Bazzalth grumbled as he brought the display polyp up to his eyes, the low rumble of interest gently vibrating the walls of his lair. It had taken him days to properly design and grow a window to the world within the world, the realm of the impossibly diminutive that made up all things. He’d made one before, many centuries ago, but that one had only been able to provide a picture of the largest that this tiny world contained. He required something more capable for his current subject of study. Something much more capable.

Within moments, the bioluminescent algae along the back of the polyp began to glow, the light providing a backdrop to the black ink slowly filling the translucent film that covered the front. The ink coalesced into an image, a crystalline pattern of maddening detail. As his powerful mind slowly parsed what he saw, Bazzalth realized with dismay that the pattern appeared to be a fractal one. Would he have to delve even deeper?

No, he decided. Not for now, at least. The pattern most likely continued as it did, only smaller, for many iterations. Perhaps, it even went on forever, endlessly repeating no matter how closely you looked. Not long ago, he would have thought such a thing impossible, but back then he would have believed a lot of what this crawler’s weapon did was impossible. To think that a material existed that could take a bath in a person’s blood for a period of five days and emerge entirely unscathed! Truly fascinating!

Only two other materials could boast a similar feat, though not entirely. A person’s flesh, obviously, also could withstand the blood pumping through it. However, in truth, even it slowly broke down when faced with the unending corrosive nature of a person’s ichor. The secret was that a person’s flesh was constantly regenerating, utilizing the profound energy imparted by the liquid to continuously rebuild against the onslaught.

No, outside of this obsidian-hued crystal, only one substance could survive a person’s blood entirely unharmed. That substance floated in a vat close by, seemingly trapped indefinitely in a state of half-death. Bazzalth took another long glance at his prized specimen, as had become routine since he had retrieved her days ago. He found some irony in the fact that her body, filled with and seemingly impervious to the most destructive substance known to personkind, could be laid low by something as weak as a crawler-made blade.

And yet, though her heart no longer beat and her mind no longer fired, Pari was not yet dead. Not by his definition of the term, at least. He’d found that the individual biochemical compartments that made up her body still seemed to function on an individual level, seemingly pulling energy from the processed blood bath in which she was suspended. But more importantly, her soul remained the vibrant blue it had always been, showing not even the slightest hint of the dead souls’ grey. While such behavior went against everything Bazzalth knew of souls from millennia of observation, the reason for such a discrepancy was plainly obvious to his eyes.

The chains.

Hundreds of ethereal chains wrapped tightly around Pari’s spirit, binding it in complex patterns, the purpose of which he could not yet discern. So tightly were they wrapped around her that they warped the soul’s form into a nightmare mockery of its normal self.

But not all of them encircled her soul. Bazzalth could find them easily, now that he’d noticed their existence. Hidden within the mass of chains were chains of a different sort, larger and sturdier than the rest. Unlike the others, these chains did not wrap around the soul but rather seemed to have embedded one end directly into it. Of the dozens of these chains, five stood out. Along these five, and these five only, flowed the energy that kept Pari’s soul alive.

One end of each and every chain, of both varieties, led away from Pari, their incorporeal forms reaching south through the wall of his cave lair and extending across this vast world to connect Pari even now to the Vile One, the most horrid of crawlers to ever exist. Not only did this foul being’s machinations dare to tamper and defile Pari’s very essence, but they also refused him his prized specimen! After all, how could he conduct proper study when such an unknown variable was constantly interfering? Bazzalth found the situation utterly intolerable, and he vowed once more that soon enough that cursed creature would not escape his wrath.

Almost by habit, he glanced at the point where the chains met the wall. Early on, he’d marked the point where they met, so he could use any deviation to track the comings and goings of the Vile One. That was how he’d known of her approach some days ago.

It rankled him that she had escaped his grasp, but such was the price of caution. He didn’t dare slay the wretch, lest it turn out that her bindings lasted beyond death. No, he had to make sure he did everything that he could to try to free Pari from the crawler’s clutches before he took the final option. Only then could he get the unsullied data he needed, make Pari a part of his hoard, and fulfill his promise.

----------------------------------------

The day’s patrol proved uneventful, just like nearly every one since the day he’d been forced to send Pari out into the world, the day when Gretiem had...

No, there was little point to reliving the events of that day again. All that really mattered was that the destruction of the crawler city to the south meant that incursions into Bazzalth’s territory had almost entirely ceased. It made him wish he could fly higher. If that were possible, he’d be able to easily see so much further and his flight speed would dramatically increase, since he wouldn’t need to navigate the mountains’ treacherous crosswinds. But alas, to fly too high was to be spotted, and still this could not be permitted. It would be wonderful, however, as the circuit would take perhaps only a third of what it took each day now, allowing him more time for what truly mattered.

Still, this patrol was nearly over. He could see the entrance to his lair one peak over, and...

What was that rock doing beside the entrance?

Having lived in the same lair for hundreds upon hundreds of years, he knew every boulder, canyon, and crevice around. No large rock, about half the size of one of his fists, had sat there when he’d left earlier that day. His powerful eyes peered through the vast distance between them and spotted something unnerving sitting atop the stone: a small, quadrupedal mechanical device.

Quickly, Bazzalth’s gaze moved from the rock to his lair. Immediately, he spotted three live souls inside. What was more, he noticed that two of them were not blue but green, the soul color of the Vile One and her minions. They had somehow infiltrated his lair during his absence!

An almost instinctual fury burst forth inside him, and he let out a roar that echoed through the mountain range. They were after his lair! His possessions! His... his Pari! Her corpse belonged to him and nobody else!

Bazzalth’s wings beat once at full power, tripling his speed in a single moment and sending him hurtling towards his lair. He would show those impertinent beings what it meant to anger a person!

The fools had not even stationed any of their usual scavenged war machines outside the entrance, instead only leaving the one atop the boulder. That paltry machine stood barely a fifth of the height of even the smallest war machines they’d thrown at him before, and it even lacked the usual pathetic weapons the others possessed. Instead, it merely had the four legs and a somewhat swollen-looking, almost bulbous body. It would not stop him.

As he neared the entrance and the rock, the machine squatted low. He eyed it with a shred of suspicion, wondering what sort of plot it would try once he got closer. What he did not expect was for it to detonate. One loud crack later, and all that remained of the machine were tiny pieces littering the ground. Little of the rock remained either, a part of him noticed with detachment.

Bazzalth had no time to care about a malfunctioning piece of ancient crawler technology. Instead, he rushed past the debris and charged into the tunnel entrance. As he barreled through, he noticed the sundered membranes that he’d used for decades to seal the passageway scattered in pieces across the tunnel floor. Thick as his finger and grown from his own mighty and durable flesh, they would normally open much as a sphincter would to allow him through while squeezing tight for anything else, forming a near-impenetrable barrier to entry. Only another person would be strong enough to force their way past. That and, apparently, one annoyingly resilient crawler.

He knew now what he would find before he even reached his lair. The two green souls meant two invaders. With the signs he’d seen already, he knew that these two would be the servants of the Vile One: the Scavenger and the Revenant. The Vile One herself would not be here; she lacked the courage to face him, as demonstrated in their last encounter when she had immediately abandoned her underlings in a futile attempt to escape.

True enough, he found the two a moment later as he entered his lair, but that was about all that followed his expectations. Much to his surprise, the lair looked untouched. His various devices and instruments seemed intact and unmolested. Even Pari still floated within her vat.

The interlopers appeared contrary to expectations as well. Unlike the Revenant, who carried herself warily and held her reclaimed weapon guardedly in front of her, the Scavenger lounged in a wheeled metal chair, seemingly entirely unconcerned with the situation he was in. Far more importantly, Bazzalth could see no chains on either of them! They were free from the Vile One’s bindings!

Something seemed off. Very off. But Bazzalth decided he did not care; he would not miss an opportunity so fortuitous. These crawlers knew how to free Pari and he would pry the necessary information from them using whatever means necessary. He would focus on the Revenant, he decided. She had somehow survived his blood mist bomb, a weapon he’d constructed specifically to slay her. Created using a specially processed aerosol variant of his blood, the destructive power of the mist was only slightly inferior to the raw liquid. If she could survive that, then he would not have to worry about accidentally killing her before learning what he needed to know.

The Scavenger let out a weary breath, barely audible even to Bazzalth’s superlative ears. The message contained within it, however, came across loud and clear: “Before you do anything stupid, look up.”

Bazzalth almost ignored it; the audacity of a lowly crawler giving him orders would normally have been enough for him to slay the creature on the spot. But everything still felt off; these were no ordinary crawlers, and Bazzalth couldn’t quite reconcile the situation with how composed the Scavenger appeared despite Bazzalth’s immolating rage. He decided to heed the crawlers words this once. He turned his gaze toward the cave ceiling for a moment and his thoughts momentarily crashed to a halt.

