“Have you yet mated with Hathan-Captain?” The mountain shook. Or, perhaps it was just Skthveraachk herself, the blatancy of the inference snapping her head up and backwards as the pale drone aside her sung Ckhehnvraahll’s thoughts. Putting a pause on her Band’s communication to utter incredulous reply.

“In this place? In this time? At the raising of a new power with which to entreat Triumvirate, these are your thoughts? Why ask this?”

“You refuse answer?”

“No!” Calmness. Debris shook from the ceiling once more as the Queen momentarily distributed responsibilities between thinkers. Distracted from the sounding calls for guidance, if just for a moment. “And, no. Ckhehnvraahll, you tremble. It is rare for you to leave safety of nest. Unheard of, to leave territory. You should return.”

“You need my brood for this. I fear this, yes. But next to humanites, next to my bonded, I know I am safe.” There was a shakiness to the Slough Queen’s song, a fear she was attempting to suffocate under such unrelated queries. “And you, Skthveraachk. I would not have expected hesitation from War Queen.”

“What relationship, what expectation, does the truth of name hold over my avoidance in breeding with the humanite Captain?”

“Because you most clearly wish to.”

“The light of the goldboughs dances in your eyes.”

“Horrid accusation!” A mixture of exaggerated and genuine offense was scratched against the Queen’s armoring, the touch dull in the chitin but still heard with its chiming tones. “He sung much contradiction in the meeting of lighted Queens, but never once did you show contention. When eyes orient to him, your contractions of abdomen are visible. You show head’s underside to humanites-“

“They are small. Is loathsome necessity of which they do not understand significance!”

“But make sureness to hide it from the Hathan’s view. And,” The disruption was ignored, blessedly, if only to rain further mischievous condemnation. “Your antennae, twice, began to reach for his false presence.”

“Even I am not used to false-light projections. They deceive eyes, while voice knows them untrue.”

“Any colony who saw such signals to male would initiate negotiation for breeding immediately.”

“The Hathan-Captain is a colony of one. The Hathan is not formite.”

“Difficulties in form are always solved eventually. What strange argument. Your own colony learned well how to mate with the songless flying beasts which begat stingers. Do the humanites possess no traits desirable to assimilate into the people?”

“The humanites are not songless.” This was not the time. Nor, the place. The few thinkers she had brought were singing irritation, Skthveraachk’s distraction weakening the coherency of the colony’s hymn. Another shudder in the rock, and though smothered in a blackness only lit by the dull blue of the technology around which they huddled, she could see with sound the cracks winding up through the ceiling. Fractures in the whole. Faults in the surety. “They think. They choose. I am not of the slavers who force a pairing upon conquered colony. To the star-sent, their bodies are pure, and I have seen strongest males executed for the pollution of their form, even if invisible.” It was true, the Aadarsh and Hathan had both praised the formite eugenics while holding it apart from the dirtiness of the humanite method, but. “I do not know if the pursuit of offspring would be condemned, if even possible.”

“Have you asked?”

“Cease such probing!” This was ridiculous of Ckhehnvraahll. “The Hathan is nearly of Skthveraachk, so much have we shared and suffered. He possesses at least one bonded, but has sired only a single offspring. Perhaps this is the norm, to which my inquiries would be insult, and it is of no matter! The humanites are not as formite, not as passalidite, not even as chaerilite. Pudgy! Squishing and twisting with skeletons within rather than without! Their scents are foreign, their taste is of a hardstone sea, and lighting antennae upon them is as to stroke a pupa!”

“Repulsive when described, yes. Unnatural shapes.” Insistence now from the thinkers. There was not significant danger, but this distraction was inappropriate. Singing both apologies and a will for patience, it was a need not of her own. If the Slough Queen was distorted, her children would waver. The less experienced female must be sated. It was not as though she would provoke undue truth with her prodding. “Though, they are a uniquely colorful species, yes?”

“Oh by Founder Sh’e,” A rush of want, caged beneath shell and the mountain’s crust, burbled free. “Did you see the beauty of his eyes?”

“I have few humanites of my nest with such a hue. Like the azure of oceans.”

“Blue, white, like sky and cloud.” Heaving a breath, her vents flared and fanned along her lungs. “And always wet. Imagine rubbing your hairs across such eyes, or licking them! Then the sounds, his noises! He can strike his tongue behind his bones, and it echoes, like…” Thok, thok, thok. Ckhehnvraahll’s amused mortification at the lurid noises Skthveraachk sent to her, hollow and reverberating like a mate’s rapping on shell, was nearly a giggle.

“This is not embellishment? Such lecherous notes, alone?”

“It is most crude. Certainly unbeknownst, certainly unintentional. As so much of them is.”

“Perhaps you emit similar signals unknowingly.” Debris rattled off her carapace and armor, barely noticed, as Skthveraachk scanned her own memories. Unable to draw from the colony’s collective consciousness at so critical a time. “If it is offense you fear, investigation, then. Quiet. Independent of the male. The procedures for such among their kind? If not mating, then as bonded?”

