She could smell the smoke as the cloth over the cave entrance was pushed aside, and the crackling wood and screams rushed in to appeal to her twisted ears. Yet, the thick cloth swept back to shut it out, and she barely flickered. The Queen trusted her sisters, young as they were.
The smaller changeling stood at the entrance as if daring her to speak a command. The strips of wax splattered up the sandstone glowed sickly green either side of the cloth, but as the Queen watched her subject stare at the earth and shuffle towards her, she knew the cave around herself and far behind her was pitch black. Puffs of royal breath faded into existence before whisking themselves out of the world. The smaller changeling would barely see it. Only one emerald eye glowed in the shadows.
I would look more intimidating with two, she thought. Maybe that would explain her appalling lack of discipline.
“Now… Moulder,” the Queen whispered, “I want you to tell me exactly what happened.”
The smaller changeling – Moulder – took a step forward.
“This can wait,” she snapped. “Rancid needs special attention immediately. I don’t think my usual stock can heal wounds like that.”
The Queen waited for the echo to die in silence. Quite apart from the dramatic strength, she needed the time to steady her breath.
“Moulder,” she said. Her voice was a raised knife quivering with bloodlust. “Houses smoke. Our sisters lie screaming in their dozens. Our best healers struggle. Our soldiers have no peace to keep. Tell me what happened.”
Moulder licked her lips. “We did everything according to the rituals described in the Catacombs. I don’t know what happened, but something wasn’t right this time.”
“And the rituals described in the Catacombs are?”
“Forgive me, Queen, but we’re wasting time. You know what the rituals are.”
“I certainly do. The question is; do you know?”
Moulder swallowed and shuffled her hole-ridden hooves. Good, thought the Queen. So she’s realizing what’s at stake here.
“Well?” she prompted.
“The gems were ready, including the emotion gems: we’d oozed all the juice we had and moulded each blob into a brilliant cut, as usual. No imperfections. The jeweller sister supervised the whole thing herself.”
“What emotion did you sacrifice?”
Moulder rubbed her head. “Rancid made the sacrifice. I told him I would gladly do it, Queen, but he insisted. I’m sure it’s nothing. It’s nothing, isn’t it?”
The green eye disappeared, and then opened again. Now, she’s using my honorific. That’s definitely a bad sign with this one. Normally, she’s not such a sycophant. “What sacrifice did he make?”
Moulder shook her head. She seemed to be slashing at an invisible foe before her. “I don’t know. I… I guess it would be love, the strongest he had, but –”
“What kind of love? And for who?”
“Queen, does it matter? It was love either way, one of the best emotions. I’m sure it had nothing to do with that –”
“Yet, you and he disappeared last night, didn’t you?”
Moulder stared in shock.
The Queen fought to dam her own green magic. Her horn was already sliding from a chill to warmth. She is your sister, she is your sister…
“You know you are not fit to be his special love,” she said with hardly a quiver of rage in her voice. “He has been here only three years, and it is clear he is excessive and greedy. He will have a lesser sister to placate him, not a prime mate like yourself. We don’t want you endangering the purity of our line.”
“It’s nothing like that!” Moulder threw herself forwards, as close to the shadows as she dared; the Queen could see the beads of sweat and wisps of smoke trailing off her skin. “He is like a brother to me. He would risk arrows and fire to pull any of us back to the village. Or do I have to remind you that none of us would be here if it wasn’t for him?”
The Queen shot to her hooves and lowered her horn at her. “Silence!”
“He’s the best drone we’ve ever had!”
“I said SILENCE!”
A crackle of energy lit the twisted, rotting horn, and for a moment Moulder flinched at the black chitin gleaming beneath her own neck.
Curse you for ever being born!
The wax hummed slightly as it glowed.
The Queen suppressed a gasp. She suddenly seemed to notice her scimitar horn for the first time, and slid back into the shadows. She placed herself into what she considered a dignified seating position; straight back, snout level, forelimbs a straight line from shoulder to ground. She was all too aware of the heat of her own magic between her ears.
“Now,” she said quietly, “I won’t repeat what I’ve said before, but let us make this clear: once this is over, you will cease encouraging this relationship immediately. I will not have infatuation masquerading as a life debt. Do you understand me?”
Moulder glared back.
I was this close, the Queen thought. Just this close! How could I do this? I'd hoped the meditation would work, but if this happens again…
The green light faded. “Well? Do go on.”
The air between their glares almost crackled.
Don’t look away, thought the Queen. No matter what just happened, no matter what you nearly did, you are still Queen, and you will not look away.
Moulder looked away. The Queen sighed as quietly as she dared.
“Once we created the gemstones,” said Moulder, as if nothing had happened, “we carried them down to the lake and left them at the temple overlooking the shore. I blew the horn and summoned Him. I gave Him our offering.”
“What did the drone do?”
“Rancid… recited the prayers to placate the hungry lake spirits. He lit the torches to draw good luck towards the warmth and the light, he doused himself and me with purified water from the shore, and he brought the basket of gems to the altar for Him.”
“So he did everything to the letter.” The Queen nodded to herself. “Interesting.”
“Is it relevant?”
“No. It is not relevant to this case.”
“Then please don’t bring it up. You sound like you suspect him of something.”
The Queen eased herself onto all fours. “Sometimes, I think you forget who the eldest sister in our village is. Do you need a reminder?”
“Queen, I’m not spitting at your hooves for a duel.”
“My dear sister, you wound me with your tone. Am I not a fair and lenient enough leader? Do I not show enough mercy for you? Old Gangrene would have killed you by now for daring to speak that way. Just be grateful I got her first, peace be upon her.”
The glare vanished from Moulder’s face. “Peace be upon her.” She bowed. “I apologize, Queen.”
For once, the Queen heard no malice in the voice, hidden or otherwise.
The gales whistled through the stalagmites and stalactites behind the Queen, howling to find their way down to the Queen’s back. She remembered the rumours of unnatural winters swooping down on the pony nations to the north, and licked her lips. Cold blasts were a dinner gong to her sisters. All that love huddled together before the fireplace was bliss on the tongue.