Small, bulbous-bodied machines, just like the one outside, covered the surface above them—hundreds, perhaps even several thousands of them—their bodies forebodingly still. It didn’t take long for Bazzalth to realize his previous misunderstanding: that exploding machine outside the lair had not been a malfunction after all. It had been a demonstration.

Just one of these tiny machines packed enough power to destroy a rock forty times their size. If they all exploded at once...

Bazzalth did the calculations several times, utilizing knowledge built over decades of studying the rocks of these mountains, and came to the same chilling conclusion each time.

They would bring the entire mountain down upon everyone and everything here.

A bluff. It had to be. No crawler would willingly take their own life; they were far too pathetic for such an act. But... but what if this one was different?

Bazzalth had full confidence that he would survive the explosion and subsequent collapse, and his hoard—locked safely within his prodigious mind—would thusly survive unscathed as well. But what of his equipment? His research materials? His exhaustive collections of samples acquired over centuries, each carefully organized and cataloged? Their odds of survival were far less encouraging.

He would have to rebuild and regrow everything—a new lair, a new suite of instruments, and all the rest. What’s more, he’d have to explain to his sister why his old lair had been destroyed, and if she found out he’d been bested by a crawler, then the pain of losing his equipment and collections would be nothing in comparison to what she would inflict upon him. With great anger and dismay, Bazzalth realized that the crawlers had their claws around his throat, not the other way around.

“I’m glad you understand the situation,” the Scavenger wheezed. “Know that I can detonate them at any time, and they will also detonate automatically should I die. So let’s all just have a nice little talk, yeah?”

“Talk?” Bazzalth growled furiously. “Crawler invades Bazzalth’s home, threatens Bazzalth, then wants to talk?!”

“Given what happened the last two times we’ve met, I thought it wise to demonstrate enough strength that you would be forced to view us as beings worthy of respect, rather than as two conveniently delivered snacks,” came the reply. “We came here to negotiate as equals.”

The furnace within him surged into action as his outrage grew. The disrespect! These crawlers thought themselves his equal? Preposterous!

His mind raced through several battle plans, discarding most of them immediately as they wouldn’t deal with the collapsing ceiling issue. He quickly settled on a rough plan of action: first, he would swipe the Revenant to the side, sending her into the vats filled with Ichor of Life. The Ichor could destroy even souls themselves, so it would be his best chance to take her out of the equation before she could respond. What’s more, the action would take him in the same direction and bring him close to Pari’s vat, meaning he would be able to protect his most precious data source with his body when the rocks fell. The rest of the lair would be lost either way, if what the Scavenger claimed about them exploding on his death were true.

“Not enough, huh? Alright...” the Scavenger moaned.

A number of robots scurried down from the ceiling—not enough to alter the threat, sadly—and took positions around various pieces of equipment. Bazzalth’s breath caught as he noticed two climbing onto Pari’s tank. There was no realistic possibility that the child’s delicate body would survive even one of those blasts.

“Look, I don’t want to do this, so don’t make me,” the chairbound crawler hissed. “The choice is up to you. And don’t fool yourself into believing this is a bluff. I don’t have much hope for my own life as it is, and she’ll live through it. Trust me, she lives through fucking anything.”

Bazzalth could barely wrap his mind around what was happening. His mind ran through countless scenarios, but all of them ended the same way: he would lose everything.

“Ten, nine, eight, seven,” the crawler counted.

Bazzalth could see no way out. He would have to treat with these pathetic creatures to avoid disaster. The indignity of being forced to engage with crawlers on an equal footing threatened to crush his spirit. He, the superior being, lowering himself to their level! If Tavreth ever found out...

“Six, five, four,” the crawler continued.

No, he would make this quick, and she would never learn of this shameful incident. But if she did... nothing she had done to him so far would compare. The thought terrified him, almost as much as the thought of losing his entire lair.

“Three, two-”

“Bazzalth’s benevolence for such impudence is short-lived,” he rumbled, hoping to keep the panic inside him from showing. “Speak quickly.”

“About time,” the crawler grumbled. He seemed to sit a little straighter, his head held a little higher. “Alright, then... I’m dying. I want you to heal me.”

If the moment hadn’t been so serious, Bazzalth would have laughed at the absurdity of the request. A person healing a crawler? Preposterous! No person would ever do such a thing! Not for a currently living crawler, at least! He had little inclination to even consider such a request, especially after the crawler had the gall to threaten him in his own home.

Still, how was he supposed to respond? If the Scavenger was already dying, then they likely cared less about their own survival--their behavior just now corroborated this. That just made the threat above him even more real. Negotiations were so frustrating! This was why it was better to just take that which you desired through strength, as any proper person did. The process was so much simpler.

“Why would Bazzalth care to heal crawler?” he replied.

“Because I can make it worth your while,” the Scavenger told him. “I can build you machines-”

“Bazzalth has no need for crawler machines,” he growled.

“Then I’ll give you something better. How would you like to study the body of somebody from another world? This is a rare, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

Bazzalth was so thrown off by the unexpected response that he didn’t know what to say. For the first time since he’d first encountered these crawlers, he took a closer look at their souls and found many more differences than just color. While the souls of other crawlers appeared a consistent, uniform blue, these contained a multitude of greens of various shades constantly in flux. Countless eddies spun and swirled in a violent maelstrom that reminded him very much of the surfaces of certain celestial bodies he’d studied twelve hundred years ago. Normal crawler souls would pulse very slowly, almost like a heartbeat. These seemed instead to vibrate almost imperceptibly but with tremendous vigor, almost buzzing in place. But most notable was their shape. Lumpy and misshapen, the souls contained a number of grooves circling their surfaces as if they were being squeezed by invisible snakes. The size of the grooves matched those of the chains still encircling Pari’s soul.

Were these crawlers truly from another world? The idea seemed hard to believe. And yet, their souls were wholly different from the myriad he’d seen over millennia. Combine that with the abilities of the Revenant and the Vile One, both several orders of magnitude more powerful than any he’d ever witnessed before, and he found himself shockingly willing to entertain the Scavenger’s claim.

What sort of knowledge could he glean from studying such a unique specimen? The opportunity to expand his hoard with Knowledge that no other person would ever be able to obtain enticed him beyond words. He could feel the yearning roaring within him, building swiftly in strength until it threatened to overtake his reason. But no person survived their early years without learning to wrangle that urgent, ever-present need. He pushed it aside and instead focused on another problem.

“Bazzalth cannot guarantee that crawler will be healed,” he warned.

“Come now, do you think I came here by chance? I’ve seen your work. You are, without a doubt, the greatest expert in organic science on this world by an absurd margin. If anybody can figure out how to fix me, it would be you.”

That his skill in the matters of life exceeded all others did not surprise Bazzalth. After all, the competition were merely crawlers. What hope did they stand against him? Still, his abilities were not limitless. “Not all things are possible. Yet Bazzalth will be punished for failure regardless? No.”

The Scavenger let out a weak sigh, though it seemed that everything he did was weak and listless. “So you don’t want your lair blown up if you try and still fail. I guess that’s fair. But I do not feel safe here exposed and alone. If I were to remove the bombs, then there needs to be another way of ensuring my safety and your cooperation. Hmmm...”

The crawler fell silent for a moment, deep in thought.

“What about a collateral?” the Revenant chimed in, speaking for the first time.

“Yes, a great idea,” the Scavenger replied. “A collateral will do nicely.”

Bazzalth hated collaterals. Other people loved to take what was his to force him to make them things they desired. It was part of the pain of being weak, he supposed, but that didn’t make it any more pleasant.

“What would make a good collateral for us?” the crawler continued, slowly looking around the lair. Bazzalth grew stiffened as the Scavenger’s gaze fell upon a certain body. “I know! Pari would-”

“No,” Bazzalth growled immediately.

“I must insist. Pari is the only thing here valuable enough to work.”

“NO!”

“You’d rather have this whole place blown to smithereens than loan us Pari for a few weeks? Really?”

“Pari-child is priceless data! Pari-child many times more valuable than puny crawler! Bazzalth will not give Pari-child!” he shot back. The Revenant tensed, resetting her stance and glowering his way.

“Don’t talk about comparing value when you don’t even know what I can offer you,” the Scavenger replied. Unlike the Revenant, he remained entirely unconcerned. “I didn’t want to do this, but I guess you’ve forced my hand. Give us Pari and not only will I let you study my body, but I will also share with you many facts that only I know. Facts from my homeworld. Think about it. Not a single other person on this world knows what I know. This is an exclusive, once-in-a-hundred-lifetimes opportunity, and I am offering it to you just this once. Take it now or lose it forever, because if you don’t, I’ll be too dead to tell anybody anything.”

More unique knowledge? Bazzalth's hoard called to him, telling him to agree, but he could not. Not if it meant exposing Pari to the Vile One again.

