Evoli Victorious

by Starscribe

Chapter 7

Evoli looked out at her army, swollen with the ranks of the mighty force sent to destroy her. Many of these drones still wore the body-paint or armor of her enemies, glittering in the dawn sunlight. But all that armor didn’t protect them.

There was no chance that the great queens wouldn’t realize what she had done. The real question was—how much of their army was this? It would take them at least five years to grow replacements. That assuming they could find the glamour to do it. Without so many servants, Evoli suspected they would have a very difficult time with that.

“We will not cross the desert this time,” Evoli said, addressing her troops both intelligent and drone. “We will not sacrifice our numbers to return quickly. Instead, we will target the pony settlements directly. We will harvest them, and use them to sustain our advance.”

It was a daring plan—and some part of Evoli knew—an unsustainable plan. Harvesting the pony population would create enormous wealth in glamour, enough to feed her army for years. But it was akin to cutting down every tree, instead of sustainably harvesting only a few. When it was done, there would be no more hunting ground at all, and no more food.

But that doesn’t matter. I have plenty of territory to hunt in. Most of this army will probably be destroyed in our battles with the great queens anyway. She didn’t have to worry about sustaining the empire beyond that. Once she had defeated the others, she would have all the power she needed.

“How are our new controllers?” she asked Decimus, who was waiting on the ramparts for her once the speech was complete. He had a nervous look to him, as though he were reluctant to talk to her.

“Not… well,” he admitted, shuffling uneasily. Decimus was loyal, but he looked like he’d been shaken. “They are… damaged. From their harvesting. I have never seen the process performed involuntarily before. I don’t know how long it will take them to recover. Or if they ever will.”

“Give them work assignments anyway,” Evoli muttered, dismissive. “Only feed the ones who work. That should convince the others of the importance of contributing to the hive.” She advanced on him, lowering her voice dangerously. “There will be far more coming, Decimus. Thousands, perhaps. I am relying on you to find a way to use them in the swarm. There is no way to extract all the glamour they contain, until only drones are left. If you think it would be kinder to simply kill the controllers we create—”

“NO!” he exclaimed, far too quickly. “We’ll find a use for them, my queen. You have my word on it. There’s no need for anything that extreme.”

“Good.” Evoli turned away from him. “I knew it was wise to trust you. You were always one of my finest, cleverest males. Put them to use, and I may find another use for you when this life is over. I will have the wealth to create many new queens, Decimus. Perhaps you will be one of them.”

“P-perhaps,” he said, obviously trying to conceal his excitement at the suggestion. The desire to advance was universal among changelings. Particularly the males, who spent their lives subordinate.

I’ll make you queen, all right. Queen of all the exiles. You can be the one who figures out how to feed them. That would be a great way to free herself of responsibility, as well. If a queen couldn’t feed her swarm, it was obviously that queen’s fault, not anypony else’s. Despite how quickly she’d suggested the plan, outright slaughtering every new controller was likely to create even more united opposition from the enemy. Best keep the number of abominations down. I’ve already got enough blood to worry about.

Her army advanced. With the size of her force, it didn’t matter what stood in her way. They took hundreds of miles—sweeping up the eastern coast and down into Mexico and Florida. Many, many ponies fled from her army—and she let them. Those most determined to fight were also the juiciest to harvest, and she didn’t need them all at once.

For a time, Evoli had enough to eat, and so the hunger faded. She advanced only as quickly as her supplies of glamour dwindled, not sacrificing her new army just to keep the others going. She kept her promise to Decimus almost immediately, as soon as he’d come up with a system that he promised would keep her new controllers from going insane. It took years for a queen to mature, so might as well get that started as quickly as possible. Despite the wealth she amassed, that was the only queen she created. Minor, subjugated queens could raise the drones for her armies, rather than daughters who would barter with swarms of their own. It was a simpler arrangement for all involved.

Her growth could not continue forever, though. The great queens and much of the pony population both had fled to the north-eastern United States, where ponies and rebellious changelings alike had united under the banner of a warlord. His name was Aileron—or maybe that was his city. Evoli didn’t really care. But they had troops, and an army, and built entrenched defenses by the day.

The first barricade into conquering their land was an ancient city named New Delaware, with fifty-foot walls of polished limestone and a garrison of ten thousand griffon mercenaries. For the first time, Evoli halted her advance completely, and lived off supplies while her armies prepared for a siege.

New Delaware could not simply be avoided—if it was not conquered, then they could not advance any further into the great queens’ territory without fear of serious reprisal from the rear, harassing her supply-lines. Evoli could not leave her army anymore—not when the enemy was likely to have developed the same chemical weapon she used to take the army in the first place.

As she settled into a siege, she visited Strand’s workshop, who had kept on with his diligent labor over the last several years. He had been calling for Evoli for some weeks now, eager to show her something. Finally, it was time to see the result of her trust in the changeling geneticist.

The workshop was one of the first structures they had constructed outside New Delaware, in order to protect and conceal Strand’s work. Strand’s own staff of guards lurked outside—mostly controllers now, the most ruthless and bloodthirsty of all those they had created during their harvesting.

As such, Evoli could not simply will them out of the way—she had to instruct them, and wait for them to realize who she was before they scattered before her like flies feasting on a corpse. She could make out whispers from some of them, the nickname that she’d been given among the former ponies she had harvested. “Evoli the Despoiler” they called her.

But while most of the controllers she had created would say such things with fear, these spoke with awe.

