We were struggling to stay afloat.

Madhuri was still just a chick and the way she flew was nowhere near as graceful as her mother. She didn’t have the strength to clench her stomach while afloat, resulting in her behind end hanging below her wings. She couldn’t fly straight for the life of her and wobbled all the way, but it was still miles better than the effort I would have to produce to bring Barry home to his colony.

She’s gliding to save strength. Barry told me as I grew concerned about her constant drops. That’s how most of these birds learn to fly.

A bird he called her. I asked if he was giving her another name and he became defensive. Everyone knows that one. Just like how you are an ant and I am a hornet; she is a bird.

He was pretty amused when I told him that we had called them sky predators for ages.

That fits. He said. Considering birds eat ants. But they don’t eat us. Someone really needed to tell him how painfully direct he was. Well, not me. I was more interested in knowing why the sky predators, or birds as he called them, didn’t eat them. He looked scary to me, for sure. But to her, to Madhuri, he was but a bite-sized snack.

It has nothing to do with size. We were simply born special, superior.

Yeah?

Absolutely; See this?

He shoved his butt toward my face and protracted the tip of his stinger.

I scoffed. We also had that. I must have leaked my thoughts again… because he went ahead to shove the full length out. And I was impressed. He was big. The stinger was almost as large as my head, and it was thick. That thing could have easily penetrated my body from front to back. Add the strong poison that oozed from the tip, yep, it was no wonder the birds didn’t target hornets.

I think I saved Madhuri by spraying my pheromones all over Barry’s body. She would have attacked him otherwise, and things would have escalated quickly from there. Had he poked her at the wrong place she could have ended up with a swollen belly. That would have all but ended our chance of us making anywhere with her crying from the contractions.

The shaky flight and the wind were alright; since we could snuggle under her feathery warm coat. She squirmed every time Barry moved, scraping her skin, but between staying afloat and flying in the dark, she got used to it pretty quickly. As for how we controlled her. We didn’t. She followed the scent of my pheromones, which I had to keep throwing out every time I recovered enough to hold some sway over her. According to Barry, his colony was straight ahead, but Madhuri never actually flew straight. So it was both troublesome for her and me.

I had to constantly run out of her warm feathery coat and into the cold numbing winds to correct our course as Barry dictated, which meant even more correction over time because even he was starting to have doubts.

The forest looks the same at night. He blamed. I was too exhausted to refute his claim but kept an eye on my map to make sure we wouldn’t be going around in circles. But the map was static and refreshed into a blank slate every time we crossed a certain distance, two hundred ant lengths to be exact —I counted. And it only showed the portion that I had personally explored; the rest remained covered. It was still better than nothing, even with all the flaws.

I was still debating what to do with the skills. The trial had almost curbed the little enthusiasm I had regarding the system. The evil was out of the box. Now I knew cultivating strength with the system meant being in a constant tussle with Greed, the sickness that lived inside me, and my safety was but a delusion.

There was also the slot that had opened after Greed evolved to tier-1. But I was already against the idea of making Princess a vessel of Greed. As a vessel, she might only connect tot eh system, but since there was a chance of her forming a shard of Greed —whatever it was— I was against the whole idea, altogether. There would neither be any vessels nor any leaks about the system. The world shade was dark enough already.

The rain arrived at just the right moment because that’s when neither Barry nor I were feeling well. Madhuri was exhausted beyond belief. It poured into the forest and quickly drowned all sounds of life. We had kept going in a trance —Madhuri flew, I corrected course, and Barry slept— but rain connected us back to reality, bringing exhaustion from the back of our minds to the front.

We had to quickly hide. Madhuri wouldn’t listen until Barry bit her neck and pulled her toward the trees. He made sure not to hurt her too much, but it pained me that we were not any better than her brothers. We were also hurting her to get things done our way. I promised myself to see my behavior and not hurt her in the future —unless it was a matter of life and death. Selfish or not I couldn’t let her die on me now, could I?

The same I made Barry promise. He reluctantly agreed.

