Evoli Victorious

by Starscribe

Rating: teen
Tags: Profanity, Violence, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Dark, Death, Human, Changelings, Adventure, Tragedy
Length: 26665

Long after the event stole all the humans from Earth, changeling queen Evoli is sick of the constant self-destruction of pony civilizations. Maybe if someone with real talent for leadership could take over, her swarm wouldn't go hungry.

Over a thousand years ago, every human on Earth vanished. The ponies left behind were forced to rebuild what they could, largely ignorant of their new abilities. When a devastating plague spelled the end of the first age of pony civilization on Earth, the changelings were forced to watch helplessly as their food supply withered away.

Queen Evoli's swarm is barely surviving on the measly drops of love they can scavenge from the slow-recovering pony population. But it wouldn't have to be that way, if only somepony who really knew how to lead was in charge. She is many centuries old now, with power and experience that ponies in their short lives cannot imagine. Maybe if the world had somepony like her to rule it, civilization would do better.

At least she wouldn't be going hungry anymore...

A Ponies After People story written for Sparktail on my Patreon, crossposted to Fimfiction. Updates daily until complete. Edited by Sparktail and Two Bit, and cover by Zutcha.

Published 2018-09-26 16:10:02 UTC
Last updated 2018-10-06 21:55:31 UTC

Chapter 1

Evoli knew hunger as no ordinary pony could know it. This was nothing new—for the whole length of her existence, she had known the emptiness in her chest, the gnawing void that only love could fill. She had listened to her mother and father’s stories of life before that time, of an existence that wasn’t dependent on magical energy, and never believed them.

Well, maybe she’d believed a few years ago. As Alexandria grew, it needed more labor. Changelings could happily provide that labor, so long as they were appreciated and loved in their responsibilities. They needed so many drones that Riley, queen of Alexandria and all its changelings, hadn’t been able to lead them all. She had spawned other queens to take on that responsibility, all of which were subservient to Evoli. When Riley stopped producing new drones, conserving her magic for herself as age weighed heavily on her, Evoli had risen to fill the gap.

It had been an age of prosperity, with ponies increasingly aware of the plight of changelings and willing to take them into their lives. A time when there was enough food to go around, enough to feed several queens.

Then came the Concord of all the great queens, the sacred pact they all swore. Rather than face madness, they would freeze themselves in stasis when their magic ebbed away. And where could be a better place for their tomb than under Alexandria itself?

Evoli was there the day her mother went into the ice. The only queen permitted to be in her company—several of the others were already gone, frozen themselves, or killed after they went mad. The new generation of queens were too young to have earned the privilege to visit this sacred place. “I sense something terrible is coming,” Riley had told her. At the end she had been very thin—Evoli hadn’t known then just how hungry she had been. Yet her mother had demonstrated nothing but aplomb until the very end. She had never been driven mad. What other queen could give up her favorite male, and so much else besides?

Not Evoli, that was for sure.

“Something terrible is always coming,” Evoli had answered, her legs already shaking with cold though she had plenty of magic in her veins that day. Her mother had given her the last of her hoard only moments before—a fortune of glamour the likes of which not even the other queens could’ve imagined. Where she had gotten it all, Evoli couldn’t even guess. “I’ll get us through it, Mother. I’ve basically been ruling the hive for you all this time.”

“I know,” Riley said, reaching out with one hoof. She brushed the mane from out of Evoli’s face. “I trust you with my children as I would trust no other pony.” She pulled Evoli’s head close to her own, meeting her eyes with a fierce glare. “Don’t ever force them to give up what they have. We’ve clawed this far out of the dust—maybe you will take us the rest of the way.”

Her mother said nothing else, ever again. And Evoli left, feeling full, but wary.

What Riley had predicted eventually came in the form of a plague. As with many things, her own kind was immune to its effects—no Changeling got sick, not one. Alexandria’s work-crews kept working no matter how sick its pony population became. But then the ponies died, and suddenly her drones got hungry. There weren’t nearly enough ponies to go around, and they were far too selfishly engaged in self-preservation to worry about the changelings that were their friends, colleagues, and servants.

Many of her kind starved. Another of the great queens went mad, and there was a terrible battle. Evoli triumphed, and put her down, as was her way. But Alexandria just couldn’t be home to them anymore—it had been the target of desperation in the end of the plague, and so the most ravaged by the plague’s refugees. There was no new colony that rose in the ashes, and even if there had been a small population would not have been able to sustain the great size of her swarm.

They began a pilgrimage of their own. Tens of thousands of drones died that year—all those who were not intelligent, Evoli sacrificed. First as individuals—as scouts into new areas, or warriors to fight dangerous beasts or troublesome ponies. But eventually, by thousands, destroying themselves before they could go mad with hunger and starve the swarm even faster. By the end of their great exodus, their great city had dwindled to just under a thousand, with only one surviving queen.

Fortunately for her, the plague did not do so well in the desert as it did where it was cooler. There were survivors down here in their thousands, albeit a mere shadow of the civilization that had once been. They seemed filled with superstition about the end of their world, and were willing to blame anything for the pain they had felt. Particularly her changelings, if they were ever caught.

Nothing like Alexandria was possible in that world, so Evoli improvised. Every servant she had left was an individual, intelligent and resourceful in their way. Not only that, but most of them were determined to gather the glamour necessary for them to get a new birth when they got older—and none of them had personal stores of glamour left after the exodus.

Under Evoli’s direction, her swarm went back to the ancient way of doing things. Since the ponies weren’t willing to let them into their lives, they would have to force their way in instead. They would steal their love.

Still, over a hundred of their number starved before they were established enough to feed themselves. At least a hundred more dispersed, choosing to make their way on their own, forsaking Evoli’s protection in the process. She let them go, mostly because that meant more food for those who remained.

Evoli herself remained in the new hive, located in the ruins of an ancient theme-park. For the first few years she had no children at all—but as it turned out, a hive without drones for the menial labor was a hive nopony wanted to live in. Not to mention how difficult her males became, when she refused to even entertain them.

Within a decade, nopony was starving anymore. Evoli had learned from her mother—while the insane queens sometimes tried kidnapping and feasting on huge amounts of love at once, Evoli had known that was not sustainable. Her changelings integrated themselves tightly with their colonies, taking skilled roles as they had done in Alexandria. They were doctors, nurses, teachers, anything that might be showered with love from those grateful for their work. Most of them had no use for gold—they just collected their earnings, to fill the coffers of the hive and sometimes buy love its own way.

As the population began to recover, so too did Evoli’s changelings—but it wasn’t to the world they had known. In this world, there were very few refugees still living—the disease was harder on them than their children. What few were appearing were vastly dwarfed by the already-living population. A population that blamed their parents’ generation for the terrible disease that had almost destroyed it.

Not only that, but these new ponies were a stagnant lot. When she was young, ponies had all the salvage they had ever wanted from the old world. Old human machines could be repaired and used to make new machines. But all of that was dust now—the books were all rotted away, and the computers all bits of broken silicon slowly decomposing in the ground. If the cowardly burrowing HPI had even still existed, they made no effort to help.

Evoli watched as the world sunk into primitive subsistence. For a time, her changelings tried to recreate the technology they had known—rebuilding tractors, getting new water wheels and generators made, that sort of thing—but the current generation of ponies didn’t want any of it. With such a small population, and no machinery to speak of, the effort to try and claw their way back just didn’t seem worth it when the changelings wouldn’t be able to eat any of the food they grew anyway. Evoli, like most of her drones, would be just as happy sleeping on a dirt floor so long as her belly was full.

So, they were forced to tolerate this new world, for all that it was the inferior copy of the one they had known. Her changelings learned new languages as that started changing too, with some parts of English consciously rejected, and others breaking down into regional dialects now that ponies rarely left the small areas they were born in.

Evoli was getting old—even then, she had known the hunger of a queen, but somehow the reaper had held back. Perhaps, like her mother, she was somehow immune to the madness. Maybe she was a queen who would rule forever.

Over a century later, her first changelings started dying. A few had the glamour to be reborn, and she did for them what she had done for so many others—so long as a drone remained useful, its queen could replace it. Yet Evoli discovered something else—as the population of her group dropped, the amount of love they harvested didn’t go down nearly as fast as the need for love went down.

Intelligent drones needed tons of love compared to dumb ones, and several of the dead could be replaced with drones without making much difference. Evoli’s intellect by then was tremendous, able to control thousands in complex tasks without difficulty. She became a few different ponies on the outside, then tens, then eventually a hundred. The fewer drones she involved in her work, the more she realized she didn’t need most of the “intelligent” drones.

Her mother had held onto many of them for purely human reasons, she was sure. Her favorite male hadn’t even been an impressive specimen as far as changeling males went—the only thing remarkable about him had been his loyalty. Evoli wasn’t a “refugee” from the mythical world whose traces got weaker every day. Just because she remembered a day when those ruins covered everything didn’t mean they were any more significant in her life today.

It took just over another decade for her to finally remove her first intelligent drone. Her name had been Sarin—a drone who had been a particularly well-loved teacher at a local school, nearing the end of her life. Her position among children meant she had a veritable bounty of glamour to give—as well as enough to pay for her own rebirth.

Evoli took that bounty, performed the ritual… and stuck her egg into the freezer. Nopony asked questions—those drones who had remained were mostly living among ponies at that point, so they weren’t abreast of the affairs back in the hive. Only her males knew, and the one who tried to spread it around, well… he ended up with his throat cut and fed to the fungus lighting the hive.

By the time that year was out, another handful of the most well-placed drones were quietly replaced with herself. And for a while, it was enough. Evoli felt full again, had enough glamour to keep her always-expanding abilities running. She didn’t hurt the eggs or anything—those drones had been loyal to her, and so she would keep them. Until there was more food to go around. They wouldn’t notice the time passing—how could an egg know if one year had gone by or a hundred?

A few of her drones were too clever or useful to replace—some had complex relationships with many people, or interacted with other changelings who would notice the change. When their time came, they would be replaced the correct way, with one of her drones filling the gap only until the revived drone was mature enough to shapeshift again.

As the years passed, pony society recovered. Well… it grew, anyway. The land was good to them, and earth pony magic didn’t take much teaching for ponies to use it to feed their villages. So long as the primitives had earth ponies, they rarely went hungry.

As their population grew, so did the amount of love that Evoli could harvest. As the next century passed, the natives founded many new villages, moving north up the coast, and taking back overgrown ruins. As they went, Evoli made sure some of her own made up the starting population of each new city. Mostly drones, though some of her spare population went too.

Riley would’ve created new queens by then, sending one to the new regions as she had done so long ago. But new queens would’ve meant new ponies to soak up love. Even as her most loyal servants begged for the honor, she refused. They were lucky to get any of what was rightfully hers.

And that worked, for a while. So long as the ponies spread faster than her need for love increased, everything worked out fine. Unfortunately, other changelings had noticed the new feeding grounds.

Nearly two centuries after their exodus from Alexandria had ended, Evoli felt the alarm of panic from her drones protecting the hive. They were under attack.

Chapter 2

She could see through the eyes of the first drone as it died. She could feel its pain, however shallow and insignificant such creatures were capable of feeling pain. It wasn’t intelligent—none of her new drones were, and so there was no terrible mourning to be had. Every drone asleep in her hive woke at once, hurrying to the armory as those patrolling the outside retreated through the burrows.

She got her first glimpse of the attackers—more drones, though they obviously belonged to a different swarm. Another drone died with an arrow in its neck as she consolidated her forces. Evoli pulled the remaining drones inside, where the tight space would prevent them from falling to such unseen assailants. The enemy couldn’t know their burrows, so would have to feel them out and explore them blind.

“Get into the treasure room,” Evoli said to her attendants—all males, all attractive, of course. “Don’t get hurt.”

“I can feel it!” one of them shouted, an older male named Pitcher. He was the only “refugee” male she had left, the others had all died, left, or were waiting in ice. “We’re under attack! Give me soldiers, and I’ll go out and fight them in your name!”

Evoli considered the request with one part of her mind, while most of the rest devoted itself to stalling the invading army in the tunnels. The drones fighting them didn’t seem terribly talented with their combat, or even well organized. Their bodies seemed sunken and shriveled with hunger. It took two of them to every one of Evoli’s, and hers had been badly armed. She had grown soft over so many years without a fight.

But not too soft. Their hive had an armory, where armor of lightweight steel sheets and forged weapons were still made according to the ancient craft. It was a far more time-consuming process than back when they’d had electric furnaces to make the ore, but her drones could still do it. Just because the scouts outside hadn’t been armed all the time didn’t mean there weren’t weapons for them to wield.

There were just over a hundred of the enemy, at least that was when they stopped coming. Evoli’s hidden scouts reported that at the very back of the army, a queen herself appeared to be in command.

The context of the battle changed at once. These drones were starving, and this queen had to be desperate to have come in person. Either that, or quite young, so that she couldn’t get very far from her brood without losing control. Drones that were starving were very difficult to keep from going feral, as Evoli herself had learned.

The most energy-intensive part of drones was raising them—they didn’t need much love to live on, if you didn’t care about whether they woke up or not. I could have all of these drones for myself if I kill their queen.

Instead of trying to kill as many as possible, her own drones fled out of the way, allowing the army deeper and deeper into the hive. The treasure room alone they could not be allowed to enter—not where the eggs of the next generation were growing, or all the glamour they had stashed there, or her males. Anywhere else, she would let them ransack.

Evoli took direct control of a few of her drones, which she in the interim disguised to look brownish instead of orangish. A queen that was in good control of her swarm would never have been fooled by that ruse—but her drones managed to slip into the lines without much difficulty. Evoli herself took shelter in the treasure room as her drones worked their way towards the enemy queen.

Whoever you are, coming in person will be your last mistake. A queen doesn’t subject herself to danger. Evoli herself would never even let this queen see her, if she got her way. There was no need to subject herself to that risk.

The queen had a few drones closer to her than the others—not drones, males. They were better armored than the others, though not better armed. An honor-guard, perhaps? Evoli couldn’t get much closer than that with her drones, not yet. She would have to wait for an opportunity.

As it turned out, Pitcher was the one who gave her that opportunity. He chose that moment to attack, dropping down from a hidden passage. His own armor was ancient, but well-kept, and far superior to what these new changelings wore. Instead of a spear, he had a longbow, one with which he had literally centuries of practice. As Pitcher and his drones attacked the queen’s guard, Evoli herself slipped closer and closer. She finally got a good look at the queen—she was short, and starved-looking. Probably not even twenty years old, by her size and desperation.

Evoli hesitated for a moment, thinking of her mother’s face frozen in the ice, looking down on her. What would her mother have done?

This poor, starving queen had been driven mad with hunger. She was probably a refugee, since her brown crest didn’t look familiar to Evoli. She had probably never even learned how to control a swarm properly.

It is a pity for your sake I am not my mother. Evoli sprung out of the shadows with her drone, plunging its crude spear into the queen’s throat. Her guards cut it down almost instantly after that—but it didn’t matter.

“Why?” Her other surviving drone could hear her voice, confused and desperate. A frightened child. “Why did you attack me? After all I’ve done for you?” The queen never got her answer—she died moments later. Without her to control them, the drones descended into madness.

