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X. The Gates of Erhyan
Sulwi
Off the coast of Jarik, a tall black fin broke the surface of the water. Then another. Soon, a forest of them had risen, interspersed with hissing plumes of steam. The pod waited, clicking conversationally, until one of the big beasts raised its blunt head, scanning the beach.
A rangy form, tall and thin, greenish-brown plumage ruffling in the salty breeze, waited there. On one hip was sheathed a belt knife as long as its owner’s forearm; on the other, a quiver rested. There was a pouch strung on the belt as well, rattling slightly as its contents shifted with its wearer’s movements.
The figure waved to the pod but didn’t move the other hand, the one holding a short recurve bow in an easy grip.
The owners of the black fins retreated into deeper waters.
On the beach, a lone kriuulu dropped to his haunches to wait. Sulwi didn’t carry those weapons for hunting; like all suulon, Sulwi was herbivorous in his male form. If he lived long enough, he would eventually cast off his sporous feathers, exchange soft flesh for a hard, bony trunk, a spread of reaching limbs, and a wide root system. Not long after, she would begin to produce dry, infertile egg-fruits, addictively soporific to draw in hungry prey animals to supplement sunlight as a food source. Not until another kriuulu spored near her would she bear fertile ones.
Until then, Sulwi would range far and wide, going beyond the reach of his mother tree and the sprawling groves of Suulon, carrying a bow and arrows and a long knife to make sure he lived long enough to become a new mother tree.
The suulon groves bordered the Australian plateau, where some of the only legally free humans on the planet lived. The suulon kriuulu never ventured onto the Australian plateau. Those who dared to explore even deserted areas had never returned.
Movement in the waves alerted Sulwi. He drew an arrow, but only twirled it lazily in one wing-claw.
A glistening, flashing pseudopod pushed out of the water and onto the sand. It swelled, flashing brilliant colors and patterns, and more pseudopods pushed up beside the first. Soon, the garish mass had pulled itself onto the beach. It pulsed, gathering itself into a more stable shape, though it still stayed halfway in the surf.
Sulwi waited, letting eyespots and aural fronds study him, letting the creature see that he was armed but not threatening. Slowly, he put the arrow back in its quiver, hoping he wasn’t about to be the latest in a long line of kriuulu to become a d’vog’s meal.
He reached one-handed into his pouch, pulling out a handful of brilliantly colored stones and a pliant, durable sickle tree leaf to lay them on.
The sapphire was first, as always. It was a deep blue, the sunlight rippling off its surface. Next, a chunk of pumice covered in greenish-brown peridot. Sulwi placed these close together on the cloth.
He’d always been fascinated by the d’vog, had longed for an opportunity like this one. Color, he knew, was key to what passed for speech among the amphibious folk, and Sulwi had traded far and wide to build up a repertoire of gems. He wasn’t sure how his opposite number might translate this approach to color speech, but Sulwi hoped he was beginning strong by saying d’vog and suulon.
He waited, letting the d’vog mull over whether to accept the proposal to talk.
It stayed still, only its eyespots moving, some watching the kriuulu and others studying the gems, as the surf washed back and forth over it. Faint hues flickered, fast as thought, deep within its translucent body. After a long moment, the small hill of translucence flattened, and the cluster of pseudopods became long, thin arms that split into numerous grasping fingers at the end. Its watery skin thickened, developing leathery bumps and ridges. As it slithered nearer, several bumps became more pronounced, eyespots migrating to the tips.
They were both close enough to the water and near enough to the trees, should either decide that flight was the best option.
The d’vog blinked warily at Sulwi. He moved back a step but did not let go of the bow. Two tentacles flashed out, their little fingerlike tendrils curling around the stones. It held them up, and, forming valves in its rough skin, burbled several watery notes.
Sulwi hadn’t known until just now that d’vog sang. After a surprised moment, though, he bowed and unlaced the pouch from his belt, opening the mouth wide and placing it on the sandy ground. Gems and other stones spilled out. He walked another few paces away to give the d’vog room.
