His armed retinue did not hide their frantic eye-movements, the way some hesitated only moments before leaping from their perches to rush back to their wyverns. Adjusting power, she felt, the vibrations rattling pebbles and stones beneath her. Once, the Queen would have mocked and jested internally, tittering over how so weak a leader had managed to inflict such harm upon her. Now, she barely heeded the other humanites as they began to shout, to direct, to prepare. They obeyed the Prescott. But they were not the Prescott. The Prescott, the Brigadier General, let his pod-green eyes rest upon the pad. Fat resting around his mouth curling and set, posture as hard and chiseled as the personifications seen erected from rock in Guir. As the completion of the shattered statue within Rugoro’s center. The filter beneath his nostrils hissed in an exhale which lasted an entire half a beat before he brought those same, sunken eyes up to meet Skthveraachk’s own. A final act. The concerto’s conclusion.

“I was prepared to do so. I hoped, expected, planned, that it would not be necessary.”

“You have ruthlessly prioritized the throne in every battle it has appeared. I was not within it. Its presence was needed. Mine within was not.”

The sharp pain through her abdomen was just the metal fragments. The tightness in her lungs, only her injuries.

“It was not the Sovereignty’s decision. Not their plan.” Emotion in the corners of the eyes which betrayed thought like the twitching of antennae. Delayed in response only by a soldier now more focused on their VTOLs than Skthveraachk.

Thrumming of their own craft, engines reignited. It didn’t matter. It wouldn’t matter.

Strong. Stalwart. Outwardly unphased by the coming end. She succeeded, but struggled, in maintaining her stare down on the humanite Queen as his scowl turned ever more shaded.

“You see my kind as monsters. Have put yourself in harms way before for the sake of the lives of others. I acted the monster, so that you would emerge from your nest to vanquish me.”

She confirmed it, nonverbally, a quick tapping made to the band. A motion halted by the Prescott-Queen’s clicking of teeth.

I have become what is needed to survive in this war between frenzied siblings.” Mandibles snapped at the accusation, her claws thumping on the ground to order back the few survivors of the raiding cluster still huddled within the cave. Smelling her fear. Her joy. Her anxiety and anger. “Aliens who would cut the very memories of my past from my chorus, who kill scentcrafters and thinkers and Queens as though they were drones! I killed few to save many, my colony. Your colony, the Sovereignty’s colony, all-“

Notes trembled and failed on her shell. Noticing, for the first time, the fatigue and weight behind those sunken pod-green irises. At least one would. There was a danger in the question. Skthveraachk chose not to answer it.

“Your foundational knowledge was…incorrect. Though understood.” A quick pant, a struggle still to maintain composed. “My death would be mourned, my silence cause great, but temporary, upheaval. Another Queen has already been selected. Thinkers, prepared to transfer knowledge.”

“Death is always a possibility on the battlefield, but my colony would continue. Lesser for my absence. But not gone. If my final note is made in ending your threat to this world, it is…a good finale.” Triumph or tragedy, victory true or biting on the body? Voices from within the cave sung ever onward, waiting to see the color of this final movement. The Prescott slacked at his shoulders, leant lower as the soldiers around him continued their meager defensive preparations.

“Aadarsh-Who-Has-Been-Blessed orders me to bring you to him alive, unharmed, conscious and clear.”

A spark, a flicker. Sucking in another breath to answer, brief gurgle escaped the Queen as fluid seeped from her vents. Skthveraachk settled on a nod instead. Four, three beats at most. Scout could almost feel the vibrations from the distant engines approaching. The Prescott was a humanite, what would he ask, demand? What could she promise? Safety? A quickened end? Forgiveness, recompense?

“What of them?” Worded so as to express confusion, not repetition. A habitual desire not to insult. Even here.

Skthveraachk made a quick scan. For the helmets, the colors. The markings of faith scratched upon some shoulders. Worn, as twinkling metal hung from about necks.