“Yes,” she said in businesslike tones. “So you appear to have completed the ritual without issue. And yet He still came.”
“Yes, Queen. I am sorry, Queen.”
The dying gale swept across the cavern, with the Queen’s lank mane fluttering in its wake over her swollen red mass of a left eye. Barely a tickle passed through, but she remembered her old mirror – some donkey artefact from a few raids back – and her gaunt statue of a reflection letting the locks slip into clefts along the walnut-like wound.
“I know what you’re thinking, Queen,” said Moulder.
The Queen resisted the urge to smirk; this sudden interruption had not made her crack a muscle, and it was a stoic skill she would not drop lightly. “Do you, now? What brilliant mind reading is this?”
The blue eyes glittered strongly. “You think his emotion wasn’t strong enough.”
“I see. You disagree, I take it?”
“It would not sway your opinion if I did.”
“Regardless of what I say, it won’t prevent your drunken passions from going against my order. That is clear enough. So let me spell it out for you,” said the Queen, and the face leaned forwards until the gleaming tip of the horn poked out of the shadow. She made no attempt to halt the rising glow. “If you do anything to threaten the integrity of this village, I will kill him.”
Moulder spluttered. “Him?”
“He is becoming a liability to our very survival. We have enough problems keeping bounty hunters and so-called ‘heroes’ from wiping us out, and they are merely our prey.” The Queen tried to soften her expression. She’d practised this with the mirror, and it never seemed possible to shake off the half-glare the slash wound had left. “You’d rather I killed you?”
At this, Moulder stamped a hoof and rose, wings beating furiously, to head height. “The Catacombs be damned! Yes I do. And if you kill him, you might as well kill me too.”
A shot of green plasma leapt from the horn. Wax exploded all around them, splattering Moulder’s back and the Queen’s forelimbs. Neither of them had moved an inch. Moulder’s right shoulder oozed green slime from a scar that hadn’t been there a second before.
Curse you! Curse you, Moulder! The Queen hoped beyond hope that the flicker of shock on her face had not been spotted. Why am I so weak when you do this to me?
She blew out the smoking tip of her horn. “You watch your mouth, maggot! You’d have to challenge my title before I could even dare to kill you, and even then you’d have to wait for Patella and Scapula to challenge me first or die trying. And no force in this world or the next will make me choose to save his life over yours. But I will say this: I can and WILL make your life a ceaseless misery if you dare defy me again!”
Moulder spat at the royal hooves. The Queen had enough sense to stay still. She could see the shoulders wobbling.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said.
“I will heal him,” croaked Moulder.
“But you will not endanger this village. Do I make myself clear?”
“Crystal, Queen.” Moulder shot for the cloth. It flashed violet light and the Queen appeared before her.
The Queen’s glowing eye narrowed. She could feel a slight heat behind her twisted horn and knew it had just pulsed. How is it you always get to me, Moulder? How?
“And one last thing before you go, Moulder,” she whispered.
“Yes, Queen?”
This time, the Queen’s horn nearly stabbed between Moulder’s eyes. “You will not insult the Catacombs again. The runes are there for a reason.”
Gusts criss-crossed overhead to bring scattered seeds and small creatures over hills and mountains. The cliffs of this country rose up to mark the ultimate boundary, within which she found all she needed and beyond which were the dead grasslands of lost farms and vanished villages. All caves gave her secret bolt-holes, hideaways, and short-cuts to many of the dwellings that dotted the forests, the rivers, the marshes, and the hills.
Even the great lake beside the changeling village of mud huts and thatched rooftops, shrouded as it was in unrelenting mist, would serve sixteen different uses before anyone got thirsty enough to think of bending their necks down and drinking.
Yes, the Queen thought as she crouched among the bracken. Everything is there for a reason.
She grinned when Moulder, cresting the next ridge between the conifers, glanced back and swivelled her head from side to side. Moulder had never been assigned to scouting duty, not least of all because she breathed hard enough for neighbouring villages to hear her coming. The Queen, however, remembered her lessons from Old Gangrene, a tutor who once beat her senseless for blinking too loudly.
Soil slid down her chitinous flanks and beetles crawled over her wings and mane. She was slick with mud and tangled leaf litter, but that was just for completeness’ sake. Moulder would have to step on the Queen before noticing her in her spidery stillness.
They were where the forest met the foot of the cliff, on the other side of the lake. A wicker basket – stolen during a griffon raid – hung from Moulder’s horn, and as she peered up the sheer wall of limestone, it rolled along her forehead. She’d simply pushed her way into her house and then rushed out under the full moon with it. At least she’d had the sense to cover it with black silk – plundered on a minotaur raid – but thorns, swamp mud, and dead insects now punctured the flowing fabric.
The Queen frowned. You’re obviously planning something. The question is what.
She watched as Moulder glanced left and right, buzzed her wings, and shot up the cliff face. The Queen shifted slightly to make her out beyond the fuzzy branches overhead. Black shadows spread up the face where the contours blocked the moonlight. Moulder vanished through one, and emerged from the upper side. She passed a second one. The third one she plunged into, and seconds passed.
The Queen’s grin widened, crackling as it stretched. She flapped her wings, bending them and rounding them to soften the beats. She kept up the flapping.
She galloped at the wall, then up it, wings pumping furiously.
As soon as she reached the cave entrance, she ducked to one side and pressed her shoulder and flank against the boulder. All in complete silence.
Try and best me now, rookie, she thought. It was a wonder her cheeks didn’t crack in the wake of her grin.
She peered around the boulder. Her grin vanished.
Her eye told her she was in a vast cathedral. Stained windows, bone-smooth columns, and oak pews lined themselves either side of the central aisle. Moulder was taking small steps, glancing around with wide eyes and gapes as she passed the pulpit and entered the sanctuary where the altar sat. Despite the emptiness, there seemed to be a distant choir, perhaps hidden beyond the windows or hiding within the cathedral. It was impossible to tell. The acoustics were all over the place.