It picked up the gems Sulwi had placed on the leaf and seemed to contemplate them, the little bumps under its boneless fingers tasting them. Then it placed them back on the cloth, but the greenish-brown peridot was above the sapphire, closer to the top edge of the leaf. Similar, he realized, to their actual locations facing each other.
That wouldn’t make sense, though; it was too obvious a statement, it did not need to be said. He didn’t think the d’vog was simply commenting on their relative positions.
No. It meant, Sulwi decided, that the kriuulu had approached the d’vog—why?
It reached out to the pebbles spilling from the bag, sorting through them one after another, until it found a little stone arrowhead. Sulwi’s heart skipped a beat as the d’vog put the arrowhead between the gems representing itself and Sulwi, the pointed end touching the sapphire.
Do you intend violence? the d’vog was asking.
Sulwi came over and, mindful of the predatory tentacles, removed the arrowhead.
No threat. Peace.
He found a chunk of beach glass and placed it on the cloth. Human.
The d’vog pulsed, hissing. A tentacle lashed out, grabbing the arrowhead and a piece of hematite.
Humans—violence... The hematite—orcas? Interesting. Humanity was a predatory species, and the filth that still clogged the waterways of the plateaus that were the remains of Earth’s continents spoke volumes about the lack of care humanity held for their fellow intelligent species. But did they actually hunt orcas? He couldn’t imagine the d’vog allowing that.
Then again, kriuulu had learned to stay away from waterways for their own safety. Whatever species had once held mandate over the ancient kriuulu had been lost to time, but that extinct folk must not have given much protection from their amphibious predators if they still feared the water.
For all that the d’vog were predators that relished kriuulu flesh when they could get it, though, this d’vog’s behavior seemed to say that they valued their mandate over the orca race for more than just what they could get from them. Did that mean they would protect their charges? And did that, in turn, mean that d’vog saw an intrinsic moral value in the mandate?
He calculated his response. Taking the sapphire from the space above the peridot, he exchanged it for the beach glass, picking up the arrowhead as well before the d’vog could misconstrue and decide that Sulwi was asking it to attack the orcas. He dug through the unused stones until he found a certain one, an odd piece that Fthelis had given him when he was first building his stone repertoire. He’d known what it would represent immediately and hoped the d’vog understood, too.
It was a chunk of shale, a fossilized bit of clamshell on one side, with a carving of a knotted circle surrounded by smaller whorls on the other. He placed this between the sapphire and the hematite.
D’vog—mandate—orcas.
The d’vog’s rubbery fingers stroked the whorls, and it burbled soft notes but did not move the shale piece.
Like Sulwi, the d’vog were not the same as the vo’ai.
Good. This would be easier.
He found an opal, milky white with veins and flecks of gold. Placing it above the beach glass, he moved the shale between the two.
Vo’ai—mandate—humans.
After giving the d’vog a moment to consider this, Sulwi replaced the slate with the arrowhead.
The effect was so immediate and shocking—the d’vog opened all its valves and shrieked, its leathery skin hardening into spikes—that Sulwi scrambled back and almost nocked an arrow to his bow.
Hissing, the d’vog looked with all its eyespots at him for a moment so drawn out that Sulwi had enough time to regret coming here, enough to wonder what it would feel like to be digested alive by this creature. But then it gave an odd sort of shiver. It flung the opal off the cloth, substituting the peridot in its place.
Suulon—violence towards humans?
Slowly, Sulwi stepped up again and replaced the beach glass with the opal, the arrowhead pointing towards it from the peridot.
Again, the multiplicity of staring eyespots. Again, the shiver. Then, with slow deliberation, the d’vog placed the sapphire beside the peridot.
We will hunt with you. Suulon and d’vog together, we will destroy the vo’ai.
