Though he had shamed them, he was still their brother. That was what spurred them out of the wastes, what impelled each of them to go. They were Lords of their tribe, but this was far too important a duty to entrust to any lesser being. Though their brother had stained their name, had willingly surrendered to the infection and become, in the end, a base creature in all but name, he was still family, and so they left to claim his husk.

The little one had been the one to finally bring him down. They were not surprised. Stronger beings than their brother had met their fates at the end of the vessel’s magic and nail. They didn’t blame the wanderer for what had been done. The small one had put down little more than a rabid beast.

The infection was not all that had consumed him. Hate could be a subtle thing, an elixir that brought you back to drink it again and again and again. Hate and resentment had spurred the Traitor Lord to claim the Queen’s Gardens as his own, as they had in turn been stolen from the mosskin.

And though their brother’s sense of justice had warped into obsession, the sisters didn’t find it hard to sympathize. The Pale King had colonized the land and driven their tribe out into the wastes, where life was hard and noxious fumes claimed the sickly and the young. And though the king was long gone, the garden—the loveliest corner of that land—remained. Lush, fertile, overgrown with life. As the Mantis Lords pushed deeper into it, their awe was matched only by their anger. It was unjust for such verdance to have been kept from them, let alone be stolen in the first place; the Pale King had no right to deny them this, or to banish their tribe to a place where their numbers were being whittled faster than they could ever hope to grow.

When they found their brother’s husk, the three of them gathered around it in quiet reflection, thinking of injustice.

One of the sisters, impelled by some wordless, nameless urge, rose and pressed into the garden. The others followed. They were not driven as their brother was—they were not slaves to the infection. But it was, of sorts, a reckoning. Mantises had again come to the garden.

Nestled within the garden’s heart was a cocoon of roots and power, the queen’s residence. Slumped outside of it in an eternal, final vigil was the remains of one of Hallownest’s Great Knights: Dryya.

The Lords’ fury was tempered a bit at that. Though Dryya had served their people’s enemies, she was known as a just and righteous champion. And the corpses piled around her told a tale that her death had been their brother’s doing.

Such needless, senseless grief and violence their peoples had wrought and borne upon each other.

Stopping to pay their respects, the Mantis Lords rose quietly and entered the cocoon. Within was a long shaft, and at the bottom, in a chamber that faintly glowed with ambient light, was her: the White Lady.

For Hallownest, she was both queen and god, and looked each part. The Mantis Lords were not small beings, but she herself was at least twice as tall as any of them even while seated and bound. Her form was as pale and luminous as her name implied, and instead of the usual horns or crests that adorned her insectile subjects, her head was crowned by a web of tangling roots. Her body shimmered with ambient power.

On the Lords’ arrival, the queen stirred. “Strangers arrive… three. From afar. They reek of fungus… what need have you, then?”

The foremost of the Lords approached her. Emotion stirred within her heart, and she angrily accused the goddess before her: “What need have we? What need have we not? Banished to the cruelest corner of Hallownest, we scrape by a meager living, breathing in toxic fumes day after day and beset upon all sides. Though our young grow sick and our numbers wane, and our wayward brothers and sisters embrace the infection that swallows their hearts and bodies, we still fight against everything the world has seen fit to throw at us—yes, the world and your husband both, lady.”

The mantis’s voice echoed through the chamber, sharp and accusatory, tinged with the fire that only comes with righteous regret. The White Lady stirred in her bindings; her whole body was covered with thick rope, preventing her from moving or escaping. Who could have done this to her? Had their brother been so cruel? But no… it didn’t seem his handiwork at all.

“…the mantises,” said the White Lady after a moment’s reflection. “I might have guessed. Yes, you were driven out. Why have you returned? For vengeance?”

“Vengeance is not ours to give,” another of the Lords spat. “Our brother lived for it, and what did it get him? A life filled with anger and emptiness that ended at the nail swung by your spawn. No, his way is not our way, but we mourn him nonetheless, and come here so that in death, he might regain the dignity he threw aside in life.”

“And,” added the last of the three sisters, “so that we might look you in the eyes and know that you have to face what you did to us. You and the Pale King both. As we depart, know that the ruination of our tribe is on you!”

