UE Rewrite: B5 — 14. Laughter and Venom (Patreon)

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Isabelle (Our Auntie from Earth!)

Azalea (Our Newest Spider Girl!)

Undying Empire Index

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Isabelle’s legs felt numb after the shock of hitting her butt, the towering dragon-like creature radiating power as sunlight danced off its mirror-like scales. Yet, she was not focused on the jet-sized monster.

Internally, she slowly folded inward, her stunned mind finally coming together after making promises it had been keeping for days.

“You’re…alive?”

The words should have brought joy. Instead, it brought vertigo.

“What do you mean we have a lot to discuss…” she mumbled. “Why do I have two sisters?”

Her sister stood there—twice. Two Tiffanys, one darker in hair and shadow, one lighter but somehow more weathered. Both unmistakably her sister. Both impossibly present.

“How?” The word scraped out raw in her throat. “Comment est-ce possible?”

Both sisters slid down the dragon’s wing before glancing at one another in unison and speaking together.

“It’s complicated.”

It was almost comical, if she hadn’t wanted to throw up—scratch that, she did.

Leaning to the side, she choked out what little she’d been able to keep in that morning, hacking and choking. Tears leaked out of her eyes, which she couldn’t contain. Everyone else in their travel party shrank back immediately in fright once they got their bearings.

It was too much.

Way too much.

“Izzy…” the lighter, more weathered sister whispered in sudden concern, sweeping forward to support her, Sarah doing the same. “Hey… Let me check your health.”

“Ack—h-hey!”

Isabelle cried out as orange flames sparked to life at the snap of her sister’s fingers, expanding to engulf her! Only, it was warm…comforting? The exhaustion in her bones eased slightly, the sharp edge of hunger dulling.

“Malnutrition, dehydration, exhaustion,” Light Tiffany rattled off, her hands glowing with soft, Halloween-like light that cast an unusually gentle glow across her big sister’s face. “When did you last have a real meal?”

“Define real,” Isabelle croaked, then caught sight of Edmon standing awkwardly between his two wives—yeah, and somehow she was the problem; her sister should have been worried ‘bout herself.

Clearly, the man didn’t know which one to help or how to help without making things worse because he had that look on his face he got when Tiff and her started fighting in France.

His frost-touched armor gleamed in the morning light, making him look like something out of a dark fantasy—like a smutty book she’d read back on Earth.

Stop it. He’s your brother-in-law! She internally chided, wanting to slap herself. This is just…me coping. Focus. Just…focus.

Dark Tiffany noticed her looking and smirked. “Some things don’t change, I see, Izzy. Still deflecting to your unrealistic fantasy books when life gets too hard?”

“Don’t,” Light Tiffany warned what Isabelle had to assume was her sister’s darker half with comments like that while still tending to her. “It isn’t as if we can talk about our own personal, ahem, escape habits,” she grunted, narrowed vision drifting between her and her husband, who looked away with an actual blush. “She’s been through enough.”

“Oh, quit coddling—”

Isabelle’s face burned, flashbacks of her teenage years coming back in full stride, her big sister snapping at her for borrowing her clothes and ‘stretching them out.’

“Both of you, stop,” Elinor’s voice cut through, not loud but carrying absolute authority. The Empress—and she was unmistakably that—remained seated on her dragon, watching with those unsettling emerald eyes. “We aren’t on Earth anymore, and both of you know we have expanded responsibilities. This is a new start…for all of us.”

Sarah cleared her throat from beside her, catching Light Tiffany’s gaze.

“Isabelle?” Her friend’s voice was careful, uncertain. “Are you okay? Your tears…they’re floating.”

Derailed, she blinked and centered on her sister’s small, kind smile as the vomit separated itself from her mouth, snot cleared, and tears floated up like diamonds before her eyes within the flames.

“Tiff, how are you doing this?”

