Life Seed, page 18
I cast my eyes down and quickly spot the lifeless remnants of the Flyer queen. Her slender violet body, so different to the hulking majesty of my mother or me, lies motionless in a ravine far below. I notice the jagged stumps where her wings would have been. Her four legs are crumpled underneath her, clearly broken. Her ruby eyes are sightless in death, and her entire length is riddled with spines. Some of those are small and metallic. There is even one which has pierced her top eye, a black glassy spine from a brave juvenile. The majority of the spines embedded in her, however, are white. I sharpen my eyesight and see how incredibly resilient the Flyer queen must have been to keep fighting even as her body was impaled again and again by my mother’s attacks. Her jaws are pierced everywhere by the spine crown she must have torn off Alaya with a single savage bite, but even that did not stop the enemy. The sight of her fills me with loathing.
And the smallest, faintest hint of fear.
I roar out defiance to drown the traitorous emotion, and my confidence returns. The enemy is dead, as is my mother. For the Flyer to have made it as far as our nest’s border is a testament to her strength, but now that dead queen is no longer my concern. I have my own enemies to think about, and time may or may not be on my side. Just as I have been born, somewhere across the ocean another Flyer queen must have hatched. And in the depths, the third one is surely waiting.
I glance back. My hundreds of brood-siblings stand behind me in a silent display of unconditional obedience. Sunlight glitters on their black scales, and at that moment they look beautiful. This is my strength, and theirs, combined. This is my world.
With a growl, I order them to move and follow me down to a secret cavern. The first thing I should do is commune with my Flower.
THE CAVERN is not far from our nest, but the going is tricky. The ice is slippery underfoot in places—treacherous. As the slope we go down becomes sharper, I am forced to dig my claws into the ice to prevent myself from losing my footing. I go carefully, always making three feet secure before moving, and most of the males imitate me. Some of them are too foolhardy, though. Three of them tumble to their deaths while trying to rush over treacherous terrain. With an inner sigh, I forget the names I gave them. A shame, really. One of them had been the first to hatch.
The danger only adds to the delicious freedom that is life, though. As I use my muscles and exert myself, I feel the giddy rush of excitement that comes from facing a challenge and overcoming it. Faint echoes of my forebears whisper of similar challenges and others much greater. I push them to the back of my mind and think only of the moment. I want my memories to be pristine, shining clear in every instant, so that my daughter and her daughter and her daughters for generations will remember my life and seethe with envy at what they will never experience firsthand.
The sunlight on my skin is electric, a hint of lightning caressing the folds of a cloud. I feel myself grow stronger every minute I spend under the sun, and I know my scales will be even more radiant in the brilliant light that engulfs us. I long to simply lie down and bask in the warmth of the light, but there is something that must be done first. It is the one thing that drives me, whether I want it to or not. It is the one thing I hold in greater regard than my own magnificent self.
As I enter the cavern ahead of all my brood-brothers, I see it: a breathtakingly beautiful Flower, blooming in the shadowy depths of the gigantic space. Its petals have the same prismatic iridescence as my scales, white and pink and neon green, always changing, always new. It towers above me in its magnificence, even though I know that one day I will dwarf it when I am fully grown. For now, though, I feel… respect. It is grudging but undeniable. This is the soul of the planet, the essence of a world given shape. It is power given form, a focal point for the spirit-lines that bind us all in a unique mesh of existence.
I come to a stop in front of it, and a quick glance back shows me that the males are all quivering with fear, spread out as far away from the Flower as they can get. I growl dismissively. They can never understand the beauty that I behold. They can only sense in their simple instinctive way that here is something much greater even than I. Much older and much deadlier.
I lean my head forward, nearly touching it, close enough to make the Flower glow with inner light and the scorching heat that is its energy. I close my eyes and commune with my world.
The spirit-lines of my Flower reach far. Through its power, I am able to see everything at once. The vines under my feet are conduits of pure energy, and when I open my eyes again, my sight is transformed. I look around in wonder, and for the first time in my short life, I can See.
None of the memories could have prepared me for this moment. It is something that can only be experienced, and even then it is not something that can be understood. My sight reveals the glowing tendrils that link me to all my brood-brothers. I see their individual life sparks, and looking down I can see my own, larger than theirs, more beautiful, yet also made of the same energy.
I cast my eyes down, through the mountain, and the world opens itself to me. I follow the vines that thread the entire continent, and I see life everywhere, not only animals this time, but the plants too. Some forests are gigantic organisms, a single dormant consciousness of incalculable age. There are underground networks of complex mushroom systems that nourish creatures which have never seen the sun. Farther away still, in the heat of the desert sands, there is life in small, defiant concentrations wherever there is a little water. Beyond the desert, I can sense limitless prairies with blades of grass dancing in the wind, and every single one of them is alive. I can even cast my sight to the very edges of the world, and I see…
Ah. There. An interruption. The oceans are the limits of my sight. They surround my continent, and I can sense the faintest hint of the tendrils of the Flower of the deep. It rivals mine in every way, a fact which I acknowledge, even if I do not like it. And beyond it, where my sight cannot reach, I know there is a third Flower, the last on this world. It grows in a volcano, and its petals are tipped with molten magma. I know this because of the memories inside me, and I also know that the guardian of that Flower is the first of the Two Others I will seek out and kill. The Flyer queen will die under my teeth and my claws, pierced throughout by spines. Of that, at least, I am sure.