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Tioklu
Tioklu had made good time crossing the h’Izha plains. It was his first time truly setting foot in burchar territory. He’d heard tales, of course, about gargantuan creatures having survived from Inur-before. He only saw one, though, and it was an ancient burchar. Its hide was as gray-brown as a bare mountain, and at first, he thought it was a mountain—until its enormous, jagged boulder of a head slowly turned to look at him.
Its huge throat sac inflated, and though Tioklu heard nothing like a voice, the ground beneath his feet rumbled faintly.
He ached from walking, but as the ground quieted—even the hot wind going still and silent—Tioklu decided it would be wiser to remain standing.
He held no weapons, not even a knife, as he already knew burchars would not take kindly to an armed visitor in their lands. So he simply returned the gaze of the ancient burchar as he showed empty wing-claws, then bowed, trying not to show how terrified he was. Trying not to rip out his feathers in sheer panic.
As he bowed, he realized he could not see the burchar-mountain’s lower legs. They seemed to have been overgrown, somehow. Grass, shrubs—even some sparse, unfamiliar trees—ringed its lower body. Instead of four legs and a tail, there were only low hills and a long, curving slope up to…
Mother help me, Tioklu thought.
The stories were true. Burchars really did ossify into a sort of organic stone in their final centuries. He looked around himself, seeing solitary mountainous forms in the distance, remembered wondering as he traveled whether mountains weren’t meant to be parts of whole ranges rather than popping up one by one.
“H’Nrados thanks you for your courtesy,” someone said beside him. Tioklu spun, alarmed that anyone had come so close to him, but it was only a burchar—one that was not the size of a small mountain. “I’m h’Alyin,” the burchar said.
Tioklu tried to sort out whether that was a feminine or masculine name among burchars—and how strange it must be, to be the same gender and wear the same body all one’s life—but he was saved the embarrassment when he realized the burchar’s back was covered in thickly plated scutes rather than spikes. A woman, then.
“My name is Tioklu, a child of Tsiru. You honor me, Alyin.” He knew his pronunciation was off, but subharmonics were the least of his concerns at the moment.
“Honor, is it?”
“Is this not… the correct thing to say? Please, apologies. I am a stranger to everywhere but the groves.”
She studied him. “I see you bring nothing to trade. What, then, is your business in h’Izha?”
“Oh—well, perhaps I do bring trade, as I have both news to share and a request for aid in traveling.” He felt a subtle rumble in the earth and, realizing h’Nrados must have spoken again, had to clasp his wing-claws together so as not to start ripping at his feathers. It was a bad habit he’d had since before he could remember; he’d lost his ability to fly several years early because of his nervous plucking. “I—well, I must travel north across to the mountains of Erhyan. My mother tree has… er, has sent me to treat with the lysks there.”
As he spoke, Tioklu felt the earth rumbling in a constant thrum. It was a distracting sensation that made him stumble over his words. He was already prone to mixing up his Common grammar with Suulon phrasings; he didn’t need to add a stammer into the mix.
By the time h’Nrados was finished, he’d figured out that the ancient creature was relaying his words to every other burchar in… earshot? groundshot? Well, to everyone. And by evening, Tioklu had realized that “everyone” meant a whole army of burchars who were on their way to greet this strange visitor.
“Army?” h’Alyin laughed when Tioklu asked. “No, these are just a few of my brothers and sisters.”
“A few?” he squeaked.
“Yes, of course. Oh—you don’t have families as we do. Let me see. My birth-mother, heart-mother, head-mother, and clan-mother have, between them, two hundred twenty-three husbands and wives; well, some are shared, of course. So my immediate family only numbers in the thousands, but my extended family roams the entire h’Izha plain. I have seven husbands, five wives, and seventy-two children, though only twelve are of my body. And of course, my immediates do have quite a few h’adbani among the Jarik clans, you know. I myself have three h’adbani, and another two have promised themselves, so I—Tioklu? Are you well?”
He whimpered.