“I’d be happy to tell you the story, but in short, I lost my good half… Me, obviously, by my darker side’s responses,” she mumbled, glancing back with a glare at her twin. “But not even an hour ago, my daughter was able to restore this side of me, but things got…complicated. We’re both your sister—same memories, same everything. Just nice…and cruel.”

“I prefer the word realist,” Dark Tiffany drolled, rolling her eyes. “And didn’t our daughter just chide you on passive-aggressive jabs, sweetheart? Good habits die hard! In short, she got the light,” Dark added, bitter as burnt coffee. “I got everything else.”

Yeah, Isabelle sighed internally upon seeing the electricity spark between them, they’re both my sister—without a doubt. 

Isabelle’s gaze found Edmon again—perfected Edmon—and something twisted in her chest that she immediately buried. Then, she found her little niece again, looking more elf-like than the 15-year-old she’d last seen—a real frown on her lips. 

This…is my family now? Wow. My niece is an empress in another world.

“The others,” Isabelle managed, gesturing at the refugees to deflect. “They’re with me. Sarah—Dr. Whitmore—she helped organize everyone in this group… We wanted to get here as fast as possible. Sarah wanted to ask you something, El. Eh…Elinor? Empress?”

Her niece’s pinched lips lightened. “Elinor is perfectly acceptable in private, Aunt Izzy, but in public, Empress would be appropriate.”

“Right. No, of course. Sarah?”

Sarah stepped forward, adjusting her broken glasses. “Your Majesty—Empress—”

“No need to be shy. What is your question?”

Her friend’s breath hitched. “Can you… Can you really raise the dead? Even someone who died thousands of years ago?”

Elinor’s emerald eyes shifted to the box her undead toad people carried. “Look around you, Doctor. I think your labor force that helped protect you across the jungle answers that.”

Sarah’s gaze swept across the skeletal servants, the doubled Tiffany, Edmon’s misty blue eyes that drew Isabelle in; the world quieted for a breath with her frozen lungs until her friend’s words popped her bubble.

“Then it’s true. I’m not trying to waste your time, Empress. Umm…” She stopped, wringing her hands. “After the First Oscillation, museums were looted, artifacts stolen or destroyed. During the Second, when relics gained power, it got…worse. A lot worse.”

Her voice grew stronger, more passionate. “I couldn’t let her be taken by zealots, like the Scarlet Hand or Les Reliquaires Noirs—necromancers who’d turn her into a puppet…

“She was brilliant—the female pharaoh who declared herself king, who built Deir el-Bahari, who ruled Egypt for twenty-two years of prosperity. History tried to erase her, but she survived in stone and papyrus and—”

“Be direct,” Elinor commanded, though not unkindly. “I have over a hundred thousand people to look after in a hostile world. My time is precious, Sarah.”

Wow… My little niece has grown up from talking about boys and tattoos to running an empire.

Sarah swallowed hard. “I brought the mummy of Hatshepsut, Empress. Well, smuggled her here since Izabelle had luggage that wasn’t inspected due to…her relation to High Queen Butter…”

Her friend shot Isabelle a guilty look, but she didn’t care. Figures she had another motive at the start for befriending a frantic, borderline hysterical woman abandoning her world.

“I’ve studied Hatshepsut for twenty years—since I was thirteen. Every inscription, every artifact, every fragment of her story. I know her accomplishments, her building projects, her trade expeditions. But I want to know her.

“Not as artifacts and speculation but as a person. What was she like? What made her laugh? What kept her awake at night? Uh…you could say I have an unhealthy obsession… My mom and four ex-boyfriends said the same,” she added with a strained laugh in her word vomit.

Isabelle remembered those nights during their exodus—Sarah whispering about Hatshepsut when the screams got too close, clutching her research notes like holy scripture.

“If anyone could give her voice again…” Sarah's words tumbled faster. “With what High Queen Butter said about you. I just thought—I hoped—well, that you aren’t just some necromancer… You cared.”