“Not fear. Respect. Propriety. He has suffered much. Some, by my voice. He is not songless. I will not treat as some silent breeding male.” Breath. Breath. Beat. “A few questions, perhaps, to available Queen-colonies of humanites. Research. Cultural curiosity.”

“For shared understanding.”

“But later.” Now, the Band was ringing as well. The six thinkers alongside her were fuming, huddled as they all were around the flattened screen laid upon the subterranean rock. “You must ground self. Accept risk. Your colony will swarm back to you if you fear, if you signal danger. Your presence reassures. But will also cripple.”

“Received, my Queen. I fear them. But we love you, more. Ckhehnvraahll-Colony will be strong.” The single white drone amongst the Queen’s meager number entwined her antennae, just once. Embracing the towering armored form before falling to silence as Ckhehnvraahll refocused herself. Absurdity. Thoughts for the later, for the elsewhere.

“Rejoin the link. Attention to most critical tasking, then descending priority.”

“Received.” The pale one was pushed aside. Bodies once more pressed to her, merging her into the colony. Smoke. Ash. No space for laughter, no cause for joy. No longer Queen, but colony entire, streteched across a thousand lengths and five battlefields. And it took all of a breath for her eyes to stream through the thousands above, into the body of bleeding soldier with severed arm and blinded eye.

“Report.”

“Two humanites dead. Forty-six voices silenced. Link fracturing. Surrounded.” A scout was relaying the message from a rocky outcropping, maintaining position even as the forest burned around it. Location received. Grid coordinates applied. Fewer than sixty soldiers and menial-warriors, maybe seven humanites, choking on smoke from the nearby fires as Kthcvahlaatch soldiers encircled the site. Clever. Had been a solid position when Skthveraachk last looked. Three more of her drones collapsed, but not before thrusting scythes and spears into the masses of bodies encircling, taking at least five with them. “Advise us.”

“Spitters present?”

“Negative.”

“Humanites to center. Hold until final note. Defend humanites.”

“Received.”

“Mother, Wyvern Command.” That was for the Band, and the brief garbling of noise prompted her to sing down the passageway. The sticks they had been sent with, leading out in a chain to the open air and larger length-tall tower, adjusted to clear the music.

“Rescue. Exfiltration. Grid, D3-12-01. My soldiers will soon be silenced. Humanites must be saved.”

“Refused. One. Kthcvahlaatch-Colony attempting to capture living or dead star-sent for study. Other wyverns to stay on task. My soldiers will hold.”

“Received.” The thinkers shone in the blue light around her, humming as they delegated and reoriented and adjusted the sprawling swarm. The matter was settled, but she returned to the soldier. Tried to. The first had fallen, his corpse pulled in half. The warrior behind hoisted his severed head as a shield, driving off the scythe of a hostile scented drone before plunging spear forward. Another raised to try and bite down. Three bullets from three slingers, behind, cracked its skull and sent it toppling, a spattering of lance fire confirming the kill. “Two beats and twenty breaths. Endure. Humanites will be saved. You will die after.”

“Received. Our final note. Three will fall for each of us. Goodbye.” A necessary test. Kthcvahlaatch was not Ktcvahnaah. Kthcvahlaatch was clever. Even now, her swarm was probing the lines. Committing only so far as to confirm a humanite presence, then falling away under lance and spear and sling. Diverting. Seeking out a line of battle further from the front, to a Banded scentcrafter weaving and spewing affirming and powerful notes into the air. Ckhehnvraahll’s warriors, uncertainly watching the explosions of light and sound from afar, huddled around the Carolus treaded tanks. Shuddering away at the noise as the Banded one thumped limb against the nearest hull, bringing flaxen Colonel emerging from its side. “Solovyova. Colonel. New firing location. Grid, D3-12-01. My soldiers are overrun. Saturate area once humanites are extracted.”

“I am aware.” Buzzing in the distance. The designated hostile stingers swooping, trying to get over the ranks of her children, only to be brough down by volleys of stone and blasts of light.

A name. Unimportant. Briefest fear on face, trascending to rage as a hand slapped to the helmetless head, the alien comm.

It was a sound from the long-throwing tank that had begun to crawl forward in earthshaking grinds, the huddled white forms beneath uttering prayers and final messages as the treads drew near, only to abruptly halt. Vibrating through metal, and rock, and the female’s own communicator.

Calls from within the Solovyova’s vehicle. From the tens to either side. You couldn’t smell the blood from here, but you could smell the fire. Feel its heat. The plains were already marked with craters, dark splotches amidst the green. How long until plants grew here again? Irrelevant. Delegate concern to menders. The scout on the ridge was recalled as the wyvern flew higher, spurting white beams at the trio of stingers trying to throw themselves into its engines. The small cluster of her own troops amidst the ever-growing sea of enemy bodies dwindled, shrank, and then vanished entirely. Perhaps two or three yet clawed to life. Pride filled her.

