I was born in the Darkness.
From tenebrous depths I had emerged, blind and screaming. From pupal shell I thereafter left, naked and thrashing, witness to an alien world that I did not recognize. That I could not recognize.
It was cold and full of color. It was agony to my new flesh. It was repulsive. It hurt. It hurt. It hurt!
I clawed and staggered around in the dust and slime and rock and stone and screamed, my newfound sight and feeling buffeted with this torment. My senses were filled to brimming with this... suffering. I moved and screamed until I could no more and I fell to the ground, curling into a ball. There I wept in tight self-embrace, not knowing what to do. Not knowing what cruel power this was and why it chose to gnaw at me no sooner than I had been born with cursed sentience and sapience into this callous world.
Then I heard a skittering. Then a voice. A single voice, so soft and sweet, and that was all.
My head swiveled up from the coarse floor, searching for the sound that pierced through my pain. What I first saw through eyes so clouded and wracked with a throbbing ache was a cluster of small bodies scuttling upon the floor before me. They were worms. They wriggled and skittered and moved their plump little sallow bodies around in a mindless fashion. They were all I saw, yet the voice was still calling to me. Desperate need outdoing my wish to whimper and give in to my endless cascade of agony, my sore eyes searched and searched for the source. And then I finally found it.
My face froze when realization dawned upon me. It was a worm. A worm that had wriggled away from the others and up to me. This one, particular worm, so fat in form with ugly brown-black head and of pale-white flesh. And it indeed spoke.
It was conversing to me in a language I knew not, but somehow understood with perfect fluency. It was... truly calling to me. Asking me to take it up in my worthless palms and... ingest it. It was inviting me to feast upon a power it would bestow. A power that would give me my meaning; that would end my agonies and satiate all my wants. Quickly, I snatched it up and held it to my puling maw, unable to resist its words, be it a promise or a lie.
Past my teeth the chittering thing slithered and down my throat it slipped. I felt its cool body grace my interior, its weight as it fell. Then I could feel it moving within me. Needle feet pinching and prodding my intestines. It was adjusting to my weak form, so new and helpless. It was filling it with something I could not fathom at that delicate moment. A deep darkness that snuffed out my sufferings ever so slowly but surely. A dark, filling... emptiness. It touched me and took away what I despised so. And it molded my tortured flesh into what it saw fit.
As time passed and as I felt my body adapt to the queer happenings that affected it, I noticed the cold no longer felt so dreadful. Neither did the colors, or the pain that weighed me down. It felt almost welcoming. Then it truly did. Not a foe, not a discomfort, but something good. A friend. A loved one.
From the ground I stood, my trembling legs, longer and stronger, lifting me in crooked display. Sounds I had not noticed before entered my mind. I turned about and saw a hundred shapes, a hundred figures. All stunted and wispy and puling and hissing. All crooked.
The shapes were as mine, and were rising as I did. They were my sistren, and they had just emerged from their own pupae. They had just eaten the worms upon the floor as I had done. Embraced the strength that would be enough to exist in this reality. Embraced power and meaning. Embraced the Darkness.
We were all united in a chorus of screeching, rasping and hissing. We mingled together with our bodies and song until some of us fell silent and let their gazes fall from floor and sibling to the realm above. I turned my head to the commotion that surely captivated them so, and thus did I see her.
Yes, her. Our mother. I could see our dear mother looming above us. She cast a magnificent shadow upon us, her wizened figure and the ragged, crumbling cloth she wore helping to provide it. Hers was a visage of rawest beauty, both great and terrible to behold. We cried to her, demanding her attention. Her answer to our plea was given when a new sound, of something broken falling and scuffling over dark rock, landing before us in a dry heap.