More than a few drew nearer the Queen at the suggestion. Not seeing her struggle. Her desire, to frenzy there and then.

The male forced a smile, and though she knew it to be false, the Queen even believed in it. The pain in the soldier’s tone, the reassuring certainty of end in the Prescott. She had killed. Murdered. It had to have been for a purpose, the potential in their lives sacrificed for a reason! This humanite would die for his menials. No sense, no reason, no logic. Lie to him. It was all for nothing if he did not surrender. Lie. Frenzy. One more step, a tenth of a length. He looked back upon her. Composer could not see her here. Lie. Frenzy. For them!

“Most of them will be sent to what the Sovereignty terms labor and re-education camps off-planet. I do not know what happens to them beyond this.” Dourness, but acceptance. The song wavered and stalled for breaths entire. “But those bearing marks as the cross, the crescent, will be removed from the general population and executed. Given to my people for recycling and repurposing.” She cursed her own song as the General silently cursed it in return, not even the false smile remaining as his wrinkled face once more reflected its lethargy upon her carapace. Word muttered in exhale, truth unquestioned.

“They see your usage of kinetics similarly. Your agreements both seem to hold little sway over the reality of your actions, when pressed.”

Two beats, at most. The Hathan surged towards them on wings and sky.

“I taint and sully my music every measure beneath your species. I will not defile it entirely with lies. Your soldiers are not my directive. You are.”

“They care only for you. Our objective, is only you.” There would be discontent. Fury, even. She could weather it. She would endure it. “My plan. My decision. Send them back to their vessels. Hide them within the cave. It does not matter. I swear upon my mother and my mother’s mother that they will not be pursued, or harmed. So long as you remain, and are apprehended.” Less than three hundred voices, swaying and chanting as they fell one by one to their injuries behind her. There was a darkness in her eyes, at the edges of vision. A numbness in her legs she refused to show, as the General looked for any trace of deception. Any hint of trickery. He would find only a female, fatigued and bloodied and seeping out onto the endless dust. And it was a light shining clear through the obfuscating goldboughs how, in this of all places, the visage of the alien who had fought, schemed, triumphed and killed was now little more than a male. As tired as she.

Did not need thanks. Didn’t want it. His soldiers were looking to him. His nearest, gripping lance so tightly it would have snapped had fingers been formite claws instead.

Blurry. Faded. The reaching of a hand for the male’s uniformed shoulder.

Hand hesitated just before making contact. Taken up from the air, the General clasping it arm-to-arm.

Mask to face, helm to cap. The Prescott deactivated his pad, began to reach for his ear, but found it needless as the soldier broke their contact and turned from him.

Protests. Discontent. Distant. So distant. Focus upon the General, the wobbling shape as the world faded.

“On b…ehalf, of the Sovereignty. I accept. Your surrender.”

Had he heard her promises? Of course he had. They hear all.

“Be at ease, Commander.” Humanites withdrew from their crags and positions. The first of the metal beasts, taking flight with unmoving wing and unliving hearts. “I confirm. The General remains. His men are retreating. He remains. He must be secured. Ignore the rest. Ignore.”

The second. The third. Each rose to the sky as her children began to emerge from the cave, feeling her distress. Carrying the song for her, now that her voice was too weak to continue on its own. Not the bellowing call of victory nor the crashing triumph over the impossible. Her cadenza concluded. The symphony of long violence and trials, ended with the flourish of concerto’s last act. General and Queen watched his ships as they departed, becoming specks in the distance. Claws on her shell. Barely felt. Just a bit longer. Just a bit more. Still able to see the trails left behind when their hum was replaced by a growling storm, wyvern after black-and-red wyvern dropping one after the other. Pouring forth their army of occupants. All for him. All as he stood, unafraid, accepting. Surrounded by formites and seeing the approaching end, yet looking only at her.

