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  Origon slumped, brushing dust off his robe, though more landed even as he did. The wings of the Pixies generated strangely tall twists of air, but at least they were outside his bubble. He watched the ballet of death around him, in a circle of empty space.

  Except now he labored for every breath. Origon’s feathers felt like they might burst into flame. Sweat soaked him. Why was it so hot?

  A spear thrust through the side of the shield and Origon jigged away, narrowly avoiding another hole in his robe, and in his side. This shield of air was not nearly as effective as his mentor implied.

  Ah. Origon’s crest rose in triumph. It was the pressure! Simple thermodynamics. Another thing he hadn’t been told when shown the trick with the shield of air.

  Well, he could hear more than just the Symphony of Communication, couldn’t he? Origon took more of his notes, this time listening to the Symphony of Power. It was concerned with the connections between things, and one of those things was how heat moved around.

  He waded through measures detailing the shifting flows of the battle. One side was definitely winning, though he didn’t know who or what they represented.

  Origon found the legato phrases, slow and stagnant, defining the inside of the sphere, and changed the tempo of several measures, pushing the heat away from him and into the wall of air until it was even cooler inside than it was on the plateau. Quite by coincidence, it further opened the spaces in the music of the air, and Origon stuffed more notes into the Symphony of Communication. His shield now had another aura of orange, for the House of Power, to match the yellow. It indicated where his circle of protection ended.

  This time, when a spear stabbed at the shield, it skidded off the hardened air, dragging the Pixie wielding it off balance. Her compound eyes flashed in anger.

  Success! The shield wouldn’t last forever—Origon heard degradation of the notes when the spear impacted—but he could take a moment to figure out what was going on without his robe gaining more holes than greens attacked by grubs.

  Origon tugged his sleeves down so his wrists were properly covered and spun in a circle, observing the fight.

  Now he had a moment to watch, he noted the phenotypical differences of the two parties fighting. One faction was brighter blue, and the chitinous places covering their skin had natural sharpened points. The other, smaller, faction was smoother-looking, and he thought their compound eyes might be larger. The spikier ones also had better armor—harnesses around their chests and shoulders with purple metallic plates. The others had nothing so organized, and many lacked armor at all, relying on their naturally hard skin.

  The better clad ones were winning, and Origon would make a wager they were the warrior caste who’d been causing so much trouble. But that meant the fight was spreading dangerously fast through the plateau. If only the Council had listened to him.

  He called out to the nearest non-warrior, hoping she could understand the common tongue. He wasn’t in the Nether anymore, with its inherent translation between species.

  “Which is to be the correct way to your hive?”

  The Pixie started, turning multifaceted eyes toward him. Evidently she understood. “Why here, majus? We applied for help. None came. Now you plop down in the middle of a battle we lose?”

  “I am to be here now,” Origon answered. He tried to keep his crest level as a warrior banged on the top of his shield with a hefty warhammer. He could hear the blows banging notes out of existence, crumpling them from eighth to sixteenth to thirty-second notes. “Simply tell me what to do and I will be helping.” If the warriors didn’t kill him first, that was.

  The Pixie sneered at him and buzzed away, running face-first into a knot of warriors. Origon winced as blades came at her from three sides, then dug into the Symphony of Communication. It was farther away, but he could still hear the melody of the air, tumbling around them in a violent caprice. He redirected a few phrases with his notes and wind caught the flats of blades, moving them enough to narrowly miss her. The Pixie countered and thrust back, hitting one warrior in her armored breastplate, but the Pixie’s strike slid off.

  Origon could see the blades coming in again, and again he tried to change the Symphony, but it resisted his efforts. What he attempted was too similar to what he had done before. The Symphony was getting muddy with his alterations. Origon watched in horror as the Pixie he addressed was cut down in seconds.