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They stood well away from the waves, but Tioklu’s head still rang as the trade choir’s thunderous voices called out over a sea afire with sunrise.
The previous evening had been quite pleasant, despite the hot, dry wind of the plains, and there had been a festival dinner laid out in a massive stone edifice on the lee side of h’Nrados. Tioklu had thought that burchars were nomadic, but he decided they must not travel constantly if they built for permanence like this.
As he’d filled his stomach with unfamiliar food extravagantly prepared, Tioklu had also filled his ears with information. He had learned, much to his surprise, that the lysks of clan Erhyan had not had a pact-marriage in fifteen lysk generations. Approximately. Depending, of course, on the average modern lifespan of Erhyan lysks, which none of these burchars were sure of.
H’Alyin had explained this, answering as many questions from Tioklu as she could. Her people hoped it was merely the fact that Erhyan lay far to the north of Vo’ai, where no burchars had survived the Cataclysm or the subsequent tsunamis during the Drowning of h’Nyf, the land that had connected Erhyan and h’Izha until the Cataclysm.
They feared it was because Erhyan had become too isolated—perhaps dying out entirely—after the Drowning. And now that they knew how the vo’ai had been practicing their mandate over the New England plateau, they feared even more the arising of a vendetta long forgotten.
After eating, Tioklu had begun to explain just why he had to speak with clan Erhyan. As he spoke, the burchars nearest him fell silent, then those beyond them, a reaction wave of silence until only the sound of his words filled the hall.
He spoke about his friend, a kriuulu named Fthelis who had lived as a traveler, much as the burchars themselves did—roamed farther and for longer than anyone else from the suulon groves. About the terrible news Fthelis had brought home from his final travels before sporing and rooting.
About vo’ai atrocities, as laid out in a young human woman’s journal, gifted to a burchar scribe by a lysk.
About a sky split by screaming fire.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
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“My clan-mother,” h’Alyin said, greeting him with a scowl the next morning, “she came to us a bit ago, said the atterlim had brought troubling word to her Library, but… she wouldn’t say what, only that the vo’ai were involved in something awful. This must be what she meant. Damn them! Did you know that the vo’ai—their distant ancestors, anyway—did you know they once held mandate over lysks?”
“I did not not. How long…”
“How long did it take before they freed the lysks?”
Tioklu nodded.
“They didn’t.”
“But… how… what happened?”
“We happened!” h’Alyin brayed, her voice trembling with undertones Tioklu couldn’t hear. Then she spun around and trotted off—presumably to talk to someone who wasn’t a kriuulu.
Finally, as the booming rumble of the trade choir faded away, their throat sacs quivering with residual vibrations, Tioklu saw what they’d been calling for.
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The hills the pallicorn approached were called the Gates of Erhyan. The Erhyan range was not known for its tremendous height, nor for the snows that capped its northern peaks year round.
They were known for those striking Gates.
“That one is h’Emun,” a voice sang in High Kriuulu. “And that one, h’Asheld.”
Tioklu shivered.
He hadn’t expected a pallicorn so young to have already started its menagerie, but the middle shell buzzed with insects that would sting when irritated, as Tioklu had unfortunately learned; several sections of inner shell bustled with swallows that had struck up an uneasy sort of truce with the bees; and there was even a slithering creature that would hide, unharmed, among the pallicorn’s tentacles to snatch food for itself.
The oddest by far was Zeth, a kriuulu who made Tioklu’s feathers stand on end.
They took no personal names, it was said, all of them going by the same one. Like every Zeth, this Zeth’s plumage was night black, with a curling crest and shifting iridescence that Tioklu found hard to look at, his eyes unable to focus on any detail.
The lineage of the Voice, they called themselves, and they should have been extinct eons ago, when their race had simply disappeared. No one, so far as Tioklu knew, had ever found out where they came from.
Zeth shrugged as Tioklu’s crest raised in trembling alarm. “Apologies, brother,” it said. “I forget myself. I shall go.”
