Swarming Sovereignty

Lia jolted awake, frantically casting her gaze around the room. It was unfamiliar, and everything was huge. She seemed to be on some sort of incredibly soft and comfortable bed that certainly wasn’t the rickety one she had at home.

Where had she been last…it had been raining, she was running home from school, there was a boom, and then…she woke up here. Had she been struck by lightning? That couldn’t be, she felt perfectly fine. No, not perfectly fine, she felt amazing, better than she had in a long time.

“Ah, you’re awake, perfect.” The voice was coming from behind her, and she could hear the sound of its owner clapping her hands. Lia turned around hesitantly, and found that it was…Amelia, one of her best friends.

But two things were wrong. First, she was enormous, many, many times the size of Lia. Second, it didn’t feel like Amelia. No, she felt like…Lia’s creator, which was definitely not right.

“I see you’re confused, that’s perfectly understandable. Would you like me to explain?” Amelia asked, smiling gently.

Lia tried to nod, but her neck just felt…stiff, like it was being restrained somehow, meaning she was unable to actually nod. So, instead she just sort of…waved an arm in agreement.

“Oh, right, right, I forgot. You’re not really equipped to communicate right now.” Amelia leaned forward, tapping an enormous glass wall that was between them. “Step on the green tile for yes, the red for no.”

Now that she was looking, Lia could see that there were indeed two colored tiles on the floor. She had been rather distracted by the giant woman in front of her, so those had failed to really grab her attention. So, with a bit of effort, she heaved herself off of the bed and scuttled over to the green tile.

“Perfect. Well, the long and the short of it is that you died. Game over. Kaput. You were on your way home from school and were hit by lightning. Seems like the targeting for a wizard’s spell went awry and imbued a thunderstorm with life-seeking lightning bolts.”

Amelia’s lips pulled up into a mirthless grin, a sadistic spark entering her eyes as she continued. “Don’t worry, I made sure he won’t be making any of those mistakes again. You’ll get to meet him and exact your revenge eventually, but not yet.”

Lia panicked at this, trying to yell out something, anything, but all that came out was a low hiss.

“I know, you would rather get at him sooner. Unfortunately, you’re not strong enough for that just yet.”

Lia dashed over to the red square, planting herself firmly in it.

Amelia raised an eyebrow. “You don’t want to get revenge?”

And Lia was back to the green square. Fortunately, the two were pretty close together, so the walk wasn’t too bad.

“Are you sure?”

That gave Lia pause. The wizard had killed her. Obviously, she wasn’t dead at the moment, but Amelia had said so, so it had to be true. And, the more she thought, the more she realized she did want to give this wizard a piece of her mind. Not kill him, of course, but…

What did she want to do to him? There was something, but she was unable to tell what it was. It was like a word that was on the tip of her tongue – vague enough she couldn’t tell what it was, but solid enough that she knew that she knew.

“I see you’re thinking, so let’s return to the original question. Do you want revenge?”

Lia hesitated, then tapped her leg on the green square she was in. Yes, she supposed she did want some form of revenge…whatever that meant.

Amelia’s smile widened. “Perfect. Before I explain, I need to ask you a few more questions, so bear with me. First, I’m going to list off names, tap your leg when you hear yours, alright?”

Lia waited as Amelia listed them, tapping when she heard “Lia”.

Amelia was smiling genuinely now, a proud, excited smile that Lia had learned meant that some crazy plan was working. “Perfect. Same thing, just tap when you hear my name.” And, after another quick test, Amelia was looking incredibly excited.

“Alright, going to get into some harder questions now. Tap as many times as the number of family members you have, including yourself.”

That was…six. Her parents, herself, her two little sisters, and her little brother.

“Perfect. Now, here’s an important one. Are you romantically interested in guys?”

What kind of a question was that? Of course she was, she had a boyfriend and everything! She was about to tap the green tile in affirmation, but hesitated before she actually did. Now that she was thinking about it again…she felt nothing. Honestly, she just…didn’t feel the same thinking about him. The same things that she used to find so attractive were…unimportant. And, other guys were the same. She didn’t find a single one even remotely attractive anymore.

So, she scurried on over to the red square, prompting an unusual spark to enter Amelia’s eyes. “What about girls?”

And when she thought about it, she realized nearly immediately that she was. It was an odd sensation – she realized on an intellectual level that something fundamental had changed within her, that she should be panicking, but…no. She felt excited. A whole new world had just been opened to her, and she wanted to explore it.

She immediately went back to the green square, prompting a squeal and a fist-pump from Amelia. “Perfect! Alright, explanation time. You died a couple of years ago. And, in that time, I never forgot you, I never moved on. Everyone else, your parents, Liam, your other friends…they stopped caring. They were sad at first, but they got over it. I loved you more than everyone else, so I didn’t.”

