An Alien Legion for Land, Sea, and Sky: If It's Alive, They Can Infect It

Rhode Island.

Round Clam Town.

The territory belonging to the Queen of Diamonds.

Only perpetual gloom and dampness existed here. The air carried a strange scent, a mix of slime's cloying sweetness and minerals.

It was like a trench at the bottom of the sea, or the belly of some enormous creature.

Li Dan stood in the center of the space. The ground beneath his feet was uneven, soft and slick when he stepped on it. Looking down, he saw faintly blue-glowing slime trickling through the folds of the rock walls and collecting in small puddles that reflected strange, shifting shadows overhead.

The place looked every bit like an insect hive. Honeycomb-like holes covered the rock walls, and some held unhatched eggs. Their faint bioluminescence made the space flicker between light and shadow.

A territory within a Ghost Card changed according to its queen's preferences.

The Alien Queen occupied a raised platform deep within the space, in a nest built from slime and unknown bones.

Her massive body filled most of the area. Her jet-black shell gleamed with a cold metallic sheen, and several pairs of enormous limbs gripped the edges of the nest. Her abdomen kept contracting and swelling, each movement accompanied by a low hiss. Eggs the size of footballs slowly emerged and dropped into the pool of slime below with soft plops.

What unsettled Li Dan most was that the Alien Queen kept her head slightly lowered, her pupil-less compound eyes fixed firmly on him. Even between laying eggs, she never looked away.

There was no malice in her gaze. Instead, it held an almost instinctive dependence and affection, like a young animal's attachment to its mother.

But coming from a creature so huge and terrifying, that affection was enough to make his skin crawl.

*Come on,