Chapter 3: The Swarm Awakens

Wakefulness came to Hestia slowly. Eventually, Hestia felt somebody nudging her, and with a yawn she sat up, giving a sleepy glare towards her newest child.

Taylor Hebert looked back blankly, clearly unrepentant that she'd woken up the goddess, though Hestia could swear she saw a glimmer of amusement in her eyes.

"Morning," she grumbled, yawning a bit. Taylor helped her get dressed, and then the two spent a few minutes brushing each other's hair.

This had been what her mornings had been like for the past couple of days. Get woken up by Taylor, who like Bell was a morning person, then spend a few minutes tending to each other's hair. Last but not least, Hestia would access Taylor's Falna, checking to make sure the memories were slotting into place properly before doing a little bit more work to piece things together. Afterwards, she had to go to work, leaving Taylor alone in the church.

She felt kinda bad about that, but Taylor didn't seem to mind. The young woman – or 'teen' as her world would have referred to her as – took care of cleaning things and taking care of the building while she worked at the potato puff stand and Bell dove into the Dungeon. With an extra mouth to feed, they needed every valis.

Miach's advice about using the Falna to heal a broken mind had been right on the money. But it was not an instant fix, unfortunately. Taylor's mind had been so badly fragmented that restoring it was taking multiple sessions a day: Once in the morning, then one more before bed.

'I'm close, though,' Hestia thought to herself as she ran the brush through Taylor's wavy dark hair. It was just a gut feeling, honestly, but Hestia was confident Taylor would be back to normal very soon!

The whole enterprise would have honestly been much harder to do, if not for the… thing that lurked in Taylor's mind. Hestia didn't trust it, it felt too much like the Dungeon to her, but it seemed to care for the girl who had appeared before Bell, and Hestia knew that if nothing else, it wanted the girl's mind to be restored as well, and so had lent it's help.

Apparently, Queen Administrator – as it called itself – had been watching Taylor since she'd been born, and as such, had known Taylor better than she herself likely did. With that sort of awareness of Taylor's life, Queen Administrator had known exactly where certain memories were supposed to go. Without its aide, Hestia felt it would have taken at least a month to do as much work as she currently had.

"Now, while Bell and I are gone today, I'd like you to go to the market and buy some food. Bread, cheese, dried meat, and maybe some rice and salt if it's in the budget. You think you can manage that?" Hestia inquired as she handed the brush over to Taylor. Taylor nodded at the instructions, and Hestia smiled.

During one of the mind-healing sessions, the goddess had realized that the language Taylor spoke and the spoken by the inhabitants of Orario were completely different! She had had to lend her own memories of Babelian – or Common as it was more 'commonly' known – in order for the girl to understand what she and Bell were saying!

Hestia kept on talking to Taylor about this and that, knowing that even though it might not seem like it, the bug-controlling girl was listening and learning. She soaked in knowledge like a sponge, and was so curious about everything! It was super cute!

"And tomorrow, we're going to be going to the Monsterphilia!" Hestia continued, while Taylor ran the brush through her hair. "It's amazing! The Ganesha Familia captures some monsters from the upper and middle floors of the Dungeon to show them off. They then make them do tricks and exhibition matches with up-and-coming adventurers. I think you'll like it!"

With deft hands, Taylor tied Hestia's hair into her traditional twin-tails style, and the goddess flashed Taylor a grin.

"Thanks, Taylor!" she chirped. "Now, be a good girl, okay?"

Taylor nodded, then reached out and patted Hestia on the head. She pouted at that. Taylor was just so tall! She wasn't the only 'victim' of Taylor's head pats. Bell was also 'tall' enough to suffer the same treatment as her.

It did feel nice, though. Not that Hestia would ever admit that!

"Bye-bye, Taylor!" Hestia called out, leaving the bedroom and rushing out to her job. Taylor just waved, and watched her leave with not-quite-empty eyes.

The short girl with her jet-black hair parted into two tail-like extensions left, as bouncy as ever. It was adorable, like watching a puppy.

