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.