Lia stared at Amelia in shock. Amelia had always been rather…touchy-feely, but love? She wasn’t sure how to react to that. Sure, Amelia was quite attractive, but…

She shook herself out of her musings. Amelia was talking, and she needed to listen.

“So, these past two years, I’ve been tirelessly working on a way to bring you back, and to bring you back better. I’m not going to sit and let you die on me again, and I’m not going to let the world ignore how great you are again. No, I’ve given you the power to make this world into a utopia, a perfect society where we don’t have to worry about all these petty issues we deal with in today’s society and can focus on what’s really important. What do you say? Will you work with me?”

On some level Lia knew that Amelia was acting crazy. Her eyes were completely focused on Lia, and she was smiling a huge, unhinged smile. But, at the same time the things she said were so…alluring. It made sense in a way that she was honestly kind of scared about. She knew they were the ravings of a lunatic, but on an emotional level they just…connected with her.

Well, Amelia had never steered her wrong before, and Lia was dead as far as the world was concerned, so…it wasn’t like she really had anything to lose. She tapped the green square, prompting another excited squeal from Amelia.

“Yes!” She cheered, turning around and bending down. She straightened up, turning around and placing a small cloth-covered object on the area in front of the glass between them, something Lia was beginning to realize was a table. “So, um, you…might have noticed that you’re, um…small.” She said, suddenly nervous. “I might have reincarnated you into a monster. And, uh, you’re kind of not the biggest looker at the moment, if you know what I mean.”

She waved her hands frantically. “It’s not permanent or anything, though. If you keep working on raising your level and evolving, I promise you you’ll be able to get to something that looks like your old body eventually, if not better-looking.”

Lia paused, taking that in. So, she was a monster now. That wasn’t supposed to be anywhere close to possible, but bringing someone back from the dead wasn’t either, so she just had to accept that Amelia had, apparently, been quite busy. She tapped the green square once again, and Amelia tore off the object’s cloth, revealing a mirror.

“Not the biggest looker” was a…rather large understatement. She was, in a word, horrifying – she was something akin to a dull brown spider with a scorpion’s tail and a set of cockroach’s wings.

Oddly enough, she really didn’t feel that out of place in her body. A quick test showed that she had full control over everything and was even capable of rather limited flight if she really strained her wings.

“Ah, good. You seem to, um, be taking it well? I know you were never really afraid of bugs, but I was worried. So, uh, let’s talk about what you are and some of the help I’ve given you. Over these past years I’ve put my entire being into researching how to resurrect you and how I can make sure you’re able to make the world a fitting place for you to live in. As a result, I’ve become one of the world’s most powerful witches, and I’ve used my entire arsenal of abilities making you the best you can be.”

Oddly enough, that weird sense that Amelia was her creator had vanished during the time she had been looking at herself. She had caught Amelia doing something in the corner of her vision, so perhaps that had something to do with it?

Ignorant of Lia’s inner musings, Amelia continued. “I’ve set you down the path to become something I’m calling a Swarm Matriarch, an entirely new breed of monsters I’ve made. Once you evolve a couple of times, you’ll be able to start converting living things into part of your swarm. They’ll retain their old memories, feelings, everything, they’ll just have undying loyalty to you in addition to all that.”

Ah, that was what she had wanted to do to the wizard. She wanted to make him part of her swarm. It was another impulse she probably should have been concerned about, but that really didn’t matter, there was no point worrying about things like that all the time. She wanted to, so she would, it was as simple as that. She had a second chance at life, so she wasn’t going to let silly things like that get in the way of what she wanted.

That was also an attitude she should have been concerned with, but she wasn’t, and that was that. She was different now, but she wasn’t about to throw away everything just because her mind was not what it once had been.

“I’ll be joining your swarm, of course, but that’ll have to wait until you’re established more and I’m sure you can handle things without me for a bit. But, before that, I have to help you get acclimatized. Go ahead and open your status, I want to introduce your new toys to you.”

Lia tapped her green square in acknowledgement, mentally calling for her status. And, as it always had, a grey window popped up in front of her, though it looked…different to how it had when she was a foxkin.

There were a lot of things she wanted to comment on there, but she unfortunately lacked the capability to ask Amelia about them. Fortunately, Amelia seemed like she was about to start going over them anyway.

“Right, so, let’s just run down the list here…” Amelia said, picking up a tablet next to her and beginning to read off of it. “So, your race isn’t foxkin anymore, but you’re not going to stay a Lesser Swarm Queen Larva forever, which ties into the level thing. You’ve probably noticed that the cap is, uh, quite a bit lower than the normal one hundred that ‘sapient’ races have.

