Mirrors had always fascinated Skthveraachk Queen, or rather, reflections in general. She could remember leaning over ponds, examining herself as though through the eyes of a drone set before her but without any aid of the link. When there was concern for her body, for bulb upon the end of her gaster or a tightness in her chitin, another of the colony was simply enlisted to relay its vision through to the Queen’s own. The delay was brief, nearly non-existent, but it was always present. Seeing her foreleg raise as she raised it, antennae twitch as she twitched it, perfectly in time with her actions, was always something she found a juvenile entertainment. Looking upon the freshness of her shell in the stretched false-light mirror, the smooth perfection where once had been scars of sealant and cuts of impact half-hidden beneath the Sovereignty’s gifted armor, reminded her of those old measures back on their world.

“Columns formed. Ten wide, ten deep, gap, ten deep, repeating. Humanites prompt speed. Hathan-Commander awaits.”

“Received.” The room had lost one of its walls in the fighting, but the regality of the structure, as well as its integrity, had been assured ten times over. Skthveraachk had been told it was formerly merely the entrance, the lobby to a residential bloc; habitation cubes which stretched up for twenty layers above them. They had been hesitant to grant it to her, but the Queen had explained it was not of her choosing; it was a cherished, almost holy site now. Floating discus lights and green fabrics hung over meager glass windows given additional coating of goo and chitinous coating, covering the interior and solidifying the scents therein, forever. “The garb is fastened?”

“Confirmed.”

“During the battle, it caused discomfort below abdomen and thorax. Improperly fastened. Ensure mistake is not repeated.”

“Received. Ensured. Queen is prepared. Queen will be immaculate. Queen will represent all. The new cycle is welcomed.” There had been no hope for her throne, for repairing it before the battle, but the Queen staring back at her through the screen was adorned still in shapely, thinner plating. Hugging to her limbs, much like the Sovereignty’s own suits of power and protection, with a helm that horned itself as similar shape to the set which lay still upon the Palamedes. The Queen moved now, as during the battle, under her own power; no longer lifted by engine or platform, but with legs gleaming in hardstone and metal, smooth and pure over softened hairs.

“Understood. Inform the Hathan and Herald. I move to the procession. I am readied.” Was she? As the Queen and her swarming retinue made their way out of the converted structure, past the row of the ten largest purple-tinted soldiers towering above the drones, a final look back was given to the enameled and preserved centerpiece of the room. Ringed by the shattered stone, concrete, reinforced metals which made up the internals of the walls and ceiling. A statue which reared on four legs, pointed forward with two, head upright, and mandibles thrown wide to the ceiling. Flashing behind her eyes briefly recalled how she had stood where the statue was now. Hidden, beneath the voided sky made bright with the trails of wyverns, of spitting lance-fire from the ground. Of the blue lattice shield, pockmarked by empty holes where power had failed, and the sound and roaring as the world had screamed in pain around them.

“Reform! Reform! Sing out to the Composer, let rage all voices, but reform!” It had been her sole concern. The surge of their attack through the fields outside Tarasque, fields green and verdant turned black under the melting slew of fire, had cost them thousands already. The Sovereignty’s fleet overhead had been supposed to deny intervention by the enemy’s ships. Eighty-six percent efficiency, was the number Skthveraachk had been cited after the battle was finished. Humanites praised it as a blessing. To the Queen, it meant that one in ten of the stray or deliberate shots from orbit had penetrated the blockade, and turned hundreds of lengths of buildings, terrain or passageway into craters of blood as much red as it were orange. Thousands had died in the first bar of the invasion merely reaching the buildings. Humanite. Formite. Life.

“Cannot reform! Coalition patterns clear! Hunting Queen, hunting scentcrafters!”

“Expected. Disregard. Obey command. Skthveraachk thinker, reinforce the Solovyova’s vehicles, they are assaulted from above.”

“Received.”

“Skthveraachk thinker,” Tugging had come upon her rear legs, first. Touches she ignored as meaningless, hunched down under building’s cover while the sky rained death. “Street progress?”

