“A Dyss?" Caly asked. "That’s not possible ... right?”

“Of course not,” Olm muttered quietly, “Not possible at all.”

“Impossible,” Caly agreed. “Utterly untrue.”

“Insane, even.”

“Mad.”

They glanced at each other. Caly swallowed hard, finding her mouth suddenly dry. The Queen swept descended the walkways, while all around them, ten thousand xenos bobbed and slept in their tanks. Her creature brought up the rear, dragging the staff (still spilling dirt all over the clean floors) in his wake.

“Maybe we could just leave?” Olm asked.

“You think she’d let us go?”

Olm glanced back at the creature, who glared blindly at them, as if they were guests who had stayed past their welcome, but the rules of polite society prevented him from saying anything.

“No.”

“Then we go on.”

“You just want to see if she’s telling the truth about the Dyss—”

“Of course, I want to see if she’s telling the truth! I mean, she can’t be. A Dyss. But…

“But what if she is?”

“Look, Olm, maybe there’s another way. Maybe we can, I don’t know, bargain with her somehow. Could it hurt to hear her out?”

“You’re starting to sound like the human.”

“Don’t say that,” she shot back. “Just give me more time. Stick together. And help me keep the human away from the Queen. I swear, it’s like he’s trying to stick his hand in the hornets’ nest.”

“I will try,” he muttered. “But be quick.”

A pinging sound whispered through the chamber, reverberating through all the glass vats. Olm winced, like a sudden headache twinged at his skull. Yet Caly felt … nothing. Light, even, as though they hadn’t just trekked halfway across the desert.

At the bottom of the chamber of vats, more winged doors led them into more hallways. They followed one that sloped down in a gentle curve until the walls split apart, and a sudden expanse yawned just beyond the edge. Caly peered down into a vast, glittering darkness. Unlike the garden above, the wind that howled here was cold enough to make her shiver, even through her suit. Support columns, like the legs of improbably massive insects, marched away into the vast darkness, burrowing into the cliff faces far below. Ramps were cut into the crust of the planet, cascading down into a quarry where a hazy mass of lights twinkled, dizzying in their distance.

The sound that filled the chasm was beyond description. It reminded her of the songs of the nomadic whales that roamed the oceans of her home world, if only those whales had been made of diesel engines and industrial gear boxes, all grinding and clunking and hammering away.

The Queen seemed barely to notice that they were hanging over kilometers of empty abyss, seemed to revel in the fact, judging by the way her feet stepped so lightly, so close to the edge. The floor was little more than a corkscrew ramp that wound around a beam, wide enough to drive a hovertruck down, though one small slip, and you’d lose a lot more than the truck.

When Caly touched the beam, it jolted her and she pulled her hand away on instinct. Live energy coursed through the beam’s metal, strong enough to make her fingers numb on first touch. As they descended, the humming swelled, growing louder and louder, until Caly began to worry. She was about to ask the Queen if they should, you know, run, when the humming fell, leaving an ear-popping silence in its wake.

That distant, piercing ping rose up from somewhere far below their feet. Like a rock hammer, tapping—just once—on a particularly delicate geode. The ringing note sustained, a soft, almost sweet sound.

It was interrupted by a scuffle. Olm was trying to coax the human to keep his mouth shut, but Taws threw him off, and stomped up to the Queen, a determined look on his face. “How many, Yole? How many have you killed?”

Caly shot a look at Olm, who threw his hands up in the air as if to say, I tried.

The Queen stopped, and looked from Taws to Caly. “Your servant, does he always speak above his station?”

“I don’t have a station,” Taws answered.

“Clearly,” The Queen’s dark lips quirked up at this little show of spirit, intrigued. “What kind of xeno is it, anyway?”

“It’s a he,” Taws said, “And I’m a human.”

“Never heard of it.” And just like that, the Queen’s interest waned. She drifted down the ramp.

“What about Blacktree?” Taws shouted after her.

The Queen stopped. It was the kind of stop that makes the wind go quiet, and the air prickle with a chill.

“What about Blacktree?” the Queen asked.

“You didn’t help them. You murdered them.”

Now, she did turn. “Have you ever been there? To Blacktree.”

“Never had a chance,” Taws said, bitterly.

“Taws,” Caly muttered, “Shut up.”

“Well, human, it was a lot like every other town on this half-rotted planet. Vile, populated by drunkards and addicts and, worst of all, the people who thrive by selling to drunkards and addicts.”

“Anyone can judge, but you don’t have the right to murder—”

“You stand in my domain. You breathe my air. You gaze upon all that is mine. By my authority—”

“If you’re truly so powerful, you could have let them live.”

