Germination 11

August 8th, 2032.

You did the best thing you could have, Reyna thought, tightly wrapped around her little skylord. She saw the Truth of the large horde, it was in the air they breathed.

She felt the harmonious song of her kind, a beautiful maelstrom of minds and memories. A hundred and more minds creating their own gyres within the world, delivering their song into the world.

Her horde-mate, who shined with the vacuum of the void, who stared at her with awe and the eagerness to learn. She had not changed at all, watching each and every griffin with fascination.

Delicately she stepped forward, holding her head up high under the imperial gaze of the wanakt. Skylord. Where her kind was the sleek hawk, his was the form of the great stork, tall and vast.

Why have you come here, little nightscreamer? With one of void-energy-in-flesh.

A sleek song of the mind questioned the young griffin. The mind-song pulsed with memory and thought, of frequencies high and low encoded into the universe.

We seek the beings known as Thread, the light that screams out from the eyes of the dead, She sang the Truth to the horde-leader.

The horde-leader was one of the White Dancers, one of the largest breeds of their kind. Only those witchkind called hippogriffs grew larger still, the corpse eaters who scavenged the bodies of the greater beasts.

The White Dancer narrowed his eyes.

Truth. Do you seek refuge among our horde? Or simply memories and knowledge? Impressions seeped across the connection, the memory of sickeningly sweet tar scent, the mourning agony of dead hatchlings and mothers.

Memory and Knowledge. The thought was sent along with an undercurrent of pleading and hope. Thread has breached the veil, devoured of her kind and theirs. Stolen energy-in-flesh for themselves.

Celia looked curious, but also pained, chewing on her lip at the near-silent communication between griffin and griffin.

“I know you’re communicating somehow, a psychic signal embedded into sound?” Celia theorized and Reyna marveled at the intuition of her little skylord. “But… if they know something? A lot of people, including them, are going to die if we don’t do something.”

She thinks of us as people then? He said to her with a pulse of curiosity, moving carefully.

She snorted, her tail swaying slightly. Yes she does. She is no fool, she communicated. She sees energy-in-flesh, sees us as we are.

Celia’s eyes flashed with a flicker of silver. Energetic violet-blue particles popped into existence, dark solids lightened by the void.

The White Dancer startled. She is blessed by the mother-in-the-dark? By she who is Calafia? Bewilderment spread across the quivering air.

Reyna simply purred in bemusement. She holds a powerful Gift, to bear the element of Soul within energy-within-flesh. See her strength, see her connections!

The White Dancer grumbled as he witnessed the void light which slithered out from Celia’s skin. Tangles of her energy, a web touching all her companions. The two dragon-kin, their red-blue energies flared with the touch of the seeping void. The wolf-kin, was a rippling tangle of the Green and the Blue with cracks of the Black and Silver, drinking of the energies offered by her friend.

The goblin child was the least tangled, the energies of the White flickering against the dark.

She has not learned the gift of healing, the horde leader questioned.

Healing-with-void is long forgotten, Reyna mourned for what had been lost. The healing arts had all been lessened with the death of the void-healers.

His gaze sharpened as he stared at the heart of her little skylord’s soul.

We shall help, the threaded ones deserve to feel peace. To not be trapped in a place between life and death. We will Teach, we will show them the Truth.

Reyna let out a crooning joyful call.

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The griffin, I knew this species. It was the White Dancer Griffin, the largest of the long tailed griffins. Only the hippogriffs were greater in mass, weighing some two hundred tons, and thirty three meters at the shoulder. Equine builds versus the serpentine builds of the White Dancers.

Meeting a being twenty meters tall and seventy meters in length was mildly terrifying. The main trouble instead was the noise, an aching pressure in my ears at the conversations flitting between the horde. Mental communication wasn’t uncommon among otherkind beasts.

But the medium for their psychic abilities was… slightly painful, and I wasn’t sure why that was.

“I never thought I’d see a White Dancer again…” I could hear a certain goblin’s shocked murmur, eyes distantly nostalgic.