  He could do little from where he was. He was no warrior, though he could handle himself in a fight. Still, he alone would not make a difference in this battle. If the Council sent more maji, however…

  The warhammer was still knocking notes from their places in his shield and Origon turned a glare upward, his crest expanding. He delved back into the Symphony of Power. This music was fresher than the music of Communication. A few more of his notes to increase the tempo of the warhammer’s melody and it heated until it glowed. The Pixie warrior swore and dropped her weapon. Origon reversed the change he’d made to the Symphony, taking his notes back into his core. He breathed easier, feeling less spent. He’d need to make sure he didn’t overreach. That had always been a failing of his in university. Change too many things at once, use too many notes, and what was left?

  No, this fight didn’t need him. It was already lost. The warriors were chasing down the remnants of the smaller army. He looked toward his original objective—the hive with the elaborate carvings around its circumference. He was nearly sure it was the one to host a scientific-minded faction of the five hives. As he recalled, the warriors had taken over several others already. If the Pixie’s history was accurate, they developed this part of their homeworld twenty-five hundred cycles past, long before they were part of the Assembly, when one hive mother birthed an unheard-of five hive daughters at once. The plateau where they settled became a hub for commerce with the other species of the Assembly, until this war started. If he stopped it, commerce from Mother Hive would flow again. The Council would have to acknowledge what he’d done.

  The hive mother was the key. From what he knew, she was the way to influence the hive. He definitely couldn’t reach the warrior mother, but he might reach the mother for losing side.

  Origon listened to the music defining his shield. The Pixies couldn’t harm him right now, but if he left the shield’s protection, he wouldn’t last long. The only answer was to take it with him. As another spear pinged off the shield, he composed a wandering refrain from his notes and attached it beneath the score of the shield. Then he began walking. To his relief, the shield traveled with him, though the effort of putting one boot in front of the other was exhausting. How many of his notes were in his constructs? The Symphony did not like to be changed twice in the same manner, and the farther a majus moved a change in the music from its starting point, the harder it was to hold.

  Fortunately the pull from the ground was far less here than in the Nether. It was the reason one rarely saw Pixies flying in the Imperium. Here, however, he bounced along, though each jump tugged at the muscles in his legs. He was breathing far faster than he should be. He’d have to take back the notes of his change soon, and that would leave him defenseless.

  He was nearing the edge of the battle. Forty more paces. Thirty. Twenty-five. He huffed like an asthmatic Festuour. The Symphony’s resistance to his shield was growing.

  Origon looked around. There were still twenty or more warrior Pixies close enough to catch him. They were busy chasing the last of their opponents, but once they did that, he knew they would be after him. He heaved his feet forward in another half-hop. Fifteen paces farther. Ten.

  The shield of heated air compressed in on him, and it grew hotter again in his little bubble. Eight more paces.

  By all the ancestors, enough!

  He dropped the shield, taking his notes back with a rush of energy, and sprang forward. There were warriors nearby but his jump caught them off guard. He got three more jumps in before they gave chase.

  Origon
picked up his robe and ran across the dusty plateau toward the ornamented hive.

  * * *

  “Who comes here?” called a sentry at the hive entrance.

  “Origon…Cyrysi…” Origon gasped, holding a stitch in his side. “Majus of the…Houses of Communication and Power…I come to aid you in your war.”

  The Pixie considered him a moment with her large, dark compound eyes, then the pack of warriors closing swiftly behind him. Origon knew his crest was spread in all directions, and tried not to clench his hands. They might be chasing him, but this was their eventual destination. He and this sentry had a common cause.

  “You may pass.”

  Origon jumped through the entrance to the hive as a horde of guards rushed to meet the warriors who had chased him. Origon collapsed against the inside wall of the hive. This was not how he thought helping the Pixies would go. Thoughts of being welcomed with a stately ceremony flew from his mind.

  Thump. The sound was right next to his ear, on the other side of the hive wall.

  He bolted upright, then glanced out the entrance to see the group that had been chasing him engaged with the less-equipped guards from the hive. They weren’t the ones making the noise.