Both halves of her sister gasped. Even Edmon looked shaken.

“Hatshepsut herself?” Dark Tiffany breathed, her cynicism cracking. “The female pharaoh? My, with that pedigree, perhaps she could be our first Supreme Court member.”

“The builder of Deir el-Bahari,” Light Tiffany added, wonder creeping into her voice. “She proclaimed herself king, donned the false beard of pharaohs, opened trade to the distant land of Punt, and raised obelisks that still pierce the sky. Her mortuary temple was not just stone, but a proclamation.”

Elinor’s laugh was like wind through a mausoleum. “How delightfully ambitious, Dr. Whitmore. And it makes me wonder if my little sister truly said those things about me or if you’re just trying to puff me up, not that I care for the latter. But yes, I could raise her. Perhaps tonight, after our new citizens settle. It would be a good demonstration.”

Then those emerald eyes cut to Isabelle. “I’m afraid I can’t give you too much more of my time, Aunt Izzy, but I will carve out some when I am able. Oh, and Isabelle, one more thing?”

Chains cut out of thin air, pulling her niece off the dragon to land beside her so fast that Isabelle choked and developed hiccups!

“Come with me for just a moment…”

A lump formed in Isabelle’s throat upon looking into her niece’s penetrating emerald gaze—it wasn’t the look of warmth but of hard calculus in this moment.

“Eh. Yeah…”

Forcing her shaky legs into action, her movements felt robotic as she moved away from the others to stand at the edge of one of the prismatic and deadly hot springs. Her sisters, Edmon, and her group all watched with bated breath.

Elinor’s voice was clipped and final, spoken low so none of the others could hear. “I’ll be blunt. That lingering attachment to my father—bury it. It will only bring you…and our family pain here. I am dealing with enemies on every front. It is safe because I do not have internal distractions… Please, don’t give me internal distractions, and help me with my mother. She needs you.”

Heat flooded Isabelle’s face, her stomach twisting. “I…I understand.”

“Good.” Elinor’s chains manifested again, pulling her back to her dragon in one fluid motion. As she settled onto the dragon’s spine, her expression shifted, something dangerous flickering in those supernatural eyes as she gazed eastward.

“Change of plans. Mom—both of you—stay with Isabelle. Help her and the refugees get settled. Dad, you coordinate the new arrivals from the west.”

“Wouldn’t my talents be best served—” Dark Tiffany started with a grimace, Isabelle’s way.

“It can wait an hour.” Elinor’s tone brooked no argument. “Besides, I’m sure your sister has questions that the family should answer. Family reunions shouldn’t be rushed… You told me that once, Mother.”

“You look…concerned,” Isabelle hiccupped, rejoining them and trying to be a part of the group. “Is everything, hic—okay?”

For a moment, Elinor’s expression softened toward her mother. Then iron returned as her gaze swept the eastern mountains.

“No need for concern, Aunt Izzy. Just a few uninvited guests scouting our valley.” Her smile was sharp enough to cut. “But I’m an accommodating host to the unexpected. We’ll see if they appreciate my hospitality. I have a new, rather excitable spider who is already en route.”

The way she said it made Isabelle's skin crawl—like listening to a cat discuss a mouse it hadn’t killed yet.

Her dragon launched with a crack of lightning, the downdraft nearly knocking Isabelle over if not for both her sisters steadying her. She watched the dragon disappear into the morning haze with her brother-in-law and their…maid?—her niece’s warning still burning in her ears.

✧⸻✧⸻✧

Mmm. Mmm. The air tastes different as a human, Sister. So…lively! Like, Violet’s electro-static thread she used to zap me with when I’d tangle her silk.

“We’re getting fairly far from the city, Azalea…”

Azalea balanced on one toe atop a crystalline formation; arms spread wide, her new body singing with possibilities she’d never imagined.