“Stalled. Humanite wyvern, destroyed. Retasked to assisting in reclamation and rescue. Spitters are holding street-designate Perilous Trudge. Slingers and menial-warriors assisting.” It was a choice borne of necessity, to use the thinkers as prime relays. Removing the Prescott had stifled their coordination, but not silenced the plans he had left in place. They would hunt her, her thinkers, her scentcrafters, and seek to end their leading of the song. So, the Queen had split her forces into five. Ensured decoys were erected and protected as greatly, perhaps even more greatly, than she herself was. The tugging had reached her middle limbs, which felt taut and cracked. “Humanite hunter raids sighted nearing the third cluster.”

“Alert! Skthveraachk Queen!” She had disregarded the first alert, it’s priority ranked far below the deluge of information she was coordinating.

“Three raiding clusters. Three scouts, ten menial-warriors each. Intercept. Eradicate.” Further up the street, an anti-arial lance emplacement exploded into a blue shower of fire and light. Observers ten layers, floors, above her waved limbs and sung to embattled clusters of the development while three wyverns in triangular formation roared past their building. “Enemy queen and thinkers sequestered beneath the terraformer tower. Reform. Leave dead in the fields. Push!”

“Skthveraachk Queen! The cycle! Skthveraachk-Colony endures!” Tugging, itching, cracking; she had sent queries to those around her, and been answered with joyous celebration. Half her mind focused on the battle, while the other consented to the examination. Cracks in her shell were vanishing under the peeling husks. Her constricting armor expanded out as limbs cricked and struggled around the flakes of chitin. Lungs fought to breathe as the outer layer of their protective slats was expelled, like the organs themselves were trying to flee from her. It was the worst of timings. It went up as a cheer as hymnals and odes broke through the screams and rages of the battlefield.

“The cycle concludes, Hathan-Commander! I must shed the burdens of the past to be made ready for the future! It will be replaced once the molting is finished.”

His concern had been magnified, the sound of conflict hard over the Band as the drones around her had stripped her bare. Helped her into the pose she had selected many measures ago. Spit and spewed against the shedding layer of her skeleton as the Queen stepped out of it, tearing through the outline with a carapace unmarked by damage. Unburdened by sealant.

“It is the end of my cycle, Commander! The time in which I was given song!” To occur on the battlefield. In this, of all places. The first of any colony to celebrate the start of a new cycle on an alien world. “The three-hundred and twenty-second cycle of Skthveraachk-Colony!” An explosion ripped thirty rapturous voices from the choir. It could not even scar the joy which filled the streets. “I sing with a sadness as we bid the old cycle farewell, and usher the new in blood, in fire, and in victory!”

The Solovyova had cut into the transmission unabashed, her song loud and wild.

It was a misnomer. The statue, the shed chitinous outline, would mark the spot of the cycle’s rebirth forever; the rebirth of the colony, not of Queen herself. It was impossible to keep track of the measure of one’s creation, needless even. But back in Hollowcore, in the vaults of the colony lineage not even the invader Ktcvahnaah would dare touch, the erected lines of the molts of Queens reached back to the birth of the colony’s song. Skthveraachk Queen’s, here, now, to be one of the eight in remembered history to be shed beyond the walls of the prime nest. She gave the site a final look, then turned out into the street. Heading for the edge of the city.

“There is no interruption, Hathan-Commander. I proceed to the assembly. I heed your request readily.” The Herald had been clear that only a fifth, a fourth, of her forces would be required for the demonstration. The rest carried out their duties; measures after the city’s fall, bodies were still being dug from the rubble. Repairs were underway on the blockish structures, excavations and disassembly of blocked passageways. The Queen had called them ‘streets’, but it was not like in Guir. In square grids, the city had been lain out, and between the buildings came room only enough for halftens of humanites to walk side-by-side through the structures. Cramped, like a nest’s tunnels but above ground, with tubular and wormlike vehicles which ran on rails elevated between the oppressive rectangular behemoths. When spaces did open, it was to places of greenery, of unobstructed sunlight, of running water and grassy rises. Only to be swallowed again by the grey carven blocks. All empty. All silent. Devoid of life.