I break the contact with my Flower and back away. I will not admit it in front of the males, but my link with it cannot be sustained for too long or my own mind would be absorbed by the very thing I am charged with guarding. Instead, I roar out an order, projecting my will with renewed strength.
Go. Feed. Grow strong. Spread throughout the continent and sow fear in the hearts of all other living creatures.
As one, the males growl agreement and dash away through the tunnels that will lead them to the valleys and the forests and the deserts. Some of them are already bickering with one another, trying to display their dominance. I take note of every victor in every squabble. Wherever they go, I will know. And whenever I call, they will come.
In the meantime, I will hunt. I will kill. And I will grow powerful.
Chapter 17—Torn
A FLICKER of awareness.
I am Elias.
But then…. Why…?
Then the memories came in like a tide, swallowing everything in their path.
I WATCHED them come down from the sky one afternoon, while I basked in the golden rays of the setting sun. At first I paid little attention to the bright star descending, glowing fiercely against the darkening sky. I had just killed a razorback behemoth of the depths, a thing with no name, one so powerful that he could hide his own life spark from the Flowers. In hunting him I was deliberately trespassing on the domain of my Singer sister of the deep. If she had come upon me after the battle with the razorback, tired as I was, she might have been able to ensnare me with a song. She did not come, however, and I surfaced triumphant from the black ocean depths and into the light of my world.
I devoured the blistering energy of the razorback’s spark, heedless of the burn, and afterward I felt my power grow even more. Warm blood-soaked flesh nourished my body even as its energy nourished my core. Returning to the mountain of my Flower, I was a rolling harbinger of destruction, a spike-covered jewel big enough to flatten forests in my wake.
Replete with victory, I watched the flickering light die as the star from the sky touched the land. Strangely, though, there was no explosion, no crater afterward. A flicker of doubt made me wonder. Something about that light was very odd. But I was tired, and I claimed the time for my rest. Whatever it was, if it was even worth thinking about, I would investigate in the morning.
The panicky mental echoes of some males woke me up in the late hours of the night. Annoyed, I projected at them to be Quiet, and their cowardly keening ceased. For a time. It resumed in the early morning, and by then I could no longer ignore the fact that something had happened in my world.
I watched the new creatures through the eyes of the bravest grown males as they hid in the bushes around the place where the star had fallen. They were unlike anything I had ever seen, and no memory of my mothers could explain what they were. The Flower could not link to these animals, even though they were obviously alive. I could not understand it. I knew every creature in the world, from my own lifetime and countless others. Knew even the creatures in the oceans and the creatures in the other continent. These animals did not belong anywhere. It was as if they had come from a place… beyond. An unthinkable concept yet undeniable.
For an entire turn of the seasons, I watched. The creatures appeared to be harmless, puny, and devoid of claws or spines. They stayed very close to a female creature that was larger than me: something of metal and light which not even the darkness of the night could quench. It would swallow the creatures one at a time and then spit them back out at random intervals. This female was entirely motionless, and I watched her fiercely, preparing myself for battle.
Her challenge, however, never came. Her males spread out around her, cutting down trees and building nests in tight, precise formations. When wintertime came, the males stayed either in their nests or inside the female. I was astounded. She had not moved, not even once, and I had had at least one male watching her at all times. I did not know how she took nourishment, unless she was consuming the males, which ranged around my world and came back with the tiny animals they were able to hunt. It was a mystery to me, but as far as I knew, not a threat. Which was good, because lately I had begun to watch the skies.
The challenges of the Flyer queen were subtle at first, starting long before the strange creatures arrived on my territory. Once a stray male of hers flew over my mountain, wounded. A single spine brought him down. Then there was a squad of them, flying in formation. They came upon me while I was hunting in the desert and stole the heart of the sand snake I had killed after an entire day and night of hunting. These ones were faster, and my spines brought down only one of them.
Then there was the year of the great storm, when something large had flown in, hidden in the black clouds, outlined only briefly after every flash of lightning. Her sinuous shape had made every spine on my body stand up, ready to be fired, but the coward had flown away just as the storm dissipated.
She came back several years later and killed two juveniles of mine, weak males with no territory of their own who had therefore failed to reach maturity. I felt their deaths, and I felt their terror. But in her slippery, backhanded way, she had flown back to her own vile nest by the time I rolled to the site of the murders.
Several turns of the seasons followed that incident, but I had not seen her at all. Just the same, I kept a watchful eye. The time was coming for me to mate, and instinct and memory told me that it was the most likely time when she would strike. All throughout the winters, I patrolled the shores, watching for her. Her advantage lay in ambush and escape, mine in power and reach.