“Let me give you a taste,” the Scavenger said. “In my world, there is only one moon. It was created by a collision of celestial bodies that knocked off part of our world as it was still forming.”

The hoard in the back of Bazzalth’s mind reached out, seizing the new Knowledge and pulling it in with gusto to consume, process, and incorporate within itself. Then, as it always did, it came back ever hungrier with new questions, new needs. How did the lack of the two other moons affect the world’s night? Was it darker? How did that added darkness change the nature of the life living there? What about tidal patterns? Bazzalth wanted to know. His hoard yearned for it greatly... but he couldn’t let himself give in from something so simple. While interesting, this Knowledge was, in the end, quite rudimentary.

“Bazzalth is not impressed. Bazzalth doubts crawler has much to offer.”

“Is that so? Then what if I told you our people have walked on our moon? Many times, even? Don’t know how? I can tell you so much about that and more. All you need to do is agree to our offer.”

Bazzalth’s hoard writhed as it took in the new data, unable to reconcile it with other Knowledge. Nobody could travel to the moons; such a feat lay deep within the realm of impossibility. Several people had tried before, including Bazzalth himself. As one gained height, the air required to counter the world’s ceaseless downward pull grew thinner and thinner, until there was no longer enough to stay aloft. What laid beyond that was naught but emptiness, the gulf between the end of air and the moon many, many times greater than that between the end of air and the ground below. And yet, this crawler had the audacity to claim such a thing?!

But what if it were true? Would the Scavenger be stupid and foolish enough to make such an obviously false claim as proof of his value? Something told him this was not the case. As far as crawlers went, at least, this one seemed more intelligent than most, and one who, given the machines above them, understood the dangers of dealing falsely with a person. No, he had told Bazzalth this precisely because it was impossible.

Bazzalth’s hoard screeched in hunger, its need greater and more powerful than it had been in a long, long time. It gnawed at his sanity, pushing him to do something drastic, to take the crawler and tie him down and pull every last bit of Knowledge from his tiny brain. But to do so would bring a great cost, a cost he could not abide.

All he could manage to get out was a simple, pained “How!?”

“Uh uh uh, that’s confidential until you agree to our arrangement,” the snide crawler replied. “All you have to do is say yes and I’ll tell you everything I can. I’ll even draw you pictures, whatever you want.”

Bazzalth knew he had lost, his will laid low by his rampaging hoard and the cruel crawler sitting before him, but he refused to submit so easily. A person fought until they could no longer fight. If he could not stop himself, he could at least do something for his prized data.

“Bazzalth has one condition.”

“What is it?”

“Crawlers must never return Pari-child to Vile One, and must reveal how crawlers became free from Vile One’s chains.”

“Free from the Vile One? Huh? Who is the Vile... oh... oh man...” The crawler began repeatedly wheeze so hard he began to tremble. It reminded him, in a way, of the noises Pari used to make when highly amused, only far more pathetic. “The look on her face when I tell her... oh, it’s going to be priceless! Oh, she’s- URK!”

Suddenly his body began to shake harder, almost violently. The chair metal armor he wore and the chair in which he sat began to shake as well, almost as if vibrating in sympathy. Even the crawler’s soul seemed to be quaking along with the rest.

The Revenant let out what sounded like a curse, bounding over to the Scavenger and ripping off his armor as easily as if she were peeling a fruit. Her actions revealed the crawler beneath the metal, giving Bazzalth his first glimpse at the true Scavenger. What Bazzalth saw did not bode well for the Scavenger’s life. Blood covered the crawler’s face and upper body, with more leaking out with every spasm.

“Help him!” the Revenant cried out. “Help him now or it will be too late!”

She hadn’t needed to say anything; Bazzalth was already on the move. He was not losing his lair, nor such a rich data source, over such a insignificant reason. Rushing over to one of his storage units, he pulled out a small vial of holnox venom. Vial in hand, he returned to the Scavenger and swiftly picked him up, doing his best to not crush his fragile body—years of experience handling Pari and other delicate samples helped greatly in this regard. Placing him upon the examination table, Bazzalth fed the venom to his injector array, selected one of an appropriate size, and began injecting the venom in small doses around the crawler’s body.

Quickly, the Scavenger’s quaking ceased. Bazzalth monitored his condition for a moment, making sure that the crawler’s weak breathing continued.

“What did you do?” the Revenant asked, quickly and easily hopping five times her height up onto the table.

“Holnox venom,” Bazzalth replied. “Paralyzes crawlers, interferes with nervous system.”

“Won’t something like that kill him?”

“Only if too much injected, but Bazzalth did not,” he told the worried crawler. “Scavenger-crawler is correct. Bazzalth is greatest in world. Bazzalth will fix crawler, then crawler will tell Bazzalth everything.”

----------------------------------------

“Hmmmm...” Bazzalth rumbled as he studied the model of the rocket that has supposedly carried living crawlers to a moon. A tiny model of a crawler stood beside the rocket’s base, putting into perspective the truly gargantuan size of the construct. Were a similar rocket designed for a person, it would easily surpass the height of the mountain within which he resided.

Bazzalth found it almost hard to believe that crawlers could be capable of building something so large from just metal. Stone, sure. He knew how certain crawlers could grow stone over time until a large tower or wall stood where none stood before. But metal? Never had he known of a crawler that could do the same for metal. Not until the Scavenger, at least.

For the first time, Bazzalth got a clear, unobstructed view of the Scavenger using his metal-shaping ability. Like other crawlers, the mechanisms of his abilities could not be seen to Bazzalth’s eyes. Through some undetectable mechanism, metal obeyed his will to the molecular level, much like fire materialized spontaneously at the bidding of other crawlers. His range appeared to be far superior to that of others, however.

Bazzalth wanted to study this in greater detail more than anything, but he doubted he had the proper instruments to truly make headway. He would need to do a bit of study with what he did have, learn what he needed, and then design and grow it. The process would take several days, but he had the time—fourteen days of time, to be precise.

The Scavenger had awoken only two crawler hours after his seizure, thanks to Bazzalth’s expert treatment, upon which the final arrangement had been agreed upon. The Revenant would take Pari for fourteen days, then return. Bazzalth had that long to stop the Scavenger from dying and learn as much as he could in the process. With the agreement made, The Revenant had cut Pari free from her vat and carried her away, followed by a long line of machines until none of the exploding devices remained within his lair. Then the questioning had begun, which led him to the present topic.

“How rocket made? Grown, like from stone?”

“No, nobody has powers on my world like they do here. Everything had to be made in foundries and factories and then assembled into the final version,” the Scavenger said. Well, not so much ‘said’ as ‘wheezed, hissed, and grunted with intent’. Bazzalth didn’t mind so long as he could understand the information contained within the noises.

“No abilities?” Bazzalth repeated with some doubt. “Then how Scavenger-crawler have ability?”

“I don’t know,” the crawler admitted. “I gained my abilities when I first arrived here. I can’t explain why. My body improved too, to the point where I could do things here that no human on my homeworld could ever accomplish. That’s how it is for all of us. We basically became superhuman when we got here.”

Bazzalth grunted, putting another topic of study onto his mental list, and moved on. He’d come back to that later.

“How rocket get to moon?” he wondered. Though he had not heard the term ‘rocket’ until today, he was well aware of the basic mechanism of such devices; he’d discovered and studied such rudimentary physics back in his first century. The cones at the bottom of the rocket were clearly vents for some sort of combustion, which would push the entire thing in the other direction. “Combustion not strong enough.”

“Sure it is, if you have the proper fuel.”

“Tell Bazzalth about proper fuel,” he commanded.

“Uh, well, you know about oil? The kind found underground, I mean.”

“Bazzalth is familiar.”

“It’s made from that.”

“Do not lie to Bazzalth,” he growled, shaking the table slightly with his anger. “How oil burn where no air?”

“You bring the air with you, obviously. Just the oxygen, to be specific.”

“Oil too dirty. Cannot burn enough to propel anything.”

“Well, you have to refine it first, obviously. It’s a far more complicated process than just burning oil you pump out of the ground.”

“Tell Bazzalth of refining process.”

The crawler faltered. “Well, umm... I don’t know it.”

“Crawler promised secret knowledge as part of deal,” Bazzalth angrily reminded the puny creature lying on the examination table. He had half a mind to simply end its sorry existence, hunt down the Revenant, and reclaim Pari at once. “Is crawler already breaking deal? Bazzalth can learn much from crawler’s corpse.”

“You can’t expect me to know everything!” came the frightened protest. “I’m not a chemistry expert, alright?! Ask something I know more about!”

The whole arrangement was looking more and more dubious by the moment. Bazzalth’s desire to study the Scavenger’s ability was about all that was keeping the crawler alive at the moment.