When she and her entourage finally emerged from the straight lanes of travel, the sounds of activity and life were once again welcomed by the Queen’s body. From the edge of the city, to the terraformer reaching up nearly to surpass the blackened towers of now deactivated shielding, a straight path near twice as wide as the canyon leading to the Caldera ran unobstructed. Littered, only until a measure past, with shielded platforms and stationary lances six humanites needed lift together, spitting death on any and all who had tried to advance down its length. It was filled now with thrumming, motionless tanks and transports. With rows and ranks of Sovereignty soldiers, their songs and chatterings turning quieter as the Queen strode by in armored splendor. Their eyes, when they believed her incapable of seeing, following as she walked along their formations interspersed with Skthveraachk’s own children. Soldiers, warriors and menials all who did not so much as flinch in their postures. Observers from high vantages on either side of the great central channel could make out the unarmored and unarmed humanites gathered in the shade of buildings. Not hiding from the sun as in Guir. Not fearing to bare their arms or heads.

Miroslava had pointed up when the Queen had asked, the Commander busied with his own preparations. An odd usage of resources. They had not, did not, understand how a sun could harm when its heat was so meager. But they would seek to learn. Seek to be taught. At least there was already much they could manage without instruction. Somewhere ahead in the line, visible if she wished to use the link, the Herald would be seated atop the thronelike platform, surrounded by ambers and the greatest of the humanite’s machines. The Queen, as she reached her own position within the formation, had selected only the largest purple adolescents from her ranks. Alien culture prized the fearsome, the powerful, the greatest specimens, and as the hundred soldiers rippled around her only slightly larger body, it was the breeding male which was the last to meet her within the center of the mass. Still bearing the cuts, breaks and cracks in his shell. His own cycle, his own molting, yet tenmeasures away. Still clad in the silken ropes ringed through skulls, through bone, around the near seven suits of full Coalition armor which made up his protective coat.

“Most soldiers included within procession. Have directed menial-warriors into scouts and perimeter guards. We will not swarm without protection.”

“Received. Accepted.” She had not ordered it, but if the soldiers thought it necessary, there was no reason to debate. Perhaps, though, as the last few hundreds of her swarm took their stations amongst the great line of military might, a debate had been what the former Vhersckaahlhn wanted. Expected.

“Queen is exposed. Colony is exposed. A slow march? Open terrain? Soldiers remain engaged in fringes of Tarasque. City is not yet fully secured.”

“The Herald has sung that full control is not likely to be realized for many measures yet. Habitations, garrison chambers for menial and soldier alike, must be swept and searched for weaponry and dissent. There will be incidents for many suns yet.”

“Then this display is irresponsible. Dangerous.” His timbre was always base and deep. The touches of his antennae upon her head, however, how they slipped just under the curve of the flanks of her skull, were ever surprisingly sensitive in their concern. “Queen must be brave, but not foolish. Queen must be warrior, not disposable drone.” Skthveraachk looked out and across the opened passage, the great swathe of empty space leading to that curved expulsion tower which belched white and wispy smoke into the sky. Daylight now, the pitch of night then. When the touches of her soldier had been distant and vague, his mind as his body focused entirely on curling itself under cover of a barricade her swarming multitudes had already cleared. Listening to the hissing and crackling as the exposed flesh of those draped upon barriers where they had fallen bubbled and melted from the heat of the lancefire overhead.

“Too open. Too vast. Eighty lengths, more.” The scout had drawn out the distance ahead on the behemoth’s shell, a single one of its eyes protruding over the lip of the barricade. “Wall erected at ninety lengths. Fire from atop. Fire from remnants of bridge.” Building to building, like threads of stone, great walkways hung over the expanse. Coalition soldiers had rained hot lightning from above, until the humanite’s vehicles had blown apart and melted the central sections. Now rubble still glowing crimson littered the ground, and the Coalition hunkered at ends, rather than at center, of the broken bridges. “Advance, impossible.”

“Climb?”

“Too many Coalition present.”

“Divert?”

“Streets are assaulted. Our task is here.”