The White Lady’s voice was a murmur that could have made the earth tremble. “To look me in the eyes…” She devolved into a melodic sound that might have been wan laughter. “These sad eyes are old and blind. I cannot see you. I could barely see my spawn. The world is lost to me, little more than a haze of grey blurs…”

She trailed off for a moment, and then continued, her voice rising above the chamber. “I am—or was—blind in more ways than one, it seems. I knew my husband banished you, yet the wastes… I did not know they were so hostile. The ruination of your tribe… the—the death of your young…”

She held off, quiet and pondering. The destruction of young. The death of spawn. Now that was a pain she knew all too well. She and her husband both. The Pale King, her beloved Wyrm, had forced himself to do what he insisted had to be done to stave off the infection. ‘No cost too great,’ he said. And she had believed him.

It had not made seeing the destruction of her spawn, the twisting of them, the hollowing of them, any easier.

“I too know something of loss,” she said quietly. The knight—her lovely, beautiful broodling, strong and stalwart—had come to her, and she had ached with maternal care, but to acknowledge and love it was a sin she could not bear repeating. “My husband the king destroyed much in his quest. I loved him—I love him still, yet I cannot help but reflect on what he did with… regret. It will not change the injustice wrought, but I am sorry for what was done to your people.”

Silence settled on the chamber. “Your husband the king,” one of the lords ventured, approaching the White Lady, “was… this his doing?” She reached out and touched the cords binding the great queen, and though her touch was masked by the ropes, the White Lady still shuddered at it. It had been long, so very long since she had known another…

“Not his doing,” she replied. “Mine. My urges are ceaseless. To breed, to be bred, that feeling consumes me. The Pale King satiated those urges, but twisted our spawn into something terrible right before my eyes. Even as he did so, the urges continued. I had to bind myself away to avoid flooding the kingdom with spawn that were to be little more than my husband’s experiments.”

She broke off quietly. And perhaps there was another reason to it as well. Regret. She knew something of it. To bind herself, to permanently quiet those urges which drove her, to force herself to endure year after year in this empty chamber with no other creature for companionship, eternally alone, perhaps that was her penance. A self-inflicted punishment for her transgressions.

The Mantis Lords seemed to see through her. “It is not only that,” said one sister, approaching her. “We can hear it in your voice; smell it in the air. This is your punishment, is it not? Lady, allow us to free you. You do not deserve this fate.”

“But my urges…”

“Surely you must know,” the last of the sisters said. “Even here, you should sense it. There is nothing in this twisted kingdom that can stand against your spawn. Hallownest has become their playground. The infection shall soon abate; there is no one to twist your broodlings any longer. They will exist as they deserve to, living lives of their own choosing. Let us free you.”

The White Lady quieted, reflecting. Their words rang true. Could the moment have finally arrived? Was she ready for her long captivity to be ended? The world around her was still but a blur in her blindness, but there were three vague shapes which she believed were the Mantis Lords.

“Yes,” she murmured, “perhaps it is finally time. I… I…”

She quieted again. These three creatures, forced to endure a lonely existence out in the wastes, watching the slow death of their tribe, had the opportunity for vengeance, but did not take it. They had come to force her to confront her culpability, and to free her as well. Did she deserve this? Did she deserve them?

One of the creatures reached out, their razor-edged touch ready to cut the bindings, and she shuddered with need, her whole body craving another. She had to breed. It was why she existed in the first place…

And everything clicked.

“Your people,” she said. “They are dying.”

“As we said,” one of the Lords replied, voice bitter.

“They need not be,” the White Lady replied. “I am… fruitful. Eternally so. I can, will, must breed. If I am to be unbound and resume my life of ceaseless mating…” She held off for a moment, preparing for what she had to say next. “Why shouldn’t it be with you? Your people need not die any longer. My children share the shape and species of my partners. They will be mantises, like you. And I can repopulate quickly. It is a solution, isn’t it?”

For their part, the three Lords were stunned into silence. Indeed, this could be an option. They were sisters, yet they did not have the usual equipment of other females. They planted seed, and didn’t keep it. The White Lady could bear their offspring. They looked at one another in wordless gazes. They had come here to retrieve their wayward sibling—and perhaps to, on some level, force the rulers of Hallownest to acknowledge their culpability. For one of those very rulers to concede her wrongdoing and offer this solution was unforeseen.

Could this really be the answer?

“Are you certain?” queried one of the sisters. Above them, the great bulk of the White Lady shimmered, light dancing beneath the ropes.