Tioklu smoothed his crest down with one hand and tried to look at Zeth. He was supposed to be an envoy, wasn’t he? So be one, he told himself.
“N-no,” he stuttered. “Stay. I-if you wish.”
Zeth nodded and looked out of the aperture in the pallicorn’s shell. “What,” he asked, “do you think of the Gates?”
Looking out, Tioklu studied the Gates again. “Do you think they truly are ancient burchars?”
“Possibly. Likely? See the way h’Asheld faces towards the mountains? And h’Emun is turned outwards? So expressive, despite the eons of erosion. What do you suppose it means?”
A large, strong hand clapped Tioklu on the shoulder. “They are guardians, of course!” said h’Alyin. The burchar woman and two younger brothers of hers had decided to accompany Tioklu, once the trade choir had successfully called a pallicorn. “One protects Erhyan from the world; the other protects the world from Erhyan! It’s fantastic, isn’t it, seeing all these ancestors guarding the lands?”
All these—? Tioklu thought. Suddenly, he was on the floor with no memory of sitting, only the impression that too many of those hills seemed to have what must once have been blunt herbivore snouts, with broken horns and scutes parading down in regular rocky formations that jutted above the tree line.
He closed his eyes. There was pain in his chest, in his head, all over his skin. Tioklu was more afraid than he’d ever guessed was possible. Mother, he prayed. Why is the world so ancient? So frightening? And so beautiful?
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The comforting sound of leaves rustling in the wind woke Tioklu. Someone was touching him, a light press of wing-claws on his head, a larger, firmer hand on his chest. When he opened his eyes, h’Alyin’s broad face greeted him, the scales around her blunt crest faded from their natural earthy green to a pale gray.
He was absurdly happy to see her.
“He’ll be all right,” Zeth warbled in imperfect Common.
“Yes,” said Tioklu, and got up. He rubbed the pallicorn’s inner shell and whispered, “Thank you.” She gave another leafy rustle, her shell giving off a flickering glow the exact shade of the sun filtering through his mother tree’s leaves. “How does she know?” he asked Zeth. “How does she know where to go? What to do? How is she so... perfect?”
Zeth shrugged. “She is a pallicorn. They just know.”
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Seven lysks met them when Tioklu and the others stepped out of the pallicorn’s shell. Their manes were cut close; the men’s talons were tipped with metal, and the women wore daggers sheathed on their arms.
All bore old scars and fresh wounds, and Tioklu could smell their singed fur.
“So,” the biggest one, a man with only one eye and half a tail, snarled. “I’d heard the winds-damned kriuulu were finally being brought to heel. Yet here one stands, plain as day, with several burchars at his heels.”
“We—I mean, they—I mean—”
“Oh, shove off,” h’Alyin growled. “The kriuulu here is just a messenger boy. We are here to renew the Pact of Adba with you.”
The big lysk snorted. “Pact of Adba? While this one stands unharmed beside you?”
“This one,” Tioklu said, his voice barely even quavering, “is here to tell you the vo’ai are no longer kin to any other kriuulu. My brother Sulwi speaks to the d’vog; my brother Leufthi speaks to the atterlim. My mother Tsiru and my sister Fthelis have declared the vo’ai branch is broken. They hold no mandate any longer, and never will again!”
“Huh,” one of the lysk women said. “The parrot brings news after all. Skurr, let’s go inside before our guests freeze.”
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The Low Hall of clan Erhyan’s mountain home was rarely used, and then only for isolating lysks who fell ill from the occasional plagues that seeped up through the many layers of Inur. Most lysks were happier using the High Hall for celebrations, accessible as it was only by flight. The elderly and injured of the clan took their meals in their home caves—except for today.
Today, the clan celebrated their first burchar visitors in a long age.
H’Alyin and her brothers cheerfully lent their hands to clearing the hall of dust and cobwebs. Then they lent their strong backs, the lysks throwing protective blankets over them like saddles. The three burchars bore stacks of ancient, heavy tables out of storage caverns to set up in the hall.
