The primedrone chamber walls reverberated with the impact of the meteor fragment crashing against it. The translucent material grew threateningly thin in the epicenter of the hit, but held its structural integrity. Alarmed, two workers swam towards the damaged portion and examined its progress in self-repairing. They steadied the breath organs buried deep within their long necks and exhaled super-hot plasma on the area. Graceful fore-flippers swiped the molten, pearlescent variation of aether over the breach, ignoring the violent arguments that had almost become a homecoming ritual in the household.

The primedrone aether dragon reared his head, letting his mane ripple in the surrounding aether. The workers could see all four pairs of his amber visual organs, stacked one atop the next on his forehead, looking at them through the huge breach. They were serene as always, calming the workers' nervousness on overhearing the conversation. Drawing courage from their lord father's visual organs, they toiled on to fill and re-strengthen the wall. They ducked in unison as another fragment collided with the area just above them. The sensory whiskers on their cheeks felt the change in aether composition, and registered the scent to be their queen's with a shudder.

"How could you even think of leaving this hive, Seirir? Have you gone insane? You damned drone, you dare abandon your hive, your home and your queen, in times of need such as these?!"

The workers heard the primedrone sigh. Through the breach, they glimpsed the queen floating through the rear end of the chamber. Their heads dropped in reflex and they went back to repairing the wall promptly. Their foreflippers quickly pulled, twisted and swiped the matter to re-strengthen the pocket dimension.

"This is not the queen I had admired," said the primedrone softly. It rose to a crescendo with each next word, "This is not the great regent who led us through invasions and wars with barely a scratch on us. This is a rambling, battle-crazed-"

"What does a drone know about war?" cut the queen sharply. "A drone knows no such sorrow since birth! A drone doesn't have to forge his legacy in blood and gore to prove himself worthy of ruling a hive! A drone can just lick the hard-earned prizes of war and waddle in luxury, preaching against war. You accuse me of being, and I quote, 'battle-crazy', yet I am not the one who plans on deserting the hive like a wretched maestral!"

The workers winced at the foul remark. The queen had called the primedrone himself a maestral, a hive-wrecker, a whore. They thought her words cruel, but her outburst was one born out of their grief as well. Their father's departure would be a great loss for the already disfunctional hive. With none of the other drones stepping up to take his place as primedrone, the disfunctionality was slowly tipping over to anarchy.

"My children deserve better than a broken primedrone prone to hysterics. They deserve a primedrone stable in both mind and body to run this hive. I've found myself inadequate for the support and care they desperately need during such troubled times."

"All I had ever asked you was to be by me when the times turn rough, love," said the queen, her voice lowered to a whisper.

"And you've stayed by me for so long, through so much. You helped me out of the void that wench Lindarir had left when he. . . he consorted with that little upstart. I don't think I can survive without you, I don't think I can make it. For once, if you could stop thinking about yourself and think about the hive - the state you're planning to leave it in."

"I can't do this anymore, darling, you deserve better. This hive deserves better than what I can possibly offer."

"You just can't stand me anymore, can you?" she asked.

"This isn't about you, Danau," he replied firmly.

They went back and forth, having calmed down to have a normal conservation that had been missed by the workers for so long.

The workers swam out of the drone quarters using the finer motions of their four main flippers. On exiting into the bigger hive, they erected their two gigantic, sail-like axillary flippers and let the radiation pressure from the stars above them push them towards the hive nursery. The hive was a colossal, spherical labyrinth of the special aether, sealed away in a gigantic pocket dimension. The workers touched down against the wall surfaces of the hive nursery and folded the sail flippers. They tiptoed across the sealed catacombs, opening certain pockets for the nurses to check on the newly hatched babies being incubated within them. Outside their little glass sphere of a pocket dimension, a main sequence star danced with its celestial partner of the same type but a bigger size.

Primedrone Seirir lounged on the biggest of asteroids stored in the chamber as he watched them waltzing across the sky. The stars were bright and happy as always that cycle, and their soft singing would've lulled him to sleep. His mind, however, was lost in a meteor field of problems; a thought crashing into his headspace for each one he had managed to avoid. There was the issue of the queensguard who had rebelled against the queen and had narrowly escaped execution. There was the issue of the primedrone beheading in the past, with his parent hive having declared the queen a mortal enemy.

There were the rumors of his queen's secret lover gathering his forces to move in and take over his position by persuading the queen. He wasn't afraid of that drone, in fact he had scoffed when the Captain of the Dronesguard had informed him of the threat. He knew the threat like the core of his birthstar, thanks to being taught by the same elder drones and having fought over common resources in the same nebula.

Then there was the question of his ruined parent hive near the Origin world. Someone would have to look after the only remainder of the hive, a struggling nursery, having lost both the primedrone and the queen to his love. He didn't mind relinquishing the position to go there and live as an elder drone. The whole secret lover issue had popped up as a welcome solution to the refusal of the other drones.

Why was his queen refusing to part with him then? She already had her eyes on another. She had clearly violated his request to spare his hive from her 'diplomatic conquests', and he had no reason whatsoever to continue living with a queen who did not respect him.

He was afraid; he was all bark and no bite. Queen Danau had risen to stellar infamy after her trial of Primedrone Lindarir. She had caught him, paraded him like a war criminal and had seared his head off in a pulsar's beam. Death seemed to be the only way out of the cursed wedlock. He considered her first consort, Primedrone Aemenor, lucky to have survived the courtship with his head still attached to his body.

He sighed and turned over on his back. The asteroid bobbed in the aether matter filled room with the shift in mass across its surface. He could feel the gravitational pull of the stars towing the pocket dimension with them as they sailed across space.

He lifted his foreflippers and blew some plasma onto them. They swirled and condensed into a globe of burning gases between his limbs, and he wove a little pocket dimension around them with aether matter. The heavier of the elements settled into a molten core as he spun the orb slowly, whisking forth the lighter elements to the surface. He knew that it wasn't a true star, just a clever mimicry of those celestial nuclear reactors. The pocket dimension steadied its volatile shape as he watched the miniature white dwarf taking birth within a tiny gas cloud.

He lighted up the cyan spots on his navy blue lower jaw, smiling in glee. It was a soothing activity in times of stress; to test the limits of his aether bending skills. When the mini star was nearly fully stable, he looked across the chamber and pulled a meteor fragment off a depression in the wall. It flew to him as if it were attached to a string connected to his flipper. He slowed it down, twisted it around midair to examine its structure and placed it in orbit around the star.

As it spun around the star in an imitation of the celestial dance above them all, Seirir felt a hint of joy bubbling within him after so long.

•°۝°•

|| Author's Note ||

My main inspiration for these beasts are the leafy sea dragons (Phycodures eqes) I'll be doing a sketch of them soon!

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