Rebirth
A/N: As one might guess from the cover, Mana has the look of the Kerrigan Master Skin from Heroes of the Storm.
The only way for Mana to keep track of time was to watch the outside world through the eyes of one of her Zerglings, Overlords or Drones. A Queen was in the making, as she would help to spread the creep, thus increasing the area where the Zerg could put their buildings on. Right now the only thing that was in the making, aside from the Queen was an Extractor, a building designed to pull additional resources out of the ground. Looking back, she should have ordered the Drones to morph into this specific building earlier, because despite hunting almost none stop, the Zerg had a huge resource problem. So big in fact, the Hatchery didn't have enough bioenergy stocked up to let a single Larvae morph into a replacement drone. Thankfully time was something Mana seemed to have plenty on hand, so to speak. Which was bad!
It had been just two days since Eragon's "visit" and so far nothing new happened. The only thing really worth mentioning happening was the feeling of her body melting and being reformed for the lack of a better term. This had been exciting and frightening at the beginning, but apparently one could get used to everything. Inside her little space Mana couldn't move much, which tended to further agitate the girl trapped inside. Luckily for her, whatever liquids were keeping her alive also influenced her brain in a way that made her feel content almost ninety percent of the time she was awake. However the other ten, she tended to rant and rant and rant with only the Zerglings to listen to her and of course all they could do was getting aggressive themselves and hunt down their prey more viciously than before.
Since nothing new was to be seen around the Hatchery, Mana had taken a little risk and sent one of her Overlords in the clouds and then told it to fly in the general direction where she had last seen Eragon. Luckily the cloudy weather hadn't changed the past couple of days, it even snowed one time, so the Overlord had no problem hiding from curious onlookers. The last thing she needed right now where some overzealous people thinking that she might be a threat, which she was and kill her and her little swarm before she was even out of her cocoon.
The things her Overlord managed to scout, however, were pretty disappointing. First of the village, if you could call that pile of houses that, had to be the smallest one she had ever seen. Her gut feeling told her as much. Thanks to the highly evolved eyes of the flying balloon-shaped Zerg and her mind link to said Zerg, Mana was capable of seeing very detailed pictures of the people doing their day to day business in the small village. For some reason, the clothes the people were wearing didn't match up with the ones she had been wearing before being enveloped by the fleshy cocoon. It was just the colors or style, but overall hers were definitely prettier and generally appeared to be done in a different fashion altogether. Though at the same time, she hadn't really been paying attention to her clothes at the time she woke up in this place.
Back to the topic at hand, the Overlord did manage to eventually spot Eragon, finding him working outside a hut on a field, alongside someone who appeared to be the same age as him, maybe his brother. From time to time an older man would join them, no doubt the father, although said man appeared to work mostly in the nearby barn. Maybe the two younger ones insisted since it was getting colder each day and no doubt the two brothers were worried about the health of the father.
This became a kind of hobby for Mana, watching the villagers doing their stuff when she wasn't occupied with her base. The Queen allowed Mana to further spread the creep with so-called Tumors that duck themselves underground once fully grown. She also managed to increase the Larvae production on the Hatchery, though it was pretty much useless, seeing as there were barely any resources to spend on troops or buildings for that matter. In her desperation, Mana ordered a second Extractor to be build, so that the Drones at least had something to do, aside from just staying inside the Hatchery the entire day. Aside from that, the wildlife in this part of the mountains was too scarce to properly stock up resources. The best guess was, the animals traveled down during the winter, in order to not have to dig through the snow for some grass. Only a couple of herds stayed on top. Even twenty Zerglings could only cover that much of a perimeter, which grew with each herd being slain and brought home for the biomass. At least the increased size of the creep area allowed the Zerglings and Drones to move around much faster than before, at least up to a certain point.
This routine went on for two more days. The creep would cover a bigger area, the Zerglings hunted everything down that had meat on its bones and the drones would carry it to the Hatchery or work in the Extractor. With more troops, more Overlords were needed in order for Mana to not lose control over the swarm. By now she had actually planned to add the Roach Warren, but the lack of resources put a stop that plan rather quickly. So instead of increasing the size of the swarm, the girl once again ordered her Zerglings to hunt down animals, but avoid the two villages the Overlords had spotted so far.
Mana used the opportunity to watch what was going on in those places once again. Eragon and his assumed brother were still busy on the fields, carrying everything they could into the nearby barn. In the meantime, some man with a white apron was being yelled at by a girl with brown hair. Some smith was handing over a knife to a woman.
Mana would have sighed if she could. Nothing interesting was happening once again. She was ready to just go to sleep when one of the Overlords asked for her attention. Opening a "channel", so to speak, the Overlord transmitted pictures to her. At first, it looked like just another village, but it didn't take long to see that this one was completely different. For one, the village was placed in the mountains and heavily fortified. A wooden wall at least five meters tall, spikes placed outside to impale every storming enemy and even a tower next to the huge double doors. Yet what lived inside those villages proofed to be really interesting. They looked like humans, but were significantly bigger, had gray skin, thick arms, bent over legs and sprouted horns from their heads. The smaller ones pretty much resembled human children, with the exception of the skin color. Something Mana noticed only later, was that the village actually extended into a nearby cave.