Skurr and his mate Rrosuna begrudgingly allowed Tioklu to busy himself with bringing out stools and setting them beside the tables.
Torches burned along the walls, and two huge fire pits beside the cavern opening kept much of the icy chill from getting in. Tioklu himself consented to wrapping a finely woven blanket around his shoulders. “My ama—my mother—made this,” Rrosuna told him, and refused his every protest that it was too fine for a simple kriuulu like him to use.
“Today,” she assured him, “you are not a kriuulu. You are a guest.”
More and more lysks were gliding down to land just inside the cavern. The wall carvings had been polished and tapestries hung at intervals, showing moments that must have been from clan Erhyan’s history.
Halfway through bringing out stools for the lysks, Tioklu stopped. His hands were shaking.
He recognized the wood these stools were made of. The wood of the tables was the same. Wood of a bright golden color with swirls of dark bronze dots where feathers had once sprouted.
One of the tapestries showed lysks cutting and burning through mother trees that had begun to encroach into the mountains. Lysk children ran and flew about the hall, some with their arms waving, others pretending to rip at them. In his mind, Tioklu could hear the roars of lysk warriors, the screaming of dying mother trees.
Seeming to sense his mood, h’Alyin cantered over to him, the drumming of her four legs scattering lysks from her path. “Tioklu?”
“These people,” he said, staring at the wood of the stools, the wood of the tables. “They’ve been through so much. So much that should never have happened.”
She saw the way he looked at the tables, and belated recognition bloomed on her face. “So have your own people, Tioklu.”
He shook his head. “Vo’ai,” he spat. “They are not my people.” He took a seat, scooting the stool closer to the table, and struck his wing-claw against it. “Let them be of use to the folk they’ve harmed. Let these mother trees’ dead wood give hope and shelter, not whispers and nightmares.”
“Hear, hear!” a lysk roared beside him. It was Skurr, taking a seat between Tioklu and Rrosuna. Platters upon platters of steaming meat, roasted root vegetables, and dried fruits began to circle among the many tables. H’Alyin lowered herself to her haunches on Tioklu’s other side, her thick tail curling around her feet. Her brothers, Tioklu saw, had joined two other tables, happily being mobbed by chattering lysk children and shyer adults.
As the feast progressed, h’Alyin occasionally shared extra any dried fruit he especially relished. He wondered at this but found himself returning the favor, noticing which roots or leaves she enjoyed and making sure to pass her some any time those plates came their way. Beside him, Skurr threw a mischievous grin to h’Alyin; she shrugged and grinned back.
Tioklu looked back and forth between them in confusion, and they both burst out laughing.
People came in and out, exchanging seats to make sure everyone got enough. At one point, a group of youngsters who had all been sitting together, their small wings wrapped in cloth, stole quietly out through a side passage.
“Why did those children leave?” he asked. “Are they well?”
“Just wait,” h’Alyin said, smiling.
Finally, Skurr banged on the table. “Everyone ready?” he yelled.
Lysks roared back in approval, children shrieking in joy.
In came the ones who’d left earlier. Their wings were unwrapped now, and Tioklu saw that they flashed with brilliantly painted colors and patterns. His eyes wide, he looked to h’Alyin.
She grinned at him. “Just wait... and... here we go!”
The tallest young lysk stepped forward. “In honor of our, um, our guests...” She faltered, obviously unfamiliar with Common, but at a nod from a woman Tioklu assumed was her mother, the girl started again, continuing her speech in Lysk.
H’Alyin leaned over. “The kids are putting on a play. It’s a legend about Adba and Khiai.”
“Adba, the moon? And what’s Khiai? Oh! Was that the lost moon?”
“Very good, Ti.” He cocked his head at the nickname, but she just winked. “They’re kids, though, so don’t expect the kind of elaborately choreographed wing dancing trained performers do.”