“Look, it gets far more feasible when you understand that the whole rocket was not going to the moon,” the Scavenger hurriedly continued. “It fired in stages like this. The bottom stage would burn first, then when it was exhausted, it would break off.” The bottom third separated from the rest of the model. “Then the second stage, then the third. I think these stages might have just burned pure hydrogen and oxygen, actually.” The model split apart until all that remained was a small piece at the tip. “Really, all of that was just to throw this tiny bit fast enough to make it to the moon. It’s kind of wild that they managed to do it at all, and they did it several times.”

Well, that did make a bit more sense, Bazzalth had to admit. With such a design, it might actually be possible to accomplish such a feat, assuming that the fuel could indeed be made strong enough. Hydrogen did release much more energy upon combustion than oil.

“Why only several times?” he inquired.

“Uh, I think it was very costly and it was decided that there wasn’t much that could be learned up there or something? They instead worked on making space stations, little permanent habitats that float above the earth outside of the atmosphere, and using them for research instead. That’s how I understand it, anyway. It all happened before I was born.”

His hoard ingested the Scavenger’s explanations and found them possible. Myriad possibilities crossed Bazzalth’s mind. A lair hovering above the world, far out past the atmosphere? A lair on a moon? One lair on each moon?! The possibilities!

Perhaps he’d given up too easily, swayed by the temptations of Knowledge within easy reach. If such puny crawlers could manage this, then Bazzalth could as well. Shivers of excitement down his spine. The pathways of Knowledge were countless. Ever larger his hoard would grow.

His hoard satiated for the moment, Bazzalth moved onto the main topic at hand. “Scavenger-crawler must remove garments so Bazzalth may study body,” he instructed.

The grey clothes flowed off the crawler’s body, forming a puddle to his side. So they had been created from metal! Bazzalth had not been sure. He had not thought the Scavenger capable of manipulating metal to such a fine degree. Bazzalth’s anticipation grew yet again as he picked up the crawler and laid him on another section of the table.

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“Huh... that was... much more gentle than I would have expected from somebody with giant claws bigger than my whole body,” the Scavenger remarked.

“Bazzalth has much experience,” he replied as he switched out the viewport he’d been using to peek into the atomic world for one much more familiar. He only needed to see cellular structure for this.

“Pari?”

Bazzalth just grunted.

“She would talk about you all the time, you know.”

Bazzalth paused, a flash of alarm rushing through him. Had all that time he’d spent training Pari to stay silent about him been for nothing? Had she gone out and told everybody all the things he’d told her not to? “What did Pari-child say?”

“Just about how great and wonderful and strong you were. That sort of thing.”

“Is that all?”

“She never told us you were a dragon, if that’s what you’re asking. We had no idea.”

Bazzalth let out a chuff of relief and amusement. He could live with these people knowing of his existence, even if word of him spread. With the crawlers pushing north more every year—the destruction of their city would only slow them down, not stop them—the existence of people would be discovered eventually. His job was simply to push that inevitability as far into the future as possible. What he could not live with was another person learning that he had raised and then released a half-person, half-crawler hybrid into the wild. It would bring about dire consequences that made him tremble just thinking about it. “Pari-child was good child.”

“Cutest little terrorist you ever did see.”

Bazzalth wanted to press further on the topic, to question the crawler about Pari and the Vile One. He wanted to know the circumstances of Pari’s death as well, plus how the Scavenger had managed to free himself. Still, he held off for the moment. Bazzalth did not trust the Scavenger’s answers to be free of falsehood. He had been far too lax the last time with the crawler known as Pyr and had almost lost his precious data for it. This time, he would study the crawler better first, learn his expressions, his way of speaking, his tone, until he could spot a lie properly. Only then would he begin.

Instead, he turned back to the matter of the crawler’s body. A pretty sight this was not. From the torso to the head, the Scavenger appeared severely unhealthy. While some muscle remained, the way the sweaty, pallid skin loosely covered the torso was a clear sign of the body shrinking rapidly. The sign appeared even more clearly on the arms, the skin sagging. Well, the arm, really, as the crawler’s left arm was little more than a stump severed above the elbow.

Yes, not a pretty sight indeed. Bazzalth had seen other crawler bodies in similar condition, especially when he destroyed their mines. Yet somehow, this crawler’s lower half made the upper half appear vibrant in comparison. He’d never seen something like the Scavenger’s legs before.

Waxy, white skin hung off bones with little in between, giving the false impression that the legs had been mummified in some way. Myriad dark blood vessels ran across the ivory skin, the hundreds of interlocking lines reminding him in a way of the weavings of various insects. These were not the legs of a living person.

How much of the Scavenger’s condition was caused by the state of these legs? How much of his legs’ condition was caused by the state of the rest of him? Bazzalth did not know, but he would have to find out, and fast.

First, he needed samples. Manipulating the controls on the side of the table with his claws, he sent weak nerve impulses along one of the table’s many manipulation arms, this one with a small blade at the end. The arm reacted to the impulses, the muscles at the base slowly contracting and bringing the implement steadily down.

He preferred to use these arms to his own when it came to delicate or detailed work. He had more control than if he used his own claws. It also let him observe better. It was hard to see your subject when your hands were many times larger and always obstructing your view.

“Hey, hey, hey!” the crawler hissed as the blade descended, tucrenyx flowing towards him. “What are you doing?!”

“Bazzalth requires samples for study,” Bazzalth patiently explained.

“Samples meaning what, you carve off a piece of me? Hell, no! I’ve already lost enough of my body, thank you!” The tucrenyx grew closer.

“Bazzalth must have samples or Bazzalth will be unable to fix Scavenger-crawler,” Bazzalth less-patiently explained. He set the side of his hand down between the flowing metal and the Scavenger, only for the metal to flow beneath and around it anyway.

“Then take some blood! That’s fine! Do a biopsy, even! But no lopping off pieces of me!” The metal rushed over the crawler’s body and hardened into a thick metal shell.

“Very well.” Bazzalth grumbled and changed out the blade for a small syringe. “Pari-child never complained.”

“Pari wouldn’t know normal if it smacked her in the face!”

Bazzalth was beginning to miss working with cadavers.

----------------------------------------

A low rumble escaped Bazzalth’s maw as he gazed at his collection of samples taken from the Scavenger’s body, trying to unearth the secrets held within. Inspection of the cells had revealed several enlightening, fascinating facts. The true question was what it all meant.

Fact One: the Scavenger’s cells gave Bazzalth undeniable proof of the crawler’s claims of extra-terrestrial or extra-dimensional origin. Though he appeared the same as all other crawlers, his cells were different enough for Bazzalth to consider him a completely different species from the base crawler that he mimicked. Bazzalth noted how the cells, though clearly different in appearance, seemed to still have sub-cellular structures that accomplished the same tasks as the local crawler’s. It was almost like two people independently writing the same story despite having never once met.

Interestingly, the cells taken from the upper, more-healthy half appeared nearly identical to those from the legs. Given the state of the body’s lower half, Bazzalth had expected to see some malformation or something, anything that would let him distinguish between the two halves easily, but no. The legs cells on their own seemed just as healthy as the others. The issue was that they weren’t on their own.

The entire lower half of the Scavenger’s body was a war zone, where his immune cells waged ceaseless battle against a horde of single-celled microorganisms. Bazzalth had never seen anything like this lifeform before. Not quite a bacteria, not quite an amoebic parasite, they attacked the crawler’s cells directly, seeming to puncture the outer wall and enter the cell, devouring it from the inside out before using the newly gained excess mass to split into two copies.

Where had this creature come from? Though there was always the remote possibility that this was some sort of rare local disease that Bazzalth had never seen before—even he could not find and catalogue every single species of single-celled lifeform in the world—he rather doubted it. Instead, he thought back to the crawler’s earlier words, when he’d claimed to only have gained great strength and ability after traveling to this world. If such a thing had truly happened to him, would it also happen to the variety of other organisms that also made his body their home? Bazzalth believed that, at least in this case, that had been exactly what had occurred, because the Scavenger’s superpowered cells were slowly losing.

He glanced over at the sleeping crawler, the small being’s chest rising and falling weakly beneath a large pelt. Did a similar disease exist within the Revenant’s body, or, perhaps, that of the Vile One? Why did they not display symptoms? Perhaps the Scavenger’s problems were two-fold. Perhaps they all did have something like this within them but each of their immune systems were keeping it at bay, while something which had happened to the Scavenger had weakened him just enough that his body began to slowly lose the fight?

Bazzalth’s thoughts immediately went to the spinal injury that had deprived the crawler of the use of his lower body. There had to be some relation between that injury and his current state. Bazzalth considered conducting a procedure or two to learn more about the injury, but decided now was not the best time. He didn’t want to risk waking his subject. The Scavenger needed every bit of rest Bazzalth could give him right now, or he might not live long enough for Bazzalth to learn everything he wanted to learn. That would be a disaster.