Poor Pitcher and his soldiers were suddenly overwhelmed, as instead of fighting with coordination they rushed him, not caring if he killed dozens of them. Once they closed the distance to his archers, the archers stood no chance. The queen’s own males were centermost in the melee, and apparently, they lacked the training or the practice at controlling drones, because they couldn’t restore order. They too died, literally devoured by the drones in their mad hunger.

The other drone Evoli had been puppeting died too, along with dozens of the enemy.

Changelings needed love to survive, and few fellow changelings had love to offer. But there was one kind of affection shared by all living creatures—the love of life. They could get at that primal source of nourishment by consuming the flesh of intelligent creatures. So they ate each other.

Evoli didn’t know how many of the new soldiers she might’ve lost if she left them to their own devices. It was at that moment she emerged from the darkness with her drones, and focused her will on them. They had already dropped their weapons—now they stopped fighting, turning in unison to face her. She could feel their terrible hunger, only partially sated. Their desperation for one to protect them as this dead queen never had.

I will care for you, she promised. I have food for all of you. Come to me now and taste it. So they became her swarm, at the modest cost of one experienced male, one mad queen, and a few dozen drones.

Integrating them took longer than the battle—a few hours of work to convince each of the new drones to her side. Evoli was glad none of them were intelligent, and that all this queen’s males had been killed. She wasn’t sure what she would’ve done with either group. Probably would’ve had to kill them. I couldn’t have spurned survivors of a previous generation nursing rebellion.

For some time after that, her only regret was that she hadn’t been able to kill the queen herself, and thus harvest whatever love she had left. It was a shame whatever she’d been holding had been wasted when she died.

A few years passed, and Evoli began to feel the sting of hunger again. As the years went by, she had replaced almost all of her controllers with simple drones, conserving every drop of glamour she could. Her supply of males, ever the mark of status and wealth for a queen, had to be sacrificed as well, locked away with her growing stash of eggs for times of greater wealth that seemed increasingly unlikely to come.

Evoli’s own power grew. Her mind expanded, able to control a growing swarm. The thousands that once would’ve taken every ounce of her concentration were now so easy that she barely even had to think about using them. But for all that, the love she harvested just wasn’t enough. She was too old—ancient, so far as queens went. She needed more love than all the drones in her swarm combined, and there was just no way that piecemeal scavenging of love would keep her fed.

But as her power grew, Evoli realized there was another source of love, one she hadn’t tapped. One Riley had never touched, but other queens were constantly vying over. Each other. If her drones were stretched to the limit of what they could harvest trying to integrate into pony society, then perhaps she should do what that dead queen had done, only smarter. Evoli’s ancient age might make her the most powerful queen alive—the others would pay tribute to her, or die.

Evoli began to arm her subjects. The vast treasuries were emptied to buy supplies for their journey—not only weapons and shelter, but slaves as well. The ponies of that day had a new name for survivors from the old world—Outcasts. They could be bought and sold as slaves, where regular ponies couldn’t be. Evoli now had the power to use them as a food source as well.

Her power was great, great enough that she could sense the large groups of changelings across the country. It didn’t matter how hard they tried to hide from her, she could feel their hive-minds, even sense their thoughts when she wanted. Not the queens—they were too powerful for that. But by knowing the drones of her rivals, she could know the state of their hives.

The first of her targets was the only other hive as far south as she was, one located in what would’ve been eastern Mexico. It wasn’t a large hive, but it had a very large city to feed on, and its queen had grown complacent in her strength. Evoli’s own army attacked when they least expected.

Evoli herself did not even enter the burrow until the battle was over. There were dead drones on the floor—fat and healthy with the spoils of their hunting ground. Spoils they will share with us, from now on. No queen was dead today, though some controllers and males had fought and died. Mostly on the enemy side—what few Evoli retained were back managing the hive. She had not brought anything with her she wasn’t prepared to lose.

The queen had a broken wing, and blood dribbling from many scars. Evoli’s own changelings held her prisoner, and so the drones in the whole hive had stopped attacking. If they struck again, Evoli would kill her, and take these drones for herself. She’d done it before.

“Who are you?” The queen wasn’t tied up, though there were crossbows pointed at her on her throne. She was nursing her wounds, trying to bandage them up as best she could.

Evoli herself was untouched by the battle, since of course she hadn’t been here. “Your new master,” she said, her voice absolutely confident. “Evoli. I am the queen you now serve.”

“What makes you think that?” her prisoner hissed, spitting blood onto the ground at her hooves. “I never infringed on your territory. I never broke the terms of the old pact. Why would you violate them and attack us?”

Evoli grinned her sharp teeth down at the younger queen. “Because I can.” Then she cast her spell, harvesting the helpless queen for most of the glamour she possessed. Not all of it, since that would’ve made her mad with hunger, and useless as a servant. But most. Evoli didn’t feel hungry. “I am leaving a few drones behind. From now on, you will give them half the love you harvest. If you do not, I will kill you, and take this hunting ground for myself.”

The queen cowered in fear, hiding her face behind a broken wing. She nodded. “We will obey,” she squeaked, cowed.

“Yes, you will,” Evoli agreed. And she left, a greater queen as her mother had been. This first subject was weak compared to those who had served Riley—but it was a start.

Evoli didn’t feel hungry again for a whole week. Then she did, and it was time to find a new target. There was a lot of land for her to conquer, and many younger queens to subjugate. They would all serve their proper master in time.

Chapter 3

There were seven queens of any consequence in the former United States. Not that most who lived there now had ever heard that name, and certainly none of them would be willing to admit it. Those queens knew each other by many names over the years, Evoli included. Over time, their suicide pact had ensured stability in many of their domains, such that the primacy of names no longer mattered.

They had come to use titles instead, and to recognize each other’s territories by those names. To Evoli, or Ajna, as was her title among her equals of the great queens, the remaining eight territories were themselves the borders of the world. Up north the land grew too harsh for changelings, and so was not worth taking. To the south, the population was often too sparse, at least as far as her kind had seen to explore as they marked civilization.

Of the six remaining great queens, she had only five targets. Queen Anahata had not attended the last great concourse, and it was an open secret among her kind that her drones had succumbed to some new disease. Her costal territory was out of reach for now, as it stretched along the southern seaboard, but that would change in time.

Two queens of consequence stood between her and that unclaimed land. The closest of those would not be the simplest target to conquer, and she would have to act quickly. Manipura had long contained her probing advance along the eastern border, with a network of spies so tightly-woven into the populations of pony cities that it was impossible to make a journey of any length without being discovered.

Manipura was too young to know the great dying of the plague—she had been weaned in this world of terrible scarcity, by a queen who had given herself to the ice almost as soon as she had taken over. Her weakness is certainly congenial, Evoli thought. It is a disservice to the hunting ground to leave it so poorly used.

Youth might bring vibrancy, but it also brought inexperience. As Evoli committed new probes to her eastern border, taking more precise control of her drones than she ever could’ve dreamed of a century ago, she discovered what she had expected. Manipura had prepared herself well for infiltration from changeling enemies.

An invading changeling army would keep to the population-centers of ponies the same way an army in the desert had to keep to aquifers and rivers. It took tremendous energy to power an army on the march, even moreso when there were numerous controllers serving as officers, or ancient queens gaining experience leading an army in war.

But Evoli’s troops were not controllers—she had only a handful of males now, and she would not risk them in such dangerous missions. If a changeling army was prepared to sacrifice—as much as a third of its number if the distance was very great—it did not have to worry about keeping to population centers to feed.

Evoli knew she would not have long to work. The refined love she had harvested from her first conquered queen would not keep her from starving forever. She needed better food, from prey who owned actual territory. It was a shame Manipura would have to die.

Word could not escape of what she had done, or what she planned, or else the remaining four great queens would turn and crush her together. Their minds were still enslaved to Riley’s old pact. Perhaps when there were fewer of them, Evoli could try to free them too.

Or maybe not. Maybe they would all need to die.

Riley prepared her army with weapons Manipura would not remember. She lit the old forges again, making armor out of the enduring metal, Duralumin. It was softer than the fine steel plates her officers had once worn, many years ago. But steel simply had not had the endurance to survive so long. Evoli had no time to build an infrastructure to mine more.

Besides, building wasn’t really the changeling way. Building was for prey. The masters of the world could take what they wanted, regardless of who had built it first.

While her army prepared physically, she made good use of her captive queen. Evoli could produce a great many eggs—but as it turned out, she could also bond drones that were not physically her own. So long as she was the one to give them their first few drops of love, they would serve her, and not the one who had birthed them.

It took her only a year to swell the ranks of her army to nearly ten-thousand. They were impossible numbers—numbers she couldn’t dream of being able to feed. But that didn’t matter. Most of them would not survive the war.

Her estimate had been in error, as it turned out. Just over half of them starved as they crossed the most desolate wasteland between the seat of her power and Manipura’s hive in the ruins of the city once called Austin.

Evoli watched them die, a great trail of corpses that littered the ground behind them as they flew. She felt confusion, if only for a moment. There was something else her older self should’ve been feeling. Or maybe that was her mother’s voice. “Bono malum separate.” She could almost feel the dead queen towering over her. Impossible of course, since her mother had never been so magnificent as she was now.

“Cura te ipsum.” Evoli responded to the specter. It vanished without another word, leaving her with the terrible sight of her dead. She had not brought any of her males on this trip, or any of her last few controllers left in the hive. They would be needed supervising the captive. This was good—it was probably not advisable for creatures as emotional and weak-willed as males to see the price the swarm had to pay for victory.

They reached the great hive by night. This meant nothing for a changeling hive—as any hive of consequence would be both active and guarded no matter the hour. Only in the domain of a poor queen with poor hunting grounds would the hive ever shut down for even a brief interval—letting the drones rest to conserve their strength.

Evoli’s outer probes reported only a few hundred guards flying about. Manipura had trusted to the pact and many spies to protect her. She is a great fool. Even so, Evoli knew she would only enjoy this advantage once. No matter how well Evoli concealed her intentions from the other great queens, there would be signs. Even if she slaughtered every drone in the hive, all any of the other queens had to do was capture a single drone and demand who her master was. All the wording of “protecting themselves from the Outsiders” and “preventing an advance of extermination from arising among the prey population” couched in the pact was just a polite way of saying “we’ll make sure not to kill each other.”

Evoli could still turn around—though it would probably cost her the better part of her army. She could preserve the pact her mother had worked so hard to build. Her stomach rumbled, a terrible emptiness that never seemed filled. She could barely remember the day where she had felt whole, six months ago. It would not come again unless she fought.

So she fought. Her great age and experience made each of her drones terrible warriors. They came quickly, washing over the battlements, slaughtering every drone they found. Controllers had one chance to surrender—and most did. Fickle creatures. Not worth the glamour they cost. But her drones spared them, if only because this was war as she had ever known it. Drones were the soldiers of war, the costs they paid, and the primary targets. Even the most ruthless queens typically recognized controllers as a rare resource to be preserved.

Some—males, mostly—refused to put down their weapons. The hive had been so completely unprepared that a few weren’t even armed, and they tried to fight with their bare hooves. They died.

Evoli herself caught Queen Manipura trying to flee, once it was clear that Evoli’s forces were overwhelming and she stood no chance of victory. Manipura had not been so foolish that she trusted to distance and words alone to protect her—she had a teleportation spell hiding in the darkness of her den, and intended to transport herself alone to some distant corner of the world to seek refuge.

Evoli never learned where that teleport was intended to go. One of her drones burst through the door as the spell was being prepared. Before the changeling was cut down by her remaining circle of loyal males, Evoli used its location for a teleport of her own.

It wasn’t much of a fight once she involved herself. There was none of the old dignity of war. Evoli just pointed her horn at the enemy one at a time and sucked the glamour out of them until they were withered husks. She was much too hungry for dignity and ritual.

Of course Queen Manipura was no opponent to be crushed by such a simple spell. That was why Evoli had come armed and armored—real armor for herself, with runes worked into the metal to give it greater strength. She might not have the old pony craftsman to make her great works—only her mother had ever won his service—but she could imitate based on what they had reverse engineered.

“You’re so thin,” Manipura said, her voice echoing strangely in the vaulted room. Even with her spells shattered and her servants dead, she managed to keep calm. An admirable trait from an enemy.

Yet her words managed to enrage her. “Do you think you’ll be able to persuade me to stop?” Evoli advanced on her. The room was almost perfectly dark now—but changeling queens had other senses. She could feel Manipura’s magic, a bright glowing spark. More magic than she’d had in months. A buffet compared to what she had managed to subsist on lately. “You can’t even see me.”

“I can sense it,” Manipura said. “You should’ve gone into the ice, cousin. It is exactly as the honored ones wrote. Madness and hunger can undo all we create.”

She wasn’t just empty words, though. Before Evoli could say anything else, she lunged. The queen wielded six blades, all unseen—but the magic that lifted them was not. Evoli battered them away with a dozen of her own, each one just as visible to Manipura. At first the other queen’s greater supply of glamour gave her the advantage, but not for long. Evoli had lifetimes of experience on her. Manipura slipped on one of the corpses, and hesitated. Perhaps she was overtaken with a moment of grief for this male she had cared for.

It didn’t matter. A second was all it took for Evoli to slice into one of her legs. The gash was deep, leaking deep green blood onto the floor that neither of them could see.

Manipura screamed with rage, filling the room with a storm of thrown objects. Dropped swords, rocks, nails and other construction materials. A lesser queen might’ve been overwhelmed by the number, since once the objects were thrown their magical signature vanished, making them invisible.

Evoli had enough threads of mind to follow each one. She knew how fast they’d been thrown, and from what angle. She dodged or parried each one of them, stopping a few against her shield. “It’s good you were here, Manipura,” Evoli said, as the other queen began to weaken. “I don’t know that I would’ve had the strength to fight one greater. But you were too young. Your mother could’ve stopped me.”

Manipura spat a mouthful of blood and slime at her. “Don’t speak of her. My mother wanted to see what she built endure. How much of what you build will endure, Anja? What inheritance is waiting for your children?”

Evoli stabbed her through the neck with two swords at once. Manipura’s weapons dropped out of her magical grip, clattering to the ground all around them. “I don’t care,” Evoli said. “After I’m dead, nothing matters. You and the other great queens chase a myth. There’s no Timeheart waiting for you. There’s no repair for our souls.” She began to feed—she couldn’t let Manipura take this feast of magic with her out of this life. She drew in magic faster than she ever had before, harvesting every drop.

The other queen’s body withered before her, drained of blood and glamour both. It dropped to the ground an empty husk. “They don’t need repair,” she said to the dead. “We are mighty. The world is ours to take.” Her head swam, a rush of color and energy and her insides no longer felt hollow. Her mind could stretch again to things beyond the next meal. More importantly, her magic was coming back.

There was no time to set up a new domain here and slowly expand into the hunting grounds. Evoli had four great queens left to take. She would have to make the glamour last until she could get her next one.

Chapter 4

Evoli ruled over half the world.

In a way, her campaign had felt almost too easy. After the death of Manipura, Visuddha’s territory had come next. The especially pure queen’s army had not done her much good, even if her spies had been better than Manipura’s. But seeing Evoli’s army coming was not the same thing as stopping it. After a few hours of siege, Evoli had taken her capital with most of its controllers and males.

