Chapter 60: The First Princess
“A lot had happened, yes?” The question arrived in a chittering voice.
Magma moved in its slow ring, heat rising off the black rock in visible waves, the stone glowing from within at its edges. A drip of molten material ran down the chamber wall and hung there at the end of its run, swelling, waiting. The air sweltered, pressing against the skin.
"You're telling me," sighed Barjuchne.
She lay on her side with her head resting on her hand, her elbow on the warm ground, looking out over the egg chamber with tired contentment. "It's funny how fast life can become so complicated." Her gaze drifted across the alcoves, the eggs in their warm hollows, and the guards at the far doors. "Hell, even I can't keep track of most of everything that's going on, and I'm the one it's happening to."
She turned her head and looked up along her tail.
The tail had curled and then pushed itself up into a high arc, and at its end, perched with her legs dangling down over the scaled ridge, sat Ei. The ant princess held a cup and saucer in two of her four hands. The cup held, quite literally, plain sugar water. But the ambient heat of the chamber had done its work, and the sugar water had become hot, and so it was now, technically, tea.
"I miss this," said Ei, looking down at her. "I still remember when I was just a little ant. You would hold me for hours in the night. You would free me from my terrarium and let me climb on your claws and your tail."
She sighed. It had weight behind it.
"There were nights where we did nothing but lie there. You would look at me. And I would try to escape you, to return to my hive, the one you stole me from." Ei’s compound eyes narrowed at the memory. "But you would just... turn your claw. And I would have to run the whole course from the start, all over again."
The tail lowered, dropping the princess a few feet closer to the ground.
"You know, if you say it like that, it'll make me feel bad." She gestured vaguely at Ei with one claw. "I didn't know you were going to transform. I just thought you were an ant. Anyway, that was weird, right? The transforming thing?" She frowned, genuinely considering it. "What even is magic?"
Ei chittered, annoyed. She shot Barjuchne a sour look, her mandibles clicking, two of her four arms crossing over the other two.
"Oh? Are you saying that I wasn't good enough for you as a simple ant?" she asked. "Perhaps I should consider trying to escape you again, if that is how it is."
The tail’s end rose and wrapped around Ei's waistline. The ant rotated sideways in the grip, one hand turning neatly to keep the tea upright, and then Barjuchne held her out in front of herself, suspended. The dragon's claw came up and ran gently along Ei's chitinous face, following the line of the plates, the smooth and the hard together.
"Oh, don't be like that, Ei," said the dragon girl. "There are millions of ants out there. But you're the only one who is mine."
The claw slid down and took one of Ei's four hands and drew it in for a kiss.
"Out of all my princesses, you'll always be the first," Barjuchne promised. "Out of every ant in that mound, I chose you."
"Good," said Ei, reassured again, her antennae settling. "In that case, I can truly count on you to do anything for me?"
"You know that."
Barjuchne set Ei down on the ground beside her. The tail made one slow journey across Ei's body, top to bottom, taking its time to get to its end. "Sugar? More flowers?" she offered. "I'll get them myself." She leaned in, her voice dropping. "You want me to terrify somebody who stepped on your old hill once? I'll get them right now. Right this second."
Ei seemed pleased. She set her cup down to the side, then rolled back to face Barjuchne and scooted in and grabbed her with all four arms.
Even Barjuchne had to brace. The ant's strength was a legendary force. The hug crushed the air out of the dragon girl's chest with the casual power of its press.
But, despite that, after recatching her breath, the dragon's chest rumbled, and she purred.
"Actually," began Ei, loosening her grip slightly, studying Barjuchne's face from very close up. "I want to move my mother into the mountain."
Barjuchne froze.
Her eyes went wide, and then she composed herself, and then she could not fully compose herself.
"Ah! I mean..." The thought of her mother-in-law living with them was, in a word, weird. "What's wrong with the anthill? It was a great anthill."
Ei saw the hesitation instantly. She scoffed and sat upright, turning away, arms crossing in layers as she sat with her back to her now. "I knew it!" she announced. "To think I fell for such a superficial monster as you."
"Aw, no. Come on, Ei."
Barjuchne sat up and reached out, taking the antgirl by the waist and sliding her back against herself.
Ei did not budge her posture. She sat cross-legged and close-armed, a monument to offended dignity, letting herself be moved without conceding anything.
