Germination 14

August 27th, 2032.

I flicked my tongue out, and blanched at the taste of the sea. Salty was one thing, but an ocean rich in iron and exotic metals was… disgusting.

This time we had the whole team together, though Mads was hanging back for her own safety. Being a member of a people genocided by religious fanatics made it… less than safe.

Instead she was back home in the same equivalent spot, which sadly for her was a giant hot desert. We were also being escorted by Ultima, who was much, much stronger than any of us.

Her staff was still covered in the arrays of potent workings of the craft, a continuous beating pulsar of energies. A powerful spellcasting focus, a device designed to focus magic and provide housing for a familiar. Spell focuses, Foci tend to be made of natural materials. More advanced focuses had a magical core, and a composite layering of conduits.

Of course that natural material didn’t need to be normal, it could come from a rigid or a plast just as well, or even be mined. As long as it was found not manufactured it would work as an excellent conduit to carve with runes and cyfrins. The following step from carving and or forging your wand, stave, sword, staff would be to emplace a weave of a spell within, then made perpetual with a set of runes.

That weave was the exact same weave as the one I had created with nine light glyphs and a single void glyph. Turns out witches had just lost their ability to Feel the void, and mistook it for a strange pattern of the White and the Black.

A full spell focus was almost always a multi-layer composite, akin to a bow and its wood, horn and sinew. The core or pith was almost always a material able to store huge amounts of energy, the third layer or heartwood was a matrix of magical materials that supported the entire focus.

The second layer or sapwood was made of elderwood… a label for ancient trees that conduct and pipeline magic very well. The first layer of bark was just a coating to shield the focus. Focus.

Complicated stuff. “I don’t think we’re much farther now.”

Ultima nodded. “I’m currently pulling you all into the Black, shadowing you from sight and feel. Best to keep those monsters from swarming you.”

I could feel the oily murkiness, the twisted darkness wreathing skin and muscle and sinew, blood and bone and spirit and soul. It was like eyes blinking inside the darkness within my own body, like fingers and claws and scintillating teeth gently cutting along my soul.

It felt like home.

I followed the subtle tug on the back of my mind, teeth buzzing with static. Blazing violet-blue sparked like fire from silver light, suffusing skin until it seemed almost solid.

I watched the foggy sea below, waters averaging almost a hundred degrees celsius, fueled by volcanism. A heat and energy that would melt apart the very proteins, lipids, glycans and and nucleic acids that make up my body.

To strike at flesh and mind is to strike at shadows on the wall, useless.

I blinked at the unbidden thought… which didn’t sound like mine, not in a way that made sense.

I breathed deep, and with trepidation… spread my awareness into the space and time around us. With my eyes I could see auras, the esoteric energies of the immaterial. But this was a deeper dive into the realms unseen, running invisible fingers along the yawning fabric of the nothingness.

Follow the wild things Void Child, was said to me as my heart beat and pumped blood, a chill running down a column of a billion neurons. Fingers plucked and pinched at the fabric of reality, and I hissed at the… crater in existence.

Reality seemed to be twisted around the center of the sea, space expanding and contracting as the otherworld broke reality. Ultima called such places domains, the lairs and territories of powerful supernatural beings, including witches. Miniature realms created by the sheer weight and power seeping into the world. It was subtly warped, like the eye of a storm.

Oh boy.

“Well that explains why we could never find their nest,” Ultima spoke aloud for our benefit. “Their hive is inside a realm, a moving garden that can subtly twist the very connections tying life together.”

Fuck.

“You’re doing what?!” Dinah’s voice cut through the atmosphere of dread as we approached the shifting film of existence. “No. Father, I am not questioning our need to attack the hive. But we need more information on their… they have a domain father!”

Ultima hissed. “That doesn’t sound good.”

“They’re coming here aren’t they?” I said quietly, hoping I was wrong. Hoping to any god that would listen as I watched the film bubble and boil for what felt like a mile around.

“There’s a lot of old grief and rage being fanned,” Althea spoke aloud, pale gold piercing into my dark, dark brown. “Everyone knows someone killed or devoured by the threaded ones, and we know where the nest is.”

Dinah looked ready to scream, as claws clenched around a poor squeaking golm-speaker. “Yes, father. We’ll scout where we can.”

“How far out are they?” I asked as she hung up, Dinah practically quivering with rage.