“Yes. I could have. But why?” She tossed her hand casually, as if hanging all those xenos had been as unimportant as flicking water from her fingers. “I had the power. They didn’t.”

The human opened his mouth to argue. A well-placed elbow in the gut turned his words into a breathless ughf! Caly pulled him aside before he had the chance to stand up straight again.

“Are you trying to get us killed?” she whispered harshly.

“She can’t do this,” Taws glowered at the Queen as she descended the spiral ramp, “Someone has to tell her she’s wrong.”

“No, they really don’t. And what makes you think she’d listen? She’s—” Caly stopped short, as Olm walked past, holding his hand to his head, grumbling to himself. Behind him, the creature hobbled down the ramp, obsidian eyes blank and staring. It stopped. Its unblinking gaze settled on her.

Caly smiled and nodded, one of those fake smiles that one gives to an insufferable colleague who doesn’t merit the energy of a full-blown rivalry and therefore receives only surface-level politeness in the vain hope that future interactions will remain at a minimum, or better yet, never happen at all. She waited until the creature passed, before continuing.

“We’re in deep, human. Or did you not notice the literal army she’s got back there? And if she really found something that belonged to the Dyss, then what she’s doing here is massively illegal. It’s no wonder she built walls around this place—if the Synod caught wind of this place, they’d have a whole regiment out here in an instant. Fuck, they might even send the Navy. Do you know what that means?”

“A chance for justice?”

Caly snorted, “The Navy doesn’t care about justice. They’ll crack the planet—with everyone still on it. The Synod doesn’t need New Nowhere. Look. Just play it easy, Taws. Let me work on a plan, and we’ll handle her. And we’ll all get out of this, safe and sound, together.”

“You sound pretty sure of yourself.”

“This is my arena.”

Taws’ set his jaw, and searched her face. She had to resist the temptation to darken her visor—it felt like she could see all the stars reflected in the dark pools of his eyes. But those were only lights from the chasm below, weren’t they?

“Then you’ll help me stop her?” he said.

“No matter what.”

Olm was somewhere ahead, massaging his temple and giving Caly a look that said, By all the stars, get me the fuck out of here. It did not go unnoticed.

“You see what I’m saying, Calyciana?” the Queen sailed over, hands clasped before her, tutting as if she truly empathized with Olm’s pain. “Us courans, we’re different. I’ve found my servants are far less excitable after they’ve been processed. But you and I, we can withstand the song of the Spirine a little better, can’t we? You might even say, we thrive in it.” On the edge of the ramp, the Queen spread her arms grandly, closed her eyes, and inhaled deeply. Her majestic horns, polished to a shine, glittered against the backdrop of the chasm.

“Your poor servants, though,” the Queen said, “They are a little backwater, aren’t they?”

“Olm? He’s not backwater. He’s just sensitive to these things.”

“And the other one?”

“Oh, him. Yeah, he’s backwater. I wouldn’t take him seriously. Nobody’s even heard of his people before. Humans.”

“That would explain it, then. He doesn’t seem to the fundamental concept of the universe.”

“Right,” Caly said, trying to sound as politely interested as possible, “Which fundamental concept, exactly?”

“Our utter supremacy, of course. Our strength is our destiny. We were meant to rule. And the lesser species—to serve. If the humans haven’t figured that out, I’m surprised they’ve survived this long at all.”

“Yeah, I’ve been wondering the same thing,” Caly said. But something the Queen said made her mind churn. A new plan, as simple and effective as any she had ever done before, ripened in her mind.

The good news was Olm would appreciate it. Probably. Once all was said and done, that is.

And the human? Well. You can’t please everyone all the time.

***

The air was furnace, and thick, sulfurous compounds caught in his lungs. The ramp carried them directly below the chamber, giving Olm the chance to look up and see many more chambers huddled like elongated eggs around the spindly columns that, to Olm’s eye, seemed far too narrow and curving to support the bulk of the Spirine above. How many vats, in each one? How many xenos?

And how, Olm wondered, between the aching waves in his head, had the Queen gathered so many without anyone knowing?

The walls of the cavern were shadowy and distant and the path was so dark, it was like they were walking through open space. Somewhere out there, magma churned and roiled, spilling rivers of red across a broken landscape.

