Deep in the strange contradictions of space there was a room. It was more like a metaphor than an actual place. A normal mortal could claim that meant it wasn’t real, but that would be far from accurate. Like its owner, this place could be considered more ‘fundamental’ than those roomes made by humans.

Within the room ‘sat’ the anthropomorphic personification of chaos. Chaos existed anywhere that anything existed, and some places where nothing existed, but the focal point of its hypothetical consciousness was here.

This impossible existence thought of itself as female. Many sentients consciously or unconsciously referred to the facets of chaos as a female. Lady Luck and Dame Fortune were two examples, and every world had similar names. Chaos in its thinking form found enjoyment in this and decided to take these as its names.

Compared to order who preferred to form as little personality as possible, lady Luck enjoyed imitating the trappings of mortals. While order lived within orderly, stagnant nothingness, Lady Luck preferred to emulate the constructions of mortals. She saw a great deal of herself in a chair or a table.

A seed isn’t very likely to become a tree, it needs a great variety of conditions to grow and a variety of threats can destroy it. Even if it is planted successfully a bit of misfortune like a lack of rain, a hungry animal, or bad weather can destroy it before it reaches its potential.

Once it becomes a tree and a mortal selects it they can make it into a myriad of things. It might be unfit for use in creating anything other than disposable products like firewood. All the character gained from years of life and make it unique will influence the way mortals make use of it.

The bits of wood that are made into furniture could be made into a variety of designs. That ‘finished’ product will then be used, hopefully for years, but potentially for decades, and in rare cases even longer. It will acquire the dents and stains of use till it is no longer suitable to function as a table.

To Lady Luck, this long journey was filled with chaos. Coincidences, choices, misfortune, and luck all were an integral part in the story of a ‘mere’ piece of furniture. She didn’t particularly value the complete journey so much as the requirements to complete it though. She liked all sorts of things like that.

Lady Luck knew that unfulfilled potential was as powerful as potential that had been fully developed and utilized. Many a war was started because a man died before he could stop it. To her, creation and destruction weren’t separate things.

Chaos was unlike other personifications like order, or the lesser ones like death, life, love and war. She did as she wished, giving no thoughts to her duties and letting her personality grow far beyond her original nature. However, in a strange, ironic way this was fulfilling her duties and staying true to her original nature.

She was constantly playing with mortals, actively and passively. She ruined and saved lives, often with the same action. She wasn’t good or evil, she just was.

Plenty of evil, and a great deal of good was brought into being because of her influence though.

Just a few years ago she decided to implant a human soul into an insect, give it a large amount of power, and place it in the position to witness a kidnapping that would have caused a conflict that would have eventually escalated into a war across the continent.

Despite the chaos that didn’t come to pass lady Luck wasn’t upset. As far as she was considered the chaos that did occur was just as sweet.

Besides, more was coming. After all, there was always more chaos.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Life was good.

It had been a couple years since the crazy events of my youth. A lot had happened since then.

The aftermath of the kidnapping had been surprisingly important. I suppose I should have known though. Apparently I lucked out as well, since Arizel was on top of things.

In addition to spreading information about the kidnappers and their methods, Arizel also manipulated the information a bit. He mentioned my role in saving Astera, but he left out the bit about me eating people.

Man eaters are a taboo, and if word spread that I was one I could count on some powerhouse straight up murdering me. The whole political shenanigans of protecting me would have caused a lot of trouble.

Apparently Sobek gets a pass since he only attacks people who enter the river. The fact that nobody can kill him seems to be a factor too. The blue whale sized crocodile ate quite a few would be heroes before the nearby nations decided killing him wasn’t worth the manpower.

It’s a little unfair.

As for me, I had a pretty peaceful life after that. I’ve been eating a good chunk of wildlife and babysitting Astera. Other than that things are pretty quiet.

Well, there was the shenanigans with Brokkr…

The local ‘blacksmith,’ a dwarf named Brokkr, is a fairly eccentric fellow. Like most of his race he is a craftsman. He is unique though, since he prefers working with organic materials.

Kodo beetle shells, magic beast bones and hide, and tough or magical wood are his favored materials. He can make some pretty crazy stuff too.

As soon as I met him, he started staring at me like I was a golden egg laying goose. A rough, hairy dwarf staring at me with sparkling eyes like that was enough to give me goosebumps.

After enough pestering I started using my shapeshifting to make the exoskeleton on parts of my body incredibly thick and dense. I had to tear it off of course, and it hurt like a @#$!&, but watching him dance around practically singing was kinda funny.

It’s a good thing it grows back though, since he always seems to need more. I must have ripped off enough of my exoskeleton to outfit a small army over the years.

Phene seemed happy about it though, since Brokkr didn’t use as many magic beast bones she got more ‘gourmet’ meals.

Brokkr wasn’t the only one that liked having me around. The best chef of the village, Lawrence, often sent me out to get special ingredients. That was great since his pecanwood smoked, mother bee honey glazed, moss boar ham was worthing dying and being turned into a bug monster for.

Seriously, I cried the first time I tried it.

...I don’t even have tear ducts.

The people were friendly and welcoming. I think having Astera riding around on me and pulling my antenna showed how patient and non confrontational I was.

