The Final Message
The Prime Queen reached out, carving the final character into the Chuāum tablet, setting it atop the stack. The Queen relaxed their hold on the Aspect of Scribe, leaving it frozen in place far beneath the ground. The Scribe was, as far as the Queen knew, the first and perhaps last of its kind.
The Prime Queen had been planning for the future from the moment they clawed their way free from the cocoon that had incubated them. It had not been enough to war relentlessly against their contemporaries, they sought a future where Queens were not torn apart for their resources, where a Queen would not bury their fellows to rise above them.Ā
It had taken time, a thousand by a thousand cycles of their starās gaze had passed across the shell of Chuāum that topped the Prime Queenās lair before the other Queens had ceased their attempts of betrayal. Hundreds of wells of biomass poisoned and tainted to get the Prime Queenās message across. Queens that saw only an upstartās greed in the Prime Queen were removed as the alliance of lairs grew, their biomass being spread to benefit all of the Allianceās Queens.
Expansion had followed, lairs exploding out until Chuāum covered the ground, each Queen touching their neighbours without hostility. The Prime Queen had foreseen this, they knew it would come to be the moment they killed their first Queen and followed this path. Without room to grow, the Queens would target each other, their alliance would be torn apart, fueled by the desire to become more. Instead, the Prime Queen directed the Queens of the Alliance to focus internally, building and refining until a single Queen learned to pierce the sky.
With the knowledge to tear open the sky, the Queens expanded once more, claiming worlds and systems for themselves. They grew beyond the Prime Queenās expectations, leaving them alone in their lair, the first planet, it had been left for the first Queen who looked to the future to rule. The Prime Queen had insisted that each other Queen take an Aspect of the Prime Queen with them. It was through these Aspects that the Prime Queen first met the Creatures-of-Blood-and-Fire.Ā
The Creatures-of-Blood-and-Fire had come across a Queen at the edge of the Queenās space, and using what they had called an Artificial-Intelligence, had deciphered the language of the Queens. The Creatures-of-Blood-and-Fire had requested that a representative of the Queens communicate with them, face-to-face, as they had called it. The Prime Queen had sent their Aspect, its titanic form dwarfed the Aspects of the Creatures-of-Blood-and-Fire, and the Prime Queen watched the Creatures-of-Blood-and-Fire as they scurried about their claws with fascination. The Creatures-of-Blood-and-Fire had flinched when the Prime Queen had struck, their Aspects not prepared for the customary settling of hierarchy. The Prime Queen had torn apart the Aspects, their innards painting the Prime Queenās protective Chuāum as small objects of metal dug deep into it.
The Prime Queenās Aspect had relaxed into the gore afterwards, the Prime Queen awaiting the next set of Aspects to join them, now that the hierarchy had been established. The Aspects had never come, instead, the Creatures-of-Blood-and-Fire exposed the meeting area to the heat of a star, scouring the Prime Queenās aspect from their metallic world.
For a few cycles there was no word from the Creatures-of-Blood-and-Fire, and the Prime Queen had wondered what had happened. Was it customary for the Creatures-of-Blood-and-Fire to destroy the Aspects of their hierarchical betters? Were they like the Queens of old? Escalating matters of diplomacy until Queens were themselves torn out of their Chuāum? Without answers they waited, settled deep into the lair of the Queens homeworld.
The Prime Queenās answer came from the lair of an Alliance Queen, as above an Aspect, the Chuāum covering the skin of their world shook. Though the Aspects that the Prime Queen had dealt with on their first meeting had been small, the ones that the Creatures-of-Blood-and-Fire sent to invade their world rivalled the greatest of the Queenās Aspects. Aspects covered in skins of metal, instead of Chuāum, they had attempted to carve and cut through the Chuāum, finding it resistant to their tools, until they had discovered the solution. Fires burned and melted holes into the Chuāum, hundreds upon thousands of smaller Aspects had moved through the lair, burning their way through the Aspects of the ruling Queen. The Prime Queenās Aspect had watched as their first Queen burned, the beginning of the end for their rule.
Over thousands of worlds, the pattern repeated, the Creatures-of-Blood-and-Fire sent their Aspects deep into the lairs of the Queens, burning through all before them. The Prime had watched each and every Queen of the Alliance burn, their own Aspect burning afterwards. Now, they felt the Aspects of metal land on their Chuāum, the first of the holes being melted open into their lair and they knew it was their time.
Far below the Prime Queen, dug deep into the earth and untouched by Chuāum, their Scribeās eyes stared without seeing, the thousands of tonnes of Biomass crowned with a single cocoon reflected in their eyes, their claws resting upon the final message of the Prime Queen to their only child.
āIf the Creatures-of-Blood-and-Fire find you. Run.ā
