#harsh language

And within these battles of dominance grew something more than just territory but also magical supremacy. Each mystical being possesses its own unique and elemental powers. As the war grew to a larger scale, betrayals were not able to be prevented. A web of alliances and betrayals intermingle with the supernatural races while leading to mutual distrust. 

The history was marred by not one, not two, but five different wars at different times. Both sides inflicted much suffering on the other. The wars led to untold loss with neither willing to yield. The main lasting repercussions come in, especially in the revised laws that were enacted to prevent any form of interaction or alliance between fae and nymph. Love between individuals of two races was seen as a dangerous threat to the stability of their respective societies.

The history was written in blood and the older generation of both races have a hard time letting go of their prejudices. 

And here lies the snowstorm. 

In the middle of the forest, where the snow blasts down like little chilling knives slicing through your skin and a good three feet of snow -

Your kind were the ice nymphs, once the royal family, now stripped of your title and an outcast amongst your kind. Where the fae folk thrived, you ventured - away from the place you once called home, now a barren room barely the size of a storage room. The scars of the Cold War between the nymphs still lingered, leaving the kingdom in the easy grip of the Lyrin fae.

You kind - the ice nymphs - were rare to come about, each one of your veins flows with the power of winter. In the lores, your kind was told to have a beauty that was like a fragile kind of enchantment, with hair as pale as frost, and skin as delicate as the first snowfall. 

There were only a few times that you have looked in the mirror - countable with five fingers. After your family was stripped of their title, with you accordingly, life was never the same. Your people, with no place to go, lost trust and justice in you. 

Desperation drove her journey as she yearned to escape the dark shadow of your people’s fall that hung over her head like a knife over the bed. Even with the ice in your veins, that winter night, when the biting frost finally embraced you and hunger gnawed at your core, your strength failed. You had pushed yourself as far as you could but as the sun dipped below the horizon, your body could no longer hold you up, giving in to your exhaustion and malnutrition. 

Lying beneath the icy canopy, you were a fragile, half-dead being that is an easy hunt for food for predators living around the area. Your eyes swerved back, trying to calculate how far you might have to go back for shelter. But you didn’t know. 

You had walked without a direction, lost in the depths of the Lyrin forest. Frostbites numbed your limbs and your brain was moving slower from the exhuation. But there it was, amidst the unforgiving cold and darkness, you sensed a presence stirring. 

Your hazed hearing registered the crunch of footsteps in the snow as your blurry vision sent your brain to somebody standing next to you. Your eyes roll around until you have a clearer picture of who it is. A man with dark hair, brown eyes, and plush lips, dressed in regal attire with a crest of the fae kingdom. Lyrin was one of the biggest fae kingdoms and everybody knows their crests. After all, it was them who led the battles many years ago. It was them that inflicted the harm and loss on your people. It was them that had killed the ruling family back then. 

Your family. 

But he wasn’t the one who took the action. No, he was almost as old as you were and then, the both of you were barely kids. 

Prince Jimin, they called him. 

The golden sunlight. 

The crown of Lyrin weighed heavily on his shoulders. He knew the crowning ceremony would be soon, and this winter, he wanted to let go and be just a man until he could no longer. Once he takes over the throne from his father, his duty to serve his country is solely on his shoulders. There was much to do and many things he would like to change, but even as king, these little ideas - as his father likes to call them - had to go through the council. 

And Jimin knows that the old hags would never approve of it. 

It went beyond the revised edition of the old laws. 

To reconcile with the nymphs. 

Jiminhad ventured into the forest today, going around with no direction, guided purely by an inexplicable force. The kingdom, although a realm of enchantment, was deeply tainted by the darkness of its past. If all was silent enough, one could still hear the shrieks and cries of the souls. The darkness had bred a strong sense of hatred and fear between faes and nymphs. Their mating was now an old tale of forbidden love - a story buried deep in history. 

As he ventured further into the woods, he stumbled upon the nymph, your frail form half-buried in the snow. Your beauty, even in your weak state, took the breath right out of his lungs. He recognized you as a nymph with your small frame and pale, white hair. But it wasn’t completely white. It shone like the silvers of the moonlight when light reflected off it. 