----------------------------------------

“Really? She got the artery too?” the Scavenger wheezed the next morning.

“Correct,” Bazzalth replied as he took another look at his readings from the just-completed procedure. “Complete severing of both nerve and blood vessel.”

“How did I not die from that? I should have died from that real quick, right?”

“Scavenger-crawler’s body different than normal crawler,” Bazzalth explained. The difference served as yet another stark reminder that Bazzalth was dealing with an extra-planar being. Any normal crawler would regenerate the damaged tissues at a steady pace. Their healing prowess could not stand in comparison to a person’s, of course—nothing on this world could—but they would likely have been fully healed within a matter of days. Their issue was surviving the initial injury. From his deep understanding of crawler anatomy, without immediate medical treatment, he knew that the average crawler with this exact wound would bleed to death far sooner than they would be able to heal enough to stop the bleeding.

The Scavenger’s body, on the other hand, seemed the exact opposite: a level of hardiness that possibly even outclassed people, paired with an utterly pathetic level of healing and regeneration. He’d found it utterly remarkable the level of strength the cells within his samples had displayed, even long after being cut off from nutrients and oxygen. Bazzalth suspected that the Scavenger would have been able to survive a far worse wound than the admittedly bad one he’d already received. In a way, he was surviving such a wound now, if one thought of the state of his legs as a wound caused by the infection within.

Once Bazzalth had finished explaining this to the Scavenger, the crawler just nodded slowly. “I see,” he said. “That also explains why I didn’t die when I lost my arm before that, too. I never had the chance to get that treated at all, but I survived just fine.”

“Correct.”

“But how does that explain the infection in my legs? If it’s as bad as you say, why isn’t it everywhere?”

“Bazzalth has theory,” he said.

“Oh? Let’s hear it.”

Not for the first time, Bazzalth found himself grateful that the Scavenger was at least decently intelligent. It was nice to have a conversation partner who understood what you said the first time and wanted to know more.

“Bazzalth believes infection within Scavenger-crawler from beginning, but crawler’s body able to successfully fight infection and hold infection at bay, so Scavenger-crawler detected nothing wrong. Bazzalth thinks that sudden loss of blood to lower body destabilized lower half enough for infection to gain clawhold. Deterioration of lower half continues from then.”

“Alright, I can maybe see that part. But again, why is it only my legs?”

“Crawler’s body has cell barrier in torso preventing spread of infection. Massive build up of immune cells from wound outward, all infection that come up die. Bazzalth believes body cut off lower part to save rest of body. Infection level in rest of body minimal.”

“Wait, what? There’s like a wall in my body blocking off the disease from my upper half?”

“Correct.”

“That’s... not a thing. We don’t have those.”

“Bazzalth believes body specially constructed barrier in response to danger. Perhaps special nature of body allowed for such mechanism.”

“It’s really weird to hear that I’m some sort of medical oddity,” the crawler mused. “So my body is just leaving my legs to fend for themselves? What happens when there’s nothing left?”

“Bazzalth believes infection will move upward in mass and break through barrier. Rest of body will be consumed.”

The Scavenger gulped. “Can you fix it?”

“Bazzalth has never found organism Bazzalth cannot kill,” he reassured the crawler. The crawler did not appear reassured.

----------------------------------------

“Hmmmmmmm,” Bazzalth rumbled as he stared into the magnifier.

“What’s wrong?” the Scavenger asked.

“Nothing,” he replied without looking away.

“Uh huh,” came the sarcastic response.

Now Bazzalth looked away, glaring at the annoying crawler. The crawler was not currently lying down, having constructed another wheeled chair from the metal he’d brought with him. Unfortunately, after having finished that, the crawler seemed to have nothing better to do than watch Bazzalth and make comments.

Bazzalth found himself appreciating Pari even more. The child had known how to amuse herself without having to bother him all the time. The Scavenger needed something to distract him while Bazzalth worked, but he seemed far too nervous to make his own and Bazzalth was far too busy to do anything about it either.

“That’s the sound you make when something didn’t go how you thought it would,” the crawler told him.

Bazzalth snarled lightly and went back to looking at the magnifier. He didn’t want to admit it, but the Scavenger was fairly correct.

“Well?”

“Chemical did not work,” Bazzalth finally, begrudgingly said.

“Which one? Weren’t you testing two?”

“Both,” he conceded.

“Both?! Didn’t you say that these were each powerful antibiotics?”

“Correct. Chemical Three is highly effective antibacterial agent, yet infectious organism entirely unaffected. Likely immune. Chemical Seven is strong anti-parasite substance. Initial test showed viability, over half of disease in sample perished. Bazzalth administered second test after survivors reproduced. Nine of ten survived. On third test, parasites are now immune.”

“It’s adapting that fast?” The crawler paused. “Actually, is that fast?”

“Abnormally fast.”

“Fuck...” the Scavenger moaned. “Can we just fill me up with enough to kill them all all at once?”

“Scavenge-crawler would die before infection does.”

The crawler sighed before falling into blessed silence.

Bazzalth returned to his experiments.

“Hey, Bazzalth.”

Bazzalth ignored the Scavenger.

“Hey.”

He took a deep breath, keeping his gaze on the magnifier and focusing on the important goings on within.

“Bazzalth, hey.”

Bazzalth wrenched his gaze from his important study to fix the crawler with another glare. “Does Scavenger-crawler want Bazzalth to fail?”

“Of course not! It’s just... I’ve been here for three days now and I can’t not ask anymore. Why do you keep calling me ‘Scavenger-crawler’? My name is Blake.”

Bazzalth felt like he was back in time, answering Pari’s inane questions, except Pari’s usually made more sense. “Scavenger-crawler is Scavenger-crawler because Scavenger-crawler scavenges.”

“Scavenges what? I don’t scavenge anything.”

“Old crawler machines, obviously.”

“You think I stole all my machines? You’ve watched me make some!”

“Bazzalth thought so before. Now, Bazzalth believes Scavenger-crawler builds machines using old crawler designs.”

“Well, fuck you, too! Yeah, a few of my parts are based on some stuff I found, like the memory units, but ninety percent of my robots are entirely my own design!”

Bazzalth blinked in surprise. While the back of his mind grabbed upon the new word ‘robot’ and devoured its meanings, finding it a pleasant modification on ‘machine’ with subtle but important differences, the front of his mind was more confused as to the sudden outburst of anger.

“Scavenger-crawler is upset,” he noted.

“I’ve been building machines and robots since my parents bought me a K’Nex kit for Christmas when I was nine, and I’m damned proud of it! How would you like it if I said that you just steal all your knowledge from some ruins you found?”

Bazzalth grumbled. Admittedly, he would not take such a claim very well. To say that one did not amass their hoard themselves was to question a person’s worth as a person. It was one of the highest of slights, serious enough to bring about even combat and possibly death. Luckily, no person was foolish enough to make such claims about another.

Still... “Bazzalth finds claim dubious. Robots constructed by Scavenger-crawler contain internal composition remarkably similar to old machines.”

“Oh come on, that’s like saying if I created a linked list, everybody else who comes up with the same thing is stealing from me,” the crawler griped. “When dealing with logical problems, it’s not uncommon for two parties to reach very similar conclusions. That’s just the nature of the field.”

He paused for a moment and Bazzalth took the opportunity to turn his attention back to studying what was important: the microbes.

“Hold up... you’ve studied ancient machines?”

“Correct,” Bazzalth said without looking up.

“Can I see them?”

“No.”

“Oh, come on! Please?!”

“Bazzalth disposed of machines two thousand years ago,” he informed his irritating patient.

“God damn it,” the Scavenger sighed, falling thankfully quiet again.

Unfortunately, it was not to last.

“So you must have been alive for a long time, yeah?” came the unwanted question not long after. “How old are you, Bazzalth?”

“Crawler agreed to reveal knowledge; Bazzalth did not.” Even if Bazzalth trusted the nosy crawler, one did not give up pieces of their hoard easily.

“You’ve been answering plenty of my questions already,” the crawler argued.

“Questions pertaining to Scavenger-crawler’s situation only,” Bazzalth pointed out.

“Oh, come on, spoilsport. I’m just curious. Everybody knows that dragons live a long time. It’s no secret.”

This time, Bazzalth could not help but look up. “Dragon?” he asked, pondering the word and all the information that rode upon it. Wings large enough to black out the sun, huge and sharp teeth, a domineering presence, and power—overwhelming power. All in all, it was not a bad word... but it was not ‘person’. “Do not belittle Bazzalth by using other term than ‘person’. Bazzalth will not tolerate disrespect.”

“You don’t get to have a monopoly on what counts as people, dude,” the crawler scoffed. “I’m a person just as much as you are.”

“Crawlers are not people,” Bazzalth growled. “Crawlers are crawlers.”

