There was only one destination left to them now. Evoli knew it, even as the Great Queens would know it. The end of all things waited for them at the fortress called Eternal.
It was an ancient place, or as ancient as anything built since the end of the old world could be. It was meant to be a capital of sorts for the changelings—built by a cooperative of many queens and many workers. Riley had been all about symbols and rules. She’d designed the fortress herself.
But did you think it would be my army outside, mother? Did you know it would be me waiting here to tear down all your works?
It was an impressive structure, even so. Its walls were almost a hundred feet tall, worked from stone that was more of a ramp on the inward side. But down here at the base of the cliff it was sheer. There would be no aerial assault here, not when most of the fortress was underground. It was changeling construction at its finest, tunnels and burrows in endless spiraling deathtraps. Unfortunate for these ponies that it had been Evoli’s mother who designed this. She knew every trap, every passage.
“It appears our initial reports were correct, Queen,” Decimus muttered, her head lowered in respect. There was something about the queen, there had been since so many of her makeshift swarm had died taking the New Delaware. Despite her youth, it appeared the queen was beginning to grow a spine. Evoli could sense her impotent rage even now, anger with no outlet.
It wasn’t all that strange to her to have a daughter queen who wanted her dead. That was an old changeling tradition too. Some of Evoli’s own sisters had tried to kill their mother. Not even you were an exception to this, Mother.
But Decimus was young, much too young to control the swarm. Evoli could remove her armor and put a gun in the queen’s hoof, it wouldn’t make a difference. If I die, that swarm will devour the sun itself. You saw what they did to New Delaware. Evoli met her eyes for a moment, daring her to react. Hoping the young queen was perceptive enough to know that Evoli knew what she was thinking. “Tell me,” she said. “Reports. On Eternal, yes?”
Decimus nodded. “You know the cave system… I won’t waste your time with that. But there is a war camp inside the walls. From the air it looks like… it’s like every pony old enough to hold a sword is in there. I’ve never seen so much prey together in one place.”
Evoli’s war room was a burrow deep in the ground, which would look just like thousands of others her army had dug to shelter for the night. The enemy could pour boiling oil down these holes day and night for years and never find her—it was probably as close as she would get. She needed no high towers or windows to overlook the action. This close, it wouldn’t matter if the great queens had pheromone of their own to turn against her army. She knew them better now; her grip was fresher. She could take them all back.
There were no tables full of maps and supplies here—just a few dozen of her best-trained controllers to protect her and Strand and a few other VIPs.
“They’re raising a flag of parlay,” Decimus said, a little of the old bitterness in her voice. “All prey. I don’t see one changeling out there. I expect you’ll want me to burn them?”
“No.” Evoli made her way to her throne, then settled on it. An ancient stone thing, taken from the fortress of Manipura. She didn’t need it anymore. “Prepare for tonight’s attack. I will send a contingent of drones.” She nodded to Strand. “Make sure the Wurm is hungry. That’s a lot of stone between us and the gates of Eternity.”
“It will be,” Strand said. “I’m ready to be done with this distraction.” And he buzzed his way out.
Evoli focused a few drops of her concentration on a squad of well-armed drones, as well as one “mouthpiece” drone—drones selected for their beauty, kept clean and healthy specifically to use for negotiations. Evoli dressed it in the gaudiest robe she could find, shining with enough stolen gold and jewels that the ponies would probably think it really was her. Imbeciles. Like rocks would ever have value.
Evoli felt the hunger rumble in her stomach again. There were hundreds of thousands of ponies here. The only challenge would be winning the war without killing too many of them. Conquering the world had given her quite the appetite.
She brought her drones out onto the surface under a white flag of their own, headed towards the group at the edge of the fortress walls. She walked all the way there instead of flying, getting the best look she could at their defenses.
Riley’s engineers had built this place to survive through the ages. In the old days, those boxes high above would’ve held repeating guns and cannons that could turn her army to paste before it even got to the walls. But there were rusted streaks down the walls now, and huge catapults had been erected where the human weapons had once been.
What good did all the weapons of the ancients get them? They thought they were bigger and stronger than us, and now where are they? Dust, just like my mother.
There was no pavilion waiting for her, just a covered cart glittering with metal. Gold, she could see, and jewels plentiful enough to shatter into a thousand colors.
Standing beside the cart were three creatures, a griffon and two armored ponies. The bird stood tall over his pony escorts, wearing armor of thick steel outlined in gold. He wore a thin metal crown on his head, made of steel. She couldn’t get a good look at his face through the helmet, but she thought she saw fear there. His eyes settled immediately on the drone dressed as garrish as him. It was exactly as she expected.
Predictable. Weak. I wonder if he’ll kill this drone. It didn’t matter if the whole contingent died. Far more than five would be dying when night came.
Her drones stopped about fifty feet back, and Evoli walked forward in the body she was pretending was hers. The king in his heavy steel did the same, muscles rippling beneath plate and mail.
He reached behind him, undoing a belt. There was a heavy sword there, and a few daggers. He tossed them to the ground. Evoli had no weapons on the drone, and she made sure to walk slow enough for him to see that.