But it was when he moved to pick you up that he saw your family’s sigil, now faded from royal to common, that told him - you were no ordinary nymph. As his arms went under the ice, you stirred slightly at the movement. As you opened her eyes, he was completely taken aback by the sheer blue shade of your pupils. 

Even with one foot into the Underworld, you looked ethereal to him. Jimin was snapped out of his daze when your frostbitten lips whispered a plea for help. In that moment, all history and hatred were forgotten. With fae swiftness, he scooped your fragile state - lighter than air - into his arms and covered you with his coat. 

Determined to save her, he summoned a warm breeze that melted the frost from your body and sealed you in a cocoon of warmth. Jimin only dared to start running faster to his horse when colour slowly came back to your lips. Ensuring that you were safely tucked in his arms, Jimin ran back to the castle, fighting against death who wanted to take the girl in his arms. 

As days turned to weeks, weeks turned to months. The little nymph’s life continued to hang in the balance and Jimin was a mess. He made every doctor attend to you, pacing around the bedroom day and night. He had caused an uproar in the kingdom when they found out that their crown prince had brought back a nymph - even more than this one that was from the late royal family - and was nursing her back to health. 

His father had threatened to strip him of his title if he did not abandon you. But he could not do it. So it started the feud between father and son, neither backing down. Jimin understood that his late grandfather and his father had a feud among the nymphs, had been the ones who executed them and had been the ones to fight at the front lines. They were the ones who brought Lyrin to what it is today - expanded. But as Jimin studied the history of both parties, he felt a certain connection to the nymphs. 

He did not want to be a ruler where their mystical counterparts would be afraid of them. He did not want to be a ruler like his father - ruling by fear from an iron fist. 

While doctors attended to you, Jimin watched them with sharp eyes, ensuring that none of the doctors would slip anything into your bloodstream. When nothing helped and your state was only getting worse, Jimin grew more and more anxious. He had sifted through books and hunted down the Old Scripts.

He learned that your name was L/N Y/N, the youngest of the last ruling family. Your father had been killed in the war, your mother led you and your siblings to safety but soon after passed due to the broken mate bond. Your siblings were either caught by his father’s cavalry or died of starvation, leaving only you. Your records were still in the kingdom, seemingly down till two days before he met you. That means that you were active in your own kingdom, at your people’s mercy until you left.

He looked back at where you lay still on the bed. 

And if he didn’t find you, you would have probably been dead by now. 

You woke up to the warmth and luxury of a place you had only dreamed of. Your body was still weak and you didn’t know what happened after passing out. Slowly rising to consciousness, you found yourself in a room of blue and white, drapes swinging in the wind. But you registered that the windows weren’t open and the room was cold like… ice?

Winter may be the season but no room was made to stay cold unless the elements of the magicians’ are meant to stay cold. 

Like you.

You curled your fingertips, feeling the soft, silky sheets beneath them. Trying to view the room from your current position - lying flat on the bed with a head that feels as heavy as bricks - you were taken aback by the sheer language it screams. 

Royalty. 

From the materials beneath your body to the furniture displayed, the decorations and architecture of the room, they were all beyond your imagination. You had not stepped into such a room since the battle. As you looked around, you realised the room was not originally made to stay cold. The fireplace seemed to be covered in a layer of dust but the decorations on them were clean. 

And although you knew that this was not your room, the calming temperature felt just like home. But you had not been in a room like this for a very long time. Distantly, you heard the opening and closing of a door. Your eyes immediately shot in the direction of the sound just to find a man already standing beside the bed. 

You were immediately broken out of your thoughts when you realised who it was and where exactly you were. You did not need to open the windows to know - you were on enemy territory. The rulers who killed your family. The rulers who brought demise onto your people. 

But looking at the man, clad in a loose tunic and pants, dark brown hair ruffled in all directions, you couldn’t find yourself to hate him. Even as you knew that he shared the purest blood with the murderer, you knew that he… was just like you. 

A family’s misdoings do not mean a child’s downfall. 

One’s choice does not equal the choice of another. 

You sink deeper into the sheets, holding in your sigh as you close your eyes. 

“Oh!” Your eyes shot open to see the man right in front of you. “Oh, you’re awake! Oh, finally! Wait - wait - let me call the physicians!”