The Queen turned to the cave entrance and met only a towering gateway clanging shut.
“What is this? Magic?” she whispered. “There’s nothing up here.”
She glanced forwards, and saw Moulder had stopped to examine the ceiling.
There were paintings on every square inch up there, frescoes of nearly every species she knew. There seemed to be one for each particular painting, but always with some ghastly visage laughing and leering at the creatures. In the frames were scribbled foreign languages, none of them recognisable, but all spiky and simple-looking shapes. Only a remaining quarter of the ceiling nearest the altar’s sanctuary was nothing but blank plaster between golden frames.
The Queen peered closely at one painting directly overhead: a minotaur half-turning into stone, bellowing with hands stretched to the sky while a ghostly visage laughed openly. Further along, a sea serpent writhing in underwater flames; here, a crowned unicorn growing two more heads; there, a changeling being sucked into a mirror. That visage was in every painting, twisted into a hundred taunting faces, vaguely familiar.
Ice slid down the Queen’s spine. Old stories and tales rose like ghosts in her mind.
“No,” she whispered. “Moulder, you fool…”
Her knees shifted. Was that a spasm?
They shifted again. One foreleg rose up and pinned itself against the boulder. The Queen tried to yell, but something caught her throat. Only a brief, cut-off whine escaped.
Not her, she thought. Surely not her. Even you, Moulder, can’t be that desperate.
She was slammed into the boulder and her head fixed towards the sanctuary, where a suit of armour popped into existence with a burst of stars and quacks. Unseen bonds crushed her limbs against her chest and belly.
Moulder reached forwards and began sliding the iron plates over her limbs. Her hooves trembled, but soon she was fully clad. The choir music rose to ecstatic peaks before she reared up and bowed her head.
It was then that she tiptoed forwards, threw back her locks, swept her left hoof over her head, and began to dance.
Echoes of hurried hoof steps fought against the lung-busting notes of the invisible choir. Straining against the binding spell upon her, the Queen could only see a blur of black as Moulder weaved and slashed and thrashed and leapt and stomped from place to place, alien to any rhythm or grace. While she danced, Moulder struggled to speak over the choir. Then the Queen realized: it wasn’t speech, but song, in some sharp, bellowing tongue that scrambled in her ears.
I didn’t teach her any of this. And I’ve always followed her out, or had her followed. So where the devil is this coming from?
The basket lay untouched beside the altar. Silk slipped away and a knife rose out, hovering blade-down. The Queen found her gaze drawn towards it.
Corn’s knife! How did she get that? My private stores cannot be found, much less breached and escaped from.
In the throes of her dance, Moulder bared her fangs and snatched the knife from the air. She stopped, spun round, and was at the altar. She was breathing heavily, even over the choir.
The Queen’s nostrils flared. What are you –? NO!
Panic rose as she tried to pull her limbs free. They did not move. No scream escaped her lips. No sweat broke out along her back. No flash of strength came from her wings.
Gripped between teeth, the knife sliced down. Moulder howled over the clatter of steel on the tiles until her voice cracked, and the Queen tried to shake everything out of her frozen head. She would never forget the thump it made.
Green ooze flowed out of the forelimb and onto the edge of the altar. It dripped onto the floor.
A chunk of charcoal floated out of the basket and gagged Moulder as she howled and sobbed, choking her. Mere whispers cut through the cathedral’s silence.
Moulder, you fool. The Queen’s spine creaked as she twisted it against the spell. You’ve gone and done it. You must have let her in before now; there’s no way you planned this just today. She’s poisoned your mind, and now you’re summoning her. You poor, deluded fool!
Shoulders wracking with suppressed sobs, Moulder bent down and backed off. One long scratch followed the charcoal as she weaved along the floor of the sanctuary. Flecks of green ooze and spit followed. Sniffs punctuated the long drag.
“Aha haha ha haaaa…”
The air shook with the throaty timbres. It was dark chocolate melting on the ear, but the Queen felt her face try to hide behind her neck. The ruined eye throbbed with the memory of pain. There was no doubt whose voice that was.
“There was an old lady who swallowed a fly,” sang the mellifluous voice, but over its rich warmth, there crept a snakelike relish. “I don’t know why she swallowed the fly. Tee-hee. Perhaps she’ll die…”
The Sorceress.
Moulder collapsed and let the charcoal drop and clatter away. Some of the symbol shivered.
“Before we begin, little fly,” said the voice, “Teacher wants to make absolutely sure you know what you’re doing. That quaint little ritual, for instance. Very well done, but I’ll need to see your working. In order to, ah, ‘eliminate’ the fakers.”
Moulder squeezed her stump against her chest and heaved to keep her sobs together. The cathedral dimmed until only the stained glass windows were aglow with moonlight.
“Oh, pull yourself together, dearie,” said the voice in a half-giggle. “It’s only a flesh wound.”
“The…” spluttered Moulder, “the T-Tale of the Th-Three G-G-Great-t-t… B-B-Brothers!” She broke into more sobs. She wrestled her own ribs.
Somewhere behind the red mist in her eyes, the Queen felt old voices breathing against her ear. The fairy tale? she thought. Why that?
Aha haha ha haaaa…
“Get out of my head!” the Queen shrieked. At least, she nearly did. The spell cut off her voice box before she’d even thought to speak it.
Finally, the sobs died away. Moulder took a deep breath. She bowed to the podium.
“There,” she said. She glanced at the windows. Then she continued, “There were three great brothers. Um… the Greater, the Less – no, the Middler – and the Lesser.”
She blinked at the cathedral’s altar.
“Go on, my little bookworm,” said the voice.
“And, and they were the sons of the Great Earth God sent to rule the world and keep things in balance. The Greater – no, the Middler – yes, the Greater! He was proud and arrogant, the Greater was, and the Middler was, er, dull and unambitious. But the Lesser was kind and tried to earn his love from his family. I think.”
