SHE WAS A BUTTERFLY. With a stop-start flutter of amazement, Allory checked what she could see of herself. Lemon yellow speckles adorned the tracery of wing struts and veins atop the main swirls of sapphire and azure colouration, creating a dappled effect which her insect brain thought was incredibly fetching.
Her proper Allory Fae brain wondered what under Middlesun she was doing inside an insect brain having insect thoughts.
Her survival brain threw her into a rapid, stuttering spin that shot her past the handle of what she belatedly recognised as a swooping net. Suggids! Close one. She danced away to what she judged to be a reasonable distance, glaring prettily at her accoster, a young … Faroon girl, judging by the wide ribbon wrapped about her neck in a neat bow. Huh. Faroon thought they were girly, eh?
She found herself decidedly less impressed by the full complement of specimen jars belted about the Faroon girl’s person. Most were occupied by a variety of bugs, beetles and butterflies, none of which Allory recognised. In fact, she recognised nothing of this place. Hot, humid and swampy. Dark green trees wept over grey, stagnant ponds, from which rose buzzing swarms of insects and a pervasive stench of old, rotting things. She saw many webs tended by hairy, fat-bodied grey spiders of a size that must easily exceed her normal Fae stature. Tall tan sedge gasses brushed up against the Faroon as she glided forward in that strange, undulant motion they had, pursing her mouth into a pout that made her lips resemble a pair of giant grappling slugs.
Peering at Allory, she whined, “Where did you come from? You’re the prettiest butterfly I’ve ever seen. Sapphires? What do I know about sapphire butterflies? A lesser-speckled –”
“Not now, Hassbisstariss,” a larger male Faroon called from nearby in a mollifying tone. “Daddy needs to get to the breeding nests right away.”
“But I want that pretty butterfly!”
“Well, it is pretty, my lovely slitherheart, but not half as beautiful as you.”
Ew, gag! Allory thought.
“Aw, thanks Daddy,” she simpered in her low, hissing Faroon accent. “You’re the slitheriest.”
“Come along now, Hassbisstariss –”
The pout deepened. “But I want it, Daddy.”
“Dearest, Daddy’s going to slither in late and the foreman will be –”
“I want it! I want that butterfly, and I want it now!” she howled, waving her stubby arms. Nothing like a nine-foot baby throwing a strop. When her father began to make a soothing hissing sound, she screeched, “I want it! Get me that pretty butterfly, Daddy! GET IT!”
Decent set of lungs on the brat.
Allory saw that they stood – if that was a word for these snake-people – upon a well-packed earthen path that wound away into the cloying mists. Not far off, it did appear as if there might be a larger structure, perhaps built of sticks and mud. Her distraction vanished as a sudden breeze hauled her back toward the net and the word, ‘catch,’ acquainted itself with her understanding. Faroon magic! The breeze funnelled her butterfly-self perfectly into the foot-wide mouth of her net.
With a wild wriggle, she caught the rim in her – well, with a lot of legs and a wing and half a thorax – and as the net swung around behind the girl’s shoulder, she tried to scramble out. Unfortunately, that placed her right on the rim when it thumped into the folds of that garish pink ribbon behind her back. Stuck. Allory began to struggle feebly, before taking stock of her situation and freezing up. Definitely the better part of valour.
“Where … where did my butterfly go?”
“I don’t rightly know, my slither –”
“It’s gone! It can’t be gone!” The girl slipped and slopped about heavily, searching for the creature hiding in her ribbon. “Where’d it go? Come here, pretty butterfly. I only want to pin you in my collection.”
Pin her? As in pinned … dead, to a board?
Silly her, thinking they only did that in the most horrific legends.
Allory imagined feeding the Faroon girl to a Fire Raptor, a repellent thought. First time for everything.
“Hassbisstariss! That’s enough. Come along now.”
“WAAAAH!”
The Faroon father hauled his bawling, snivelling and whinging spawn along the path with a sneaky sapphire butterfly along for the ride. The Scintillant had always considered, or at least hoped, she would not dislike other species she met at first glance. Not doing very well of late. Humans? Smelly. Faroon? Nasty. Felidragons? Once she realised she was not about to be toasted to a crisp before being snapped up for a snack, the relationship appeared to be developing agreeably – with all of one of them. The rest? Probably traitors.
Quite the almost-sparkly bundle of prejudices, she was turning out to be.
Suggid-spit! That must change. It would change.
