Evoli ruled over half the world.
In a way, her campaign had felt almost too easy. After the death of Manipura, Visuddha’s territory had come next. The especially pure queen’s army had not done her much good, even if her spies had been better than Manipura’s. But seeing Evoli’s army coming was not the same thing as stopping it. After a few hours of siege, Evoli had taken her capital with most of its controllers and males.
That Viśuddha had escaped with her retinue was only a slight annoyance to her. Evoli was so powerful now that she could easily force a drone in her presence to join her service. And those males or controllers who wouldn’t obey? She could use the glamour.
From there, Evoli controlled the entire southern half of North America, all the way down into much of what had once been Mexico. She took Anahata’s territory next—as her intelligence suggested, the queen’s brood had been ravaged by disease. Anahata mounted a futile resistance of her hive, but a few dozen drones weren’t enough to even slow Evoli down. She burned them all, and burned the hive while she was at it. There was no sense risking spreading the infection to her own troops. Queen Anahata wouldn’t have enough glamour to make harvesting her worth the risk.
With that done, Evoli’s territory stretched across over half of what her ancestors called the civilized world. Thousands of pony settlements to harvest, hundreds of towns and dozens of independent city-states were all hers. Sure, the ponies didn’t know whose territory they were, just as the trees of a forest rarely knew the name of the woodsman who might one day harvest them. That was no concern of hers—so long as she had the territory, it would mean a wealth of glamour.
Evoli had much to do to reinforce her territory. There were little queens for her to subjugate or kill, and many of her loyal servants to remove from the ice and put back into service. It would take many soldiers to protect so much land, and they would take time to grow.
Evoli knew to expect retribution from the other great queens. Four of them were still alive, after all, though only three held meaningful power. They were bound to take action against her.
Her message came about a year after she had reached the eastern coast of the country, while Evoli was busying herself appointing controllers and loyal males to rule over small settlements or supervise subjugated queens.
The messenger that arrived for her was not a changeling, as she had expected, but a pony. A unicorn with a bright green mane streaked with orange. He wore no armor, though the symbols on his robe were familiar to her.
They were the mark of all four surviving queens: Sahasrāra, Svādhiṣṭhāna, Muladhara and the abdicated Viśuddha. Why the three who still had power would have included one whose territory she had already claimed in their coalition, she couldn’t imagine. But she also didn’t care.
The messenger would not be allowed to meet her in person, or even to enter the burrows. But he also wasn’t going to be killed. Striking someone bearing marks of peace was likely to eliminate diplomacy from ever being considered again.
Even if Evoli didn’t plan on allowing any of the great queens to survive, that didn’t mean she wanted them to know that right now. The longer they took to mount a unified response, the better.
“I am here to see Ajna, great queen of command,” he said to her guards, presenting himself without any attempt at stealth.
Evoli took direct control of one of the patrolling soldiers, instructing all the others to form a circle around the messenger. She firmly directed any controllers who happened to be on the surface away from the area. Some of those had been captured during her campaign, after all. The less they saw of her diplomacy, the better.
“She hears you,” said the drone, a scrawny thing just barely old enough to lift a spear. She could not use illusion to make it appear older, unfortunately. Changelings could look like many things, but not other changelings. “What do you wish of her, messenger?”
“Not me,” he said, his whole-body stiffening as he turned to face the guard. A sign this pony knew changelings, as his entire demeanor changed. He recognized the significance of her control—that she would see anything he did, and even if he killed this drone Evoli would survive without a scratch. “The great queens still loyal to the pact speak out against you in union. It is… p-proper for you to be here in person to hear them.”
“No,” she said, the drone advancing towards him. It dropped its spear, no longer concerned with protecting its own life. Her control suppressed such a meaningless drive. “It would be proper if they had come in person. They did not, so I will receive you like this. Do not think you can weave lies to me about the pact, child. I was there when my mother wrote it.”
The unicorn nodded, wiping away the sweat from his brow with one hoof. “The message for you, Q-Queen Ajna. You have violated the pact. You have been judged in absentia and… pronounced guilty.” He winced as he said it, perhaps expecting her to strike him. She didn’t, though. What would be the point of that?
“Delightful,” she said, her drone stopping only slightly out of reach of him. The messenger was young, dressed for travel and armed with a fairly modern crossbow. Modern for the barbaric standards of ponies today, anyway. “And what was my sentence?”
“Y-you have two choices,” said the unicorn. “Either you can submit to the ice voluntarily, and allow your title to pass to a queen of your choosing, who will return all the territory you have stolen from members of the pact… or they will come for you. When you are dead, they will remove your queen-ship, and take all your territory for themselves. These are your options.”
Evoli fumed, pacing back and forth in the bottom of her burrow with enough force to crack the stone she walked upon. Of course, it made perfect sense that they would demand her surrender—she had killed two of the great queens. They were within their rights.
What angered Evoli was how little they feared her. They actually thought she might surrender, after everything she’d done? Who had stolen their spines? Had the ocean’s sickness taken their bravery?