What was thrown to our mercy was made quickly known as it tried moving. It was a thing—a creature not like us. Were it still standing upon its hind feet it would cast a tall figure, and as it was now it was equally plain to see that it was almost twice our girth as well. It had six lithe limbs clothed in thin armor, and gnarled talons ending on feeble hands. A host of tattered remnants of clothing and false-chitin I had not seen before in my short life and could scarcely put sensible names to with my naive mind dressed the being. Four eyes aglow with blue stared out, looking everywhere its head could peer so very weakly.
And it was still alive. Still mewling faintly with what little life was its own. I scented a dying aura from where I stood. It filled me with a sudden loathing I could scarcely comprehend. A rage that boiled and festered in my bowels. Something foul. Something wrong and unwelcome.
I shifted a brief glance to my sistren. They, too, could smell it. Their shrill hissing and hitching motions said to me that that it, too, filled them with an inexplicable fury. But they were also wary, fearful of reprisal from the dying entity and its decaying aura. They stayed where they were or else stole all but a meager distance up to the being, only to be held back by a lingering sense of caution.
I wanted only more.
I was the first to approach the prone figure, and I did so slowly. The creature stared at me as I approached, weakness shining in its four eyes and a murmur fleeing its toothy mouth. Stretching my arm out, I prodded its form delicately, wishing only to see what its alien carapace felt like before acting as my heart longed. A hand came up to feebly paw mine away. I ignored its pitiful attempts until it summed up enough power to earnestly slap my wrist away from its prying. Burning anger filled me. I raised my claw, a hiss sounding through my teeth, and slashed my limb downward. I felt a heavy tremor shake my arm, and a foul warmth touched my cold flesh. The creature cried out shrilly as I tore this wound into it.
The sound startled me. I ripped my claw away and took a step back. All my sistren rushed forward, their fear forgotten by my actions. The scream of the pathetic creature, sent out far sharper as many more a tooth and talon ripped into it, was drowned in the sound of ravenous squeals that demanded its sustaining flesh.
I looked to my hand as it happened, semioblivious to the happenings around me. Moist crimson-purple caked its brittle surface. A dark, runny fluid that seeped into the jagged cracks and crevices of my carapace. A lure, so strangely tantalizing in shape and color.
The worm whispered something to me from where it rest inside me. Before I knew what I was doing, I was instinctively pressing my claw to my mouth. The ichor touched my maw, and I felt horrible warmth slide between my teeth. My tongue rolled over a sweet taste and lapped up all it could. I thought for a scant moment to reflect on the strange creature that bled onto me when I struck it, but my curiosity was disrupted when something new came about me.
A hunger was what filled me then as my tasting concluded. It was cruel and biting. Crying out. It was the agony I felt when I was without the worm. It demanded to be sated. Past its plea that threatened to tear my frail body asunder, I only then heard the sounds of crunching and gnawing. I turned and looked to my broodmates. They had silenced the creature and were feasting upon it. Limbs and skin and chitin both true and false were being pulled away, but there was still so much to consume. Vacuous in my shambling stride, I shoved aside any who hindered my passage until I could see an opening to exploit without issue. Then I sank my jaws into fresh meat and blood and gorged all that I could fit into my maw.
And so I fed alongside my sistren. We devoured all that lay before us. The flesh. The blood. The bone. The Light. The sacred worm within me fed as well. We savored what we devoured. Every scrap and drop and that was ground between my teeth and rolled slowly down my throat. We savored the bitter Light most. We let it fill us and become cold and dead. We felt our strength grow greater. Then onto the lifeless scraps we descended, fighting and clawing hatefully at one another to get the larger share of it until nothing was left to scrounge about.
Our mother was pleased. She whispered her sweet nothings to us, whispered to us of our potential, our greatness, our place in this order, this Hive. She chittered to us, called us her precious Thralls, which we were. And then she departed, gliding away silently, leaving us be to digest our meal. Leaving us to plot and plan and dream of further ascension with our infant minds, if we could. Leaving us in the Darkness that gave us our life and our chance for glory eternal.
And for a time after, we were contented in its loving embrace.