And then they were deafened. The crack of thunder and fury sounded from first one, then the rest, straight swollen beams through the open air. The Coalition’s kinetics were an obvious concept. Solid strikes solid, terrain displaces, shrapnel erupts. But heat, in quantities enough, achieved odiously similar end. Rocks did not just melt, but expanded and exploded. Bodies did not merely vanish, but swelled and ruptured out in steam and force. ‘Fire one’ was uttered. Six hundred voices were made non-existent. Vanished. Gone from the song. Skthveraachk knew the smell of Kthcvahlaatch’s terror as lives simply ceased to exist. She had felt it before. And the humanites merely uttered,

“Alert! Alarm!”

“Report.”

“Breaches! We fall!” Excitement. One the colony did not share, could not parse. Finally. Kthcvahlaatch controlled two of her former nests, one of breeding, and one of farming. Both had been strategic in their location, a bulwark against incursions from outer lands. The invasion of Ktcvahnaah was an unknown thing to the former, for they only knew that death had come for them. Had responded true and proper, with a pouring out of strength. And now, that strength thrust into the established line bordering the unburnt sections of forest nearest Ckhehnvraahll’s nest. The direction of the attack. “Too many! Kthcvahlaatch-Colony is swarming!”

“Pull two hundred menial warriors from each flank. Reinforce.”

“Received! The soldiers are dead! Slingers and spitters fall!” Thinkers beat their shells and trilled eagerly at the messages. Eighty voices silenced. Images of the weakness in the barrier of bodies, a section devoid of humanites. Too few, yes, too few to spread out across the entire length. Here, they were weak. Here, the enemy Queen condensed her swarm into a scythe’s tip, and shanked wildly through the armor. Even the rarest resource of stingers dived and rushed to assist, while scentcrafters threw conflicting and discordant odors to disrupt their coherency. “Advise us! Advise us!”

“Defend. Fight.” Reinforcements scampered to the area, but were held back. “Captain Hathan?”

“To be soldier is to die for the colony. At the scythes of enemy or by order of their own colony is immaterial. Duty is served. Be ready.” He did not reply. A part of her mind was concerned, but that part was silenced and controlled. Even when Ckhehnvraahll’s more panicked music against rattled from the relaying drone.

“Skthveraachk Queen! What is this!? You fall? They attack?”

“Kthcvahlaatch searches.”

“Searches for what?”

“Me.” Explosions seemed louder, drawing nearer, as the cavern was rocked by the stampede of legs and impacts of lance. “Or, my thinkers. Our orders are too quick. We react too fast. Kthcvahlaatch knows we must be near.”

“Alarm! Fear! Cruel! Kthcvahlaatch would silence not just soldiers, but thinkers!?”

“Kthcvahlaatch is dying. Kthcvahlaatch is desperate. Cannot reach humanites through formites. Cannot resist star-sent and Skthveraachk together. Logic reasonable. Eliminate Skthveraachk-Colony’s control, chance to turn battle’s timbre.”

“Withdraw thinkers!”

“Refused.”

“Skthveraachk Queen, my children wail. They breach your lines! Your reinforcements insufficient!”

“Insufficient.” They were through. The rapid reinforcing of the line was surety, confirmation, that what was most precious was nearby. Hundreds poured through the gap in her soldiers, streaming into the forest and rampaging past the battle. Their scent was of desperation, but resolve. They knocked aside clusters rushing to secure the hole, curving their column to get behind the strongest forces in her center from the weakened side. They trampled reserve menials who were bid throw themselves senselessly into the mass, in effort to slow, to delay, the inevitable. Kthcvahlaatch was very clever. It was the perfect spot for the Queen and her thinkers; hidden in the trees, close enough to the front to allow rapid communication, secured by the star-sent vehicles and soldiers. Even now, a few tens of unfortunate and juvenile humanites who had strayed from their positions desperately sought to fall back, only to be ripped apart. “Weapons. Spears. Lances. Strong, yes. Not strongest. Humanites possess powers which render such meaningless. Kthcvahlaatch outnumbers. Kthcvahlaatch overwhelms. I see. For we have strongest of all humanite weapons.” A thousand bodies pushed through the gap. A thousand and a half, perhaps? They would devour her thinkers. The harmony would be shattered. They would turn and encircle the center, and they would fight on as panic descended. Strong. Valiant. Wonderful. Rocks shook around the Queen’s body. “They arrive.”

