by Joe Darris
Seeing the prongelk down below pulls his mind back in time, down the Spire, through the Garden, to the animals he killed, the people he lost. He thinks of all he learned and has become, those who sacrificed their lives for people who knew nothing of them. The Spire owes him blood. It owes him each step he took from his homeland and each tear shed over family gone but not forgotten. He understands now that that debt may never be paid. It will be enough to save his sister from the life they planned for. He would like to teach her all that he has learned, share his story, his symbols, be a hermit himself, but he treats the thoughts as little more than childish fantasies.
His blooming mind is still not smart enough, may never be smart enough, to see he could never think like this as a child, that his hopes and dreams were little more than a warm fire and a fresh meal and now, thanks to pressure, heartache, strife and death, his dreams have evolved to sharing a story with those he loved, to pass down all he's learned to anyone who will listen.
A hoot yanks his attention and he jerks his head to the left see the two monkeys hopping impatiently. One beats its chest and the other takes off. The first waits just a moment longer, then follows the other. The monkeys are not the loud territorial things he knows. They are smart, cunning, wise to the Hidden, wiser than him. He follows them, wishing another once-unthinkable wish: to solve their mystery.
They lead him down tunnel after tunnel. They run fast but now seem cautious. The Hidden must be about. They turn a corner and see one of the pudgy pale people standing near an open doorway. The first monkey howls its disorienting scream and the man’s knees weaken. Kao is hurt just from the echo. It works its way through his ears to his stomach. He thinks he will vomit but does not. He can cope better. The man does not fall either, but the second monkey leaps and lands upon his back. It is almost as big as the man, its head to his shoulder. Neither of the two come past the hunter’s waist. The monkey hoots and tears at the man but he fights back more courageously than Kao thought the little people capable of. The man slams the monkey against a wall and its grip loosens. The Hunter runs forward and knocks the man unconscious in an easy whack. They are no more a match for him than children. They are pathetic creatures in a pathetic place, but not for much longer.
The monkeys yip excitedly. One tries to clamber up his back but he shoos it off. They are allies, not friends.
They squeal and dance at the door the man guarded. It is masked in the blue shimmer. Impenetrable to the monkeys. They will not touch it. They do not have what he has. They do not have weapons and wounds. The hunter does, and he knows how to use them.
The Hidden's power works something like a mountain stream. It flows and flows no matter what is put in its path. Sometimes it can be diverted or slowed, but still it flows. Just like a mountain stream, it can be dammed, and just like a mountain stream, it grows stronger when confronted, not weaker.
Gingerly, Kao grabs the second prong jutting from his arm. He fingers it slowly, feeling for fissures in its hard surface. He feels one, and pulls the embedded antler towards his chest. With a grunt of pain and a dribble of blood, it snaps. Most of it still dwells within his arm, but he has what he needs.
He draws the knife back and jams it into the edge of the shimmering blue wall, where it meets stone. It is engulfed in the field, swimming in its energy. Its dark glistening blackness first crackles with blue lightning, then goes red, then white hot. The hunter steps back as the lights dim. The blade throws up showers of sparks. Finally he hears a hum, then a pop. The blade explodes in a blue white blast of powder and little else. The shimmering blue wall is gone.
The hunter steps through the doorway. The air is different in here, more charged than anywhere else he has been. The monkeys seem very cautious. They are silent, and stick to him like children. He walks in slowly, looking around. Its a long hallway, with a floor that is green and fuzzy. It makes odd squeaks beneath his feet. He has never felt anything like it before. The hall is long, he can feel the energy emanating from the end.
Slowly, he and the monkeys make their way down the long hall. It is lined in little rooms. Cages? The gods can't be so sick, to imprison everyone in one of these. Some of the rooms have the shimmering blue door, others do not. He peaks in one of them.