And fear.

“Ten minutes for airships from both Caudalann and Anagen, they set off earlier. I wasn’t told.” She sounded bitter, a low growl rumbling my organs.

We passed through the barrier, and reality skipped a beat as the realm twitched.

I held on tight to a wary Reyna as she glided down to the… what in god’s name is that?

It resembled a coral reef… if a coral reef was made of bone and melted plastic and rubber. Spires of bleached white with delicate patterns of melted hydrocarbon textures. The coral reef was a third the size of Cruorpool, and five times as high.

I swallowed.

A screaming light seemed to shine from the walls, from the air and the ground, and the quivering flesh of a thousand dead.

And an army was heading right towards them, without fully understanding what they were dealing with.

Is this what became of you Cassiopeia? Dead light screaming dead songs?

I knew this was not going to be easy.

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Ultima landed first, holding out her staff. “This time… we’re going to need you on the field Luna.” To my surprise, her familiar popped out into reality, spreading wings flashing with light.

“Huh? We’re going to use Luna to scout?” I asked. “Is that safe?”

Althea was staring, eyes wide and shocked. Dinah had gone still.

Ultima chuckled. “Did you really think Luna was just a moth? No, she's a bit more special than that.”

“Suzugia Moth…” Hakim whispered with excitement, practically vibrating in place.

White fur and scales flashed with ominous crimson light, and Luna… grew in bursting stages until she was as big as I was. I saw how the moth pulled on the darkness and the burning pyre within, a crackling pressure on reality. Like an iceberg was suddenly tossed into an unprepared ocean.

In a blink Luna was inches away from my face, and I didn’t flinch. She flew in my face a lot, even if she was usually smaller.

Precious child, a voice sang in my mind. I smiled into Luna’s silky fur, paradoxical heat and cold looping around one another on my skin.

“Susugia Moths… are creatures of the Deep and the Spark aren’t they?” I asked quietly, able to prod at the boiling sea of power under her exoskeleton.

Two understandings of the world, how change is carried by the tiniest of messengers. And how to reduce all things to their simplest form…

I shivered at the odd thought, gently thumbing my amulet with a complicated expression. I had been backed away from unlocking the mystery of the amulet.

But once we were done here I was going to fix that blunder.

Dinah looked frightened at how I tussled the moth’s furry head. “Susugia moths are powerful beings, fire and brimstone. Their power can bathe battles in fire, fire so hot it devours matter for them to consume until all goes still.”

I hummed. “So that’s why her fire is so weird,” Luna ate from time to time, lighting plants and animals on fire, and drawing in their matter and heat until the air was full of ice crystals. She seemed to set khi on fire, liberating the energy like a chemical reaction. “But she’s a sweet girl.” I patted the moth with a giggle.

Luna hovered back, flying on wings coated in flux lines of magnetism ignited with the Red. Which… gave me ideas on what I could do with that specific well of magic.

I watched Ultima move, her claws twitching to pluck at unseen strings, the strands of connection itself. It was a bubble, hiding us from sight and view.

We moved quickly after that, as Althea and I took the league in guiding us towards where we needed to go. I was still reaching out through the void, riding the current. Ultima’s own power followed like smoke, like dark fog swiveling around tendrils of un-ripples in the fabric.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

It was like standing at the edge of a spider’s web, so I took a breath. Air rippled slightly, cooled and circulated carefully. A good weave from Reyna, a means to purify and filter air. It was going to make a good glyph device soon.

A group of six witches, a familiar, a griffin and a human walk into a giant hive.

I didn’t snort, merely following the curling connections between what had to hundreds if not thousands of threaded ones. Every single one moved in an orderly dance, centered around a burning star.

“Got it, don’t bend any of the ground with your magic. They’ll know.” I warned the gang, flicking out my tongue as I tasted the minds in the dark.

We moved quickly, darting between patrols of threaded ones. There were the individual workers, then the warrior-bivouac, dozens of them packed into shells of interlocking armor. There was another bivouac, a gestalt which seemed built for construction, reinforcing walls, adding traps and pits, displaying intelligence.

The witches had all turned various pale shades at that, and I wondered how intelligent their enemies were. This was…

Ultima and Dinah helped us avoid traps, and I could see a certain goblin muttering under his breath.