The Scavenger ignored the rising anger in Bazzalth’s voice and refused to back down. “And for me, people are people, and dragons are dragons. Besides, don’t act like this is some cut and dry rule that can’t be smudged. You do it all the time.”

“Bazzalth does not!”

“Then why do you call her ‘Pari-child’ instead of ‘Pari-crawler’ when she’s just as much of a crawler as the rest of us?”

Bazzalth felt himself heating up inside and let out a powerful venting snort, roasting the nearby area with flames and scalding-hot air. “Do not belittle Pari-child! Pari-child is half-person, with the blood of a person inside far more powerful than even Bazzalth’s and others’ blood. Pari-child is not like Scavenger-crawler. Pari-child is far superior in every way.”

“Tch... touchy.”

“Bazzalth is not ‘touchy’,” he rumbled. “Scavenger-crawler is simply incorrect.”

“Whatever. I’m going to get some fresh air. This place stinks of hubris and self-importance.”

Glad to have won, Bazzalth turned back to the magnifier and prepared to begin a new set of tests. He made no attempt to stop the Scavenger as the wheeled chair rolled to the edge of the table before growing legs and climbing down to the lair’s floor. The Scavenger would be back. The crawler needed him, not the other way around. At least now, for a moment, Bazzalth could work in peace.

----------------------------------------

Death came for them all, sweeping through them like a tsunami. Scores died, torn apart by the sheer lethality that came from mere contact. And yet, others survived, seemingly unharmed by the poison which claimed their brethren. Those that lived moved on, continuing their lives as if nothing had changed. They hunted, they ate, they multiplied. Another wave approached, and several more succumbed to the blight, their defenses unable to withstand a second blow. The others carried on.

Bazzalth looked away from the magnifier and rose to his full height, arching his back and spreading his wings out as he stretched away the tightness. He was in a foul mood. After the Scavenger’s tantrum, Bazzalth had worked through the rest of that day and through the night with little to show for it.

Nothing he’d tried yet had worked beyond the first dose. The microorganisms infesting the Scavenger’s legs were, by leaps and bounds, the most hardy microbes he’d ever seen, and he’d seen more than anybody. Toxins that could devastate other similar lifeforms at low doses would be shrugged off like nothing, even when the dose was increased to tens of times higher than what would normally be needed.

The microbe’s ridiculous adaptability only made things far worse. The Scavenger’s own hardiness allowed Bazzalth to use levels of poison that would kill a normal crawler many times over, so Bazzalth had been able to find single drugs or drug combinations that were at least partially effective against the microscopic scourge, but within two or three doses, those drugs would lose all potency and become useless. Once again, he’d never seen anything like it.

In most any other context, he would find this utterly fascinating, a new air current to ride on the hunt for Knowledge. In this case, however, it meant the extinguishing of many other currents, ones that he would never get the opportunity to soar upon again. As he counted his remaining time running down, Bazzalth couldn’t help but feel growing frustration at the whole situation.

Were the Scavenger’s body healthier, there was the possibility that Bazzalth could administer several doses of drugs that had showed initial success, greatly setting the infection back, and let the crawler’s immune system handle the rest. Unfortunately, he doubted that said immune system was up to the task at its current strength, and given the state of the body as a whole, the doses might be enough to kill the crawler all on their own. They were rather toxic to non-people, after all.

Counting the day of arrival, this was the fourth day that the Scavenger had been in his lair. Four days, and zero progress. Technically, he was making progress in that he was eliminating options for treatment, but that felt like progress only in the most literal sense. He was no closer to curing the infection and saving the Scavenger from death. He would find a cure eventually, he knew; no problem such as this could go unsolved forever when pitted against his mighty intellect. Accomplishing the feat before the death of the crawler, however, was a different proposition, one he no longer had much confidence in.

Perhaps it was time to cut his losses, he mused. There was another way to get great amounts of data from the crawler, data he would be able to trust fully, unlike some of the Scavenger’s earlier claims. There would be no going back after that, however. The act alone would break the agreement in full. Then, he’d have to figure out what to do about Pari and all the other complications that would arise from that.

Not just yet, he decided. After three full days of interacting with the Scavenger, Bazzalth believed he had enough of a read on the crawler to better detect lies and falsehoods. Before he decided to take radical action, he would see if he could get what he wanted most without it first.

“Scavenger-crawler,” he rumbled.

“Once again, name’s Blake,” came the reply. Not exactly an acknowledgment, but good enough for the moment.

“Bazzalth has more questions.”

“What else is new?” the Scavenger snorted, looking away from a small screen that hung in front of him. The screen hung from an arm that protruded out from his chair near the side of the examination table, where he sat every day while not being treated or studied. Bazzalth preferred to keep him there, close by where he could keep tabs on him when Bazzalth was busy with something else. “Well, that was the deal. Ask away.”

Bazzalth decided to start with a big one, something he’d been pondering since the first day. “Why does Scavenger-crawler prize Pari-child so greatly?”

The Scavenger tried to hide it, but Bazzalth could see it now—the slight tension off the neck muscles, the slight flush in the face, the way his blink lasted longer than normal. Yes, three days had been enough to know the next statement would be suspect at best.

“I don’t know what you mean. I only chose the child because the way you had everything laid out in here implied you valued her more than other stuff. The vat was raised up above the other vats and everything.”

“Then why crawlers chase after Bazzalth after Bazzalth retrieve Pari-child? Why crawlers return days later?”

A fraction of a moment of hesitation. Not much, but Bazzalth was wise to the signs now.

“We were bringing Pari back to her grandfather, or so we thought. We didn’t realize you were the grandfather, so when you took her, we tried to get her back. Once we realized the truth, we dropped it. The second time was a coincidence. We were here for something else.”

Bazzalth leaned forward. “Why else crawlers within Bazzalth’s domain?”

“Mining,” came the quick response. Too quick. “I need more cantacrenyx crystals and they’re hard to find, so we were looking for more deposits up in the mountains.

Bazzalth knew now that the Scavenger could restructure his robots at will, so it was not infeasible that there was some truth to this one, but it felt wrong in Bazzalth’s gut. Every single robot there had been fully equipped for war.

“Where is Pari-child now?”

“Staying in a village in Kutrad, though I don’t know which. We decided it was safer for all of us if I don’t know where. You’ll get her back after you fix me and the full allotment of days are up.”

As the crawler spoke, Bazzalth noticed several signs of falsehood with each sentence, until the final sentence. Then he saw all of them. It took everything he had to not crush the pathetic creature right then and there. The crawlers intended to rob him of his prized data! He vowed to not let this disrespect go unpunished, but he held off for the moment. Crushing the Scavenger could wait.

Bazzalth knew the course to take now. First, he slyly waited, studying another two possible cures. Neither of them proved to be any better than the rest. Having separated his next actions from the earlier questions long enough to avoid suspicion, he turned to the crawler with a grave face

“Scavenger-crawler,” he began, earning a grunt of recognition, “Bazzalth requires new inspection. Current data is insufficient.”

“Mmmm,” came the acknowledgment. Before the crawler could put up a fuss, Bazzalth lifted him and his seat as one, moving them to the main examination area of the table.

“New inspection requires injection,” Bazzalth explained. “Injection will allow Bazzalth to get better data.”

“Yeah, sure, whatever,” the crawler replied, not really paying attention, his eyes focused on the screen. After more than three days of procedures, the Scavenger’s vigilance had grown lax. Bazzalth would make him regret that.

Heading to the back of the lair, Bazzalth pulled down a container filled with small canisters grown from bone. Pulling out a specific one filled with a creamy green liquid, he inspected it to make sure it had not degraded since being stored centuries ago. As expected, the vacuum-seal had held perfectly, preserving the truth serum in perpetuity.

Through the course of many years, Bazzalth’s crawler experimentation had led to a wealth of unusual discoveries. One of the most unexpected was the revelation that a specific enzyme, found in the nectar of a vine that grew to the far north, interfered with a crawler’s brain in very specific ways, interfering with their ability to lie and resist impulses. The crawlers would know, in a sense, what was happening to them as they blurted out answers to questions they desperately didn’t wish to answer. Their stress levels would rise, their bodies becoming tense, their heart rate rising significantly, etcetera, until the drug eventually wore off and brain function returned to normal.

Bazzalth worried a little that the Scavenger’s body would not be able to handle the mental stress, but that was about it. The Scavenger was lying, both in general and specifically about Pari, and that could not be tolerated. Bazzalth would have his Knowledge, even if he had to break the crawler’s mind. After all, while an incredibly unique crawler, the Scavenger was still just a crawler in the end.

The Scavenger didn’t even blink as the truth drug entered his body, the treacherous substance working towards his brain with every heartbeat. He seemed entirely unperturbed, bored even. That changed quickly.

