Isana drew several deep breaths, focusing her effort through the pain, and called upon Rill. The work was harder, much harder than it would have been with even a modest basin of water, but she was able to watercraft the wound closed. A few moments later, she was able to reduce the pain somewhat, and between that and the cessation of bleeding, she felt dizzy, mildly euphoric, her thoughts clogged into muddled clumps. She must have looked a horror, half her face a sheet of red. Her dress was ruined. There was no reason not to use the sleeve to try to wipe some of the blood away, though her skin was tender, and she thought she probably succeeded in nothing but smearing it around a little more.

Isana swallowed. Her throat burned with thirst. She had to focus, to find a way to survive, for Araris to survive. But what could she do, here, with this creature facing her?

She looked up to find the cavern transformed.

Green light swirled and danced through the croach covering the cavern’s ceiling. Bright pinpoints of light, many of them, stood in slowly swaying ranks. Other lights darted and flowed. Others pulsed at varying rates of speed. Waves of color, subtle variations of shades, washed across the ceiling, while the vord Queen stared up at it, utterly motionless, her alien eyes reflecting pinpoints of green like black jewels.

Isana felt slightly nauseated by the seething, organic motion of the luminous display, but was struck by the impression that there was something about it, a kind of link between the luminosity and the vord Queen that she could not fathom.

Perhaps, she thought, her eyes simply were not complex enough to see what the vord Queen saw.

“The attack progresses well,” the vord Queen said, her tone distracted. “Gaius Attis, if that is what he is to be called now, is a conventional commander. An able one, but he shows me nothing more than I have seen already.”

“He’s killing your forces, then,” Isana said quietly.

The vord Queen smiled. “Yes. He has increased the efficiency of the Legions remarkably. The soldiers who escaped me last year are blooded now. He spends their lives well.” The vord Queen watched for a moment more before asking, calmly, “Would you give your life for him?”

Isana’s stomach twisted as she thought of Aquitaine wearing the First Lord’s crown. She remembered the friends of the entirety of her adult life she had buried because of his machinations.

“If necessary,” she said.

The vord Queen looked at her, and said, “Why?”

“Our people need him,” Isana said.

The vord Queen’s head tilted slowly to one side. Then she said, “You would not do it for his sake.”

“I...” Isana shook her head. “I don’t think so. No.”

“But you would do it for them. For those who need him.”

“Yes.”