“Relay. Request guidance.” It was the most dangerous of situations involving the aliens. On the move, on the advance, deaths were inevitable but valuable. Ground gained. Enemies overrun. The further the distance, the greater the enemy’s force, any attempts at charging would bring only silence and bodies for not a length of ground taken. Soldiers, menials, menders, forces of the formites and humanites both could only crouch down behind what covers there were. Listening to the snapping shock of lancers, to the expulsion of the armored vehicles, and to the returned zaps as heavy cannons sought to melt through the frontal protection of the stalled tank line.

“Thinkers processing. Crafters have been assigned. Directed to assemble construct. Pattern arriving.” A quick scrawl was made, the blueprints transferred. The former Vhersckaahlhn had passed them outward, singing a bellowing march to those nearest.

“Locate! Gather! We build!” What were the humanites doing? Not his concern. Where were additional soldiers? Not his concern. What purpose would this crafter’s project serve? They were flashes of curiosity he had dutifully subdued. Two smaller soldiers dashed across the field, towards a fallen rectangular hunk of stone which would suit the crafter’s needs. One was shot. Two drones ran interference, distracting the Coalition while others rushed to aid with the column-like chunk. Six killed, getting the stone back behind cover. Skthveraachk soldier noted the losses; he had thirty-one victories. He led here. It was his role to record, and pass on. His forelegs, however, had been focused on holding up a sheet of hardstone. Bracing it, so menials could punch holes where crafter’s dictations had demanded. “Sealant needed. Send for mender. Upper covering, nearly completed.”

“Received. Secondary cluster has constructed lower platform.”

“Scouting prong located reinforcing materials. Recovering.” Pressed against the sheet of hardstone, a tapping on his shell brought the soldier’s mandibles about. Cutting in half a rod of metal, so that his female warrior-menial could affix the smaller length between stones; forming and raising the hammer just as the pegs made of severed legs were set to place, pounding them in to join the sections the secondary and primary clusters had assembled. A menial climbed atop the forming weapon. A menial tore off his belt of humanite skin, tied half a knot, and was shot down. A menial climbed up, finished the knot, and was shot down as well. “Prepared!”

“Humanites will open heavy fire. Advance once it begins. Move weapon to the wall.”

“Skthveraachk crafter, how does weapon function?” Lift, retract, push, repeat. Simple instructions. Eight soldiers reared up, gripped the handles which had been drilled into the sides of the great stone rectangle, and menials and lesser soldiers of all sizes formed up around them as canopy of metal was placed. Neither would survive long; neither was intended to survive long. “Received. Primary soldier cluster, readied.”

“Sing of triumph and death. Begin!” A repeated volley, Sovereignty soldiers emerging and expelling lights enough to blind some formites unfortunate enough in their angles. Skthveraachk soldier knew no hesitation, not even as the heat of the lances seared his shell. Coalition cowards ducked and hunkered under the heavy fire, failing to perform their duties as hundreds of formites spewed forth across the distance. Not just his cluster, but others, all bearing their own pillars, or solid tubes, or chunks of vivisected tank remains. A humanite had gathered sense enough to raise and attempt to fire back from the top of the approaching barricade in the distance; a spear struck its center with force enough to knock the alien from view, and the female menial who had thrown it quickly slotted another projectile from nearby spear-bearer. It was some new invention, a hooked prong most every menial carried into combat now. It bore a humanite name, and Skthveraachk soldier cared little. His focus remained on the wall. The barrier. The impact which knocked breath from his lungs as the entire cavalcade slammed into the face of the thing, shuddering those atop and along it.

“All! Lift! All! Together!” Once more, the call had gone out as the obscuring canopy was kept over those holding the pillar. Backing away as limbs strained to keep it aloft. Retreating a length, two, before charging forward to beat the end of the pillar against the wall. Stone, metal, bodies; all cracked at the impact. “All! Lift! All! Together!” Chanting, ignoring how those Coalition atop the wall fired down at the shielded soldiers, how the menials around them flung spear and stone and spitters poured forward with acid, Skthveraachk soldier kept his grip on the construct, and pushed once more. The stone rammed the defensive screen, the heat from the metal canopy they had arranged to protect the soldiers lifting had begun to glow and sizzle and drip atop those beneath, and one of the eight screamed out and spurted pain as melted hardstone fell into three of his eyes. It was not his role to care. “All! Lift! All! Together! PUSH!” Cracks in the wall. Shuddering as the rams down the field hammered away as well. Alien tongues flapped in alien mouths with alien languages, and enemy soldiers he could smell behind the barrier leapt clear and began to retreat. Dents became tears, tears became folds, and with a final slam forward, the metal peeled down. And menials had flooded through breaches, their scythes and spears soaking crimson.