Like hearing through ten layers of dirt. Bodies reached, touched, spat and tried to close the wounds upon her fruitlessly. She could smell Hathan, that blend of duty and desperation and the odd tinge of talltrunk she hardly ever noticed from his uniform. Bitter, but sweet.

“Be at ease, Commander.” She sung from a distance which dwarfed the expanse to her homeworld. “I am alright. I have succeeded.” Skthveraachk moved to meet the man. Took a single step. When her claw touched ground, it turned to water and sunk beneath the surface, the world spinning from fade to rise and fade once more. All was right. She could not even feel the craters within her any longer, didn’t feel when she struck the ground, barely heard the shrieking terror from the colony near and ten thousands far. All was right.

She had won.

“Protect the Queen! Protect the Queen!”

“-efuse! Refuse! Queen would trust in humanites! Queen trusts technology!”

“Protect!”

“Refuse! Obey!”

“I am frightened, my Queen.” Heard and spoken, a voice that was no longer hers but to her had it once belonged. Weeping. Cried out, waiting for an answer which never came. For there was no body for her to consume, no fragment of shell or crest left from the site of the battle. Scouts had scoured the valley, menials touched each and every corpse. Most were of Skthveraachk, only a fifth of the Vhersckaahlhn, but there had been no trace. No scent, no taste. Only a trail, the blood of those captured leading off into the forest. Towards the border nests, unassailable. To the Deepwatch. Grief had seen Skthveraachk throw hundreds against their defenses, slaughtered to the last. Grief, now, as she felt with antennae within empty stone hollow in which her mother should have been laid. It’s surface, oddly fleshy like a lumbrite. The lights through the holes in their temple of the Halls, blinking red, green, white. “I am frightened.”

“She would have mocked you for saying so.” Ckhehnvraahll Queen murmured with a skull in a wrong shape. A mouth with bones, two eyes instead of four. But just as pale and white as she had always been, dirtied by the journey. The first time the other Queen had come to the Halls of Remembrance in her person, since the formation of her colony. Even without a body to see. If only to be with Skthveraachk queenling. Skthveraachk Queen. “You were always braver than even her.”

“Bravery is nothing if followed by inaction. I wished to travel with her. I should have traveled with her, took my own soldiers.”

“Then you, and they, would be dead as well. She knew well of the danger. Knew not of the betrayal. Knew, above all, that she needed leave one capable of leading the chorus of her colony behind should she fall.” The crest of her mother’s mother. Of mothers leading back to the Founders. Each settled amidst the smell of flesh which had long ago been consumed. Every nook and hollow filled. Save that for the Queen which had birthed her. Save for that which had been reserved, waited, for Skthveraachk Queen now, too. Hymnal Watchers sung in mourning above them. Their voices rang in repeated, persistent, mechanical alarm. “We must endure. For her. Our colonies, our voices, until what was Once is Again, and there is no longer a they. No longer a them. The discord, silenced.”

“She will be forgotten.” Claws were so heavy. The Queen reached with antennae instead, touched upon Ckhehnvraahll’s skull. It compressed inward, soft and malleable. “The Composer will not count her among its numberless choir. The memories will not hold her scent, immortalize her song. I will forget her. I cannot forget her.”

It was a strange song, one of the Watchers flowing up the curved walls from awning pit below leading in the words.

The Hathan’s eyes gleamed from Ckhehnvraahll’s head, her mandibles clacking in time to the movements of his lips. Skthveraachk clapped her antennae together, slowly, the image a hilarity despite the circumstance. One of the Watchers was quick to chastise her, and the Halls once more returned to mournful humming. “For you can never forget where it is you came from. Where we will all return, upon our last note. I will cry a hundred measures of sorrow for Skthveraachk Queen’s loss, yet spend my life in gratitude that you did not travel that cursed path with her. That you, that Skthveraachk-Colony, remains.”

“You should not speak as a humanite. This place is not for them, but for us. I have not shared it. I do not wish to, not yet.”