Those things didn't trigger any new memories for Mana, nor did she have a name on hand for those humanoid beings. It was an interesting fact and the girl made a mental note to ask Eragon later about those things. If the boy would build up the courage to come and visit her. Hopefully, he hadn't really convinced himself about everything being a dream. Maybe she should show the boy that in fact, it had all been real. However, she quickly abandoned that plan, as it would just have been stupid. She just needed to wait for Eragon to hunting again.
Five more days passed. The "people" in the mountain village did pretty much the same as the humans, with one exception. Those horned humans or whatever you wished to call them went hunting more often or would have one on one brawls, which ended up with one of the fighting parties dying more than one time. During the fifth day, all activity ceased to exist thanks to a blizzard. The Overlords were forced to land, as they would have been blown who knows where with the winds going on. Mana made another mental note to increase the speed of the Overlords, once the opportunity showed itself. Forced landings like this not only made the precious flying Zerg vulnerable, it also revealed that the Zerg themselves were present to the local population. Luckily the blizzard pretty much prevented anyone from getting outside. Once the blizzard passed everything was back to routine, which was a few days later mind you. Mana had lost precious time thanks to the weather, something she wasn't happy about, but what could she do?
Another couple of days passed, with the sky clearing up in the meantime. Mana ordered her Overlords back, just to be on the side of caution. She finally had enough biomass gathered and could build a Roach Warren and even build some Roaches, once the warren was done. They were at least at the height of a human and as wide as seven humans lined up. Their back armor was tougher than that of the Zerglings and had a lot more spines. Their entire face was almost hidden under the armor like a turtle, plus they had six six legs. Their ability to spit acid made them unusable for hunting purposes, but Mana just wanted to have them for the sake of having them, plus it gave her ever growing army a lot more firepower. Sadly it also turned out that Mana needed a lot more Overlords than anticipated to control just a couple of them. Soon enough the entire area around the Hatchery was halfway darkened by just the balloon like Zergs, plus the increasing numbers of Zerglings and Roaches filled the area. It truly began to look like a true nest, even with the constant movement of Zerglings and Drones. The units, which were not hunting or carrying something mostly stayed on guard near the Hatchery and the other buildings around it. The Queen especially liked to stay near Mana's cocoon. More often than ones she shot a bird of the cocoon that was foolish enough to even come near the Hatchery, let alone come close to the leader of the swarm. Mana thought the Queen was a little overzealous, but in the end felt touched by the gesture.
After two days of clear skies, it was cloudy once again and Mana sent out her scouting Overlords back to their positions. One of them flew over the river which flowed through the valley and noticed a huge caravan going next to the river. Various wagons were filled with cargo, which in return was covered by a cloth. Mana had no idea what exactly their business was but kept an eye on them anyway. So the Overlord followed the caravan until it reached the village Eragon lived nearby. From what she could see, the villagers appeared to be ecstatic about the arrival of the travelers. Hands their shaken, words exchanged and finally the travelers set up camp on the northern side of the village. It became clear soon that the arrivals were traveling merchants. Interesting to know, but in the end, the information was pretty much useless for Mana's situation.
The following day all the girl could do was watching bored out of her mind, as the villagers and travelers traded goods with each other. Not really something exciting to do, but all her swarm was doing was hunting for resources, so nothing new there. At one point Mana found Eragon and his family going to the village and talking to the traders. She didn't know why she was so fixated on him, though the most likely explanation was that she had managed to talk to him around two weeks earlier. She watched the people interact with each other for some time, before shutting off the connection to the Overlord hovering over the area.
Bored out of her mind, Mana forced herself to sleep, despite it not being night. Luckily for her, this wasn't an issue, as the cocoon helped her out.
XXX
Something was wrong. So very, very wrong. Mana woke up in the middle of the night all of the sudden, restless and full of energy. She always felt trapped inside her cocoon but could accept it as a necessary evil for her recovery. Now however she wanted to get out. She needed to get out. Simply being cramped up in this tiny space made her so angry, she was sure her blood was boiling like lava. Unbeknownst to her, purple energy was gathering around her cocoon. It was also pulsing like a hard and looking like it was ready to burst. Every nearby Zerg unit was watching in anticipation, from a safe distance understandingly. They didn't have to wait long.
Instinctively Mana gathered energy and released it all at once. The cocoon literally exploded, the chitin flying in every possible direction. Where once there was simply an egg, now flew the leader of the swarm, radiating massive amounts of energy. She let out a war cry, which was heard through the entire Palancar Valley. Everything stopped for a few moments, be it animal or human. It was like time had stopped in this part of the world, for every living being could feel the force behind that inhuman shout. Little did the people know that this marked the beginning of great changes to come to Alagaesia. Whether these changes were good or bad had yet to be seen.