“Invoking darkness is a good way to encircle them… but like to like is another way—” He cut himself off as we dived down into a tunnel leading toward the central heart of the hive. He had choked, trembling, eyes gleaming in the dark.

I slid out of the cosmic web, and blinked rapidly.

Oh.

At the center of the colony were thousands upon thousands of workers, and hundreds of colony warriors and engineers and more…

But at the center of all of it was, there was a massive disc of plasticine flesh a hundred meters across, with limbs stretching off two kilometers into the darkness of the hive.

“No…” Ultima murmured with wide eyes, as the impossible creature moved with glorious purpose.

The queen… looked sick, dense skin was inflamed, leaking tar in rivers of blood. Cracks had spread throughout the body of the Thread Queen, reflecting a landscape of bright stars.

I almost tripped at the continuous scream emanating from the queen, like music, stretching between notes like an ever-changing pattern.

“I can hear it. It’s screaming.” I swallowed bile, it was like tinnitus, like a cry for help as a living being was devoured from the inside out.

Dinah hissed, and heat pulsed into the air, coating me in a shield of invisible fire. The scream distorted and faded, but the tone was there for me to follow. Better. I was—

Then the mountain shook, and my heart fell into my stomach.

The queen rippled as the cracks spread then blinked like distorted eyes, and the plast rose upwards. And with it the song it sang grew louder and more horrid.

It was like all the loneliness and misery in the world. I eyed the edge of the tunnel where it led to a hundred meter drop. A horrible, agonizing pull on my sanity.

I was alone, just a speck of life a mile underground, lost in stone and rock and currents of monsters. No one I was no one. All I had to do was step forward into the warm ending embrace of the maw…

I breathed, sinking into Ultima as the queen burst to life, eyes spreading like cancerous tumors.

Child, did you truly think I couldn’t see you?

My breath hitched as the connections Ultima had blocked were being unblocked.

Come to me, my child.

A literal voice of god seemed to ring in my ears.

Come to me and die.

The mountain began to shake apart, as hundreds of tendrils coiled with a bloody minded hatred, waiting to spring up.

Ultima moved as the queen, as that thing lurched upwards with impossible velocity.

The mountain broke first before the Mother.

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I was hanging onto Reyna for dear life, as she twisted around falling rubble, or cut through them with blades of air. The entire hive had been utterly demolished as the queen had spread her limbs.

Fifty limbs which themselves split into hundreds of coiling tendrils, serrated extensions of pulsating flesh. I could see the fleet that surrounded the former hive, dozens of boats littered with witches and weapons.

They reacted promptly and blasted the entire landscape with hundreds of spells, until the entire area was bathed in lethal energies. Other witches instead summoned various kinds of supernatural creatures, ghosts, fae constructs, magical animals, including a Jarvey casting a range of words I shouldn’t repeat.

The curses didn’t take, sliding off the skin of the Mother with terrifying ease. Dead stars shone under the skin of that thing wearing a living corpse.

“That thing isn’t a threaded one anymore,” I whispered in quiet horror as one tendril lashed out with seeming slowness. Until I realized the limb was moving at speeds that made the air part with storm-winds. “It never was.”

Oh you figured it out dear child?

A limb speared a ship, splitting into tendrils to stab into the crew, and they screamed and screamed and screamed. Their flesh sloughed away, and their spiritual energies were consumed, light and radiation flaring in the dark.

I could see Dinah’s father watch first in horror… then in ceaseless rage, as he spread his wings and soared. He held paired dao swords covered in runes and other patterns, and his energies began to trail along the blades.

There was a sudden push and pull of Blue, the primordial chaos pulling at the deepest dregs of matter. It seemed to pull everyone and everything in one direction, with all the gravity of the moon.

I could see his face pull into a snarl, as he drew from the chaos of the battle, his blades singing as they gathered a vortex of power.

Boomsingers, that was his bloodline.

The air flowed forward like a stormfront, and as it passed through me… it tasted like… emotions flowing down a river.

Loathing, hatred, pain, now crawl away and die.

Flesh crumpled and shattered under the spell, gathering from the energies from hundreds of witches.

The queen didn’t cease at all, as the night sky seemed to flood up and outwards from her shell, forming claws and mouths and limbs.

Will you walk into my parlor?

And they all screamed.

It was an attack on the mind, all the sorrow in the world, a deep seething light aching stabbing into synapses and neurons.