Taylor – that was her name, according to the pair of tiny children who buzzed around her – got dressed as well, putting on the second-hand clothes that'd been gotten for her, before heading out of the bedroom to a small living room area that had a couch where the white-haired bunny boy slept.

She looked around her current home, examining it. The area was a bit cramped and dim, and it'd been a bit dusty, though she had taken care of that problem as soon as she was able to walk again.

A bag of cold potato snacks had been left on the table next to the couch, along with a small pouch of gold and silver coins. 'Valis' the currency was called. Silver coins came in denominations of 1, 5, 10, 20, and 50 valis, while gold coins came in denominations of 100, 500, 10,000, and 100,000 valis. There was even supposed to be an even rarer 'platinum coin' which was worth a million valis, but Hestia admitted that she'd never seen one of those before. Indeed, the Hestia Familia didn't have any coins worth more than 100, and seemed rather poor.

Using actual gold and other precious metals for currency felt weird to Taylor as she played with one of the 5 valis coins from the pouch. From what she could recall, she felt more comfortable with slips of green paper to pay for things.

Trying to think about her past made her brain ache, so Taylor shook her head, putting idle thoughts to the side as she took the snack food over to a small device that looked like something called a 'hotplate' from her memories.

It heated the food, and Taylor ate the day-old, oil-fried potato puffs as her breakfast. She, the girl, and the boy ate this same meal almost every day in the morning. Apparently, the girl worked somewhere that sold them, so she got a lot of leftovers she brought home after work. They saved them to eat the next day, and the heating device made sure they tasted good.

Taylor wondered how the tiny device worked, though. It didn't get plugged in anywhere. Perhaps it was battery powered?

In the end, it didn't really matter, and Taylor took the pouch of valis and a wicker basket near the stairs and left the basement, ascending to the upper level of her home. The building had seen better days, and she was pretty sure the three of them were squatters. Oddly, the sight of the damaged structure didn't bother her. Seeing ruins like this felt normal.

Slowly, Taylor stepped out of the crumbling building onto a paved street. Taking a deep breath, Taylor then reached out and called upon the thousands of tiny insects dwelling within the surroundings. Wasps, ants, termites, cockroaches, spiders and centipedes to name a few all answered her call, squirming and writhing and skittering through the dark spaces within the city street.

And it was a city. A modest one, based on what she seemed to consider 'big' from her previous life, but still large enough to get lost in. Not that she could get lost with her swarm all around her. But it was intimidating.

This wasn't her first time leaving the home, but it was only the second time she'd done so without an escort.

Without letting any of her nervousness show – helped partly by shunting her emotions into her swarm – Taylor walked down the street towards the market where she'd be able to buy what her little family – no, the proper term was 'Familia,' wasn't it? – needed. With breakfast taken care of, that left lunch and dinner. Purchasing food was easy enough to do, and the money left for her use was enough for the three of them to eat for another two days. Maybe three if she could haggle a good deal.

Whatever the boy did, it seemed to be a dangerous job, as the girl always fretted over him when he returned in the evening. It didn't seem to pay all that well, either.

"Morning, dear," a woman with rabbit ears said as Taylor approached her stall. "What can I get you?"

Taylor gestured to a hunk of yellow cheese, then showed off two fingers. The rabbitwoman gave a price, but Taylor shook her head. A one-sided back-and-forth later, and she walked off with two small wedges of cheese for a slight discount.

The next place she visited was a bakery, the scent of fresh bread tickling her nose. This time, Taylor purchased two loaves of bread. They were in a pile of other day-old loaves that hadn't been sold from yesterday's batch, and got them at a nice discount. A bit stale, but a little heat would toast them nicely, making decent grilled cheese sandwiches. The boy and girl really liked those when she had made them one night.