"It's just weird. Your mother living with us?" She winced. "What if, you know, we're trying to have some alone time, and she's just... there? It's weird. It feels weird to have my mother-in-law inside the house."
Ei looked back over her shoulder. "Rou-ya's entire extended family lives upstairs," she said. "Her mother, as I recall, explicitly encouraged your union."
"Hey, don't look at me about that," replied Barjuchne. "I just wanted Rou-ya. The rest of them came by themselves."
"Mhm," said Ei, with maximum indignation compressed into minimum syllables. "Well. My mother is ageing. Soon it will be time for her to abdicate her crown. After a lifetime of service to her people, I will not simply let her sit in a hole in the ground for her final days."
Barjuchne sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose. "Ah... sheesh. Okay. Wait. What exactly do you want?"
"My old terrarium," said Ei. "I wish her to be moved into it." She paused, the pause of a duellist. "Although, I suppose, if you do not actually love me, then—"
"Okay, okay. Damn." The dragon threw a hand up. "You don't have to go that far. Of course I love you. Fine. We'll take her in." She shook her head and pointed between the two of them. "You know that this is emotional manipulation, right?"
Ei smiled. It was a small, entirely satisfied smile. "I will remind you that you kidnapped me with beastly, lecherous intent," she said. "A little conniving is the foundation of our bond."
"I was trying to survive."
Ei leaned in. "Oh? So you are saying that if you had not been in desperate straits, you would never have bothered with me?"
Barjuchne stared at her. Her eye twitched once.
"Are you just trying to start a fight?"
"Yes," replied Ei.
And then, relenting, she let out a long, sad, lonesome sigh. She put a hand against her own face. "I suppose I miss the passion you once showed for me. It seems to have gotten lost in your work and in... the others." Her antennae drooped a calculated degree. "Is it because of my chitin? Or is it- Oh!"
She was on her back.
Barjuchne lay over her, both of Ei's wrists pinned to the warm stone floor. "Hey," said the dragon girl, low, looking down at her. "You have the shiniest chitin out of literally any princess here."
Ei looked very pleased.
The fact that she was also the only princess present who had any chitin was not, in that moment, under consideration.
"Do you like my new pheromones?" Ei asked, her compound eyes glittering as she tilted her head. "I am releasing a different chemical signature today. I was waiting for you to say something, you know."
Barjuchne did not pick up on that in the slightest. "Uh, yeah," she replied. "It's very... you."
She pressed her nose to Ei's neck and then her teeth.
"Oh!" said Ei, wrapping two arms around the dragon's shoulders as the claws laid claim to her, the other two gripping the stone. "My..."
"...Wait." Barjuchne stopped. She lifted her head, and her eyes narrowed, and the scheme in them was visible as they shot from side to side. Her newest quest objective sat in her mind. Capture a Queen. "Your mom's a queen, right?"
Ei saw her intent straight away.
"You keep your hands off my mother, you animal," said the ant princess, her free arms reaching up to pull Barjuchne back down onto her. "They are to stay firmly right here and nowhere else."
"I would never! I—"
They kissed.
The teacup, forgotten at the edge of the alcove, clinked as Barjuchne's tail swung against it. It rolled. It wobbled along the black stone in a lazy curve, shedding sugar-water tea, and then tipped over the edge of the raised ground and fell into the magma.
It did not survive.
The conference room was full of papers.
Notes covered the long table and most of the floor, the accumulated drafts of a gospel being compiled by hand. The twin saintess priestesses sat at the table's head in prayer, their lips moving in silence, their foreheads nearly touching. Ead sat in the back corner, writing away at a research report of her own, her hat pushed back, her journal filling fast.
Barjuchne stepped in.
They turned to look at her. "Barjuchne," said one saintess.
"We were just thinking about you," said the other.
Barjuchne stopped in front of them. She crossed her arms, then uncrossed them, then put her hands on her hips.
"You two. I need to ask you something," she said. "Back when you were still a problem, what was that spell you used? The one that turned Ei into a person?"
The saintesses looked at each other.
Then they looked back at her.
Back inside the magma chamber, quiet. Empty. The magma circled its slow path. The heat hung, and nothing moved apart from the shimmering of the air.
Then, at just a fragment of one edge, the shell of a large black dragon's egg began to crack.