Hive Knight: A Dark Fantasy LitRPG (Trinity of the Hive Book 1) by Grayson Sinclair (poetry books to read TXT) 📗

Absolute terror pierced my heart, and I couldn’t breathe, could barely think. All I wanted was to flee from the room and never return. The creatures scuttled over the stone and rug to crawl over her feet and up her legs.

She wore the brightest smile I’d seen on her yet. She loved them, keeling down to let them run up and down her arms as if they were adorable little things instead of my worst nightmares. I was about to run, for I couldn’t stand to be there for another second when she looked at me and smiled.

“Trust me.”

I was about to tell her to fuck off, but the look in her eyes stopped me. It was pure radiant joy. Those two words calmed my phobia enough that I just sat cross-legged on the table while she played. She kept going for several minutes until she started to look a bit ragged and worn out.

She still wore her smile, but her hands trembled and her breathing deepened, sweat started to bead and drip down her neck. Mana depletion. She's running on fumes.

“Hey, you’re about to collapse. Stop the spell.”

She looked up, suddenly realizing the truth of my words. She nodded, and the smoke faded from her hands. As it disappeared, so too did the insects.

They scurried off, back to their homes in the dark.

After a couple more seconds, only the two of us remained in the room. As soon as the flow of mana stopped, she sagged, exhausted. I thought she was about to collapse again, but she held up her hand.

“I’m fine, just give me a minute.”

She leaned over the table, her breath coming in great gulps. The table supported her easily, but her arms still shook from fatigue. I pulled out a mana potion and offered it to her.

“Thank you,” she mumbled and took a few tentative sips until her strength returned. When she knew it wouldn’t come back up, she finished off the bottle, and a little color returned to her cheeks. She stood up from the table, managing to support herself and chuckled. “That was foolish of me.”

“Yeah, it was,” I agreed, “But more importantly, what kind of magic was that? What are you?”

She looked up at me with a small, very sad smile. “I’m an entomancer, the last of my kind."

Chapter 10 - Stranger Things

An entomancer? I’ve no idea what that is. I’d never heard the term on Nexus before, but it nagged in the back of my head, echoing around my empty skull and on the tip of my tongue. Maybe from one of those old games Micah always played. I cursed under my breath at the half-remembered thought, abandoning my pride enough to ask.

“I’ve never heard of one of your kind before.”

For a brief moment, as I gazed into her eyes, I could feel her sadness, could feel that bottomless pit of despair that welled up inside me. It was so deep and lonely that I couldn’t breathe; her grief suffocating under the weight of it all, then she blinked, and the moment passed.

“Has it truly been so long that we’ve been forgotten?” she sighed. “Maybe it’s for the best. A fitting punishment for the crimes we committed.”

“What crimes?” I asked, leaning back against the table, pulling at the short hairs on my chin.

History had never been important to me, but even I would have remembered if someone had mentioned a race of insectoid demi-humans living on Nexus. I’ve never even heard of the Hive or entomancers or met anyone else who talked about them. Must be a reason for it…or a good story if nothing else.

 I gave her my full attention, but the entomancer girl next to me was hesitant to speak, shifting on the spot, trying to work out something in her head. “Cat got your tongue?” I asked.

She looked up, startled. “That’s disgusting. Why would you ever let a cat hold your tongue?”

I couldn’t help but laugh at her. “It’s just an expression. All I meant was that you seem to have a lot on your mind.”

“I do, and it’s not that I mind telling you, it’s just…it’s just a very long story.”

“Well, then I won’t push you to tell me,” I said, hopping onto the table. “What do you want to talk about then?”

“Doesn’t matter, just something else, sorry,” she said and started to poke around the room, kneeling and opening chests at random to peer inside. She opened one filled with gold, running her fingers over the numerous coins, picking them up and letting them spill out of her fingers.

I did have one question I wanted to know; it’d been burning in my mind since I met her, more so than the plethora of others I had, at least. “What's your name?”

She stopped playing with the gold and turned, staring at me, but not answering.

“You do have one, right?” I hedged.

She smirked at me, but her eyes darkened. “You had to ask a complicated question.”

“I didn’t realize it was.”

“I used to have one, but I can’t remember what it was.”

“How’d that happen?” I asked.

“Another long story,” she replied with a bitter chuckle. “But I suppose I do owe you something for saving me. I guess I should start with my mother, the true queen of the Hive. She…she wasn’t a good person, as painful as that is to admit. The day she became queen, everything changed. She took the throne by her strength alone, deposing the former king by force. And no one could stop her.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, but one day we were a normal enough family, and the next, my mother was the ruler of the entire kingdom,” she said, coming to lean against the