Empty now. Cleared, and smoothed, those walkways that had been shattered hauled away while on those that had survived, distant shapes of humanites could be seen leaning upon rails. Her soldier was still touching upon her shell, and Skthveraachk Queen ran one of her own feelers carefully in a brush across his eyes.

“Danger has passed. The humanites require this display, so says the Herald. It seems strange to us, but we would not dare forsake the need to smear those we had captured from a rival nest. We cannot expect the aliens to forsake their own rituals.”

“Received. Disagreed, but will obey. Will ensure constant relay to scouting probes and perimeter watch. Any threat will be handled.”

“Be mindful of the crowd. These are no longer enemies. These are the menials of the Sovereignty now.” A whistling sounded from the floating dhrones which had begun to fill the air, and the engines of the many machines and transports rumbled into a more active state. Yes, the city was no longer a city of dissenters, of the disparate, of the enemy. Some would harbor doubts still, Hathan was quick to warn, and many especially in the early measures would continue to struggle. But the Coalition fleet had retreated from the hemisphere. Their garrison and army, surrendered, and disarmed. If there were still hostiles in the crowd? The soldiers placed throughout the menials, along with the defensive measures borne by the procession, would render their efforts meaningless. This was to be an affirmation. A declaration. And as the whistles sounded once more, wheels began to turn, feet began to stomp in rhythm, those sounds which had once shaken the Queen to her core instead brought an ecstasy as silver-clad claws undertook their advance. ‘What is that? What is that, Hathan-Commander?!’ she had cried in alarm and wonder as they had sat with her thinkers, learning the roles they were to have in the demonstration. He had smiled a boneless smile. ‘Music, Svera. Our music.’

Soldiers, black and red in their armored splendor, led the procession through the single street. Their lances, though out, were shouldered, and amongst them were those with poles aloft, bearing silken cuts on which the chalice symbol shone golden. Tanks, on tread or lift, polished and buffed of any damage, drove in lined ranks while their occupants stood tall from their innards, holding salutes or waves. Within a shimmering thass box and field of blue shielding, the Herald stood at a dais with arms wide, and the eyes of her children watched the backs and fronts of the Hathan, the Solovyova, the officers of blue and of black and of red as they rode at the heads of the marching columns of males and females both. And though the sight of Skthveraachk’s children amongst them, their steps timed to match that the ground itself shook with each trod of hooked leg, it was not the sight which dazzled nor the looks from the crowds gathered along the road which stalled her. From speakers and dhrones and stands set to sides of buildings, sounds the like of which she had never heard filled the Queen’s every thought. Every will. Air through tubes of hardstone brass and copper. The clashing, metal on metal, sending tremors through her very meat. Bellowing. Blowing. Beautiful. And when they had reached the first displays, the false-light standards which had been ordered to remain showing the Coalition’s own sigils and colors on buildings a hundred lengths tall, the Herald’s passage brought not only a shimmering wave as each green flag was replaced with the red and golden chalice, but the chorus of alien voices. Soldier. Civilian. And every banded formite, under the rays of the measure’s light, to sing the words they had been told every Sovereignty knew, and believed, and held.

“Gaze, thee, upon the heavens,

Aquaria to Mars.

Imperial Sovereignty’s command;

To bind and claim the stars.

The ruby peaks of Garda,

Cetusia’s emerald moors;

From Earth, thy home, the pride of man

On every world burns pure.

Gaze, thee, down on the broken,

Unwashed, unlearned, unwise.

The majesty of His decrees

Blinds all dissenting eyes.

No flesh shall e’er be tainted,

Nor soul in weakness scorned.

Arms rise defiant from ashes past

Hands ever labor on.

Gaze, thee, at legions endless,

beneath the banners tall.

As each shall fall, a thousand rise

Until thy truth is all.

