A horrible throbbing sensation pounded though my head as I woke up, face-first in a pile of sand. Whatever it was that I was up to last night, it must not have gone all too well; my bag was in tatters, my leather armour was shredded, and it felt as if I had been poisoned and left to just rot away down here in these tunnels. If all of that wasn't enough, the stale desert air only amplified the horrible stench of rotting vegetation that hung thick like fog over everything, too. The dryness in the air had left me parched, and whatever it was that had left me in this state had taken off with my supplies—there was nothing in my bag, no waterskin, no food, and no antipoison. With that horrible stench—the stench of death—lingering all over what was left of me, I knew I had to get out of here, quick.
After I had lifted myself up off the ground, I dusted myself up and took a look around the locale; there was nothing around for miles. Nothing but corridors of sand that seemed to stretch on forever. As I slowly hobbled down the seemingly endless cavern, I tried to recollect what could have happened to me last night, but all I could remember was heading through the desert in search of the Kalphites that I was tasked to deal with. The bug guts and bits of carapace that clung to my clothing like a second skin told me that I must have run into some of them; however, that was just about all I could remember of my journey—the rest was a complete blank.
A cacophony of chittering sounds echoed deep from within the tunnel, and the further I made my way even deeper down the cavern, the louder it became. I wasn't stuck down inside a cave, it was a hive—a massive underground hive, the size of a small city. The hallways seemed to all be leading towards one central chamber, which looked like a breeding pit of sorts. That was when the source of the sound became evident; large sacs of eggs lined the walls of the chamber, with Kalphite workers tending to them like nurses of sorts.
I could tell that whatever had laid these eggs—the Kalphite Queen—was nearby; I could smell her scent through the dense cloud of dust and dirt that filled the chamber. It was that same sharp, pungent smell, almost metallic in nature, and it was coming from the very center of the room. Through the veil of sand, the Queen stood out like a beacon, too. She was enormous; her silhouette dwarfed the rest of the workers and guardians that were tending to her, and she was easily the largest bug I've ever come across.
Not in my right state-of-mind, I decided that I should get a closer look at the Queen—it seemed like the most logical course of action, for some reason. I inched along the sandy pillar until I was close enough to practically hear her heartbeat through her chitinous shell. She was even larger up close; a monolith of green, covered in a hardened carapace like the rest, but the spikes that jutted out from her armour looked sharper than anything I'd seen before. As she surveyed the area, her abdomen and antennae were quivering slightly—as if she could sense that something was wrong.
That's when I heard a harsh hissing sound coming from the side of me; one of the Kalphite guardians had seen me. My heart raced as a group of the creatures surrounded me from all angles in a flash of wings and mandibles. I was quickly pressed up against the wall, and the Queen turned around to face me. I could see my own reflection in her horrible compound eyes, the reflection of a man with no weapon, no food, no water—and worst of all, no hope.
The guardians started poking and prodding at me with their mandibles, but I knew better than to move—not like I could, anyways; the poison coursing through my veins left me weak, and any chance of escape was an impossibility. They were inspecting me from head to toe, as if there was something deeply embedded in my skin, and they could sense it. Their chittering grew louder as they pressed me up against the pillar; I could feel sharp spines and claws digging into my skin as they ripped away the remaining tatters of my armour, trying to find whatever it was that they were searching for.
The Queen just stood there, watching the entire scene unfold with her unblinking eyes. Soon enough, my clothing was torn away from my body—piece by piece—and I was left in nothing but my boots in front of the insectoid beast. Then, as fast as the whole thing started, the Queen picked up, and let out another deep, piercing hiss that cut right through what little resolve I had left.
It was an order to her guards, and they promptly listened, stopping everything that they were doing, and backing off from my naked form. My heart was beating like the wings of a wasp as I watched the Queen move up closer to me. The smell wafting off of her body—that stale and musky smell—was strong enough to choke me. It was the same smell that had permeated my clothes, likely a pheromone of sorts, a chemical signal that the Queen was emitting to her loyal subjects—and to me, too?
She came to a stop; she was so close to me that I could feel the heat radiating off of her carapace. Her antennae were twitching like crazy, her abdomen was shaking, and a large line of spittle was dribbling down from her mouth, landing on the tip of my boot. Why hadn't she had killed me yet?
That's when it dawned on me. This whole charade wasn't a threat, it was an invitation; an invite to mate—an invitation to impregnate. It was an invitation that I didn't want to accept.
I'm not sure I had a choice, though. She pressed up even closer to me, close enough that she had her mandibles wrapped firmly around my waist. I could feel them digging into my flesh as they squeezed me like a vice; I was stuck against the wall, in the clutches of the Kalphite Queen. Her antennae tickled my chest as she ran them down my body—from my neck to to my belly button, then back up again. It was terrible, but my body was betraying me. I was getting hard under her horrible grasp.
Then, in another bout of chitters and hisses, she pushed me as far up against the wall as my body could possibly handle. I felt my manhood get sucked between her gooey-feeling chelicerae and I couldn't help collapse forward onto her. Her carapace was smooth under my fingers, and with both hands planted squarely on her thorax,