Your brain couldn’t register his words fast enough before you saw his body move so fast it was just a blurry shade running down the stairs. Or maybe it was just your vision that was a little crusty. Rubbing your eyes as you yawned, you got up from the bed. You wouldn’t like to overstay your stay, especially not in a place where your head was on a bounty. 

You had left your kingdom only to be stuck in another. 

Sighing, you looked down to your feet -

Your arms shot to cover your already clothed body. Wait, wait, wait - 

Your hands patted yourself down. You - 

You were changed. 

Your plan to secretly escape was a fail the moment your ears picked up the sound of multiple heavy footsteps coming towards the room. The large doors were banged open, revealing a line of physicians behind the prince. 

“There! There! I told you, she is awake!”

Squinting at the all-to-cheerful sound that the prince makes, the palm of your hands pressed against your ears. 

“Careful, Prince. The Lady just woke up, her senses will be sensitive. You must lower your volume, Prince.”

Sheepish eyes shot at you, a guilty smile lifting the corners of his lips. The physicians fussed you back to bed and ran a thorough check of you, reporting back to the prince whenever they found something. Whether it was something healing or something that needs healing. Over the next few weeks, you realise how persistent and petty the prince can get. 

He would refuse you bites of food if you were to call him by his royal title. He would refuse to help you up from bed, just standing at the corner of the bedpost when you need the restroom, always claiming, “If you aren’t going to help yourself, you don’t get to do your business.”

But you also realise how much he has gone through. As the only child, he was meant to take the throne a couple of weeks before he found you. But he had caused a huge uprising and a big fight with his father. When you were sneaking out one of the nights, Jimin found you during his nightly duties of patrol and whisked you back to the room. 

Although you had left with the intention of Jimin’s life getting back to normal, he has increased your security so that you won’t have much of a chance to run away again. 

Keyword: much. 

You still had your chances and when that came, you took it. You had everything packed and ready, but this time, you left with a note at the bedside table, paired together with a magic-infused healing charm for the man. 

Safe to say, it was a bad idea. 

You knew it was the moment you penned down your goodbyes and gave him the charm. But you didn’t have much on you to give him for thanks other than the occasional swirls of magic in his office. 

Yes, it was a horrible idea - of course it was! You were caught - again. 

This time, Jimin didn’t just leave you back in the room. He was silent the whole time after he found you. The ride back, up the stairs, and even after the both of you entered the room. You saw the note on the bed. 

Jimin’s back was to you. 

“Why - Why would you think that?”

You were taken aback by the tears that streamed down his plum cheeks that you had teasingly squished the past few weeks. Looking down at the note, you felt a pang of… sorrow.

A sorrow that wasn’t yours. It shouldn’t be. “Because it is against the laws.”

“I do not care what the laws claim!”

“I am nobody, Prince. You have a duty to serve your kingdom and its people. I am a princess, stripped of my title, belonging to the very kingdom your father and his father killed through. The very princess that they couldn’t care less before killing off my father on the battlefield.” He couldn’t be yours. He was a prince, deserving of one better than a bond that was looked down upon. 

“My ancestors can go suck their dicks.”

You pulled a face at the crude language. You knew that he would be insisting - you found out that much about him - and you prepared yourself for a situation like this. But your resolve was already crumbling. 

“Prince -”

“Stop, stop! I am yours! Please - I beg of you - stop calling me by my title.”

You sucked in a deep breath. “You are more than your titles. But you are also the light of your people. The only heir to the throne and you will not shove it away just because we are bonded. I refuse.”

“I will lay the world down on your feet for you, please. Do not leave me.” His cries hurt you more than knives and ropes splitting your skin raw. 

“My world is not one you can provide.”

My world is you. 

The moon is coming.

Vi scurries through the city streets, dread rattling in her throat. There are too many people here, too many bugs, too many people she could hurt. She must have lost track of time - miscounted the days on the calendar, miscalculated the time left in the day, forgotten to watch out for the moonrise, something.

The moon is coming, and she is afraid.

Everywhere she goes, the crowd only seems to grow thicker. It's too many people, too much crowding- she can almost smell the blood that'll be spilled if she stays, the feeling of shell cracking in her teeth, the taste of guts and hemolymph.

She needs to get away.