Wounded formites were dissolved in a hail of acid. Three menders were hewn and sundered before they could even utter defiant shrieks. Another seventy voices, silenced. Menials. Haulers. She watched it through the eyes of the dying. Through the lurking scouts, waiting on the perimeter. And in the blue glow of the screen laid out on the floor of the tunnel, the topography, the shapes, the instantaneous deliverance of data as Kthcvahlaatch’s invading prong turned in on itself, confused. For Skthveraachk was not there. She was a thousand and seven-hundred lengths to the faderise, watching as the invaded Queen’s forces filled the almost entirely emptied grid. No, Kthcvahlaatch; what thinkers were present were scattered, hidden amongst the rank and file. The humanites were better murderers than you, and had taught her well.

“Knowledge, Ckhehnvraahll Queen. Knowledge is the most deadly of all weapons. Hathan-Captain?”

She did. Watched as those at the edges of the breach dropped low, raised shields, bark, bodies, anything to provide protection. Watched as, far behind the lines, the heated rocks infused with green smoldering energy were catapulted from upturned artillery pieces. Saw, heard, the scream of their passage through the air. And felt, like the sundering of her own shell, as they exploded both Kthcvahlaatch and Skthveraachk soldiers alike.

“Eighty-eight voices removed from the song. Presuming dead.”

“Received.”

“Forty-two injured.”

“Critically injured to the front. Retreat those that can be saved.” On the display, though Skthveraachk could not see in the link of ruptured eyes and light-blinded drones, a single menial warrior dragged itself through the crater. All that remained of the breach. Bottom four legs and gaster, missing. A spear in one claw, the other hauling its upper third to the remnants of scent. A drone of Kthcvahlaatch, following its last received order. Sensing the aggressor nearby, and trying to turn its body to show the three legs of its left side, the side it still could move and feel, in defense. The first of her warrior’s strikes bounced off an unmelted plate of chitin. The spear tumbled, sank into the bubbling mud of blood and dirt, boiling in the heat. Scythe tried to strike back, but disconnected and fell away from the body, the tendons torn and snapped. It was her own drone which struck the decisive blow, mandibles seizing and crushing skull made soft in the heat. The hostile formite went still. Her warrior, raising its head, sighed joy and triumph. Then it, too, fell silent. The Queen watched. The Queen was proud. “Close the gap.”

“Received.” Bodies in reserve surged to fill the crater, locking the thousand and more within.

“Soldiers forward.”

“Received.”

Shields forward. Bodies, on all six legs. Spears pointed forward, the scentcrafters keeping them steady as the thin ring of fomite soldiers tightened the noose.

“Inform the humanites.”

“Lances forward, friends!” The Banded, the scout and others, uttered encouragement as the tide of black bodies picked up the scent and movement. Contained, now, in the waiting ring of Skthveraachk’s forces. “Queen says near thousand and half-more! Must kill seven each to succeed! Trivial task for us, simplistic for the star-sent.” The scout could not hide his quavering voice from the colony, but he was sure it sounded confident to the humanites.

“We live but to die, friend Shiv. It is a glorious battle, we hear songs of victory already, so of all measures, this is a good one to die!” There was no control, no order from Kthcvahlaatch. The artillery had destroyed her scented trails, and even if it hadn’t, the noose was fixed now. She battered her soldiers against a newly formed wall, no longer left deliberately weakened, trying to reach her surrounded offspring. Offspring who had only one command to rely on. They charged. Lances lowered over the heads and shields of her colony, the humanites aimed inward in an arc.

“Skthveraachk! Sovereignty! For Skthveraachk! For Sovereignty!” Branches broke. Trees exploded. Bodies fell, rose over one another, and fell again. They met the wall of shields, battled, and were shot from the standing forms safely behind the thin line. Formite and humanite. Together. Glorious. Hundreds were dead before the Queen left the sight behind. Unnecessary to dwell, beyond a brief and calmed assurance to Ckhehnvraahll. That battle was decided. Lowest priorities, now.

“Ktcvahnaah-Colony is retreating from tertiary breeding nest.”

“Of course she is.”

“Uncertain. Repeat?”

“Disregard. Received.” Wyverns swooped on the display and through her colony’s eyes, spraying the disarrayed column with lance fire. Stomachs full of transported biomass popped. Carried stalks of palmidia erupted. The traitor Queen was trying even now to keep what she had stolen while the nest teemed with Skthveraachk’s soldiers. Insolence. “Two-hundred soldiers. Divert from secondary breeding nest invasion. Cut off escape. Kill.”

“One wyvern damaged along path between Hollowcore and tertiary breeding nest.”

“Damaged? Must have spitters hidden in trees. Amusing.” Betraying their position for a single target’s wounding. “Twenty menial-warriors to designated grid C3-02-11. Scouting pattern. Locate and eliminate spitters.”

“Suggest increased number.”

“Refused. Twenty is sufficient.” Menial against spitter was not ideal, and even a poor Queen like Ktcvahnaah would have soldier guards. But her menials had the throwing-spears. Her menials had armor. They would succeed. She needed not tax her resources, spread thin in fighting two colonies at once as she was. “Songs of surrender?”