When spring came, I had not seen the Flyer queen, nor had I heard the faintest echo of a song under the waves. So I returned to the mountain to commune with the Flower. It had been a year since the arrival of the strange creatures, and when I cast my sight out with the Flower’s power, I was shocked.
The puny otherworldly males had killed their mother. The miserable little creatures had gutted her in the winter, and now only a husk of her remained, her metal plates exposed to the elements. I could scarcely contain my anger as I saw that the males had used the body of she who had given birth to them in order to build even more elaborate nests in a larger sprawl on the area they had infected. How had they done it? Had she been weak and old? That could not be possible. She had brought them from the stars. Unless….
Spring turned to summer, and I watched them very carefully. I planned the moment of my attack with no rush, considering every option. Throughout this time I came to know them very well indeed. I watched them through the eyes of every curious male who followed them on their frequent excursions deeper into my territory. I decided to encourage my males’ inclination not to attack them for the time being so I could learn more about their capabilities. The creatures seemed weak and slow, yet now they were able to hunt animals that were much stronger and faster than them. Besides, they had killed their female somehow. I needed to learn what they could do before revealing myself.
More winters came. Some of the creatures explored far away indeed, to the very limits of my own vision, but they always returned to the nest they had made. On it, there now grew things my Flower could not touch. Their life spark was too different, and it quickly fizzled away. The small creatures were either very stupid or very stubborn. They kept planting whatever it was they had brought with them only to watch it die. In the darkest hours of winter, I dared to hope that they would simply starve, ridding my world of the stain of their existence.
At the end of that winter, I was challenged by the Flyer queen’s envoy, a very large male who sought me out in the steep mountain passes of my territory. He had selected the place with great care, evidently, as the sharp inclines and treacherous rocks slowed me down while at the same time giving him plenty of spaces to hide, flying up or down or under a thousand and one covering rock formations.
It was an infuriating battle. I knew all Flyers were cowards, hard to catch. I had underestimated how much. As I fired spine after spine into the air, only for the cobalt body of the flying male to twirl out of the way at the last instant, I realized that he was simply too fast for me. His plan was obvious: tire me out, make me slow. Then he would zoom in and slice my flesh with his razor talons.
I had experience in this, though. And he, being a male, did not have generations of memories to draw upon. I set up a trap in a particularly narrow ravine, firing several spines at large rocks until I had destabilized them enough to make them teeter under their own weight but not yet fall. I then lured the large male to this space. I roared fiercely, firing almost all my spines, and then deliberately tumbled over the edge of the ravine. I made it look as if I had tried to roll, only to smash against the floor, briefly stunned.
The male’s eagerness was his undoing. He dived on me, talons forward, aiming for my eye cluster. I waited until the last possible second and then fired one single spine, pretending I was aiming for him. He slithered out of the way, twirling in the air, but my spine hit the rocks and they came down in a deafening avalanche.
The male had to use all his agility to get out of the way of the deadly rocks threatening to crush him, and he made it out just barely, using all his strength and cunning to avoid my trap.
Therefore, he had no more strength left for me.
It was almost easy after that. I leapt onto a rock and fired a slender spine, impaling his eye cluster with such force that he was launched back into the air before falling limply to the ground, a lifeless lump. I devoured his heart and then roared out my defiance, knowing that the Flyer queen had watched the battle. I shouted out my name with my mind so she would remember it forever.
I am Sizzra!
Her oh-so-faint reply, possible only at that moment of deepest bloodlust, was nevertheless unmistakable.
And I am Dresde. I will see you soon, sister….
I unfurled my crown of spines. I was ready for her. I was ready for anything.
It was then that I felt the death. A single male, one of my own. He had fallen down a cliff, startled. At first I thought it was another Flyer attack, but as my mind sped through his panicked memories, I realized it was because of the creatures who had come from the sky.
They were climbing a mountain.
The mountain where my Flower was.
My earsplitting roar made the rocks around me tremble. I ordered every male in my brood to converge upon the mountain, and I ignored my own battle exhaustion and surged forward in that direction. I climbed the nearest hill and rolled down its slope, using my momentum to propel me up the next peak. I jumped and sprinted like I never had before, like no other female of my line had ever done. I was almost at the other edge of my continent, but I crossed the distance to my goal in less than a day.
I reached the foot of the Flower mountain at the same time as most of my males. I ordered them to surround it, to kill anything that approached, and I climbed alone. My claws splintered granite from the force of my footsteps. My tail swished and made the air moan in protest.
Again and again, I cast my thoughts to the Flower, but vast though it was, it could never understand something that was not of this world. To it the creatures were invisible, nonentities devoid of life spark. It augmented my sight as I asked it to, but I could not find the creatures. I did not even know whether they would be going straight for the Flower, but something deep in my heart told me they would. Deranged males that had killed their own female could only be bent on destruction. I had been a fool to let them live this long.
I made the mountain shake with my stomping fury, climbing ever upward. I swore to kill every single one of the foul creatures. I would go to where they kept the fading corpse of their female and crush their nests and their young. I would obliterate every sign of them from my world. I would make them shake in fear and then—