Bazzalth’s sharp eyes caught the very moment the drug began to take effect. The Scavenger’s pupils suddenly dilated to their full width. His left eye opened wide, while his right upper eyelid—and the upper one only—slid down to half-cover the right eye. His body went stiff as a board... before going completely limp.

Bazzalth blinked. That wasn’t how events were supposed to proceed.

“Wha’... wha’ did... wha’ did ya do ta me?” the crawler asked with a slurred wheeze. Bazzalth had no idea how one could even slur a wheeze, but somehow the crawler managed it easily. Bazzalth grew increasingly worried as the crawler slowly slumped to the side, drool beginning to drip from his mouth as his lips widened into a content smile. “Heh, heheheheh, heeeeeeeeee... I feel gooooooood...”

Bazzalth tried not to panic and only half-succeeded. What was he supposed to do now? This was the exact opposite of what he’s desired. Would the crawler even feel compelled to answer his questions? And could he trust those answers? Bazzalth didn’t know. Still, what else was there for him to do at this point?

“Where is Pari-child?” he began.

An amused giggle bubbled up from the crawler. “How would I know, silly? I’m not there, I’m here!”

Bazzalth couldn’t hold back a groan. A wasted effort after all. But then, before he could take action, the crawler kept talking.

“She’s prob’ly in Stragma now... tha’ was the... the plan, anyway. Gabby’ll... she’ll do it. Not like the others, ’cept Arlette maybe. Gotta get the twerp ta Stragma quick ’n’ stuff.”

Bazzalth’s suspicions were confirmed! Scorching anger built within his gullet, but he kept his composure for the moment. “Crawler lied to Bazzalth!” he accused.

“Duhhhhhh!” the Scavenger retorted.

Bazzalth had not expected such a complete and brazen confession, though given the state of his counterpart, perhaps he should have. Mentally off-balance, he asked the simple question that came to mind first: “Why?”

“’Cuz yer scary, dummy! ’Specially when yer angry. Why else? Ya always get mad when... when I talk ’bout the little imp. Why would I wanna tell ya tha’ ya won’t be gettin’ ’er back? Then ya’d get real mad, so ’t’s a good thin’ ya don’ know tha’.”

Bazzalth did indeed find himself getting even madder than he already was upon hearing the news. “Bazzalth will retrieve Pari-child,” he growled.

“Can ya, though?” the crawler replied, the serum making him seemingly unable to experience the fear he claimed had kept him from telling he truth all along. “’Cuz she’s alive again, or she’s ’bout ta be. Was I wrong? I thought I was onta somethin’.”

Now Bazzalth didn’t know what to think. The Scavenger had a habit of showing flashes of disturbingly high intuition, and in this case he was spot on with his deduction. “Pari-child cannot return to life,” Bazzalth deflected. “Bazzalth already resurrected Pari-child with blood concoction. No substance will work again.”

The Scavenger broke down into a fit of giggles. “C’mere, c’mere, lemme tell ya a secret,” he hissed quietly.

Begrudgingly, Bazzalth leaned forward.

The crawler whispered so softly that Bazzalth’s great hearing almost didn’t pick it up, as if the crawler were revealing the great forbidden truth of the world. “The mitochondria is the... the powerhouse of the cell.”

Bazzalth felt a headache coming on as the little creature began to uncontrollably snicker. How was that a secret? Was he trying to say that the path towards a second resurrection went through some sort of reactivation of specific part of a cell? That made absolutely no sense!

“Nonono I’m kiddin’ I’m kiddin’ I’m kiddin’ I’m kiddin’ I’m kiddin’... c’mere c’mere, I’ll tell ya fer real this time...”

Against his better judgment, Bazzalth leaned in again and listened to the crawler’s whispered secrets.

“Inertia is a property of matter!”

The crawler’s snickers returned with added snorts for good measure while Bazzalth contemplated performing a live dissection on the spot. The crawler’s mirth sputtered out as the snorts and snickers turned into a weak coughing fit.

“Okayokayokay fer real fer real this time,” he wheezed once the coughs had subsided. “There’s a way ta brin’ somebody back ta life without drugs ’n’ stuff. Time travel! Push ’er time back ta... ta b’fore she died an’ ’t’s like it never happened!” He then proceeded to wiggle his eyebrows up and down, which meant something, probably.

“Impossible!” Bazzalth growled. To think after the first two time, he had fallen for the crawler’s tricks a third time as well! What nonsense! “Temporal manipulation impossible. Localized temporal manipulation even more impossible.”

“I knowwww, riiiiighhhht?! Tha’s wha’ I said!” the Scavenger giggled. “But ’t’s real!”

“How could crawler know?”

“The Stragmans, they have a way ’n’ they already... they already brought back thousands of people! I met one! Bu’ nobody’s supposed ta know! ’T’s a secret! So don’ tell nobody, ’kay?”

Bazzalth found himself hurriedly reevaluating the entire situation. This revelation, if true—and it seemed as if the Scavenger believed it, at least—changed a lot of things. That there existed a being that could do what he could not in this regard... his pride chafed at the thought. Yet at the same time, an entire new realm of study had just opened up to him. Temporal mechanics... how incredibly exciting!

“Why crawler not simply tell Bazzalth from beginning?”

“Why would ya have believed me? I wouldn’t have believed me. ’N’ ya already tried ta... kill us twice. How would we even tell ya? ’N’ do ya even want ’er alive again?”

“Yes,” Bazzalth immediately replied. An alive Pari would only have more time to grow and provide Bazzalth with even more data in the future. But some things still didn’t make sense. “Why bring Pari-child to Bazzalth if such method exists?”

The Scavenger let out an amused snort. “’Cuz we didn’ learn ’til after we go’ back. Learnin’ ’bout it b’fore would’ve been too easy.” His grin faded some, and Bazzalth could feel the crawler’s mood shift. “This stupid world... ’t’s like ’t’s made ta fuck ya over. Nothin’ bu’ pain.”

Bazzalth continued to push his lines of questioning, unsure how long the serum would remain effective given the already abnormal response. “Why Scavenger-crawler come to Bazzalth when Scavenger-crawler could be healed by Stragmans? Stragman procedure would guarantee success, correct?”

The crawler grew quiet, a disconcerting change from his previously effusive demeanor. “I could... if I had ta, I guess...” he admitted. “I did ask ‘em b’fore, ya know. They said no, but I could... could force ’em if I really wanna. Bu’ I only went ta them ’cuz I thought they were the only option. I’d lose too much ta use ’em if there’s a chance I... I could avoid it.

“I jus’ wanna be me, ya know? ’T’s not fair tha’... tha’ Pari doesn’t have ta lose anything. Jus’ rewind ’er ta righ’ b’fore when she gets killed, no problem. But... but me? Nnnnnnoooooooooooooo, my wounds’re too old. I’d lose ev’rythin’. All tha’ knowledge... ev’rythin’ I learned the last few years...

“I can’t do it. I can’ give up my knowledge... ’t’s too important. Knowledge’s too important... makes ya who ya are. Defines ya. More important than anythin’. I wouldn’t even be me anymore. I’d be... be somebody else... somebody dumb. I like being me, ya know? How could I throw tha’ away? Ya get it, right? The others... they don’ get it. But ya get it. I know ya get it. Tha’s why I like ya. Ya get it.

“’N’ hey!” he chortled, his good mood returning. “If ya somehow can’t save me, they can bring me back if it comes down ta tha’, so make sure ta keep my body, yeah?”

Bazzalth did not reply, the crawler’s earlier inebriated words still echoing through his mind. The Scavenger understood. All the other people had always mocked him, calling his hoard pointless. “A waste of time,” they called it. “What use it Knowledge without the power to use it?” They’d never understood, and he’d long come to accept that they never would. But this crawler... this measly little insignificant being... he understood. Somehow, he knew the truth as Bazzalth did.

Bazzalth didn’t know how to take this. It was almost too much, this sudden onrush of confusing emotions and sensations. To think that another being finally understood, and even viewed his own understanding positively as well... But it was a crawler! Could Bazzalth even allow himself to feel this way over a crawler?

“Bazz, buddy, wha’s... wha’s wrong?” the crawler asked. “Yer lookin’ weird. Ya hungry? Let’s make waffles. Nothin’ a good plate of... of waffles can’t fix.”

“Nothing is wrong,” he refuted. “Bazzalth is simply not... accustomed to such sensations...”

“Yeah, ’t’s hard bein’ lonely.”

“Bazzalth is not lonely.”

The Scavenger scoffed. “Hey, ’t’s alrigh’ ta be lonely.”

“Bazzalth is not lonely,” he repeated. “Bazzalth can fly out and visit other people whenever Bazzalth desires.”

“Ya haven’t left yer lair since I came. Nobody came ta visit, either.”