It is filled with bones. Most are arranged into skeletons, but some are in messy piles. There is a line of kingcrow skeletons fully assembled. The ones nearest the back of the room are smaller than he is. They are yellow, like bones get when cared for and cherished. As the skeletons near the door they get larger and darker. The one nearest him is almost the size of the bird he half-blinded. Its bones are black as the last prong jutting from his arm. He reaches out and grabs one. Just as he thought, cold, black, and hard. He does not need to walk the length of the room to know the white bones would snap much more easily.
This is their secret. The bones. They've changed the animals bones for their power. He looks to his arm. I learned their secret, and I am free.
On the far side is the same skeletal display but with monkeys. The white bones slowly change to black as the monkeys morph. Kao shudders. His bones must be black as any of these animals. The hermit long cautioned against food from beyond the jungle. Kao understands why, though without it, he never could have survived the Garden.
Kao turns to leave, and then he sees it. Right near the entrance to the room, like it was left there in a hurry, sits his helmet and leathers. He lifts the skull and attached rack of antlers. There are still many left, unlike the prongs once guarding his arm. He dons the skull. The bile-tanned leather shrouds him and he feels safe. The monkeys hoot and scream, their savior gone, until he turns to them and growls. They realize who it is, though he can sense their fear. With weapons and armor, he leaves.
The next room is empty, the one after that filled with prongelk skeletons. The massive animals were huge to begin with, though their bones were white. The hunter is amazed to see their antlers extend and their prongs multiply as the generations pass and their bones turn black. Before him, plain as day, is the Hidden's secret. Their power only works on these bones, this blackness that fuels all of the most terrifying beasts from the stories he knew as a boy. They fed their Garden the innocuous black moss and seized their minds too late to see the danger. This brings closure to Kao in a way he never anticipated. To understand the Hidden feels good as revenge. Their power is no magic, just old knowledge: Everyone is made of what they eat food. Kao's mother must have told him and his sister that more than a hundred times as she prepared fresh meals from their jungled home. The elders repeated the mantra as they shunned food from the plains. It even explained the hermit's brilliant madness, he had as much knowledge and secrets as the noxious brew that he fed Kao so long ago.
The knowledge is sweet, but now he must find his sister, his mentor, and escape before the prongelk doom them all.
The band of primates hurry down the hallway, but close to the end one of the monkeys shrieks in delight and Kao cannot help but look. To his left, a room lies open. He follows the monkey in to discover rows and rows of cages. Each holds a monkey. Each is too small, little more than a bed and a bowl of water crammed in the cages besides the monkeys. The monkey looks at Kao hopefully, then to the prong sticking from his arm. Kao shakes his head. He cannot sacrifice his last prong to save one monkey. Dozens more would remain trapped. The other monkey stands in the doorway, watching his every move. There is something to her eyes, something about the way she watches him that seems familiar. He cannot tell if it is the way she cocks her head, or how her wise eyes wait unflinching for his decision... The other monkey whines and Kao turns back to him. The monkey points to Kao's bone helm, but he shakes his head no. The monkey understands. They may battle kingcrows before the day is up, they will need weapons.
The Spire trembles as another prongbuck rams it. Kao must act, he does not have time to think. His mind races, scrambling for solutions. He has nothing at his disposal, not enough prongs to waste nor the time to use them, all that is in the
hall are rooms filled with bones.
Kao grins. He hopes to tell the hermit of this one, the time the hunter thought too much. The answer was obvious, he had spent too much time thinking about it to realize.
In a blink he is back snapping off antlers from the prongbuck skeletons. The monkeys understand and join in eagerly. Once they have a small pile, they scamper back and Kao shows them how short circuit the control panels. Three monkeys are free and they scramble for more prongs, keys to free their brethren. Kao bends to scoop up another but the monkey with the wise eyes grabs him and leads him from the room. Something in her eyes is so familiar, not the blue-glow of the Hidden but something deeper, too deep for Kao to fathom.
