from womb to heart, where she now passed among towering figures that paid her no heed, and from whose paths she had to duck and dodge lest they simply trample her underclaw. ve'gath soldiers stood flanking the central ramp, twice her height and in their arcane armour resembling the vast machinery of root far below. ornate grilled visors hid their faces save their fanged snouts, and the line of their jaws gave them ghastly grins, as if the implicit purpose of their breed delighted them. more so than the j'an or the k'ell, the true soldiers of the k'chain che'malle frightened kalyth to the very core of her being. the matron was producing them in vast numbers.

no further proof was needed-war was coming.

that the ve'gath gave the matron terrible pain, each one thrust out from her in a welter of blood and pungent fluid, had become irrelevant. necessity, kalyth well knew, was the cruellest master of all.

neither soldier guarding the ramp impeded her as she strode on to it, the flat stone underfoot pitted with holes designed to hold claws, and from which cold air flowed up around her-the plunge in ambient temperature on the ramp evidently served somehow to quell the instinctive fear the k'chain experienced as the conveyance lifted with squeals and groans up past the levels of heart, ending at eyes, the inner keep, acyl nest and home of the matron herself. riding the ramp alone, however, the strain of the mechanism was less pronounced, and she heard little more than the rush of air that ever disoriented her with a sense of falling even as she raced upward, and the sweat on her limbs and upon her brow quickly cooled. she was shivering by the time the ramp slowed and then halted at the base level of eyes.

j'an sentinels observed her arrival from the foot of the half-spiral stairs that led to the nest. as with the ve'gath, they were seemingly indifferent to her-no doubt aware that she had been summoned, but even were that not so they would see in her no threat whatsoever to the matron they had been bred to protect. kalyth was not simply harmless; she was useless.

the hot, rank air engulfed her, cloying as a damp cloak, as she made her way to the stairs and began the awkward climb to the matron's demesne.

at the landing one last sentinel stood guard. at least a thousand years old, bre'nigan was gaunt and tall-taller even than a ve'gath-and his multilayered scales bore a silvered patina that made the creature seem ghostly, as if hewn from sun-bleached mica. neither pupil nor iris was visible in his slitted eyes, simply a murky yellow, misshapen with cataracts. she suspected the bodyguard was blind, but in truth there was no way to tell, for when bre'nigan moved, the j'an displayed perfect sureness, indeed, grace and liquid elegance. the long, vaguely curved sword slung through a brass ring at his hip-a ring half embedded in the creature's hide-was as tall as kalyth, the blade a kind of ceramic bearing a faint magenta hue, although the flawless edge gleamed silver.

she greeted bre'nigan with a nod that elicited no reaction whatsoever, and then stepped past the sentinel.

kalyth had hoped-no, she had prayed -and when she set eyes upon the two k'chain standing before the matron, and saw that they were unaccompanied, her spirits plummeted. despair welled up, threatened to consume her. she fought to draw breath into her tight chest.

beyond the newcomers and huge on the raised dais, gunth'an acyl, the matron, emanated agony in waves-and in this she was unchanged and unchanging, but now kalyth felt from the enormous queen a bitter undercurrent of... something.

unbalanced, distraught, kalyth only then discerned the state of the two k'chain che'malle, the grievous wounds half-healed, the chaotic skeins of scars on their flanks, necks and hips. the two creatures looked starved, driven to appalling extremes of deprivation and violence, and she felt an answering pang in her heart.

but such empathy was shortlived. the truth remained: the k'ell hunter sag'churok and the one daughter gunth mach had failed.

the matron spoke in kalyth's mind, although it was not speech of any sort, simply the irrevocable imposition of knowledge and meaning. ' destriant kalyth, an error in choice. we remain broken. i remain broken. you cannot mend, not alone, you cannot mend .'

neither knowledge nor meaning proved gifts to kalyth. for she could sense gunth'an acyl's madness beneath the words. the matron was undeniably insane. so too the course of action she had forced upon her children, and upon kalyth herself. no persuasion was possible.

it was likely that gunth'an acyl comprehended kalyth's convictions-her belief that the matron was mad-but this too made no difference. within the ancient queen, there was naught but pain and the torment of desperate need.