The ramp corkscrewed around a lone column, burying them deeper in this forsaken place. A hum rose in the column’s unusual metal—at times, the white marbled metal seemed almost translucent—and when the hum crescendoed, it was followed by a breathless absence, until it began to fill with energy once more, giving the dark cavern a kind of heartbeat glow. Even when he squeezed his eyelids shut, it felt like he could see the back of his own brain. And always, somewhere in those primordial depths beneath their feet, that melancholy ping.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

When he ventured to the edge, Olm could just see how the column pierced down into a delicate-looking structure far below them. All white metal ribs and thin, membranous material—not glass, because glass shouldn’t waver and change shape—all gyrating around each other like the concentric fins of an anatomically improbable fish. The not-glass sparked and refracted arcane hues which couldn’t have been reflections, because the only source of light was the raging, red magma in the smoky distance.

There were a handful of servants down here, too. Strange, almost scuttling xenos, whose black augments were so advanced they threaded like external muscles across their bodies. They crawled over the not-glass structure, tinkering with the delicate machinery hidden at its core.

“The Breaker,” the Queen said, proud as a grandmother over a newborn grandchild, all full of promise and possibility. “It’s been down here for more than a million years, and the Synod never knew. When I found it, the planet had almost swallowed it whole.”

“What is it?”

“Watch,” the Queen said.

All those glass fins, twisting and turning over each other—melting into each other—synchronized for a brief moment, as the hum in the column rose. It built into an agonizing thrum that moved up the beam. And then, silence.

It returned with a violent, screaming fury, untold energy racing back down through the column, through the layers of glass, and into that inkwell darkness below. Then, like a pin, magnified to a planetary scale, it hit: Ping!

A blaze of color—from darkest red to fiery blue—outlined a shape, etched in the volcanic rock below the glass structure.

“The Shell,” the Queen whispered excitedly.

The glass fins turned and melted. Synchronized, and built a new hum that disappeared overhead. In that floating moment of silence, the throbbing in his head stopped. Then, it crashed down again with the falling rush of energy and that dreadful, echoing ping!

Once more, light shot through the glass. Once more, it smacked against the volcanic rock, illuminating something huge and unnaturally smooth buried in the stone. Calligraphic flames of every color flared out from the impact point, burning and crawling in complicated patterns, waves of runes—or digits, or glyphs, or something—an incomprehensible map of some arcane language, scrawled over a vast, smooth shape that peeked up from the dark, pitted crags. Already, the map faded to blue … and then, to black.

But he had seen it, buried in the mantle of the planet. Huge and dark and shining. And obsidian.

“The Shell of a Dyss,” the Queen said, her eyes alight with joy and pleasure as she watched her Breaker at work. “The first of its kind to be found, alive.”

Maybe it was Olm’s imagination, but he thought he could see new cracks—new lines and symbols forming at the center of the shape—each time the Breaker fell. It gave him a feeling, like he was teetering on the edge of the void. And when the Breaker fell, in that echoing ping, he thought he could hear a voice, uttering a single word: Jump.

Caly’s voice snapped Olm back to the present. “How do you know there’s a Dys in there?”

“It speaks,” the Queen closed her eyes. “All you have to do is listen.”

Ping…

Even Caly remained transfixed. Perhaps Olm only imagined it, but he wondered if she, too, couldn’t hear the whisper of a voice.

But one of them remained unimpressed. The human frowned over the edge of the ramp. “Seems like a lot of effort for a single xeno.”

His comment was so innocent, so blindly naive, Olm couldn’t help but bark a laugh. And then he realized the human wasn’t joking. Does he really not know?

“I mean,” Taws said. “If it wants to sleep, isn’t it rude to wake it?”

“Taws,” Olm said gravely, “The Dys have been dead for a million years. To find one, even one that sleeps … the Synod will never be the same.”

Olm’s mouth went dry just thinking about it.

“This could change everything,” Caly said, taking a step closer to the edge.

The Queen joined her, her jewelled horns towering above Caly’s. Their shoulders, almost touching. “Imagine it, my dear. All that was lost may once more be found. We could make progress, again.”

“The things we could do … The things we could change.”

There was a tone in Caly’s voice that Olm didn’t like. A kind of excitement, mirrored in the Queen’s hungry smile. So little was known of the Dyss, but Olm knew one thing: they died for a reason. If there really was a Dys down there… Perhaps the human has a point. Perhaps it should be left alone.

Energy surged up the pillar, rising to a pitch beyond hearing.

“New lanes,” Caly whispered her awe. “New colonies. New cities.”

“Hyper lanes and space colonies,” the Queen said, “Oh, Calyciana, we could reach so much further. Dream of the all the galaxies in the Synod, and even then, you dream too small. The Dys mastered the stars, long before we courans rose from the mud.”

Her voice made Olm’s skin crawl, but Caly was nodding along with her, unable to take her eyes off the glass and the black, glossy shell of the Dys below. Caly’s visor was a mirror, reflecting all those cold, fiery glyphs.