“For goodness’ sake, you little gnat! GET ON WITH IT!”
Cracks smashed across the columns and floor tiles. Moulder’s scream was cut off. Her laboured breathing hit the Queen in the chest.
“This prison is no picnic, you know. If you’re going to muck about, don’t bother calling me.”
Moulder closed her eyes and took a deep breath. When she spoke, her voice was a tightrope walker over a pit of knives.
“The G-Greater achieved mighty th-things, and the M-Middler was ig-ignored, wh-while the L-Lesser was b-bullied for being a run… a run… a runt. For this, the Greater was sent on mighty quests while the Lesser was given im… impossible rules to obey, and then p-punished even if h-he p-p-performed them well.”
In spite of her straining sinews, the Queen relaxed. She knew this tale. How often had she told it herself over campfires, under summer sunshine, or within the royal cavern itself?
“One day,” said Moulder, and her voice gained strength, “the Greater couldn’t find the Lesser and so b-bullied the Middler instead. The Middler craved the freedom to live in safety and decided to… to protect himself. One day, he went to the Sorceress –”
Here, the voice muffled its own chuckle.
“– and asked for great power to rival his brother’s. It was granted to him, but in payment, the Lesser was turned to stone and kidnapped.
“The Greater, fearing the Middler’s powers and forced by his grieving family to rescue his youngest sibling, went to bring the Lesser back, and as punishment got the Middler turned into stone instead. No one grieved his passing.
“The Lesser felt sorry for the Middler, and tried to reason with the Sorceress, but here he showed naivety. The Sorceress told the Greater about this encounter, and he went into a fit of paranoid rage and sealed the Lesser in a cave as a slave, fearing he had been this close to turning to stone.
“At first, the Lesser tried explaining to his brother and obeyed his orders to appease him, but his brother rebuffed him and tormented him more, leaving the Lesser in painful incomprehension, for he both loved his brother and feared him.
“Eventually, the Lesser became weaker and sicker, and came to mortally fear his brother’s enslavement. After an insulting request, he went mad with fury and fear, and tore at his brother’s eyes, killing him.
“Realizing that this would bring retribution on him from the entire family, he hid in terror and vowed to gather strength to protect himself and others.”
Well recited, Moulder, thought the Queen. Disembodied clapping followed.
I hope you’re paying attention, you. It’ll be very important later.
GET OUT OF MY HEAD!
Bile rushed up the Queen’s chest and burned her. Only her eye flicked from side to side, while the rest of her itched to shake and buck and bite.
“Now,” said Moulder, and there was new fire in her as she pointed to her chest with her good forelimb. “This protective armour I wear represents the brother seeking defence from his brother. The dance I performed represents the brother appeasing the Sorceress, er, you. The chant I spoke represents the brother trying to reason with you.”
The dismembered limb levitated over the altar. Moulder’s cheeks swelled and she held her throat to stop the gag.
“And this, little lamb?” said the voice.
“Th-That…” mumbled Moulder, “is the, er, br-brother’s payment. I mean, it represents it. It…”
She lurched to the left and choked, coughing until the floor was splattered with spittle. The symbol glowed red beneath her.
“Aaaand this represents what?” said the voice.
Moulder fell onto her knees, swaying with weakness. “The world. In balance. And that squiggle surrounding it is… it is… the storm of ch… the storm…”
At once, the symbol flashed and writhed. Snakes of doodles arced and intertwined in the air. Moulder fell onto her back as it scythed at her, contorting the air around itself until ghosts of claws, phantom limbs, and face-like mirages glowed white. Colours rippled over the shapes as other squiggles poured in. Talons and teeth meshed with fur and scales. Some snakelike monster emerged in the centre of it, pressing against the kaleidoscope cocoon.
“The storm of chaos,” said the voice.
The Queen winced as blinding light flashed into her eyes and vanished. Everything was purple with afterglow. Finally, it cleared.
She gasped.
The Sorceress clapped her paw and claws and winked, throwing Moulder an apple.
“Very good, my little student,” she cooed. “Very good. Now, perhaps you’d be so kind as to tell me what you want Teacher to do for you? What’s the lesson of the day?”
She snapped the digits of her paw with all the dexterity of a magician’s fingers. The black forelimb popped out of existence.
Moulder gasped, staring down. “What? But… But how? You… You give it back?”
The Sorceress guffawed and slapped the changeling’s rump. “Oh no, I just threw that request in for giggles. Good symbolism, though, good symbolism. Aw, sweetie, don’t feel bad.” She snapped her paw. A handkerchief appeared and began wiping Moulder’s tearstained cheeks. “Mummy’s not as bad as her Master. No, he watches and waits beyond this world, with power in his little pinkie that I could never hold in my entire form, and he will one day BREAK THROUGH THE BARRIERS AND TURN THIS WORLD UPSIDE-DOWN, AND INSTIL TERROR AND CONFLICT ACROSS ALL OF CREATION!”
She glowered. “Some people get all the fun. Now, you were asking, my dear?”
Moulder stomped on her reattached hoof and hissed. “Enough talk! Teach me how to heal Rancid. He has a sickness I cannot remove. It was sent by Him as punishment. My love’s life is ebbing away.”
“‘Him’? Ooh, we do love our pronouns, don’t we? You mean La Menor, oui?”
The Queen flinched at the name. She saw Moulder gasp and cross her chest.
“Oh, don’t be so dramatic,” spat the Sorceress. “It’s just two little words. You’d think he’d pop out of nowhere and – my goodness – flame you for it.” She cracked her talons. “Okie dokie, one nasty little disease going bye-bye. Just indulge a curious teacher for a moment. Let’s see if someone learns something from all this.”
She licked her lips. Moulder growled; now that the theatrics were over, she had tensed all over and was frying the Sorceress with her glare. “Every second is a second closer to death. Heal him!”
“I’m a sorceress, lassie, not a pencil-pusher. I have no set schedule. I can take all the time I please.”
“Please, heal him!”