A butcher's shop was up next, and this time it was harder to haggle a better price. Meat was expensive, more so than bread, cheese, or produce. Eggs were a better deal price wise when it came to protein, but they spoiled quickly, and since the little basement-home lacked a refrigerator or the like, perishables weren't on the menu for now. Taylor did manage to knock off a couple valis by buying some of the less popular cuts of meat, though, and was satisfied by the purchase.

Salt and rice were a bit harder to find, but with the valis she had saved, Taylor was able to get a small amount of both.

As she headed back to her home, Taylor's swarm noticed two people following her. A flicker of annoyance rose up in her. They were dirty, carried knives, and smelled of cheap wine. Drunk this early in the morning? Or still tipsy from last night? She didn't know, and didn't care to find out.

Taylor took a detour, not wanting to lead them to her home. Then, when they kept following, she called upon the swarm.

These thugs lacked the hum some people in the city seemed to have, which meant they were weak. The louder the hum, the stronger, that was what Taylor had come to learn. The boy's hum was quiet but firm, with a tone of chiming bells. And the girl's hum was the crackle of fire. Her hum was louder than anyone else Taylor had yet encountered.

As such, when a torrent of insects emerged from the shadows to attack them it caused the duo to immediately falter and flee. Their speed was impressive, though compared to some of the humming people and a few individuals she knew from her half-formed memories, it was rather pathetic.

Upon returning home with no other incidents to mention, Taylor put away the food in a small box in the basement, then began to clean things up. From the cracks in the walls insects came pouring out, and she used them to sweep up dust and dirt.

As that was happening, Taylor checked on a section of the decrepit building no one else visited save her. In it, a legion of spiders was crawling and spinning, forming several pieces of clothing out of their silk. She wasn't sure why she was doing this in the first place, either. It just felt… right.

A faint throbbing in her head caused Taylor to grimace. That always happened when she tried to think about her past, but that didn't make it less annoying.

Leaving the silk production alone, she checked the basement, and found it to be satisfactorily cleaned. The next part of her day was fetching from an artisanal well on the building's grounds. It was slightly overgrown with weeds and vines, but the water was clean and pure as far as she could tell, and she filled a tin bucket with water.

Only having one arm was frustrating, but Taylor carried the half-full container carefully back downstairs. There was a sink, but it didn't seem to work, so she had to fill it herself with the water from the well.

The next few hours were spent washing the few clothes they had, and leaving them out to dry in the sun. It was hard work, made trickier by her missing limb, but Taylor persevered, and finished the laundry around noon.

Lunch was a grilled cheese sandwich with a glass of lukewarm water. A plain meal, but filling. She planned to make riceballs for dinner tonight, and pack some extras for the boy and girl's lunches tomorrow. They were going to some sort of festival. The girl made it sound interesting. Monsters, Taylor knew, were important, but also dangerous. Just like the 'Dungeon' the boy worked in. She was curious to see what they were like.

The rest of the day was spent doing a few other chores around the place and a few exercises to keep limber. The pain of her injuries had faded after the first day of waking up in and Taylor had been surprised to be able to be up and walking so soon afterwards. Did they have somebody like ₱₳₦₳₵Ɇ₳ in the city?

"Taylor! I'm home!" a familiar and cheerful voice called out, distracting her from the dull pounding behind her eyes, and Taylor looked up and nodded at the girl as she appeared at the top of the stairs. Of course, Taylor had 'seen' her coming the moment she had appeared in the street leading to their home, but it was still polite to acknowledge her presence.

Taylor patted the girl's head when she got within arm's range, and she pouted cutely up at her. It only made Taylor want to pat her head some more.

The next day welcomed a bright and sunny sky with few clouds that was pleasantly warm. The streets were packed with what seemed like the entire population of the city and there was a festive mood in the air.

Taylor didn't like the crowds, her swarm buzzing in agitation within the shadows and sewers, but she kept on walking, keeping pace with the two youngsters who had taken her in. The white-haired boy was being pulled along by the twin-tailed girl, and they were looking around the market stalls.

Taylor felt like a mom as she walked behind the two children. Or maybe an older sister? She didn't have siblings… or at least, she didn't think she'd had any. But this seemed like what it was like.