Kids. He watched them, unfamiliar with even the concept of children. Kriuulu hatched by the hundreds from a single fertile egg-fruit, already capable of flight, surviving by instinct instead of parental care. Most of his siblings had died as tiny kriuulings, eaten by predators or lost to hazardous winds. He knew his mother tree sheltered her kriuulings, though he himself had only the vaguest memories of feeling safe under her canopy; but the emotions he saw on the adult lysks’ faces as they watched the leaping, flapping, stumbling dance were foreign to him. He could only see the happiness, but whatever was below that, he had no way of knowing.
“The little one with the red-striped black on his wings?” h’Alyin murmured. “He represents the ancient war between the ancestors of lysk and burchar, before the Hatching of the World. Lysks are primarily carnivores, and long ago, they would hunt us. See?”
Tioklu watched the little ones diving clumsily to playfully attack a pair of children, one on all fours, the other standing over him, to represent a four-legged, two-armed burchar. The “burchar” screamed dramatically and “died,” and the other children ran in to gather around, cackling evilly as they “ate.”
Skurr howled in laughter, while h’Alyin buried her head in her hands, groaning good naturedly.
Laughter and good humor, about such a terrible thing, thought Tioklu, aghast.
H’Alyin caught his expression. “Hey. Ti. It’s okay. All this? It happened so long ago that even our elders’ elders were born long afterward.”
“How... how did it stop?”
A young burchar galloped in, wearing a pale yellow blanket draped over his back. Tioklu couldn’t remember seeing him leave the hall, but it was one of h’Alyin’s brothers. H’Tranaa, that was his name.
“Stop, lysks!” he yelled in Common. “I, Adba, have come from the skies to warn you!”
The other brother, h’Brask, dashed in, holding a blunted spear that dangled red ribbons from the end. “Rrraaaa! I have come to take revenge upon the evil lysks! Die, evil lysks!” He tossed the toy spear among them.
Tioklu’s mind supplied an image of a fiery weapon falling among them, torn and burning bodies flying apart, and winced.
The little performers merely shrieked in delighted “terror.” Their wings, painted a dozen different colors and patterns, flapped and flashed in a barely coordinated rhythm, as they tossed themselves about, and the adults in the audience laughed and clapped.
“Oops, my turn!” h’Alyin said. “Watch this!” She grabbed a dark red blanket from under the table and tossed it over her shoulders like an oversized cape. Then she backed up, galloped towards the place she’d just been sitting, and leaped over the table.
“Argh!” she yelled. “I, Khiai, demand blood for blood!”
There was a long pause as the various players seemed to wait for something. Murmurs started, but just as quickly ceased as, of all things, a human—a young boy—stepped into the Low Hall. He was wrapped in a white blanket so large it nearly buried him.
He mumbled something, but someone yelled for him to speak up. He straightened his shoulders. “I am Luna, the new moon!” he yelled in heavily accented Common. “Let the war end before everything ends, Khiai!”
Tioklu thought of the Cataclysm; of how, as Inur and its moons emerged into this universe, destroying most of Earth, Luna had collided with the red moon Khiai, leaving only a fragment of Earth’s moon and a ring of debris, all that was left of Khiai and most of Luna.
“I am Khiai!” h’Alyin yelled. “I challenge you for the skies, Luna!” Then she galloped straight towards the human boy.
He cringed, but managed to remain standing as h’Alyin leaped over him, the red blanket flaring and fluttering dramatically. She landed, throwing the blanket in the air, and collapsed to the floor. The blanket fluttered to the ground. “Alas! Luna has defeated me!”
“I—I did?” the boy said, to cheers and laughter from the lysks. “I did!”
Tioklu found himself cheering and laughing with everyone else. Children! What wonderful things!
“Hey, sis!” h’Tranaa called. “Take over for me. You make a better Adba than me!” He tossed the yellow blanket to h’Alyin, then trotted back to the table, three young wing-painted lysks riding happily on his back.