The admission came grudgingly. “Other people do not understand Bazzalth.” He didn’t know why he was even saying this out loud, to a crawler no less. Perhaps he was just so shaken already, his mental state thrown into upheaval from a moment ago, but he found himself speaking aloud thoughts that had been with him for his entire life. “Being around other people only leads to pain. ”

“I know tha’ feelin’... tha’ feelin’ when yer in the middle of a crowd... an’... an’ ya look out... an’ all ya see is people who look like ya, talk like ya, act like ya, and ya say... ‘why can’t I connect with... with anybody? There’s all these people, why do I feel so alone?’ An’ tha’ feelin’, it grows. It grows an’ it grows an’ it grows until ya just... ya just wanna go away to some place where there’s nobody else around and shut yerself away, ya know? ’Cuz then, at least the loneliness is somethin’ ya chose. Yeah, I know tha’ feelin’ all too well. ’T’s okay, Bazz. ’T’s not yer fault.

“Ya know wha’ would really... cheer ya up? A big ol’ plate of waffles... haven’t had ’em in forever... could prob’ly make ’em back at the fortress, bu’ ’t’s not the same without the maple syrup, ’n’ they don’ have anythin’ like tha’ here... I know, ya could figure it out, yeah? Make maple syrup! Yeah, let’s get lotsa waffles with loads of syrup!”

“Silence,” Bazzalth growled, ignoring the foolish creature’s ramblings about food. He couldn’t let this go on any longer. He could feel himself losing control as old, unburied memories and emotions rose from the past to bombard him all over again. It was already almost too much for him to handle. And the crawler’s words, striking home with almost supernatural accuracy... how had the Scavenger known? Or was his experience perhaps not as unique as he’d always believed?

But more importantly, he had a time limit and much more he needed to know. “How Scavenger-crawler escape from clutches of Vile One?”

“Hah? Vile One? Wuzzat?”

It seemed the crawler’s memory paled in comparison to his own. “Third crawler-”

“Oh! Oh yeah! Heh heh heh... I don’ get it. Wha’ ’re ya talkin’ ’bout, clutches? Sofie don’ have it in ’er to put people in clutches... well, she kinda did...”

“Bazzalth could see chains binding Scavenger-crawler’s soul before, same chains that bind Pari-child. Scavenger-crawler’s chains now gone. How?”

“Chains? Wha’ chains?” the crawler asked, trying his best to look around, which only resulted in him limply flopping in place once and giving up. “I don’ see no chains.”

“Chains made of soul energy, only Bazzalth can see.”

“Ya can see souls?! So coooooooooollllllll! Wha’ do... wha’ do they look like?”

“Not important. Chains bound Scavenger-crawler before. Chains gone. How chains gone?”

“I dunno, mannnn... tha’s like... too much fer my head right nowwww... Maybe ’cuz she took the restrictions away or somethin’...”

“Vile One removed chains?” That made no sense at all to Bazzalth, unless... “Scavenger-crawler freed as part of Vile One’s ruse to get Pari-child?!”

“Pffft!” The crawler shook with what Bazzalth believed was laughter, and Bazzalth immediately began to worry about another seizure like the last time. Luckily, that did not come to pass, at least yet. “Sofie? Naw. Tha’ girl’s too honest. Stupid honest. Not a chance. If she removed... if she removed the chains, ’t’s because she fucked up ’n’ she’s tryin’ ta un-fuckup or whatever. Undo ’er mistakes ’n’ all tha’.”

“Crawler cannot truly believe that Vile One did not intend for bindings,” Bazzalth protested, aghast at the naiveté of the impaired crawler.

“Why not?” the Scavenger shot back. “Ya wanna... ya wanna know the truth? Ya wanna know? We’re... we’re allllllllllll fuckups. Me ’n’ Sofie ’n’ Gabby, three giant fuckups. None of us know wha’ we’re doin’. We’re all jus’ tryin’ ta keep our heads above water ’n’ hopin’ the next wave isn’t the one ta push us under fer good. We’re all just... fuckups with too much power and not enough sense.

“I... I killed somebody, ya know... well, I killed lotsa... lotsa people, really... but this one, I didn’ mean ta do it. I jus’ like kinda went...” He made a small shove with his arm, sliding it forward slightly along the arm of the chair. “...boop! ’N’ she was dead. Jus’ like tha’. Boop!

“’N’... ’n’ tha’s not supposed ta be how it is, ya know? There’s this saying in my world... with great power... comes.... comes........ you gotta be responsible with it.”

Bazzalth had never heard such a stupid saying before. Power did not come with responsibility at all! In fact, one might argue that the more powerful one was, the more freed from responsibility they became. After all, what were those weaker than them going to do about it?

“But I’m nothin’ compared ta Sofie,” the crawler rambled on. “She’s the queen of fuckups. I booped one person, bu’ she... here she was goin’ ’round the world boopin’ people lef’ ’n’ righ’ ’n’ she didn’ even know ’til jus’ recently... it’s like finding ou’ ya’ve been a serial killer fer a decade in yer sleep. What’re ya supposed ta do with tha’?” He sniffed. “But at the same time, she booped me too so fuck her, you know? Heh heh heh heh.

“Ya don’ have ta make Sofie do nothin’ abou’ these chains or whatever, Bazz. Trust me, she’ll get rid of ’em fer ya. I can tell. She’s... she’s always pokin’ ’er nose inta ev’rythin’... carin’ too much ’bout ev’rybody in the... in the whole world. Tha’s why she feels guilty now ’bout ev’rythin’, even if it wasn’t ’er fault. Prob’ly thinks Pari died ’cuz of her too, the idiot.

“But ’t’s okay, we’re gonna bring ’er back ’n’... ’n’ ev’rybody’s gonna be happy again ’n’ yer gonna fix me ’cuz yer... yer the science dragon and ev’rythin’s gonna be alright. Ev’rythin’s gonna... gonna be...”

The crawler’s head dipped for a moment before righting itself. Bazzalth could see the crawler struggling against the urge to sleep and only marginally succeeding.

“Hey, c’mere,” the Scavenger slurred, his eyes drooping. “C’mere c’mere c’mere c’mere c’mere.”

The crawler wanted to prank him again, Bazzalth knew, but he humored the little thing anyway and moved closer.

“Put yer hand... claws... whatever... put ‘em up in fron’ of me... yeah... now make a... make a fist...”

Confused, Bazzalth did as requested, only to watch as the crawler made a fist with his hand as well. Using his chair arm to move the arm, the Scavenger brought his tiny fist up and tapped it against Bazzalth’s so lightly that Bazzalth would not even have felt it had he not been paying rapt attention.

“Bam! Heheh,” the crawler chortled as he unclenched his fist and wiggled his fingers in a strange manner. “Brofist.”

Bazzalth had no idea what was going on. “What crawler do?”

“Brofist, mang! Means we’re friends ’n’ stuff now. ’Cuz we’re bros, ya an’ me. Science bros! Heheheeee... science rules!” The crawler slumped over a little more, his eyes drooping further. “Hey, listen... listen, ‘kay? I’m... I’ma take a nap fer a bit, ‘kay? If my mom calls, tell ‘er... tell ‘er I want waffles fer breakfast...”

The Scavenger’s head fell once more, and this time, he did not recover. Bazzalth gave him a quick inspection and verified that he still breathed, then finally allowed himself to relax a little. His head still felt like it was spinning, his world having been put through some strange, inebriated whirlwind. He struggled to come to grips with the various thoughts and feelings rampaging through his head.

Almost magically, Pari would return to life. The bindings on Pari’s soul, and the rest of them, were supposedly accidental and would be resolved for him? It was almost too outlandish to accept... but Bazzalth had trouble believing that the impaired crawler had been able to tell any substantial falsehoods, affected as he had been. Which only made the other stuff the Scavenger had said even harder to deal with.

Kinship.

When was the last time another had expressed such kinship with him? Never, he realized. Not from any other person, not even his own sister. There was Pari, of course, but that had been quite different. She’d expressed affection and adoration, yes, but never kinship. No, nobody had ever understood Bazzalth, not like this crawler did. Not even once.

Bazzalth did not believe in the concept of miracles, only in extreme statistical outliers. Only now, looking back, did he realize that one such outlier had just occurred. Against all expectations, Bazzalth found he greatly desired for the crawler known as Blake to live to see another day. No, more than that. Simply curing the crawler’s infection was no longer acceptable. He would find a way to restore the Scavenger’s—no, Blake’s—body to its proper form, so that Blake would be able to live a long and proper life—for a crawler anyway. Then the two of them would unlock the mysteries of the universe.

Returning to his chemical storage cabinet, he pulled out several other vials, each filled with a compound that would help mitigate the lingering effect of the last injection. One by one he administered them, watching with satisfaction as the crawler’s fitful sleep eased into a soft slumber. Then, he turned back to his magnifier and began to prepare another trial. He had a task to complete, after all, and only a handful of days to do it. He would not fail.