Every nerve ending sparked with information—dulled, yes, comparatively blind and deaf and wonderfully numb compared to her true form—but so deliciously different.

The Empress told us to explore and bond. Sister! Watch!

She sprang into a triple backflip, her body seeming to weigh nothing, less than nothing, like silk on the wind.

I can feel individual air currents! Each one has its own temperature gradient! In my natural form, I’d process this as a single atmospheric reading, but like this—mmm!—like this, I can taste twenty-three distinct chemical signatures just from the morning breeze! Is this how Violet or Mother tasted the world?

Camellia stood below, arms crossed, trying to look stern but failing to hide her smile. “Azalea, when I said we should patrol. I meant we should be moving… We’re supposed to be looking for threads, not playing.”

Ah, and this is why you never get Mother’s advice. You’re so literal, silly!

This is patrolling!

Azalea landed in a crouch, then immediately sprang twenty feet to the next crystal spire. 

How can I patrol if I don’t understand my new sensory parameters? Oh! Oh! Cami, did you know human eyes can detect polarized light if you look at the right angle? It’s subtle, but—mmm, yes, there! If I limit my perception to theirs, I can see the stress patterns in this crystal without silk-sensory analysis! That’s loads more efficient! I love efficiency…

“I know you do… And now you’re licking the crystals. I’m getting flashbacks of you eating and licking everything… Everything.”

Azalea pressed her face against the formation, tongue flicking out to slide down its length, microhairs sharp as diamonds penetrating further to suck trace amounts in for analysis.

Calcium carbonate base with trace amounts of…sulfur? Iron oxide? Mmm! This formed from repeated geyser deposits over—oh, at least three thousand years, maybe four. Each layer is a story — with trapped bacteria whispering their own.

What was this super-heated layer several decades ago? A volcanic eruption? Ash raining from the sky? The colors shift based on bacterial mats that grew between eruptions. Cami, it’s so…dull, yet alive in other ways!

“Everything’s alive to you,” Camellia mumbled defensively. “Even rocks.”

Camellia was already scaling the crystal with her ruby hair, all smug and graceful, like she’d invented elegance. Azalea’s chest puffed with pride anyway—her big sister really was terrifyingly good at this.

Where Azalea was quicksilver and lightning, Camellia was… molten muscle poured into art. A shape Azalea once tried to copy as a larva. She’d failed miserably, of course. So she stopped trying. Better to be lightning than a bad puddle.

Because they are! Just on different timescales. Mmm. Speaking of time— Azalea froze mid-motion, one hand extended, fingers splayed. Your silk. It’s seventeen percent stronger. You’re improving in real time! Are you studying me? Mom would be so proud!

Her big sister rolled her eyes—a trait seemingly gained from observing humans. It told her even more about how drastically her new form and environment had reshaped her objective failure of a sibling. She was a failure no longer… And that was frightening. Amazing!

“This isn’t like you. You mentioned—”

Ugh. No! Azalea stamped her foot, creating a perfect cut down the crystal to its base. No, you’re falling back into the old pattern! Think, Cami! I’m talking about the one you spun for Tempest. No, no, I said it was stronger than that one. Now I can quantify it! So many layers you miss. Then, you don’t miss any. Inconsistencies are a killer, as Mother often said!

She bounced on her toes, her electric pink eyes bright with discovery. Camellia’s head tilted to the side, a frown on her lips, gaze fixated on her. Azalea slid down the crystal into splits to stop herself, pawing at the surface.

“Humans would call your efficiency callous and mean-spirited, Sister. I suppose I can’t teach you anything you couldn’t pick up faster by observing… Violet may have learned faster than us both, but you were always the first to perfect Mother’s teachings.”

That got a frown out of Azalea while testing the flexibility of her malleable human form. Her big sister had no clue how challenging it was to keep up with their little sister, for her, how hard she practiced in private with every waking second to achieve feats that clicked naturally to them both.

