We could have cooperated with the ground walkers for our mutual salvation, but they are humans, and only understand dominance and ownership. All that we have left is a war to the death. For all their so-called intelligence, humans are blind to the threat right before their eyes. We never stood a chance of enlisting their aid, so now we fight alone. And we will stand on their corpses to do so.

Queen Myrrah

Hope Runs Deep

They do not understand. They do not know why we wage this war. Why we cannot stop. Will not stop. Why we will fight, and fight, and fight. Until we win...or we die. And we are not dead yet.

Writing was not a mainstay of Locust society. Well, not Tyran writing at least, and certainly words that were more sophisticated than runes. And there was the unfortunate fact that the hand of one's average Locust was far more suited to bringing death to one's enemies than writing about them. But then again, drones existed for a reason. Then again, society existed for a reason. And if the society of the surface's inheritors was to be based around a queen whose hands were better suited for writing than wielding a hammerburst, then so be it.

And so be it, Myrrah reflected, that she had to resort to writing in the first place. To convince herself of her own words.

Frowning, the queen set aside the parchment and pen. Too much had transpired recently to write anything more eloquent than vague reassurances that her kind would prevail over their oppressors. Too recently for her liking, immulsion had proven to be the bane of the Locust in a manner other than infection. The hominids' lightmass bomb had inflicted a heavy toll, in both infrastructure and lives. If they weren't destroying their own planet with their immulsion fuelled weaponry, they were using it to commit mass slaughter, only this time, within the Hollow itself. It was human nature, she supposed that if a resource didn't inspire conflict indirectly, then it had to be used in conflict directly itself. If it wasn't for the urgency of the Lambent infestation, perhaps she could have saved the Locust much grief by simply waiting for the hominids to destroy themselves with their lightmass weaponry than using it on their successors.

But used it they had. Which was why she was writing to reassure herself, in-between dealing everything from logistics to boosting her people's morale.

It seems we share twin destinies, Myrrah reflected bitterly. They fight over immulsion, we fight because of it. We focus on destroying our own species, and then circumstances brings us into conflict with one another. If only they weren't so stubborn, they might be able to see that our destinies need not be mutually-...

"Queen...I come..."

...exclusive.

Scratch that. They were exclusive.

The queen watched as High Priest Skorge approached and knelt before her, displaying a reverence only matched by the Kantus's worship of the Trinity of Worms. Lithe, thin but still a worthy successor to RAAM, it took the mere presence of her soon-to-be general to remind Myrrah that in her war against the hominids that there could be no compromise, that if the Locust species was to survive, it would need people like Skorge leading it. Or so he'd claimed with his broken Tyran-a present divergence from his prayers/screams of worship. He'd promised his queen the means of taking an eye for an eye, of repaying the ground walkers in kind for the carnage they'd recently wrought and his superior had given him the benefit of the doubt. She'd have much rather preferred the head of her foe, but an eye was a good start. By the Trinity, hominids were so blind that removing just one eye might ground them to a stop altogether.

And given the parchment the priest procured, perhaps that was the case...

"Riftworm...awakened..." Skorge intoned, tracing a clawed finger across the diagram of two cities-one as a surface ruin, the other as a submerged one. The claw reached the Locust rune for water as if to re-emphasise the point. "Water...flood...hominids die..."

"How many?"

"Many..."

Myrrah remained silent. Casualties didn't matter at this point, if the diagrams were accurate. A human city (Tollen, if she was reading this correctly) had been sunk, and if Skorge spoke truly, a riftworm was to be thanked for this miracle. She'd heard rumours of subterranean activity following the lightmass attack, but had attributed it to side effects of the explosion. She'd never hoped...nay, dreamed, that a Locust god would be awakened. Not that rift worms were really gods of course, but...well, certainly the events seemed reminiscent of divine intervention.

"More cities...sink..." Skorge continued. "Take out...body. Aim...head..."

"We sink the cities of the plateau..." Myrrah murmured. "Then the head can fall in turn..."

Jacinto-the head of the COG. Humanity's last fortress. Impenetrable from bellow due to its granite base. But now...with the riftworm...

"You are my general now," Myrrah said. "Rise, Skorge. You will serve the body of our people as well as their minds."

Skorge rose, but his head remained bowed. He had what he wanted. And what he wanted coincided with the best interests for their species.

Speaking of which...

Beckoning to Skorge to follow, Myrrah headed for the balcony of Nexus. She had a task to do, and wanted to wait until Skorge's good news (or lack of it) reached her ears. Drones were simple-minded, but they still required inspiration. Inspiration that she wouldn't have to be entirely responsible for.

"Hope runs deep..." Myrrah murmured.

Skorge tilted his head. "Queen?"

"Nothing Skorge," the Locust ruler murmured, looking down at the immulsion around Nexus and wondering how deep hope would have to run before this was all over. "Nothing you have to worry about."

Worry...it could have been her imagination, but as she looked out over the assembly of drones, ready to go into battle for the first time, she could swear it was etched on some of their faces. Well, time to remove that.

Time...for once, Myrrah felt she had all the time in the world. And indeed, it was how she started her speech.

"For a time, the humans of Sera knew the illusion of peace...until Emergence Day," she began, citing the Locust's first major victory against the monsters of the surface. "At that moment, we broke free from our subterranean world, erupting into the domain of those ground walkers, and wiping out whole cities."

The doubt faded. Wiping out settlements...the Locust knew all too well the horrors of such barbarity.

"We fought and killed the humans on their fine boulevards, in their homes, on their battlefields," Myrrah continued. "And they fought back. In time, their valiant defence was crushed. With billions dead, humans denied their enemy control by destroying their own civilization. They launched devastating attacks on their own territory-sacrificing their own citizens-so that we could not possess it. Such is their fear and loathing of us."

Perhaps they had good reason to. Perhaps in the grander scheme of things, at least something could be said for the ground walkers' resolve to cling to existence. But time was not on Sera's side in the grander scheme of things. They'd sealed their fate long ago. Their barbarity would soon end, and Sera wouldn't have to suffer any more for it.

"Understand what a world must do to survive..." the queen intoned, talking to herself as much as her subjects. "What humans must do, and what we must do. But survive we must. Now the humans' long struggle against overwhelming odds approaches the final desperate stand."

And there was it. The punchline. The words that caught the attention of every one of the hundred or so drones below her-they'd been fighting against their remorseless foe for fourteen years, and had only recently suffered a setback showing how remorseless the foe could be. How could victory be so imminent?

"I tell you this," Myrrah said, answering the question. "Because the rift worms have come to aid us. They have rewarded us for our fortitude. They do not wish to see Sera polluted by Lambency. So they will remove the disease of the surface, and bury the disease of the deeps. This I promise you, my subjects. Your queen, promises you this."

And as they roared their approval, the drones made a promise of their own. A promise to do their best to save their kind also. A promise to fight until only one sapient species remained. A promise to save Sera from the monsters of above and below. A promise based on hope of a new tomorrow.

And hope ran deep.

A/N

Stating the obvious here I guess, but this was based on two things-quotes, and the saying that "bad guys don't see themselves as bad guys." And since Coalition's End (as far as I can tell) seems to once again conform to the status of "COG=good, Stranded=evil, Locust=cannon fodder," decided it was finally time to apply the concept.