“How long?” Evoli said, abruptly returning her focus to the drone still watching him. “It would take time to orchestrate a withdrawal and a transfer of land. And they would want at least one queen to watch me go into the ice. How long did they give?”
“One season,” said the messenger. “M-more than you deserve, they said. But one season. When the summer solstice comes, then will be the moment they declare their war.”
He removed a scroll from his pack, levitating it in faltering magic. This poor unicorn was terrified. She was a little surprised he hadn’t soiled himself with how he smelled. “I have their words here, all signed. They seemed to pity you, Queen Ajna. They know you’ve been driven mad with hunger. They said it wasn’t too late to uphold the pact. What you have broken can be repaired. Consider those who come after you.”
The drone hissed at him, though Evoli wasn’t quite sure she had wanted it to. Maybe it could feel her disgust with that prospect.
“I will surrender,” she lied, pointing away with one hoof. “Go, messenger. Go and tell them that. They can send their queen to the ancient place. I will arrange to transfer my power to one of my daughters. She will supervise the return of all the territory I’ve taken.”
“Really?”
“Really,” she lied, gesturing again. As she did, the guards all around them parted, lining up in orderly rows. “Go on then, messenger. I cannot feed on your fear, but there are those in my swarm who can. Don’t wait long enough for them to arrive.”
She watched the unicorn gallop away as fast as his hooves could carry him.
Of course, Evoli didn’t actually plan on surrendering. But if the other great queens wanted to bind themselves to the arbitrary terms of an agreement made by queens who’d been frozen in ice, why should she point out how stupid they were being? Maybe she should try agreeing to surrender if only they turned over all their weapons first. Could they be stupid enough to believe that might work too?
Of course, Evoli knew the reverse was also true. Just because they had promised her three months didn’t mean she could actually count on getting that much time to prepare.
So long a life and so much power had given Evoli many new and interesting ideas—ways to play with the physiology of drones she had never considered before.
So she made straight for her laboratory. She had intended to wait at least a few years, so that she could concentrate on filling the ranks of her new territory with conventional drones and soldiers. But she could put her new wealth of glamour to use in other ways.
The lab was located deep below the former capital of Viśuddha, where the old queen had once stored works of art. Why she had cared about such pony creations, Evoli didn’t really know—but she hadn’t bothered asking to find out. Stacks of canvas had been left to mildew against the wall, with rolls and rolls of something semitransparent stored in metal canisters. Whenever they needed more space, her drones would drag away another shelf, and take more of the pony creations to the garbage.
“You’re… not supposed to be here so soon,” said Strand, the leader of her scientists. The changeling had been born as a male this time, at her own previous request. Strand was one of her own siblings—one of the few daughters of Chip who had ever woken up during those early days. Way back then, it had been genetic science that interested her. It still was.
“There is a change in the timeline,” Evoli said, walking through the newly-furnished lab, and looking at the shelves of instruments and notes on every surface. Strand had been working on this same task for many years. Rumor was she had already succeeded, but that Riley had destroyed her work when she saw what it had produced.
“The other queens formed their coalition sooner than I hoped. We don’t get a few years, only a few months.”
Strand had not been living with Evoli’s swarm until very recently. Her rebellion from the pact had attracted her. Well, him now. “A few months is not enough time, Queen.” He raised a wing. “Don’t bother shouting at me, I know you want it anyway. The process simply will not be complete in that much time. Even if we begin now, it would take at least a year before my creations would be ready for you. Perhaps much longer.”
Evoli wanted to break something—but she resisted. Strand was just a male—she could kill him easily. But his knowledge could not be easily replaced. Strand could not be replaced—the things he knew were not taught by any schools that still existed.
Alexandria and its knowledge had both burned.
“They have promised us three months. I anticipate we will have two, though even that is not certain. While we wait for our greater monsters, I need something else. After Manipura, I don’t think the others will underestimate me. They will march their army here slowly, and keep themselves far away. There will be no easy victory even if we slaughter every drone they send.”
“I may have something,” the male said, turning away from her to a Bunsen burner slowly flaming away at something tary and black. “I warn you—this weapon will change the nature of war for our kind forever. I do not think the other queens are fools…” He levitated the little black vial off the burner, setting it down in front of her. “It is, I think… a matter of mutual destruction. Those with the resources to invoke it chose not to, for fear it will be used on them.”
“Whatever it is, you have my permission,” Evoli said. “What happens to war for tomorrow’s queens is irrelevant. My army is stretched thin after so many losses—three of the great queens have not faced a serious threat in a century. Even an expeditionary force might have a hundred thousand drones. Can your weapon defeat that many?”
Strand grinned at her. “If you are right, and the queens do not come in person, it could stop an army of a million. If they do… it will certainly fail.”
That was enough for Evoli to make the connection. Her eyes narrowed as she stared at the vial, sniffing the air. It smelled like… pheromones, but none she recognized. “You have a way of disrupting their control over their swarm, don’t you?”
Strand’s grin got wider, though he feigned modesty. “No no, Evoli. You are the one with the power. Queens have always been able to win over drones from each other. I have merely taken what you already had and weaponized it.”