With faith in Emperor’s vision

And man’s own will to be,

A Heaven made upon the Earth;

United, Sovereignty!”

Trumpeting and ringing cymbals filled the air as the streets filled with applause, of the flapping of meaty fingers to bring meaningless sound amidst the repeated chorus’ music. The beating filled her, more fully than her own heart. The ringing drowned her, and carried her on tides of sensation to lands of promised beauty and goodness. She heard within it the Sovereignty’s darkness, its coldness, its danger; and yet in those precious breaths which turned to beats, the Queen would have given anything for the music to continue.

And though Queen did not dare a look from her forward march, she whispered through the link, felt out from scouts and observers around her. The smiles on the citizens, the non-queens, were wide as their claps were loud. Their eyes set, their mouths hard. Sobbing was rare, and when woman ceased her applause to bury head against male’s shoulder, he was quick to help her upright. To redouble the efforts of their exaltation. Humanites in shells which trailed black and soft from shoulders to the ground lifted strange metal symbols from the centers of the procession, and the smells from the wafting pink smoke they emitted tickled the mind as well as the tongue. The Queen saw only one alien, wrinkled and bent, stoop to pick up a stone. To wind back his arm in preparation, before a pair of soldiers had quietly gripped and hauled him from street’s side to passageway’s back. She didn’t hear the shot of lance which followed. Only, barely, smelled the cooked meat.

When the parade arrived at the foot of the terraformer, it was still the music which held her in its intransient cradle. Surrounded her, while the Herald on risen stage welcomed back the city from those which had corrupted it. Assured the citizens that once more, they were as all the stars; children of the one Queen, of the Emperor. Lesser queens had made appearances, made shows of shaking hands and kneeling before the Herald, but it was a thing of distance. Until the beautiful, haunting, unknowable notes in alien tempo had faded, and Queen found herself waiting amongst the others within antechamber of nest’s primary structure. Waiting, with attendants who scrubbed and massaged at Skthveraachk’s carapace, while first Generals, then Colonels, then Captains and queens were called one by one from the murmuring masses through the double-doors, and to the Herald. Miroslava was, for the first time in memory on the planet, not by the Hathan’s side as he approached.

“The formalities of your victories and surrenders are a strange thing, and I would learn more of them, but. Only after I experience the fullness of your music, yes.”

“It is…not music, as we know it. And yet it is exactly as we know it. Like listening through a window and sea, colored in opposition to what is right, but bearing a beauty about it.” He was holding, hiding it seemed, a discus behind his back. Two of her attendants had caught sight of it already, but she elected to act as if it had gone unnoticed. “I will insist on hearing more.”

“I will insist on hearing all the music your species has created.”

He was mocking. No; teasing. It was odd, given how formally the other aliens gathered in the tall room of stairs and furnishings mumbled and quietly exchanged words, how greatly her laughter echoed as antennae clapped. As if to assist in silencing her, the Commander at last brought the item out, lowering his own volume.

“They are exchanged to solidify a promise, or agreement.”

“It would be confused. The value of the offered item, or mass, or right or concept is looked to as indicator of weight of harmony’s desire in the giver. Then, the value of what is exchanged in return is taken as agreement. A gift of significant value, like seasonal access to a biomass reservation, responded to with a gift of equal value, like a declaration of defensive pact, would be taken as a harmonious and blessed thing. To give a gift and receive nothing in return would be tantamount to a declaration of war.”

Clacking her mandibles, the discus was taken by an attendant as the male offered it forward, and though she puzzled under the idea of a present being given as insult, it lasted only as long as it took for the graspers of the slender-limbed male to pop open the lid for the notion to last. The sickly, sweetish scent from the yellowed cubes inside bringing curious chitters from all her drones nearby. Taking one up in his gloved palm, the Commander extended it towards her. Briefly uncertain, wondering if it would be taken as rudeness for a drone to sample for safety before her, or to have another chew up the offering, she paused only a moment before dropping free the tube from her mouth. Surrounding the male’s entire hand, and sucking up the yellowed disk, and feeling the thing dissolve halfway to her stomach as the taste filled her throat and exploded behind her eyes.