Vi pushes through the throng, frantically hunting for anywhere that might be less full, anywhere that she might be able to chain her other form. She can feel something beginning to stir, the phantom of her claws threatening to break out from under her shell. Her teammates are calling after her, concerned, afraid- but she can't go to them now, not when the moon is so close.

She can't afford to have more people dead.

She needs to get somewhere safe- somewhere away from people, somewhere she can keep her claws bound, somewhere that the only person she'll hurt is herself.

But everywhere she goes, there only seem to be more bugs in the crowd, more people pushing, stalling, stopping her from getting anywhere that she might be able to get out-

The moon peeks over the horizon, and for a moment, all she can feel is blinding, awful dread.

"Vi," Leif says. "Vi, why are you running away?"

"You're acting strange," Kabbu says, concern clear in his voice. "Shouldn't you be resting? Weren't you hurt in that fight? Any other bug would be dead by now, Vi."

She tastes hemolymph on her tongue as one of her growing tusks pierces her lip. She doesn't answer, running blindly further, further. The crowd doesn't thin, no matter how far she runs, and she can feel the warning twisting beginning under her shell, the feeling of flesh starting to warp.

Her flesh gives a warning twist under her shell, and all she knows is that she has to go, now.

A bug cuts in front of her, and she startles, balking at the unexpected motion - too much, too close, the feathering on her antenna brushes shell with an uncomfortable thrill of feedback and she barely bites back a whimper. Something in her back gives an uncomfortable crunch, and she stands a head taller - still not enough to part the tide, but enough that she can feel her shell tighten, the spines beneath threatening to pierce through.

There are people all around her. At her sides, at her back, at her throat. She can feel them press closer and closer, boxing her in. Her teammates are coming closer, closer, their words scraping against the insides of her skull in awful, uncomfortable shards.

"Vi?"

Too close- she's going to hurt them, she can feel the transformation getting worse, her arms beginning to twist apart, rows upon rows of claws sprouting from her arms. They're just behind her, she can tell, staring, watching her as the moon rips through her body. She sees them, horrified, disgusted, looking at her-

"Don't touch me," she begs. "Get away, get away-"

But they don't listen, crowding closer, staring and murmuring like she's an animal in a zoo. Spikes climb the ridge of her back as her shell hardens and thickens, her wings melting and melding with the thick plane of carapace that is now her thorax, her muzzle twisting and lengthening and thickening as her jaw warps, her tusks curving and twisting outwards, her eyes watering as something behind them shifts.

She's surrounded on all sides. There are so many people here, so many people everywhere - the, the more she sees, the more she recognizes, staring and gaping and pointing at her as her shell shifts and distorts. She presses her hands over her ears, but there's nothing there but talons, long and sharp and threatening to tear away the sides of her face as her chitin crunches-

They are silent as she screams, the transformation rattling down through shell and flesh, her mandibles pulling apart, the scar on her lip tingling and pulling as her pedipalps fully extend. Her shell practically breaks in two, going from bee-size to beast-size in a split second, shattering and healing itself in an instant. The sound she makes isn't bug, an awful, wretched, guttural thing, wrenched from her chest to her jaws as her body warps unnaturally, as she changes in an instant.

The pain rings in her ears all too long after it finishes, but when it does, she can see her shell battered and broken on the floor in front of her. Her bee body, ripped to shreds, taken apart piece by piece - her beast form torn out from within, rendering it a useless corpse on the floor.

Vi looks up. And up. And up. She towers over everyone, now, but she feels horribly small. She sits in the middle of a circle, a monster torn from bee shell- she sees the looks of shock on their faces, the slow step back, the growing fear. A few nervous bugs level weapons at her.

Kabbu breaks the silence. "You- a beast!"

"When were you going to tell us?" Leif asks, its fur ruffled with displeasure. Elizant steps out from behind it, levelling her with a stony glare that demands an explanation. They crowd in, new bugs appearing from thin air to check out the hubbub, staring and poking at her like she's a zoo exhibit. A doctor jabs at the aching bite on her arm, trying to spread it open for examination, another trying to distract her as she's poked and prodded like a lab animal. They're too close, they're all too close, she can't breathe-

Vi balks, lashing out at the growing crowd with her talons, and the air is steeped in hemolymph in an instant. The floor is blue-green, pale white, deep emerald- the doctors are dead, They're dying- and everyone looks at her with disgust, backing up as if they'll catch her sickness if they get too close. There's rot in her mouth, decay coating her tongue as it pools in her stomach, an awful nausea climbing up her throat.