Mmm… I wonder if I could replicate your progress in my own silk production? The Empress’ energy might have—

“Azalea.” Camellia’s voice carried fond exasperation. “Focus. You’re always thinking twenty seconds ahead, but I’m trying to bond with you, not refine my silk craft.”

Azalea’s gaze fell low to the jungle floor, blue locks probing for activity. Passively, she captured an image of their entire environment. She collected data to provide snapshots of atmospheric, geological, and ecological activity.

Yet, her internal frustration with her big sister was growing.

How can you have grown so much, despite your weakened state, and still have such an oblivious mind? she whispered, almost to herself. It’s for this reason Mother always feared I’d kill you first when it was time to assert dominance…

“What, that is the first time I have ever not understood you? And it’s through the Nexus!”

Hehehe. That’s the point, Sister, Azalea fake snickered, head twisting around to smirk up at the glaring older woman. I am focused! I’m focused on everything simultaneously! It’s wonderful! You should try it sometime.

 She cartwheeled up the split vertically to launch to the next spire, her blue-to-white gradient hair streaming behind her like frozen lightning.

Do you remember our old nest? When you were always trying to get Violet and me to pay attention to your hunting lessons when we were just tiny things?

“You never paid attention, bouncing around terrorizing Violet’s silk and getting cocooned by her for your entertainment…to try and escape.”

Such a different point of view we have, Big Sister. I paid attention to everything! Just not what you wanted me to! Mother wanted you to learn from us as we learned from you.

Azalea laughed, the sound crystalline in the morning air.

You’d say ‘watch the prey’s movement,’ and I’d be calculating how many individual muscle fibers were firing in sequence to create that movement—all while fending off Violet’s vengeful thread! Violet understood the concept immediately, of course. We had to fight each other… Mom knew that. She always did. But I needed to understand the why beneath the why.

Camellia’s face pinched, a tremor running through her silk that betrayed her self-doubt and frustration. It made Azalea want to strangle her.

For how much raw potential she had, she wasted it. Didn’t she know their mother had tried to evolve past the genetic law that every new sibling was more potent than the previous?

She paused, perched impossibly on a crystal point that should have shredded her feet. 

Want to visit the nest?

“What? Mmm… It’s probably destroyed.”

Mmm. Probably. But not the point! The substrate would remain—stone memory, chemical traces. I could taste what happened. Reconstruct the timeline.

She tilted her head, studying her sister with her gaze that she knew made Camellia’s stomach queasy. You’re afraid of what I’ll find.

“I’m not—”

You’re not a perfect actor or manipulator, like Violet, Cami. Your two heart rates increased out of sync by twelve beats. Micro-expressions in your facial muscles indicate anxiety from the human interactions I saw in Nethermore. The subtle shift in your pheromone signature and thread pulses suggests—

“Azalea…”

Sorry! Sorry. It is challenging to find a way to support your learning structure. It annoys me that you could rival Violet and her insufferable attitude and remain stunted.

“That…is perfectly you. Wait, you think—”

It is me! She grinned and performed a standing backflip just because she could. And haven’t I been explicitly clear in that! Cami, Cami, Cami… What is Mom going to do with you… 

Her big sister still seemed stuck in a repeat of her response.

You know, combining the human brain substrate with our complex nerve system brain networks, increases our overall processing by ninety percent for sensory information… Their nervous system seems poorly engineered to accommodate that capacity, though. Tragic. Fascinating design, really. Inefficient but elegant. Mother would drool over the possibilities their genome provides.

“Yeah, I noticed…” Cami’s furrowed brow drifted to her, hope signaling through her reaction that she may not be a failure. “Thank you, Lea.”

Lea?! I adore that nickname! Yes, use that! It’s shorter.

“Haha. When I feel like it.”

Oooh! Keeping me on my toes. I like it!