We took residence inside a squirrel hole. Madhuri found it, a lesson she had most likely learned after being evicted from the nest. However, the squirrels that lived there didn’t like her intrusion. They cursed in ways impossible to understand, clicking a racket that would have called a number of night predators to the hole if it wasn’t raining outside. In the end, they pissed at her and ran out. Have no idea where they went. Not far, probably and hopefully, because we left as soon as the rain stopped near midnight.

Barry woke me and Madhuri came awoke because of us. She shuddered and gave a lonely chirp upon finding that she was alone again. I released a packet of pheromone to let her know that I was around, causing her to flutter her wings and do the hoping dance. And that was it for her sleep and my hibernation.

Barry and I looked out to see if our surroundings were clear. Madhuri followed suit for the gist and giggles. I uselessly tried to make her stop chirping, as the forest was too silent after the rain and her high octave voice ringed among the trees like a beaming signal.

A twig snapped at a distance, the wind ruffled the leaf, a scent arose nearby, Barry saw something move and it startled Madhuri. We flew out of the hole like chased by a ghost.

What was it? I asked, vibrating antennae to increase my range of detection.

Barry shook his head. I have no idea, but it was most likely nothing good.

At this point, we had more problems than solutions. There was hunger, danger, mental exhaustion, and aches. Madhuri was so hungry I could hear her stomach grumbling. I thought it was the sky until Barry explained to me that it wasn’t something so far away. She didn’t cry out as she would have done were she still in the nest. Actually, I had never heard her cry out of hunger, even when her mother was there to feed her children. Most of the crying was done by her brothers, especially the large selfish one.

I don’t want to turn out like him. I thought.

Then be selfless. The ember stirred.

Cry she might not, but she was easily distracted by every little movement. Fluttering leaves distracted her the most, for they must have looked like flying critters to her eyes in the dark forest.

As a matter of fact, I was also hungry, but Barry told me the hive wasn’t far and we would be able to eat till our stomachs burst. And that kept my hopes up.

It wasn’t long before Barry grew excited. There, he pointed into the distance, too far from my eyes to see. My sight was still limited by the skill level, but I could taste the sweetness in the air. It was minute but I could sense it. I didn’t even have to vibrate my antennae; the smell was all over the place. Madhuri liked it too, for she even chirped to happiness.

A dark city grew large past the cover of trees, branches, and leaves. Hidden between branches of a large tree with white trunk and waxed elliptical leaves, grew a large construction, dark and alive. It covered well over a quarter of the trees western side, sprawling between branches small and big. A buzzing cacophony had the air trembling. It was BEES!

Shading hell, we are too late. Barry cursed. The damn moths are already here.

The city was under attack by what he called moths, giants to me, but equal to the BEES! Hairy white and thick black dotted wings of grey, the moths were stark in contrast to their dark-yellow opponents. That didn’t matter. Why were we at a Bee Hive? Barry was a Hornet! What was he doing worrying about them? That was like me going out of my way to protect the termites. Something like this was against the very nature of things.

The only relief was that when Madhuri called food, she meant the moths and not the bees. However, that didn’t mean the bee wouldn’t retaliate. For all I knew, they were already in frenzy, and a bird in their midst would be like throwing lightning at a dead tree. A fire was bound to flare from their meeting.

However, Barry was prepared. He openly shared his passport pheromone with me and Madhuri. He didn’t just give it to her, but sprayed it over her head, covering a large part of to make her seem like just another bee —or a group of them— cruising through. But allowed to evaporate, it wouldn’t last long.

The bees didn’t attack us when Madhuri pushed into the buzzing, swishing crowd of moths and them. She confused them, which was good. And they pulled back from her, intimidated by her size. Thankfully, she was intelligent or nurtured enough to know the difference between something she could eat and something she shouldn’t. Bee's weren't much different from a hornet, and eating one alive… the thought alone made me squirm in nervousness.

However, the colony acted differently. The workers congregated together to produce a warning by buzzing their bodies, creating aggressive patterns over the hive. They wanted her to stay away, and she firmly got the message.

The moths weren’t many, but they were surprisingly immune to the bee stings. A drop of the poison would have killed one of my own ten times over, but the moths acted like they didn’t care. They were all over the hive, pushing past the workers and cracking open the hexagonal pods to drink honey and steal the eggs and larvae.