“As certain as I could be,” she replied. “If you free me, I will breed. It is what, and who, I am. If I am to resume a life of ceaseless childmaking, I… would like it to have some greater purpose. To again fill Hallownest with my brood is one thing. To know that in doing so I am righting a wrong and helping bring a people back from extinction is another.” Her next words were softer, laced with emotion. “Especially if I had a hand in that extinction. I cannot change the injustice done to you, but I can try to stop your people’s decline. I will be breeding regardless; to do so with purpose is all I could ask for. Please. Let me right this wrong…”

Her words settled on the Lords, who looked at each other in silent, mutual consideration—and then, seemingly as one, they all came to the same conclusion.

“So be it,” said the foremost sister, and she reached out to sever the cords.

When the bindings fell, the White Lady rose under her own power for the first time in ages, and the Mantis Lords were privy to her full beauty and splendor. She was titanic, absolutely massive, towering over the Lords themselves. Without the bindings she had been wrapped in or the queenly robes she normally wore, they saw the White Lady for what she truly was: a thing of cultivation. Her feet, such as they were, were tangled white roots reaching down to the floor; similar, smaller extensions reached out of her arms as an approximation of hands.

Yet she was not solely a being of roots. There, present where the legs separated, was the hint of femalehood, the vessel through which she would indulge her urges and ceaselessly breed.

Hallownest’s errant queen stood for a moment, her splendor filling the chamber, and then she reached one plaintive hand towards the Mantis Lords, bending slightly to stretch it low. “Come, then,” she said. “I have waited long enough to indulge my drives—and your people have waited long enough to return from the brink. Why should either of us wait longer?”

After a moment’s hesitation, the foremost of the Mantis Lords stepped forward, reaching up to take the queen’s proffered hand. They clasped for a moment and the mantis shivered from the thrumming of ambient power coursing like a river through the White Lady; and then she applied pressure, ever so gently, to maneuver Hallownest’s queen into position.

Under the sister’s touch, the White Lady allowed herself to be leaned back against the curving wall of her chamber, reclining delicately and easily. Her blindness made the going slow, but she did not seem to mind.

In her new position, the queen’s slit was on display; it was even more brilliant than the rest of her body. Her readiness to breed was immediately noticeable in how it was slowly winking open. The liquid dripping from her was a pale gold in color and looked like a mix of sap and nectar.

It smelled like the rich earth, full of promise, and immediately the Mantis Lords could tell from smell alone that the lady was good to her word. She would conceive the offspring of anything that bred her. The scent stirred the foremost sister into arousal, and from her genital sheath came her cock—slender, like most traits of her tribe, but long, long; it was smooth and tapered at the tip, and curved slightly. Though the White Lady could not see, she seemed aware of the Lord’s unsheathing; was she relying on scent? Could she hear the labored pants as the Mantis Lord stumbled into heady arousal? Or perhaps this was yet another power of a creature who was like unto a god.

The Mantis Lord swallowed and, her sisters watching on, she approached the White Lady. She had expected the pale twisting wood that made up the lady’s body to be cool to the touch, but there was an almost invisible warmth that spread slowly out of it. The White Lady released a sigh at the Lord’s touch, a songful, melodic, haunting sound that dragged out of her.

“It has been… so very, very long…” she said, her voice a peal of both anticipation and terrible, terrible mournfulness.

And at that moment, the hearts of the three Lords truly began to melt. Each of the sisters understood that whatever they had suffered because of the lady, she was more than willing to make it right—and had endured trials of her own in the meantime.

“Now your wait is finished, lady,” said the Lord holding her. The mantis’s penis dragged along the outer reaches of the White Lady’s slit, making the godly being hiss with anticipation; and then, ending the long wait for them both, the Mantis Lord sunk in.

It was heaven for them both. The White Lady’s voice rose high over the chamber in a single note, the sound wordless and stretching. The Mantis Lord gripped tight on the lady’s limbs, and then began pumping in and out of her.

It was easy going. The lady’s size easily accommodated even a member the size of the Mantis Lords’, and her already-worked-up pussy was slick and inviting. The Lord’s penis glided within, very nearly caressed by her smooth walls, and quickly, the mantis found herself panting with want.

“Yes, that’s right,” the White Lady said, voice rising in encouragement. “Breed me. Make it right.” The Mantis Lord thrust home, and she keened. “Fill me… with your young.” A long, luxurious, thick slide inside. “I’ll bear so very many young… a flood of mantises.” Both of them rocked against each other, a pageant of mutual bliss—the White Lady exulting in finally being able to indulge her innermost desires after such a long absence, and the Mantis Lord glorying in the sense of exultation and relief.

