The corpulent leader sat up, his placid face slipping into an expression of malicious eagerness. “You have brought the most remarkable examples of your experiments?”

“Yes, Liege,” the Dobro Designate said. He was the Mage-Imperator’s second son, after Jora’h, but he followed the leader’s thinking more closely. “You will find them astonishing. Clearly your father’s farsighted wisdom has seized an opportunity for the Ildiran race.”

The Mage-Imperator operated a set of controls with his stubby fingers so that the cradle platform tilted him upright. The sides closed in, making the platform compact and streamlined; handles extruded from the sides. “I wish to see these specimens with my own eyes.”

He called for attenders, and a group of small-statured helpers scurried in. They fought each other for the right to grasp the handles on the palanquin. Levitators switched on, lifting the enormous throne from the floor. The leader stroked his serpentlike braid and gestured forward with his chubby right hand. “Follow my son. The Dobro Designate will show the way.”

Wearing a hard smile of confidence, the Designate exited through the opposite arched doorway. He led them out of the contemplation chamber and down sloping ramps to lower, more isolated rooms. He knew the Mage-Imperator would reward him for all the hard and unpleasant work he’d been forced to do on dreary Dobro. The end results of these experiments would justify all of the miserable effort.

Despite his eagerness, the Designate set a slow pace as the attenders carried the chrysalis chair, guiding it through wide passageways, always downhill. At this depth, other Ildiran workers—mainly guards and maintenance kith—stared in awe at their unaccustomed visitor under the harsh light; then they either bowed or rushed out of the way. The Designate paused on a hovering lift platform, which dropped them down several levels, through the sculptured hillside and into well-lit catacombs within the citadel. Blazers shone at every intersection.

Finally, they stopped at a private door guarded by four monstrous-looking warrior kithmen. The bodyguards stood aside, clearing the passage so the attenders could scuttle forward, hauling the floating palanquin chair. The Mage-Imperator looked around, his interest piqued, impatient with anything that got in his way.

They entered a gallery of glass-walled rooms. The transparent cells held strange humanoid creatures in an array of body types, unusual mixtures of shapes, musculatures, configurations—some of them impressive, some horrifying, some pathetic.

“As you can see, Father, our breeding program has yielded a variety of results, as is to be expected. We collect data and then try to reproduce the cross-breed kith that we consider to have desirable traits.”