Heaving herself off the floor, h’Alyin caught the yellow blanket, leaving the red one on the ground. She bent down and gave the little human boy a gentle hug and sent him off to the end of one table. There was a small group of humans there that Tioklu hadn’t seen until now. They were smiling and clapping as the boy came back to them.
“They came here after the sky-fire,” Skurr said. “Vo’ai were chasing them.”
Rrosuna took her mate’s hand. “There are none chasing them now.”
A shiver crept down Tioklu’s back at the woman’s satisfied tone. He turned back to watch as h’Alyin took up the yellow blanket, tossing it around her shoulders.
“Lysks!” she boomed. “Attend!”
Rrosuna stood, flaring out wings painted in delicate, pale yellow swirls, and cleared her throat. “Burchars! Attend!”
There was a long moment as cheers died down. Skurr leaned over to Tioklu and murmured, “Great Adba came to us as a burchar. To burchars, she came as a lysk.”
“The world is beginning again,” h’Alyin called.
As one, the children around her stomped, flashing their painted wings in a brilliant array.
“Let us begin again,” Rrosuna answered. The children stomped again, adults hammering their fists on the tables.
Then, as one, the lysks in the Low Hall, h’Alyin’s brothers—and even the humans, too—all rose to their feet. Tioklu found himself standing, as well.
“We will begin again,” the audience said.
Tioklu’s skin was prickling. His crest rose and fell in time with his own heartbeat. Begin again, he thought. Yes.
“Let us put away all that belongs to Khiai,” h’Alyin and Rrosuna said in unison.
“We will begin again!” Tioklu said along with everyone else.
“The Terror is done!” called Rrosuna.
“The Hidden is defeated, and the war is over!” h’Alyin answered.
“Who will agree to peace?” Rrosuna asked the audience.
A lysk nearby raised her wings. “I am Sakkam. I stand in the sight of Adba, and I will agree to peace!” Applause greeted this, and the woman glided over to stand by h’Tranaa, who took her hand in his own and kissed it.
Tioklu’s heart was in his mouth. He felt his scalp tighten as his crest rose, no longer fluttering.
“Who will agree to peace?” h’Alyin called.
Another lysk raised his wings, gliding over to take h’Brask’s hand. “I am Antarr! I stand in the sight of Adba, and I will agree to peace!”
“Who will agree to peace?” Rrosuna called.
Tioklu found himself in motion without even thinking. What, by all the mothers, am I doing? he asked himself, but he rounded the table, strode to the center of the room, and stood beside h’Alyin.
“I am Tioklu, child of Tsiru, son and brother of the Suulon groves! I stand in the sight of Adba, and I will agree to peace!”
H’Alyin—no, Adba—smiled at him, took his hand, and kissed it.
----------------------------------------
Leufthi
There was a crater where a town, its farms, and a vo’ai Cathedral had once stood. Atterlim burrowed in and through the charred ruins, looking for more survivors.
There had been a few vo’ai crawling away, at first, but things that had at first looked like boulders or rubble had exploded into motion, gelatinous tentacles trapping the unlucky kriuulu, valves opening wide to ingest them, skin shifting to hard, pebbled leather again, hiding the d’vogs’ prey as they moved away to become innocuous bits of the landscape again.
Behind Leufthi, an attera over a mile long waited. Component atterlo came and went from its body, but the attera itself—and its compounded intelligence—stayed.
“Sssssee. Loooook,” it hissed. “Wwwe have waaaited for thisssss daaaay. The Ssssocietyyyyy will ssssmile on Inurrrrr. The Devourrrrrer is neeeearrr.”
“The Devourer?” Leufthi asked, though he was fairly sure what the attera spoke of.
“The Abominationnnnn. The Terrorrrrrr. The Hhhhiiiiidennn,” the attera hissed.
“Ah. That.” Leufthi laid his wing-claw on the attera’s forebody. “The humans, I have heard, call it ‘the faylind’.”