I was seeing a pattern here, and the possibility scared me. Was there a chance that the moths were also similar to the termites that had raided the city, Agnee-Rath-Ji, my home? They too were immune to poison, after all.

The moths were having the time of their life until the sky predator happened. She was slow, but the moths weren’t blurring fast either.

Madhuri pounced at them like a hungry beast. She picked one with her baby claws directly from the air, taking perch on a nearby branch to eat it before flying off to get another. She didn’t have to say how much she liked the moths; her crisp chips and burning enthusiasm was all the indication I needed.

Go, girl! Kill them all. Barry encouraged her, but he was forgetting something.

Her passport won’t last long. I told him. It’s only a matter of time before your friends, which I hope they are—

They are my friends. He interrupted. You might think I’m after the queen but that’s not true. Believe me.

I’m sure it was the truth, but his personal agendas were not the problem.

We need to get her help before the bees go against her. She won’t survive if they swarmed her.

I would have told Madhuri to roll back on the chirps, for they played a big role in warning the moths, the reason why she sometimes missed her mark. Sadly, it was already something that two insects, one ant, and a hornet, were riding a bird. Guiding her in a certain direction was the limit of my ability; the rest depended all upon her.

She decimated the moths. However, the passport that Barry had given her was not foolproof. The bees were still confused about her, but they were starting to realize the truth and growing vigilant.

I chocked when she almost ate a bee in the heat of the moment. She became careful not to touch those hairy, buzzing spearheads going berserk after one painful sting. She nicely resisted the sting, making me wonder if she was also resistant. She had a good run, but it was clear to see that the bees were starting to get suspicious of her. The pheromone had run its course.

We need to get her help. The soldiers are starting to see through her.

Then we need to meet the queen. Barry advised. Only she can give her a passport to roam freely around.

I looked at the hive. There were gazillion bees covering it.

That’s not going to be possible. I said.

It’ll be a life and death situation in a few moments, right?

Do it. I told him.

He bit her on the neck and steered her away from the commotion.

She had given the bees the upper hand. The voids she left tin h moth defense became the reason for their demise. Bees had more than one weapon. The stinger was actually their last weapon of choice. Their jaws were also fairly thick and strong, and there were only a few hundred moths flying around. Opportunists as they were, the bees saw their chance and clung to the moths. Many wings were plucked that day.

What do the moths want? I asked my partner in crime as he steered her toward one of the closest trees.

Eggs, basically: to eat and implant. Their larvae eat through honeycombs like a sickness. And honey. No matter who it is, everyone likes the sweet delicacy.

Honeydew?

Don’t compare the pure golden nectar that is honey to the watered-down plant extract that your kind likes to drink. I reckon you have never had some before. Well, don’t worry soon you’ll be drowning in it.

I didn’t want to drown in honey but sure; I also wanted to find out the cause of the sweetness in the air.

We pulled her to a tree some way from the hive and got off her; well, I pulled Barry down. He needed some nutrition’s in his body. He was surprisingly light for someone his size. His battered and bruised body was proof of his suffering at the fangs of Shri.

Madhuri surprisingly tried to fly off but took perch on the branch when I released an overwhelming amount of pheromones near her face, causing her to sneeze. It was all I could do. Things would have taken an ugly turn if she didn’t remember that it was the same thing I had done to stop her brothers from hurting her. Thankfully she remembered.

The bees soon finished their work and approached us. Their heightened buzzing made me really nervous. They were bees and we were not. In simple terms, we were trespassing into their territory.

Didn’t you want to know why I named the spider-Shri?

Yes? It’s not the time for it, but sure. Tell me. I said. I liked the distraction.

You are a buzzkill sometimes. You know. Anyways, Shri means Mr.

That surprised me. But the spider was a female—

Exactly, He nodded his head, looking at me, antennae quivering.

We both burst out into amusement, and Madhuri joined us simply because it was fun to laugh together. It was no wonder Shri hated him. I’ll never forget the confusion that the bees released. That sent us into another fit, causing the bees that were already hesitant about dropping near us to keep hover instead.

They weren’t vigilant, simply stupefied!