Starvation (2/2)
More time passes – so much time, in fact, that some of the Ants have actually aged to death and been replaced by a new generation once or twice.
All this time has slipped away, and Haalfrin still isn't waking up.
With nothing to do, the Queen continues to lounge on top of that tower, feeling increasingly anxious and empty.
To show how desperately bored she is, the Queen actually ends up calling some of her Ants to come chat with her, but this only makes her feel even more depressed; no matter how much she tries talking to them, she just can't relate to them.
Maybe she can't relate to them at all because none of them have long memories, like her. To them, this sea of blood and the floating castle are the only things that exist.
So, when the Queen tries talking to them about the outside world, all of them unanimously respond to her, "Why are you talking about this place called 'the outside'? Is there really anything out there?"
The Queen so seldomly talks to the ants that they've come to believe that this barren, blank place is their entire world. They've heard stories passed down through the generations of a great war that used to happen here, but it's such a faraway concept to them that they treat it as a mere myth.
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Feeling more and more disconnected from her own children, the Queen eventually grows even more restless.
Realizing that being near her children will just make her feel more lonely and empty inside, the Queen picks Haalfrin's unconscious body up and slings him over her back.
She plans on going places without her Ants, and she wouldn't feel comfortable having him be out of her direct reach.
"Maybe if I go and explore the land beneath the blood sea, I'll find some stimulation in this boring existence?" she thinks.
Every now and then, the Queen checks on her children by seeing through their eyes, and she sees them idly consumed in every type of pleasure seeking imaginable. With nothing productive to do, this degeneration was inevitable.
"Hah," the Queen scoffs. "I'm over here having an existential crisis, and these buffoons are completely clueless."
She looks up at her children and narrows her eyes. "I don't want to just squat in squalor like this. I want something more!"
Alas, there IS nothing more in this disgusting hell.
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When the Queen gets tired of traipsing around with Haalfrin's body, she goes back up to the sky fortress. There, she sees her children lounging around in every corner of the place with tired expressions.
As the Queen walks along the central road, she bumps into an Ant child, and the little girl gets a horrified look on her face before quickly putting her hands behind her back.
"Oi," the Queen asks, "What are you hiding there?"
"… Nothing…" the little child looks down with an ashamed expression.
"I'm your Queen. I can already read your mind."
One of the Ants nearby shoots onto her feet in her human form and exclaims, "Ah! Really? You're the Queen?! I've heard stories!"
"Yes!" another Ant asks with an excited hiss. "Did you really fight against the pointy eared demons? Some of the older granny sisters said so."
"Yes I have," the Queen answers. She then turns back to the child she originally bumped into. "What I'M curious about is why you're hiding grass."
As for how grass was able to survive in this sunless place, Haalfrin had been keeping a sealed away garden with artificial sunlight and seeds Fisco had left him before he died. With no one to supply him anymore, he had to make his own food.
"Oh," the child replies sheepishly, "I've never seen this pretty plant before. The older sisters said that green plants are edible. I'm so sorry for taking it. Do you want it? I heard they can make the hungry feelings go away."
The girl herself is bone thin, and she appears to be on the verge of starving to death.
Of course, the only reason the Ants don't starve a lot sooner is because they periodically enter hibernation. They also sometimes eat the smallest and weakest of their sisters.
Seeing this little girl look like she's making the biggest sacrifice in the world by offering up a scrap of grass, the Queen backs away and feels sorrow well up in her heart.
Of course, the Queen isn't sorry because her Ants are hungry, but that because they don't know the taste of real meat.
"Even I, myself, am forgetting the taste of delicious, thick mana," she thinks with a heavy heart. "Why can't that human just wake up already?"
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More years pass away, and the Queen has gradually given up hope on the human awakening anymore.
And so, feeling nothing but a numbing boredom and subtle sense of despair, the Queen has all of her children pack themselves neatly into every corner of the sky fortress and enter hibernation – this time for good.
Within a few hours, the Queen is all by herself with only Haalfrin's unconscious body to keep her company.
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As the years stretch on, the Queen doesn't move an inch. She used to keep track of how many times she's gone to sleep, but she quickly stops caring about having a set schedule.
More and more, the Queen spends more of her time sleeping – not because she's physically tired, but that she was SPIRITUALLY tired.
Long ago, Freyya had taught Haalfrin that the Queen surely won't make any progress on her Names, since she "has it easy".
…The goddess of all people didn't consider that perpetual loneliness and boredom weigh just as heavily on the soul as violence and fear…
For a while, it's fair to say that the Queen went crazy from the lack of stimulation. Sometimes, she'll see hallucinations, and sometimes, she'll walk aimlessly in circles while imagining that she's actually going somewhere.
During those brief moments where she slips out of her madness, Fina feels a faint tugging on her soul… and the tugging only grows stronger as time passes, and her ravenous hunger grows.
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Eventually, something snaps in the Queen's soul, and she frantically runs up to the mana crystals wedged in the castle's mana cannons.
Not even caring (or remembering) about how the mana in these crystals are too chaotic to be consumed, Fina tears one of the cannons off the wall without even bothering to properly unscrew the hatch over the mana stone.
She then claws the stone out of the cannon and pops it in her mouth in a desperate attempt to taste SOMETHING, even if it might be poisonous.
The Queen is immediately assaulted with a pain so hot that it feels like her body is being seared from the inside.
The only reason the Queen survives this is because she instinctually uses her massive mana pool to dilute the chaotic energy… though all of the mana she had eaten escapes in the process.
"I must admit," she thinks, "those humans are impeccable in their designs." The humans had managed to make the mana in these crystals pure poison to consume…
Suddenly, something clicks in her mind. "That's right. What I'm really after is mana – not flesh."
In her madness, Fina's mind somehow gained extreme focus. In this strange mental state, the Queen quickly comprehends the deeper meaning of her Fel Name...
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Immediately after she wakes up from her Comprehension, the Queen realizes that her body can now digest any form of mana directly.
Realizing what this means, the Queen rushes to another chaotic mana crystal and eats it as well.
This time, instead of being nearly killed, this time, she groans in pure pleasure. "Mmm… It tastes spicy. Wait… it has a taste? Mana has never tasted like anything before."
Feeling rich flavor in her mouth again, tears stream down the Queen's cheeks.
Reverently, the Queen pulls out the Threshold's Master Key, and she looks at it carefully.
Since she has control over the enchantments there, she's able to rewind the time for any canons or other equipment she destroys.
"What if I eat the mana stones there, then use the Time spell to restore the stones again? I'll have an infinite supply of food again!"
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While the Queen was waking up after just advancing her Fel Name, Das is invisibly watching her carefully from the sky.
Naturally, he's been diligently waiting for the moment that the Queen decides to finally kill Haalfrin. Das has even resigned himself to directly rushing down and rescuing the boy, should the Queen do something unexpected.
"I've invested too much into the boy to let him die…" – yet.
Naturally, Das has already resolved himself to receiving the Death King's punishment, since he KNOWS he'd be caught if he actually went down and directly saved Haalfrin's life.
All this time, Das had never once felt that Haalfrin's life was really in danger.
But… the second the Queen Advanced her Fel Name, this safe feeling in Das's heart went away. "But why is that?" he wonders.
The only person (as far as Das knows) who can KNOW a person's Name at a glance is Mora himself. If Das did have this ability, he'd be able to realize that the Queen had just discovered a power that completely invalidated Haalfrin.
Still, when Das FEELS the Queen's killing intent rise, he knows that she's about to do something to his young heir.
"I got a bad feeling about this. I'd better do something while I still can."
Without another idle thought, Das zooms off into the distance to some unknown destination.