“Many in invaded breeding nests. Two queens currently in laying wish return to Skthveraachk.”

“Return?”

“Lesser queens taken from Skthveraachk when aboard Palamedes. Chose to remain with Ktcvahnaah rather than go to Dracan.”

“Then they stay with Ktcvahnaah. Execute.”

“Received.” A pang of hurt, both from the loss of laying potential and in the loss of two of her elevated daughters. Hardened was her core at it. They had made their choice. Still, she did not stay to listen to their wailing as soldiers pulled their limbs in all directions, immobilizing for the decapitation. Necessary. But not enjoyed. “Direction?”

“Brooding chambers.”

“Investigated. Emptied.”

“Locate scent trails.” The eggs. The young. Of Ktcvahnaah-Colony, but unhatched and untainted by her own jelly or music. It was possible to preserve them, to save them, and add their number to her own colony if they were reached in time. “Fastest drones. Soldiers. Raiding formation. Pursue.”

“Located.” The grid was recited. The thinkers swung legs over the mapping sheet, finding the escape tunnel. Her soldiers coated the nest exterior, filled its insides as they went tunnel to tunnel, chamber to chamber, eradicating resistance. Here. They had slipped along a river’s ravine, under the detection of her scouts, following the waters up into the mountains towards Hollowcore. A pointless order; the mountain loomed in the view, chunks cascading off its face as strikes from heavy lances quaked the rock. Its great bridge of rock and web and sealant, spanning the chasm filled with the corpses of its defenders who now quaked against behind entryway. Four thousand of her brood, drones and warriors and everything between, coating the rocky pathways and rises before it, shouting their challenges and screeching her own rage while the humanite soldiers slowly ascended the switchbacks to join them.

“Swarm. Kill. Recover eggs. Take all from her.”

“Kthcvahlaatch is retreating.” The decimation of the lesser Queen was put aside, and a moment’s confirmation showed the rescinding force. Abandoning the two nests after which Skthveraachk sought, surrendering the territory, pulling from the untenable losses. Songs lost. Songs silenced.

“Received. Pursue. Continue engagement.”

Solovyova. The Queen gave a rattle of her hairs.

“Confirmed. Wide dispersal. Be prepared to cease fire, many may surrender when death is certain now that retreat is occurring.”

“Your insult is noted and forgiven. Your own advice, heeded. Cruelty inflicted here spares countless others. Kthcvahlaatch will fear, Kthcvahlaatch will run, Kthcvahlaatch will spread message. Victory, impossible. Retreat, impossible. Only surrender, accepted. Better a few colonies suffer now than many suffer later.”

Communicator went silent. An unnecessary concern. For Kthcvahlaatch, there would be a tomorrow. These losses, grievous as they were, could be recovered. A better rise awaited, once through the crucible of loss and pain. It was not an anger which guided Skthveraachk there. That had been saved. Nurtured. Prepared. That was for only one this measure. Five nests back under her control in a space of bars. Others would follow, soon. But Hollowcore was alone, now. Its front, sieged and controlled. Only its back had not yet been surrounded, her soldiers and Sovereignty both instructed to focus on the face alone.

“Am not a thinker.” The purple-hued soldier, oddly regaining some of his former red coloring now that they were back on Kayyhaitch, gave what could only be described as a grumble. “Am unsuitable here.”

“Are requested. Are required. Must lead soldiers in my absence. Vital role. Critical role.”

“Ktcvahnaah Queen unworthy of your attention. Should give to colony. To lesser warriors. Let her be biomass for menials, like undeserving Queens.” Her anger was already broiling. The undue reminder brought a cut of her scythe for the nearby male, reflecting off his plating of Coalition armor and melted chitin. The humanite skulls clattering on his shell.

“You are not Vhersckaahlhn.”

“I am not Vhersckaahlhn.”

“Vhersckaahlhn feeds Queens to menials. Vhersckaahlhn fed my mother to menials. You are not Vhersckaahlhn. I am not Vhersckaahlhn. You are Skthveraachk.”

“I am Skthveraachk. Skthveraachk is strongest colony. Skthveraachk Queen is strength. Skthveraachk Queen kills enemy Queen with her own scythes.”

“It is good. It is right. You will defend.”

“You have survived one hundred and eighteen battles. You lead.”

“I lead.” Ktcvahnaah was not clever. Ktcvahnaah was not brave. Ktcvahnaah was a lumbrite in the dark, wiggling in the corpse of her betters and thinking their devoured strength her own. Ktcvahnaah would not fight. Ktcvahnaah would run. This profanation of Hollowcore was all the proof the Queen needed, this new tunnel under the heart of the mountain. This, the nest of Skthveraachk-Colony since its creation, was to be impenetrable fortress. Insurmountable. Only one entrance, to demand battle from any would-be invader and resolve to commitment of the defense. “Mother, Wyvern Command; cease bombardment of mountain.”

