The Blood Rivalry of Queen Bees

From the Atlantean Imperial Codex on Natural Philosophy

Among the myriad wonders of the natural world, there exists no rivalry more vicious, more merciless, nor more unwavering in its finality than the battle between nascent queen bees. It is a contest written into their very being, one where only one may reign, and all others must perish.

When a hive enters the sacred cycle of succession, it does not invest in a single heir, but many. The workers, knowing that their future rests upon the strength of their ruler, fashion multiple royal cells, ensuring that should calamity befall one, another may take its place. But the hive was never meant for two queens.

It is said that the first to emerge is not born in peace, nor in ignorance of her purpose. She is the herald of a throne, but also the harbinger of death. The moment her head breaks free from the waxen cradle of her birth, she knows—knows that others sleep beneath the surface, knows that their dreams must be shattered before they awaken.

She wastes no time. The newborn queen moves with unnatural purpose, patrolling the combs like a monarch whose rule has already begun. She listens, sensing the faint stirrings of her yet-unhatched sisters. Their time is not yet come—but it never will.

With mandibles sharp and stinger poised, she seeks them out. One by one, she locates the sealed chambers that hold her rivals, each a tomb not yet claimed. And then, with no hesitation, she tears them open.

The larval queens—helpless, blind, weak—do not even live long enough to see the face of their executioner. Their cells are breached, their bodies pierced with venom, their limbs left to twitch as the first and final pain of their short lives overtakes them.

If, by chance or ill-fortune, two queens hatch at once, the hive does not intervene, for it is not the place of the many to decide the fate of the throne. Instead, the two will fight—as they must. They will lock mandibles, their bodies twisting, stingers flashing. Neither shall flee. Neither shall yield. Only when one convulses in death, venom pulsing through her veins, does the battle end.

The workers do not mourn. They simply dispose of the body, dragging it to the edges of the hive, letting the lifeless form fall as all failed queens must.

The victor takes her place. She alone will mate. She alone will bear daughters. She alone will rule.

Thus is the law of the bees—as immutable as the tides, as inescapable as fate itself.

And thus should all rulers heed this lesson well:
A queen cannot share her crown.

I.

The rain had long since turned to ice. It was wrong. All of it. Verulia was a land of heat, of sweltering jungle mists, of parrots shrieking in the high canopies while saurians stalked the riverbanks below. It had never known the bite of frost, had never felt the weight of true cold. Until today. Until this. The temple steps—once smooth white marble, polished by the treading of priests and kings—were now slick with frozen blood.

The great, sprawling city of Riat lay sprawled beneath the mountain, burning in patches, silent where it should not be silent. More had died from the cold than from swords. It had come fast, swallowing the temple first, rolling outward in a slow, creeping death. Soldiers collapsed where they stood, their breath freezing in their throats, their bones cracking under the sudden, unbearable weight of frost. Skin turned gray, then blue, then black.

Shrieks of pain choked off into silence, lips stiff with ice before they could even beg for help. Pzkya had thought herself ready for war. She had not been ready for this. She knelt at the top of the temple steps, her body betraying her, her breath coming in shallow gasps. Her left arm—gone, blasted into scattered, meaty tatters. She had watched it happen, the way her sister’s strike had froze the wound closed in an instant before the frostbite turned the stump black. She felt nothing. Not because there was no pain—but because something far worse had settled over her. A great, gnawing emptiness. She was bleeding mana. It wasn’t visible—no glowing mist, no arcane flickers—but it was happening all the same. A slow, invisible drain. Her very essence leaking out, her core fading, unraveling.

She had known this was possible, in theory. That a sorcerer’s wounds did not just bleed flesh, but bled power—until there was nothing left but a husk. She had just never thought it could happen to her. Her fingers twitched. Weak. Shaking. She tried to push herself up. Her legs buckled. She was already dead. The knowledge struck her harder than the spell that had taken her arm. Harder than the cold air rasping in her lungs, harder than the weight pressing down on her skull. She was dying. And she could not stop it. She lifted her head—slowly, painfully. And there she was. Zekhara.

Her twin.

Identical in face, in voice, in blood.

Yet somehow… not.

She stood at the top of the temple steps, framed in torchlight, in the smoke curling from the city below. She was untouched. No wounds. No frost. Not a single thread out of place in her tattered robes. She breathed as though the unnatural cold did not exist. As though the battle had been nothing but an inconvenience. Pzkya trembled. She had lost. Not because her sister was stronger. Not because she was more powerful. But because she had fought dirty. Like a bitch.

Glass shards.

Not some high sorcery, not some spell of unmaking—just glass, scooped up from the temple ruins, thrown into her eyes mid-incantation. The sting had broken her focus for just an instant. Long enough for the frostbolt to follow. And now, here she was. On her knees.

The impact of her face hitting stone barely registered. Her teeth cracked together, blood bursting over her tongue. She lay there, sprawled in filth, sobbing, legs twitching uselessly as she tried to push herself up. Above her, Zekhara did nothing. She did not speak. Did not shift her stance. Did not acknowledge the pitiful, writhing mess of a twin at her feet. She simply watched. Pzkya whimpered, dragging herself forward an inch, her body failing her completely. “Please,” she breathed, too winded to scream now, chest shaking with terror.