  A shaft of stone thrust through the wall next to his left ear, and Origon screeched, his crest as wild as if one of his ancestors had appeared in front of him.

  “What are these walls to be made of?” he said, hopping several steps farther into the hive. Behind him, the stone battering ram jerked and disappeared through the hole it made. He didn’t want to know what it had done to the relief sculptures on the outside.

  He fled inward, to repeated thumpings on the walls of the hive. The force he encountered on the plateau must have made their way here after him.

  The inside the hive was dry and roomy, cooler than outside, though Origon still felt his feathers separate from the lack of humidity. The halls were tight for him, and his crest brushed the ceiling, but that was understandable. After all, the standard Pixie only came up to his waist. Passages branched off to his left and right, but he headed inward and down. From what little he knew of Pixie habitation, the hive mothers were usually at the bottom, and she was the person with whom he needed to speak. Why were they not mobilizing defenses faster?

  Then he saw the inhabitants, and his steps slowed. He passed through an open area, and the Pixies there were dressed in simple coverings—tunics that left their wings free, and belts or harnesses to hold tools and personal items. Many more had leggings crafted from some flat fiber, like overlapping leaves stitched together. They looked comfortable. These people were not ready for war, and might not even have the capability to fight competently. His thoughts went to the Pixie he’d talked to, cut down with almost no effort from the warrior faction.

  Another boom sounded through the hive, and rock and dirt rained down from the ceiling. Pixies yelled and scrambled for the relative safety of the smaller passages—save for one. Around her, an aura of blue and orange bloomed, and she moved around falling rocks, the orange glow leaving her outstretched hands and gluing sections of the ceiling together. Her extended arms showed that one of her wings was a prosthetic, connected to her body by a set of harnesses wrapping around her torso. Origon could hear the changes in the Symphony of Power—they shared that house. Her notes were bolstering the connections amid the particles making up walls and ceiling of the hive. It was as if she was awaking connections the rocks remembered, telling them where they should stay.

  Origon stepped toward the majus—and a majus of two houses at that! He clumsily followed her example in the Symphony, but the music would resist him if he tried to make the same change. Instead, he devoted notes to energizing the connections in the ceiling. Increasing the friction between the separate rocks might be enough to fuse them back into a solid surface.

  The Pixie spared him one glance as they worked. The ceiling of this room was a lost cause for permanent inhabitation, but they could make certain all the civilians escaped to safer parts of the hive. He watched the other Pixies flit from the room.

  When the ceiling was stabilized, Origon lowered his arms, pulling the sleeves of his now dusty robe down to cover his arms. He’d raised them to the ceiling at some point, though the location of his hands did not actually affect how he changed the Symphony.

  “Good work,” the Pixie majus said. “But you come here why? What does Kirian have to do with hive of engineering-minded Pixies?”

  “To help,” Origon said. He tried to catch his breath. Most of those changes had been permanent, not reversible. He wouldn’t be getting those notes back unless he wanted the ceiling to fall in on him. “The Council is refusing to send anyone to be helping stop this genocide.”

  The Pixie grunted and tilted her head as if to observe a curious specimen of grub, her fingers twitching. Her wings were a blur on her back—the prosthetic seemed just as functional as the flesh and blood one—and she shifted around him in the air, almost too fast for him to follow. Finally, she said, “You have two houses.”

  That was not what Origon expected, but he remembered using the Symphony of Communication somewhere in there to keep a chunk of rock from falling on his head. This Pixie did not miss much. From the gnarled edges of the chitinous plates on her head and shoulders, she was older than him, and considering the short lives of the species, that meant she was likely a senior member of the hive.

  He stumbled to the left as something larger shook the hive. Had that been an explosion? He glanced at their recent work, but the ceiling held.

  “Come. Need to find Mother,” The Pixie said, and buzzed to one of the many entrances to the open area. “Two maji may be enough to change tide of what will happen. One will not.”