“Acceptable. Received.” An escape tunnel. A back-entrance. Sacrilege. Skthveraachk felt the shaking of her nest, her home above, come to a halt as the attacks from air ended. The damage to the exterior could be mended. This secret exit in which she now squatted, waited. This would need be filled, expunged, purged from her memory. Useful only to deliver vengeance on the deceiver, a death by her own cowardice, and then destroyed all the same. Her children were ready. They would die en masse at the gates, but they would force the Queen out. “Prepare the song.” Eighty soldiers, all she had brought with her, proper and large. In these cramped quarters, the humanite tools would be liability more than benefit. No. This would be settled in the true ways. Formite to formite. Scythe to scythe. They rose with her, the thinkers offering brief protests at being left unattended, silenced by reality. If the Queen fell, they would be soon behind regardless.

“Queen fights?”

“I fight.”

“Colony supports!”

“Colony must reach.”

“Queen in danger?” Hesitation. They were used to her presence. Relied on her scents, her warnings, to drive them to a fury. Amassed at the bridge, the gates, they would fight, but she had seen the lowered efficacy already in the other battlefields. They were strong. But without her, they were less. And here, this rise, they needed to be more. A single bridge, a single gateway. Covered in the smallest of Ktcvahnaah’s brood, hoping to wear them down for the ranks and lines and columns of soldiers undoubtedly filling the halls beyond. The great ceiling vaults and spiraled ramps and steps, soon to be coated with bodies. They needed her music. Raising claw to pause her troop of infiltrating assassins, Skthveraachk gathered her scentcrafters. Assembled them into clusters. Thudding beats, the pounding of legs overpowered be the stretched basins and coverings of chitin. It was a crude imitation of the instruments at the parade through Tarasque, the drums of war and conquest, but the sound they made filled the air from a hundred drones. A hundred more, slings raised, whistled and droned the strings through the air. Sounds that had never before graced the planet. Hear it. Question it. Fear it. She was coming. Riled and readied, her forces snapped and lunged before pulling back, displays of dominance and rage on each body as the Queen’s music flowed out from the crafters. Joining in the sounds of death.

“Skthveraachk Queen travels the stars, and Skthveraachk-Colony sails the sky. Once more we set claw on Kayyhaitch, seeking a repayment of wrongs in pursuit of peace. We carry the tools of the star-sent. Our warriors are the greatest of our world. And yet we look. We see. The Ktcvahnaah-Colony sends menials to stop us.” Hissing. Drumming. The humanites at the rear of the lines had no orders, but to stand and guard. They looked to one another, uncertain, and carefully lengthened distance between themselves and the horde. “Proud. Arrogant. Sullying our home with their breath, yet not even offering resistance worthy of Hollowcore’s name. They do not deserve respect. They do not deserve presence. They do not deserve existence. So we will kill them. Devour them. Silence them.” She was not with them, up there before the great carven entrance to the crevice which towered up a hundred lengths. So she sent her rage, and her lust, and felt the colony bathe in the wrath it contained.

“Let the corpses scent our nest for cycles where they fall!” Kill. Kill. The menials barring their passage shrank.

“Let their legs be rent and pulled from their bodies!” Kill. Kill! Reinforce the lines, cast your own smells across the bridge. Struggle. Fail.

“Let the halls of Hollowcore be dyed bronze with their BLOOD!” Kill! Kill! Chanted! Praised! No direction. No plan. One direction. One purpose.

“Kill! Kill! KILL AT WILL!” Even across the other nests, the fury propelled the colony on. Before the gates of Hollowcore, the barrier was broken. They poured. They rushed. Trampling as they needed, frenzied where they stood. Kill. Kill. The wave of their bodies crashed into the wall that was Ktcvahnaah’s colony, and it was the wall which shattered first. Cries of pain and calls of adulation were a symphony of life and death, an opus to destroyed opulence. Walls were cracked. Treasures were scattered in their passage. Beneath it all, Skthveraachk raced up the tunnel, keeping her scents withheld so as not to alert whatever lay ahead. Her soldiers, her troop, followed, clambering along the freshly cut stonework as they ascended. Where would it emerge? The Sovereignty had promised methods of scanning through rock, but it would take a time they did not have. It was a blind racing, a trust in ability and knowledge of enemy which spurred her. Light awaited, a soft glow of emerald, there at the tunnel’s end. Oh, yes. Now, Skthveraachk knew where they were. Macabre glee filled her, improper emotions that should have been managed by menders that were now unlinked from her. There was only Skthveraachk Queen here. Queen and soldiers.

“All menials to halls! Slow advance!”

“Received!”

“Attendants to support Queen! We go! We flee!”

“Received! Where flee? Where go?”

