While the roots below were turning the siege worms that had tried to invade into fertilizer below in the kingdoms underground, there was something stirring above ground. Bunet, the hybrid zombie made up of the bodies of a hornet and a butterfly, was filled with rage, and since Maxwell was currently unconscious from his grand necrotic spell, she could act on it.

  "Bzzzz will destroy bzzzz enemies of the bzzzz hive." Bunet said with heat as she gathered the bodies of the slain insect zombies, putting them into the hive of the undead. Bunet was hoping by recycling the bodies she could start rebuilding her undead swarm faster. Though through the feeling of her connection to the undead hive, she could tell it would still be a bit before it started producing her undead hornets like she wanted.

  This was unacceptable as far as she was concerned; she would not let the enemies of the hive wet away with their attack so easily. Especially since they were in full retreat and would be vulnerable to attacks from above as they tried to defend their weakened leader. Unlike before, strange magic allowed them to fight as one and destroy her swarm without effort.

  So she would have to do even more to speed along the recovery of the undead hives resources so that it could begin spawning the undead she required. So Bunet immediately took to the skies high above the rather thin smog wall that had several holes in it, unlike before, as it seemed her maker's output of smog was drastically down.

  But that would be a later concern; she had something more important than some holes in smoke to deal with. As once Bunet was high in the sky, she began her hunt, killing and bringing back exclusively hornets as they were in the hunt. The hornets tried to fight back against her but found their stingers ineffective, as hers very much were.

  Though she did get bitten more than a few times by the hornet's mandibles, in the end she got what she wanted and supplied a steady supply of fresh hornet bodies to the hive of the undead. Which meant soon enough she got the option to create the zombie horns she wanted, and so she did. Soon she had a small swarm of a few hundred undead hornets to pursue the enemies of her hive.

  She was about to order a full pursuit when she realized the fatal flaw in her plan, and that was you never leave the hive undefended. No, well, there were several undead elementals matching around having been born under the effects of undead grasslands with Maxwell unconscious; there was no one to command them, and by themselves, they weren't all that effective, just acting by themselves instead of as a group.

  So if Bunet wants to follow through on her pursuit plan, then she needed another commander to lead the defense. Here, well, she led the offense on the hives enemies. How to get one Bunet thought about it and came up with a crazy idea. As Bunet knew, she thought more like a hornet than a butterfly, even though she was made evenly of both, so why not separate the butterfly from her and have that one command the defense?

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Seeing as the hive of undead had gotten her as its commander and created in turn both hornets and butterflies, perhaps it could separate the two from her as well? So with the probably insane and reckless idea in her strange combo head, she dove towards the entrance of the hive of the undead. Once she passed through, nothing happened for a long moment, then the whole hive lit up with a strange black light before it stopped, and two beings walked out of the hive.

  A screen appeared confirming what had happened as well as explaining what the new beings were coming out of the hive. The two both looked at the purple screen to get all of the details of their new changes.

  The two commanders looked at each other after reading the details of their new undead lives. Horter was a zombie butterfly made of a combination of two butterflies fused together and then stretched to their limits. While bunet was of two hornets fused together into a shorter bulker mass than Horter was.

  The two humanoid zombie commanders looked at each other a moment, their instant dislike for each other somehow palpable between them despite coming from the same original form. "You watch over here while I attack the enemy." Bunet said to the other commander. Who simply nodded then proceeded to wave at her to take the hornets and go.

  Bunet promptly did, taking the small swarm she had built up and heading out to pursue the enemy. While the other one turned to the hive. "Now it is time for someone with more sense to defend the homeland." Horter said, sounding somehow distinguished, as he began having the hive of the dead produce butterflies for his own personal army before walking over to the spider and centipede undead grass elementals to get them patrolling in groups.

  Meanwhile, Bunet led her swarm of undead hornets through the wall of smog only to scream in incoherent rage at what she found on the other side. She found on the other side of the smog wall that the invaders had ridden themselves within what seemed massive, unending grass. For a moment, Bunet merely stared with four eyes at the magic grass with the unnatural hatred of the undead while her two sets of mandibles clicked rapidly in agitation.

  "Fine, you want to hide in the grass, then I will search through every last blade until I find you." Bunet whispered in pure rage before directing her zombie hornets into the grass to begin the search. The sound of battle immediately broke out as the insects in the grass fought her zombie hornets. "Good, I'll add you to the hive of the undead." Bunet said already having some of the victorious hornets bring back their kills to the hive of the undead. So the invasion by Bunet and her swarm of zombie hornets had truly begun.