“You can have it. The throne. I don’t want it. I don’t want it anymore.” Her vision blurred as she tried to lift her head, tears pouring freely down her face, mixing with blood, with dirt. Above her, the shadow shifted. A scrape of metal on stone. Zekhara bent down. And picked up the crown. Pzkya’s breath hitched into something small and broken—some final gasp of hope, of desperation, of primal pleading.

Zekhara smiled. “Oh, sweet sister…” She turned the blackened circlet in her hands, studying it as though considering. Then she lowered her gaze. Her voice, when she spoke, was soft. Thoughtful. “We both know what would happen if I simply let you die.” A scream echoed in the distance—the high, wet slosh of another loyalist put to the pike. The city below was silent. Zekhara smiled.

“Some fool would find your corpse and bring you back. And I simply cannot allow that.”

The crown gleamed in the torchlight.

“But I’ll tell you what, sister.”

She crouched, close enough that Pzkya could see her reflection in those victorious, merciless eyes.

“Perhaps… I’ll let you be Queen for a day.”

Pzkya’s pulse slammed in her throat.

She shook her head violently, choking on a last, garbled sob, but her body refused her.

The crown pressed against her scalp.

Her whole body seized.

There was no sound.

No explosion.

No dramatic flash of light.

Just a single, sharp silence.

Then blackness.

And she was gone.

II.

Darkness. But not like before. Before, the darkness had been a void—deep, empty, suffocating. A silence so absolute it felt like nonexistence. But this? This was different. This was warm. Wet. Pulsing. Something thick pressed in around her, slick and soft, wrapping her in an embrace that felt… wrong.

She tried to move. She couldn’t. Her limbs were curled in on themselves, her body pressed into the walls of this space, this chamber…..

Chamber…..

No.

Cell.

A royal cell.

The realization came like a knife to the gut.

“No. No, no, no—”

She tried to scream, but the sound that came out was not her voice. It was thin. Chirping. A high, clicking keening. “Oh gods.” Her lungs rattled in her chest, a sharp, alien buzz vibrating beneath her skin. The walls around her flexed.

Something pressed in from above. A shadow—a shape—blocking out the dim, golden light filtering in through the wax.

And then—A face. Not a human face. Chitinous. Dripping. Huge. Mandibles flexing, spit threading between serrated points.

A queen. The real queen. The one she had been placed beside.

The late-born. The one who was meant to kill her.

The hunger in those black, soulless eyes was immediate.

Pzkya’s mind buckled. Her legs twitched—not legs.

Spindly limbs. Her arms—no, no, they were too small.

Too soft. Too weak.

No strength.

No power.

She had no power.

She wasn’t even herself.

The chamber tore open.

The stinger came down.

Straight into her face. Straight into her eye.

Straight into her brain. And she didn’t die.

She woke up again. Still small.

Still weak.

Still in the cell.

Another queen.

Another stinger.

Again.

Again.

Again.

A cycle.

An endless, screaming cycle.

And she could never wake up.

III.

The Reign of Zekhara was not long. But it was unforgettable. History would never remember her—but the land would. The jungle itself bore the scars of her rule, long after she and all who had known her had turned to dust. Her victory had been absolute, but she had never wanted to rule. She had never cared for diplomacy, stability, governance. She had wanted pleasure.

She had wanted blood. And she had taken both in excess. Her decrees were insane. The executions were unrelenting. Tens of thousands were slaughtered on her orders alone. When there were no rivals left to kill, she turned on her own people.

They had once cheered for her. Now they hid from her. It didn’t matter. She found them anyway. The symbol of her dominion, the crest of her nightmare, was branded onto every banner, every monument. A silver honeycomb. Beneath it, the thing that had won her the throne. The white handprint. Her own. Frozen into the stone. Missing its ring finger. Her divine symbol. Her goddamned victory.

But she was not satisfied. The city twisted beneath her, the jungle outside its walls warped, blackened. Animals were born wrong. Deformed. Screaming. Writhing in agony.

The heat returned—but it was not the same. It boiled the rivers. It poisoned the trees. The land was cursed. And still—deep in the palace, the hive screamed. The screaming never stopped. Zekhara made sure of it. She had the apiary moved. Not to some dark dungeon, not to some hidden cavern below the earth— To her own bedroom.

The giant hive, the dripping, writhing, buzzing monstrosity of a prison, placed against the wall, so that her sister—if her sister even still existed—could hear every sound. And when her husband—the man who had once been Pzkya’s—lay beside her in their bed, she made sure Pzkya heard him, too. His laughter. His gasps. His moans. Right up until the moment she drove a dagger through his eye.

Right up until the moment he twitched beneath her, and she rode his corpse for the pleasure of the act alone. And in the hive, the screams went on. They went on every few hours. They went on for thousands and thousands of years. Long after Zekhara was gone. Long after Riat crumbled.

The corruption dug itself deep into the roots of the earth, until the city itself collapsed. Swallowed by a gaping wound in the land. A black abyss. Another forgotten chasm, one of many across the world.

And though no history remains, though no documents survive, know this. By the power of blackest sorcery, by the will of a curse that will never break— The screaming continues. Deep beneath the rock. In the darkness of a hive that predates kings and empires. In a beehive that is older than time.