The wyvern jerked in its descent, shaking the great threads which hung from the ceiling. Rattling their precious contents, the entrapped scents and sounds and voices of Queens past.

“It was not colony.” A prick between her plating. A coolness flowing through her. Had a phidite bitten Skthveraachk while she was distracted? “Not…Skthveraachk. Just me. He surrendered to me.”

“Insult.” Screen showed a red world beyond the green of the fields, the smell of the ocean, rushing up to meet them. Eyes below and beyond, beady and black as their antennae clattered when they knew she could hear. “Mockery. I took her crest back, Hathan-Commander. Sunk their nest. ‘Queen who fights as a soldier’. A thing of two roles. Deviant. Wrong. Broken thing. I killed a thousand spawn of Vh’a that measure, and they named me War Queen.”

Sky spun and raced above. Her legs, immobile, yet still she moved with a great and wonderful speed. Was this what it was like to fly? The Halls crumbled around her, or perhaps Skthveraachk had simply left them behind.

She was still frightened. Still so tired. The music refused to allow her rest, to permit her slumber. Hathan’s teeth and claws above her, on her.

“That is…what I sung.” It was harder to make the notes here, further from the darkness. Struggle, to enunciate. “Was for my Queen. My mother. Was for…her memory. It was. It wasn’t. It was and was not.”

“Knew a Queen would make soldiers fight harder. Knew I had to be there. Couldn’t win otherwise. Could not beat them. And all I wanted was…to beat them, Hathan. To hurt them. To kill them.” White lights, so blinding and cruel. Skthveraachk tried to look away. Her head refused the order given. Tried to stand. Her legs did not respond. “Even if it killed me. Even if it killed my colony. Victory. Or silence. Only outcomes of battle. Success, or death. War Queen. War Queen…”

“My name is…”

Blackness gone. Confusion, abated. Silence at first, devastating and isolating, but from the very first breath she took and scratch of a questioning claw around the orb on which she curled, seventy thousand voices rushed within her. Filled her to the brim and overflowed from every hole. Her name was Skthveraachk-Colony. Her role was Skthveraachk Queen.

“Location of Queen?”

“Sovereignty convoy-camp. Sixty lengths from second garrison cluster, risefade-sopra.”

“Time passed?”

“Three bars since losing contact beyond Rugoro. Two bars and ninety-six beats since arriving by wyvern within encampment.”

“Received. Send all current conflicts.”

“Sixty voices frenzied during loss of control before thinkers established a new song. Forty-eight have unfrenzied.”

“Execute all. No consumption; fertilizer.”

“Received. Bactum stores raided by humanites for Queen. Mender scent-trails broken.”

“Re-establish paths with marking. Provide pap to re-mark humanites who broke trails.”

“Received. Queen is safe? Queen is healthy?”

“Confirmed.” It was a guess, but a sound one. Immediately had Skthveraachk begun to check at her own body’s integrity, flexing muscles, bending limbs. The smallest of twinges felt when she breathed too deeply, pinned between the seat and her own weight, and the air tasted metallic and wrong somehow. But from the way the Hathan looked at her, the only other occupant of the pavilion tent, she knew his relief would have been unwarranted were it not for her security.

His mouth closed, question voiced. Sixteen further conflicts were hurriedly addressed before she responded.

“I can, Hathan-Commander. I apologize for my conduct aboard the wyvern, I was unlinked and not in control of myself.” Orb rose from a stand upon the floor, not as smooth as something made by her own people, but a facsimile of the beds they used crafted by some quick method by the humanites for her care no doubt. It served, even as she sought to rise from around it. “I am grateful for your people’s assistance. My decision to avoid putting menders in harms way was the correct one, but not without consequences. I will-“ She froze. Was forced to do so, by combination. As Queen sought to rise, first came the wobbling, the legs previously unprotesting now screaming out with blazing fire. Second, came the hand. The touch on her frame. Just where her vents curved below her carapace, pressuring downward into the more tender flesh unguarded beneath. Sharpness in the world evaporated. A mauve haze, enveloping.