“It is obvious,” The Queen said, her tone rising and falling, almost hypnotic in that echoing chasm. “It has always been obvious.”

“Yes,” Caly nodded.

Another echoing ping crashed through sensitive gaps in Olm’s stony skin, and bit into his bones.

“But the Synod, despite all its Crowns and Rings and Councils has been blind to it. Too busy squabbling among themselves, dragging each other back into the mud. This world is far from useless.”

“They have no idea.”

The Queen bent lower, all her jewels jangling in the hot, blowing wind. “There is so much more to be claimed. So much forgotten power.”

“You wouldn’t need anyone,” Caly said.

“Wrong,” the Queen said, “I would be a fool to attempt this feat alone, Calyciana. I find my existing servants are,” she paused, letting her eyes graze over Olm and Taws. “Inadequate.”

Olm masked his disgust with another wince of pain. He wanted to pray to the ancestors, but the words kept slipping out of his mind.

“You want my help?” Caly asked. “You want me to break the Shell?”

“Oh,” the Queen laughed sweetly, making all her jewels click and sway, “The real work begins after the chamber is opened. I need another mind to help me once I’m through. I need someone who understands how precious this moment is.”

And here’s where Caly laughs in her face, Olm thought. But she didn’t. And when the silence dragged on, a dark feeling sank in his gut.

The courans faced each other: eye to eye, two minds locked together. And though Olm could hear every word that passed between them, he couldn’t help but feel like he was missing out on most of the conversation.

“Your Majesty,” Caly bowed.

“It is not generosity that guides me. You know this, because you are couran, too.”

“I understand.”

“I could make use of you. I could make you greater than you ever dreamed. I will give you everything.”

“But your Majesty,” Caly bowed, her hands clasped tight, “What I want can’t be given. It must be earned.”

“What—”

CRACK! The shots fired so quickly, they blended into a single sound.

Caly stood with an arm outstretched, a pistol in her hand, smoke rising from the barrel. Two dark spots appeared on the Queen’s chest, and a hole burrowed into her forehead, just shy of the roots of her horns. The beginnings of a word formed on the Queen’s lips. She blinked. She crumpled, like an ornate puppet whose strings had been cut. Her horns cracked on the floor, breaking pieces of antler and scattering jewels over the edge of the ramp, where they rained on the glass below.

The human made a strangled sound.

“Hm,” Olm said.

“What?” she said, wiping red flecks off her helmet. “I told you I had a plan.”

“Not exactly your most complicated scheme.”

“Well, it worked, didn't it?” she shrugged, “Oh, don’t you look at me like that.”

The whites of Taws’ eyes were showing. His jaw clenched into angles so sharp, they could cut through paper. His nostrils flared, and Olm had never known that nostrils being slightly more open could look so threatening. And when he finally unclenched his jaw, all he could say was, “You.”

“Me, what?”

“You told me to wait.” His voice was soft and quiet, and somehow that was the most threatening thing of all. “You made a promise.”

“And I kept it.”

“I said no killing.”

“You said, and I quote, ‘Least amount of harm possible.’ You said you wouldn’t kill, and you wouldn’t help us kill either. Far as I can see, you didn’t help, and I did the killing. You didn’t have to lift a finger, and your conscience is clean. You are welcome.”

“You.”

“Pretty good, right?”

Olm had seen anger, in all its drunken forms. He’d seen it break down in tears or breakout in fist fights. But this—whatever was lurking in the human’s voice—was something that took every ounce of Taws’ effort to contain.

“I thought,” Taws’ voice trembled, “I thought you were going to help me stop her. To bring peace.”

“Can’t get much more peaceful than being dead.”

“Caly,” Olm grumbled, rubbing at his temple with his knuckles.

She whirled on Olm, “What are you getting mad at me for?”

“I’m not mad,” Olm said, “I’m just saying—”

“And you,” Taws turned to Olm. Is he shivering? Olm wondered. “You told me to follow her lead, because she had a plan.”

“Oh, no,” Caly waved her pistol around, still jittery from the kill. “Don’t you dare blame him. Lole was fucking crazy, and I did what had to be done. Someone had to. Stars, for all I know, I just saved the whole whorin’ planet! Do you have any idea how dangerous it is for us to be down here? Forget the literal army of mind slaves—you don’t fuck with the Dys! Do you have any idea what it means if there really is something sleeping down there?”

The pillar hummed with energy. Thrumming and fading up, before racing down with electric speed, piercing through the glass and hammering that world-echoing ping. The glass glowed as it illuminated the runes below. Olm caught a glimpse of those long-legged xenos, still crawling around the glass, oblivious to their Queen’s death.