Listen to her, said the Sorceress’ voice in the Queen. So desperate, so fierce, so… stupid. What have you been doing to her? She’s no fun at all.
The Queen bared her teeth. Think of the caves at home, think of the caves…
“Aw, you’re just so cute.” The Sorceress pouted and pinched Moulder’s cheek, wiggling it about. “I just want to eat you up and spit out your bones.”
Moulder struck the talons and the Sorceress sniffed.
“Very well, Little Miss Cajole,” she continued stuffily. “I’ll heal him. Now, because I’m not completely insane, there is a price.”
She snapped her talons. A paintbrush and easel appeared in the thin air before the two with a clatter. Something caught the Queen’s eye. When she peered up, she saw a blank spot flashing among the frescoes overhead.
“The nice thing is that you get to choose the price yourself. The even nicer thing is that, if I reject it, everything goes horribly wrong for you and there’s nothing you can do about it. Take a look around the hall. That’ll give you some inspiration.”
Moulder glanced up at the ceiling. Her face began to pale.
“Of course, if you’d rather let your drone go urk…” The Sorceress slid a talon over her grey-furred neck, and her head flopped over on a hinge. “I would quite understand.”
No, Moulder. No, don’t do it. The Queen flexed and writhed against the magical bonds, but they merely squeezed tighter. You witch! You dare do anything to her, and I swear I will tear your mismatched body into two halves, and make them eat each other.
Yes, right after you break out of that binding spell, I expect. Relax, darling. You can do nothing whatsoever to stop her. C’est la vie.
“Now, let’s see what you come up with!” The Sorceress sat back on her haunches and grinned at the canvas, head still flopping upside-down.
Reluctantly, Moulder sat behind the easel and picked up the brush with her fangs. Her neck swung and lifted and fell, barely altering in its flow. After a while, she seemed oblivious to anything else around her.
The Queen tried to steady her heartbeat. Although Moulder’s frown – whether of concentration or distaste, she couldn’t tell – was clear from here, the painting was facing away from the boulder. She found her gaze drawn to Moulder’s limb.
Moulder, she thought. He’s not worth this. Don’t sacrifice yourself for that drone.
“OK, time’s up. Now, let the judges see what evil’s on the easel.” The Sorceress flipped her head back on and swept over to the canvas. She drew back with a squeal. “Ooh, very nice. Very diabolical. Yes, what a twist. The originality of the vision is excellent. You’re breaking new ground here, Michelangelo. I might even call it… regal.”
Moulder turned it around.
Everything from the Queen’s wingtips to her bones chilled.
A snap of the Sorceress’ talons conjured red fire from the four corners of the ceiling. They burst and the cinders reformed into red fire as they encircled Moulder’s head. She covered her face against the glare.
They shot across and struck the Queen in the chest. The boulder shattered into pebbles.
“Power taken,” muttered the Sorceress, “is power raised and fallen. Even as the mountain howls with derision, the storm of time strikes without end, and she is become as a mote unto the wind.”
Spikes seared through the Queen’s skull, wrenching the bone and muscle out of place. It pulled from her scalp, stretching up to the ceiling, and then eased off. She opened her eye and saw two antennae dangling in front of her.
Needles slashed at her wings, but instead of ripping pieces off, they seemed to add more fibre to them. They flexed and rolled and ballooned and spread over the contours of sudden eddies and vortexes. Trailing strips unfurled and stretched out like fabric behind them.
Clubs smashed her limbs in, blowing chunks of black into the air to vanish. Under her gritted teeth and gagged groaning, the holes in her legs shrank and vanished. Four scything trunks were reduced to wiggling twigs.
A vice seized every inch of her head and pressed down. Teeth cracked. Wails hit her deformed jaws. Fangs shattered. She couldn’t stop wailing even as the vice pushed her scalp into her throat and snapped her snout.
“Stop!” shrieked Moulder.
The pain vanished.
The Queen fell and hit the tiled floor. She panted at the ground, trying to summon her senses. A shadow fell over her. She strained to look up.
It was Moulder. There was no mistaking the face. It just didn’t usually fill her entire eye. Two blue suns blinked down at her. A mouth like a cave gaped at her.
“Wh-What?” boomed the giant.
The Queen winced and covered her ears.
Moulder pointed with a trembling hoof. “Y-You? Y-You followed me?” She turned to face the Sorceress. “What is this?”
Behind her, the Sorceress saluted cheerfully. “We understand you have lots of choice when it comes to demonic pacts, and we thank you for choosing Sorceress Service. Now, I think you two’ve got a lot to talk about, so I’ll be in a higher plane of existence, just over there. Eavesdropping. Toodle-oo! Oh, and…”
She giggled and bowed so low towards the Queen that her nose pecked the floor. Her head came up.
The Queen almost bolted. Thirteen voices ripped through each other amid the tentacles, pincers, and red light, and somewhere in the middle of that mass was a face that would eat through every nightmare in her future sleep.
“LONG LIVE THE QUEEN! AHA HAHA HA HAAAA!”
The Sorceress popped like a balloon and a stench of strawberries saturated the air. A painting of a black breezie joined the ceiling overhead. The hall faded back into the dark cavern of before.
Canvasses of leaves swatted at the Queen as she fluttered by. She hated her gossamer wings snagging on spires of twigs, and her legs threatened to snap at the breeze’s vast eddies wheeling her to and fro. Everything was too loud, from the piercing shrieks of the birds in the canopy to the blundering hoof steps of Moulder below. Even Moulder’s hushed voice battered her curled antennae.
“I’m sorry, Queen,” Moulder was saying. “Truly, I am. I would have accepted the punishment for myself, but the Sorceress’ poison forced its way into my mind –”
“Don’t insult me with your excuses!” The Queen gasped and covered her mouth. “My god, is that what I sound like? You dare to pin your own childish, spiteful urges on your own instrument? Once summoned, the Sorceress doesn’t perform magic against her master unless asked, you stupid, spineless traitor!”
Moulder laughed. Each boom set the Queen’s pinprick canines on edge.
