“Who do you think’s winning?”
Viune glanced over at Iaberus, who was bouncing up and down giddily. “I don’t care as long as they don’t damage my armor.” She looked back towards the center of the cave, where Mimix was gnawing one of Rhio’s legs off, and put her hooves to her mouth. “Did you hear that, you morons?!”
“Shut up!”
The fight had been going for a few minutes already, as evidenced by the amount of drones who’d congregated to watch it. A couple of the bolder ones were taking bets - not really the wisest move, because they were Zhoele’s drones, and she abhored infighting unless she was participating - and the betting pool seemed fairly even. None of the three captains currently duking it out really had a record against each other. Sure, Titus had threatened Mimix a few times, and Rhio had punched both of them on occasion, but these three in particular hadn’t had a proper fight yet.
And, Viune had to admit, even though Iaberus was dense, she too was having trouble determining who was winning. Titus was down a leg and a wing, Rhio had lost his horn and nearly a leg, and Mimix was missing two legs and in danger of losing a eye. Mimix’s smaller stature was working against her, unfortunately, unlike her last fight with Incelidus where she was too quick for him to get a decent hit on. Against the two males, she was having a harder job than—
A ragged cheer went up through the drones as the female fighter pulled Rhio’s leg off and clubbed Titus over the head with it.
“Who started it?”
Captain Incelidus, fashionably late, as always… Viune glared at him. “Who cares? A fight’s a fight.”
“It was either Mimix, Rhio, or Titus,” Iaberus added in an unsuccessful attempt at being helpful.
Resisting the urge to start another fight with the idiot, Viune muttered some obscenities under her breath. There was no point attacking him now, especially if one of the others was about to dent their armor. Maybe later she’d glue him to the anvil and hit him with the hammer a few times, try to knock some sense into him. It wouldn’t work, of course not, but it’d make her feel better. Iaberus was a wuss anyway. Couldn’t put up a decent fight to save his—
CLANG.
The drones went deathly silent.
Viune’s eye twitched. “Incelidus?”
Said Captain shuffled away from her. “Yes?”
With slow, deliberate movements, and without breaking eye contact with the combatants, she lifted her helmet off. “Be a sweetie and hold this.”
Incelidus gulped, and took it from her. You did not argue with Viune once she used the s-word. Iaberus plugged his ears.
“CAPTAIN RHIO!” Viune bellowed. “YOU HAD YOUR WARNING!”
With a new challenger entering the fray - and one Tartarus-bent on severely crippling Captain Rhio to boot - all of the bets were off. Within ten seconds Viune had already removed Titus’s dented helmet, thrown it clear across the room, and spat in Rhio’s eyes, proving once again that she was better at fighting than all three of them. It seemed to the other Captains that at any given time, she would be either working or fighting another Changeling.
Incelidus gingerly set Viune’s helmet down and sat down next to Iaberus, who had resumed bouncing. “Lead Captain Dethyn already knows,” he commented, eyeing the assembled drones, the ones belonging to their armorer in particular. With Viune angry, it wouldn’t be long before her drones followed suit and started picking fights with the first Changeling they came across. “He went to fetch Captain Zhoele first.” When they arrived on the scene, the fight would be broken up, the combatants knocked unconscious for punishment and healing, and the crowd dispersed. With any luck, that would happen before anyone was killed, but after enough entertainment had been provided.
“I’ve always wondered,” said Iaberus, in a tone that suggested it was a topic he’d just that moment thought of, “What does ‘sweetie’ even mean?”
“It’s a pony word,” Incelidus explained. (Not that he’d known that at first. At first he’d thought Zhoele had made it up.) “I believe it’s short for… sweetheart.” He spat, trying to clear the affectionate term from his mouth. “I don’t think Captain Viune knows what it actually means.”
“Ew.”
Whatever meaning the ponies had for it, in the hive it took on an altogether different connotation; if either the smithing Captain or the nursing Captain used it, it meant that they were very very angry and likely to blow up if they received any argument. If the Queen started using it… they were all doomed. And as for the actual meaning of the word? Incelidus certainly wasn’t going to tell her what it really meant. That was a one-way ticket to dismemberment, and a subsequent second dismemberment once all the removed limbs had regenerated.
There weren’t any clear winners in the fight yet, but what was quickly becoming clear was that Captain Rhio was losing. While he, Titus and Mimix were going at anything they could reach, Viune was making a concentrated effort to target him and only him, either not noticing or not caring that Titus had latched onto and was in the process of sawing through her right hind leg. Titus probably didn’t know who the leg belonged to, in all fairness, just in the same way that Mimix probably couldn’t tell that it was Rhio she’d just stabbed with her horn. A brutal fight, is what outsiders would call it, those unaware of Changelings’ regeneration capacity.
And what about the bets? Incelidus wasn’t even sure what the drones were even betting with. Other creatures would put up valuable possessions, money, that sort of thing, stuff that Changelings had no need of. Yes, Rhio did have a trophy cabinet, and Mykerion - who was oddly absent from the proceedings - had a bunch of stolen shiny scientific instruments, but the drones?
“I’m going to find out what the pool is,” he muttered to Iaberus. “Don’t touch Viune’s helmet.”
“Take a life-belt,” Iaberus said sagely.