That Viśuddha had escaped with her retinue was only a slight annoyance to her. Evoli was so powerful now that she could easily force a drone in her presence to join her service. And those males or controllers who wouldn’t obey? She could use the glamour.

From there, Evoli controlled the entire southern half of North America, all the way down into much of what had once been Mexico. She took Anahata’s territory next—as her intelligence suggested, the queen’s brood had been ravaged by disease. Anahata mounted a futile resistance of her hive, but a few dozen drones weren’t enough to even slow Evoli down. She burned them all, and burned the hive while she was at it. There was no sense risking spreading the infection to her own troops. Queen Anahata wouldn’t have enough glamour to make harvesting her worth the risk.

With that done, Evoli’s territory stretched across over half of what her ancestors called the civilized world. Thousands of pony settlements to harvest, hundreds of towns and dozens of independent city-states were all hers. Sure, the ponies didn’t know whose territory they were, just as the trees of a forest rarely knew the name of the woodsman who might one day harvest them. That was no concern of hers—so long as she had the territory, it would mean a wealth of glamour.

Evoli had much to do to reinforce her territory. There were little queens for her to subjugate or kill, and many of her loyal servants to remove from the ice and put back into service. It would take many soldiers to protect so much land, and they would take time to grow.

Evoli knew to expect retribution from the other great queens. Four of them were still alive, after all, though only three held meaningful power. They were bound to take action against her.

Her message came about a year after she had reached the eastern coast of the country, while Evoli was busying herself appointing controllers and loyal males to rule over small settlements or supervise subjugated queens.

The messenger that arrived for her was not a changeling, as she had expected, but a pony. A unicorn with a bright green mane streaked with orange. He wore no armor, though the symbols on his robe were familiar to her.

They were the mark of all four surviving queens: Sahasrāra, Svādhiṣṭhāna, Muladhara and the abdicated Viśuddha. Why the three who still had power would have included one whose territory she had already claimed in their coalition, she couldn’t imagine. But she also didn’t care.

The messenger would not be allowed to meet her in person, or even to enter the burrows. But he also wasn’t going to be killed. Striking someone bearing marks of peace was likely to eliminate diplomacy from ever being considered again.

Even if Evoli didn’t plan on allowing any of the great queens to survive, that didn’t mean she wanted them to know that right now. The longer they took to mount a unified response, the better.

“I am here to see Ajna, great queen of command,” he said to her guards, presenting himself without any attempt at stealth.

Evoli took direct control of one of the patrolling soldiers, instructing all the others to form a circle around the messenger. She firmly directed any controllers who happened to be on the surface away from the area. Some of those had been captured during her campaign, after all. The less they saw of her diplomacy, the better.

“She hears you,” said the drone, a scrawny thing just barely old enough to lift a spear. She could not use illusion to make it appear older, unfortunately. Changelings could look like many things, but not other changelings. “What do you wish of her, messenger?”

“Not me,” he said, his whole-body stiffening as he turned to face the guard. A sign this pony knew changelings, as his entire demeanor changed. He recognized the significance of her control—that she would see anything he did, and even if he killed this drone Evoli would survive without a scratch. “The great queens still loyal to the pact speak out against you in union. It is… p-proper for you to be here in person to hear them.”

“No,” she said, the drone advancing towards him. It dropped its spear, no longer concerned with protecting its own life. Her control suppressed such a meaningless drive. “It would be proper if they had come in person. They did not, so I will receive you like this. Do not think you can weave lies to me about the pact, child. I was there when my mother wrote it.”

The unicorn nodded, wiping away the sweat from his brow with one hoof. “The message for you, Q-Queen Ajna. You have violated the pact. You have been judged in absentia and… pronounced guilty.” He winced as he said it, perhaps expecting her to strike him. She didn’t, though. What would be the point of that?

“Delightful,” she said, her drone stopping only slightly out of reach of him. The messenger was young, dressed for travel and armed with a fairly modern crossbow. Modern for the barbaric standards of ponies today, anyway. “And what was my sentence?”

“Y-you have two choices,” said the unicorn. “Either you can submit to the ice voluntarily, and allow your title to pass to a queen of your choosing, who will return all the territory you have stolen from members of the pact… or they will come for you. When you are dead, they will remove your queen-ship, and take all your territory for themselves. These are your options.”

Evoli fumed, pacing back and forth in the bottom of her burrow with enough force to crack the stone she walked upon. Of course, it made perfect sense that they would demand her surrender—she had killed two of the great queens. They were within their rights.

What angered Evoli was how little they feared her. They actually thought she might surrender, after everything she’d done? Who had stolen their spines? Had the ocean’s sickness taken their bravery?

“How long?” Evoli said, abruptly returning her focus to the drone still watching him. “It would take time to orchestrate a withdrawal and a transfer of land. And they would want at least one queen to watch me go into the ice. How long did they give?”

“One season,” said the messenger. “M-more than you deserve, they said. But one season. When the summer solstice comes, then will be the moment they declare their war.”

He removed a scroll from his pack, levitating it in faltering magic. This poor unicorn was terrified. She was a little surprised he hadn’t soiled himself with how he smelled. “I have their words here, all signed. They seemed to pity you, Queen Ajna. They know you’ve been driven mad with hunger. They said it wasn’t too late to uphold the pact. What you have broken can be repaired. Consider those who come after you.”

The drone hissed at him, though Evoli wasn’t quite sure she had wanted it to. Maybe it could feel her disgust with that prospect.

“I will surrender,” she lied, pointing away with one hoof. “Go, messenger. Go and tell them that. They can send their queen to the ancient place. I will arrange to transfer my power to one of my daughters. She will supervise the return of all the territory I’ve taken.”

“Really?”

“Really,” she lied, gesturing again. As she did, the guards all around them parted, lining up in orderly rows. “Go on then, messenger. I cannot feed on your fear, but there are those in my swarm who can. Don’t wait long enough for them to arrive.”

She watched the unicorn gallop away as fast as his hooves could carry him.

Of course, Evoli didn’t actually plan on surrendering. But if the other great queens wanted to bind themselves to the arbitrary terms of an agreement made by queens who’d been frozen in ice, why should she point out how stupid they were being? Maybe she should try agreeing to surrender if only they turned over all their weapons first. Could they be stupid enough to believe that might work too?

Of course, Evoli knew the reverse was also true. Just because they had promised her three months didn’t mean she could actually count on getting that much time to prepare.

So long a life and so much power had given Evoli many new and interesting ideas—ways to play with the physiology of drones she had never considered before.

So she made straight for her laboratory. She had intended to wait at least a few years, so that she could concentrate on filling the ranks of her new territory with conventional drones and soldiers. But she could put her new wealth of glamour to use in other ways.

The lab was located deep below the former capital of Viśuddha, where the old queen had once stored works of art. Why she had cared about such pony creations, Evoli didn’t really know—but she hadn’t bothered asking to find out. Stacks of canvas had been left to mildew against the wall, with rolls and rolls of something semitransparent stored in metal canisters. Whenever they needed more space, her drones would drag away another shelf, and take more of the pony creations to the garbage.

“You’re… not supposed to be here so soon,” said Strand, the leader of her scientists. The changeling had been born as a male this time, at her own previous request. Strand was one of her own siblings—one of the few daughters of Chip who had ever woken up during those early days. Way back then, it had been genetic science that interested her. It still was.

“There is a change in the timeline,” Evoli said, walking through the newly-furnished lab, and looking at the shelves of instruments and notes on every surface. Strand had been working on this same task for many years. Rumor was she had already succeeded, but that Riley had destroyed her work when she saw what it had produced.

“The other queens formed their coalition sooner than I hoped. We don’t get a few years, only a few months.”

Strand had not been living with Evoli’s swarm until very recently. Her rebellion from the pact had attracted her. Well, him now. “A few months is not enough time, Queen.” He raised a wing. “Don’t bother shouting at me, I know you want it anyway. The process simply will not be complete in that much time. Even if we begin now, it would take at least a year before my creations would be ready for you. Perhaps much longer.”

Evoli wanted to break something—but she resisted. Strand was just a male—she could kill him easily. But his knowledge could not be easily replaced. Strand could not be replaced—the things he knew were not taught by any schools that still existed.

Alexandria and its knowledge had both burned.

“They have promised us three months. I anticipate we will have two, though even that is not certain. While we wait for our greater monsters, I need something else. After Manipura, I don’t think the others will underestimate me. They will march their army here slowly, and keep themselves far away. There will be no easy victory even if we slaughter every drone they send.”

“I may have something,” the male said, turning away from her to a Bunsen burner slowly flaming away at something tary and black. “I warn you—this weapon will change the nature of war for our kind forever. I do not think the other queens are fools…” He levitated the little black vial off the burner, setting it down in front of her. “It is, I think… a matter of mutual destruction. Those with the resources to invoke it chose not to, for fear it will be used on them.”

“Whatever it is, you have my permission,” Evoli said. “What happens to war for tomorrow’s queens is irrelevant. My army is stretched thin after so many losses—three of the great queens have not faced a serious threat in a century. Even an expeditionary force might have a hundred thousand drones. Can your weapon defeat that many?”

Strand grinned at her. “If you are right, and the queens do not come in person, it could stop an army of a million. If they do… it will certainly fail.”

That was enough for Evoli to make the connection. Her eyes narrowed as she stared at the vial, sniffing the air. It smelled like… pheromones, but none she recognized. “You have a way of disrupting their control over their swarm, don’t you?”

Strand’s grin got wider, though he feigned modesty. “No no, Evoli. You are the one with the power. Queens have always been able to win over drones from each other. I have merely taken what you already had and weaponized it.”

Chapter 5

Evoli watched the army assemble outside her fortress with the eyes of a dozen different drones. On some level it pleased her to see that her rivals had not been so blind and helpless as her initial estimates suggested.

Yet they also didn’t take advantage of Evoli’s weakness to come down with crushing force long before the deadline arrived. They had the armies of three great queens, yet she saw none of them. Her new capital in Visuddha’s old hive grew more fortified by the day, alone and unopposed.

Until two months had gone by, and the army started to trickle in.

They came from every direction—drones soaring in dense, organized flights. Marching ponies in columns with their camp followers, and unicorns teleporting in groups. How the great queens had mobilized so many regular ponies to their cause, she couldn’t begin to speculate. One pony for every dozen changelings was not quite enough to sustain an army, at least not if they didn’t break certain taboos.

Evoli would’ve broken them, but she would’ve needed pony allies first, and she didn’t have them. The option wouldn’t be there for her unless this war turned in her favor. Which depends completely on Strand. If we win this, then we can turn immediately and take the rest of the world. But they had to survive it, first.

By the time her third month had arrived, Evoli had done nothing to prepare for succession, and everything to prepare for war. Fortifications lined the valley, with the best weapons she had stolen or bought or salvaged in her war. She kept them all well-manned, even though much of the hive beneath was empty. She had paid a high price for conquest. No matter how many young drones she was trying to raise, it would take time to grow a new army. Unless she stole them.

Every morning Evoli woke wondering whether or not the attack would come. Every day she found the enemy camp got larger, but no troops surged against her gates. She infiltrated the camp several times, searching for the queens whose presence would make her plan doomed, but she could find none of them.

Her enemy was doing exactly what she hoped they would—exactly what she needed them to do. As the weeks passed, Strand continued to brew up her pheromone, preparing whole casks of it for deployment against the enemy. Eventually, he reported that he had what he had hoped for, and that every day more was just a bonus.

“But you have to kill every queen within a hundred miles,” Strand urged, one tense night in the laboratory. “This attack will make the invading army helpless, it will dissolve their bond to whoever birthed them—but whichever queen has the closest natural affinity for each drone will win them.”

“Even if I only got half, I could use them to kill the other half,” Evoli said. “That doesn’t seem so bad.”

“No!” Strand shouted, frustration obvious in his voice. “You will not have enough time. The weight of the swarm will eventually assert itself towards whatever cause the hive-mind supports. Given you’ll be using them to kill their sisters, they will almost certainly weigh against you. Unless you are the only choice. Then their new swarm will settle with you instead, because it has nowhere else to go. Drones crave domination. You must give it to them.”

“What about males?” Evoli asked, eyes narrowing a little. “They can control drones too.”

“A few.” Strand waved a dismissive hoof. “Yes, we can. My lab assistants have been most effective, by the way. But their will is no match for a queen. You could take all my helpers away, and it wouldn’t matter how badly I wanted to keep them. Expect something similar to happen to them.”

“I would rather capture the males,” Evoli muttered. “And the controllers too. They’re better soldiers than drones.”

“Too bad.” Strand did not sound apologetic. “They will temporarily lose their swarms too, be blind and alone… but their connections will return. I’ve already tested it quite thoroughly. Unless you can convince them to join you… but honestly it doesn’t seem worth the risk. The massacre you’re going to bring on their homes, it’s probably best just to kill them. We don’t want agents of the enemy in our ranks.”

“Right.” Evoli turned away. “Keep working then, Strand. You do good work for my swarm.”

“What I can,” Strand said. “But look outside. There are more than changelings waiting for us. None of my poisons will help against prey.”

“I know.” Evoli grinned wider. “I have something special in mind for them.”

Then, on the very day of the deadline, Evoli saw a delegation marching towards her hive. There were less than a dozen of them—drones hefting a wooden palanquin. They marched it to the midway point between her fortress and the war camp, then began pitching a white-roofed tent surrounded by wide flags.

“There’s no point,” said Cica, her newest adviser. She was a drone who had woken to consciousness during the war and led her squad to victory. It was good to have a new perspective. “Just kill them, Queen. You aren’t going to surrender. Why speak to them at all?”

“Because they might have something to say they didn’t mean to,” Evoli answered. “And because their queen is there. I feel her…” As she had hoped, there were no other queens within her sensing. Only this strange one, its mind like something sour and burning. She would enjoy killing it.

“The Arbiter will expect you to kill yourself,” Cica argued. “What could you possibly learn?”

Evoli shrugged. “Perhaps nothing. But it will be an excellent opportunity to kill her.”

So she marched out to the delegation—alone, unarmed, unarmored except for her flowing black robe. She wouldn’t need weapons against any kind of monsters the great queens sent. Even Muladhara herself could not win a duel with her now.

Evoli stepped into the tent, taking in the details in one glance. A tray of icy fluid in the back, the one meant to receive her frozen body. Six changeling drones, none looking very old. Not controllers, at least not that she could sense. Then there was the queen.

“What kind of freak are you?” Evoli asked, staring openly at the Arbiter. There was something distantly familiar about her, but she was so strange.

Her general outline still looked like a queen, but a few details were off. There were no more holes in her wings, and the few openings that remained in her leg appeared to be healing. Evoli breathed in, expanding her senses to the invisible. This pony was a changeling, somehow. She still brimmed with glamour.

Evoli stumbled back a step, raising a hoof to block the light. She opened her eyes and found herself tightening her jaw against the strange creature before her.

I thought I had done terrible things to survive the great queens. But I would never have done this. This thing was far more a betrayal of their nature than anything Evoli had brewing in her lab.

