As the Tempest flew high above Jacinto where no humans could see it, Reyna saw as the massive city of Jacinto fell to the ground and flooded the Hollows with seawater. Reyna covered her head with her arm, not having ever been above surface before in her life. "The surface is so bright!" Reyna yelled over the wind.
Myrrah said nothing but directed the Tempest away from Jacinto and out towards the ocean. "Where are we going Mother?!" Reyna shouted.
"Somewhere where you will be safe!" Myrrah shouted.
"Where is that?!" Reyna shouted. "They destroyed our home! Where will we go now?!"
With a sigh, Myrrah said quietly, "I'm not sure."
Myrrah and Reyna flew for hours until they finally found a safe place to land. The Tempest landed on the ground safely, and Myrrah helped Reyna down. "Where are we?" Reyna asked.
"An abandoned human shipyard," Myrrah said. "I believe they called this place 'Endeavor.' We should be safe here for the time being."
Several Reavers then landed around them and the Tempest and the Locust that got off bowed to Myrrah. "As you all know,the humans succeeded in sinking Jacinto before us and have flooded the Hollows," Myrrah said. "This is a minor setback in our quest for dominance, but we still shall prevail."
Myrrah then looked at Reyna, who looked sad at losing her home. "Your world can end in the blink of an eye," Myrrah said. "One event, one unexpected twist of fate... and suddenly the world as you knew it... is gone. Forever.
"All that you held dear, all that you held close... is washed away in a sea of distant memory. Life... is cruel. Of this I have no doubt. But life continues on... with, or without you. One can only hope that one leaves behind a lasting legacy. But so often, the legacies we leave behind... are not the ones we intended."
The Locust growled in approval and Reyna walked over to her mother. "Good speech," Reyna said, her eyes still adjusting to the light of the surface. "But didn't we evacuate more Locust than this?"
Myrrah looked around and noticed her daughter was right. There were only a few hundred Locust present, and while hundreds of thousands had died in the Hollows, there were at least a few thousand that had been evacuated.
"You there," Myrrah said, pointing to a Drone. "Where are the others? There were thousands evacuated. Where are they?"
The Drone thought about the question and struggled to find the correct wording. He finally settled on the word, "Savage."
"Savage?" Myrrah questioned. "After all this, those fools decided to abandon us and go savage? After all we have been through? Pathetic!"
"Most of them have left my Queen," a Kantus told her in Locust tongue.
"So those fools believe that just because we lost our home, we have lost the war? We now have one less enemy to deal with now that the Lambent have fallen! The humans have lost their last safe haven. It won't be long until they destroy themselves. But, incase they don't, we need to get organized."
Myrrah then raised her voice so that everyone could hear her. "My loyal subjects," she said, her voice even and calm. "It has come to my attention that there are some Locust who believe that we are finished and have left to become savage. Rest assured we are not finished. The Lambent have hopefully perished for good, and the humans have destroyed their last safe haven. We are closer to winning than ever before.
"But, we cannot separate. Those that have left us will be viewed as traitors who have no right to join us again. But I now ask you something. How many of you are willing to die for me, and for your species? Step up if you are ready to fight."
Every single Locust in the crowd stepped forward and Myrrah nodded. "Excellent," she said. "You are now the Queen's Guard, and you will serve and obey to fight for a better future!"
The Locust, including Reyna, shouted in approval and pumped their fists to the sky. Myrrah then left the steps she was standing on and walked up to Reyna. "Come," she said, wrapping her arm around her daughter. "Let's find a place to stay."
Two years later, Reyna woke up and stretched her arms. The cot she was sleeping in was nowhere near as comfortable as her bed in the Hollows, but those days had long passed.
The Locust had been occupying the Endeavor for the past two years and had recently started taking boats out to look for more places to go.
Reyna walked out to the docks, looking around. There were a few Drones and two Kantus on the dock with her, but other than that, the dock was abandoned. Reyna walked up to one of the Kantus and asked, "Where's my mother?"
"Sea," the Kantus said in Tyran. He had a deep and gravelly voice that reminded Reyna of Skorge, making her sigh.
So many of the Locust she had known and grown up with had died recently and it made Reyna depressed. Most of them didn't even have names because of how many Drones there were. Only the higher ups, like Kantus' and most of the generals, were named.
As Reyna walked around the abandoned shipyard, she smelled the sea air and sighed. She missed the Hollows more than she thought possible, and the smell of this unfamiliar air didn't help.
Over the past two years, Reyna's skin had tanned significantly. When she was in the Hollows, she was as pale as paper due to never being out in the sun. She had gotten used to being outside and no longer flinched at the sun, but she still would have preferred staying underground in the dark.
She was nowhere near as frail as she had been down below. She had always been incredibly skinny due to growing up on a diet of worm meat and berries, and she hadn't gained that much weight since surfacing. But what she had gained was muscle.
Myrrah had thought that it would be important for Reyna to know how to fight for herself now that she was on the surface, and had a few Drones and Boomers teach her how to fight. Reyna even knew how to wield certain types of guns like a Hammerburst and a Boltok, but she didn't tell Myrrah that part. She had asked a few Drones for lessons when Myrrah wasn't around, against the Queen's wishes.
Reyna continued walking until she got to the station where the boats would dock and noticed that her mother's Tempest was missing. Myrrah often flew the Tempest when she wasn't on boats with her main forces, off searching for a different place for them to stay.
Reyna then heard a buzzing sound approaching the docks and looked up. She saw the Tempest flying in and smiled, knowing her mother was back.
The Tempest landed carefully on the dock, and Myrrah dismounted from it. She saw Reyna and said, "I believe we have found a new place. We must go. Hurry up and gather your belongings."
Reyna ran quickly back to the room she had been staying in and grabbed her bag full of clothes, which had gotten significantly lighter than it had been two years ago due to her outgrowing most of her older clothes.
She then ran back out to the docks and saw Myrrah talking with a group of Kantus. When Myrrah saw Reyna approaching, she waved the Kantus off and walked back towards the Tempest. "Come now Reyna," Myrrah said, mounting the Tempest and holding her arm out towards Reyna. "Let us go."
I had a different idea for this chapter, but it got pushed back to the next chapter instead. The main reason for this chapter's existence is that I wanted to adhere somewhat to the Gears of War canon. According to the canon, Myrrah and her forces occupied Endeavor for quite some time until Marcus and the rest of Delta Squad decided to take over. The canon also states, at least according to Richard Prescott's last words, that the Locust had discovered Azura very recently, rather than what I believed. But if I continue talking, I might end up spoiling parts of the next chapter.