//------------------------------// // Chapter 10 // Story: Evoli Victorious // by Starscribe //------------------------------// 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.