Finally… finally, after a life in the wastes, a life of hardship and harshness, of seeing their young wander away or die early, the pain of seeing their brother break away and succumb to infection, finally the mantises’ time had come. The sister slid home, groaning with bliss as she did so. The physicality of it all was only part of what made this moment so perfect, so righteous. Deeper still was the knowledge, the realization, the incredible thought that finally, their tribe would no longer be dying or wasting away… they would return. They would come back.

They would repopulate.

The White Lady took each thrust with a sublime sense of wonderment and appreciation. She was built for breeding. That much had been apparent to her for much of her long, long life. Oh, she was no mindless, brainless animal, unthinkingly spreading her legs and taking seed, reproducing over and over again.

(And here the Mantis Lord thrust deep and the sensation temporarily drove the thought from her head; she was unthinking, ceaseless, she was a being of life and roots and seeds and all that was green and good and she needed to propagate, that was who she was—)

No, she was no base creature. She had enough mastery over herself to bind herself up when indulging her innermost desires would have been terrible and problematic. But her spawn, her little ghost, full of verve and void, was on the cusp of solving everything.

And so, indulgence became her release. Her triumph.

The Mantis Lord hilted in her again and the lady sang. Her voice shook the roots of her abode, feminine and melodic and lovely. Here she was, feeding her ceaseless appetite, her unthinking demand to breed, and she was doing it for a greater cause. She would correct her mistakes, and those of her lovely, beautiful, terrible Wyrm, and all was right in the world.

The Mantis Lord’s thrusts grew faster and more erratic, her voice rising high as she bred the White Lady. Behind her, she heard the rustling as her sisters maneuvered about the chamber. One of them stalked past her, her white-shelled face colored with arousal, a similar cock on display.

The second Lord approached the White Lady’s head and the root being opened her mouth, taking it in with a delighted murmur. The second Lord arched back her head, shuddering with bliss as she began fucking the White Lady’s face. The queen of Hallownest quivered under the dual ministrations; as every urge, ever command to breed that her body had been hurling at her these long years was finally sated, she let herself drift along, buoyed on a boat of delight. Strange… was it just her, or was her blurry, half-blind world beginning to bleed into shape and color?

Further thoughts were drowned out as the first of the mantis sisters grunted and hilted in her, jetting her full of cum, and the White Lady leaned back with an appreciative sigh, still slurping the cock of the second Lord. As the first of the mantises withdrew, the last sister took her place, lining up her own slender cock with the queen’s hole, and the lady thought to how long and luscious this new step would be.

It wasn’t long before she was gulping down mantis cum.

---

She stayed in her chamber as she slowly swelled with brood.

The Mantis Lords had conversed amongst themselves after her initial breeding, and the three sisters had come to an arrangement: one of them would need to be with her at all times to ensure the future safety of her—no, their—brood. The White Lady didn’t mind. After ages of loneliness, she enjoyed passing the time in conversation or even the simple comfort of moments spent in another’s presence; and of course, she allowed each of the Lords to ‘entertain’ her in turn. Though she was already plumping with offspring, that didn’t matter to her. The dam had been broken, there was no holding it back; she mated for pleasure’s sake, now.

At first, she had scarcely told the difference between the three mantises. They were each stern matriarchs, stoic and formidable, holding the future of their tribe paramount. But as the days passed and the Lords traded their positions with her, the White Lady slowly came to see them as individuals. The one who had mated her first was slightly more impulsive and inquisitive, a touch less severe than her siblings. The one who had held until last was the closest to a leader they had among them; not truly paramount, since they each ruled jointly, but a ‘first among equals’ arrangement. And the one who had slid into her eager mouth that night of first lovemaking was the meekest of the three, prone to introspection and wistfulness in private when devoid of her sisters’ commanding presence.

It was this one who was with the lady today.

“Ah…” she moaned, feeling her brood settle within her. “They are coming along nicely. They are quite healthy. Your sisters will be pleased when they learn…”

The Lord, who was resting in a small bed of leaves that the mantises had made for themselves at the edge of the chamber, perked up at that.