“You didn’t have to kill her,” Taws said.

“Then, what? Did you expect we were just going to walk in and tell her, ‘you’re under arrest!’ Well, out here in reality, human, we don’t have the luxury of playing pacifist.”

“You didn’t give her the chance.”

“A chance? She had a million chances. Hmm, what should I do today? I know! I’ll enslave the local populace and use them to help me dig up the most dangerous fucking thing the Synod has ever seen!”

“I came here to save her,” Taws said, his voice as small as a speck of dust, tumbling through empty space.

“Yeah? And she was going to liquefy your brain, but I guess that doesn’t bother you because there’s not much to liquefy, is there?”

“Caly—” Olm tried to cut in.

“Should I have begged her to stop? Should I have got down on my knees and cried? I got us this far, human. I got us all the way in. Tell me what you would have done. Think your stupid little jokes were going to win her over? When were you going to make your move? No, seriously. When?”

“Caly, you’ve made your point.”

“I got us in!” Caly growled and threw her hands up in frustration. He could hear the ragged emotions tearing at her voice. “Why is it whenever I do something, it’s never good enough? I’m the one who has to come up with the plan. I’m the one who had to deal with her the whole time she was salivating down my neck,” Caly pointed her pistol at the Queen’s corpse, “Do you have any idea how dangerous it is here?”

She had a point. Even Olm was still riding the adrenaline. A Dyssian Shell. The Queen was mad to have even come near it, let alone to try and break it open. And who knew what would happen, had she succeeded? The whole of New Nowhere… on the verge of death.

But the moment Olm opened his mouth, it all went wrong: “Look, both of you are right—”

“Absolutely not,” Caly and Taws said at the same time.

They glared at each other.

“How in all the fucking stars can you be this naive?” Caly said, “What did you think we were going to do when we came out here—lasso her up and drag her back to the sheriff? She would have killed us. She would’ve taken the planet with her.”

“Or the system,” Olm said.

“Or the system!” Caly agreed.

“The whole galaxy,” the Queen gurgled.

“Or the whole galaxy!” Caly said.

She looked at Olm. Olm blinked at her.

Between them, the Queen rose into a trembling, haggard shape, like a body stretched out on hangers that had, through the horrors of science, learned how to walk upright. Blood dripped down from the hole in her forehead and dripped into one of her eyes. She dabbed at it with a cold, blue finger, as if she was at a fancy dinner party, and someone had told her there was a bit of sauce on her face.

“You could have had everything, Calyciana.” Her voice rasped on her own blood. “A destiny, like mine. The Synod will become ashes of a memory, and you, with it—”

Caly, screaming, pumped the rest of the pistol’s clip into the Queen’s chest. And when it was empty, she threw it aside, unshouldered her rifle, and squeezed off three bursts, tearing out a chunk of the older couran’s perfectly-sculpted cheek. The pale blue skin of her jaw came apart like a zipper, and her mouth fell open on one side.

Glistening, black threads crawled up from the muscle tissue and knitted over the wounds. Not sealing them, but growing through them, replacing the torn, blue flesh with obsidian growth.

Olm squeezed the contacts on his Hammer, and lifted his arm. Energy crackled from the power packs on his ribs.

A force, like the blunted trunk of a tree, slammed into his back and sent him sprawling. He let out a groan and the taste of blood flooded his mouth. A moment later, Caly smacked on the ground next to him, her helmet bouncing with a sickening thwack.

The pillar’s gentle hum became an angry, liquid zapping as the metal twisted itself open, riddling itself with an amost organic latticework of tears and gaps. Shapeless, black limbs, not quite like the branches of a tree, reached out and snagged at Olm pants, wrapping and winding around his legs. Thorns caught at his shirt tails and dug into the straps of his retractable armor, snapping through the leathery material.

He rolled, and reached out to Caly, who tried to push herself back to her feet. Branches caught her ankle and tore the skin and made the ramp slick with smears of her blood.

The Queen let out a long, rasping sigh. She raised her hands and tilted her head back, letting her own blood drip down her neck. The growing carpet of vines touched at her, gently. Fondly.

Olm felt the vines crawling up his back, snapping through the wires and the metal exoskeletons that held his hammer to his arm and shoulder and back, breaking open the braces. He felt the whine of power in the Hammer’s capacitors before it was cut short, and the Hammer rattled in pieces against the floor. Olm held the trigger, and nothing else.

Bleeding, and lying there, he should have been fighting. Instead, he found himself remembering the words of an old chaplain, “The thing about hrutskuld funerals is that nobody ever wants to admit they’re at one.”