The Queen worked her fingers into the hole in her cheek and massaged the muscles, hoping to prevent the new obsidian stitches from stiffening too much. Even now, more obsidian leaked up from the wound to glue flesh to flesh.
“What a waste of time,” the Queen said, though with the hole in her face, it came out more like “hut a haste of hime.”
Why, the Queen thought, did I even need her?
But the Spirine had made such a compelling argument. Imagine how useful another mind, one like yours, would be…
Unfortunately, after all that excitement, this new couran had been nothing more than a liar. Annoying.
Because her muscles hadn’t quite stitched together yet, the Queen had to stagger with one leg trailing numbly behind her. Most of Calyciana’s body was entombed in the prehensile growths that spilled out of the column. A matte helmet stuck out of the black mass of vines and branches. The couran was still alive, and glaring up at the Queen with unbridled fury. Not that she could do anything about it.
Still useful, then.
The Queen knelt down, and brushed her fingers along that helmet. The Queen did not know why she did it, only that she felt compelled. A willing mind. There will be time to work on her. Calyciana squirmed as the Queen drew her fingers up to the horns that sprouted through the helmet’s ridge. The material was all wrong.
“Fake horns?” the Queen asked. Her cheek was still sewing itself up, so saliva and blood dripped out of the gap. “This one is deformed.”
The horns do not matter. The thought penetrated the Queen’s mind, like the wake of a ship cutting through the waves. It was wrong—of course the horns mattered—and yet… the Spirine was always right.
Calyciana squirmed against the vines’ iron-vice grip. She twisted and gritted her teeth and hissed as she tried to move.
“Stop struggling,” the Queen said. “Or else you’ll ruin what little you have to offer.”
The hrutskuld was barely breathing. His eyes were turning red, and one of the vines was clamped around his neck, allowing him just a whisper of breath. At least, she was pretty sure it was a hrutskuld. There were so many lesser species, it was hard to keep them straight.
Behind her, there was a hard, steady clacking on the metal ramp, followed by a polite-yet-gurgly cough.
“Oh, good. Gurzan,” the Queen said, “Take them to processing.”
“What about that one?” Gurzan tipped his staff at the couran’s other servant. Not the hrutskuld. The … what had she called it? A hoo-lan? Or was it hur-man? He had one boot on the ramp, and one on top of a vine, as if it was his own, personal plant, and he was laying claim to it with his heel.
He called himself a human.
The Queen frowned.
Why is he still standing?
The column split deeper, and obsidian rods shot out of the metal. So many of them, all at once, when they collided with the xeno, they made a human-sized outline in the air.
The Queen, quite pleased, allowed herself a grin. She knew it was wasteful, but what was the point of power if you didn’t let it loose, once in a while? She instructed the rods to retract back into the Spirine. Might as well reuse the matter—
But the human was still standing there. Untouched. One hand, resting on his belt, his lips quirked to the side, wholly unimpressed. Perhaps, she thought, even a little angry.
“Gurzan,” the Queen said, thoughtfully eyeing the human, “Take the other two to processing. And be gentle with the couran’s body—we will need it.”
Gurzan bowed and backed away, shepherding the vines up the ramp with his staff. That old broken thing spilled crude matter everywhere he waved it, but at least the vines obeyed. Like twin snakes, they dragged the xenos up the ramp.
“I don’t suppose,” the human said slowly, “I could implore you to let them go?”
“They are mine. As are you.”
The human-xeno smirked, and shook his head, as if he’d just heard a joke that only he would understand.
“You doubt us?” The Queen asked. She flexed, not with this body, but with the veins and muscles of the Spirine itself.
“I would,” the human said. “If I knew who I was talking to.”
“Queen Lole, Who Shall Forever Reign—”
“You are no Queen. This place, it wears you. Like skin. You are nothing more than a tool.”
Suddenly, this ceased to be entertaining. The Queen’s inhaled, her veins flushed with anger. She lifted her hand, and commanded the energy from the Breaker back into the Spirine. She clawed her fingers, and a mass of obsidian vines crawled down the column and spilled over the ramp in a twisting, grasping, obsidian flood. The vines reared up and shot out, impaling the human.
The Queen let out a gasp, as the vines impaled themselves. Cracks ran through the morphing tendrils. They had gouged scars into the column and pierced through the ramp, creating a knot of vines for the human to casually perch atop. As if he was the one who put them there.
“What is this?” she demanded, more at the Spirine than at the human. How dare you miss? It was supposed to serve her. But when the Spirine responded, it let its anger be known—and made her crumple, gasping, to the floor in agony.