Chill vapor rose from the open troth behind the Arbiter. Her escort drones looked on with quivering, terrified eyes. Did they know what Evoli planned?

“You hurt me, older sister. Don’t you recognize me?” She took a single step closer, her strangely crystalline wings glittering in the sun. “I am Lachesis.”

The last. The youngest of Evoli’s blood-siblings, excepting the unhatched eggs hidden in her secret vault. “You were the worst,” Evoli spat, baring her teeth. “Now the reason Riley stopped having children comes to lecture me on morality.” She strode past her under the fluttering canopy, staring down at the strange fluid. It wasn’t water—Evoli didn’t actually know what the suicide-pact called for. She had never really planned on following its terms.

“How many of your sisters did you murder, Lachesis?”

She almost expected the strangely colorful queen to try a few futile blasts of magic. Instead it looked like her shoulders slumped a little. “Six. Clotho, Atropos, Decima, Karios, Themis, and Tyche."

Evoli tensed a little. She vaguely remembered those names—other little queens, all of them dead before they were a century old. In some ways, Lachesis was an early version of her. A queen unsatisfied with her position at the bottom of the pyramid, who wanted to find her way to climb a little higher. “You remember their names.”

“I can still hear their voices.” Lachesis reached forward towards the troth with one hoof. As it got close, the top layer of whatever was inside started to boil away. The heat of her body was enough. When she looked up at Evoli, she noticed her eyes. Round, pastel purple. Agonized. “The specter of the past is with us every moment, Evoli. I think you can hear them too. Their blood cries from the dust.”

Evoli stomped one hoof, roaring in annoyance. Many of her nearby drones growled at Lachesis, though her control didn’t break long enough that any of them actually got violent. Evoli had a great deal of practice controlling her drones. “Don’t romanticize with me, sister. I can’t believe the ‘Great Queens’ sent the Butcher of Missouri to arbitrate my surrender. Aren’t you dead, anyway? Mother sent her pet monsters after you… and your swarm collapsed.”

She gestured past them, at the marshaled army. “What kind of illusion is this?”

Lachesis shook her head, kicking out against the troth with one hoof enough that the whole thing shook. A demonstration of how real she was. “She did send them, Evoli.” Her horn began to glow. Evoli was too slow—they were both swallowed in the illusion.

Evoli saw through the queen’s memories. Somewhere dark, and a corridor of corpses. A strange creature, looking a little like she did, and a bat with a glittering knife. They’d killed hundreds of drones, maybe a whole swarm.

“Ezri and the Dreamknife gave me a choice, sister. The same choice I give you.” The vision dissolved, replaced with a gnawing, empty tear in reality. It was the void, that unreal place where monsters came from. The old stories said changelings had come from there once, long ago.

“It’s in you, Evoli. It’s in all of us… a sliver of the abyss. Our ancestor tried to escape from it, to banish it from our lives. But she died before she could finish. You know the story.”

Evoli growled again. She could shatter this projection if she wanted, but still she hesitated. Not because she actually cared what her youngest sister had to say, so much as she wondered if she might accidentally reveal something useful.

I can endure her moralizing for a few more minutes.

“There’s another way.” The projection changed, the broken crevice down to nothingness replaced with a brilliant light, a distant glow. It burned—Evoli could barely look without screaming. It was a place of order, the place that made the laws. A place of feelings she hadn’t known since she was a child. Before she had known power.

“Ezri captured me. She kept me with her for years. Every day, I thought she might kill me. But she didn’t. She showed me the cure.”

The illusion vanished from around them, and Lachesis stood only feet away. “Forget about the ice, Evoli. Forget about ruling the world. Forget about your hunger. I can take them all away.”

For a few seconds, she could almost feel it. There was something there, a rope thrown down to her in the mud. A hoof willing to lift her up.

She sounded so much like Riley. Evoli’s eyes narrowed. “I hope you’re being honest with me, little sister. All this…” She waved a hoof towards her. “This stuff about peace and ending hunger. Because my scouts have already reported to me. You’re the only queen for hundreds of miles. And for me to destroy this army, I need to kill you.”

Lachesis met her eyes fearlessly. She didn’t move, didn’t tense, didn’t ready a spell. “I hoped I might be able to… to convince you. I thought that maybe if I did, it might make up for some of what I’ve done. Some of the lives, I…” She shook her head. “Wishful thinking. The others thought so too. But I owe a terrible debt for everything I’ve done. If this is how I pay it, then…” she smiled, meeting Evoli’s eyes again. “Maybe my sisters will forgive me.”

That was more infuriating than anything she had done so far—how much like Riley she looked standing there. Not so tall as Evoli, not so powerful, but so proud, so self-important, so insufferably convinced of her own virtue.

“I’m going to destroy everything our mother ever made,” Evoli hissed, baring her teeth as she advanced on her. “By the time I’m done, no changeling from one end of the world to the other will dare mention oaths or pacts again. When I’m done, I will be god, to changelings and our food. They will worship me, and I will have the glamour to live a thousand years.”

“You shouldn’t.” Lachesis did not retreat from her, didn’t look away even as magic seemed to boil from around her. “I don’t know as much about war as I used to. Forgotten most of it, I guess.” She laughed weakly. “Maybe you can. But you shouldn’t. I’m the first queen of the future. If you turn away from this… we could make something better than Riley ever did. A future where no drone ever goes hungry again.”

Evoli couldn’t take another minute of this. She reached out with her magic, screaming in fury that shook the whole valley. She tried to rip away the queen’s glamour—but it was out of reach. Like she could see the meal in front of her, but it dissolved like smoke when she tried to touch it.

“I forgive you, Evoli.”

Evoli blasted the drones all around Lachesis to smoldering ash, and wicked green flames spread over the white canopy of the peace tent. She smashed into her younger sister and slammed her head down into the boiling ice. She yanked her out a few seconds later and brought her slamming into the side of the container. Her head shattered like an ice sculpture, and her body fell still.

Bits and pieces of dead queen rained down around her even as the ash began to boil. Evoli could hear the rage from the invading army. She stormed out of the peace-tent, leaving the corpse of Lachesis, ‘queen of the future’ to burn with her servants. It was time to win a war.

Chapter 6

The death of Lachesis did not mean the battle was over before it started. As Evoli had expected, most of the drones that made up this army did not belong to the freakish “queen of the future.” They were, rather, the army of the great queens. Plus, Lachesis had controllers, and males, and both of these could stop the drones from going feral. The single blow did nothing but enrage her enemy.

But for once, Evoli herself did not leave the field. She needed to be here, for the same reason she needed to make sure there were no other queens nearby. This new chemical warfare relied entirely on proximity to supersede all else among the regular drones.

This is the moment I change warfare for changelings forever. Once Evoli demonstrated it was possible to steal another’s army from them, the others would infer the method. They didn’t need Strand’s brilliant bioengineering to invent some new substance, not as they would when she revealed the greater abominations Strand was creating. From now on, queens will always have to fight with their armies.

After today, there would be no more puppet-mastering from the shadows, where only others were at risk if they failed. Even Evoli herself would have to enter the line of fire.

The army began to march on her fortification, a great swarm so dense that where it passed before the sun, there was nothing but shadow. A swarm so large that every soldier Evoli had could’ve been wearing powered armor and it probably would not have made a difference.

But the HPI would certainly not be fighting on her side, not after all that she had done. Her passing attempts to raise them on radio for trade had consistently failed.

At least she didn’t see any mechanical drones or helicopters fighting with the enemy. If the ancients decided to interfere, she might have to wipe them out too.

She might do that anyway, just to be safe. Once she ruled all the world, it would be her responsibility to make sure the children she protected would not be threatened again.

Her troops could not manage powered armor and firearms, those secrets were lost to the ancients. But Evoli could conceal some pipes in the battlefield, each one ending in a sprayer that would look like rusting junk to the enemy. The great queens had been so good to give her until spring to set this all up, and they had let her exercise de facto authority over where the battle would take place.

Evoli watched from the top of her fortress as the sprayers began to disgorge their vaporous cargo, raining a faint black shimmer down over the army. It billowed up into the air, swallowing most of the airborne changelings as well. Those few who were not within its reach immediately started flying higher, moving desperately to escape whatever it was. Even if they didn’t know what it would do, they would feel so many others vanishing from their hive-mind. Hundreds of thousands of drones would’ve abruptly vanished from the control of her enemy.

The wind blew up towards the fortress, and many of Evoli’s own troops would be struck as well.

Not a single primitive hivemind, as drones naturally formed in the absence of a queen. This was a hundred thousand individuals, suddenly without purpose, without enough intellect to form a mind. It was more torture than she could’ve inflicted by ripping their wings from their bodies.

Many began to turn on each other—but not in the clean, systematic way a swarm did. A swarm of feral drones forced all other drones to join or be consumed—this was a brawl. Thousands of little shapes all attacking each other.

The controllers and males were not immune. They still had their minds, of course, but both depended on the hivemind for emotional stability, for instructions, and for information. It would feel to them like they had just watched their family murdered in front of them.

The pheromone ran out, and the sprayers began pumping only water vapor, the pipes exhausted. Water didn’t hang in the air like the pheromone did, and so she could see the scene more clearly.

Beside her, Strand nodded with a satisfied look on his face. He had brought his own group of a few drones, his escort and laboratory crew. He kept calling them “his crew until he became a queen.”

Evoli would let him keep thinking that was in his future. It wasn’t.

“It is exactly as I promised,” he finally said, scratching down notes with a levitating pen as he watched the behavior of the primitive swarm. The pheromone wouldn’t reach them up here—though if it did Strand probably would just keep on working. He wasn’t exactly sentimental. “Claim your army, Evoli. Take what the great queens have given you.”

Evoli lifted up into the air. This would not be a new flood of glamour, as she had won with some of her previous victories. Rather the opposite—these drones would be a huge burden for her. She would lose a great many of them in the journey back to where they’d come.

But that was no concern of hers right now. “Prepare the cocoons. We will harvest Stonehearth soon.”

Strand nodded without emotion, as though it had been a remark on the color of the wallpaper, instead of a suggestion of the most heinous act any changeling could commit. But Evoli was long past the point of caring. It was time to secure the food supply. “They will be waiting to receive what your army harvests.”

She took off into the air, soaring up and over the ramparts, past her own changelings that milled about down on the ground, as much a part of the confused masses of the enemy as any of the invading army. Some of her old drones would probably have been killed today too.

It was a worthy sacrifice.

Out in the crowd, she could see a few patches of order. Some of the older males had managed to secure as many as fifty drones, keeping back the masses of the confused. But their grip was tenuous, and their minds could not stretch very far. Evoli could easily take those drones as well.

She flew into the center of the mob—or above it, anyway. The few drones who dared to attack her fell dead from her path like flies swatted as she flew. Eventually she reached the center, and there began to glow.

There was no single hivemind here anymore—there was confusion, agony, desperation. Drones were not loyal creatures, who knew the causes of the ones they served. They were creatures of instinct, without preference for how they got their glamour. More than anything else, they wanted purpose. Evoli would give them that.

She reached out, seizing every mind in a growing sphere around her. She gave glamour to each, such a small amount that she hardly even felt it—but to them, it was the spark of a covenant needed to seal their loyalty to someone else. She already represented a collection of drones, a mind of thousands. Not as large by half as this army, but that didn’t matter. It was stability. And as it grew, it attracted more.

They weren’t that different from ants, or any other swarming insects. Once a few started to move, their decision moved others. It was really just about managing that initial push.

She felt a few spots of resistance, dark patches where the ground below her was still filled with drones. She turned her new limbs upon them, devouring everything she couldn’t sense. The army turned into a proper melee, consuming its controllers and generals with the bloodlust of one recently returned to awareness. And what few drones had enough of a spark of intelligence to resist her will could be consumed with the rest.

It was wrong to kill controllers, it was wrong to kill males instead of capturing them as the spoils of war. Evoli no longer cared—she would set the terms of war from now on, not some dead queen from long ago. It didn’t matter that the dead queen had been her mother.

No more rules. No more trying to control us from the other side of death. We get to decide our future now.

Well, she did.

By the time the dust and blood had finally settled, one in ten of the attacking army had been killed. A surprising number of ordinary ponies had been ready to fight alongside the swarm, with their primitive armor and weapons instead of claws and exoskeleton. All dead. The drones had killed anything that wasn’t part of the hivemind.

Evoli arranged them into great ranks before her—an army that would’ve required several queens to control in the early years she could easily master on her own. Could her mother have commanded so great an army as this?

No. Riley gave up the power of numbers so she could raise a hundred controllers. What a waste. If you had cared about your children, you would’ve handed me an empire that spanned the world. We wouldn’t need to hide in the shadows from ponies, they would call us masters and worship us.

Evoli passed through the ranks of her new army, occasionally stepping over the fallen corpse of a male or a pony. There weren’t very big pieces left behind after being inside such a swarm. Some of these wore her own colors, those of her exterior guard who had been caught in the pheromones. It didn’t matter to Evoli where they ended up—all of them would serve her in time.

“Now you see the power we deserve!” she shouted into the crowd, though few of them would understand. She could sense a few controllers in the whole mess who had given in to the weight of the hivemind rather than be devoured by it. Not one male had bowed to the pressure, so not one of them had survived. Only those who had once been mindless drones themselves could understand the escape that option would’ve presented to them.

A shame to have so much waste. But at the same time, that was food Evoli didn’t have to spare for mouths that didn’t deserve it. “The pony town of Stonehearth is not far from here—its southern farmers have long since been converted to our cause, so that they ignore our drones flying overhead. We have been able to hide here without fear. Now, though, we will do more than hide.”

She spoke for her own males and controllers. They would need to be won over to this cause. Many of them were probably watching from the ramparts right now, or her words would be passed to them. “There are three thousand ponies living in that city. Enough for a much smaller settlement to survive as helpless parasites. Or, we could try something new. Instead of gathering the few dewdrops of glamour we can steal, this army will bring all of them here.”

Well, not quite all of them. The process she spoke of did not work on a pony until they had their cutie mark. That meant leaving the younger children behind, along with any members of other species who didn’t get cutie marks. But big speeches like this weren’t about specifics. “We will gather the food to feed this army. Not enough to march, but enough to sustain us long enough to arm ourselves.”

At her silent order, ten thousand drones took to the air in a single buzzing flight. Her grip on them was still tenuous—but within another hour or two, it would be secure. Another queen would not be able to take those drones back, even if they had been hers by birth. Only by killing Evoli could the original identity of that swarm be restored. Or if they could trick her to get far from her army, which obviously wouldn’t be happening.

They took off, buzzing away over battlefield as though they hadn’t suffered a serious trauma. These drones were eager to obey her commands, as any new swarm would be. And she had given them commands—fly to the village and take every pony with a cutie mark back to her fortress.

“Queen,” muttered Decimus from behind her. One of her loyal males, woken from cold sleep. That meant he was still too young to breed—and too young to know that questioning a queen wasn’t good for his safety. “What about out contacts in the southern farms? Will we harvest them too?”

“Yes,” Evoli said, resisting the urge to strike him down. It was a sensible question. “But we will let them live. They will join us as new controllers—the reward for their contribution. And as a matter of fact, I will assign them to you. Your first command, Decimus. Congratulations on your promotion.”