“Unknown! Unimportant!” Notes of panic in the sickly scents, another Queen unregulated by menders, unsupported by masses of thinkers. Left alone, to decide, to plan, to think. Incapable of doing so. “Eggs from primary breeding nest?”

“Evacuated. Link severed. Location unknown.”

“Will be safe. Will rebuild.” Off the sloped walls the delusional wants reverberated. Where the luminescent fungal growths had become unkempt, untended. Each measure, Skthveraachk had ensured tenders clip their lengths to match the grooves of the walls, so that light had shone softly down on the stands of molted skin. The raised and cleaned stones, bearing the scent of each Queens’ cycle. The vaults of Hollowcore, where the shed skeletons of each Skthveraachk Queen were gathered. Immortalized. Near three hundred cycles of history, contained here, shaded and recessed in an elongated stretch of cavern. One through which Ktcvahnaah Queen now crawled, her personal guards and strongest warriors all gathered in her defense. “Will survive. Will endure.”

“But you cannot adapt.” Costly. A moment of confusion was all they had. She spent it immediately. First, to draw the other Queen’s attention. “So you will forever be a remnant. Unable to accept the new.” Echoes of the past. Calls to what was. And second, to send her soldiers behind the shrined statues of molt. Towards the tunnel back to Hollowcore. A moment of confusion. Ktcvahnaah sought to identify the song. To resolve the conflicting scents. Skthveraachk crackled and creaked as she emerged into the lights lining the grand vault, the crest of a Queen hung from her foreleg and her crown arching on high. “And so doomed, to die in the old.”

“QUEEN IN DANGER!” Scream it to the Composer. It was still understatement. Ktcvahnaah’s attendants came first, heavy and soft. It was less an attack than a distraction, allowing the bloated Queen to turn and scamper in wild abandon for the tunnel. Back, to the colony that would give its last life to preserve her. Skthveraachk rammed her weight into the nearest as her soldiers attacked, crushing it flat to the floor. Deceiver found her way already barred, that precious moment well purchased. Scythes were flashing, glinting, while mandibles dug and seized. Three of her troop, dead, but the vault’s entryway was a battleground now. Impassable without risking death. Ktcvahnaah did not risk. She gathered her defenders, made her turn a full circle, and ran. Further into the cavern. Away, as Skthveraachk’s own guardians battled and bit and clawed. “DEFEND QUEEN! DEFEND COLONY!”

“Chase! Catch!” One to one. Soldier to soldier. These were no menials, not meager distractions. This was the best the other colony could present. They outnumbered Skthveraachk, and they locked limb and mandible to her own warriors. Sickling up a blow, the armored Queen hacked through a gaster, split it down the middle, and poured its contents free. Swatted aside another wounded body. Pursued.

“Skthveraachk Queen! I sing-…! May your mercy be as encompassing as your strength, your truth as shared as your wisdom!”

“You hurt me.” There was no formality. There was no custom. Down to twenty soldiers, they fell away one by one as they latched to the guardians Ktcvahnaah threw back at Skthveraachk. The tunnel was embattled. The exit, guarded. The room, long as it was, was not limitless. The War Queen stalked, paused only when slashing away aggressor, passing it to one of her children. An air thick with markers. Fear. Danger. Warning. Death. “You hurt me.”

“Skthveraachk Queen was dead! Skthveraachk Queen was taken by the sky! I saved colony, I preserved, I guarded!”

“I would have forgiven.” The drums beat above. Her colony was inside the nest proper, now. Taking back the clusters, the garrisons, the chambers. “I do not forget. I cannot. But Ktcvahnaah Queen would have been forgiven. Nearly ninety thousand, I was. Ninety thousand could have gone to Dracan, to the war of the star-sent. How many would have been saved? How much faster the fight ended? I left with only thirty. You hurt me.”

“You promised departure! Your words are frenzied, your truths wrong!” She was out of troops. Ktcvahnaah still had more to spare. Skthveraachk regulated her breathing. Adopted a stance of aggression. Two came upon her at once, and the puff of danger signals she emitted brought a more fearsome fervor to the soldiers behind, maddening their resolve to reach and protect her. The soldiers bit for her core. One succeeded, the other fell. She wrestled to pry the jaws off her as her shell impacted shallowly, the armor absorbing the weight. “You would leave our world! Your nests, mine!”

“I left our world. My nests, yours. I said I would go. I said I would leave you in peace.” Twisting, she snapped the head of the soldier entirely around. Scarring could be seen on its skeleton, sealant spots. These had seen combat. Caution. “I did not say I would not return. I did not say you would keep what you had stolen.”

“Frenzied! Frenzied!” Her bulbous gaster was there, ahead, lurching and pulling away into the dark as two more soldiers broke and rushed for the armored Queen. “Your song is soured! The sky-sent have warped you as they warp all! I would not join you! Would never join you! To go to the sky is death! If not of body, then of music!”