The pair reaches the end up the hallway and a huge door. It is metal, massive and round as a river stone. Kao pushes at it and with a groan it gives way. It opens up to shelves of ground, neat little cutaways, like a mountain climbing path, but more uniform. The monkeys scamper up them. One foot on every other step. The hunter follows. He is not used to a surface like this but he adapts.
They climb level after level of the steps. As they ascend they see people resting. Kao expects the monkey to threaten them but she does not. She understands, as does the hunter, that they are terrified and pose no threat.
The lights flicker madly, the tremors are stronger and faster. Kao fears not for his life, but he must escape with whatever he can find of his people. The Hidden gods in their home in the heavens do not have the same option. They know nothing of the outside world, of the ground or the earth. They cower together and whimper, a weak pile of bodies that reeks of sour fear. They smell like wounded, trapped creatures, animals who have accepted their death and wish for it to be quick and painless. A pathetic way to spend their last minutes, Kao thinks, and he pities them.
He brushes past as the monkey gestures for him to come on. As they pass the people, Kao senses their fear diminish. It still chokes the hallway that spirals up and up, but shouts from the bottom bolster those at the top.
They shout as the hunter and his ally ascend and leave them behind. He knows not the words, but their message is clear:
They thank him for their lives.
Too soon, he thinks, and quickens.
Chapter 40
Feast your eyes on the world below us. Nature has saw fit to move the clouds and grant us vision in this darkest of times. So feast on the destruction, relish our demise as our world is taken out from under us.
Urea is not surprised to find her panthera so near the biselk. Her panthera did as she would and stayed close to the danger to better understand it.
Bolts of lighting bigger than biselk crack between black antlers harder than steel. No one is closer to the action than her panthera, yet the one ton predator is not particularly frightened. Annoyed, yes, concerned, definitely, but feels no fear, that uninvited, unwanted, neural molecule that causes synchronization to go fuzzy, like trying to see through the clouds that shrouded the Spire.
Instead she paces and growls. Her tail flicks across her vision. Urea embraces her frustration. She takes it for her own. She can work with anger, it is like hunger, mostly. A dull reminder that not all is good in the world, that action must be taken. Anger, like hunger, focuses. They are survival emotions that encourage success at the cost of others. Anger is different than hunger of course. Hunger is predictable.
If an Evanimal knows that the mind inside its own is also after food, pilot and puppet can cooperate. Anger is not so easy to work with. Anger turns to rage. When that happens Evanimals become weapons who seek nothing more than destruction. Urea had ridden out rage before, in the early days, when her panthera still rebelled. Like gasoline on top of water, rage needs to be burned off. An impromptu and exhausting hunt had solved the problem. Rage was manageable to Urea. Anger could also turn to fear, which must be avoided. Fear causes all to become mindlessness and recklessness. They'd all learned of fear, Kao being their most recent and accomplished teacher. Urea understands that if she loses to fear the biselk will attack the Spire unchecked. And given time, well, time levels mountains. The Spire's but a twig perched atop a magma inferno. Fear cannot happen. Urea must be brave and confident. She has to channel the anger, not be defeated by it.
So channel it she does. She roars. She hears it in two sets of ears. Her own human growl and the mighty bellow that rumbles from the panthera's throat. Then, both brains dumping adrenaline into both bodies, they attack. Her panthera embraces the quick assault, and Urea is thankful for that. The panthera has been waiting, anticipating their synchronization. Now the two attack as one, the perfect mixture of mind and muscle, instinct and intelligence. Their united minds launch the feline's body at the biselk.
Oblivious, amped on testosterone, adrenaline, and a thousand volts of electricity, the brutes are essentially giant bombs locked on the Spire. Each blast is larger than the previous one. Every biselk is amazed at the power they command. Do they see the Spire as an aggressor, or do they know its inhabitants and their true power? Either way, they've disregarded their petty rivalries for a taste of power and rejected the minds that control them.