"Taylor! What do you think?"

Blinking a bit, the teenager glanced over at the girl who was smiling while holding up a couple of cheap pieces of jewelry, posing like she was a princess.

Taylor just shrugged, and the girl pouted. "Come on, Taylor! Don't I look good?"

The teen peered closer, scrutinizing the apparel, before wobbling her head back and forth. That caused the girl to pout even more furiously and stomp her foot.

"Ugh! What do you know?" she huffed before returning the jewelry to the stand.

"I thought they looked nice, Lady Hestia," the boy said softly.

"Thank you, Bell!" the girl simpered, and Taylor couldn't help but snort.

'She has it bad,' she thought in amusement. The sort of puppy love the twin-tailed girl showed for the boy was adorable. More amusingly was the fact that the boy was completely oblivious, just grinning boyishly at her.

"Come on, let's go see the monsters!" the girl exclaimed, dragging the boy along, but also took Taylor's hand. They headed off towards the imposing structure – coliseum, her memories supplied – to watch people beat up animals. She felt like this was wrong, somehow, but couldn't put a finger on why that was.

Suddenly, a scream rent the air in the direction of the coliseum, and for a terrifying moment, dark images flashed through Taylor's mind. They were indistinct and faded before she could properly comprehend them, but such was the riot of emotions they inspired in her heart that her swarm exploded with frantic activity, and she froze in place.

Taylor wasn't even aware of when she let go of the girl's hand. She wasn't sure when her feet began to carry her towards the screaming, but she was in motion before she realized it. Taylor didn't stop, though. She kept on running, summoning her swarm as she did so. The shadows writhed and boiled with chitinous mass, and more screams rang out as people finally noticed the terrifying clouds of insects spilled out into the streets.

'It certainly helps clear the area out,' Taylor thought to herself, amused, before turning grim as she focused on the source of the terror her swarm was picking up.

There was something wrong in the distance, where the shouts were coming from. Something was charging through the crowd, and if not for the swarm getting people out of the way, it would have trampled them, or worse.

For some reason, the source of the commotion was impossible for her to perceive through the swarm. Like the people who hummed, this thing's whole body was indistinct and blurry, so she couldn't really understand what it was.

'Yet why can I feel it?' she wondered. It was not part of her swarm, but there was something off about the whole thing. Her power tried to connect with it, but it refused. That had never happened before!

So she tried again. And again. Repeatedly, Taylor reached out and tried to connect with the creature, attempting to stop it before it could kill anyone. And then without warning, her power managed to overpower the creature's mental defenses, and it was like her mind exploded as her consciousness brushed against that of the bizarre lifeform.

Everything suddenly seemed to click into place for Taylor. The achy, blurry fuzziness in the back of her head vanished and her memories were suddenly crystal clear again as somehow, the very act of breaking through the creature's mental barriers allowed her own jumbled up mind to snap back into place.

She wanted to blush, bury her face in her hands and maybe disappear into a pit for all eternity as she recalled what she'd been doing and how ridiculous she'd acted the past week with the boy and girl who'd taken in her! No, wait, their names were Bell and Hestia! Oh, jeez, how could she keep forgetting that?!

But she couldn't disappear and the ground didn't swallow her up, so Taylor did the next best thing and shunted her emotions into her swarm again. Next, she kept running and finally made it to the spot where her swarm had corralled the source of the chaos, and blinked in surprise.

Physically, it resembled a giant praying mantis, around eight feet tall, but with bluish crystals covering its greyish-white carapace, especially along its back. Its front arms were razor sharp blades, and its legs were tipped with sharp spikes. This must have been one of the so-called 'monsters' that dwelt within the Dungeon, and were being shown off today.

Finally, Taylor focused on the new connection she'd just made with the creature in front of her and frowned. Its senses were equal to that of a human's. More so, in the case of smell and sight. Its huge compound eyes were especially useful. Trying to see through her swarm's senses wasn't easy. This, though, was significantly better.

Yet what was truly strange was its mind. Rather, its lack of one. It barely had any instincts beyond killing everything it encountered. Just kill, kill, kill! It knew nothing else! Eating, sleeping, and anything else biological creatures knew to do, it seemed to barely understand. It had to be forced to eat or do anything that wasn't killing. It was very strange and worrying, because it reminded her of some of the super-insects Amy had created for her: mentally broken by the very nature of their birth.

As Taylor's power took control of the monster, she found it was ridiculously easy to give orders to, and with a flex of mental power, she crushed its urge to rampage and slaughter and calmed it down.

Not wanting it to be killed by some of the humming people who were approaching the scene, Taylor walked over to it, ignoring the shouting aimed at her, and mounted the monstrous mantis.

'I miss Atlas,' she thought to herself, feeling a pang of sadness for her beloved beetle buddy.

"M-miss?!" somebody exclaimed in disbelief, and Taylor looked over at the person who'd worked up the courage to come closer to her. It was… an elf?

She looked like it with the pointed ears, but she was also wearing glasses which was odd considering the pseudo-medieval buildings around her. Add in the brown hair styled in a not-quite bowl cut, and the office lady outfit, and she was rather cute, though the fear and confusion in her eyes made Taylor feel sorry for her. She knew what it was like to not understand what was going on while other people were fighting.

"It won't hurt you," she assured her, patting the monster's neck.

"H-how…?"

"It's mine, now. I won't let it hurt you," Taylor declared. That didn't seem to make the elf relieved, though. If anything, she and her pink-haired friend who'd joined her at her side just kept staring at her in bewilderment.

"Um, if I may ask, what Familia are you in?" the elf asked hesitantly.

"The Hestia Familia," Taylor replied, and boy did that sound odd to say aloud. Also, now that she could think properly again, it was really weird how the little girl whom their 'family' was named after had the same name as a goddess from her world.

"I didn't know Bell had gotten a new Familia member," the elf muttered to herself, squinting up at Taylor suspiciously.

Taylor just nodded slowly. 'Seems like this person knows the boy… right, his name was 'Bell,' wasn't it?'

"I'm new."

"I see," the elf muttered. "Well, my name is Eina Tulla, Bell's Guild assistant. Uh, thank you for stopping the Crystal Mantis… however you did it. You likely saved a lot of people."

"No problem," Taylor assured her. She then glared into the distance where her swarm could 'see' other escaped monsters running around. Most were being confronted by the humming people in the crowd, but others were still free. And wait… where were Hestia and Bell?!

Taylor began to look around in a panic, realizing that they'd gotten separated at some point during the chaos.

"I have to go," Taylor said, urging the monster – which she now knew was fitting called a 'Crystal Mantis' – to rush at the nearest escapee while also directing her swarm to try and find the two children. She refused to let them die, not after they had saved her and welcome her into their home without asking for anything in return!

The Crystal Mantis first approached an ugly, brutish thing with bumpy purple skin. It looked strong, but the Mantis' bladed limbs sliced through it with contemptuous ease. It didn't even try to fight back, not expecting a fellow monster to go after it.

To Taylor's continued surprise, when the creature died, it exploded into black ash and a single, fist-sized bluish-purple crystal. The stone felt off to her swarm's senses. Like it was there, but also not? And it seemed to hum, just like the people did, only the 'sound' was harsh and discordant.

While the whole situation was odd, she didn't have time to waste, and so scooped up the stone from where it fell and then ordered her new mount to go after some sort of saber-toothed tiger creature that was nearby.

It was fast, and seemed to be quicker on the uptake than the purple brute, as it leapt aside as the Crystal Mantis slashed at it. In retaliation it tried to pounce on her, but the Crystal Mantis flew into the air, jinking to the side. It made her stomach lurch, but it was better than being killed.

'Seems to be Mover 2, maybe 3,' Taylor noted. 'Possibly Brute 2 as well with the way its paws cracked the ground when it landed.'