“Truly?” she said. She rose and with long, fluid strides, crossed the chamber to where the lady reposed. Gently, she rested one hand on the lady’s abdomen. The lady leaned back, filling the chamber with a low, appreciative lullaby. After such long lonesomeness, the gentle stroke and touch of a mate was something she never knew she wanted…

They spent some time like that, the two of them, the Mantis Lord continually stroking the modest roundness of the White Lady, the lady resting. Yes… this was correct, this was right. This was what she lived for. To breed, to grow round with young, to feel them nestle within her…

“I can feel them,” the Lord said after a few minutes. “These little larvae, they squirm under my touch.”

“A dance,” agreed the lady. “They are energetic and filled with spark. They will do your tribe well.” She beamed in appreciation, casting her gaze around the chamber. Ever since the night in which she had been bred by the mantises, her eyesight had slowly returned to her. Now she was nowhere near approaching blind; oh, her vision was still blurry, and she sometimes struggled to make out shapes, but it was far better than it had been.

What had caused her vision to wane? Despair and sorrow, perhaps? Or was her body slowly withering as she deprived it of its need to reproduce? Whatever the source, it had been chased away by the arrival of the mantises and the assumption of her new purpose. She would not begrudge it.

“Come closer, my love,” she crooned, and after a moment’s hesitation, the Mantis Lord approached, her touch trailing along the queen’s rounded belly. As the Lord grew closer, within the lady’s sight her companion transformed from a shapeless blob into a true vision. Lean, tall, proud, with a white mask of a face, a tall horned crest, and a blue-grey cloak that draped off of her shoulder. “I can finally look at you. You are so lovely…”

Blushing, the mantis leaned a hand against the lady’s cheek, and the latter sunk into it. The Lord considered; she could not speak for her sisters, but for her part, her relationship with the White Lady had transformed. From being a far-off, nearly faceless adversary her tribe had cursed, now she was here, and happy, and helping, and…

And what had begun as a union of convenience and necessity had, for this Lord at least, blossomed into something more.

The mantis stroked the lady’s cheek, and she leaned into her touch more and more, appreciative as ever, glowing with power and life. To think, this massive, gentle being carried the future of her tribe within her…

As if reading her mind, the lady spoke. “It feels so right,” she murmured, “not only to resume my propagation, but to do so with purpose. The mantis tribe will live on, endure, because of me… the creatures who will grow and thrive and step forward into the light of this place will be my young. My offspring. I can take pride in that… happiness…” She leaned back with a happy sigh. “I wonder what Dryya will think. You have kept her informed as you’ve come and gone, yes? I hope she visits soon…”

The Lord tensed, suddenly aghast. She… did she not know? How could she not know?

No… the question was, why did they assume she had? She had lived for eons bound in this low chamber, cut off from the world, with no visitors save them and her own wordless spawn, that little ghost.

Oh, why did the duty of informing her have to fall now?

Sensing something wrong, the lady stirred, her white glow dimming by a breath. “Heartmate? What is the matter?”

“Dryya…”

The lady tensed. Yes, something was wrong. “What of Dryya?”

“My lady, forgive us, we did not keep this from you to be cruel. Dryya… perished.”

Quiet descended on the chamber. The White Lady reeled, losing herself in shock and suddenness. Dryya? Lovely, noble, stalwart Dryya, was gone? Like that? But… but how? When? She had thought her defender was standing sentinel over her all this time, had looked forward to reuniting with her…

How could this be?

Glistening tears began to drip down her face. “How… why?”

The mantis looked down in shame. “…we bear some responsibility. After his exile, our wayward brother laid siege to your garden. His troops besieged this very place, but were driven off by your protector… yet she succumbed. Your spawn finished the rest.”

The silence that blanketed the chamber was dark. The lady reached down, cupping her own stomach, stomach that was rounding with the progeny of the mantises, the family of her friend’s murderer.

“I see,” she said.

“We disavow him!” the Lord said, desperate. At that moment, thoughts, desperate thoughts, swirled in her mind. Would the lady break their bargain? Would she loathe them forever? Would their brother’s hate and pride doom the mantises? “We disavow him now, as we did then! He is not—we are—”

A gentle root reached up to stroke her face and she broke off. The White Lady still wept—but she smiled at her attendant through her tears. “I know something of familial sins,” she said. “You needn’t defend yourself to me. The loss stings, yet… yet anyone I could blame is past. The more time I spend with you, the more awful I realize the situation my husband placed your tribe in. …no, not only him. I abode by his edicts… I can see why your brother would have wanted these gardens, and me.”

“Still, lady,” said her companion, “your friend Dryya… he killed her.”