Evoli could already see the little village of Stonehearth coming into sight through the eyes of her drones. The children of plague survivors had built a thriving little agrarian community out here, oblivious of the nearby danger. By the end of the night, Evoli would remind them of fear.

And forget about her own hunger, at least for a little while.

And what works for a village will be even better for a city. What fools we were to ignore a source of food as limitless as this! Why harvest little drops of love over a pony’s whole lifetime when you could suck them dry all at once?

My mother was the greatest fool that ever lived. And I will be the greatest queen. Evoli barely even remembered what she had done to Lachesis a few hours before. She would feel no grief over the loss of that monstrosity.

If my father was still alive, he would be proud of me. Chip would know what it meant to do what is necessary. He would praise the queen I’ve become. And she told herself that, listening to her own thoughts instead of the terrified screams of Stonehearth’s ponies.

Chapter 8

New Delaware was not one of the dozens of villages and tiny towns Evoli had faced in her campaign across the country. It was, rather, a fortress of surpassing strength, built by the finest griffon stonemasons. As night fell, Evoli could see their torches moving back and forth along the walls, and see the outlines of their patrols in the air.

She couldn’t see a single changeling anywhere—though by their nature, it was hard to be certain about their presence. But Evoli would’ve been able to sense it if every bird there were really just a changeling in disguise. But that didn’t mean there were no changelings in the fortress—perhaps they would have prepared their own samples of the pheromone. Evoli could not command from the back anymore for that reason—by the time she returned to the front, these birds could’ve shattered her troops.

There was no surprise in this attack—her numbers were so great she had to marshal them in ranks and keep them carefully arranged.

Her army was nearly five hundred thousand strong, with a fifth of those being “harvested” controllers.

Queen Decimus followed her down the ranks. Were it not for Evoli, she would represent the wealthiest queen ever created, with more controllers than one queen would ever have in her lifetime. There was just one problem: they had to keep harvesting ponies in order to generate the absolute fortune of glamour she required.

Evoli had a plan for that. “I want your troops at the front,” Evoli said, gesturing towards the walls with one wing. “When I signal, Strand’s weapon will come at the walls. I want you screening its approach from the skies. Once the walls are breached, you can pull back and let my swarm dismantle the city.”

Decimus shifted uneasily on her hooves. She was small—too small to control a hive mind. She spoke in a tiny squeaking voice, and wore armor that made her look taller than she really was. A child playing pretend, who hadn’t had the chance to grow up. Somehow, Evoli doubted this queen saw her elevation as much of an honor.

“Great Queen…” she began, voice timid. “Your… your request will subject us to the greatest attack by the enemy. That’s a griffon army in there. They can all fly. If I bring numbers like mine against the walls, surely they’ll all rise out to meet us.”

Evoli glared at her. “So? Your army is larger than the garrison. Even if every one of them rises out to meet you, you have ten soldiers to every one of them.”

“I have two… changelings.” Decimus looked away. “Queen Evoli, most of them were farmers until recently. I have five hundred with previous military experience. They aren’t drones… and I can’t yet command them even if they were. I hear that New Delaware is garrisoned only with the strongest griffons. Bloodthirsty warriors with a century or more of battle experience. That seems like a threat better suited to your drones.”

In any conventional changeling war, she would be right. Drones were replaceable, and even Evoli’s bleeding-heart mother hadn’t cared about losing the ones who weren’t intelligent. They were cells of the great organism, nothing more.

But my army won’t starve if they all survive. The more griffons wasted their time killing useless controllers, the fewer warriors Evoli would lose.

“Decimus…” She draped a wing over her shoulder, walking her along the ranks. “Do you know what comes after tonight?”

The nymph stiffened at Evoli’s touch. There was something strange about the way she looked, something Evoli could just make out in the moonlight. Her wings were wrong… like they were calcifying. Doesn’t matter. I won’t need her for much longer. Once we take the other queens, I won’t need to fear a rebellion.

“I don’t,” she said, looking down. “What comes after tonight?”

“New Delaware is not our target, it’s only the opening engagement of this war. The Great Queens have fortified in a pony city on the coast. I hear ponies are flowing to it every day. Stories of… our means of sustaining the army… have travelled here. They’ve served to unify the enemy.”

Evoli glared at Decimus, as though daring her to blame or question her. She didn’t, tail tucking between her legs. “I understand there are a million soldiers waiting for us there. Most of them conscripts, like yours. Neither side can wait out the other in a siege, since both of us are constantly running out of food. We must meet in battle, and meet soon. I need my army to be as strong as possible when that happens. Your controllers… have an opportunity. To serve the swarm, to prove themselves. You tell them that honor and glory is waiting for them in New Delaware.”

Decimus looked up at her a long time, strange wings shifting uneasily. Then she nodded. “I… I understand. I will tell them.”

“Good,” Evoli said. “I expect you to award high accolades to those who fight well tonight. And those who die—at least they died serving a wise purpose. Once I rule all the world, there will be no more suffering. They help to bring a golden age.”

Decimus did not look. She took off, buzzing back towards her army. Evoli stared at her wings for a few more seconds. She’d seen their like before…

But it didn’t matter. There was a battle coming, and everyone knew it. She could see the lights going up on the wall now, huge bonfire spots shining out at her. The birds needed the flames to see—their eagle vision did not do well in darkness. Idiots are blinding themselves. And giving us perfect targets.

Strand might consider it a weakness in her Wurm… but Evoli realized it was probably an advantage now. Only bats had better night vision than changelings. It would’ve been foolish to deprive themselves of this.

“Hear me, swarm!” Evoli shouted, her voice bellowing over the assembled troops and the waiting fortress. She heard no response from the griffons, not even the beat of a war-drum. They were listening. “Tonight is the beginning of the end for pretenders and fools! Tonight we show them the fate of their resistance! We will take no bird captive tonight, keep no prisoners of war! Let them fight as hard as they wish, knowing that when the conflict is over we will leave them nothing but a mountain of the dead and a feast for crows!”

Her swarm roared approval—at least 4/5ths of it did. Decimus and her controllers could muster only a little halfhearted stomping. Typical.

Go now, Decimus. Serve your queen. The sound of beating wings was suddenly so loud it drowned out all else. Dust rose from Evoli’s right as they took off, buzzing in a disorderly block towards the city. They carried makeshift weapons—shields, spears, mostly made of wood. Evoli would not be wasting armor on troops she only kept out of the mercy of her heart.

Strand watched beside her from the observation tower, smiling his approval. “I was wondering if you had some productive use in mind for the deadweight. I never should’ve doubted you.”

Evoli shrugged. “I don’t expect it will be a concern for long. Their supply is finite… we will need to stop harvesting them soon.”

“Oh, I’m not so sure about that.” Strand had a way of being completely infuriating without ever annoying Evoli quite enough for her to retaliate. He could argue without arguing, and always sounded like he knew more than anypony else. “There were seven billion humans caught in the preservation spell when Equestria cast it. The vast majority of those have not yet returned. If we stopped trying to sustain them after they were harvested, it’s possible we could continue the practice indefinitely. We won’t need so large a drone army once there are no enemies yet to conquer. It’s also possible additional resources would eventually allow me to perfect a method for harvesting non-ponies eventually. Though I… can’t commit to that.”

Stars above I’m employing a lunatic. Evoli didn’t show her feelings—and there was no chance this male would be able to sense them. She only nodded. “That would be… an interesting direction,” she said. “But now, I think we’ve given Decimus enough of a lead. Release the Wurm.”

“The battle will be over before morning,” Strand promised, taking to his own (normal-looking) wings and vanishing over the edge of the tower.

A terrible roar shook the ground moments later, one frightening enough that even Evoli’s drones seemed to shift uncomfortably. She gritted her teeth, having to focus for a moment to bring such a large hive-mind under control. There were so many drones now that Evoli sometimes caught resistance from them, whenever she ordered the group to do things it didn’t like. It’s a good thing we don’t have to keep this up for much longer. We’ll lose most of these drones when we siege the Pillar of Equilibrium, and we just won’t make new ones. We only have to last a little longer.

The sky over New Delaware had gone completely dark—Evoli could no longer see the bonfires. She could hear the shouts, though—a carefully displayed military cutting down Decimus and her controllers. She could hear them dying, yet they fought on. But they aren’t drones. They’ll break eventually. We have to take advantage of this opening while we have it.

She could feel the massive shape of the Wurm, moving through the huge opening in her army. It didn’t move with precision, grinding and chewing through huge sections of ground in addition to anything else that got in the way. A few small structures left outside the walls of New Delaware were completely consumed in those terrible jaws.

A few moments later, it met the walls. She couldn’t feel the Wurm in the swarm, but she didn’t need to in order to feel the terrible crack, sending bits of stone tumbling around like chipped ice after the first days of spring thaw.

“Forward,” she whispered, both mentally and physically. Her drones and loyal males did not take flight, but lifted their shields, their weapons—and charged into the breach.

It was over by dawn. Many of the veteran defenders had fled, once it was clear that their defenses were broken. Many more had stood their ground in the city’s tunnels, bleeding Evoli for every drop they could before drones found and consumed them. There were less than a thousand ponies in the fortress—she spared their lives, committing them to be harvested.

When the sun finally broke through the clouds, it was on a scene of flame and death. There was a mountain of corpses in the center of the courtyard, and many of the city’s structures had been collapsed to ruin. It hadn’t just been Evoli’s own soldiers who attacked the city—once Strand released it, the Wurm had rampaged for hours.

Evoli stood atop the keep, one of the few buildings sturdy enough to still be standing after the siege. She was joined by Strand, Decimus, and a half dozen other important changelings. Generals, tacticians, supply officers. All her most important advisors and servants.

“The attack was devastating,” Decimus whispered, her voice sounding on the edge of tears. “We lost one pony in three. The garrison harried our retreat… thirty-three thousand. Another ten thousand are injured, some critically.”

“Care for them as best you can,” Evoli said, shrugging with disinterest. “Your army did well.”

“Not well enough,” Strand grunted. “They put out the Wurm’s eyes. If they’d been better about covering the attack, it might still—”

“I’m not going to listen to that.” Decimus glared at the male, baring her little nymph teeth. She vanished in a flash of magic.

“Well.” Strand looked unmoved. “As I said. The Wurm is intact otherwise. The only weakness they could find were its eyes. All the damage to its hide is otherwise superficial. I had to devise a new method of communication, since our light method will no longer work. That was why I couldn’t retreat when you commanded.”

“It lives still,” Evoli muttered. “So long as you can have it ready to attack the Pillar of Equilibrium in another month or so. I don’t expect we will need it again.”

“I will,” Strand said, confident. “I would need years to breed more, but… our one has more blood in her yet.”

“Good.” Evoli turned, facing north. “This war is almost over. I hope you’re ready, Queens. Because I’m ready for you.”

Chapter 9

There was only one destination left to them now. Evoli knew it, even as the Great Queens would know it. The end of all things waited for them at the fortress called Eternal.

It was an ancient place, or as ancient as anything built since the end of the old world could be. It was meant to be a capital of sorts for the changelings—built by a cooperative of many queens and many workers. Riley had been all about symbols and rules. She’d designed the fortress herself.

But did you think it would be my army outside, mother? Did you know it would be me waiting here to tear down all your works?

It was an impressive structure, even so. Its walls were almost a hundred feet tall, worked from stone that was more of a ramp on the inward side. But down here at the base of the cliff it was sheer. There would be no aerial assault here, not when most of the fortress was underground. It was changeling construction at its finest, tunnels and burrows in endless spiraling deathtraps. Unfortunate for these ponies that it had been Evoli’s mother who designed this. She knew every trap, every passage.

“It appears our initial reports were correct, Queen,” Decimus muttered, her head lowered in respect. There was something about the queen, there had been since so many of her makeshift swarm had died taking the New Delaware. Despite her youth, it appeared the queen was beginning to grow a spine. Evoli could sense her impotent rage even now, anger with no outlet.

It wasn’t all that strange to her to have a daughter queen who wanted her dead. That was an old changeling tradition too. Some of Evoli’s own sisters had tried to kill their mother. Not even you were an exception to this, Mother.

But Decimus was young, much too young to control the swarm. Evoli could remove her armor and put a gun in the queen’s hoof, it wouldn’t make a difference. If I die, that swarm will devour the sun itself. You saw what they did to New Delaware. Evoli met her eyes for a moment, daring her to react. Hoping the young queen was perceptive enough to know that Evoli knew what she was thinking. “Tell me,” she said. “Reports. On Eternal, yes?”

Decimus nodded. “You know the cave system… I won’t waste your time with that. But there is a war camp inside the walls. From the air it looks like… it’s like every pony old enough to hold a sword is in there. I’ve never seen so much prey together in one place.”

Evoli’s war room was a burrow deep in the ground, which would look just like thousands of others her army had dug to shelter for the night. The enemy could pour boiling oil down these holes day and night for years and never find her—it was probably as close as she would get. She needed no high towers or windows to overlook the action. This close, it wouldn’t matter if the great queens had pheromone of their own to turn against her army. She knew them better now; her grip was fresher. She could take them all back.

There were no tables full of maps and supplies here—just a few dozen of her best-trained controllers to protect her and Strand and a few other VIPs.

“They’re raising a flag of parlay,” Decimus said, a little of the old bitterness in her voice. “All prey. I don’t see one changeling out there. I expect you’ll want me to burn them?”

“No.” Evoli made her way to her throne, then settled on it. An ancient stone thing, taken from the fortress of Manipura. She didn’t need it anymore. “Prepare for tonight’s attack. I will send a contingent of drones.” She nodded to Strand. “Make sure the Wurm is hungry. That’s a lot of stone between us and the gates of Eternity.”

“It will be,” Strand said. “I’m ready to be done with this distraction.” And he buzzed his way out.

Evoli focused a few drops of her concentration on a squad of well-armed drones, as well as one “mouthpiece” drone—drones selected for their beauty, kept clean and healthy specifically to use for negotiations. Evoli dressed it in the gaudiest robe she could find, shining with enough stolen gold and jewels that the ponies would probably think it really was her. Imbeciles. Like rocks would ever have value.

Evoli felt the hunger rumble in her stomach again. There were hundreds of thousands of ponies here. The only challenge would be winning the war without killing too many of them. Conquering the world had given her quite the appetite.

She brought her drones out onto the surface under a white flag of their own, headed towards the group at the edge of the fortress walls. She walked all the way there instead of flying, getting the best look she could at their defenses.

Riley’s engineers had built this place to survive through the ages. In the old days, those boxes high above would’ve held repeating guns and cannons that could turn her army to paste before it even got to the walls. But there were rusted streaks down the walls now, and huge catapults had been erected where the human weapons had once been.

What good did all the weapons of the ancients get them? They thought they were bigger and stronger than us, and now where are they? Dust, just like my mother.

There was no pavilion waiting for her, just a covered cart glittering with metal. Gold, she could see, and jewels plentiful enough to shatter into a thousand colors.