XXX
After the excess energy was depleted, Mana's feet gently landed on the creep and looked around. For the first time in weeks, she was capable of seeing through her own eyes again and it felt good to see the world around her. Every color appeared to be more intense than before. Whether that was due to her better eyesight or because she hadn't been able to use her eyes for so long, she didn't know.
Her Zerg slowly came closer and closer, until the closest ones were only a few feet away. Then, as if they had practiced it beforehand, each of the Zerg bowed before their leader synchronized at the exact same time. Mana couldn't help but smile triumphantly. Seeing all those deadly and terrifying creatures bowing to her of all people, made her feel powerful. And that is without mentioning the power she actually felt ever since waking up. She was sure she could take down the entire village of the horned people up north all by herself with one arm missing. And probably still have time to murder the entire valley.
The leader of the swarm was about to take her first few steps when she noticed something of the corner of her vision. This something appeared to be a bony stick or something, covered in chitin. Turning her entire head around, Mana found out that the bony stick was part of a wing structure growing out of her back! In fact, the leader of the Zerg now possessed a pair of bony wings, only these weren't true wings as there was neither feathers or leather, which would get her off the ground in the first place. Pleasantly surprised, she looked down at her own body and noticed that it was covered in chitin plating. The clothes she had been wearing upon her wakening up were gone. For some reason, it felt like this should bother her, but it didn't. Mana didn't ponder upon that thought process for too long since she wanted to know how exactly she looked like. So without further ado, she went into the mind of the Queen and took a good look at herself.
As previously mentioned, she was covered in a chitin plating, with two colossal wings growing out of her back. Her skin color was now an overall purple, with some parts of her body shining in a brighter version of that color. Her face was what remained mostly human, though her eyes were glowing purple as well. Some sort of crown grew out of her head and her hair appeared to be glued together in dreadlocks and then covered with chitin. Plus it now reached down all the way below her waist. Similar to the crown, she now possessed triangular shoulder blades and her lower arms were covered in extra chitin, which grew into spikes before it reached the elbows. It was the same case with the legs. Her hands were now deadly claws, looking like they could tear through the skin by simply touching it. Finally, there was some sort of "bandage" around Mana's feet, plus stilettos grew out of the heels. If not for the visible toes, one would assume she was wearing high heel shoes.
Overall, Mana was happy with her transformation. She looked just as deadly, as she was sexy. Satisfied, she returned to her own body and found that the swarm was still looking for her, seemingly waiting for a grand speech. Or maybe just orders.
"Continue with your work. Our swarm needs to grow. We have to evolve." Three simple sentences, yet the swarm was seemingly happy or rather ecstatic about the prospect of growing bigger and more importantly evolving further. But in order for both to become reality, they needed to continue their work. In a matter of seconds, every Zergling had left the Hive Cluster, hunting for more Biomass. Mana herself walked towards the Hive Queen and said: "Take care of things here. I'm going on a little stroll."
The Queen unit bowed respectively in response. Seeing as her swarm had their orders, Mana decided to test out her new body. Despite already knowing what she can do, thanks to the Zergs ability to tap into genetic memory, she desperately needed some sort of activity or else she would go crazy!
XXX
After walking for half an hour through the woods, Mana finally let loose, so to speak. With her wings she cut down trees at least a century old. Her fist smashed rocks three times her size into tiny pieces. Her movement had become so fast, most creatures would only be able to make out a blur. After thoroughly destroying her surroundings (around a 500-meter radius consisting of trees, moss and a couple of rocks), she began running. She ran faster and faster, faster than she had ever run, faster than humanly possible and even faster than a leopard. Obstacles she either dodged or smashed out of her way. She didn't know how long she ran, but by the time she decided to stop, the sun was already rising. Granted she didn't know when she woke up, but the Queen of the swarm must have run at least an hour. She must have had a lot of pent up energy.
Luckily for her, she could feel her swarm and the general direction she had to go to return. With the help of the Overlords, she could pinpoint her exact location. Knowing where she had to go, Mana casually walked through the bushes, enjoying the first rays of sunshine on her new skin. The adrenaline slowly but surely left her body and soon enough she actually felt relaxed. She looked around a little bit curious about the place she was in and the plants she saw. Most of them she recognized instinctively. She didn't remember their names, probably never knew them from the start, but was sure she had seen them before. But there were also plants which appeared to be exotic to her, like something you'd see in another country. It appeared that subconsciously her memories were still intact, thus resulting in her to recognize some of those plants, while others were new to her.
"Maybe I should talk to Eragon again." Mana mused to herself. "He did trigger something...hmmm. In any event, I should try to meet him the next time he goes out hunting."
Luckily for her, she didn't need to wait for too long. Having heard her wishes, an Overlord lent her his vision. For some reason, Eragon had decided to get up early and venture into the woods. Also, he was carrying something in his arms.