Luckily the Empress had given me a few tips on speaking. It turned out to be kind of tricky, I had mistakenly assumed that getting to a certain strength would let me talk. It was more of an acquired-wisdom-over-the-centuries thing. I had gotten the hang of it eventually though, and could talk with eveyone easily now. I was friendly with everyone in town.

Not everybody was a fan of me though, and that made for some really fun moments.

As it turns out, the honeywood forest was very valuable to surrounding countries because of its exports. It was almost entirely thanks to the Empress.

Mother bees are mythic beasts with a special ability. They naturally nurture plants. This forest was full of so many titanic trees because of a millennia of careful tending by the bees. The plants in this forest were head and shoulders above those in other places.

This meant the forest supplied a great number of magic herbs suitable for alchemy, as well as high quality lumber. The elves of the various towns and villages gathered the plants in a sustainable method and sold them to neighboring countries.

The honey from mother bees is a valuable ingredient for increasing the quality of healing potions as well, so it was in high demand too.

Most of the neighboring countries enjoyed a friendly trading relationship with the elves of the honeywood forest. They respected the rules and were polite to its inhabitants. The problem was that politicians and businessmen are greedy and like to push boundaries.

That is why it's important to keep a position of power in negotiations with people like this. The mother bees were instrumental in that. Everyone knew that any lawbreakers would be unceremoniously stung to death. It wasn’t very personal though. I get that punishments need to be objective sure, but threats need a personalized touch.

That’s where I came in.

Whenever delegates or businessmen who were considered troublesome came, I would work with my friends to put on a little play. I might play as bad cop, but most of the time I played the part of barely trained murderous animal.

Before the troublemakers arrived I would go hunt one of the bigger, tougher predators of the forest. Usually I chose a honey bear, which was famously big and mean. It was tasty as well, but that was more of a bonus.

Then as the troublemakers rolled into town I would walk by dragging a dead bear the size of an minivan behind me. They would see me tear of a limb or something, listen to the grisly noises of me chewing meat and crunching bone, and would usually wet themselves when I turned to look at them.

It was great listening to the conversations that followed. Even the ones that were mostly screaming. Stuff like:

“Oh don’t worry, that’s just Manto.”

"Wh-who?"

"Manto, he's one of the Greenbul's magic beasts."

“S-so he’s trained not to attack people?”

“Well... He’s trained not to eat people…”

Or

“No no no… make him go away!”

“It’s alright, he’s just memorizing your smell, he does that with new people.”

My personal favorite was hanging from the underside of a branch while eating a recognizable chunk of bear. I would let a drop of blood fall on the merchant as they walk under me. They would look up to see a nightmare in exoskeleton chewing into the skull of a bear.

...People didn’t let me do that too often since it was a bit too effective at scaring them.

Either way, merchants aren’t so eager to gouge prices or cheat the elves when they have the sound of a large predator’s femur being crunched to shards still echoing in their ears. Arrogant diplomats also get a lot less confident in their elite guards after watching them shriek like little girls.

They didn’t need me to do that often though, which was a shame but a good thing I suppose. Most of the time that kind of play was overkill. Just showing up for a moment and leaving was enough, the rumors did the rest.

The elves also had me carry Astera around and let the humans catch a glimpse of her riding me like a horse. That wasn’t to show me off so much as to show off the Greenbul clan’s skills. Occasionally the humans would get the wrong impression though, so I got to do the scary act again.

Other than that, life was pretty quiet. The forest was beautiful and peaceful. As long as I stayed out of the water I wasn’t in any danger as well.

It was wonderful, which was why I had been waiting for the other shoe to drop for years now.

Right now I was killing time hanging from the bottom of a balcony near the top of the Greenbul’s complex. Astera was in class and there wasn’t much to do right now.

People were going about their business below me. Most didn’t notice me, people rarely look up, but I saw one wave at me. It was Anthus, I’d know that ridiculous hat anywhere. He was a great guy and taught me the basics in tracking.

I was originally a praying mantis, so I wasn’t good at those special methods of following traces of prey. In the first place, praying mantids hunted by vision and ambush. As a human I hadn’t learned to follow spoor or tracks either, so his lessons were very useful.

Anthus wasn’t the best fighter, but his stealth and tracking abilities were nothing short of incredible. His awareness was quite good as well, since he was able to spot me hidden in the shadows underneath a balcony six stories of the ground.

I hung out, watching the town while listening to the buzzing of bees and the rustling of leaves. After a bit a single bee flew up and landed on my shoulder. It was a messenger from the Empress.

The bee did this ticklish buzzing dance on me before it flew off. I never quite managed to learn the code, but I think I got the basics.

‘Meeting, leaders, hive.’ were the words I managed to make out. I climbed out from under the balcony, Arizel would know more.

Tracking him down was more time consuming then hard. There weren’t any cell phones so it was mostly a matter of narrowing down where he could be this time of day. I would ask around and search till he ran out of 'hiding' spots. Eventually I found him wrapping up some bit of work in an out of the way storage area.

“Hey, you get the Bmail?”

“Yes, I don’t know why you insist on calling it that, but I did.”

“What was it?”

“Oh, there is going to a meeting tonight before sunset. The other chiefs and leaders of Honeywood are attending.”

“Really? What for?”

“To prepare for war.”

There it is, the other shoe.