“The true griffins are complicated spirit-beasts,” Dinah added, ears flicking towards the feathered semi-avians. “The mind is a complex and many-layered thing, which is why only the greatest… or most specialized of beings can speak spirit to spirit. To touch the storm of the mind.”

“There’s lots of fear, hunger and rage lingering about,” Althea commented with her use of the World Eyes. “And air of course, dancing around each other in a frenzy.”

Reyna chirped happily, gesturing with her wings. The White Dancer rumbled and gestured for us to… follow?

The nesting site seemed to be old, ancient even. Built into what I was now more certain was a corpse, one some several kilometers long with a skull the length of a battleship. And it certainly wasn’t a Titan, just… a being vast on its own merits.

I curled my fingers in and out, absently pulling at the air with my magic. A tad wasteful, but it was good practice and stress relief. And safer than using fire or void. At a low level, at a high level… air was lethal.

I could see the cautious stares of many of the griffins as we moved in relative silence. Most were of a single species, the common griffin. Their underside was a pattern of light leonine gold, with a dorsal side of dark brown-blacks like an eagle. They had a thick mane of feathers around their necks… and were about twice the size of Reyna. There were opinicus too with their short tails, and robust humped backs.

The White Dancer brought us over to a shadowed area and I recoiled at the sight.

There in the shadows lay thick piles of bones, enough to cover my ankles or even my knees. There was a mess of rotted metals and fragmented plastics, what had to be armor plating and old weaves of fibrous armor. “What… what happened here?”

The big griffin was watching us, how we reacted, an analytical twist to vermillion eyes.

“I think I know.” Dinah said, an ominous thing to say here and now. A pained growl was sent by Reyna. I saw what she was looking at.

Oh.

It was a skeleton, a hundred meters long, of the same species as the White Dancer before us. Bones as thick as my torso, and a skull the length of two of me at least.

It wasn’t alone.

Piles of bodies, of beasts and witches centuries dead. Witches, pulped and fractured bones, scars where claws and wind had sheared through flesh. Others seemed to have… exploded from the inside out.

Air is life.

I swallowed bile, a hint of anger surging into my magic. Watching where magic and weapons had cut down to bone, where broken boots sat down on tiny fractured skulls.

Behind the skylord, was an old nest… with hundreds of smashed eggs and small fragile bones. Witch skeletons were layered on top, showing the key signs of overpressure where rib cages had collapsed. Where microfractures had spread like sinister fingers.

Some had their hands wrapped around their necks, likely from having their own breath stolen. Every single one was wearing the standard bearing of the Chantry, white cloaks and shattered red and gray masks.

“So this is why griffins started to retreat from Calafia?” I said aloud, asking the people who knew more.

“The Chantry hunted the griffins down, saying they were beasts in league with lawless witches. Outside the sparrow griffins who are just beasts, rather than spirit-beasts.” Dinah explained with a grimace as she watched the lingering avians.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

“Right… I know there’s about three or so… classes of otherkind, Beast, Spirit, Being. Beasts are magical creatures who are generally sentient but not sapient, physical, visceral beings. Spirits are ephemeral entities, like the spirits or the faerie which range in intelligence. Beings are fully sapient, possessing souls or spirits so complex they straddle the line.” I murmured to myself, still staring at the bones. “Did… did they hunt them for anything they could have known as spirit-beasts?”

Farrow shook his head. “Who knows… It's been centuries since the original hunts. Pretty much everyone knows griffins as either food, or as beasts of legend defeated by the Chantry.” He looked disgusted, claws flicking out in his anger.

His khi swept through the area, a flicker of warm spirit-fire rippling across existence. My skin prickled.

I was growing used to opening myself up to the sources of magic, each with their own Nature. Made it easier to feel how reality rippled.

The Red was like jumping across a fireplace, pure emotion riding high like the burning heart of the stars. Drawing on the promethean spark, was like drawing on the infinite depths of passion. My emotions flared hotter, my temper ran shorter and deeper.