“I thought I might be frenzied. Once. I accused my thinker of frenzy. But how could he be? He could only do what I wished. If he killed, it was because a part of what is Skthveraachk wished it. I thought I had forgiven her. But she.” More careful, this time. Both scythes extending to thrust past the first’s defenses, her range greater. A turning swipe, to slam her protected gaster against the second’s body. Sending it flying into the wall. Cracked. Broken. . “She hurt me, too.” No communicator down here. No map. Alone, in the dark, tasting blood on her tongue and in the air. “You could have been so much.”

“Pity! Mercy! Save me from the star-sent as you did before! I will serve! My voice, as one, beneath yours! We will bring our unity to the others! I was wrong! Accident!”

“We will become so much under them. Not equals. Never equals. But so much more than we are now. Scraping in the dirt. Looking up in confusion. They are twisted. They are different. They are wrong. But they will change us. We will be better for it. Accept the new. Die in the old. The only choices. You chose already.”

“Skthveraachk Queen!” No more soldiers. No more obstacles. Skthveraachk slowed, to match the speed of the other Queen’s flight. The floor slippery beneath her excretions, the wet markings calling for aid, for support. Skthveraachk made no such calls. They were unnecessary.

“I wear a crest on my armor. Ckhehnvraahll-Colony does same. Hangs skulls of Vhersckaahlhn above her nest. Trophy. The humanites fear it. We took many skulls on Dracan, wore them, used them against the star-sent. This crest I wear is in love. Respect. She saved me. Your crest will be worn in mockery. Warning. The last Queen of Ktcvahnaah. The last Queen to hurt me.”

“Do not end my colony!” Even here, the last light of truth was lit beneath the other Queen. Desire for life. For self, yes. But it was not for herself the Ktcvahnaah begged. “The memories! Our temple must remain! Our song must endure! My children! My brood!”

“Your children will be mine or die. Your eggs will never know your song. Your temple will stand watched until Song’s End, but no one will visit your watchers. You could have been so much. You are the old. You are the past.” Smells of her children grew stronger as they filled Hollowcore. Refamiliarizing, pouring their odors over every sodden length of invaded territory. And Ktcvahnaah screamed as Skthveraachk’s scythes were finally brought down into her gaster. Struggling enough that the blades slid through her meat and shell, at first. Requiring another plunge to fully pin her to the stone. “You hurt me. So many have hurt me. I cannot repay them.”

“My final note! Remember! Burrow Queen! My colony!”

“I can repay you. Goodbye, Ktcvahnaah Queen.” It was a wrongness, to enjoy the work. The effort that went into prying the crest from skull, the pouring out of blood and brain and life. She told herself it was required. Bathing the crest and ridges in the pain, the fear, the final notes of pleading and writhing and hurt, so that the smell could be sealed and encapsulated on the chitin. That for tens of cycles, the Burrow Queen’s wails could be tasted, heard, touched by those who came near. Skthveraachk told herself that was why it took two entire beats for Ktcvahnaah to finally go silent. As she strode through the central hall, that chasm that dripped and rained down blood from eight layers soaked in bodies above, a part of her believed. The other wondered what it meant. When one could lie not just to others, but also to one’s own self.

“Queen is safe!”

“Queen is safe. Notify crafters.” The Band was still crackling, unable to transmit from beneath the mountain. “Connect.”

“Skthveraachk Queen. Initial combat with formites, promising. Design updates, in planning.”

“Prioritize change to spears.”

“Spears?” It felt oddly distant, the way she sung through the tasks arranged for her return to the linkage. “Insufficient? New hardstone tips highly effective. Will adopt into all construction.”

“Hafts. Fighting spears, sufficient. Throwing spears, problematic. Enemy formites saw. Copied. During battle, removed spears from bodies. Threw back. Damage sustained. Must adapt.”

“Received. Will add priority.”

“Queen is safe!” Celebration. Tens of hundreds had surrendered from Kthcvahlaatch. Hundreds sought surrender from Ktcvahnaah. Breeding nests full of immature and developing eggs to boost their replenishment, pastures and subterranean farms of stalks needing harvest and replanting. Only the start. Only the start of it all. How outnumbered had they been? Two to one? Four? The losses were minimal, acceptable. One measure. Five nests. Thinkers cautioned against growing pompous, and Skthveraachk tempered the anticipation. There was work. So much work. But she was home. Ckhehnvraahll sent queries, and then adoration upon the Queen’s confirmation. Emerging to the light, the Band blipped back to life as the Skthveraachk set claws to the bridge now as much made of entangled bodies as thread and silk. Cleanup was paused. Eyes, seeing and relaying sight across more than two thousand lengths of dispersed battlefield, looked to her emergence. Skthveraachk briefly swayed, feeling the weight of it all. Then went on four legs. Held up, in foreleg claw, the severed head of Ktcvahnaah Queen.

And her roar was taken up by tens of thousands, raising themselves to the blue sky above.