“What?”
“I’m sorry. I can’t take you seriously when you sound like a cricket gargling.”
“Do you forget who you’re talking to? Whoa!” She ducked a boulder of a berry and lowered herself to Moulder’s blue eye.
“I’m sorry,” Moulder insisted. “I shouldn’t have said that, my sister. No! In fact, I take it back. Why should I apologize? You got what you deserved. Who do you think you are, threatening Rancid? After all he’s done for you?”
“Who am I? Who am I?” The Queen spread out her eyelash-thin limbs. “I am the Queen of the hive, the eldest sister, the protector of our village. I am she who has fought the ceaseless minotaur Corn and kept him wandering the wilds in despair and listlessness. He alone could wipe us out if we showed so much as a weak hoof, and there are hordes of others like him who seek our destruction. I keep the village in line and obeying the Catacombs!”
To her shock, Moulder sped right past her. She dodged aside, spinning in the slipstream.
I am going to kill her if I ever get my old body back, she thought.
“Are you hearing me?” she shrieked into the darkness.
“Yeah, I heard you. I’m not ignoring you.”
The Queen cannoned into the bracken, but a leg was snagged between two feathery wisps of the frond and she braced herself to pull it out. All the while, Moulder’s steps began to die away.
It was dawning on her that she was having a harder time against the undergrowth than Moulder.
If they need a strong front, what now that I’m a weak Queen?
“Moulder, I order you to return to the Sorceress and revoke your wish!”
A chaos of blubbering ripped through the air. With one tug, the Queen freed herself and sped forwards to the noise, wincing and twisting her antennae to muffle it. Moulder had fallen to her knees in bubbling mud, howling at the overcast sky beyond the fuzzy branches.
“I don’t believe you. I don’t believe you! Even in a breezie’s corpse, you’re still trying to ruin my life, throwing away my lover and your saviour for ‘the village’.”
The Queen sniffed. “Oh yes. You believe your lover’s affection is genuine, do you? What proof have you?”
“You cold-hearted bully! I hate the very air you breathe, you soul-sucking monster!”
The Queen ran a hoof over her elongated eyelashes. No. Tell me it’s not true. Don’t you understand me at all? Surely, you must have some idea why I choose as I do?
Moulder suddenly vaulted up and galloped through the undergrowth. The Queen shrieked and forced her wings to flap harder.
“Moulder, slow down!”
“Rancid has fought on our side in the battles for the village as fellow medic for years! We cured each other and worked together! We hunted for food together from local villages and flew together over the mountains! He used to leave me for a while whenever I got tired, and then bring back some plundered trinket to please me!”
Finally, she slowed down. The Queen almost hit the back of her head, just before Moulder turned around.
My gods, the Queen thought, look at her wide eyes. She truly believes it.
“He talked about taking me back to his own village.” Moulder sighed. “I didn’t think that was even possible. Oh, Queen, I don’t know how to convey it. He excites me.”
“It isn’t possible. Drones never return to their villages once they’ve left. Their role is merely to seek a mate, found a village, and die. Thank goodness I intervened. You have no idea what he could be. For all you know, Rancid is an eloper.”
The wide eyes narrowed. “I beg your pardon?”
“Oh, don’t tell me you’ve never heard of elopers? They pull interested but low-ranking mates away from their homes without consulting anyone higher up, like the Queen. They say it’s to ‘start a colony’, and before you know it, they lose interest, abandon the poor darling, and find another colony to woo. They’re diseased minds, Moulder. Unnatural.”
“How would you know?”
“Before your time.”
“HA! Don’t give me that bilge. You’re just making this up as you go along.”
I don’t have to explain myself to you, the Queen thought. You weren’t there. You didn’t see Old Gangrene in her prime, before she was queen. You weren’t even an egg then.
Well, I got the monster for her. I hunted him down and killed that cowardly eloper. Old Gangrene was never the same, but at least her soul could rest easy.
“It’s obvious what happened yesterday,” said the Queen, and here she aimed her horn – or the miniaturized remains of it – at Moulder’s forehead. “Your drone’s fake emotion angered Him.”
Moulder hit the Queen.
Leaf litter hammered her from all sides. She could barely breathe or gasp. Several seconds passed before any sense returned to her.
She realized she was shaking. For a moment, she thought the next thing she’d see would be a black hoof eclipsing the sky.
The steps died away.
“Moulder!” she cried out. “MOULDER!”
The Queen fought to get into the air. She pushed her way through the fronds to see the mud huts and thatched rooftops.
Changelings encircled the village, bearing armour and sweeping beams of green light to and fro. Changelings stood in rows and columns, patiently watching the sky. Changelings swooped onto the bare earth with fattened bellies and fed them mouth-to-mouth, trickles of green saliva dripping from their lips. Changelings galloped from cloth-covered entrance to cloth-covered exit. Changelings hovered over the still smoking inner ring of huts and vomited splashes of water over the ashes, while others stirred the black sludge with their hooves, leaned down to drink, and with shudders flew up and out to the lake.
I hardly ever see them at work these days, she thought. Once, I would have been in there with them.
Cries and moans echoed out of the healing hut nearby. The Queen ducked behind a leaf to avoid the sweep of a guard’s light, and then darted between his legs and over to it.
The healing hut went quiet for a moment, and the guard outside shifted in his purple plate armour. The Queen landed on the roof and stretched her limbs to peer down. A flash of cloth as Moulder bounded through it caught her attention.
“Where is Rancid?” Moulder nearly head-butted the guard.
The guard shrugged. “He’s not here.”
“What?”
“He has already left the village.”
Crisscrossing gales howled overhead. The Queen checked around the edge of the hut, and then crawled back into position.
“What?” breathed Moulder. “W-Without even asking for me?”
“He said he feared for his life and left with another.” The guard placed a hoof delicately on Moulder’s unresisting shoulder. “Scapula.”
“Scapula?” Moulder pawed at the earth, scattering dirt. “He left? With Scapula?”