I had to meditate whenever I drew on that source of power and perspective. Ultima said the Red was the determination and driving force of the universe. Any emotion was amplified, just as the Red was used to amplify and feed heat into true fire.

I glanced over to the massive griffin. “I’m sorry for what happened here.”

The White Dancer chuffed, but didn’t seem to think I was lying.

The truth is in the air…

I blinked and turned to Reyna who looked startled. “Hmm…” Had I heard something from her direction? “I think I understand if you don’t want to help, witches hurt you, they killed your kin.”

There was a murmuring ripple across the entire horde, a hundred and more songs pushing on air.

The horde leader shrugged his shoulders, an odd motion with wings followed and air refracted to reveal a fresh set of bodies. Dozens upon dozens of threaded ones, delicate spherical red surrounded by tendrils of black and white tendrils.

Oh.

That was at least five dozen individuals. How fast could these things reproduce? Or had they been building their numbers for a long time?

They haven’t been seen in a decade or so.

Ajani cursed. “By Calafia that is a nasty fucking possession!”

“Possession?” I asked carefully, eyebrows knitted in concern.

“I’m a Warder, remember?” He snarked openly, rolling his eyes. “I know binding, so I know of bewitchment, manipulating Connections to manipulate people, places and things. I can literally feel my tusks sparking.”

“This involves the power of the White.” It was a statement rather than a question. “I guess that’s why they’re screaming.”

The witches all flinched, and I suddenly had two hands on my shoulders. The hot scorching hands and claws of Dinah, and the dense, heavy weight of Althea’s fingers.

“You can hear them?” Dinah said with a deep seated concern as I craned my neck up.

“What’s the problem?” I asked.

“Connections are important,” Ajani replied. “But they’re also dangerous because things can attack through those connections. Oracles have to dive carefully… if you can hear whatever’s controlling these plasts…” he trailed off.

“It’s a connection that other beings can exploit.” I said with a fierce scowl.

There was a pulsing boom as the horde leader approached with an annoyed look. I mouthed sorry without thinking and he snorted.

I shook my head. “Sorry. What did you want to talk about—”

The griffin sang a song which whirled around the energies of the world, and I staggered. Flashes of images surged from inside my eyes, as information, as memories sank down the gullet of my working mind.

A rain of threads from the sky, of assembled massive forms killing and devouring as their souls sang a dirge of death. Entire rolls of memory, shaping and weaving themselves into a map. Flashes of cracks in reality gushing out floods of the threaded ones, of alien cityscapes in tears in reality.

Wings-and-claws-and-feathers, the pride of Air. Children of the Violet Sky.

The vision ended, but the memories didn’t as I blinked away spots of periwinkle.

I chirped with a second blink, the phantom sensations of feathers and claws and tails, of dancing lights on a spectrum my brain couldn’t see. Ultraviolet.

I leaned against both Althea and Dinah with a sigh. “Oww. Please don’t insert memories in my head, Sundiver.” I pushed against my temple, trying to quell a headache to no avail.

The White Dancer— Sundiver laughed.

“Celia?” Althea murmured into my ears. A smile rose on my face.

“I know what we need too, they’ve been fighting them for weeks now. So give me a map, and Ajani make yourself useful and set up some wards for these guys?”

Ajani didn’t protest, staring at the skeletons with a haunted expression.

This was going to be a mess. I just knew it.

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We had gotten a lot of good information from the griffins. I had written it all down, locations, their odd behaviors, known hive sites and so on. As well the tactics they had shown.

All of it had been accepted with no trouble, spread throughout the clans so they could do their part along with clanless trained warriors.

Which was technically all of them. A lot of people in this world could fight. But in Caudalann… no nations of fire trained everyone to fight. Because they were offen passionate, intense people shaped by a land of death and conflict.

The question then would be why I was standing before the grandmother of the Frazoiyo clan.

Alone.