Speak to him.
“I will!” she said. “I promise, I will!”
The pain relented, and she inhaled and drew herself up into that self-important pose that had worked on so many of these primitive xenos before. Her mouth opened, and she said, “Why are you here, xeno? Answer me.”
Queen Yole felt the Spirine shift its attention. Felt it shutting down the lesser processes. The Breaker ceased, the converters furled up their branches and sealed their microscopic pores, and all but the most necessary servants in her domain slumped and went still. All the Spirine’s senses turned over and focused on the human.
The human blew out a calming breath, and spoke. “Yole, you have wronged innocent people. You have taken lives that were not yours to take. You ripped them from their families and their friends, causing pain and loss that can never be undone. Your very presence brings terror and suffering to those around you.”
“Is that all?”
“You threatened the orphans.”
“Isn’t that terrible,” she sniffed lightly. “And what do you judge for my punishment?”
“I can help you. I can guide you to change.”
The Queen’s lips turned up into a smile that could cut through bone. The human seemed to mistake this for an invitation to continue.
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“Lay down your tools,” he said. “Free your slaves. Let go of this place, and start a new life. There is another way—”
“How weak can you be?”
The human set his jaw, frowning his disappointment. His lips tightened into a dark line.
“Life is war. How has your species made it this far without understanding this?”
“Oh,” the xeno said, “They understand it.”
She did not understand the gravity in his words. Though she watched him with a thousand eyes, the Queen was used to communicating with brains that, if shaken too hard, sloshed around and dribbled out of the nearest ear hole. The nuances evaded her. Otherwise, she might’ve felt what was about to happen…
“Even in paradise, life is war. Plants strangle their own siblings, and poison each other's roots, they climb to steal the light from their neighbors. If I am strong enough to take, then I take. Why should I allow the weak to fester?”
“You are not worth more than everyone else. And no matter how many limbs or tentacles or freaky little grabbers you have, all of us can exist together. The sum of our differences will enrich the whole.”
“What a soft species you humans must be.”
The human said nothing, but his nostrils flared. It was such a familiar motion. He almost looked couran.
Perhaps we will have use for him.
“Mercy is a curse. It drags the proud down, and prolongs the suffering of the weak.”
“And what about when you need mercy?”
“Why would I need mercy?”
“I know what you dream of. You’re not the first. I doubt you’ll be the last. But one day, a change will come, and you will wish you deserved mercy. It’s not too late to ask for it. I can help you escape.”
“Your ideals are flawed, pacifist.”
“Never said they were perfect,” he said. “But I’m trying to do better. What about you?”
“I am better,” she said. The Queen reached into the Spirine’s reserves, untouched for eons, and brought them to life with a clap of her hands. In the shadowy distance, columns bent toward them. Far above, the surface of the cavern began to crack, showering soil and stone into the chasm. On the glass structure, the crawling, maintenance servants with their alien limbs went catatonically still. The column split open and spewed forth a deluge of obsidian. Vines reached and snapped and whipped as they expanded and lengthened, and the Queen laughed as she felt the weight of all that bone-breaking strength explode outward.
There were five humans. There were ten. There were a hundred. She swatted at them all, hitting nothing. Watching visions of this idiot xeno multiply. Some small, receding part of her worried that the Spirine was breaking, that it’s sensors were casting errors on its own sight. How else to explain this?
But this small part, this shred of Yole, was no longer in control. Had not been, for a very long time.
“I am awake!” the Spirine screamed through her, “While all the others lie dead and sleeping! I will become the crown upon which they throw their prayers—to be reborn anew! The Queen of the Dys!”
The distant columns now brushed against the edge of the ramp, flooding their own obsidian matter—walls of thorns and wires and jagged fangs clapping together and building into claustrophobic inevitability. She saw his boots. Lashed out. Light flickered, and her vines crushed nothing.
“Let go.” A hushed voice said behind her.
How?
“What are you?” the Spirine asked.
“Please,” he said. “Come back, Yole.”
This body—Yole’s body—shivered. She squirmed like she did back in the first days, when she first offered herself to the Spirine. The fingers—Yole’s fingers—twitched.
“Let go of this place,” the human said, “Let everything go.”
“My servants. They will die.”
“They are not living now.”
“And then what, human?” she spat. “Should I turn myself—and all this—over to the Enforcers?”
He rubbed the back of his head, slightly embarrassed, “Is that an option?”
“Weak,” she laughed bitterly.
