Chapter 43: Chapter 43

While their queen slept the rest of the Antanoid continued with the defense and tried to make as little noise as possible. Holding the wall against the moths silently proved to be rather impossible however. Nonetheless they managed to hack away at the beasts for the last hours of the night without waking up their queen, having been lucky that the corpses in the other entrance served as a large enough distraction to keep the moths there occupied.

When the sun rose over the horizon in the north-east, greeting a new day, the moths all cried out together and began to retreat. The only exception being the heavily wounded one that had been forced to attack the wall for the last hours. There were countless wounds all over the front of its body that actively leaked blood and the only thing it managed to do was whimper pitifully. 

In an act you could call mercy, Artemis ended the life of the moth with one of the glaives. The animal let out one last cry before it slumped to the floor, motionlessly.

The wail woke the Antanoid queen, who proceeded to furiously excuse herself for falling asleep and for not supporting her daughters in their battle. She was met by kind smiles, a victory kiss and forgiveness, not a single one of the girls offended by her actions in any way. On the contrary, they had taken quite differently to it, interpreting her falling asleep in such a situation as a sign of trust, which left Kai in an embarrassed state for most of the day.

With the dawn of the new day came a motherload of work for the small settlement. The first order of business was the removal of all dead moths and all the bloodied silk. They did not have any knowledge of the local illnesses or possibly helpful herbs so keeping the hive sanitized was important.

When that was done they split up into smaller groups, some of them gathering food as well as materials in the woods, some repairing any damaged parts of the hive and constructing more walls. The rest harvested the corpses of the moths or what was left of them. 

While her daughters did all that, Kai continued her training together with Anna. With Artemis’ method of assessing the strength of a creature or person she even had a use for that training now, which helped to motivate herself. She also hoped that she would figure out a way to help her daughters during combat if she got better at manipulating and sensing mana.

After that Kai did not train her close combat ability like she usually did. Instead she stretched her body in between short breaks. Kai was growing at an incredibly fast pace and she would like to stay agile so she would have to work her tendons or they would stay behind the growth of her body and limit her movement in the future. 

Anna had the time of her life watching her queen in weird positions. Kai let her have her fun and was just thankful her daughter let her do her thing instead of arguing that this training was not befitting of a queen. She had yet to truly understand what Anna and her daughters understood as queenly and what not.

Kai ended her day with a bath and laid another two eggs before she went to sleep. She was determined to stay awake during the night to keep an eye on her daughters. With the new fortifications she didn’t worry about their ability to defend, but them being reckless especially Artemis.

The first howls of the night swept through the dark forest and Kai shuddered. Despite the multiple walls in the tunnels she felt uneasy and had the urge to tear them apart. There was clearly something instinctual going on with her not liking closed tunnels, but she would have to deal with it for now.

The moths came again and descended once more on the leftovers of yesterday's battle. 

The defense worked a lot better tonight and they didn’t lose a single drone. Due to the outer walls they weren’t able to slay any of the moths however, because they were able to fly away if they got injured too much, despite the barricades being a few meters inside of the tunnels. Had they built them directly at the entrance the moths could have attacked from above which was why Tiffany planned them a bit inside.

Kai quickly grew bored, not being able to do anything. Her daughters didn’t let her near the barricades and Lena refused her offers to help. She had to be the only leader in existence that didn’t have enough to do…

Anyway, in the end she sat down and watched her daughters lash out at a moth every now and then. Lena provided her with snacks again, which Kai gratefully accepted until she had the thought that it was like she was eating popcorn while watching her daughters fight. After that she stopped eating.

At some point one of the glaives broke and Kai managed to get herself roughly a meter of the bony hilt. She played around with the hollow bone, scratching markings into the material with her short claws.

As Kai did that she got an idea, a rather random idea. The bone was hollow so could she craft some kind of flute with it?

Her curiosity piqued and with nothing else to do she got to work. Now Kai had no idea how to craft the instrument, but she figured cutting a few small holes in one side of the bone should work. It didn’t.

The bone was too strong for her claws to simply slice through, but at least not hard enough for her not to leave any damage as was evident by her markings. Kai refused to let herself be stopped by that and began to saw at the thing until she had her first hole.

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It was rough and had about the diameter of a normal pencil, but it would hopefully do. She took the bone and waved it experimentally, creating a deep hollow sound of air rushing through the pole.

Kai grinned happily. She had no intention of bringing her mouth anywhere near the bone to blow into it, but if it also worked just by swinging it she wouldn’t have to. 

With that in mind Kai tried to create a similar hole on the other end of the bone as well as two holes closer to the center, but on the opposite side of the pole.

Once she was done she stood up, grabbed the center and took another few test swings. The bone created 4 different sounds depending on the direction she moved it. They were quite rough and made her wince, her ears used to the modern earth level of skill, but she tried to ignore it.

The two outer holes were louder and had a higher pitch than the inner ones, which made them the primary tunes while the inner holes were more useful to accentuate the other two, as far as that was possible with such a crude instrument.

Kai continued to swing the bone around herself, getting used to which sound was created by which movement and began to hum. She was so focused on her thing that she didn’t notice her daughters watching her in curiosity. They knew of the concept of music, this however was the first time that they witnessed it for themselves in their lives and it was something completely different.

Kai closed her eyes, not wanting to think about how weird she might look right now and on a hunch started to push her mana into the bone without controlling it any further.

At first nothing happened, but after a minute or so her tunes became a lot clearer, making it easier for Kai to listen to them. She had no clue what was happening or why, but for the moment she also didn’t care.

Kai continued to channel her mana into the bone and moved the instrument through the air. This was actually kind of fun. 

She gently began to sway left and right, trying to stay in some kind of rhythm. It definitely wasn’t what she was used to, but her situation gave it a certain charm.

Somebody joined Kai’s humming and she opened her eyes in surprise. Most of her daughters except for those on the walls had gathered around her and suddenly she was very aware of what she was doing. For a moment she couldn’t do anything but stare wide eyed at the girls.

Ember raised her hand and looked at Kai hopefully. “Can I try mom?!”

Kai blinked and kind of went on autopilot. She nodded. “Uhh… sure.”

Her daughter made a small hop of excitement before she rushed over to Kai. “Yes!!”

Kai made place for her daughter and took the opportunity to escape the circle around her. 

Ember started to swing the bone flute herself and hummed to it. The tunes made Kai look around and watch her daughter. Ember wasn’t able to keep a rhythm or create clear sounds like Kai, but her determination was still really cute. Kai couldn’t help herself but forget about her own embarrassment and smile warmly at the sight.

She looked around her daughters and decided to join Ember’s humming to encourage the girl to continue. Seeing their queen and mother join in the others followed suit one after another. Ember looked around with large eyes before she laughed happily.

Not even 40 meters away from them there were beasts, trying to eat them and only kept outside by the Antanoid on the wall. Yet, when the laugh sounded out, even they smiled and slashed out more vigorously. It was truly a bizarre sight.

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