Except I wasn’t alone was I? Dinah was next to me, her soul seeming to shrivel up and die in the presence of her kin. And I knew Ultima was here, having slipped into the Outer Sphere. She wasn’t a natural shaman like her mentor or Althea, but she could still work the spirits as all witches did. With the energies of their spirit.

Still didn’t leave me any less anxious even if I suppressed my expression of it.

Aclima of clan Frazoiyo, was somewhat shorter than her granddaughter. Only by a few inches of course, but it didn’t change much. Black scales where Dinah had midnight blue, and dark crimson where she had rojo-purpura. She wore an open back caramel brown tunic etched with lines of gold with a cloth belt wrapped around her thin waist. Along with a slitted cloak in solid crimson, and long stiff pants in black. Her hair literally looked like gold.

Her claws repeatedly tapped on the mahogany wood of her desk, neatly trimmed claws to a sharp edge. She definitely looked older than Dinah… in her thirties maybe?

Dragons aged far more gracefully than witches, who could live for centuries, and dragons… the wapuk could last a thousand or more years. True dragons… thousands, if not tens of thousands according to legend.

Those electric blue eyes were predatory, like they were trying to unravel my soul. But she wasn’t speaking… just waiting.

Power play. Treating us like lessers.

I straightened my shoulders, setting my jaw as I accepted the challenge. My own fingers nervously tapped the desk, and I could tell Dinah was shocked at my boldness.

But then I hated people like this…

A solid thirty seconds passed before the elder dragoness leaned back with a bemused smirk.

“It does fill me with pride that my granddaughter has found such… an interesting person. I did the same when I was young, a chip off the old block as you humans say.” She sounded warm and grandmotherly, but I knew better.

There was an edge to her words, a twist that made my heart beat faster, that reminded me of… certain people my mama no longer talked with.

Aclima’s smile was chillingly confident. “I expected something like this would happen someday. Any apprentice of Ultima would always be caught up in the web of life, right back to me. As is my right and due as a dragon.” There was a bitter twist to her lips, dark intent in those eyes.

“Is that a fact?” I challenged her despite that being incredibly stupid against a dragon. I was pulling on fire and void, a layered wreath of will and imagination. With her words I felt like someone was pulling at my will, like subtle fingers prying at my weaknesses.

“This kingdom has been mine for a hundred and more years, I know my clan, I know my people. I know how this will end.” She rubbed her claws, scraping metal-hard keratin together.

“Grandmother.” Dinah sounded stricken, hurt even.

“You were always my hope for the future Dinah dear,” I could see how her fire drained and amplified emotions, like bellows backed by words. Aclima’s face twisted into something bitter and dark and amused. “You look so much like my dear old mother… but my blood runs through your veins.” I shivered at the joy revealed in electric eyes.

“I don’t…” Dinah hesitated, seemingly going limp against her grandmother. Instinct or a sign of how much Aclima has hurt her?

There was smoke in the elder dragoness’ gaze. “I still know how this all ends, you are just like me. You are not the first to challenge my way of things. But all of them have fallen in line as they should. But it has always made the clan strong, and loyal to me.” She spread her arms in emphasis, fangs gleaming with sparks.

“Lots of people have said things like that before.” I pointed out. And pushed the void outwards, shielding Dinah from the fiery heart of her kin.

Dinah breathed, her inner fire flaring into a brilliant flash of Red. “I do not believe you know everything grandmother. The past shapes the future, but it does not determine all that will be.”

Her grandmother’s smile curdled.

“You are quite confident aren’t you? Normal for a teenager, human or not.” Aclima mused aloud, casually insulting my own intelligence. She was like a draconic spider, using hooks and levers to control.

I hated her.

I bared my teeth with purposeful insult. “If that’s what you believe.”

“I believe you wanted a report grandmother?” Dinah added with her own gleaming eyes.

Aclima leaned back with a self assured grin. “Yes, best to get to it my little dark dragon.”

Dinah flinched.

… oh this was a nasty piece of work.

I’ll never let this woman change Dinah. Never.