Chapter 12: Chapter 11: A Change of Plans

Rose hurried to the field near the burrow where the Queen always hunted. She felt…elated, more than she ever had in her memories or in her short period of true awareness. The Queen had called her important, and she had not only given Rose a name, but the vital task of bringing more sisters into the swarm.

A part of her still yearned to be on the front lines, protecting the Queen directly, but she understood the importance of the task she had been given. Their war with the goblins would bring corpses to be made into modeling wax, items to help bolster their army, and, most importantly, many new sisters.

Their burrow, modest as it was, was not prepared for that. Nor was it a fitting dwelling for someone like the Queen. She should be given plush seating on a throne like true royalty, her every order obeyed by legions of followers, not forced to live in a hole in the ground while she fought on the front lines.

That gave Rose pause. Where had that come from? She was reasonably sure she had never seen a throne in her life as a rat, nor had she had any concept of what “true royalty” was. And she got the feeling that those ideas weren’t instincts her conversion had given her, either.

Wait, how did she know what instincts were? No…how did she know what anything was, save for the little she could remember from before her enlightenment? She knew that, usually, sapient beings had a period of time where they were still learning everything and didn’t grasp things right away like she did.

So, why did she know these things? The question nagged at the back of her mind, like there was something important she had forgotten, and she was on the cusp of remembering it. Every little turn of phrase she thought of, every question she had just seemed to intensify that feeling. It built and built until, finally, something snapped, and the feeling vanished, leaving in its wake a set of windows in front of her.

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