bookpower 743. The Monarch and The Heart of The City
743. The Monarch and The Heart of The City
743. The Monarch and The Heart of The City
She was hungry before she learned how to breathe.
Hunger was all she knew whilst inside of the cocoon.
Starvation came before her own existence was determined.
The Monarch was born as a larva with six arms and two legs. An adult at birth with imprinted instincts and memories given to her by her host mother – the Heart of the City. The only color she knew in this world was red. How it could be smeared, mashed, squashed and consumed at the handful.
And blue from the wires that seemed to govern the pain in the living from what she knew. Those tiny strands of blue meticulously spread thinly so that they could take their mind off the hunger.
The Monarch remembered her life as she fell into a state of deep introspection in the face of the Amalgam. Her throat shriveled in her grasp. Her eyes could not see anything other than the darkness of their apparel, and the pair of golden eyes that stared down at her judgingly like a pair of stars.
She began her life as a larva only knowing hunger. She was one of seven hundred from a brood born beneath a city of tens of thousands. All her life she had been living in this same exact place, seeing the same red, and feeding off her own kin to sate her insatiable hunger.
Was it wrong for her to feed on loved ones? Animals like sharks feed on one another in the womb of their mother.
It was survival of the fittest.
A world where life is to become food for each other, no matter evil or good.
A crushing pain overcame her. But strangely, it was not the kind of pain that took her mind off the endless hunger, and the infinite yearning to become complete. It was the kind that opened her eyes as she felt parts of her psyche begin to slip away. A void opened within her. She could not see it, nor herself.
She could only feel what she knew immediately was her soul being destroyed. Dark fragments of herself were absorbed by the Amalgam as her entire body turned dark, like a black cutout against a world of bright red.
“Why was it that I was always seeking to become complete?”
It was an imprinted yearning that came before she existed. As a result, she never had a chance to know what she was. She knew she was an Insectid to some degree, but the names that circulated their colonies and nests said otherwise.
“Impuritas. Are we all just impurities for trying to help ourselves?”
She didn’t know. She was angry at the Amalgam. Why was she and the Crimson Hunger being persecuted when the Insectids in the north did the same to another at a far more disastrous scale? Or the eternal war in the south?
Why not them?
Was it so wrong to want to eat?
To consume?
She blamed the Amalgam with all her heart, but then she heard the Amalgam’s voice call to her.
“Marduk and the Brightest Star ushered to us this wish. The White Wing told the tales of destruction as a warning to the Beholders. Marduk spread it to us after our Tiamat’s death as a prophecy. Tiamat... was our original true ‘Heart’. The queen of monsters, usurped by Marduk, who has become our ultimate founder...”
Tiamat was a great serpent-like Dragon whose own wrath was ingrained into the Crimson Hunger. She was the original progenitor of the Crimson Hunger, long before Marduk came into existence. Her reign only extended in the ocean depths furthest away from the lands. As legends... no, as the Monarch’s memory served her – Marduk slayed Tiamat, which created what was called the Red Sea and perhaps even the Dead Sea in the distant oceans.
The Heart beneath her, which the Amalgam firmly planted a boot on, throbbed.
It imparted memories of Tiamat into the Monarch, as well as of Marduk. The Heart viewed Marduk as the legitimate ruler of the Crimson Hunger; a figure head exalted by defeating Tiamat.
This was why the Monarch – a being born from the Crimson Hunger – was called a ‘brood’ of Marduk. In some shape or form, the entirety of the Crimson Hunger bent to his own whims, but at the same time, the Hearts themselves also had their own sense of separation.
Namely in how they operated, why they operated, and their reasons for their infinite hatred.
“... but why do you shine so brightly? You are clad in the same darkness as me. We’re both consumed by it. Yet that shade of yours is nothing like the consorts of the Brightest Star. Why is it not as dark?”
These words did not come from the Monarch.
They were from the Heart itself. It used her as a vessel to speak, and for the first time, the Monarch tried to fight back. She clasped at her throat.
It seemed futile now of all times.
She wanted to know more about this Amalgam. Wanted to know more so that she could spite her with every ounce of her being, even if it meant going against her Heart.
The golden eyes of the Amalgam, which appeared like pure-yellow orbs of light on a black silhouette, stared at her judgingly.
“I’m speaking to the Monarch. Not you.”
The Amalgam conversed with the Monarch directly. She didn’t need to, but she did. In a way, it felt like this was an autonomous response from the Amalgam rather than her conscious self.
Was this an unconscious part of the Amalgam?
If so...
... then why was her agony postponed?
Indeed, she was at utter ease in the absolute presence of the Amalgam. She felt no pain, no hunger, no suffering.
Just existence.