“That’s on purpose. You’re technically a monster now, not a ‘person’. As such, you should be hitting race evolutions much, much faster, and they’ll be much more noticeable and impactful. I’ve managed to greatly reduce the limits that prevent lower monsters from evolving into things too high above their original state without jumping through a million hoops, there might be a bottleneck here or there, but you should be able to get through those and start evolving fast again.”

That was good to know. Aside from Mental Fortitude, her stats were awful, the worst she’d ever seen, so it was comforting to know that they weren’t going to be like that for too long.

“Oh, and don’t worry about the stats. It’s just a result of starting as low on the evolution chain as you are. I could have started you higher, but I wanted to give you more choice in how you develop. I made a prebuilt evolution path, but the system should be robust enough to make its own evolution options, and I’m pretty excited to see what turns up.”

Lia couldn’t help but stare. Amelia was still a student when Lia had died. An incredibly gifted one, sure, but still just a student. And now she had apparently become a good enough mage to discover how to raise the dead and mess with the fundamental building blocks of monster life, both things that the world’s greatest minds had been looking into for centuries.

Amelia smirked. “I can’t really tell what you’re thinking, but I’m guessing you’re pretty surprised. Yeah, I’ve become the world’s foremost expert in magic, not that anyone actually knows that except for you and me. Really just goes to show what the power of love can do.”

Lia was pretty sure the power of love wasn’t that powerful, but she didn’t have any way of calling Amelia out on that, so she had no choice but to let it slide.

“As you’ve probably noticed, I went ahead and truncated your Title and Skill list pre-emptively. You’re probably going to be getting a lot more of them than normal, so I figured this would be a better way of going about things than having your status window grow super big. Don’t bother checking your Titles, you should only have Conqueror of Death right now, but go ahead and open your Skills, I’ve given you a few.”

Venomous Sting’s effect was probably simple enough, and Dimensional Storage was likely to be a way of stowing away things magically, but she’d never heard of the other two, so she opened their descriptions so she could get a better look at what they actually did.

 

“So, Blood Money and Dimension of Discounts are a package deal.” Amelia said. “It’s a semi-automatic item creation mechanic that lets you take energy from things and turn it into something useful to you. As a bonus, it acts as a convenient hidey-hole that you can warp into if you’re really in trouble. Um, once it’s a bit higher level, anyway. It’s kind of expensive to open right now but I can only do so much when making a new Skill.

“And Dimensional Storage should just let you store a small amount of stuff in a pocket dimension, something to tide you over until you get hands. You’ll be able to store a lot at higher levels but that’ll cost more Mana too, so you won’t be able to get crazy with it until you have more Mana to work with.”

Amelia reached down below the desk, bringing up a bundle of cloth that had something moving inside of it. “You’re pretty much too wimpy to do anything right now, though. But that’s only because you’re the monster equivalent of chick still inside its egg.” She unwrapped the bundle, revealing a bound but very much alive rat. “Here’s a really low level rat monster. Go ahead and kill it, that should get you up to your first evolution and then we can really get started, alright?”

She reached up, taking off what Lia assumed was the lid to the tank that she was in. There was a thud, and then the rat dropped down next to Lia, glaring defiantly at her and unsuccessfully attempting to wriggle out of its bindings.

“Just sting it, you shouldn’t need to bite it or anything. You can eat raw stuff now, and it should taste good too, but I’ll have some cooked stuff for you to eat too.”

Lia looked hesitantly at the rat but moved in closer, getting in position to sting it. She was afraid the position was going to be awkward, but fortunately she seemed to have some sort of muscle memory that let her judge the distance correctly on the first go.

Lia took a moment to think about that. Each of the options had their strengths and weaknesses, and as such their own appeal. The Young Lesser Swarm Queen seemed to just be progressing on the path she was currently on, while Swarm Battlemaster and Swarm Magocrat seemed to specialize her more.

The specialization was good, at least for the time being. She wanted to be out and doing things, not relegated to some sort of baby-making machine while her swarm did everything for her. So, she dismissed Young Lesser Swarm Queen for the moment, and turned her attention to the other two.

More magic was good, but…she hadn’t really been good with magic while she had been studying as a foxkin and hadn’t really liked it either. Plus, low-level magic was awful, practically unusable in any sort of combat situation, so Swarm Magocrat didn’t seem great for the time being.

Which just left Swarm Battlemaster, and it had a certain appeal to it that she couldn’t really resist. Most monsters used physical attacks at this low of a level, and she didn’t want to be caught with one defense while her magic had yet to give her any ways of dealing with the situation. Plus, when she did get a swarm going, she’d be able to increase their effectiveness just by being near, quality over quantity!

That settled it, she was picking Swarm Battlemaster. Hopefully she could just hop evolution paths if she didn’t like it, but she was pretty confident in her decision.

She barely had time to process that before everything went black.