--
The failure weighed heavily on Pelle's mind.
He spent most of his way back absent-minded; he didn't even realize that he was home until one of his entourage told him that he was.
Yes, he didn't stay behind. He couldn't. Not after what he saw and what happened.
The billions of bugs under his command, the ones that rallied under his command, all vaporized in a single instant. None of them even knew how they died; they just disappeared, just like that. They couldn't even scream or make a sound before it all happened.
Now, Pelle wasn't a stranger to his siblings dying. It happens all the time; hell, even he kills them from time to time. It's because his mother could endlessly create them that Pelle felt no psychological burden whenever he saw them die by hundreds at minimum.
But that? That was something else.