Trying to slow it down, Taylor set her swarm upon the monster, stinging and biting and burrowing into fur and flesh. The saber-toothed tiger roared, though it wasn't in pain, rather it was angered by the audacity of it all. The monster's flesh was too tough for her insects to pierce. As expected of something with the toughness of a Brute.

Hopefully, its eyes, nose, and mouth were much less resistant. Wasps and roaches attacked its eyes and then forced themselves into its throat. In the same way she'd killed Alexandria, she choked the monster to death, and it slumped to the ground before exploding into black ash.

'Another crystal,' Taylor noted, intrigued as the strange prism clattered to the cobblestones. 'So it wasn't just something unique to that purple thing.'

She snagged it, her swarm carrying it to her hand as her Crystal Mantis landed back on the ground.

'Alright, what else is there?' she wondered, looking around. It seemed like order in the surroundings was being restored as there were hardly any monsters left that she could detect. That was very good, but where were Bell and Hestia?

As she killed a few more stray monsters, she noticed a huge, silver-furred ape, just at the edge of the her swarm, was chasing after something. Taylor frowned as it entered a strange, sprawling mess of alleyways and poorly designed streets. As it was heading into the city proper, and there were no humming people nearby to try and eliminate it – she decided to call them 'heroes' in her head until she had more information – in the area, Taylor urged her new mount to follow it while her swarm pursued.

Following the silver ape into the utterly bewildering and labyrinthine alleyways, Taylor felt confused, as the monster was ignoring several people that it could have – should have, based on what she'd already seen – attacked, but instead chose to keep chasing after a duo who had just run into a dead end.

'Bell! Hestia!' Taylor suddenly realized in horror as her swarm recognized their hum! They were trapped and cornered, and she wasn't going to make it in time! Sure, Bell was fighting, but could he really beat it?

Yet despite all of her fears, she arrived just in time to watch as Bell leapt onto the gorilla's back and plunged a fancy looking blade deep into its neck. It seemed to hit something vital, as it let out a roar, before collapsing into ash.

Taylor felt a pang in her chest as she was strongly reminded of her own first night of heroism where she faced down and somehow managed to defeat Lung, the shapeshifting dragon-boss of the Azn Bad Boys through luck and desperate hope.

'I will not let him end up like me,' she vowed to herself, leaping down into the dead-end to greet Bell and Hestia.

At first, Bell tensed up, raising his knife to defend himself when he saw the monster land nearby, but blinked in bewilderment as he spotted her riding on its back.

"Taylor?!" he exclaimed in disbelief, his cry echoed by Hestia who was coming out from her hiding spot.

"Hey guys," she said, waving her sole hand at them. She couldn't help but smirk at their stupefied expressions.

"You can talk now?!" Bell uttered. Taylor blinked. Was that really the first thing he noticed about her? Not the monster she was riding, or the cloud of bugs around her?

"We are going to have some words about running off into danger, missy!" Hestia growled, stomping over to her.

Taylor felt the Crystal Mantis twitch a bit as she approached. She wondered why it reacted like that when nobody else had triggered that response, but ruthlessly crushed it, rendering it docile once more.

"Sure, we can talk later," Taylor assured her. She felt safe around the little twin-tailed girl, and after all she'd done for her, Taylor felt she deserved some answers. They both did.

"Good. Now, if you don't mind…" Hestia huffed, before trailing off. She slumped, falling onto her butt with a groan. "So tired. Beeeell! Carry meee!"

"Yes, Lady Hestia!" Bell exclaimed, hoisting her up, piggyback style. The three members of the Familia left the alleyway, all while showered with raucous applause and cheering, the inhabitants of the area having seen the whole fight.

"Let's find a place to rest, and check your wounds," Taylor suggested, and the two nodded.

"I know a place," Bell offered, and Taylor nodded. Together, they went out into the city. It had been a rather exciting day for sure. The otherworlder couldn't help but wonder if the rest of her time here would be as hectic?