The workshop had been built within a gigantic canvas tent, at least two-hundred feet long and almost a hundred feet high. It could’ve held quite the crowd, though most of the space was not for ponies to assemble. The working area was encased in a protective metal cage near the entrance, which Evoli’s drones had dragged across the prairie as they conquered. The remainder of the space was empty of furnishing, except for a few reinforced pillars to hold up the tent.

There was little light in here, only the pale blue of some chemical that Strand had invented to calm the one they kept here.

The male scented her before she was halfway in, and stepped back from what he was doing near a centrifuge. “Ah, queen. It’s good you’re here.”

“You said you were ready. Every day New Delaware receives more reinforcements. You promised me you could bring down those walls.”

“And I will,” Strand answered, sliding past her towards the cage’s exit—the one that led into the tent proper. “It’s time for you to meet the newest member of your swarm. If you thought weaponized pheromones would revolutionize war… we’ve barely even begun to scratch the surface of what’s possible.”

You are completely insane, Evoli found herself thinking. I’m glad the others were too short-sighted to realize how dangerous you were. Otherwise you might be coming for me instead.

There was no light illuminating anything past the cage. But Evoli could feel something alive out there, something that was almost a drone but not quite. Like a child, or a drone that had come out of its cocoon half-formed. It couldn’t join a hivemind, only briefly touch against it. Like someone freezing to death out in the cold, who could only ever open a window to let the warmth from within melt the ice on their body.

“Behold, my creation. I call it a Vaultbreaker Wurm—the first of its kind.” He stepped out of the cage, snapping his wings together in a particular way.

The entire room shook around Evoli. She saw something move across the room, something turning to face them. A pair of eyes glowed with their own, hungry brilliance. The ground shook as something rumbled toward them, dodging around the central column. Eventually it got close enough to the cage that Evoli could make out more of its features.

Some part of her wished she couldn’t.

It was as though someone had taken the basic biomechanical plan that made changelings, and chopped the whole thing to pieces. It was at least thirty feet high, and perhaps twice as long as the tent at least. Layers of chitinous armor grew along its length, each one almost as thick as her whole body. Its front wasn’t a jaw, just a single round mouth with rows and rows of serrated teeth. It had no head as such, but its swollen eyes had been sunken into the body. The entire thing buzzed with glamour, like a live wire ready to spark.

“Stars above, you did it.” Evoli lifted off, trying to get a better look at the creature. She saw many little wounds in its armor—such as a steel ring almost as thick as she was set into its body. The wound oozed greenish slime even now.

“Do not speak with doubt,” said Strand. “Of course I did it. I spoke only of the possible, Queen. And it is true, my Wurm is a crude work… a cudgel, if you will. But the tools we’ve been given are potent. I expect with a few hundred more drones, and enough glamour, I could breed even greater things. Living weapons the likes of which even the Enduring Ones would tremble to see.”

He wants more? Evoli had given Strand at least a hundred drones, across all ages. Even a few controllers, which she’d never seen again. But those had become far less valuable now that she was creating them by the village-full.

She tried to reach out into the creature’s mind, but it reacted immediately, thrashing about on the ground and bellowing like a rotten elephant. For the split-second she remained in contact with it, Evoli almost screamed herself. She could feel its terrible pain, its confusion. Its mind had been stripped back to something that was less than a drone, yet it remembered being more. It wanted to destroy, and it didn’t much care what or who got in its way. Life itself was its enemy now.

“Be careful, Queen!” Strand lifted something from a hook—a lantern, which he flashed directly into the creature’s eyes. Brilliant orange light emerged from within the lantern, and the Wurm actually sizzled where it touched, as though it had been briefly placed on a hot skillet.

Evoli landed beside him, watching in fascination. The Wurm retreated from them again, back into the gloom of the tent. “I can’t command it?”

“No.” Strand sounded matter-of-fact. “Remember the pheromones? Imagine what a creature like this could do if it was turned against our own army! It will obey me however. With training, it will obey you as well. It will take weeks, but in time you can earn its obedience as I did. You just have to break it enough.”

“Wise,” Evoli answered. “But we do not have weeks. You can command it tomorrow morning. We cannot confront the New Delaware garrison in the air… but once you’ve smashed the walls, we will either destroy them in their city or send them to flight.”

“Tomorrow night,” Strand corrected. “Forgive me, queen, but the Wurm does have one weakness. It cannot abide the presence of sunlight. I hope to treat this vulnerability eventually, but given the urgency of your campaign… I may have used necromancy to accelerate the process.”

Evoli growled in displeasure, but it didn’t last long. She was so impressed with Strand’s work that she could trust him to solve the bugs in the next generation. Once I’ve taken the world, we can work as slowly and carefully as we want.

“It’s perfect, Strand. Tomorrow night then. I will inform the army.”

Comments

[FanOfMostEverything]

I call it a Vaultbreaker Wurm

6/6 trampler for—
Sorry, force of habit.

In any case, a little mad biomancy does help alleviate the fatigue that comes from watching Evoli burn her mother's legacy to the ground and waiting for her to die. Whatever happens next should be horrible, but fascinating.

[Yami Vizzini]

“I can’t command it?”
“No.” Strand sounded matter-of-fact. “Remember the pheromones? Imagine what a creature like this could do if it was turned against our own army!

At least someling in this hive can think ahead a bit.

[Russian Bank Teller]

HPI! HPI! HPI!

[Helium]

Sometimes truly the only answer is to nuke it from orbit.
Evoli and her monsters have now officially crossed that line.

[Lithl]

Eventually it got close enough to the cage that Evoli could make out more of its features.

Some part of her wished she couldn’t.

i.imgur.com/gNK65hz.gif

[erictheblue]

something about this reminded me of "the culling of the hives"...
it's a complicated story.