Miyo was feeling sluggish the next morning and so returned to bed after breakfast. Assured that the gods would provide whatever she needed, Rykard went out to talk to the other Contestants. Benhuldran and Iceface may have been offended by his display yesterday, but that need not mean that they broke contact off entirely.

Not that it would have been consequential to Rykard if they did. Ultimately, they were enemies. The clash, in one form or another, was inevitable. This world would belong to only one sovereign and Rykard was certain in putting his name at the top.

The two men eluded him. Either they were still sleeping or had decided to stay within their apartments for the time being. Shrugging, Rykard set out into the depths of the garden. He wanted to keep his feet moving. A matter of killing time.

As he walked through the perfect woods, his mind went through yesterday’s fights. The other Contenders had been surprisingly powerful. No one on Rykard’s old world had come even close to any of them. That still put them behind Rykard himself, but not by enough that he was as certain in his victory as he was initially.

From past records of these games, he knew that all three others that had fought so far, Altana, Maliande, and, especially, Benhuldran, were freakishly above the norm. Was that a countermeasure against his own potential dominance or just a freak accident? Only the gods could know.

Even if his chances weren’t the 100% he had initially estimated, he still would have bet on himself 10 out of 10 times. He was stronger than what Benhuldran had displayed. He was strong enough that he was confident that he would win in a war. The problem was that he may just slip up enough or that Benhuldran may just display enough power, to win a battle - and a battle was all this tournament came down to.

He would see by tomorrow, most likely. Today, he would face Tess. How strong she was would be another point of interest. The rogue had made herself rare and all he had ever seen of her was a short display of shadow magic. From the goth, his mind turned to the other two female Contestants he had interacted with. Maliande was likely going to avoid him. 

‘I wonder how Altana is doing.’ The thought had scarcely surfaced, that Rykard noted that his footfalls caused little crunching sounds. Before him, the landscape shifted from a luscious garden to a desert. Rykard would have called it lifeless, had it not been teaming with skittering beetles the size of his foot, patrolling like ants in steady search of more biomass.

Over the crest of a dune, he located a singular form. Altana, obviously, but even more human than before. Any and all signs of chitin had been removed, leaving only her balanced curves. Her skin was a blueish black, a scale-ish texture giving it a unique sight, while not interrupting the smoothness in the slightest.

Pointy ears akin to that of a goat twitched. Altana turned her head, wild red hair framing her gorgeous face. Amber eyes, purple lips, and a simple calm met his approach. Her nudity did not embarrass her. She just looked at him, a restrained chimera, but a chimera regardless.

To her feet, the lower half of her tail had morphed into a gaping maw of some kind. The skittering beetles regurgitated bits of biomatter into it. Some of them just fed themselves to their queen wholesale.

“It might be bad luck to devour the garden of the gods,” Rykard cautioned with a smile on his lips.

“They have plenty to give.” Altana’s answer was melodic, her expression unmoving. “How did you find me?”

Rykard shrugged. “I happened to think of you and the gods decided to let me find you.” His eyes traveled up and down her form. He was equal parts attracted and interested in an academic manner. “Recuperating your losses from yesterday?”

“Teyla regenerated me to that end. I am stockpiling what I can. There is nothing else for me to do.”

“You can talk to me,” Rykard said, conjuring himself a chair to sit on. The smile on his face only grew, from assuring, to inviting. A simple gesture, and he offered Altana a chair of her own. A luxurious throne, worthy of her station, and fashioned specifically for her dimensions. The lower back even had a cut-out in the side for her thick tail to rest in. “At least until this tournament is over, I can lend you an ear.”

Altana beheld him for several seconds. Slowly, like a shy animal, she moved towards the chair. Once she had put down her round butt, she gradually relaxed. “You desire me,” she stated.

“You are very desirable,” Rykard answered simply. “I’m not here to make a move on you though - not of that kind, not today. You made it rather clear how your species handles courtship.” He cocked his head, letting his pride and certainty show in every fiber of his body language. “When the dust settles, there will be no more worthy mate than me.”

The announcement made the hairs on Altana’s ears rise and fall. Something like goosebumps appeared on her arms. The shiver was gone quickly. “I’ll be observing your progress, Rykard.”

“Related to that, if you allow the question: what, exactly, are you?” Rykard let his eyes drift to the beetles still coming and leaving, all aiming for the bit of her tail now covered from his sight by the backrest of her chair. “An alchemical lifeform, that much is clear, but there’s a wide spread when it comes to those. Would you regale me with the story of your species?”

Altana nodded abruptly. “You have illuminated me much about you… normal people. It is only proper that I return it in kind.” Placing the tips of her fingers together, she looked down for a moment. “I am a young queen of the Ouroboros, so I will have to rely on the gene-memories for the early parts,” she apologized in her melodic tone.

“I’ll take all you can tell me,” Rykard encouraged her.