“Yes. You never noticed? And she was beginning to think she’d never become Queen.”
The Queen had expected Moulder to break down into howls, wails, sobs, anything. Yet, as the weight of these words sank into the young changeling’s heart, she seemed to lose all life. Her very skin seemed to collapse. Everything stopped moving, and any light that danced across the surface of her eyes darkened like a frozen pool in a winter’s dusk.
The Queen bowed her head. This was where she should have stepped in to drive the warning home. Had she not tried to warn her ever since the young fool had smiled at that interloper?
She opened her mouth, but then she saw Moulder’s face and closed it again. His love might have been heartless and fake, she thought, but yours was no mere infatuation. What has that slimy insect done to you?
Some of the villagers gathered round eagerly.
“Moulder? Where is the Queen?” a stocky one asked. She and the others were leaning forwards, mouths open like worried dogs.
“Uh,” said Moulder, wiping an eye.
“We haven’t encountered her since Decadence saw you leave the village. Did the Queen leave with you? What were you doing?”
“I…” Moulder swallowed and straightened her neck. “I don’t know where she is. I’m sorry.”
A spark of emerald sliced along the Queen’s horn.
Sweat dripped from foreheads. Hooves rubbed scalps. Moulder glanced over to the perimeter where straggling shrubs shivered.
“I am here! I am the Queen!”
A bolt of green sliced into the earth at Moulder’s hooves, pricking it with a tiny scorch. Hisses and screeches broke out before the Queen’s silvery wings arced over their heads and came to rest at the front of the crowd. Her horn still glowed, as did her throat.
“SILENCE!”
The clearing died. Changeling spines, tied with old chains of obedience, snapped into place. Guards stood to attention. Fangs were quickly hidden behind closed lips.
“Moulder has broken the sacred runes and committed a heinous crime,” shrieked the breezie in her enhanced voice. “She has summoned the Sorceress.”
There were several gasps.
“Yes! And to heal her fetid drone, she spinelessly sacrificed me to that demon’s power. This, for a love offering as feeble and false as the gem that angered Him.”
“Shut up,” said Moulder.
“Rancid is an eloper, and Moulder is a traitor to the village.”
“No, shut up!” Moulder covered her ears. “Why will you never leave me alone? Why do you still pick on me?”
“I want her thrown into the cave of confinement and guarded night and day. She has become an insufferable liability, a weakness that we can no longer tolerate.”
None of the changelings moved. Many of them were still frozen, each face a rictus. Those at the back buzzed and hovered over the heads of the swarm. Even the guards coughed and stared. One or two changelings cocked their heads. One lanky specimen was stroking her chin.
“Stop staring and start obeying! I trained you in everything, even the most basic and general of rules. Just because my body is that of a feeble and otherworldly prey, it does not mean our society has changed. I am still your Queen. I still guide and protect you.”
Don’t I?
She shook the treason out of her head. “Did you hear what I said? Throw her into the cave!”
Patella stopped stroking her chin and stepped forward.
Her horn was already beginning to lengthen and twist. Where once she had been eye-to-eye with Moulder, now she could have sneezed onto her scalp or bitten her brow. The natural armour under her wings was already turquoise, and purple strips grew around her midriff. The tip of her tail tapped the ground with each step.
The eyes, the Queen thought. She already has half-coloured eyes. And there: pupils between the young blue and the mature green. Her body is already yearning for my role.
“The Queen let the eloper make the ritual,” said the upstart.
Changelings whimpered and shuffled their hooves all around. The Queen could smell the rank fear and uncertainty. It had been so long since Old Gangrene’s death that most of her sisters knew only one Queen.
So this is how it starts, is it? Open defiance and ridiculous questioning? Well, we’ll stamp out this bloodstained parasite right here. “I have given you an order, Patella. Don’t defy me!”
“The Queen let the eloper make the ritual, and so has mismanaged.” Patella’s voice was soft and careless, like a silken bed sheet tossed onto the ground, but the hidden steel was in her blazing eyes.
“What are you talking about? I didn’t authorize him to perform the ritual with her.”
“But you did not forbid it. You are still responsible for what has happened. A proper leader would have overseen the ritual.”
Several changelings shuffled uncomfortably where they stood. The Queen noticed, out of the corner of her eye, a few start to look away. A new smell tickled her antennae; something foul about Patella. A stench of powerlust.
She inflated her lungs. “This is nonsense. Now, Patella, I am Queen, and I order you to –”
“You also failed to stop the Sorceress pact.”
“And you would have done any better, would you, against even a lesser draconequus confined in a mystic prison? You cannot blame me for a sister’s betrayal! I had already mastered the runes in the darkest depths of the Catacombs when you were still learning your numbers.”
Patella spat at the ground beneath the Queen. The glob was so big that she had to back off fast. Patella grinned at her, showing a broken fang.
The changelings buzzed in trepidation, some of them pleading at the Queen through blue eyes. She could almost hear them whispering: Make this not happen.
The Queen turned white. “This is meaningless posturing, Patella.”
“Not according to your own rules. The Catacombs make it clear.”
Why are you looking at me like that? Her own wings shifted slightly, and she felt herself floating away from that hungry expression.
“Why? Why are you challenging me now? Has my leadership meant nothing to you?”
Patella closed her eyes and bowed her head. “I’m sorry, Fatalis, but what you say is true. We need a strong front, and since you are now the weak link, you can no longer give us that front.”
The Queen blinked. “Wh-What did you just call me?”
“No!” Moulder threw herself in front of the Queen. Her cheeks were shiny. “Patella, no! I hate the Queen. I hate what she’s done. But I don’t want her killed. Whatever else she is, she’s still our sister.”
“You…” said the Queen, staring past Moulder to Patella’s wide eyes. “You used my name.”
There was barely a flash of black. Moulder rolled aside, and Patella stepped forward into the recently vacated gap. Her grin faded.
In the heart of the Queen, an old emotion, long forgotten, began to slice into her. She flapped harder, pushing away from the shadow of Patella’s face. She’s been waiting for this all along.