Standing beside the cart were three creatures, a griffon and two armored ponies. The bird stood tall over his pony escorts, wearing armor of thick steel outlined in gold. He wore a thin metal crown on his head, made of steel. She couldn’t get a good look at his face through the helmet, but she thought she saw fear there. His eyes settled immediately on the drone dressed as garrish as him. It was exactly as she expected.

Predictable. Weak. I wonder if he’ll kill this drone. It didn’t matter if the whole contingent died. Far more than five would be dying when night came.

Her drones stopped about fifty feet back, and Evoli walked forward in the body she was pretending was hers. The king in his heavy steel did the same, muscles rippling beneath plate and mail.

He reached behind him, undoing a belt. There was a heavy sword there, and a few daggers. He tossed them to the ground. Evoli had no weapons on the drone, and she made sure to walk slow enough for him to see that.

They stopped perhaps ten feet apart, a ruler and an animal pretending to be king. “You,” he said, his voice a regal mask. “You are the one named Ajna the Despoiler.”

“Call me Evoli,” she whispered, grinning in a way she hoped would be convincing. “What is the purpose of this meeting. Do you wish to surrender?”

The king reached down, hooking a claw around the edge of his helmet and tossing it to the ground. He shook out his head of regal white feathers, apparently fearless of her presence. “I have come to submit to a power greater than my own,” he said, as though each word cost him dearly. “I have brought tribute. I wish to give it to you, in exchange for the safety of my people.” He raised a claw, and the ponies hitched themselves to the wagon. That was why they were so lightly armored—they weren’t guards at all, but laborers.

Evoli’s own escort did not shift uncomfortably at the approach of something new and dangerous. They had no discipline, nor anything to protect. They were set dressing.

Evoli stood still as the cart was brought to her and turned to face her so she could see the wealth it contained. Prodigious piles of gold, silver, wrought into jewelry that ponies and griffons both seemed to find attractive. Plenty of glittering gemstones—the ransom of a king. “All this will I give you if you leave the ones I love in peace. Leave us to our land, and we will leave you to yours. This war can end.”

Evoli made a show of walking over to the cart, levitating one of the coins into the air, inspecting it. Setting it back down. Then she turned back. “You are King Aileron.”

“That is my name now,” the bird agreed, his eyes downcast. “I remember the world when It was something better, Despoiler. My name was Don McCarthy. This nation you destroyed was my home. I want the death to end.”

“There is only one problem,” Evoli said, shoving a pile of gold with one of her hooves. It spilled out onto the ground, revealing something made of metal underneath. She didn’t even stop to look at it, turning back to face the griffon. “The entire world is mine. I can’t let you leave to my fields and my citizens. I have a counter-offer for you. Whatever the Great Queens have on you, whatever they have done to make you put your army between me and them—I will give you more. I will let you remain in power over this nation of ponies, under me.”

The griffon sighed. “All the kingdoms of the Earth if only I’ll bow down.” He lifted the helmet from where he’d dropped it, settling it on his head. “Isaac!”

The gold exploded, bits of metal and gemstone scattering in the air like broken glass. A hulking figure emerged from within, wrapped all in metal. Evoli recognized the shape, though she hadn’t seen one like this in so long. And she knew the name.

Isaac was several heads taller than Aileron, taller than Evoli herself would’ve been if she were really there. His armor was like nothing made by pony hooves, a flexible metal with perfectly articulated joints and a mask over his face that ran down in a hose to something on his side. He held a human weapon in both hands, and strode up to her like an avenging god.

Evoli waited for the brief twinge of pain as one of her drones died—but it never happened.

“What are you waiting for? Kill the bitch before she can get away!”

She looked up as the armored figure lowered his rifle, using the other hand to remove his mask.

Isaac’s face looked a little different than Evoli remembered it. His hair was cut short, growing in bright green. His skin wasn’t withered with great age, but smooth. Only his eyes carried the weight of years. “This isn’t her, Corporal. It’s a puppet. No sense wasting the bullet.”

Evoli grinned wickedly up at the figure. “Isaac. It’s been a long time. Since you saved my little sister. How’s the abomination doing these days, anyway?”

“Better than you.” Isaac scooped up the gas-mask, sliding it into a pouch on his belt. “Riley warned you about this, Evoli. Why didn’t you listen to her? You’ve gone rabid.”

Evoli wasn’t having fun anymore. She focused, and her four guards lunged for the king and his single escort. The bird wanted a fight? She’d give him one.

Isaac’s arm snapped up before the drones had even started moving. He pulled the trigger, and the air caught fire. There was no pop of gunfire, only a brief electric feeling that would’ve lifted Evoli’s fur if she had any.

The drones were wearing heavy armor and chain, but from the way the first one exploded it might as well have been scraps of paper. Isaac never took his eyes from her as he shot the other three, spraying the ground with the ichor of the dead.

His rifle opened vents along its sides, revealing coils of wire that glowed bright orange with heat.

“The Preservation Initiative will not sit by and watch you slaughter the remaining population of our planet,” said King Aileron. “If your army sets one rotten foot on my land, I will grind it to dust.” He took a step closer, apparently unafraid of this drone. “I survived the end of the world, bastard. These people nearly had their feet under them before something bigger than all of us took that away. Turn your army around, take the gold, and enjoy what you’ve taken. It’s more than I would give you if the choice were up to me.”

“She can’t,” Isaac whispered. “It’s just like Queen Riley said. Hunger drives them mad. She ate everything she could, and now there’s nothing left. Why didn’t you go into the ice, kid?”

Evoli felt fury burn through her. At once, every drone in her army rose from what they were doing. They stopped eating, stopped resting, stopped digging shelters.

Evoli was done with strategy, she was done waiting. Even delaying until nightfall would be too long.

“When I’m done with them I’ll come for your Initiative next, Isaac! They aren’t the warriors they were—they’re scraps, slaves to that voice in the sky. I’ll have them too!” She lunged at him, no longer caring about the life of this well-groomed drone.

That was good, because Isaac blasted it to pieces another second later.

Chapter 10

Evoli could feel her drones dying as they charged into the mouth of the Pillar of Equilibrium. Each death gave her only a brief glance inside before the drone died—from a hail of arrows, from bullets or boiling oil or many other hazards. Yet there was so much energy in there, so much life.

Isaac dares to lecture me, demanding that I give up and die while he lives his endless, immortal life. What does he know of hunger? I deserved the blessing of the gods, not him, not that freak drone of a younger sister. They’ll all be ashes soon.

But they weren’t so far. In the first few minutes of the battle, she had lost a thousand soldiers. Of course, a thousand drones were nothing to her, and there were plenty more.

This wasn’t the wise strategy that she had used to dismantle so many fortresses before. She probably should’ve tried to wait them out, maybe cut off their supplies. The changelings inside could live forever with so many ponies, but the ponies would need food and that would have to come from somewhere.

A few of her various advisors told her so—that her probing attack had proved the strength of this place, and that she should regroup. There was no need to take the whole fortress today.

Evoli ignored them all. She consumed everything, and it didn’t matter what got in her way. “Attend to the battle!” she yelled to her advisors. “We’re taking them today! Before night falls! They will have no time to plot against us! This land will be ours!” And so they left, one after another. She hadn’t actually told them what to do, nor did she think she needed to. She had chosen the wisest and smartest of all to lead.

“You’ve lost your mind,” Strand said from behind her, his loyal troop of servant drones attending him. “This attack is pointlessly wasteful. We don’t need to risk failure to eliminate our excess population. There are safe methods for that.”

“I want the Wurm to break through the walls,” Evoli commanded, barely even looking at him from her throne. So much of her attention was focused on the battle, she didn’t have much to spare for him.

“It’s daytime,” he said. “It can’t attack during the day.”

“It doesn’t need to fight for long,” Evoli said. “Just long enough to break through the wall. One charge will be enough. It doesn’t matter to me if it is destroyed in the assault.”

“That would be a terrible waste,” Strand said, advancing a little closer. “Even worse than what you are already doing. The Wurm might be the first of its kind, but there is potential. I can’t cure its weaknesses if the enemy destroys it in battle.”

Evoli separated herself from the battle outside a little. Enough to see that Strand was carrying a knife. He had hidden it cleverly, tucked away inside a pocket he’d created in his foreleg. But there was powerful magic in that blade. The kind of magic that could have only one purpose. Killing her. But she didn’t move—not even the slightest hint that she realized what he was doing. “Can one of your servants command the Wurm? If you don’t want to do it, you could remain behind. Let one of them go out.”

“Yes,” he answered off-hand, glancing briefly over his shoulder. “I have taught Cordyceps to control the creature’s will. She could send it out.”

Strand stood at the base of the throne now, so close Evoli could feel the strange burn of the magic. Shouldn’t Strand be in agony?

“That’s good.” Evoli remained in place, though her body was building tension in every muscle. Her drones were momentarily left to fight without her guidance. “Well, Cordyceps. Go out and command the Wurm! Send it up against the wall! If it’s going to die in agony, make sure it knocks down as much of that fortress as possible.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Strand said, voice low. Then he struck. He lunged forward with a speed only glamour could produce, aiming straight at her throat.

He was the fastest male she’d ever seen. A few centuries ago, she wouldn’t have even seen him coming. But Evoli was more than just a changeling anymore, she was practically a god.

She drew in a breath, searching out the fragment of glamour that was Strand’s small life. What she had been unable to take from her sister she could steal freely from him. She drew in magic.

Strand kept coming, and she kept pulling. The male withered before her. Body became thin and skeletal, trembling as he reached for her with a glowing purple dagger. She could still see his expression of horror at the moment the last drops of magic were sucked away.

Strand’s corpse tumbled to the floor at her hooves, blown away with the breeze.

His drones scattered in horror, screaming their frenzy. Many of them weren’t intelligent, and so they were rendered momentarily mad by his death. A few, including Cordyceps, stared at the corpse with horror on their faces.

Evoli stepped over the body as though it were no more important than a spill on her carpet. “Cordyceps! I gave you an instruction. Will you follow me, and show yourself for a loyal member of your swarm? Or will I do to you what I did to your treacherous master?”

The drone’s wings buzzed in fear, and she nodded. “Immediately, Queen Evoli.” She flew off with the others. Evoli set one of her guards to watch, making sure that they were doing as they were told. Only when she was certain did she go back to fighting.

You were supposed to be different, Strand. You cared more about your craft than personal power. Killing you is such a waste. Evoli wouldn’t have done it on her better days. An attempt on her life was not typically unforgiveable, so long as it was incompetent enough. But she was out of her element.

There were many more dead drones when she returned her attention to them. The enemy had noticed, and Aileron’s troops had galloped out to harry them during the minute she was looking elsewhere. She made sure plenty of them died in their retreat, but that couldn’t make up for the crater in her lines.

Then the Wurm roared. She turned a few drone eyes to watch it come, a hulking abomination of flesh and teeth. She could see its flesh burning in the sun, see black lines tracing itself around the monster’s body. But her guess about what might happen appeared correct—the monster seemed only more determined to reach its destination.

Evoli scattered her drones out of the way, let it strike up against the Pillar of Equilibrium with all its terrible force. The stone cracked, and a great section of the cliff came tumbling away from above. Many inner chambers were exposed, arches and soldiers and ponies of every kind now unprotected.

The great Wurm rolled to one side, smashing down onto an empty fortification, and thrashing about with its tail. Huge sections of flesh came tearing away from its body, pouring something sickly green onto the ground. Smoke rose from the monster wherever the sun touched it—and in a few more moments, it stopped moving.

It’s a good thing war is going to end today. I might not be able to make another. Evoli wasn’t sure how detailed the notes were on that strange creature. But that didn’t matter now. She had a war to win.

The ponies within fought with terrible ferocity, even now that they had to fight the swarm on many fronts. Every time one cavern fell, the ponies had to split their attention still further, and retreat deeper into the ruins. But still she saw no sign of her ancient enemies, no hint of where the other great queens had gone. She didn’t see even a single changeling as she broke deeper into the ruins, where she knew the great assembly-hall would be located.

“What do you want from me?” asked a voice from beside her. She was so startled that she nearly took her attention away from the battle again. But there were fewer surviving drones now, so she didn’t have to completely take her mind away from the violence in order to effectively command it.

It was Decimus, looking even more degenerate than the last time Evoli had seen her. Both her wings had gone from clear to a solid crystal. It was a little like wingrot, except that she’d never seen a wingrot case that wouldn’t be oozing pus at this point. “Why aren’t you helping with the battle already?!” she demanded, her voice crisp and harsh. “You have an army, don’t you? You know where the enemy is. I demand you send them in beside the swarm!”

“They’ll attack us,” Decimus argued, though her voice was far less disobedient than Strand’s had been. There was no insolence in the squeak of a young queen, only fear. “Your swarm isn’t the same as mine. They see us as the enemy. I’ve already lost people to it. I don’t want to be fighting from all sides.”

Evoli’s patience was running thin. Outside, drones died in thousands. Regular ponies fought for every cavern, every corridor, joined occasionally by dark figures in metal armor. Isaac’s human soldiers were like small gods, and it was easier to bring the caverns down around them then get crossbows through the metal they wore. So that was what her drones did.

“I will open a front for you,” Evoli said suddenly, a grin spreading across her lips. She already started pulling back, leaving a gap in the line that Decimus and her army of worthless husks could use. “Down into a tunnel I haven’t explored. It seems quite wide, perhaps it is of strategic value. You will clear it of the enemy and kill all those who do not surrender.” She sent the image of the section of tunnel she imagined without telling the young queen any of the other details around it.

Such as the fact that Evoli knew exactly what was down there. And that it was certainly the best defended place of the whole fortress. Down in the deepest part of the Pillar of Equilibrium was a strange deposit of magical crystal that Riley’s own swarm had discovered during construction. It was there they had built the council chamber, and there they would’ve met to make new laws. The crystal granted any queen who sat in that room supreme vision, along with the ability to touch the minds of drones from one end of the world to the other.

That would be the new seat of the great queens, beyond a doubt. They would have nowhere better to hide as Evoli’s army swept across what was left of the world.

“We will obey,” Decimus said, without sounding even the least bit happy about it. But she didn’t call Evoli insane, like so many others had done today. Maybe she wasn’t the worst of her servants.

With the last of her distractions gone, Evoli fully turned her attention towards the Pillar of Equilibrium. She had lost many drones in her initial waves, fighting more as an instinctive blob than the tactical knowledge of an ancient. But now that there were half as many, she could focus far better. She split the drones into teams, distributed the weapons of those they killed, began harassing and sealing off and sending drones on suicide runs.

That was the biggest advantage of all when it came to fighting ponies. Each pony was an individual, and few of them would be willing to do anything they knew would kill them. That limited their tactical options. But Evoli’s drones—most had no identities of their own. She could send them running into supplies of oil or powder and let them explode, ripping gaping holes into the wall of the fortress. She could send them forward to test for traps with sheer numbers, triggering every one until their little bodies gave out. She could do that, and still have plenty to spare.

The ponies finally started to retreat, leaving the dead behind as they moved deeper into the earth, to increasingly ill-prepared fallback positions.

It was only a matter of time now. Evoli’s brief outburst had cost her some lives, but they didn’t matter in the end. She had plenty left to take the world for herself.

It wouldn’t be long now.