Witches were falling right out of the sky, with some outright being devoured alive by clusters of threaded ones. Luna was raging, bringing down hellfire in streams of deep blue. It wasn’t enough.

No. No…

She reached out with deadly precision, a spear of tendrils aiming for Dinah.

No.

I reached for the void, twisting limbs struck with neural agony. I imagined the sign of the void, pulling more and more power into existence. I pinched the void into violent layers, as matter disintegrated, then added a delicate skein to contain it.

I circled around the Mother, gathering power from the world, and compressing vicious hungry chaotic nothing into a bubble. Until it was larger than my entire body, a barely contained bomb. I held tight the barrier, then peeled the front away into the shape of a barrel—

A lance of power was unleashed in an instant, as matter unraveled into white-hot plasma. It pierced through the central body of the creature, the void-plasma spreading inside burning flesh like poison, like venom.

The creature thrashed in agony and then and then…

Stop.

The entire battlefield went still, as that voice rang clearly, almost motherly.

Its vessel went still, ignoring the horrific burns and plasma eating away at its brain.

The stars beneath skin blinked, before forming into a kind smile.

Now that is interesting isn’t it? Precocious child, you presume to touch the void freely? Without permission, without death?

“I have permission.” I said without thinking, and the entity paused.

Oh? Then I shall gladly learn who gave you it by ripping it from your very atoms!

A portal tore itself open to reveal eyes upon eyes upon eyes, with pupils made of dying stars. I was thrown off of Reyna who let out an enraged roar…

And plunged into the endless Light.

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Dinah wanted to scream, wanted to rip and tear when Celia got pulled into the portal by that monster. That foolish, stupid human had gotten the attention of whatever thing had been possessing the queen.

“You’re a damn hard headed fool!” She tore into her father, who was staring at her like he didn’t know her. “I told you we needed more time, and now your foolishness killed her!”

“I… I wanted to end the threat that has been harassing our people for centuries,” Ladon spoke with regret. “We’ve lost so many, in our clan, in our nation. Tens of thousands over generations.”

“The threaded ones were never the enemy… merely the tools for that… entity. Slaves, nothing but slaves.”

Ladon was still. “They were screaming weren’t they? How long have we not seen this, and why?”

Dinah spat fire, blinking away boiling tears. “It doesn’t matter now, she’s been taken and is…” she didn’t want to say it.

“She’s not dead.” Ultima suddenly appeared as if reality had been cut away. “I can cut open a path, and it might get us to the heart of the true enemy.”

Dinah shook her head, glancing over to Celia’s friends… and Ajani.

Althea was grinding her teeth, utterly wreathed in the boiling plasma of the Green. Fangs and claws aching to tear through flesh and bone.

“You’re the one thing keeping us alive with Luna and your spells on the field.” Dinah said with agony in her heart, her loyalty pulled towards her friend, and towards her people. “I can’t… make that call.”

Ultima grimaced, grief and shame in her eyes.

Then a miracle happened.

The air rippled with a call, like a great panther, like a great bird of prey all at once. From the skies came a hundred and more griffins in all shapes and sizes, all led by a White Dancer.

No. It can’t be?

The horde flapped their wings and down came the Hurricane, surging down to flatten the puppet queen.

“Dinah. Go.”

The dragoness stared at her father. “What?”

Ladon smiled. “Go save your friend, show her that for us… loyalty is everything.”

Dinah beamed, and grabbed both Althea and Hakim in her arms. A weight fell down on her tail and she blinked at Ajani.

The goblin shrugged. “What? I don’t want the human to die, I’m not heartless.”

Ultima blinked forward in a flash of shadow. “Take this, I think we’re… dealing with something not of this world.”

Dinah recoiled at the sheer darkness of the artifact in her hand, a simple knife but one drenched in rarefied violence and hungry shadow.

“You’re not coming?” Dinah blurted out.

Ultima shook her head. “My student is a sweet kid, I don’t think she wants that many deaths on her conscience.”

Althea nodded, eyes fierce, flaring with the Green. “I’m going to rip that bloody abomination to shreds.” There was promise in her voice.

Hakim hissed. “We had a deal, that’s all there is to it.”

Dinah launched forward, just as Ultima spun her staff, colors out of space dancing under her influence. Reality tore open, a great rip into the fabric.

And together the four witches fell down the rabbit hole.