Chrysalis

“Oh… oh, I don’t like the smell of that at all.”

Her antennae waggled furiously as she tried to waft away the stink of whatever sorcery had been performed here. Whoever had performed it had gone to great lengths to scrub the signs away, but they hadn’t expected someone with her level of intelligence coming onto the scene.

After all…

“I’M BRILLIANT!” she declared to the empty room, then cackled gleefully.

She had so many things to do, so many ideas, it had her head spinning most days, but the Eldest, her largest and most demanding Senior, had requested she complete this task personally, and so she would. She’d left her labs and gone to the third stratum, to the city of Roklu, in order to investigate the former Church of the Path facility here.

As she looked around the chamber, her thousands of lenses each reflected the light differently, each looking at something the others weren’t. In just a few moments, she noticed something.

“Interesting…” she murmured.

It was a little irritating, having to adjust the position of her head in order to point the lenses in different directions, but after a few minutes of finicking, she managed to isolate what she’d been looking at. Her eyes were able to see almost everything at this point, each lens picking up on something different. Using her eyes to ‘see’ in the traditional sense was almost impossible now, she relied on mana sensing for that, but her eyes now acted as sensors, able to scan for thousands of blends of light, mana, energy and everything in between.

“Trying to hide from me? I can see EVERYTHING!” she snapped her mandibles mockingly at nobody as she advanced further into the chamber, antennae sweeping through the space her eyes had identified.

in the floor. She’d been so intent looking upward, she hadn’t even noticed the floor wasn’t flat. Such a terrible oversight! Luckily, no one had been present to witness her

that she

BRILLIANT!” she cackled once

overhead… as well as

it, casting her eyes across the floor, down into the depression, then

to ensure that there wasn’t any speck of existence that was beyond her gaze. After all, secrets could be hidden anywhere,

aware that it has been stolen. Please

Neither was time.

by piece, the enchantments that had been built into this room began to put themselves back together. Whoever had broken them had

minutes was a strain, but for this, she needed to hold the cast for much, much longer. Yet, as the mystery began to unravel right before

She lay there for a while, recovering, letting her glands and core replenish their energies. When she was sufficiently recovered, she turned her gaze back

power and currents of mana, ever so faint, almost ghostly, now hung over the depression and

enchantment, and even then, she felt there were elements missing. It was too long ago that this had been destroyed, but even so, her mandibles clacked

was much here she didn’t understand, things she’d never seen before, which was exciting! If she saw something she didn’t know, it wouldn’t be long until she turned it into something she did know. After all, just who was

ant continued to prance around the semi-sphere depression in the ground, examining each piece of the enchantment she’d managed to uncover with

see… I see!” she muttered (and occasionally