She should have been rejoicing. Celebrating her departure, praising the Composer and her mother and her mothers before as the questioning arms of her colony were wrapped about her within the hanger. Separated into two of the flying notrock ‘VTOL’s, Wyverns, the humanites had called them. A rounded nose that did not breathe, jagged wings which could not flap, a tail which was rigid and inflexible in its wide span. They seemed so much larger in her memories, now that she was cramming into their belly. A squared and oval space, windowless, bathed in an unsettling green light. Like she had been devoured whole by some massive, hovering beast. She should have been rejoicing. She instead was left with a gnawing pit within her, a sickness of fear and anger. Scout, mender, soldier, all of her specialist caste would take the second transport. They would be fine, alone. Cohesive. Her drones needed her, and she needed her thinker.

The Queen was curling against the rigid seats set to the sides of the ship, and could not see as the bodies of her twelve writhed and wriggled their way into every gap of the vessel not designed for their forms. Her Band translated all the same.

Not the Pod. The Pod had been left in the cargo bay once Skthveraachk had collected her troop. Female vocals. It was maddening, trying to recall if she recognized the tones within a ship of thousands.

A refrain. She exhaled to deflate her thorax, and allow her attendant to fold itself like a crude plate of armor around her core. A veteran of the first battle between them? Odd. More odd that she had not encountered one previous? It had been made to sound as though they were mostly soldiers of the Safir. Ah. Recollection. It was the Hathan-Liar who had commanded the air. This was a drone who controlled their notrock machinery. Crawled within its brain and wormed fingers through its meat of brain. Both of the voices were taut. Strained. Agreeing, yet forced to conflict.

She felt the music could be touched, knotted and tied as the last of her colony pressed amongst their brethren. Their own chorus of relief at their rejoining pushing out the Band’s translations, and her need to offer calming vibrations shoved it further as the doors began to seal the sight of the deck, and second vessel therein.

The heavy latching and rush of air as entry to the beast’s belly was sealed. Only those green lights, and the whisper of her half of a colony. The humming of the ship. The touch of a thin leg on her, extended through the jumbled mess of bodies.

“I request data, War Queen. I cannot fulfill my role in a silent sea. What is occurring?”

“I detest them, thinker.” She clasped her claw around the male’s leg, but in such quarters, ever vibration made traveled through entirety of those present. “I resent them. They are weak, yet cheat the natural order with creations unconquerable. Their songs are crude, yet they impose it upon us. Their soldiers disobey. They argue. There is no unity, there is no togetherness.”

“I do not hear them as you do. Only you get to bear that Band about your neck, and that hardstone crown. We go now to return control of your, our, colony. Is it not similar, our disparity of purpose?”

“A Queen is needed. Ktcvahnaah was present, I was not. I had thought her killed, along with the rest of my nests. Not so. They needed to be led. Those who refused must have been commanded into actions against the very nature of their roles. It is not similar. Humanites bicker with their superiors. They lament their roles. They fail, and instead of being excised from the collective, they are merely sent away to corrupt somewhere else. Their leaders are as much drones as they are thinkers as they are Queens. It is not similar. It is not similar.” It was good that the ship began to shake and rattle, drowning out her music. She did not wish to continue. Again, she stroked her antennae and body across the others, though there was no small amount of discomfort and fear within her at the way the Wyvern felt like it was standing. Leaping. A momentary weightlessness, like a great fall, before thunderous exclamation was felt through the hull. Were they still within the Palamedes? Was Skthveraachk now falling through that great emptiness, only these thin walls between her and the void? She trembled, and the others echoed her fear. Composer preserve her voice.

“So, the humanites would bury scythes and thank our pleasant company before sending us on our way? No. What has transpired? What new obstacle is presented before us?” She sung. Maintained her level, held control of her voice despite the shame of it. She recounted all that had been said, all that had been found true, all that was not true, and all that was somewhere in between. Most of her drones did not understand. The few who did, mourned. “I should be somewhat proud of my hypothesis being proven so succinctly. And I should enjoy our first, or is it second, example of why Queens need eventually learn to heed the thinkers who exist to advise them. I should also savor a few beats to gloat.” Infuriating. Even more so than the humanites, at times. Peel any who ordained a role within the colony that by its nature existed to contend with the will of the Queen. “Ah. Pleasant beats. Now I will compel you to consider that, fundamentally, nothing has appreciably changed in our relationship with the aliens.”

“Explain.” And peel whomsoever decided to make thinkers so coatedly coy, as well.

“They are the superior race of beings. Physically, thanks to their technology. Numerically, thanks to their numerous worlds. Intellectually? Perhaps. More information required. You have deemed it slavery, but would you consider us to have enslaved our stocks of phidites?”

“The comparison is not apt. They produce for us. Sweetwater first, meat later when they are too old. They do not speak. They do not think.”

“They produce, and so we protect them. They are provided plentiful biomass, and we feed from the by-product. We gain the benefits of their existence; they gain the benefits of existence beneath vastly superior beings.”

“You are attempting to sing to me of solace in the knowledge that instead of slaves, we should be considered more akin to livestock?” She beat her claws against the carapace of the nearest drone as baseline to her anger. “I have been struck and blinded, thinker. I sought knowledge, and in my search, I succeeded only in laying trail the humanites could follow back to my nest. My home.”

“Queen calm.” Small legs massaged beneath her core, scratching and soothing as attendant chittered. “Queen calm. Queen ready.”

“They are here. They have arrived. Whether it was Skthveraachk-Colony or another, contact would have been made. We are at a perpetual disadvantage here, and achieving a stalemate which leaves us beaten, but alive, is the victory you should be pursuing. If you are experiencing an excess of emotions, I would advise making time with your mender. You are needed rational and focused.” An excess of emotions was putting it lightly. The Queen, too, could detect how the air around the thinker shuddered from his song. Doing his utmost to remain in control, and not excrete warning signals despite his fear. “Survival first. Adaptation later.”

So soon. So quick.

“There is a bridge.” Once, singing walls would have been cause for terror. It was commonplace now. “We must land on it.”

The humanite controlling the noises cooed and long vowel, and Skthveraachk rumbled in the ball of her people.

“Received. If there is fear of the structural integrity of our construction, then as near to the bridge as is possible. The clear path at edge of the great pit.” No scentmarkers would be tripped if they approached from on high. But as soon as Ktcvahnaah Queen knew of her presence, she would begin to stall and delay. Occupy as much time as she could while marshalling the forces within Hollowcore. Skthveraachk would not need fear an attack from the rear, but eighteen could not hold the bridge against hundreds, let alone a thousands. “I do not know the workings of these machines, but we may need to depart rapidly, or perish. Be prepared for this eventuality.”

“They were. I do not know if they remain so any longer. Perform your role, humanite.” She heard an inhale, had to remind herself that it was the alien and not the machine which breathed. “Prepare accordingly.” He did not respond or confirm his orders. Instead, the next sound was that of heavy impact, and a jolt which knocked many heads within against ceiling of the compartment. Muffled words from the controller of the Wyvern vessel, either to another or back to the Palamedes for all she knew. Contact over thousands of lengths, instantly, without a single body in their link. Focus. The doors would open, Hollowcore’s majesty before her, then she would need march across bridge and stake claim. The humanites needed soldiers. All she had. She would appeal to Ktcvahnaah’s self-interest, the risks of refusal. Focus. Breaths in…

The door slid open. The green light, lost, snuffed out under the gleam of the familiar mid-measure sun. O Composer, pure of voice and blessed of touch. She pushed, shoved those nearest the doorway forward as they all too eagerly spilled free onto the grey and orange rocks. How it ground beneath her, the pressure of its sharp edges on her claws. How soft the colors. She tried to breathe in, to smell, and found her lungs spasming and coughing with each intake. So warm. So clean. Why had Skthveraachk never noticed how strained her lungs had felt aboard the vessel? How the temperature was just wrong, just off. Thirty measures and more, sucking thin air and sleeping in an unpleasant chill. The sky stretching above her again, as it should be. The stories told in each faint strand of scentmarker, the listing of prey caught and patrols enacted. A wind wrapped around her in the landing of the other VTOL, kicking up dust and stones, but even their scrape along her body was as if running through an open plain once more. Home. Home.

“War Queen.” The thinker. Warning scent spilling from him. Warning she adopted, warning which brought cessation to similar revels from her colony. The scout was the first from the second ship, and began to run circles three lengths out from the rest as they clustered with Queen at the center. Queen at center, but with two of her legs ridden up against the back of the hulking soldier, who made self a vanguard between the open rock where they had landed and the bridge of rock, corpses and sealant stretching over the abyssal drop.

“Much traffic through here. Old. Ten measures, more.” The soldier kept to six legs, but the muscles visible along grooves of chitin flexed in preparation of rearing. Drones without a role busied themselves with rubbing across Skthveraachk’s gaster, smearing them all in identical scent in case of separation amidst the others. “Intent?”

“Meeting with Ktcvahnaah.”

“Our smell will mark us hostile and unknown. I will lead from the top until they hear your song.”

“I will join you.” She expected resistance, as there always was, and fell into practiced explanation. “I will raise my voice and fight at once. It will speed resolution.”

“Received.” No protest from the soldier. No distasteful cries for her safety. The mender supplied them instead, as did the thinker, from the rear of the gathered defensive ball. “Two of the smallest to control the bottom. Do not allow passage.” The attendant first volunteered, but it was insufficient if a flank was attempted. Scout was suitable, but likelihood of death was too high. Two drones instead. Less effective, but more expendable. Suitable. “At your order, Queen.”

“They may detect us already. These machines blow our scent forward. Advance to point of contact with Ktcvahnaah-Colony drones and hold.”

“Received.”

Her claws sunk into the malleable sealant and hooked around craggy stone. She took to the left of the bridgeway. The former Vhersckaahlhn soldier took the right. As they had against the monster aboard the Palamedes. Once more without her armor. Once more, forward. The two drones fanned to either side and slid along the curve of the bridge, crawling until they hung suspended beneath, the tremble of their clawfalls keeping in time with the Queen’s advance. Scout elevated himself, carried by delver and thinker, and began to tap fiercely.

“We are detected. Activity at the entrance to the mountain. Twelve menials. No soldiers. Approaching, forty lengths.” Mandibles were widened, muscles tightened. She let spill a touch of danger signalling, but only a touch. Skthveraachk needed her colony controlled enough to pull back. “Thirty.”

“Dispense the greeting markers. No supplication.” Vents flared, gasters tapped repeatedly along the bridge and those behind fanned their heads to send the smells billowing forward. Her second farming nest for a scentcrafter. She could see them clear now, no longer just blurred shapes. Were they her children? One of her daughters’? Brown and black. Crests too small to tell. She hoped they were of Ktcvahnaah. Fifteen lengths. Skthveraachk reared, and her soldier synchronized his own raising to four legs perfectly. “I am Skthveraachk of Skthveraachk-Colony! I sing of perplexity and rage! I sing to Ktcvahnaah Queen!”

A drone reached her first. Leapt, mandibles wide, aiming for her thorax. It had no chance of meaningful damage, and sought to unbalance or distract. She brought left foreleg upwards and right foreleg back. The first cut the worker from the air, threw it aside and down to the chasm. As the second charged behind it, she thrust forward the readied right, and plunged her scythe through its outer eye.

“I am Skthveraachk Queen of Skthveraachk-Colony! Ktcvahnaah Queen! You will hear my voice and know my music! You will taste of my scent and feel my anger! Ktcvahnaah Queen, you will answer!” Queen not in danger. Queen safe. She ensured no fear fell from her to disrupt the line of her colony, wrapped around the horizontal pillar of the bridge. Her soldier lowered his crest and let the leaping drone skid off him. Claws and scythes seizing the flailing drone as he fell into the rear ranks of the advance, skewered and cut apart.

“Six more from the entrance. Two soldiers. Menials beyond.” The drones beneath gave quick tug of their arms as the scout reported. “No attempts at flank yet.”

“Another marker. Greeting. No supplication.” They flexed and spewed more fluid, waved it forward. Her Band was vibrating. It was distraction she could not afford. “Prepare for rightways shift.”

“Received.” They responded faster now. They had shared a battle already. They knew better how to react. A drone made a thrust of small scythe for Skthveraachk, and she let it glance against the chitin of her underside. Let her weight rock to her right for the drone to stumble forward, heard it scream as jagged mandibles of the spitter latched into its head just below the crest and pulled it back into the line. Crunching, peeling as the weak struggles did not distract her spitter from cutting open the drone’s abdomen. From the meaty squelching of jaws feeding on the menial as its song faded. Her spitter had been without the nutrients needed to produce acid for near thirty measures. First chance to replenish, it took.

“I am Skthveraachk Queen of Skthveraachk-Colony!” The soldiers were approaching. She let out a hiss of warning to unsettle them, and reinforced it with a shaking of her hairs as a fourth drone tried to break her stance. Bit low for her legs. Foolish. Inexperienced. As Skthveraachk head was brought down, she could see the subtle ridges, the grey splotches, marking the drone as one of her daughters’ brood from the nearest farming nest. Unfortunate. She clenched mandibles and severed its head. “I will be heard! My voice will echo in chambers and halls carved by my mother, and by my mother’s mother!” The first soldier strayed to her right and slammed against the former Vhersckaahlhn. The colony braced to support him, and he held. More cautiously, the second approached, and Skthveraachk made quick cuts in the air to stave off the attack for precious few beats. The air was heavy with death and danger signals. Their music and smell struggled to break through. “I come with scythes folded, but not blunted! Ktcvahnaah Queen, I have walked this bridge and I have climbed these walls and I have ascended the spiral step, and I will carve my way to you if I must! Ktcvahnaah Queen, you will answer me!”

The drones were growing multitudinous behind the soldiers. She could see more and more shapes appearing from the doorway. Two taps were given from below; three were trying to slip beneath them. Her drones would hold them back, until they couldn’t. If she tried to assist her soldier grappling with the smaller, it would open her to a charge. She maintained her composure and focus, feigned an assisting reach for the crimson behemoth, and was ready to counter the blow as it came from the hostile warrior as it seized the perceived advantage. Scythe met scythe, and she dug her claws into the corpses suspended in the sticky strands of bridgeway. Skthveraachk had brute strength with her. The hostile soldier was wise, and retreated a step as the Queen pushed. Out of her rightmost eye, she watched her own soldier push forward, trying to get his jaws angled for the neck of his opponent. Long pincered mandibles denied him. Skthveraachk felt the bridge jostle as combat was joined beneath it as well, and when her enemy made a jab for her eyes, the Queen responded with a slash upward, severing the soldier’s right scythe at the joint. It should have either retreated, or advanced for a final desperate blow. It did neither. It stood, it swayed. The drones behind it were slowing. Forming a chain. Her core warmed.

“Do not advance!” It was command to both the others, and her own colony. She felt the battle focus, knew her soldier would pump the same adrenals. The soldier was losing blood. It tried to advance, but collapsed instead. Clamping jaws around the wound to steam the tide of life’s essence, while a smaller drone took its place and extended arm warily. Skthveraachk took it without hesitation, personally, though ensured the others remained near enough to attack if needed. She felt the pull of attention from deep within Hollowcore, and commenced the battle on a different field. “Ktcvahnaah Queen, may you never suffer tragedy as I have endured these past measures. I am Skthveraachk Queen of Skthveraachk-Colony.”

“Skthveraachk Queen!” Alarm. Fear. That was good. But she already could feel the split attention. The other Queen had not stopped giving orders, despite their voices joining. That was less good. “By what trickery…? May your song endure forever; your smell is wrong and horrid. You fell at the brooding nest the day the Composer rained fire on the land. I listened as your voice was silenced, heard as the booming filled the valley. How do you appear before me now!?”

“I fell at the brooding nest. I did not die at the brooding nest. I was taken. Taken to a place beyond the sky.” Her own colony shifted uncomfortably at the phrasing. Skthveraachk could practically see a ripple pass through Ktcvahnaah’s own. “Long have I been gone from my home and my children. And I return now to find you within my greatest of nests. To find you inhabiting the home I longed to fill with music again. You will explain this truth, Ktcvahnaah Queen.”

“There is no explanation needed, Skthveraachk Queen.” The treacherous queenling. She practically chewed the note of ‘Queen’. “You had died. Your queenlings all too young and inexperienced to lead. Your vassals were not worthy of the might of Hollowcore, subservient as they were. Ktcvahnaah-Colony claims these lands now, to uphold their protection against forces to the sopra and as penance for our angering of the Composer. Where is your colony, Skthveraachk Queen? Why do you come here with so small an escort?”

“How bold you have grown, Ktcvahnaah Queen.” The other Queen was probing. A jerk of her back legs posed question to her scout, and the answer was immediate. Sixty-four menials on the bridge between them and Hollowcore’s gates now. “How different from the fearful Queen who begged Skthveraachk-Colony for succor and safety in their time of greatest need. This territory no longer requires your protection. And the fire was not of the Composer’s making. As you swore yourself as vassal to me, you will adhere to this truth and submit.”

“What is this truth you claim? That you did not die when all others did, but were taken by the sky? None return from the sky once gone. This is a music of madness and frenzy. I rose to protect these nests when they should have been lost. I will not surrender them to Queen who reeks of foulness and appears before me without tripping any scent barriers. You appear out of nothing at my nest bringing strife with you.” Peel her. Ktcvahnaah was a coward, but she was not a fool. Already she had picked up on the refusal to answer, knew that she had nothing in reserve. Appealing to her was without purpose. Her nests were lost to her. She beat on her thorax, and the color of her music became that of a monarch’s condemnation.

“I have seen the bodies. I have watched the disposal. You excise the disobedient from the colony by the hundreds. I do not bring strife. You have caused it yourself. Hundreds frenzying at once? Your control and guidance is poor over my children. They know you as usurper. Release them to me. They are needed for far greater purpose.”

“You come to my colony with discordance!” Workers were marshalled, but their hesitation was visible. How many were hers once? How many were of Ktcvahnaah? Ktcvahnaah Queen was a negative known, Skthveraachk a potentially favorable unknown. “I know not by what power you are here, by what tricks you slip the patrols and border watch, but all can see your corruption. There is growth on your head, there is taint in your music. You claim to be sky-sent? You should be purged as the Founders purged the chelicerites before.”

“I come here under powers you could scarce comprehend, Ktcvahnaah Queen.” She did not need to play up the threat her notes now carried. It was heavy enough to weigh the air. “I have fought by my own scythes in wars. I have saved colonies, and bound them to my voice. I marched to fight the creatures of the sky as you ran and cowered, and slew hundreds before I fell. I have felled a chaerilite!” That earned a murmur, and she bade her colony recite the tale. Let it loose upon the minds of all within Hollowcore. “With but a single death, Skthveraachk-Colony brought low a child of the sky-sent! All this I have done, and I tell you now, I have still been claimed by those who live beyond the sky. So great is their strength, that even I am but soldier for them to use. I come here to reclaim my sons and daughters, that we may serve them and prevent the fire of their fury from falling on our world once more.”

“You are frenzied.” Ktcvahnaah was terrified. Terrified enough to do something stupid. Some of the drones were creeping closer. Others were frantically backing away. “You sing impossibilities.” A push. A push over the edge, where fear became despair. She needed to hurl Ktcvahnaah from her safe and knowable peak, or be hurled down herself.

“You do not know what the sound of the impossible is, Ktcvahnaah-Colony.” A sunset on a black horizon. A world in a sea of stars. She did not have a scentcrafter to give life to the memory, but she poured every iota of recollection she had into its drawing on the back of the nearest drone. “I have stood within the sky and gazed down upon our home, and it is small, and it is fragile, and it is alone. You will not deny me my colony, Ktcvahnaah Queen. I have survived too much to be halted here, now, by you.” Not enough. Already she knew it was not enough. They could not grasp her abstractions, and she could not communicate her truth. Proof. There were soldiers now amongst the throng on the bridge ahead. She needed proof, now.

“Wyvern-humanite.” The Band could transmit distance aboard the Palamedes. It had already trembled here. There was no reason it should not broadcast. Ktcvahnaah sounded confusion, but Skthveraachk dared not sever their connection. “Your ship carries weapons. Weapons which breathe sound and shatter ground. I require them.”

Of course, some unknown humanite who took leadership because Hathan was occupied elsewhere.

“By the time I explain in words you comprehend, I will be dead. Do not set fire to the bridge. Throw your weapons against the exterior of this mountain, two hundred lengths above my current location.” Ktcvahnaah was moving from confusion to alarm. Alarm meant a response quickly coming. Both Wyverns remained grounded behind her, mere black smudges in the distance. “You will do this. Now.”

“You sing to me? No. You are singing to no-one. You make music with but yourself. Madness and frenzy. A broken mind and splintered voice.” Hesitation and fear remained, but each beat emboldened both the Queen and her Colony. “I do not know how you survived, and how you gathered these few among you, but I will not subject my voice beneath yours. You have lost yourself. You have lost your melody.”

Peel every Founderless one of these pink, discordant sacks of meat. Had they not promised her assistance? Had their Admiral not assured her safety? What was Hathan-Commander now without her, where would he be if not for her? If not for her. What would occur to him without her? What would his role be without her? One of the soldiers began to move nearer, and her heavy hiss and snap of mandibles drove it back. It would not last. They would need to retreat, lose half their number, and if they returned to the Palamedes empty handed, what then? The Admiral could find another Queen, with time. Another Queen. And another Commander. Gamble. Chance. But logical.

“You will hurl the weapons which sunder the ground at the mountainside above me. If you do not, I will be forced to defend myself from this colony, and I will die.” Admitting that just cost her beats she did not have. Ktcvahnaah was emboldened. “And then you will tell Hathan-Commander that you allowed my death by your inaction, and he will tell Oskar-Admiral. Then, I think, it will be more than myself and my colony who shall be dead.” Would they bother to execute some nameless blue shell? Who knew. But the blue shells cared for their Commander. She had mere beats to see just how much. Ten beats. Twelve beats. Fifteen beats. The soldier advanced again. Hissing whine drove it back once more. But it was not the Queen who had made the noise. It came from beyond. From behind. From the Wyvern’s shape that had begun to lift itself from the ground, to hover straight upwards. She could barely see it. The drones could not see it at all. But that whine made her hairs stand on end, and unsettled both her guts.

The second half of the message was meaningless. The recognition that the danger was fast approaching her seemed a promising thing. Loud whistling had left Ktcvahnaah-Colony on the bridge in suspenseful caution, trying to determine its location. Such determinations were easy when the sky above them was suddenly exploding.

“NO! NO! HIGHER, HIGHER! TWICE AS HIGH!” Like an invisible bubble had expanded, a wave of force passed through them all as all music was lost under the artificial thunder. Light blossomed and blinded from the side of the mountain, rocky shrapnel rained down and cut at the bindings of the bridge and those upon it. She could not retreat. It would be weakness. She ordered instead the drones guarding their flank to dig in deep, lest they be blown clear off. Two hundred lengths!? The humanites had barely made it eighty!

More alien commands, ones she no longer cared to try and decipher. This. This was terror. This was a despair she herself had felt on the field, watching her people disappear from the face of reality. A second slew of explosions rocked the mountainside, and the bridge swayed. Actually swayed, the tethers on either side straining against their bonds. She could almost see those inside scurrying, petrified, trying to understand as she had tried and failed to understand. To beg for orders where none could be given. Three drones fell from the bridge, screaming out as they disappeared into the depths. Was it enough?

“Skthveraachk Queen! What have you done!? What are you doing!? It is the sky-fire! It is the Composer’s wrath!” Yes, Ktcvahnaah. Wrath. But not of the Composer. Not of Him.

“What is the matter, Ktcvahnaah Queen? What is the matter, Ktcvahnaah-Colony? Am I not frenzied? Do I not sing of the impossible? I raise my voice to the sky, yet it seems the sky answers me!” None on the bridge advanced now. Even the drone which clasped her arm shook like a twig. Such power. Such fear. “What do you say now to me, Ktcvahnaah Queen? Where now are your excuses and rationalizations? Are you perhaps huddled in my old chambers? The chambers highest within the peaks of this nest, thinking yourself safe with solid stone between you and the outside world?”

“Cease, Skthveraachk Queen! Cease, or you shall bring down the sun itself!”

“There is no such thing as safety in this world any longer, Ktcvahnaah!” Peel pretense. Peel formality. “How does it feel to be at the mercy of the sky? How does it feel to have power stripped from you?! A darkness comes soon to our world the likes of which you cannot fathom, Ktcvahnaah Queen! Humanites, again!” She was in control. At last, she was in control. It was her who called down thunder and force, it was her who could stand still and sure while the ground itself quaked. Yes, Hathan-Commander, look now what she could do with gifts like the humanites! Another rupture, another crack formed, another cascade of rubble pouring down on them. She may be slave beneath him, but he was nothing without her now! Fear, Ktcvahnaah. Writhe in fear, tremble in the dark as you try and fail to comprehend and feel your role become a useless ceremony as your colony is taken from you and you are left at the mercy of a superior race, unable to protect … unable to withstand … unable …

“No…” Her voice sounded so small. Her colony did not budge, but it was not steady. It was not still. It shook and gave off the fear markers, lost under the tide of fluids seeping from the panicked bodies on the bridge, but there still. Scars were carved into the living rock of the mountainside, and small stones yet tumbled down around them. Skthveraachk did not realize she was bleeding until the mender’s graspers were felt against her carapace, smoothing the spittle into newly formed cracks.

“Emotional levels are unacceptable, Queen. Yes? Yes. Suggest rest once concluded. And reassessment.” It was quietly spoken. But not so quiet.

“No.” She steadied her voice over the Band. “I do not need further example, humanite. I believe Ktcvahnaah Queen has found a harmony with me.”

“Skthveraachk Queen, may your return herald glorious successes for cycles to come! I will lower my voice beneath yours once more. I will listen to your tales of the sky, and of the power you now command! I will obey without question, a voice in the choir, forever!” And that would be that. A few spurts from a single Wyvern amongst dozen and more, and she would have the fearful adherence of Ktcvahnaah for cycles. Fearful obedience to the greater being, not of loyalty or trust, but out of necessity to survive. An enforced harmony. A controlled unity. And when Skthveraachk left for the stars, how long until dreams and notions of power replaced that obedience? How long until Ktcvahnaah once more stirred against reason? It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter.

“Keep Hollowcore, Ktcvahnaah.” The subterranean pools where she had drank of purest water. The corridor where she had first scribed her name alongside her sibling queenlings. Memories of a life she no longer lived. She let it drain into Ktcvahnaah’s astonishment. “Keep the nests. Keep it all. The time comes where it shall mean nothing. May it bring you comfort until then, as it can no longer provide my colony.” Steady breathing. Unclenched claws. No twitches to the pain of claws digging against her split chitin. “You will release all those willing to depart here, whether they be of my former colony or yours. I will take them to the nests of Ktcvahnaah-Colony, until all who wish to leave with me are accounted for. I will … “ Disappear into the sky? Be lifted from the world by great unliving metal creatures? “I will quit your territory on the border with Ckhehnvraahll-Colony. You will release them from any obligations of vassalhood, as with all others.”

“They have already refused to acknowledge me.” She almost clacked her antennae. So easily did Ktcvahnaah admit her failures now. “Any who wish to leave these lands to ascend to the skies will be free to depart. I will chant the most beauteous of eulogies as you leave, and bid those who accompany you on your great journey peace wherever you roam. Goodbye, Skthveraachk Queen.” Of course she would. So long as it was far from here, and far from her. Did Ktcvahnaah actually understand? Did she actually believe that this, these squabbles and harmonies and farms and eggs and the calls of passalidites echoing up from the valleys, would ever truly end? It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter. The still bleeding soldier, limb severed, lurched forward, barely able to walk. Skthveraachk felt her scythes twitch, but the female showed its neck and lowered its head. Emitted supplication signals.

“Skthveraachk Queen. One voice… under yours.” She released the drone. Clasped the soldier, and smeared pap against her. A thin line, that nonetheless immediately brought the mender clambering over the Queen’s body to suck and close the wound of arm. A colony of nineteen.

“One voice, under yours.” A drone, a tender, slid beneath her. A colony of twenty.

“One voice, under yours.” Acknowledgement from a group of scouts. A colony of forty-six.

“One voice, under yours.” Brooding queen and her attendants from deep within the Hollowcore sent message. A colony of two hundred and fifty-seven.

“Yes.” Voices began to raise. Graspers thought lost were touched again. Minds united. Memories began to flow into her, all that had transpired since she had been contained. Imprisoned. Throughout the nest, census was begun. Numbers were tallied. They would repeat, as to each nest they traveled. “Yes. It is harmonized. We will depart from here soon, and journey to the faderise. Then to the alto. It will take time to visit all my former nests.”

Splintered into pieces. Sundered into sections so small they were near non-existent. The spitter was still feasting on the fallen corpse, but moved aside when she advanced. Not into the home she had once known, but into the future that lay beyond. They had nests to approach. Songs to sing. People to gather. The bridge groaned behind her as her step became matched.

A colony of thousands, once again.