  Origon was caught flat-footed, but leaned forward and half-ran, half-jumped to catch up. At last, someone who moved as fast as the situation warranted!

  He caught up with her a few paces down the corridor, and noticed the carvings along the tops of the walls. They were heading in the right direction—which would have taken him too long to figure out, alone.

  “Kratithakanipoulitekaveya,” the Pixie said, and Origon tried to catch the intricacies of the Pixie name. Judging by the number of syllables, this one was highly esteemed in her hive.

  She spun in the air, flying backwards as she observed him. “Common name is Kratitha. You are Origon Cyrysi, yes?”

  For the second time, Origon was caught off guard. She’d heard of him?

  “I—yes, that is to be accurate,” he said. “I am afraid I am not to be familiar with you.”

  Kratitha waved a small hand as if to dismiss the comment. “No matter. Good to work with another two-house majus again. Probably shouldn’t have come. This is internal matter to Pixies, but since you came—”

  “I want to help,” Origon broke in. “The Council will not be treating this matter with the attention it deserves. Let me know what I can be doing to help.” He let his crest curl up to show his determination. At least speaking with another majus, there were no barriers in communication.

  Kratitha turned, picking one corridor out of a three-way split. Origon had to admit, he would have been completely lost. They’d passed countless doorways, though glimpses of Pixies hurrying this way or that were getting less frequent the farther in and down they went.

  “Must secure Mother and one other. Many engineers will be turned today, but as long as Mother is safe, still have chance at our way of life.”

  “I must be admitting, I am not fully versed on Pixie social customs,” Origon admitted.

  “Yet still barged in thinking could be a hero, hm?” Kratitha said. Her voice didn’t have the sting of accusation, just stating fact.

  “Er, yes,” Origon said. Fortunately Kratitha’s back was still toward him so she couldn’t see his crest droop in embarrassment.

  “This way.” The Pixie took another side passage, which looped into a sloped circular tunnel, spiraling sharply down. She explain
ed as Origon hurried along behind her, “Pixies are still hive-minded beings, yes?”

  Origon nodded, though she wasn’t looking. Kratitha seemed to take his silence for agreement and continued. “We wage war less by death and more by…ah….” She paused and swung around in the air to watch him, her compound eyes glittering in the little lights placed in recesses in the rock ceiling. “More by mind control, if you accept flawed comparison.”

  “You are having a collective of like-minded individuals,” Origon said, and Kratitha cocked a tiny finger at him.

  “Yes. When warriors take over, as have in other hives on the plateau, many engineering-minded members here will ally. Sort of peer pressure.”

  “But the hive mother?” Origon prompted.

  “Stronger-willed. Different genotype from children,” Kratitha offered. She landed, then walked through a small opening in the tunnel. Origon had to bend almost double to fit through.

  “And you are her child?” he asked. He would have to talk with other maji in the House of Communication when he returned to the Nether. There were several who would be fascinated with Pixie sociology.

  “All here are,” Kratitha answered. “Though will join warrior mother, when there are more of that influence than of this hive mother.”

  “So we must be taking the hive mother from this place to somewhere safe?” Origon asked.

  Kratitha flew to a doorway trimmed in carvings, coated with what looked like gold and copper, in the glow from bioluminescent lights recessed into the ceiling. She turned, half-barring the doorway, then seemed to force herself to relax.

  “Must rescue two members of hive to propagate.” she said. Her fingers fidgeted and she shifted from foot to foot.

  “There is to be something you are not telling me,” Origon said. He had always wondered how an all-female species reproduced, though some of the others of the ten species had even stranger ways of reproduction—not something easy and normal, like the way Kirians laid eggs.

  “There is,” Kratitha agreed. “Shown to very few not of Pixies species—few of our species, in fact.” She moved through the doorway, then beckoned Origon closer. “These are his quarters.”