Her would-be captor took her for an unsolicited ride into the mists. The pair of Faroon worked up a head of speed courtesy of another prickle of magic that Allory realised must assist their slithering movement, for they quickly reached the barrier and ascended a diagonal path that took them to the top of a mud, stick and leaf-impregnated embankment. Behind, she saw only more dreary grey swamp, an environment that struck her as wholly suited to the snake people. However, as the pair moved over the top of the twenty-foot-tall barrier and then slithered down a similar slope on the far side, she was able to curve her insect neck to take a peek at the far side.
Her proboscis dangled for a second. Allory collected it with an annoyed gulp.
She gazed briefly out over an area of waterlogged salt flats or a tidal marsh that, once more, opened up upon a realm she had only ever heard described in legend. Ocean. That expanse – well, it could be a lake, but a briny, brisk tang in the air suggested salty ocean. Upon a narrow but long strip of slimy grey sand banked up against this barrier, she saw hundreds upon hundreds of Faroon nests, each about twenty feet across and guarded by three or four of what she assumed must be females. They were part-sunken in the ground, so that as her hostess slithered by, the butterfly could easily see inside. The nests were full of murmuring, hissing Faroon young – apparently blind and helpless. Their eyes were not yet open, like a clutch of seven Faerie pupae when they first broke the silk birthing cocoon together and became Faelings.
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The remarkably bulky Faroon young mewled and squirmed and flopped about in a grotesque fashion, apparently not adverse to crushing one another into the mud in search of the maternal teat. She saw several ferocious fights break out between mothers sharing the nests. That tonnage of grey flesh going at each other was no small matter. The young who got in the way tried to wriggle away, wailing in fear and pain. She saw one youngster being suffocated beneath a mother.
Oh no! Gagging, Allory had to look away.
To her surprise, Hassbisstariss appeared none too happy with this behaviour either and hurried to catch up with her father.
As they slithered along the beach, the father explained to her that this was the Day of Winnowing and the rise of the Kera-du-Kerakarool, the God-King of the Ocean. Three times, Hassbisstariss had been proven worthy and thus risen to become one of the adult population of the Faroon Nation. He said this proudly, but the butterfly’s assessment of her reaction was disgust mingled with terror.
Strange.
Shouts rose along the beach. As Hassbisstariss swung about, the butterfly had a confused impression of fighting in every nest, of frantic mothers battling and bellowing and massive fathers leaping into nests to wrestle out this or that youngling. In some places along the beach, huge, slimy brown tree roots descended to root themselves under the water – because the tide was rising, the butterfly realised belatedly as her mind struggled to make sense of the scene. Wavelets now washed up against the rims of the nests closest to the ocean.
Confused yells poured in from all directions. “Mine!” “Mine!” “Yours is weak!” “Leave her alone, you bully!” “Die!” “My son will slither free!” “Discard this one!”
A scent like burned cinnamon assaulted her sense of smell, perhaps exuded by the fighters, she imagined.
Suddenly, the Faroon father cried, “This one’s ours! Stay here, Hassbisstariss!”
He flop-leaped into the nest like a boulder skidding down the damp slope, narrowly missing crushing a youngling before battering his way across to the side of a female who he greeted with a hefty headbutt! “Leave my spawn alone!”
“They’re pathetic!” shrieked the other.
“Compared to your corpulent litter of slime-sucking morons?” Smack!
“Your obnoxious whelps will never raise their heads to the light of Centresky, you worthless cretin!” Whack!
“Slug-faced thrasher!”
“Snivelling earthworm!”
All over the beach, multiplied a thousand times over, adults quarrelled over the mewling young. Allory belatedly realised that the fights were not over which young Faroon would be taken, but rather, which would be left behind. If he had been Yaarah, her hackles would have stood bolt upright. It appeared that many of the young did not even have parents to advocate for them. Perhaps those adults did not bother? As the turquoise waters suddenly lapped higher, a wild scramble began for the tall barrier behind the beach. Adults pushed their young along; some of the little snake-people were strong enough to move on their own, to climb out of the nests or even clever enough to hitch a ride on an unwitting adult’s tail. The turmoil was terrible. They fought and pushed and bit and tore into one another, using their magic to hit or haul rivals out of the way, while those who straggled made increasingly terror-stricken, toad-like croaking sounds in their long throats.