They moved across the geothermal fields, Azalea dancing between geysers while Camellia followed with careful precision. The contrast was telling—the camouflaging assassin who moved like art and the brute guardian who moved like purpose.

Azalea dropped beside her sister with a whisper, slipping between ferns as they picked their way over a patch of unstable ground.

Camellia steadied herself on a crystal outcrop within the dense jungle, looking down the cliff from the northern shelf, testing the surface before crossing a slick stretch of bacterial mat. 

“I know Mother is perfect. I have to wonder if she told me the truth about—”

Mother always tells the truth, Azalea sang, vaulting a fallen trunk and pausing mid-leap to grin back at her. Also, Mother is not ‘perfect.’ She would call that foolishness, and you know it. She is ‘perfect’ to us. There is a difference. She also doesn’t always tell us things so we can grow and evolve unique skills, such as Violet’s frustratingly potent silk.

“I suppose you are right…again.”

Her hair flashed in a signal that she tested—some ri’bot responded to it and came closer. It looked like she could do it in this form, too, changing her entire skin pigment and texture. She’d need to test it further.

“Azalea?”

Azalea froze, hanging in the air upside down with a thread binding her in place.

Mmm. Did you feel that?"

“Ugh… Feel what?”

The air pressure shifted. Northern quadrant. Elevation approximately… She landed, pressing her palm flat against the ground to connect to the thousands of silks she’d woven through their environment. Three hundred meters? Maybe three-fifty. The wind patterns are wrong. Flying prey… Large. Perfect prey for the hive.

Camellia’s frustration returned, focusing on a more ineffective way with her silk. “I don’t—”

Because you’re feeling for vibrations through the ground first, copying me and assuming wrong, which I did on purpose. I’m not using the substrate transmission because it obscures atmospheric phenomena. I said they were in the air…

“Ugh… You’re teaching me now?”

Correction! I know you’re trying to learn, she winked, still hanging upside down. You are better adapted to the human condition, mixed with our refined nervous system. I bet you would have caught it first if you had more confidence and weren’t putting all your effort into analyzing me. Work smarter, Sister, not harder!

Azalea’s head tilted at an impossible angle, tracking something invisible.

The air is being displaced in an unnatural pattern. Not the birds we’re accustomed to—too uniform. They almost appear as a colossal, singular entity if I draw back my focus… Trained, not natural. The weather is cold for them by their muscular vibrations, out of their natural environment. Something large is maintaining altitude against the prevailing winds between them.

“How large?” Camellia launched skyward, hair splitting out and doing what she should have done immediately the moment Azalea sent the warning pulse through their united web. “If it’s… I feel it! Based on pressure differential and distance… Bigger than Tempest! Or…no, wait.”

Mmm! Mmm! Good, Sister! Azalea chimed, wind rushing past her as her thread pulled her up to join the redhead. Multiple objects flying in formation! That’s why the pattern seemed wrong. They’re creating interference with each other’s wake turbulence every second due to the chill.

Camellia’s ruby markings flared slightly on her back when they broke through the canopy, peering northward toward the snowy mountains.

“We should report this.”

In a moment! I need more data. The chemical signature in the air… It’s…

Azalea’s nose twitched, processing scents human senses shouldn’t be able to detect.

Feathers. Definitely feathers. But treated with something. An oil? No, a resin. For waterproofing? And…mmm! Ri’bot!”

Camellia was already rushing toward the curiosity, words sparking electric poison in Azalea’s heart. “We’ll report on the way… I think we have invaders.”

Azalea’s lips peeled back to show a glossy smile.

Then, it’s time for us to play! Our first hunt. Oh, please let me take the lead, Cami! Please!

“Okay… You get to lead the hunt.”

Yay!

Poison ebbed out of her slick tongue, leaking from the corner of her mouth. She managed to lick it back in before it left any traces in the environment, silk collecting any microdroplets that lingered in her passing as she cycled between more than a hundred unique toxins and acids.

We’re going to have so much fun…

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