“He did,” she replied, her voice misty. “But you are not him. And they—” And here she swept her touch low to her rounding belly, “—are not his. They are yours. Ours.”

“So you forgive us, lady?” asked the Lord.

“My heartmate, you are not the party who needs to ask forgiveness,” the White Lady said, opening her arms for an embrace. The mantis took it, clasping arms, fingers entwining with roots, limbs snaking around each other, two faces touching, their brows leaning on one another. The queen stroked the Lord, the Lord caressed her, and slowly they rocked together.

Before long, the scent of arousal filled the air. The queen was ready, and the mantis was erect, her long, slender penis rubbing against the lady’s rounded tummy and feeling the young squirm within.

The White Lady whispered an entreaty. “Please.” It was all she had to say.

The Lord hitched her hips lower, her cock dragging down the bountiful roundness of Hallownest’s queen, until it found the familiar, waiting entrance. She slid in easily, the touch familiar and luscious, the sensation sublime. But this was no simple act of broodmaking or fleeting moment of mutual pleasure. This was something truly intimate, something more. The Lord slid further inside, her cock gliding along the inner confines of the Lady, whose walls were smooth and tight around her, the act strumming them both full of pleasure.

‘Making love,’ some called it. It had seemed a pointless, almost crass distinction before. But now they each understood. True sex was more than just the act of procreation or the sating of urges. As the Lord hitched her hips back and slid in again, her spire stroking the wall of the queen’s tunnel, each of them shuddered from the bliss it brought. This was a mutual act of closeness, of desire, of nearness.

The White Lady bore each thrust with delight, crooning a high song, her tears ceased—though Dryya was gone, she needn’t mourn. The warrior had done her duty, and now thanks to the lady’s spawn, Hallownest might finally recuperate from its long nightmare. The thing to do was not to mourn the past, but to look forward to the future—the future the lady carried in her belly. The salvation of an entire tribe… and, perhaps, a future of unity between groups who had been divided. How could the mantises be exiled from Hallownest if their young had come from the queen’s own womb? Her body rocked with pleasure and her mind sang with satisfaction as the Lord slammed into her, and she reflected that Dryya would have been happy to know that in the end, her last stand hadn’t been for naught. Everything turned out alright.

---

Laying day had finally come.

The White Lady was huge, a massive, swollen, beautiful creature. Her globe of a belly towered nearly as high as the Mantis Lords themselves; so swollen was she that she could scarcely labor to move under her own power. As her pregnancy had progressed, the Lords had arranged things so that two, and then all three, of them were present.

“Are you ready?” asked the leader of the three, her voice whipped with worry.

“You needn’t worry,” came the happy, weary sigh of the one who was mother to their children. “I have done this countless times.” And then with a grunt of effort…

The mantis tribe was reborn.

The grubs came one after another; they were small, cute things, wriggling and energetic, and each of the Lords cradled them gently in their arms with wonder. They had expected some display of the queen’s uniqueness to have shown itself, but the White Lady was good to her word. Her young were indistinguishable from the race of their sires. Yet there was some difference. Perhaps because they had not gestated in the bodies of those who had suffered in the wastes, or because their mother was the root being of Hallownest, but they seemed brighter, healthier, more energetic.

As the mantises held their young in their arms, each of them began to weep as the weight of realization hit them: their young were hale, and healthy, and they assured the future of the mantis tribe.

They would live on.

“Thank you,” one of the Lords said, cradling a squirming, chirping grub near her. “Thank you, White Lady.”

“It is… what I am here for,” she said with a weary smile. “Give me some time to recuperate, and then we can add to your tribe’s numbers once more… should you wish it.”

“We would like that very much,” came the reverent reply.

Tired and satisfied from the process of laying her most recent brood, the lady leaned back, reflecting. Yes, one batch of young alone would not safeguard the mantis tribe. She would need to give them more. She didn’t mind. It was the natural next step.

And perhaps not only the mantises. There were others in Hallownest who were teetering on the precipice of survival, families and tribes who had diminished under the infection. Was a queen’s duty not to her people? She could help them all.

She would help them all.

And as Hallownest slowly recovered and repopulated, the long cloud of the infection finally chased away, the mantises returned, their numbers bolstered with rank after rank of vibrant, healthy young. They began the process of leaving the wastes, settling into the gardens where the queen rested, and over time, the Queen’s Gardens came to be known by a new name:

The Breeding Gardens.