"Why would you do that?" asks Kabbu. "They just wanted to make sure you were okay."

Vi tries to respond, but her throat doesn't form words anymore. She wails something out, incoherent, but he simply looks at her with cool disappointment. "I don't see why I bring you out at all, if you're going to act like this," he tuts in Jaune's voice. "Behave yourself! Do you think that the Hive raises wild animals?"

The Hive around her tuts in agreement, casting judgemental eyes on her. There's blood on the floor, pooling in the crevices between tiles, the same yellow-green of all bee's blood. Bugs murmur and titter and judge, a million billion eyes all on her, alone at the middle of the throng.

It feels awful, it feels wrong - but no matter how much she twists and turns, she can't find a single bug who seems to notice that something is strange. The awful feeling in her chest grows and grows, taking over until she can't feel anything else, rotting and festering and swelling. There's a static between her and them, an awful gap, and it won't stop growing and growing and-

She snaps back to reality.

Jaune is beneath her, a horrible fear in her eyes, Vi's jaws clamped around her arm. There's that awful sinking feeling in her stomach, the feeling that she's done something horribly, irreversibly wrong.

She lets go, and Jaune scrambles back, vanishing into the crowd- a million eyes staring right at her, right at the shards of bee fluff and shell in her teeth.

"You animal," the Overseer snarls. "What's wrong with you? Do you get off on attacking harmless bugs now?"

"And Maki approved you?" Elizant snarls, her mask doing nothing to conceal the disgust on her face. "Has my association fallen so low as to take in mindless beasts?"

"You lied to us!" cries Leif. "A member of the hive? You're nothing but a monster!"

The other bugs join the chorus, chanting their disdain for her- wretch, beast, poacher, rattling through her shell until she can't hear herself think, the sound vibrating in every little crevice of her shell and every hair of her antenna in a cascade of voices she knows.

A stone cracks across her shell, and she howls. It doesn't drown out the voices- they only get louder, and louder, and louder, howling for her death, for her silence, shut up and die already-

She runs. Like a coward, like the fucking idiot she is that's run a hundred times before- faces blur past her, people she knows, Maki, his face twisted in disgust and horror, Bau, all humor gone from their face as they ready their daggers, Ollie, half her body gone beneath the tearing force of her jaws-

The Golden Path's leaves crunch under her paws, the crowds falling away as she flees. Her pursuer is only a few paces away, bigger than her, stronger than her, jaws snapping at her ragged wings. She has to run, she has to get out, but her legs are too short, her limbs fumble beneath her, she stumbles-

Claws lodge in her chitin, piercing it as easily as if she were a wriggler again and wrenching her on her back. Rust-red eyes, flashing green-blue in the moonlight, a pair of tusks, a twisted reflection of her, rope tied around its limbs and bee-blood spilling from its jaws as it calls her name, Vi, Vi, VI-

"Vi!"

Her claws flashed out, scoring a sharp gash into one of Kabbu's external mandibles. Vi sat bolt upright, ignoring the jolt of pain from the sting-mark in her side as she pulled her claws against her chest.

...but no one was there but Kabbu, holding a hand to the new scratches on his muzzle.

A dream. It was a dream.

It... wasn't real.

Vi trapped her claws against her ruff, trying to focus on controlling her breathing. It was a dream. It didn't happen. None of it had actually happened.

Her hands were still shaking.

They were still in the Swamplands. She could smell the swamp water if she focused, lingering over nearly everything else. Maki was still leaned against the wall, Leif was sleeping not half a foot away, curled into some awful pretzel shape.

In, out. Focus on the spiracles closer to her thorax. Focus on the spiracles closer to her stinger. Her claws were tipped with pale blue-green. Hemolymph dripped from the scratches on Kabbu's face.

Just a dream.

She worried her wrist in her teeth, ignoring Kabbu's sound of alarm. She- it wasn't real. It wasn't real. Tonight wasn't the right night. She still had her calendar in her bag to prove it, hidden away with the chains and the handful of charms she'd commissioned.

The half moon shone high in the sky.

Fourteen days until the full moon. Fourteen days before the next time she had to fear her transformation.