Chapter 11

Decimus and her swarm of controllers fought brutally. Evoli could hear them from outside, and sense the violence through the aid of her own swarm. The deeper they went, the better prepared the enemy became. She could not see into the minds of Decimus and her controllers, but she could ask those on the outskirts through her own controllers’ vocal questions.

The enemy was prepared—with weapons of the ancients, in great numbers. Many of the orphaned controllers died. All the better. We need as few mouths to feed as possible. At least dying in battle would be a good death. She would feel guilty if she had to eat them herself.

But then, as violent as it had been, the battle was over. Evoli’s own changelings still fought brutally in caverns that seemed to go on forever. But instead of resisting her, the troops in these areas seemed mostly to be trying to get away. They were retreating, not trying to hold her back. Because the great queens aren’t there, and they know it. They shouldn’t have been allowed to retreat.

That was the danger of trusting ponies to do the job drones should instead. Ponies cared for their own lives, and so they were poor warriors. But Evoli didn’t hunt down the fleeing enemy—they were food, after all. Once her task was complete, she could gather up the defeated and punish their leaders. The rest would add their magic to her swarm, one way or another.

Decimus eventually emerged from the depths. She hadn’t been leading from the front, though she had been gone for so long that Evoli worried she had been killed in some counterattack. There would’ve been no obvious sign of it, not with a swarm of controllers. They wouldn’t go mad and start killing each other like her own drones would do if she died.

Decimus had been wounded—she had thick bandages on the side of one leg, and walked with the aid of a wooden brace. The kind of weakness that would mean a sure death by one of her sisters. But Decimus had no sisters—only subjugated queens ruling over distant lands to the south. Maybe I’ll replace her when this is over.

“My queen…” She stumbled to a stop outside the Pillar of Stability’s main entrance, lowering her head to Evoli in respect. “I have done as you commanded. Though… I fear the victory might not be as rewarding as we hoped.”

“I doubt that very much.” Evoli walked alongside her, running a wing along the little queen’s back. “Your swarm fought better than I expected. Against superior weapons, in small quarters and darkness. They are to be commended. But tell me—if you have secured the passage I suggested, what is it do you think would displease me?”

“I… discovered the throne room,” she said, looking away from Evoli, speaking very quietly. “There was… I lost friends to get inside. They had a mounted—”

“I’m not concerned with the battle to take it,” Evoli cut her off, voice suddenly harsh. “You will tell me exactly what you discovered there, and you won’t waste words to do it. The great queens were within, then? I know your drones could not defeat them in a battle, no matter how many there were. And you…” She looked down. “Is that where you got that wound?”

Decimus nodded. “F-for you, my queen. I tried to… but we couldn’t win. There are three of them, Evoli. Three queens. I don’t know how to beat them. I think…” She lowered her voice still further. “I think you might want to try to negotiate again. We’ve taken out most of their army, and they have civilians… they’ll probably be willing to give in to your demands now. You can be queen of the whole world.”

“I’m already queen of the world,” Evoli said. “This battle proves it. And a queen has the wisdom to know that she cannot suffer rivals to live.” She tensed for a second, resting one hoof on the curved sword at her back. She felt the spike of fear from Decimus almost as brightly as though it had been a real pony emotion. That’s… not possible. I must be getting hungry if other changelings can trick me like that.

Evoli let go of the handle, laughing. “Relax, Decimus. You have served me faithfully. Loyalty is rewarded.” She gestured to one side. “I’m guessing the enemy didn’t attempt to flee.”

“No,” Decimus answered, backing away from Evoli at a brisk walk. She never turned her back, though, or ran. “Why don’t they? Every queen I ever met could teleport, and there’s three of them. They could be anywhere in the world if they wanted.”

“Because they wish to survive,” Evoli answered, turning away from the cavern’s entrance. “They cannot survive without a swarm to feed them, no less than you or I. If they flee, they will starve. Their only chance is to wait for me to come for them. If I were wise myself I might leave them alone, let them wither away in a guarded cell while I solidify my power… but that would let so much precious magic go to waste. No, I will confront them. And I will triumph, claiming this last sliver of the world for myself. Then, finally, there will be peace.”

Decimus didn’t remain with her, but hurried off as fast as her injury would allow. By the time she returned, her leg was no longer bandaged and bleeding, and there was dry slime on her body instead of dried blood. She had a pair of soldiers on either side—wearing armor salvaged from the enemy, by the look of it. Each one kept well away from Evoli, as though a queen who wasn’t even four feet tall might be able to protect them from her wrath. Your minds make you weak, controllers. You wouldn’t do what was necessary. I bet if I asked you to trade your life for Decimus’s right now, you would selfishly allow the whole swarm to die so you could live.

But whatever her temptation, Evoli would have to be practical. She had already lost Strand, and potentially much more. She wouldn’t throw the orphan swarm into disarray quite yet.

“Now, to finish this,” she said, sending a wave of her own changelings down the shaft. Only a dozen of them, though there were another dozen or so surrounding them as they followed. She wasn’t about to trust her safety completely to the hooves of such a weak queen.

Evoli remembered the pathway down as completely as though she’d been here yesterday. She knew each lock, each door, each stairwell and trap. Where they passed plenty of bodies of Decimus’s changelings that hadn’t known what was coming until a wall fell on them or they flooded a corridor with water, Evoli could skirt the whole thing without being told.

“There’s less… dead than I expected,” Evoli said, when they were nearing the bottom of the winding shaft. So deep that they’d left the realm of manually dug corridors, and into the abyssal cave that housed the throne and all the other crystal formations. The air was thick and humid here, and filled with the smell of bat droppings. Even the ancient queen Riley hadn’t been able to find and wipe out all their colonies. “With the time it took you to fight your way here, I would’ve expected thousands of dead.”

They passed plenty of Decimus’s changelings along the way—controllers that guarded side entrances, or watched over their own dead lying in respectful slumber. But no prisoners.

“We were cautious going down,” Decimus said from up ahead. “Controllers don’t fight the same way as drones, my queen. And I’m… not old or strong enough to show them how to fight myself. We used pony tactics instead. It takes time, but there are fewer casualties.”

“I suppose I can forgive you that given your results.”

The entrance to the throne room was a straight shaft exactly half a kilometer long, with thick stone blocks set to form walls where none had existed before. There were carvings set into the wall, detailing the exact wording of Riley’s ancient pact. All the laws that wrapped around our necks. All the tricks she used. You tried to rule us with words when you got old and feeble, mother. I’m about to set us free.

But there was another reason the path was so long and straight. Here at last she found some of the dead—a massive pile of them near the entrance, surrounded by soldiers who seemed to be in mourning. And at the end of the hall, more of the human weapons of war. There was changeling blood everywhere.

“It was… a terrible struggle,” Decimus muttered, her voice distant. “Getting to that door. I don’t know how other queens deal with it. When I’m older, and I have drones of my own… I don’t think I could send them somewhere like this to die.”

“Collect your wits,” Evoli scolded, setting off down the hallway and dragging the young queen along beside her. Her own drones made up the rear, cutting off the controller swarm. “Death is a part of life, Decimus. Your changelings gave their lives for the hive. That is the honor of their existence. You should not mourn that they fulfill the measure of their creation. It would be worse to take the opportunity for service from them. Living for themselves, that would be the real curse. Changelings are meant to be part of something bigger, it’s what separates us from ponies. Your swarm has a unique perspective there—and they chose the superior method over one that left them with darkness and confusion.”

Decimus nodded. “Of course, m-my queen. They did. But that doesn’t mean I won’t miss them.”

Evoli felt it again—this time it was grief instead of fear, so bright that she actually stopped walking, staring at the other queen. Decimus stumbled, came to a gasping halt, looked away. “W-what is it, queen?”

The sensation was gone again. It didn’t linger on her body that way it might’ve on a pony, like blood in the water for a shark. It was gone again, back to the shallow echo of emotions that she felt from others of her kind.

“Nothing. It must’ve been nothing.” Evoli could see the end of the tunnel now. There was another group of Decimus’s changelings, facing a sealed stone door with a broken metal lock. They formed two tight ranks behind shields—a pharynx formation, and not a bad one either. Waste of time for changelings, though. Time they spend hiding is time they aren’t using to cut down enemy warriors. More pony selfishness infesting my hive.

Evoli’s drones shoved their way through from behind with contempt, sending a few of the controllers sliding across the floor. Their officers got the idea after that, and they moved out of her way, forming a wide aisle all the way to the door. It swung open just a crack, and cool air drifted out from inside. Strange smells came with it. Mildew, fungus, decay overwhelmed the mineral smells of this dense cave.

And on the ground in front of them was the wreckage of a human device, a cylinder of many small openings with cranks and boxes of bullets. The cause of so many deaths along the tunnel, broken to pieces by Decimus and her brood.

Evoli instructed her drones to watch the door, to enter the instant it seemed that violence had begun. But otherwise, they would only be a distraction. She let them push it open, ready with her magic in case there were more attacks from within. But there were none, only a diffuse blue light. “You will come with me, Decimus. I don’t expect you will be necessary—but I might want a witness. This will be a historic moment. Those guards of yours, however… they may not come. Even controllers might be a liability against the great queens.”

Decimus nodded, whispering something to her guards. They exchanged far more words of hushed conversation than seemed warranted, then she finally hobbled forward beside Evoli. “Alright, my queen. I’m ready.”

Evoli stepped inside to claim her destiny.

Chapter 12

The throne room had been a spectacular chamber in its days of glory. But the war above had not spared it—as Evoli walked inside, she had to climb over huge chunks of fallen crystal, probably dislodged by the weapons of the ones defending it. There were four colors, each specifically grown here rather than found. Green, orange, red, and blue, each one divided in a circle where many thrones had been.

There was a seat here for every one of the Great Queens. But thanks to Evoli, there were only two of those queens left. Both of them would be here, waiting to fight her. Too bad Decimus didn’t attack anyway. She would’ve lost badly—she was just a child, no matter how many controllers she had—and that would have meant a cleaner end to everything than Evoli putting the queen down herself.

There was nowhere to hide in the throne room, or at least there hadn’t been. Riley had created this place around the ideals of openness and honesty—not with the world outside, but at least with each other. That was why it had only one entrance, and nowhere to hide. They hid their true faces from ponies, but not from each other.

The table lay on its side. And there in the dark, Evoli could see a large tray, open and steaming. It was a tray of superchilled fluid, the ice which queens used for suicide. But she’d never seen one this large before—the block of ice it would make would be massive, large enough for several chains. We lock ourselves in a prison before we get too strong. Before we can think bigger than our chains.

But there was room to hide now. Shadows moved in the light of Evoli’s horn, forming briefly into pony figures before melting away again.

“I don’t like what you’ve done to changelings,” said an echoing voice from the gloom. Evoli lashed out at the direction it had come from, breaking a huge section of emerald away from the ceiling and making it tumble to the floor. The chamber shook around her, but somehow the tray of icy fluid didn’t spill.

“Neither do I,” said another voice. “Not that I deserve an opinion. But it’s shitty.”

Evoli was nearly to the tray in the center of the room. Her horn blazed, and she tore a huge chunk of stone right off the wall to bring down on… no one. The boulder cracked down the middle but there was no pony standing under it when it hit. “I’m not here for you!” Evoli shouted, her voice much louder than the others had been. “I’m here for the Great Queens. I know they are hiding here.”

“Not hiding,” Isaac said, stepping out of the fog. He wore the same armor he’d worn on the battlefield earlier, the vents down his back already open. A chunk of glowing rock rested in his hand, and a sword in the other. He pointed down with the sword—and Evoli saw.

There, resting peacefully in the fluid, were Muladhara and Svādhiṣṭhāna. Their eyes were closed in death, and she could practically taste the defiance on them. Dead. She would receive no wealth of glamour here. The food she’d counted on to sustain herself would not come.

“I’m sorry, big sister,” Ezri said, emerging from the shadows on the broken side of the spring throne. “Age isn’t the only way to starve. Muladhara and Svādhiṣṭhāna… we were so close with them… but not fast enough. When you destroyed their swarms, they…”

“They died rather than become you,” Jackie said. She hadn’t moved—but now a shadow lurking near some broken crystal took on definite shape. Evoli could see the reflection of bat eyes in the gloom, and the glimmer of metal that refracted into every shade of the rainbow. That was the dagger, then. The Dreamknife.

Evoli backed away, glancing briefly towards the door. Isaac stepped gently to one side, placing himself and his sword between them. Evoli’s eyes darted between the three of them.

I don’t have to starve. There are other sources of magic. These were immortals—demigods, created by Archive before her disappearance. Though Evoli didn’t understand the specifics, she knew power when she smelled it. If I can drain them, I’ll eat like a queen for centuries.

But she would have to do it, first. Her eyes moved more methodically as she glanced between them. Jackie—the deadliest assassin in the world, who had killed kings and sorcerers and demons and survived. Isaac, the mightiest warrior of a dead race. And Ezri—an abomination.

This would be far harder than defeating two queens. Taken together, these three were almost a god. Almost.

What’s all this power if I can’t use it? If I win, it won’t matter what it cost.

“You had a choice before, big sister,” Ezri said. “Lachesis, remember her? We sent her to help you. To give you a choice. But you killed her, took that choice away.”

“It’s okay though,” Jackie said. She wasn’t in the same place anymore, though that first shadow was still there, bat eyes still glowing in the light of Evoli’s horn. “We have a few new ones. You can get in the ice and hope there’s a magical cure for whatever you have… or we can fucking kill you.”

Evoli couldn’t follow all three of them with her eyes. They’d surrounded her for that reason exactly—but she could still keep a mental note of each of them. Her mind moved in many threads, and each one had only one task.

“Nothing like me has ever existed before,” Evoli declared, her voice fearless. “You threaten what you don’t understand. I’ve brought down the greatest queens on Earth. I’ve torn away every chain my mother wrapped around us. Maybe when I was a child, you three could’ve killed me. But now… that day is long gone.”

“Sister…” Ezri watched her from just beside the tub, the only one who wasn’t holding a weapon. Yet the pain she saw in her eyes was almost worse. Her body might be green and orange and freakish, but the sadness emanating from her was real. “Big sister, our mother’s laws were never chains. They were like… they were armor. Living them kept us safe. Safe from becoming… you.”

She’s weak. She gave up the strengths that nature gave us. Spit on our advantages and become more prey. She deserves whatever I do to her.

“You won’t convince me to kill myself over some impossible dream,” Evoli scoffed, and in her anger the whole cavern rumbled again. “I’ve taken all the world for myself. No queen could stand against me—no monster, no Outsider, and certainly no man. You three will bow to me, and serve… or I will do to you what I’ve done to every other creature who resisted me.”

Metal sang, and Isaac drew a sword. The blade looked strange to her—all black, without any reflection in her magic. He held it in one hand, with the crystal wrapped around a little chain in the other.

“Then I’m sorry,” Ezri said, lifting her head from the tray and facing Evoli in the gloom. “I hope in the numberless eternities beyond the veil of death, there is forgiveness for you.”

Evoli didn’t wait another moment—she charged, straight at Ezri. The little changeling—just a freakish drone—was suddenly gone. She passed through empty air, and smacked into the side of the icy tray.

