The Hive
As a blast from the past I've decided to enter this contest with a remake and reimagination of one of my earliest works (which nowadays looks cringeworthy to me): The Hive.
“Thief! Thief!”
Andra didn’t even flinch when the wave of anger and sheer indignation carried by the mer-chant’s voice rolled over the passers-by behind her. It was accompanied by the commotion the large man’s efforts caused as he tried to force a path through the meandering streams of customers, merchants and travelers filling the streets of the Dunesailors' precinct.
Lithe, quick, and streetwise beyond her age, her face hid behind a shawl, Andra moved between the crowd like a dancer in a ballroom. Here, a shrivelled Shiver hissed at her, it's black claws and teeth filed down, the sunlight playing with its ochre, pale green and steel grey scales and lizard eyes as it lumbered past, it's back laden with crates and wicker baskets. There, she darted below the towering bulk of a red horker, the great animal and its handler not even noticing her as its great head with dark tasks and long trunk swayed back and forth, its long ears flapping to push the swams or flies away that had started following it the moment it and its caravan had entered the great city. The young woman darted into backstreets, scaled a wall only to smoothly slide down its other side, where she found herself on the main thoroughfare of Newtown, the outer city.
Confident that she had shaken off her pursuer, she pocketed her loot and put the knife she had used to cut it loose back with the others. It'd been a good day so far, and it was time to give The Peddler his share. Everyone did. Not doing so was... unwise. You didn't ply the trade in the Hive without it being sanctioned by him. Those who did always vanished from the city. One way or the other.
Swimming with the masses, the current of people, animals and carts pulled her across the boulevard towards the entrance to the inner city. A giant gate house flanked by towers built from the hardest mountain rock rose above her, yet compared to the walls rising behind it the structure looked tiny. The Hive's broken shell rose many a hundred meters into the clear blue desert sky. Entering the twilight of the gates she felt the cool draw of the shade even with all the bustle around her. Tall gates stood open, old wood a foot thick banded in iron, ten meters high, and wide enough to let fifty men walk through them abreast. Still, if the stories Andra had heard were true, they were toys compared to the gates the ancients had built when they first raised the city.
On the other side she went with the flow for a few streets, soaking in the impressions around her. Tall towers of glass and a smooth rock that almost looked like grey marble rose between scores of flat-topped houses and mansions that merged one with the other, lavishly decorated with alabaster pillars and ornaments, the green of plants from overflowing gardens wafting in the breeze. In the midday sun the broken carapace threw jagged shadows across the meandering streets below. Hundreds of meters above, houses and gangways clung to the inside of the shell like honeycombs, giving the city its name. Reaching them often took the better part of a day, even with the stairwells and elevators people had erected over the centuries, and was an adventure of its own…
This is what I had back in 2014. *cringe*
### Latest WIP ###
