Still in the flashback of Thorax talking about how his face was injured, but also how he even ended up in this whole situation, the story continues with Pharynx being interrupted by the rest of his search party returning too soon.
Pharynx rushed to his brother and grabbed him by the shoulders.
“Come back! I know what’s best for you!”
Before another word could be shouted, another voice came from the entrance.
“I knew it!” Gaster snarled.
Both brothers turned to see three changelings standing at the entrance of the cave with three more saddle bags dropped to the ground.
Caught off guard, Pharynx pushed himself away from Thorax.
“What are you all doing here? I said to scout ahead.”
The three changelings marched their way inside. All of them circled around Thorax, but Gaster continued her verbal assault.
“I knew you were making us avoid this area. Still protecting your weak little brother.”
Haltere proudly marched behind the pair, leering through his helmet at Thorax and the injuries suffered.
“That’s got to be some kind’a trick. Not even a soldier fresh out of their grub shell fighting a maulwurf came back looking that beaten up.”
“Shut up,” Thorax groaned under his breath. “Just leave me alone.”
Elytra made her way around the far side of Thorax and took a better look at the back of his head, taking in the full sight of his damaged fin that had eroded into his neck.
“Forget being fresh out of his shell. I can practically see into it.”
Gaster stood strong blocking the entrance, not taking any pity on the runaway changeling.
“Enough with the chit-chat. If Thorax wants to play with the black stuff that attacked our hive, he should go back to work on clearing out all the oily gunk that flooded in below her Royal Chamber. Maybe if he works hard enough, he can fight for a share of the rations the grubs are allowed to feed on. That is, if Thorax isn’t too busy hitting himself. Right, Pharynx?”
Thorax narrowed his eyes on Gaster, his anger surpassing any pain he may have been feeling at the moment.
“I never hit myself, and you’re not taking me back. I can’t stand feeding on helpless creatures like that anymore.”
Gaster lit up her horn as she stepped closer to further entice Thorax.
“It doesn’t matter who’s hitting you, and you’re going back. But if you’re tired of feeding on helpless creatures—”
[Back in the cave with Thorax.]
Chrysalis kept her eyes bearing down on Thorax, uncertain if she was more impressed with his capabilities or infuriated over his rebellion.
“Gaster was far from helpless. There was a reason I made her an infiltrator long ago, yet you fed on her after she challenged you… Normally, such behavior would have earned even one of equal standing as hers to be punished, but you earned that meal if she was foolish enough to wager it. You were even more entitled to it if you had to fight your brother and the other two imbeciles to reach it.”
Given how he was no longer under the immediate fear of being torn down or belittled but instead was given some form of praise, Thorax tilted his eyes up to his queen.
“They started it.”
Next >>3333874
So, much of the same as the previous piece I did with Thorax, but only three changelings this time. However, Haltere required a helmet for this scene, and fuck me running if I could get Perchance to produce anything close to what I needed. Not even Stable Defussion could recreate the same helmet from a cropped screencap with the img2img function. I had to manually shift, warp, paint, and will that thing into existence. Matching the color scheme and pattern to the actual changeling helmets wasn’t too difficult after that.
Otherwise, all the same anatomy issues, but at this time around I had more practice. Also, this is such a bit step up from my first attempt of creating a changeling: