《War Queen》Survival: Chapter Two
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Those remaining on the surface could not find enough pieces. Confusion, disharmony, and panic spread through the nest on a tide of disconnecting wrongness whilst information, instead, slithering like a dying stream. A pair of arms melted into rock, a head bobbing it pit of bubbling mud, a scythe lodged into charred tree a hundred lengths away. The workers had rushed to form the bivouac after the first shifts in the nest, filling the hole with their own bodies in interlocked protection of the lower layers. The second sundering destroyed almost all of them. Children. Sisters. Elder and newborn all. Destroyed. Gone. There was not even meat enough to recycle for the nest, for the brood being carried away at panicked pace. They had been killed because they were obstacle, without care for the loss of biomass. Requests and demands for understanding screamed through the chorus in shrieking pitch.
“Five layers have been exposed. Collapses in layers six through ten. Workers are excavating chambers. Advise us.” Menials poured through tunnels, digging in a half-frenzy as they relayed their words. They could not maintain the song alone, and the emotional chaos above made notes wild and unsynchronous. Rescuing other workers was not the correct reaction, not what they had been taught, but the loss was too great. The colony fed off her fear and hurt, and struggled to save those that had not been made gone by the sundering. Hairs scraped her eyes, roughly. Too roughly. The attendant still cleaning dirt from her mouth and face worked their limbs without rhythm. She coughed again, and it felt like half a lung spilled from her guts.
“Remaining spitters currently putting out flames in treeline. Menials rebuilding nest. Scent trails in direction of faderise are gone. Unknown direction of attack. Unknown source of attack. Unknown attack. Advise us.” A new observer from above. The fourth of the morning, the others dead. If the markers were gone, every step through the warped terrain above would be a new one, with little information but memory on what was ahead. Unknown direction, unknown source… it was impossible. No creature alive or dead could change the world so quickly, so thoroughly. Her Queen’s Queen had not seen the start of the excavation of Hollowcore, nor could any living remember those first who had crafted markings to the chasms of Remembrance. Fifty thousand spitters firing at once could not have made a hundredth of the damage just done to them. Could the creatures control the ground beneath them? The sky above? What stopped them from unmaking the nest again? Protect the nest. Her heart hammered.
“The eggs have been evacuated. Breeders proceeding to farming nests for safety. Column can smell brooding nest is on fire. Queen is in danger. Vassal Queen is discordant. Advise us.” A scout following the fleeing breeders and nursery workers, chain of bodies yet linking it to the nest, inhaled the panic of the nest and nearly drowned in it. The scout yet knew her place. It did not wish to protect the nest; it wished to protect the Queen. Ktcvahnaah had been radiating terror like mid-rise’s heat, and even now scampered on her fatty legs away from the conflict. A poor Queen. A weak Queen. The brood was away safely, the collapse of tunnels was ongoing, an escape route was available and the nest was unsafe. Her death would weaken the colony. Her death would destroy the colony. Under Ktcvahnaah, it would be consumed or consume itself. Protect the nest, protect the colony. One of her legs felt twisted and wrong.
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“Queen must be evacuated.” The thought passed through her, and her scant two-thousand remaining people roared in unison. Danger signals were flying up all across the scarred and burnt remains of once prosperous plains, the few scouts driven to begin re-mapping already skittering back towards the treeline. “Creatures above. Flying not-rocks. Twenty lengths in the air. Bipedal creatures descend to ground. Twenty. Thirty.” Never enough information. Any moment, the earth beneath would rupture up and heat would wash her and she would be gone. The brooding nest would be gone, and their biomass would not even feed these creatures. Removed from the symphony of creation. Like being swallowed up by the sky. More were coming. Not-rocks that now flew on… who knew? These creatures would kill them all, and there was nothing she could do but run. Out through the rear passages, out in single column, fleeing to the farming nests.
“Queen must be evacuated.” Again, the call sounded, and the attendants nearby began to tug. She had been right; left middle leg oozed at the second joint, pain flashing through her whenever she attempted to properly move it. Rock from impacted and debris-drooling ceiling having carved across her limb. Injured. Outmatched. “Cease repairs. Cease repairs. Creatures approaching. Half-remaining workers join soldiers. Half-remaining workers flee with Queen. Unable to save nest. Save the Queen.” It was no singular thought from scout, not some personal desire. The entire nest chanted and thrummed in unison, wailing their grief for those lost and surging to protect that which they had left. Attendants pulled more fiercely at her, mandibles gripping her armor and dragging Skthveraachk towards the tunnels which would lead down, then out, to safety. The suffocated drone’s grasper slipped from her own, still buried in the dirt. A non-priority. Protect the colony, protect the queen.
“Thirteen scouts killed. Twenty-four spitters killed putting out fires. Forty-eight soldiers killed by unseen spitters at elevation. Flying not-rock spitters. Moving fast, difficult to see. Evacuate the Queen. Evacuate the Queen.” The nest, the colony’s desire to survive overpowered her every thought. Denied her attempts to process the new information as it came. They had creatures that could fly. Creatures that could walk. Creatures that could spit, and float, and unmake what was. Victories were losses and she had not the army she needed here to win. She would flee. “Evacuate the Queen.” She would run to the next nest and re-organize there. She would pass information, try again, and…
“They will follow us to the next nest.” Her thoughts became words. The tugging on her larger body did not cease, but it faltered. “They followed to Ktcvahnaah-Colony. They followed Ktcvahnaah here. They will follow us to the next nest. They will destroy that nest. They will follow from that nest to the next. They will destroy that nest. They will not stop. Colony will be destroyed.” There was clarity in her words. Voicing them, letting them carry from those around her seeking to drag her towards safety and outward until they brushed at the minds of all within nest, fear for survival was quashed beneath something different. Stories of the time before the birth of the Song. When there was only friction and strife, and entire colonies rise and fell at the whims of an uncaring sky. Before the Founding Colonies had secured their world, cycles upon cycles ago, when a single wandering chelicerite could consume ten thousand before it was killed.
“We cannot protect the nest.” They could not save the nest. The creatures destroyed the top five layers once. They could do so again, even if they chose not to now. Serenaded requiem began from those still fighting and dying to put out the roaring inferno.
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“We cannot protect the Queen.” They could not save Skthveraachk. The realization flowed and surrounded her, an icy river that she could neither deny nor escape from. If she fled to the farming fields, they would follow, and they would destroy them. Then to the outposts, throwing her finest soldiers against them, to die again. Not even the rock and depths of Hollowcore would likely stand against those who commanded sky and ground both. They would come. She would die. And such meant…
“We cannot protect the Colony.” They could not save Skthveraachk-Colony. Skirmish. Gain a fraction of information for thousands of dead. Retreat. Repeat. It had cost them one of their five nests just to learn the capabilities of their enemy, and perhaps not even that was complete. They would all die before ever being able to make use of what they had learned. Sonorous yet wailing, the requiem chilled and killed the frenzy that had formed. Death was inevitable. It was coming for them. And there was nothing they could do to prevent it. Locked in place, the tugs of her attendants ceased entirely, the certainty of the end had paralyzed all. Voices vanishing from the choir and song like extinguished spats of light as the creatures came again from above. Skthveraachk tapped mandibles together a single time. Leant left into her injured leg. Submerged herself in that empty black ocean swallowing them all.
“Protect the species.”
She straightened, stiffened, and felt something crack in her leg at the movement. It barely registered. They were dead. Voices that would soon be silenced by whatever monster rampaged above them. And once they were gone, would it stop at their colony? It would not. It would move to the next. And the next. And the next. And the next. And the next and the next and the next and the next and there would be death not just for them, but the Song. The Death of the Song. None would be left to remember, none would be left to rebuild. Ice shattered. The ocean was thrown back and away, waves roaring and crashing and surging away from them. From her. From Skthveraachk-Colony. They would all be dead before the knowledge could ever be used. But others would fight for them. Protect the species. Protect the species. Information. She needed information.
“Cease work on nest. Cease evacuation. Evacuating column to form spaced linking to nearest farming nest. Order them form spaced link to all Skthveraachk-Colony nests. Order all nests to send scouts with supplication-scent to Ckhehnvraahll-Colony, Kthcvahlaatch-Colony, and Shlthvelhneekch-Colony. Request-“ Politeness was irrelevant here. Peel the idea of ‘request’. “Order their Colonies to relay information onward. Order every scentcrafter we have to assist in forming messages. Pass all knowledge gained since this rise to all nests and all listed Colonies. Standby for further knowledge.”
“Received.” The frenzy had ceased. Discord was born of disharmony. There was no fear in certainty. There was no disparity in unity. She knew what was required now, and so the colony knew what was required of it. Attendants resumed their half-tug, half-carry as she sought to rebalance armored weight to uninjured left side, but no longer towards the escape tunnels. Up. To the surface.
“Census of remaining numbers. Generality.” No time for precision, no sense in it. Eight hundred soldiers. Two thousand menials, varying caste. Eighty scouts. Three hundred spitters. Not even a half of what had been before. “Move all to surface. Segment, scouting pattern. One scout, twenty menials. Sixteen groupings. Locate hostile creatures. Prioritize scout survival.” ‘Received’ came the response again, strained. She was running out of eyes. The menials had not the strength nor size of soldiers, could not assist the spitters, and had not the vision to scout. They would shield those who still had use. Half-blinded both above and below, rubbing repeatedly at her sodden eyes, Skthveraachk crawled through the squished tunnels. Carried on the rippling waves of reclaimed harmony, menials rising up and forward as one. They touched one another, sharing of their sorrow and loss. Wishing their sisters and brothers goodbye. Hauling up and helping forward those that stumbled, or had been injured. Unified in purpose. Unified in death.
“Eight scouting groups wiped out. Three damaged, scouts unharmed, replacing menials.” Another two-hundred dead. It was logged and recorded. “Two hundred lengths from treeline into changed landscape mapped. Hostile creatures are grouping in newly formed valley, thirty lengths wide. Three previous not-rocks within. Sixty visible bipedal creatures within, more arriving. Descending from bellies of flying not-rocks.”
“Flying not-rocks different to previous not-rocks?”
“Confirmed. Flying not-rocks hold different shape, and fly more than twenty to thirty lengths in air. Previous not-rocks flew only single length in air.” Bipedal creatures, not-rocks which flew low, and not-rocks which flew high. Information.
“Confirm all three groups as hostile. Designate previous not-rocks as ‘gliding’, designate new not-rocks as ‘flying’.” The gliding not-rocks were dangerous. The flying not-rocks were birthing, or moving, or vomiting more of the bipedal creatures onto the battlefield. They were more dangerous. They were the priority. She could see the strange dip in the landscape, the rounded valley as though giant boulder had fallen from sky and been removed. The creatures huddled in small balls, organizing. Clustering around the hovering not-rocks while the two larger, flying not-rocks suspended themselves in the air above. So many impossible things she had seen this rise. The huge flying not-rocks kicked up the scorched dirt when they breathed, little tornado like funnels. It was almost beautiful. But their spitters required straight lines to fire. They could be distracted. “Three hundred workers. Scouting pattern. Approach and surround the new valley. Advance eighty spitters. Fire for flying not-rocks. Advance fifty soldiers. Prepare them to rush into new valley.”
“Received.” She felt the open air on her face when they reached the fifth layer. Thick with smoke, thick with the dead and dying. The corpses, the pieces at least, would saturate this land. Making it rife with sickness and disease. They would never return here. Tunnels opened to nothing, roads stuck out from the sides of the ground and hung over the hole that had been left. She tried to focus her gaze, to look up to where the pillars of entry had once been, and saw only the red and black sky above. Impromptu ramp had been made out of rocks and debris and bodies for adhesive, and it swarmed with activity as all who remained in nest raced for the ground above. And for the first time, she felt for herself the ripples in the air over the singing. The bellowing of a wounded beast, and the sizzling cracks of retribution.
“Attack failed. One flying not-rock took several impacts from spitters, but raised too quickly to kill. The other followed. Flying not-rocks are also spitters. Eighty-four menials have been killed.” Three different creatures. None were effective in melee. All were spitters. A bizarre but effective composition. She refused to let the failure taint the song, and lent her voice to the chorus once more growing in violence and desire to attack.
“Status of connection to other nests.”
“Nearly completed.”
“Relay information that all three creatures seen are spitters. No presence of creatures designed for melee combat. It is likely all hostile creatures are spitters of varying sizes and effectiveness. Order the thinkers to begin planning for such.” When she was dead, Ktcvahnaah would attempt to control the colony. Skthveraachk would ensure the thinkers were given priority over the attacks to come, and designate Ktcvahnaah only as primary breeder. At the rate these creatures moved, her colony would be gone long before the vassal Queen could assert control over even one nest. It was good. “Reinforce with two hundred more menials. Spitters to advance within sixty lengths of the new valley.” This information, however, was less good. The flying not-rocks were too quick. Hitting them from a standstill, or…float-still, was not going to work.
“Flying not-rocks are targeting our menials, preventing them from reaching the new valley. Two more approaching.” The surviving scouts held their positions, watching the battle. She made quick motion to bring a dozen more up and intermingle them with the menials. The drones, nursery workers, even cleaners, all milled and ran in frantic circles and zig-zags. Trying to get closer to the valley’s ridge, only to be shot down in the distance between. Yet they were getting closer. There were too few hostile spitters to stop them all. A groomer threw himself forward, was shot eight time as the white lightning cracked out, and disappeared over the edge of the valley.
“Continue the distraction. All nearby spitters to empty their sacks into the new valley. Advance soldiers in once done.” Skthveraachk ascended from the nest with the others, and this time her cough was not of inhaled dirt, but of reeking smoke. Her body spat scents of danger and warning; her eyes tried to take in all the destruction at once. It was different, seeing through her own gaze rather than the multitudinous eyes of the nest. Tasting the greenery turned to ash around her. Hearing the sagging groans of wood as trees toppled over, smothered under bodies burning themselves to prevent blazes from spreading even as new fires flared to life. A line of soldiers with missing arms, missing mandibles, missing sections of thorax. Nursery workers vomiting sealant onto the cuts, wafting air with gasters to dry the clotting, and sending them back towards front. Each one added to the list of available soldiers. Those too injured to heal crawling towards the battle, seeking at least to take shots that would spare others before the end. Her scent was muffled by the devastation, but presence already began to serve purpose. The voices rose. The song was strengthened. The creatures were screaming in the distance.
“Attack successful. Soldiers and menials are entering valley now. Spitter fluids are effective. Melts bipedal creature’s shells. Melts through gliding not-rock. One hundred eight-six menials killed-“
“Spitters are being attacked.” No time to parse. She quickly sorted the information as rapid tapping on her shell relayed the words from the rear observers. Spitters could kill two of the three creatures. If it caused the flying not-rocks to flee, it was likely just as effective on them. Information. More information. Paid for with lives, sent back to the other nests. “Flying not-rocks are spitting down on them. Twelve dead already.”
“Advance another hundred menials, provide distraction.”
“Menials already swarming around them. Flying not-rocks are ignoring menials and focusing on spitters.” Peel her bare; she swore inwardly as a flush of anger sprayed chemicals out on the surrounding soldiers. She could hear the cracking noises in the direction of faderise, though it was too far to see with her own eyes. The sight was relayed through the still untouched observers, blending in with the scattering and running menials. Ignoring the sounds of cutting and ripping and roaring from the new-valley as the soldiers tore the creatures inside apart to focus instead into the sky. Black shapes moving at the fringes of vision, traveling in straight lines while light flashed and bombarded from either side of the thing. The bolts of white crackling and lancing down to strike the swollen gasters of more bulbous spitters. Those struck through head and core merely collapsed. Those struck in the acidic sacks ruptured and blew, showering other menials nearby with the caustic bile.
“Withdraw menials from spitters.” The creatures did not care for biomass. They identified threats, and attacked. They adapted. The enemy had some manner of intelligence. Terrifying. Dangerous. Information. More. More. Her people were dying. The nest was near emptied; her forces almost entirely mustered to the top of the gaping hole left in land. She had to make each death count. “Spread the spitters not in the tree cover. Isolate. Make them difficult targets.” Time. She needed more time. She had no time. Antennae spread and felt forward as she moved beneath the trees, soldiers and menials swarming after her. Some voicing protests still, warning of danger. Yes, many would die in the fires, but all were dead anyways. It was the best and most secured vantage. “Move thirty spitters near the treeline. Scouts and observers stay in the mass of menials. Relay directions. Target the flying not-rocks.”
“Hostile creatures sighted.” The alarm flared from the observers furthest into the sundered landscape, five hundred lengths past the treeline. There was no end. There was no victory. She chanted and sung until legs were raw. “Single column, forty wide, three deep.” Near identical to the first attackers. Another wave. The observer who had sounded alarm died quickly, but the information was sent through the menials who had survived. Deaths scattered across the field as the flying not-rocks spit again and again. Skthveraachk was jostled slightly as the spitters as she had ordered moved past her through the trees, taking their positions. She watched with her own eyes, smelled and felt with her own body, as the spitters reared up on back four legs. Their stomachs distending and clenching, head and thorax going straight and rigid. Mouths spreading wide before, finally, the stream of acid was belched forward and up. A glistening crescent sailing through air, the menials still below splitting and moving to avoid the falloff. Four ropes struck the side of one of the flying not-rocks. It wheeled and spun about, then fled off in the direction of the advancing creatures. The others went wide, undershot, or simply did not reach. Too far. Too fast. They needed more. They needed everything they had.
“Recall all the most recent creations of the pemphredonate breeding.” One hundred and fifty. The first brood. The only brood. Thirty layings it had taken to create them, and they would not have time for even one more. Yet, the fertile female could not take to wing. “Recall all except the breeding female.”
“Received.” Movement was felt in the otherwise ignored column of fleeing workers heading for the farming nest. The rustle of air. The whisper of wings. One hundred and forty-nine. Weapons to secure her colony’s future in the next war. More priceless than most of the eggs her nest carried now away from here. To die here, against these endless creatures. The requiem song, defiant and angry, was yet colored by lament as she let her wailing guide the chorus.
“Creatures in the new valley are dead. Forty-eight soldiers killed. Two hundred eighty-eight menials killed.” Another wave was fast approaching. The victory was meaningless, but relayed. “Flying not-rocks ceasing attacks on spitters. Targeting menials and soldiers.” And now, something different. Her wailing ceased, and returned to the chanting as she considered. What had changed? Thirty-four of the attacking spitters outside the trees had fallen, but the rest scuttled freely, no longer feeling the stings of the creatures strike around them. The barbs and lightning had turned to the masses of soldiers and menials. A dozen falling each time one of the flying not-rocks passed. A dozen in each pass, as opposed to a single spitter.
“They target largest groupings of our forces.” Information. Perhaps their spitters were not limitless after all. Perhaps they too eventually ran dry. Inspiration. A test. She had so few left. The final creations would be here soon. Then, there was nothing left. Less than two-thousand of her people remaining. Make it count. “Spread wide across the battlefield. Cluster sixty menials.” Their purpose was to die. She waited. She watched. The nest tensed. Sixty of the most injured swarmed together. Locked arms, balled into a group, and their voices were of joy and sorrow and rightness. They sung of farewell and of fondness, words immortalized in the choir. The flying not-rocks descended, and three ran across the sky above the ball. Two of the sixty survived the barrage, and suffocated shortly under the weight of bodies above them. It had worked.
“Spread wide! Cluster a hundred menials in line towards trees!” They targeted the largest concentrations they found. She built a line of writhing bodies towards the cover of trees, the ash and sparks falling across her armored form. “Cluster two hundred menials, a line towards the trees!” The not-rocks flew overhead, straight lines as they spit their death from the sides of their base. The lined was formed, the voices raised. “All spitters within the trees, ready aim parallel to the line! Either side of the line!” Four flying not-rocks descended again. Voices were cut short mid verse, bodies collapsed as the flying creatures worked down the line formed, killing as they went. She heard, and she saw at last with her own eyes. Saw the great shapes on squat wings and heavy gut shining like chitin in the red light of sky, bearing down on the forest. Bodies cut and torn in their wake, the impact of the spitters flashing on the sides of the creatures tearing her people apart. A hundred lengths. Fifty. Thirty. “Spitters, empty stomachs! Fire! Fire!”
She watched with her own eyes. Watched as those ugly wings melted and sizzled. Watched as they teetered in the air as rope after rope of glistening fluid struck across them and burned through whatever wrongness these monsters were made of. They fell through the sky, and she could see wings rotating within their wings. Bizarre. Emitting oddly pleasant hum. Two slammed down into the ground muddied by her people’s blood, skidding. Another listed to her right as it toppled, breaking in half, and collided with the falling not-rock behind it. For split instant, a second sun was born. Light cascaded from where the two connected, heat rushed forward, and the scream was so loud she feared her antenna would snap. They struck the ground together, and eight voices were silenced from the song in a blink of an eye. Gone. This was a power that made her people gone. She watched it all, and told it all as the connections finally made it to the first of her other nests. They would sing of it when she was gone.
