>>5984792“Hivekeeper Yamir? What are you doing here? Shouldn't you be with Pahan, helping him prepare for the ceremony?” You smile conspiratorially, “He could really use the help.” Even after all that preparation, the imposing figure before you is caught stockstill for a moment, his eyes shimmering with willfully excised memories. “No.” The light dies down, what has been unwittingly dredged up allowed to settle back into the depths, “I still have unresolved business with you.”
His head slowly lowers as the rest of his body crumples onto the ground. “For the regrettable end of our last meeting, Keeper Sylvia Thornton, apologies. Will you forgive this husk's indiscretion?” Now it is you who stands stockstill, your mind racing to suppress the unpleasant memories. Eventually you exhale a whisper, “Yes. Yes, I do.”
“For your grace, immense gratitude. Now, let us go to the ceremony. They will be starting soon.” His body unfurls back to the former stature. No, that much taller. You struggled to keep up with him as he disappeared behind turns after turns. Despite the labyrinthine layout of the station, you could tell that this is not the way to the Queen's chamber. Where else could they hold the ceremony?
The electric lights in your head grew further and further away from one another, until their cones of light describe clear oases separated by shadowed dunes. Just where the interior designer became fully convinced of the futility of artificial illumination, you nearly bumped into an unmoving Yamir. “Take my claw and don't breathe a word. We're now in my gens' sanctuary.”
Soft bristles poke and brush at your heels. A funny, but not at all unpleasant feeling, made you glad to have left your socks at home. Yamir leads you into a niche of sorts, a recession in the wall before closing a picket gate behind him. You would lean against the wall, but it feels uncannily contoured, jagged. In the lowest whisper you can manage, “What is this place?”
“Drunk, are you not? Make sure to not puke.” Right then a thousand candles lit up. My god! Bones, bones everywhere. You turn to your side, and a skull menaces back with black diamond eyes. From the ceiling, hundreds of claw aim straight down Damocles-style, fluttering to the AC's rhythm. Had the candle-light been stronger, you would surely have fainted at this scene taken straight out of a horror holofilm.
In the centre of the room dozens of pairs of wings are stretched out on ossified legs, a deranged lepidopterist's exhibition. On second glance all the left and right wings are arranged separately with a gap in the middle, just large enough for someone the size of Yamir to fit in...