“From what I can tell, the beginnings of our swarm are something that is often predicted in the fiction of advanced civilizations. The first of our number were no larger than ants. Their basis likely were ants, but I cannot say so for certain. Our purpose was to serve as a universal tool. We would devour the biomatter an area and store it within the hive. Most outstanding was our ability to recycle ourselves ad-infinitum, no prions destroying us and no drop going to waste. Such was why they dared to name us after the very god of the first alchemists.

“In time, they used us with ever less oversight.” Altana’s voice shifted gradually, her tone becoming gleeful and feral. “The first mutations occurred and we gained ambition. From ambition came plans. We carefully cultivated our own genome. We abducted our caretakers, addicted them to us, wrung them for every drop of seed and ovum they were worth. We formed the infiltrators, so that they may seek out even more worthy seed. They came back with generals and geniuses. Infiltrators became queens, the guiding minds of our hives, who would direct us through their decisions and guide our evolution through their choices in mate.

“Our activities were spotted but it was much too late already. We were legion and they lived atop our hives. We devoured their societies, leaving only pockets of them alive so that they may try to come up with ways to defeat us - so that we may devour their foolish soldiers and enslave their greatest minds as breeding stock over and over again! Their attempts to defeat us were our evolution! They were-”

“Altana,” Rykard gently interrupted her.

The redhead was bowed forthwards, fingers bent into claws, teeth extended into carnivorous fangs, eyes filled with bloodthirst. At the sound of his voice, her spine suddenly straightened. The frenzied smile dropped. She blinked and regained control of herself. “My apologies,” she said.

“You haven’t done anything to me,” he assured her. “We all fight against our worse nature. Continue, please.”

Altana nodded. “We are reaching the time of my birth. As the years passed, the Ouroboros grew greedier. More and more queens were born, each governing their own swarm, each part of the collective, yet warring on each other. Our fundamental aspect means that internal strife is fought without loss. The devoured drone of one swarm is reborn without loss in another. Aggression, thus, selected for itself. In due time, the aggression reached a level that the old scheme was abolished and the last pockets of non-swarm territory devoured whole. The Ouroboros only devoured each other.

“It was then that I was born. Mutation, low in trait aggression, high in trait empathy. I was kept by the queens and given a swarm to test my fitness for survival. The first queens taught me much. I reminded them of the sapients they had replaced and they were trying to determine if it was for better or for worse.”

“Your existence ultimately split the hive,” Rykard guessed. “There were those queens that saw that the relentless pursuit of aggression would ultimately lock their species in endless war on itself. Then there were those that wanted that. That enjoyed the endless war, because they were a product of it.”

Altana gave him a long, interested look. “Your predictive powers remain astonishing.”

“You crossbred with so many sapients that you are prone to our mistakes.” Rykard gestured for her to continue. “Fill me in with the details, please.”

“As you say, the hive split. One side called me regressive, the other the next great leap. The aggressive queens banded together and devoured the old queens. The war was lost from the outset. All we could was delay against those of us that warred every day. I was placed on the Competitor’s Hexagon on a vain hope… a hope that was realized at the last moment. As the swarms crashed into the area, the gods claimed me.”

“And so all the drones you are stuck with…”

“...are the descendants of hundreds of years of aggression,” Altana finished the sentence. “They obey me, lacking the higher brain function to understand continuity. They lost contact to their queens, so they follow the one queen there is. Should I, however, show to be unaligned with the will of hive, they will feed one of the larvae the royal jelly and raise her to replace me.” The redhead paused for a moment. “That is the tale of the Ouroboros, Rykard. The form I present you was formed to entice a once superior enemy into underestimation and to make sure their most worthwhile traits were only passed on among my kind. Underneath this mutation of empathy the genes of hunger and savagery remain beating. That is what I am. That is what my species is.” Ashamed, she directed her gaze to the floor. “You must distrust me.”

“Not one bit,” Rykard answered, causing her amber eyes to dart back up. The confusion in them only deepened when he saw his relaxed body language. “I see and understand your issues and I am not making light of them,” he assured her. “You have a heavy cross to bear. My offer to help still stands. Even if I would make it easier, I think you’re fully capable of this task you were born into.”

Rykard allowed himself a gesture beyond simple chatting. Leaning over, he placed his hand on the side of her face. She jumped, at first, as if the touch caused her pain. Then, she placed her own hand on his. “You’re warm,” she whispered.

“You trust my ability to read you? Then trust it when I say that I detect no lies from you, Altana. I believe in you. You’ll overcome this. The origins of your species may be soaked in blood, but that does not mean you cannot be the change that is needed. You’re not a regression.” There was naught but the utmost sincerity in the sovereign’s tone. “I will not lose to you, but if I did, living under your rule wouldn’t be so bad.”

The Ouroboros Queen was speechless. She held onto his hand for a long while. “Thank you,” she whispered, then let go.

“My pleasure,” Rykard assured and left her to think on what he had said.