Ignoring the other Captain’s salute, which made a noise like a rusty spring, Incelidus ducked into the crowd of drones, navigating his way through towards the two drones of Zhoele’s that were taking the bets. It wasn’t too difficult to cross undetected; the vast majority of the drones were concentrating on the fight, not who in particular was trying to force his way between them. A couple of his drones recognised him, yes, but they fled in terror before they could get punished. A wise move considering the circumstances - even the combatants would get a shout in at their drones for slacking off, once they’d regained consciousness.
He wouldn’t like to be in the place of the bet-taking drones in a few minutes’ time, that was for sure.
All he needed to do was get within earshot, and he managed it by taking off and attaching himself to the cavern wall above their heads. The fury hit him almost instantaneously - he only just resisted the urge to start a new fight of his own - the drones were betting their work positions. Guard duty, patrols, hunting, excursions, everything was going in, and the winners got their choice of job. It would send any Captain into a rage just thinking about it. Zhoele was going to be even more annoyed now…
Another cheer rippled through the drones as Captain Rhio, now almost completely limbless, followed the way of Titus’s helmet and soared ungracefully into a wall. This quickly turned to groans as Captain Viune, who it seemed many of the drones expected to leave the fight once she’d dealt with the one responsible for her ire, now decided that Titus was the one to blame for it. This caused a flurry of activity among the bookmakers. The pool was swinging towards their armorer. Really, it shouldn’t have been too much of a surprise, Incelidus pondered, as he prepared to stealthily leave before he got caught in the vicinity. No matter who started the fights, if they were involved, it tended to be the older females that finished it, whether it be their armorer, or their… nurse…
None of the drones had spotted what Incelidus had spotted, that which was rapidly overwriting his fury towards the drones with catatonic fear. A few of his own drones were already looking fidgety under the sway of the overpowering emotion, but that didn’t save the bookmaker, who knew only of the new arrival when she tapped him on the shoulder to attract his attention.
“Hello, sweetie.”
Captain Zhoele’s first hit all but disintegrated the drone’s face. The follow-up sent it flying over and into the fight, where it sent all three remaining combatants sprawling to the ground. The third hit the second drone and practically wiped out half the crowd. For all her… ‘special’ qualities, it couldn’t be said that she didn’t have good aim. Three hits, two seconds, one dominating silence.
She wiped her hoof on another nearby drone’s wing. “A funny thing happened on the way to the throne room,” she commented, nonchalantly, probably well aware that all the other Changelings in the room were now petrified with fear. “‘Apparently,’ Lead Captain Dethyn told me, ‘there’s a fight going on.’ ‘Surely not,’ I said, ‘because I know that every Changeling in this hive knows the punishment for infighting.’ But I followed him anyway, and do you know what I found? I found not only a blatant disregard for my warnings, but on top of that, a wager. ‘Pinch me, I must be dreaming,’ I said to myself, ‘because what is happening in front of my eyes can’t possibly be really happening.’ But then I remembered something else. Care to hazard a guess? No? I remembered that Changelings don’t dream.”
Without even pausing she catapulted another of her drones across the cave, straight into Titus, who’d attempted to take advantage of the distraction. Drone and captain fell into a crumpled heap. “Obviously, that means everything I saw and heard must be true, and that must mean that my report to the Queen was interrupted by not, as I first surmised, Lead Captain Dethyn pulling a practical joke, but by four utter and complete imbeciles having a petty argument. Needless to say, I wasn’t very amused by the immature actions of Changeling Captains who ought to know better, and I was most definitely not pleased with the fact that drones seem to think wagering their duties is something they can get away with.
“Now, under normal circumstances, I might have been content with issuing a few more warnings, in case the first hundred hadn’t gotten through your thick exoskeletons. But no. Today, since you managed to time your squabble so poorly, which means I am now late for my report to the Queen, you get an extra special treat.”
Her eyes narrowed into slits. “You’re all dead.”
“What Captain Zhoele means,” interrupted Lead Captain Dethyn, placing a hoof on Zhoele’s shoulder having finally picked his moment to follow in, “is that all of you - and I will check - will be expected to explain yourselves to the Queen.” He took a moment to share a glance with her. “So, yeah, you’re all dead. All of you, throne room, now. Incelidus, get down from there and help us with the idiots.”
“CAN I HELP, TOO?” shouted Iaberus, waving from the other side of the cavern, as the now very nervous drones who hadn’t yet been maimed or knocked unconscious flocked to the exits.
“GO AND FIND MYKERION!” Zhoele shouted back, the fleeing drones giving her a wide berth. “BRING HIM HERE! NOW!” She moved her focus of attention to the tangled mess in the middle of the chamber. “TITUS, YOU BASTARD! YOU PROMISED ME!”
“Are you sure she’s…” started Incelidus, once Zhoele had left earshot, “…a Changeling? Not a dragon? Or something like part dragon, part shark?”
“Technically,” said Dethyn, “She’s a princess.”
“Is there any difference?”
The Lead Captain snorted. “Not really. Come on, if we leave her alone with those four she’s actually going to kill them this time.”
“About that… I may be stuck.”
“What? Wait, you didn’t— Incelidus!”
“Sorry, sir.”
“You’re disgusting.”
“Thank y—”
“That wasn’t a compliment.”