“By the threads of the Mother…”

He was wringing out his hand of her saliva. It was good. It allowed for the nearby attendants to begin stuffing each one of the yellowed disks into her, uncaring for the sideways looks she was garnering at the noisy process.

“It tastes of sunlight. How does it taste of sunlight? I accept your offering as Skthveraachk-Colony, and return to you…nothing. May it be received.” Her gaster quivered as she insulted so pungently the male, and the Sovereignty entire, but it was but a humor to them. The Commander accidentally letting his teeth show for just a moment before curling his lips back over them. “But it is not my birthing day. It is the beginning of the three hundred and twenty-second cycle of the colony.”

“Most drones do not live past their tenth cycle, though those of elevated caste may easily sing their thirtieth. It is whispered the current Queen of the Past, Chkeevh-Khtchaahln Queen of the Triumverate, endures well past their hundredth.”

It was as though she struggled to stand still. After the eighth glorious disk of melting yellowed wonder was taken in, she found middle legs near unable to remain still. Tapping and twitching, urging her to run needlessly. When Queen merely clacked assurance, the Commander shook his head.

“The eleventh cycle of my song, and eighth as Queen. The three hundred and twenty-first has been named ‘The Cycle of the Great Becoming, of the Star-Sent and our Touching of Sky.’” Skthveraachk had neither attention nor interest in assigning consideration to why the Commander appeared as though he had just been struck by a hairy limb, the slight opening of his jaw and mouth as he sought to clear throat.

A female in rich golden-amber suiting called from the doorway, and on instinct akin to a formite’s own when detecting a danger signal, the Commander stood stalk-straight. Turned, gave quick nod as the female beckoned him on, and looked to the Queen only to raise pausing hand to her near depletion of the composer-cake tin.

It was a needlessly obvious statement, and under different circumstances, she would be annoyed at the humanite’s sudden slip to behaviors strange. As it were, the gestating and growing puddle of the cakes within her brought forgiveness of all things. Music. The taste of light and lightness. Mothers all the way to the beginning, forgive her, but she could pass into torpor here and now and yet join in the Composer’s chorus happy.

She had nearly descended down and done just that, when her Band began to murmur. But it was not the Hathan’s voice, not his tone or timbre. It was the Herald’s. Urging one of the attendants near, the Queen gripped to its skull and began to empty her stomach into its own, bidding her mind become clear as she sought to respond. Reaching to touch at the device, when the Hathan’s words answered instead.

The words were not for her. Ignoring how two of the blue coated humanites moved away from her as she pulsed and emptied her stomach into the drone, the realization made colder the warmth Skthveraachk had felt previous. She had not activated, could not activate the Band in such a way. And if the Herald was unaware of her listening, the only one who could have ensured such wrongful infiltration was-…peel him and her, what was the Hathan thinking?

Her eyes were cast to the closed door, then to all those around. The vibrations of the Band meant nothing to them. Everything, to the Queen.

Something was slid across wood.

The Herald laughed. The Commander, the Hathan-Captain, lied one of his own.

What question was there? She could practically hear the unvocalized echo of the Hathan as well, before the Herald continued.

Silence. Longer, than there should have been, before the Hathan’s even tone was once more on her skeleton.

His smile was as audible as it was strained.

Her mind was as tangled as a chelicerite’s webbing, and would it not have been a potential revealing threat, the Queen would have sent drones out immediately to gather her thinkers. Instead, she tried desperately to parse, comprehend, think, and plan, all by her own self.

The risk he had taken. The openness he had shown. When the doors opened, when Devries emerged with hand curled around a new golden marking like those worn on shoulder and chest, he kept his face clean and cleared as he advanced. Lying, with every step, to those around and those onlooking. She should have hated him for how easy he made it look, how he hid the truth of what he had done. By the time the humanite had reached her, and had leant forward, it took all her control not to stroke with rigid hairs across the breadth of his entire body.

“Yes, Hathan-Commander. Yes, Hathan-Captain. Yes.” The plots? The kindness mixed with dangerous edge? The offering of graspers while scythes yet poked from the sheathes? She’d heard. And yet, there was but one thing for which she cared.

“I am going home.”