But the others were moving too. She caught the downward stroke of a blade from the corner of her eye, and dodged as Isaac’s sword passed inches from her head. She couldn’t dodge the wave of energy from his other hand, flinging her up towards the crystal ceiling.

A batlike shape hung there, dagger at the ready. They’d been planning this.

Evoli was too fast. She roared, and stopped herself dead in the air. She lashed out in all directions, filling the room with flames that burned away at the runes and turned her vision white.

She let the fire burn for almost a minute straight, until the walls had gone molten and began to drip down around them in soupy globs. The gloom they’d been fighting in before was well and truly gone now—everything glowed.

Including Isaac. His armor retracted from around his body, vents down his back opening with a hiss of compressed air.

Evoli landed on the ground in front of him, where the tray of icy suicide-water had been. It was completely gone now, apparently burned away right along with the corpses of Muladhara and Svādhiṣṭhāna. But Evoli didn’t spare much thought for them. They’d chosen their fate, they were the only ones to blame that they were dead.

“You’re still here?” she asked, lifting up several chunks of molten magma in her magic. But it’s a good thing they’re harder to kill than ordinary ponies. If they die before I harvest them, then I starve. There weren’t enough non-changelings left in her entire world to keep her going for much longer now. She needed something stronger.

“The Archive guides my hand,” Isaac said, picking up his sword from where it had fallen. “She remembers me. She will remember you too, when this is over.”

“I doubt it,” Evoli said, her voice laced with scorn. “She’s super dead after what they did. Your belief isn’t going to help her—and it won’t help you.”

Evoli attacked, blasting at Isaac with every bit of molten rock she could find. He raised the back of one arm, shielding himself, but largely in vain. Metal dented and screamed with the force of each blow, and Isaac’s voice twisted into pain. It didn’t matter how strong this human was, how fast with his sword. He was still just a man—he had no defense against her magic.

But then something shoved her, and Evoli realized that she had forgotten something. Her hunger had focused her so closely on this one meal that she had forgotten the other two.

Jackie’s light blue form was standing on her other side, fresh green blood on her knife.

It was so sharp that Evoli hadn’t felt it cut. But then her legs gave out, and she tumbled forward.

An illusion spell below her faded, just in time for her to see Ezri standing beside the tank of ice. It was still there, the ground around it unburned.

She had no time to speculate what kind of shield they’d used to keep it from being burned away before she splashed face-first into it.

The cold was the enemy of changelings—it had been from her first memory, when she’d woken in Alexandria beside her young mother and father to a world of ice and snow. She’d nearly died in that first year—and now she knew those feelings again.

Numbness spread on her face, her limbs. She felt the buzzing pinpricks of cold, even as the surface of the liquid above her head went cloudy. She reached for her magic, tried to form a teleport—but found it wasn’t there. The ice had frozen that too, and left her with nothing.

Not that there’d been much left to begin with. She’d used so much in this war.

It doesn’t matter, she thought, glowering up at the vague shapes above her. I’ve still destroyed you, mother. My children will be free.

“It isn’t much,” said King Aileron, a few weeks later. Decimus stood at the top of a large rise, above a sweeping expanse of swampland. Before the Event, this place had been called Florida. Now, it just looked like somewhere she’d go to get eaten by alligators. “But it’s the furthest I can get you.”

“The heat is… wonderful,” Decimus said. She wasn’t wearing a robe like the king, or even a hat. The tropical sun and humidity felt excellent on her bright pink body.

In the clearing behind them, she could hear the voices—audible voices, not the “hive-mind” that she’d known so well in her first life—of her swarm. Thousands and thousands of former ponies, survivors of Evoli’s scourge.

“It might be,” Aileron said. “But the ponies who find you in the future will not be. After what your, uh… former associate did… you’ve made quite the name for yourselves. Perhaps deserved.”

“We aren’t them,” Decimus said. She turned, so they could see the massive Albatross the HPI had used to get them all here. In several loads—this last one was full of cargo, supplies up from Bountiful to get them started. Her changelings were already hard at work unloading it. “We’re her victims.”

“I know,” Aileron said. “And I know what you did, luring her into our trap. We couldn’t have beaten her without you. So here you are.” He gestured with one wing, at the shipping pallets wrapped in plastic. “It’s all we can do you. Hopefully this land is worthless enough that no ponies try to settle here for a long time. And by the time they find you, you can… all finish transforming.”

We better, Decimus thought. There aren’t any ponies here. If any of my bugs don’t change, they’ll starve. But she didn’t say that. Any implications of changelings starving were usually the preamble to justify their harvesting. And Aileron of all people wouldn’t hear any of it.

“We will,” Decimus said. “Thank you for your kindness. Good luck rebuilding.”

“The same to you,” he said. “May Archive find a place in her memory for you and yours, along with mine.” He took off.

Decimus didn’t wander back to the growing camp, not yet. She let herself walk a little ways, to the edge of the rise. She found it wasn’t the Archive who occupied her memory, but Evoli. In a way, you did free us, she thought. I never would’ve changed if there was another way. We won’t have to steal love again.

It had been a painful lesson. Many of her drones had starved, and just as many had been killed to take the Pillar of Equilibrium.

But even so, she couldn’t help but feel a little gratitude. Thanks Mom. I wish you could’ve seen it.

But then again, maybe it was for the best. Evoli probably would’ve burned it down before they started.

Chapter 7

Evoli looked out at her army, swollen with the ranks of the mighty force sent to destroy her. Many of these drones still wore the body-paint or armor of her enemies, glittering in the dawn sunlight. But all that armor didn’t protect them.

There was no chance that the great queens wouldn’t realize what she had done. The real question was—how much of their army was this? It would take them at least five years to grow replacements. That assuming they could find the glamour to do it. Without so many servants, Evoli suspected they would have a very difficult time with that.

“We will not cross the desert this time,” Evoli said, addressing her troops both intelligent and drone. “We will not sacrifice our numbers to return quickly. Instead, we will target the pony settlements directly. We will harvest them, and use them to sustain our advance.”

It was a daring plan—and some part of Evoli knew—an unsustainable plan. Harvesting the pony population would create enormous wealth in glamour, enough to feed her army for years. But it was akin to cutting down every tree, instead of sustainably harvesting only a few. When it was done, there would be no more hunting ground at all, and no more food.

But that doesn’t matter. I have plenty of territory to hunt in. Most of this army will probably be destroyed in our battles with the great queens anyway. She didn’t have to worry about sustaining the empire beyond that. Once she had defeated the others, she would have all the power she needed.

“How are our new controllers?” she asked Decimus, who was waiting on the ramparts for her once the speech was complete. He had a nervous look to him, as though he were reluctant to talk to her.

“Not… well,” he admitted, shuffling uneasily. Decimus was loyal, but he looked like he’d been shaken. “They are… damaged. From their harvesting. I have never seen the process performed involuntarily before. I don’t know how long it will take them to recover. Or if they ever will.”

“Give them work assignments anyway,” Evoli muttered, dismissive. “Only feed the ones who work. That should convince the others of the importance of contributing to the hive.” She advanced on him, lowering her voice dangerously. “There will be far more coming, Decimus. Thousands, perhaps. I am relying on you to find a way to use them in the swarm. There is no way to extract all the glamour they contain, until only drones are left. If you think it would be kinder to simply kill the controllers we create—”

“NO!” he exclaimed, far too quickly. “We’ll find a use for them, my queen. You have my word on it. There’s no need for anything that extreme.”

“Good.” Evoli turned away from him. “I knew it was wise to trust you. You were always one of my finest, cleverest males. Put them to use, and I may find another use for you when this life is over. I will have the wealth to create many new queens, Decimus. Perhaps you will be one of them.”

“P-perhaps,” he said, obviously trying to conceal his excitement at the suggestion. The desire to advance was universal among changelings. Particularly the males, who spent their lives subordinate.

I’ll make you queen, all right. Queen of all the exiles. You can be the one who figures out how to feed them. That would be a great way to free herself of responsibility, as well. If a queen couldn’t feed her swarm, it was obviously that queen’s fault, not anypony else’s. Despite how quickly she’d suggested the plan, outright slaughtering every new controller was likely to create even more united opposition from the enemy. Best keep the number of abominations down. I’ve already got enough blood to worry about.

Her army advanced. With the size of her force, it didn’t matter what stood in her way. They took hundreds of miles—sweeping up the eastern coast and down into Mexico and Florida. Many, many ponies fled from her army—and she let them. Those most determined to fight were also the juiciest to harvest, and she didn’t need them all at once.

For a time, Evoli had enough to eat, and so the hunger faded. She advanced only as quickly as her supplies of glamour dwindled, not sacrificing her new army just to keep the others going. She kept her promise to Decimus almost immediately, as soon as he’d come up with a system that he promised would keep her new controllers from going insane. It took years for a queen to mature, so might as well get that started as quickly as possible. Despite the wealth she amassed, that was the only queen she created. Minor, subjugated queens could raise the drones for her armies, rather than daughters who would barter with swarms of their own. It was a simpler arrangement for all involved.

Her growth could not continue forever, though. The great queens and much of the pony population both had fled to the north-eastern United States, where ponies and rebellious changelings alike had united under the banner of a warlord. His name was Aileron—or maybe that was his city. Evoli didn’t really care. But they had troops, and an army, and built entrenched defenses by the day.

The first barricade into conquering their land was an ancient city named New Delaware, with fifty-foot walls of polished limestone and a garrison of ten thousand griffon mercenaries. For the first time, Evoli halted her advance completely, and lived off supplies while her armies prepared for a siege.

New Delaware could not simply be avoided—if it was not conquered, then they could not advance any further into the great queens’ territory without fear of serious reprisal from the rear, harassing her supply-lines. Evoli could not leave her army anymore—not when the enemy was likely to have developed the same chemical weapon she used to take the army in the first place.

As she settled into a siege, she visited Strand’s workshop, who had kept on with his diligent labor over the last several years. He had been calling for Evoli for some weeks now, eager to show her something. Finally, it was time to see the result of her trust in the changeling geneticist.

The workshop was one of the first structures they had constructed outside New Delaware, in order to protect and conceal Strand’s work. Strand’s own staff of guards lurked outside—mostly controllers now, the most ruthless and bloodthirsty of all those they had created during their harvesting.

As such, Evoli could not simply will them out of the way—she had to instruct them, and wait for them to realize who she was before they scattered before her like flies feasting on a corpse. She could make out whispers from some of them, the nickname that she’d been given among the former ponies she had harvested. “Evoli the Despoiler” they called her.

But while most of the controllers she had created would say such things with fear, these spoke with awe.

The workshop had been built within a gigantic canvas tent, at least two-hundred feet long and almost a hundred feet high. It could’ve held quite the crowd, though most of the space was not for ponies to assemble. The working area was encased in a protective metal cage near the entrance, which Evoli’s drones had dragged across the prairie as they conquered. The remainder of the space was empty of furnishing, except for a few reinforced pillars to hold up the tent.

There was little light in here, only the pale blue of some chemical that Strand had invented to calm the one they kept here.

The male scented her before she was halfway in, and stepped back from what he was doing near a centrifuge. “Ah, queen. It’s good you’re here.”

“You said you were ready. Every day New Delaware receives more reinforcements. You promised me you could bring down those walls.”

“And I will,” Strand answered, sliding past her towards the cage’s exit—the one that led into the tent proper. “It’s time for you to meet the newest member of your swarm. If you thought weaponized pheromones would revolutionize war… we’ve barely even begun to scratch the surface of what’s possible.”

You are completely insane, Evoli found herself thinking. I’m glad the others were too short-sighted to realize how dangerous you were. Otherwise you might be coming for me instead.

There was no light illuminating anything past the cage. But Evoli could feel something alive out there, something that was almost a drone but not quite. Like a child, or a drone that had come out of its cocoon half-formed. It couldn’t join a hivemind, only briefly touch against it. Like someone freezing to death out in the cold, who could only ever open a window to let the warmth from within melt the ice on their body.

“Behold, my creation. I call it a Vaultbreaker Wurm—the first of its kind.” He stepped out of the cage, snapping his wings together in a particular way.

The entire room shook around Evoli. She saw something move across the room, something turning to face them. A pair of eyes glowed with their own, hungry brilliance. The ground shook as something rumbled toward them, dodging around the central column. Eventually it got close enough to the cage that Evoli could make out more of its features.

Some part of her wished she couldn’t.

It was as though someone had taken the basic biomechanical plan that made changelings, and chopped the whole thing to pieces. It was at least thirty feet high, and perhaps twice as long as the tent at least. Layers of chitinous armor grew along its length, each one almost as thick as her whole body. Its front wasn’t a jaw, just a single round mouth with rows and rows of serrated teeth. It had no head as such, but its swollen eyes had been sunken into the body. The entire thing buzzed with glamour, like a live wire ready to spark.

“Stars above, you did it.” Evoli lifted off, trying to get a better look at the creature. She saw many little wounds in its armor—such as a steel ring almost as thick as she was set into its body. The wound oozed greenish slime even now.

“Do not speak with doubt,” said Strand. “Of course I did it. I spoke only of the possible, Queen. And it is true, my Wurm is a crude work… a cudgel, if you will. But the tools we’ve been given are potent. I expect with a few hundred more drones, and enough glamour, I could breed even greater things. Living weapons the likes of which even the Enduring Ones would tremble to see.”

He wants more? Evoli had given Strand at least a hundred drones, across all ages. Even a few controllers, which she’d never seen again. But those had become far less valuable now that she was creating them by the village-full.

She tried to reach out into the creature’s mind, but it reacted immediately, thrashing about on the ground and bellowing like a rotten elephant. For the split-second she remained in contact with it, Evoli almost screamed herself. She could feel its terrible pain, its confusion. Its mind had been stripped back to something that was less than a drone, yet it remembered being more. It wanted to destroy, and it didn’t much care what or who got in its way. Life itself was its enemy now.

“Be careful, Queen!” Strand lifted something from a hook—a lantern, which he flashed directly into the creature’s eyes. Brilliant orange light emerged from within the lantern, and the Wurm actually sizzled where it touched, as though it had been briefly placed on a hot skillet.

Evoli landed beside him, watching in fascination. The Wurm retreated from them again, back into the gloom of the tent. “I can’t command it?”

“No.” Strand sounded matter-of-fact. “Remember the pheromones? Imagine what a creature like this could do if it was turned against our own army! It will obey me however. With training, it will obey you as well. It will take weeks, but in time you can earn its obedience as I did. You just have to break it enough.”

“Wise,” Evoli answered. “But we do not have weeks. You can command it tomorrow morning. We cannot confront the New Delaware garrison in the air… but once you’ve smashed the walls, we will either destroy them in their city or send them to flight.”

“Tomorrow night,” Strand corrected. “Forgive me, queen, but the Wurm does have one weakness. It cannot abide the presence of sunlight. I hope to treat this vulnerability eventually, but given the urgency of your campaign… I may have used necromancy to accelerate the process.”

Evoli growled in displeasure, but it didn’t last long. She was so impressed with Strand’s work that she could trust him to solve the bugs in the next generation. Once I’ve taken the world, we can work as slowly and carefully as we want.

“It’s perfect, Strand. Tomorrow night then. I will inform the army.”