They stopped perhaps ten feet apart, a ruler and an animal pretending to be king. “You,” he said, his voice a regal mask. “You are the one named Ajna the Despoiler.”
“Call me Evoli,” she whispered, grinning in a way she hoped would be convincing. “What is the purpose of this meeting. Do you wish to surrender?”
The king reached down, hooking a claw around the edge of his helmet and tossing it to the ground. He shook out his head of regal white feathers, apparently fearless of her presence. “I have come to submit to a power greater than my own,” he said, as though each word cost him dearly. “I have brought tribute. I wish to give it to you, in exchange for the safety of my people.” He raised a claw, and the ponies hitched themselves to the wagon. That was why they were so lightly armored—they weren’t guards at all, but laborers.
Evoli’s own escort did not shift uncomfortably at the approach of something new and dangerous. They had no discipline, nor anything to protect. They were set dressing.
Evoli stood still as the cart was brought to her and turned to face her so she could see the wealth it contained. Prodigious piles of gold, silver, wrought into jewelry that ponies and griffons both seemed to find attractive. Plenty of glittering gemstones—the ransom of a king. “All this will I give you if you leave the ones I love in peace. Leave us to our land, and we will leave you to yours. This war can end.”
Evoli made a show of walking over to the cart, levitating one of the coins into the air, inspecting it. Setting it back down. Then she turned back. “You are King Aileron.”
“That is my name now,” the bird agreed, his eyes downcast. “I remember the world when It was something better, Despoiler. My name was Don McCarthy. This nation you destroyed was my home. I want the death to end.”
“There is only one problem,” Evoli said, shoving a pile of gold with one of her hooves. It spilled out onto the ground, revealing something made of metal underneath. She didn’t even stop to look at it, turning back to face the griffon. “The entire world is mine. I can’t let you leave to my fields and my citizens. I have a counter-offer for you. Whatever the Great Queens have on you, whatever they have done to make you put your army between me and them—I will give you more. I will let you remain in power over this nation of ponies, under me.”
The griffon sighed. “All the kingdoms of the Earth if only I’ll bow down.” He lifted the helmet from where he’d dropped it, settling it on his head. “Isaac!”
The gold exploded, bits of metal and gemstone scattering in the air like broken glass. A hulking figure emerged from within, wrapped all in metal. Evoli recognized the shape, though she hadn’t seen one like this in so long. And she knew the name.
Isaac was several heads taller than Aileron, taller than Evoli herself would’ve been if she were really there. His armor was like nothing made by pony hooves, a flexible metal with perfectly articulated joints and a mask over his face that ran down in a hose to something on his side. He held a human weapon in both hands, and strode up to her like an avenging god.
Evoli waited for the brief twinge of pain as one of her drones died—but it never happened.
“What are you waiting for? Kill the bitch before she can get away!”
She looked up as the armored figure lowered his rifle, using the other hand to remove his mask.
Isaac’s face looked a little different than Evoli remembered it. His hair was cut short, growing in bright green. His skin wasn’t withered with great age, but smooth. Only his eyes carried the weight of years. “This isn’t her, Corporal. It’s a puppet. No sense wasting the bullet.”
Evoli grinned wickedly up at the figure. “Isaac. It’s been a long time. Since you saved my little sister. How’s the abomination doing these days, anyway?”
“Better than you.” Isaac scooped up the gas-mask, sliding it into a pouch on his belt. “Riley warned you about this, Evoli. Why didn’t you listen to her? You’ve gone rabid.”
Evoli wasn’t having fun anymore. She focused, and her four guards lunged for the king and his single escort. The bird wanted a fight? She’d give him one.
Isaac’s arm snapped up before the drones had even started moving. He pulled the trigger, and the air caught fire. There was no pop of gunfire, only a brief electric feeling that would’ve lifted Evoli’s fur if she had any.
The drones were wearing heavy armor and chain, but from the way the first one exploded it might as well have been scraps of paper. Isaac never took his eyes from her as he shot the other three, spraying the ground with the ichor of the dead.
His rifle opened vents along its sides, revealing coils of wire that glowed bright orange with heat.
“The Preservation Initiative will not sit by and watch you slaughter the remaining population of our planet,” said King Aileron. “If your army sets one rotten foot on my land, I will grind it to dust.” He took a step closer, apparently unafraid of this drone. “I survived the end of the world, bastard. These people nearly had their feet under them before something bigger than all of us took that away. Turn your army around, take the gold, and enjoy what you’ve taken. It’s more than I would give you if the choice were up to me.”
“She can’t,” Isaac whispered. “It’s just like Queen Riley said. Hunger drives them mad. She ate everything she could, and now there’s nothing left. Why didn’t you go into the ice, kid?”
Evoli felt fury burn through her. At once, every drone in her army rose from what they were doing. They stopped eating, stopped resting, stopped digging shelters.
Evoli was done with strategy, she was done waiting. Even delaying until nightfall would be too long.
“When I’m done with them I’ll come for your Initiative next, Isaac! They aren’t the warriors they were—they’re scraps, slaves to that voice in the sky. I’ll have them too!” She lunged at him, no longer caring about the life of this well-groomed drone.
That was good, because Isaac blasted it to pieces another second later.