The largest prongelk rams the Spire. From down on the surface, the view is spectacular. When the antlers collide a bolt of lighting thick as a tree trunk forms instantaneously between the biselk and the Spire, it arcs high and cracks loud as the sky tearing asunder. Before the ball of light radiates outward like an atomic blast, the biselk is shoved backwards. The sound drops out, then everything goes black. Urea doesn't know if it is the synchronization stuttering from the power dip or a sonic boom combined with the panthera protecting her eyes.
Then they're back online. The panthera already charging towards the biselk. Good. They share goals. Though Urea is not surprised. The ground is smoking, and here and there dull red veins of molten rock shine from below. This will not end well.
The massive herbivore bellows. A bolt of electricity beneath its flesh courses down its spine then radiates in every direction, down every bone. Sparks spray out of every one of its dozens of points, its hooves. Slobber crackles with electricity as it drips from his mouth. His eyes are wide, the pupils so dilated that they fill his eye sockets. A nearly invincible monster to begin with, his conductive skeleton and nervous system are now so overrun with electricity and adrenaline that his brain can't do anything but charge and bray.
The panthera leaps, flies over the biselk and neatly slices his spine with her claws in mid air, just like Urea commands in her amplification chamber. The jolt of power races up her black conductive claws and then her arm. It supercharges the panthera's VRC, a hundred separate jousts with the Spire concentrated into one flash of energy.
Urea's brain accepts the amplified data coming from the chip without choice. She lands silently, black as the sky behind the full moon. She hisses at the sparking behemoth. Urea hears her human body hiss too, but she did not initiate the action. It came from somewhere else. Was VRC synchronization that simple? A little power and Urea is obsolete? No time to wonder now. If the Spire goes down, such hierarchies will matter naught.
The biselk she scratched brays and whips his head around, searching for his attacker. The panthera has vanished into the night. The biselk sees another behind him, already pawing the ground for another joust. Instincts, adrenaline, or the field confuse the Alpha. He lowers his horns and charges the smaller biselk. The two collide, their momentum multiplied by the obscene amount of energy they carry. Once the lighting fades and the sonic booms echo off into the caldera, the two of them are lying face to face, their horns locked together. Either dead or unconscious, they are incapacitated.
Success.
She continues with another pair of biselk, timing her strike to make blame. Urea thinks she initiated the attack, but is not certain, it came so soon, too soon. Control is irrelevant. If the panthera understands the strategy, they all may live through the night.
Chapter 41
A reprise! Sing! Raise your voices high! Let the Prince and Princess kno
w who they fight for!
When Skup enters the King's mind he is not greeted with the same cold resolve as Urea's panthera afforded her. The King is terrified. He is flying high above the electrical mayhem below, while more than a dozen birds as big as him chase. Instantly, Skup is nauseous. The vultus is flying every which way as it dodges attack after attack. Each vultus gains altitude on him, then dive bombs, one after the other.
Skup pumps his arms with the bird and feels him rise. Nothing is injured yet. Feathers are still mostly intact, no torn tendons. Only the one blind eye for handicap and more than a dozen to one odds. Close enough to a fair fight.
Skup can hardly see though. Between the tenuous connection and the bird's fear the VRC is feeding him imperfect data. Now and again the whole image goes digital, and Skup is left staring at the inside of his eyelids. Still, he has some control, and he knows how to get more.
Like all waves, the strength of the Spire's Electromagnetic field doubles in strength as he halves the distance between the source and himself. He pumps the King's wings once more, then goes into a nose dive. Faster and faster they fall, the vultus slicing through the air like light through space. He can hear the other birds behind him, trying to keep up, but they don't practice flying in the predawn dark like Skup and the one-eyed King do. They pull up.
In an instant Skup and the King are just a few yards above the charging biselk. The synchronization is stronger now. The bird's confidence returns and the Spire has enough juice to keep the VRC well powered. Though every biselk's collision with the Spire causes a blip in the connection, The King's forward motion makes his placement predictable.