“You’re not the Queen anymore, Fatalis.” The voice was almost a croon. “I’m afraid you’re too weak to live. I wish I could risk it, but I remember Old Gangrene too.”
“Patella, I –”
“You did right by us that day. I thank you, and you will be honoured. I promise.”
“P-Patella…” The Queen felt something break in her throat. “Patella, please…”
She shot aside as a glob of spit ploughed through the air beside her, and zipped back. Several changelings screamed.
Her whole body froze. Strain as she might, nothing moved. The black skin glowed as green as Patella’s horn, and she found herself drifting backwards. A pair of drool-flecked jaws creaked open.
That was when Moulder kicked her sister in the face.
The Queen tried to ignore Moulder’s cry of pain. She ducked into the undergrowth and weaved her way through the labyrinth of branches. Behind her, Patella yelled and her hooves ploughed over the mud. Spider webs flashed past the Queen’s face each time she jinked. Surges of magic picked around her; Patella was trying to snatch her with her telekinetic magic.
“If you fwee,” yelled Patella around an obstruction in her mouth. “I degware you ha’ forfi’!”
The Queen dived through the sea of grass blades and into a crevice, but leapt back from the teeth of a mouse and whizzed on. Blown stems whipped at her. Deformed antennae and pincers snatched at her. Wafts held back her frantic beats. Drops of rain shrieked and exploded all around her.
She hit the surface of a pond. It glued to her belly and limbs, and sucked her down. She thrashed at it, hit soil, and hauled herself onto it.
The distant yells of Patella died away. The Queen fell onto her back, panting and straining against the dead weight of dew crushing her chest and joints. She stared up at the canopy, and realized it was just grass.
From afar, the wall of roars rent the air and shook pebbles across the earth. Her antennae flapped in the raging gale. There was no mistaking the dragon of the lake. La Menor.
I’m such a fool, she thought. This shouldn’t have happened. Without a genuine emotion gem to satisfy Him, He is getting impatient. I hope the new Queen is smart enough to get the gem to them.
Fatalis fixed her gaze onto the pond’s surface. The new Queen. Yes.
She rubbed her shoulders and upper limbs, and quivered. She had to keep it in, something that was a part of her, but she wanted to wash it out, wipe it off, or throw a full-bodied seizure and buck it off. Something sacred had been lost. No, Patella had taken it! No shot had landed, but something had hit her back there, and she felt its poison running through her guts and heart and throat, sapping her muscles and draining her soul while it seeped through.
Fatalis.
She looked at the memory of Patella’s glowing horn and wondered, in the darkness of her mind, whether that would have been all any of her sisters ever thought of her. Not the Queen who served for many years of peace and bliss and – above all – security, but the one that was dragged down to a mere fey bit of an insect and then left a stain on the floor. “Don’t tread on her; you might have to scrape her off afterwards.”
She fought back a wail and wrapped herself tighter where she was.
Whatever rain had bombarded them before had thinned to a drizzle, flecking drops of dew along the contours of leaves and stems. A flake of bark floated on the pond’s surface.
I remember looking upon Moulder as a hatchling, she thought. I named her in honour of the dark half of the life and death cycle, just as the Catacombs said. I made her take the vow of protection. I even had a hole put through my left hoof to make the sacrifice for her strength. I did it all.
But the way she looked at me…
Where was the infatuation and resentment all those years? Moulder, do none of my days and lessons matter to you anymore? Did they ever matter to you? I fed you, I watered you, I blessed you and prayed for you and taught you every letter of the Catacombs’ runes…
Tell me, Moulder! What did I ever do to you? Please tell me! I can’t stand not knowing!
She stretched out a foreleg. It truly was a black twig, swaying slightly even in this mild breeze. That wretched Sorceress – she made this possible! That power was there all along, and I was only ever an ant, scurrying to and fro fixing small dirt tunnels while she sat, but a stone’s throw away, holding hot oil over our heads and smirking at us.
“What was it all for?” she whispered. “I’m weak. I was always weak; that witch did nothing she couldn’t already do, and now I’m doomed to die unless I can undo this. I must undo this, now!”
She flared her wings and flipped forward onto all four legs, and as she did so, she caught her reflection in the pond. She froze, poised for a sharp downthrust, fangs clenched.
The breezie in the water was a black strip of spider legs and bulging green eye. Antennae hung limply over the spit-of-a-nose. Both ears were little more than pointy dots behind the flaring threads of eyelashes. As for the limbs and torso? Jagged needles bracing a dark pebble. Grey bristles flitted at the tail.
Yet, she was nothing but a pair of wings, two blobs of cobweb flapping and rustling to whisk her away at the faintest waft. They wavered over her, with no care for her straining effort at closing them behind her back. There was nothing changeling about them.
Fatalis eased backwards and let her rump pat the earth. Only the puff of dust haunted her sitting, but soon faded with the other ghosts.
I hate the Catacombs. I hated killing Old Gangrene, peace be upon her. I never loved any second of it, and yet they said I should do it, and I did it. All my love for her, and I still did it.
No! I was right to do so. Old Gangrene was getting older and crazier. She was breaking the sacred rituals and getting upset over mere etiquette. And that meant the village would be wiped out if I didn’t take a firm hold. A weak Queen means a weak hive. A weak hive means a dead hive. And what is one changeling to the hive?
So I challenged her. I challenged her and… made it quick.
Fiercely, she crushed her eye with lids and hoof. No! Don’t you dare show that emotion! Not that one. Every tear shred is a stab into the soul. By gods, I still have that.
Oh, sister. What did I do to you?
Cheers and growls disturbed the patter of drops on the pond. Changeling yells and wingbeats met her ears. She stood up at once, heart racing, but then settled down again: mixed in with the cries and hums were beating drums and whistling wood. She closed her eye. She could almost blink at the glowing wax lanterns and crisp her skin before the ceremonial bonfire.
Forgotten already.
A trickle slid down her cheek. She swatted it away and shook herself down.
