporate anything from the non-meat treat.

  I halt everything, the thought I just had was so revolutionary I had to check myself. Could I tweak my own life essence? It takes me a moment of mental effort, but I know I can. Though I’m not sure I want to, at least not with any of my current bodies. My essence is so complicated I can barely parse it, and modifying life essence I don’t understand seems like a very horrible idea. I resume my work, though I am mildly annoyed that I have yet to find any more food down here, even in the smallest of crevices I can fit into.

  With a start, I feel as if the world itself is bearing down on me, looking at me, through me. It isn’t hostile, it feels almost…proud? With an extreme mental effort I try to connect to whatever is looking at me, and I get everything, and yet nothing. Both of my bodies heave, though thankfully I manage to not barf. Wasted food would be horrid in these food starved positions, and I doubt my vomit would taste very good. While I barely got anything, at least anything that stuck in my mind, from the brief connection I know I can do it again now that I’ve done it once. Though I’m going to wait until I’ve found food, and maybe I’ll have figured out what a “Hive Queen” is by the time I connect to whatever that force was again.

  Magic observed the newly forged Hive Queen, it appeared that the full scope of the Curse had manifested itself in a way even it didn’t realize. Nobody, not even Gods, had managed to stay conscious after their first connection to it. The first connection was always the worst, as it opened one up to a fundamental truth of the universe. While an exception to the rule, it didn’t automatically mean the Hive Queen could wield unimaginable power, just that the peak of her power would most likely be far, far higher than others. Magic figured it knew what the cause was as well, the very nature of the Hive Queen, splitting the connection between two minds at once. If true, it couldn’t wait to see what wonders she would perform in the future, when she had far more minds at once. It would take notes as the creature progressed, perhaps it could replicate a more…manageable version of this creature in the future as a specific kind of Curse.

  Also I originally wanted to go with a far more alien thought process for the direct POV, then realized that I could save that style for later when there is a true Swarm and it would make more sense.