As the surge of bodies hit the barrier and began to slither up the runways, the incoming tide pushed higher again, the waters rushing up the flats now and rolling some of the young along helplessly in the surf. Allory thought it might help until the tide sucked back again. More than a few adults lay out there, stunned or unconscious. Hundreds of young lolled in the flooding nests, unable to escape up the slick slopes.
Suddenly, as if an unheard signal had rippled across the grey expanse, the Faroon all stopped fighting and made a concerted rush for the battlement. Bodies and hands shovelled Hassbisstariss along; she in turn shoved a fat, grub-like youngster ahead of her with a series of thumps of her distended stomach to make it roll over and over. Still stuck in the folds of the youngster’s bow as she finally made the turn at the top of the barrier, Allory was in a perfect position to observe as a vast black dome heaved itself out of the surf not far off the beach, sheeting water down its blubbery flanks as it rose and rose like a living mountain.
The Faroon people moaned in fear.
Standing tall and grey atop their barrier, they spread out and began to make strange, jerky genuflections with their bodies and stubby limbs as the monster from the deep pulled itself toward the beach. Subsidiary areas of water boiled around it, churned up by dozens if not hundreds of whippy black arms.
The moaning resolved into a low chant, “Kera-du-Kerakarool, save us, o save us! Kera-du-Kerakarool, save us, o save us! Kera-du-Kerakarool, save us, o save us!”
A pair of enormous, crimson-shot white eyes opened in the mountain that was that monster’s face and fixed upon the spectacle. Every last Faroon flung themselves upon their face in grovelling worship.
“I AM KERA-DU-KERAKOOL, THE REAPER OF SOULS!” it thundered. Spray exploded from its mouthparts, falling upon the shoreline like a drenching rain. Its mighty roar rippled the waters like an earthquake. “WHO SUBMITS TO THE MASTER?”
“We do!” the prostrate Faroon wept.
“WHO HERE SERVES THE WRAITH?”
“We do!”
Allory shuddered. Allied with the Wraith! Or was this another of its ghastly manifestations?
“WHAT IS THIS PATHETIC OFFERING? DRIVEL! FILTH!”
Dozens of inky black tentacles lashed forward, plucking Faroon, young and adult alike, out of the abandoned nests with their sticky, sucker-festooned undersides and coiling back to stuff them into the creature’s almighty maw until there were so many, it overflowed with gluttony. The massive creature – Allory had never seen a living being so vast – threw back its head and spat its helpless prey in all directions. The ocean boiled white as hundreds more of the ocean creatures surfaced to feast upon the bounty. A tenth the size of this leviathan, each beast was still bigger than her entire colony, and their waving tentacles made the waters appear improbably hairy.
The massive tentacles whipped forward again, scouring the shallows until, after three more mouthfuls, half-swallowed and half spat out to feed its minions, they were plucked clean. The ocean was stained crimson.
The behemoth fixed its eyes upon the stricken, paralysed throng. Four hissing, monstrous breaths drew out the waiting, before it thundered, “I HUNGER! WHO WILL SACRIFICE THEIR IMMORTAL SOULS?”
To Allory’s horror, a pressure like a ghastly stroking developed upon her mind. She struggled against the ribbon; fighting to escape and propel herself out there to satiate to the prodigious monster! On all sides, dozens of Faroon flung themselves eagerly down the barrier and into the water. They even wept with apparent joy as they swam out to receive the honour of being caught in its coils and eaten in this hideous orgy. Sounds of wet sucking and slurping carried across the waves as the Kera-du-Kerakarool finished off its meal.
“YOUR SOULS SATISFY!”
The blast sprayed gobbets of grey flesh far and wide, one last time. Turning ponderously, the visibly bloated monster subsided into the ocean. The waves lapped up against the barrier and then settled, running away off the beach and leaving the nests partly awash. Allory did not want to look. Only carnage remained down there; other sharper fins now cut the waves, scavengers swarming over the remains of the feast.
She gasped as a hand plucked her out of the ribbon. Hassbisstariss whispered, “There now, little butterfly, don’t be afraid. Go.”
Allory hesitated upon that open grey palm.
“Go, pretty butterfly.” The girl-Faroon’s eyes leaked huge grey-tinged teardrops. “Fly free. Tell them how it is for us.”
Her hand launched the sapphire butterfly into the sky.
How she wished she could express the gratitude that filled her heart. A simple act, yet unutterably poignant.
The nightmare swirled her away to a foetid Human city.