The alien was not wearing gloves. There was no dirt upon her, felt upon her, they must have scrubbed it all before her arrival, but his flesh. Like the insides of another were rubbing along hers. Touching within ridges shallow. Baritone voice faltered off, confusion replacing concern. She’d stopped breathing. Stopped moving. He had seen.

“Could you please remove your hand from me?”

His music was light. Scented with respite and measured humor. As though she were once more facing down the Prescott, the Queen fought to keep her own song as sure.

“Rephrasing. Could you remove your hand…from that spot specifically?” Hathan looked down to the spot of contact. Back up, to Queen, who tactfully turned her head so that only the edges of a single eye could regard the dawning expression. Rise of comprehension, as breath remained stilled so as not to tremble.

Pressure released. Softness taken from the edge of her vents, which immediately flared as she sucked inhale and dedicated every thought to the slowing of thundering heartrate. Impossibly soft fingers flung up, both hands raising as a surrendering soldier.

“The Herald wishes our presence?” Needless repetition. Something, anything, webs take her; anything to change the direction, the entire genre, of the music between them. “He has not yet spoken with the Prescott?”

“I do not feel as though my injuries were severe.”

Patches. Something clinging over her shell, over the holes which penetrated deep into crust and flesh, felt even without the Hathan’s informing of their presence. Humanite wouldn’t have understood the reaction of her spreading mandibles, the curl in her claws. Though, where she would have once thought the alien ill for the spreading crimson blood swelling up and discoloring his face, Skthveraachk expected now it was born of similar emotional root. A thinker made note of the information. Skthveraachk let her wish to stab through the drone’s observation of the exchange flow clear.

“Did not think your litany of roles included philosophizer, Hathan-Commander.” Up on six legs. Bumping against walls of the tent. Struggling, succeeding, in movement. Seeing the lack of register upon his face at the jest. “An attempt at humor, the idea of pain being central to the living’s…it is unimportant.”

“You are forgiven only if you cease to mention it.”

His hands hovered near, but kept distance as they slipped through gooey airseal barrier. Distance widened, as the Queen was swarmed by tens of drones. Attendants, menders and any menial sanitized enough to risk contact. Movement became unnecessary concern; like the wyverns they had carried unto victory, she was lifted on platform of chitinous bodies. Carried, alongside the wary but relaxing smile of the Commander, towards the central tents arranged about the tanks and lifts. Recognizing, only now, the way the humanite voices soared in clamorous upheaval.

“How long have your people been cheering?”

Soldiers embraced. Raised fists. Clustered around vehicles, resting outside tents. Some even waved. Some even smiled at their passing, regardless of the milling bodies cooing and licking and examining her fractured shell from all angles.

“I. We.” Life sung out clear through the encampment dedicated to its eradication, joy called from lungs which oft flung only fear and pain. Legs limp, seeing still the distance the Commander kept, the most careful of center claws was pushed out. Sought to make contact with limp hairs and closed barb for his torso. “For beyond the designs of Composer and Emperor, us two are bound as partners and equals, has it not been pledged? Few, perhaps no, others would have trusted in my decisions.” Something chewed upon the edges of her mind. A bloodied hand. Red streets. A broken statue, standing within central square. Ignore. Do not prioritize.

Cheers followed them. Eyes and twisting lips.

“What is good is right. What is right is necessary.” A falter in his grin, a stutter in his step. Yet he did not hesitate to lay his hand upon her claw, a measured touch which faded only as the amber Sentinels outside the command post were seen. The humanite straightening, as Skthveraachk better tried to present self atop her new, living throne. Focus upon the present. Mind, to the now. She had won. She had won. Finish and confirm, obey and serve.

It would all be worth it. In the end.