“Four flying not-rocks killed. Bipedal creatures emerging from two that have crashed into ground-“
“Advance forward. Everything left alive. Cover and destroy them.”
“Received. Six flying not-rocks approaching the treeline.” Of course they were. Over a thousand bodies poured out of the cover of the trees, surged down the hill, painted it black with glistening carapaces. They targeted the largest number of her people; here they were. Come close. Come closer. The pressure of bodies around her mounted, and with deep breath into still raw lungs, she joined her children spilling free of the wood’s embrace. A last smell of foliage, charred as it was. She would miss it. “Pemphredonate broodlings approaching.”
“Designate broodlings as ‘Stingers’.” She had not named them at their birthing. It was custom for such to be decided on only together with the thinkers, and they had been busy at Hollowcore when the first clutch was laid. She did not think they would mind. It was wrong to die without a name, without a note to call their own in the hymn, and so she named them. “Split evenly between six approaching not-rocks. Prioritize gathering information and on at least one of the Stinger’s survival.” Out across the landscape she went, forced to lean half on a pair of soldiers who had taken up the duty of her attendants. A waste. Two soldiers given just so she may have mobility. They would not be deterred, and she did not try to order them away. Ahead and above, those great black shapes surged forward. Their sides spat. Their wings within wings beat and howled. The stingers came from behind her, and though they could touch none, their scent was familiar and known. Their wings beat, their bodies went rigid, and one hundred forty-nine of her youngest children collided in the air with the not-rocks. A perfected combination of her brood and the pemphredonate. Sleek. Airborne. They latched against the wings of the not-rocks and jabbed barbed claws into their flesh. Two of the onyx shaded creatures peeled off, abandoned their charge. Her weapons chased them, and died by the tens.
“Forty-eight Stingers killed. The flying not-rocks are mostly stomach, as with the gliding not-rocks. Bipedal creatures inside. Destroying wings causes them to fall. Killing bipedal creatures inside causes them to fall.” Another sun grew and flashed out of existence, whirring, spiralling death throe of one of the things striking the ground somewhere behind and to her left. There was a hot wind today, made hotter by the bodies surrounding her. That was it. It was all she had. Forty-eight stingers for four flying not-rocks. Twelve spent for each one. They would kill a few more, and then be gone. Forward. More were coming.
“Spread column eighty wide. Make the center deepest.” They raced across the field, and she glanced down into the valley where most recent battle was fought. Red blood. Orange blood. Black blood. Pooling together in a soup, a small lake in the bottom. Meat mixed about with the chitin and strange shining shells of the creatures. “Menials to the front. Absorb the spitter fire. When they fall, those behind pick up and carry. Use as shields.” Their bodies could not take much of the creature’s shots. But every few seconds was a dozen more lengths closer. Roaring, crashing overhead. Bodies of her children and of the bipedal creatures fell from the sky and crushed or slammed down on the army swarming across field. Not even a thousand and three hundred left. How many waves of creatures were behind the one ahead? It did not matter. Protect the species. Protect the species.
“Received. Forming chains to other colonies in progress. They will hear all that has been sung here.”
“Inform the thinkers they are not to submit to any other colony. Fight and die. Do not allow enslavement. Find and pass information until colony is destroyed.”
“Received. Goodbye.” It was a quiet tune. A gentle, strange, alien thing. One did not wish farewell to one’s own arm, to one’s own head. The connections had not yet reached Hollowcore, but from the farming nest came mournful, dutiful ode to departure. Daughters she would never touch again with her own graspers. Her orders had been relayed. They had been accepted. Thirty thousand, eight hundred, sixty-four voices reached out across the distance, and bid her goodbye. She reached back to touch each one. Then, she was in the now once more. Staring at the line of shelled creatures hunkering in the mud and filth. And her voice raised as though to create one of those strange, glowing suns herself.
“PROTECT THE SPECIES! KILL!”
Their spitters flashed white. Her people fell. Their not-rocks erupted fire. Her people fell. The flying not-rocks spun out of control, crashed into her forces. Her stingers threw themselves into the rotating wings, were cut apart, and brought the creatures down with them. Her menials fell. The menials behind picked them up and carried them, and then fell. The soldiers picked up the menials and carried them, and then fell. Then, Skthveraachk herself was on them. And they all fell together.
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