His expression hardened, “You weigh and you measure, and you judge the weak and the strong. But you ignore the gifts of difference. Life is the rarest thing in the universe, and if you were truly powerful, you would defy these judgements, and empower those you think are beneath you. You would grow stronger together.”
This xeno’s logic was so twisted in on itself, it almost came full circle to making sense. But what else could you expect from one of the lesser species?
Yole inhaled. The Spirine inhaled with her. From the dunes above, observant eyes might have seen a cascade of growth: trunks of metal writhed up the marbled heights, and wrapped around the tallest branches, choking them and weighing them down until they touched the walls. A branching carapace weaved itself over her domain, until the Spirine looked less like the trunk of a leafless tree, and more like some hollow, massive seed, sprouting new roots and reaching for better soil.
Below the ground, the new tendrils leeched matter from the reserves, and from the sands themselves, and the column rippled with rivers of new metal.
The Queen brought her clawed hands together in a cage. With a slicing shriek of metal, a thousand obsidian spears clamped down on the ramp, trapping the human in jaws of obsidian. Now, it wouldn’t matter how fast he could move.
The human sighed.
That was fine. Let him behave however he wanted to. We have already won. Fresh metal dripped up from the broken ramp to catch the Queen’s feet, as she sauntered a slow circle around his cage. “Tell me, xeno. When the worms beg for mercy, do you think the birds will listen?”
The human put his fist under his chin, and thought about it for a moment. “It’s a big universe,” he said, “You’d be surprised how big some of the worms can get. Maybe, one day, the birds will be glad they listened.”
The Queen sniffed, and smiled. Such bravado. An endearing quality, if there ever was one.
And now that he was in their grip, perhaps they didn’t have to kill him after all this. Perhaps this worm could still be useful. The idiotic naïveté, of course, they would have to cut that part out, but the rest of him … there was value there.
Breaking into a Dyssian Shell was tiresome work. The Spirine had been working toward this end for centuries. Perhaps longer. Maybe this stubborn xeno will be useful, then. He seemed young enough. And vital. And …
“What a strange weapon,” the Queen cocked her head. She hadn’t noticed that oversized handgun hanging from his hip. It was clean and well-maintained, unlike most of the weapons on this backwater world, though not elegant and decorative, like the heroes who strutted from town to rundown town.
She reached out, and the vines reached with her.
“Don’t touch that,” he said.
It was the way he said it: as if he was the one in command here.
But what was he? Nobody had even heard of this species. Human. Nothing more than a fly, caught in the threads of her destiny.
“Seriously,” he said. “You don’t want to touch the gun.”
She reached for it, using every vine at her disposal.
The weapon reached back.
Threads, nearly invisible if not for the silvery dust on their gossamer lengths, flew up from the textured metal of the handle. They sailed gracefully through the air, as if dragged by some unseen wind, and where the silver touched her vines, chunks of obsidian fell to the ramp and cracked. She felt a sudden deadening of the nerves, a cold, painful numbing where her vines had been.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” the human said. Worse, he sounded like he actually meant it. Like he was the one who wronged her. “I can’t make it stop. I can only sort of—”
And then, his own silver strands were growing. Crawling up his flesh, glistening like dew-covered spiderwebs over all his skin. All the silver lashed at the air, and though the threads couldn’t have been more than a hair’s width, they sliced through the obsidian cage, like metal wire through fresh mud.
He moved as slow as a river crawling through the low desert. None of that flickering speed now. He hefted his pistol out of its holster. A chamber, the wrong shape for an energy pistol, sat quiet and dead and still. He pressed the muzzle to her forehead. It was colder than steel and Yole—twisted and caught in the mind of the Spirine—saw her existence shrink down to this very moment.
It should not be. And yet here it was: the end of her life, at the hands of some lesser xeno that should have died out ages ago. Impossible.
He stood with one arm outstretched, the gun held firmly against her head, but not so harsh that it hurt. How had it come to this?
“Let it all go,” he said. “Before it’s too late.”
The muzzle grew warm against this body’s flesh, yet the bullet—or whatever projectile this weapon would fire—did not come.
But she was a Queen.
“Don’t toy with me,” she said sharply, “Kill me and be done with it.”
He swallowed. “Please.”
“Kill me!” she commanded.
The muzzle shifted, dragging across her temple. It clicked against one of her horns, and she thought she felt him squeeze the trigger. Despite the Queen’s strength, her heart hammered in her chest, pumping adrenaline into her veins, and making her hands sting with cold sweat.
And yet …
“You can’t do it, can you?” The Queen’s lips twitched into a smile.
How could someone so strong act so weak?