Germination 15

August 27th, 2032.

Light streamed in through a window, as I overlooked the descent. There was a general warmth in the air, with stray beams of golden sunlight cutting through the dappled roof. The gentle music offered comfort, easing the static in my ears, that edging anxiety and confusion that marked every second of my existence.

I was sitting down on a couch, feeling safe, feeling at ease. When was the last time I had been this calm?

A door slammed open. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it?” He had the same kind smile, the same fair skin, and modest hands brushing back black bangs.

I beamed. “Hey, dad.” I hid the tremble in my hands, clenching my fists tight. “I guess you’re back from a new experiment?”

He nodded with a twinkle in his eyes. “Of course, we’re working on some interesting advancements in Applied Metaphysics when it comes to the brain. Strange loops seem to have connections to some of our experiments with probing planck-scale phenomena using atomic and molecular wave packets.”

I tilted my head with an identical smile. “The brain huh?”

Dad offered a broad goofy grin. “We’re probing the very deepest annals of physics and strange loop cognition here. There’s lots to learn.”

“Well, I certainly know that much from my teacher. The world is so much bigger than I ever imagined.” I admitted with a shrug and a shy smile. “The pressure is pretty intense.”

My dad nodded. “Do you want to talk about it?” He asked, placing his hand on my shoulder, an almost ghostly touch.

I felt my facade crack. “I… so much has happened since I started learning with Ultima. Since you were gone, since she left us too, everything fell apart. But it feels like things are going to be okay and then… this world is amazing. But it’s too big for one human girl.”

Dad acknowledged my words with a bum. “I remember my work being the same way. It’s not your fault if the pressure is proving to be a little too much.”

Your fault, it is your fault, your fault you’re here and making a mess.

My grin was a broken, jagged thing. “I just… I want to help but I don’t know how, I wanted this. So why does it hurt? Why does it have to be so dangerous?”

“It’s okay, I’ve gotten in over my head before too. Nothing special.” His expression was oddly flat.

“I… okay.”

“You’re still young, no one knows when they’ll be ready. That’s life.” He shrugged casually.

I was a fool wasn’t I? Just a stupid kid playing a fantasy.

I blinked tears out of my eyes, rubbing my face as my stomach lurched and my anxiety sang through my body. It hurt.

“Oh? What’s wrong? The truth hurts, but we can work past that. I’m your dad after all, I’m here to help.” No he wasn’t, he was gone he was gone he was gone…

“I just wanted to help people like you.” My breath hitched painfully, as I mumbled onto his shoulder.

Oh…

The hand on the back of my neck tightened, claws trailing down.

Oh, Cecilio… my father’s voice shrills with a venomous sweetness, and a chill ran down my spine.

How much longer are you going to drag this out?

I couldn’t pull away, I couldn’t even breath as the world constricted on me like a vice. Too much sound, too much light, too much itchiness crawling under my skin, it burned.

I can only see out of the corner of my eyes as dad’s corpse turned to reveal empty sockets, tunnels into dead starlight. A smile painted unnaturally wide and cheery, with broad fangs and a gullet of light so dense all reality fell away, twisting the eerie shadows of the room.

I screamed.

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

The glass shattered before Althea’s face as she stood at the edge of a land quite different from the battlefield they had left. There was no clash of armies here, only a world of glass and silk threads instead of flat stony land and jagged hills and hives.

What was this place?

She could pick up the scent of entropy, of burning sunshine, of the bitter notes of the hungry fundament of the void. There was a flurry of spirit-kind, thousands of aspects, sparks of light, twisting knots of void, and various elementals hiding from the spider at the center of the web.

“We’re in the Prime Spirit,” Althea spoke aloud, clarifying for the entire party. “One that’s being heavily warped by… whatever is puppeting the threaded ones.”

“I think we’re dealing with an… Other.” Dinah spoke aloud, making Althea flinch at her suggestion. “Ultima said this thing was not of this world. The pressure it exudes is familiar to me.”

“I’ve got some good shields set up,” Ajani added with a quiet murmur, gesturing to a complex bracelet with attached shields made of platinum, iron, copper, nickel brass and gold. Cyfrin letters were linked by the chains, and she could feel the protective magics embedded into the chains. “Not sure it’ll be enough against a god.”

Althea growled and he flinched. “This thing is no god of mine or ours,” the spirits pulsed and wavered. “Not all Others are all-powerful, and this one can’t be if it’s been fighting us for two hundred years.”

Dinah’s eyes widened, and her confidence returned in a flare of heat. “She’s right, this Other has to take a vessel, which means it’s vulnerable in some way. It can be defeated.”

There was much to do, Althea clenched her fists as she took the lead. She smiled wryly, poking at Ajani. The goblin looked surprised but stayed steady and she knew they would need that steadiness. That strength and force of will was the underlying backing of a true warden.

Althea heard the whispers of the land, glass sang, thread weeped, while air yawned and cursed. She scented the wrong smell wafting in the air, and she let her claws slide out.

“There are guardian spirits here, scuttling around.” Althea declared and warned as the gang spread out. “The concept of light, wrath, and hate is wrong here.” She was already carefully reaching for their opposites, knowing they would counter the monsters lurking in broad daylight.

Scintillating mirrors flickered and pulsed with images, and memory… and the entire world was covered in light. Althea barked and Ajani stepped forward, and a bubble expanded outwards, shielding them from the light of madness.

The threads and mirrors were gone, replaced by a vast mindscape, doors upon doors and fragments of broken scenery etched into reality, with floors of glass and ominous glowing fog dancing around the spaces between scenes.

I know this place.

This place was one covered in invisible knives, like spiritual scalpels stabbing into memories, into places of vulnerability. She could hear sobbing, a wretched painful wound that pulled at her heartstrings.

The void whispered, follow the pain, wolf-child.

The group of four walked through layers of scenes, colliding against each other with visceral violence. Glorious purpose guided the werewolf and her tentative pack, weaving around patrols of liquid patterns of light.

She stopped at a particular scene, the white sterile walls of a human hospital deeply carved into the fraying fabric of the spirit world. There was a small child there, staring listlessly at a wall. They were surrounded by rivers of light like delicate webs, pinning them in place.

She took a step forward and a taloned hand was placed on her shoulder. She scowled at the dragoness responsible.

“Move carefully, you likely know better what the danger here is… but anger can cause mistakes.” Genuine concern was in the dragon’s dark gold eyes.

Althea nodded, and lifted a hand as she whispered a litany. “Veiled darkness, the ceaseless disparity, the warm sable of the womb and the death of stagnation. Heed the call of the voice of the Inner Sphere.” She began after the shortest of nods.

Ajani acknowledged her by casting dust along the ground, circling around the scene until it was surrounded in a circle of dirt. Magic pulsed and warped as it was contained within, holding four witches, a child and spirits in place.

“Rise up to confront the light, reveal the lies hidden in the day, raise your hand against that which has no end! Under your night sky, devour the maddening foe, return choice to your right hand!” Althea felt her vision fill with a sheen of cyan as her blood rose in unison.

The light had no recourse as midnight blue spirits rose from the growing shadows, in a flurry of motion they mounted themselves over the web. The light sank down into the darkness, infinite choices pared down to just one.

The spirits both… broke apart into flurries of motes, light and shadow melding into one another before sliding apart.

Althea grinned as she walked over to the child, who looked confused.

“¿Quien eres?” Their voice was a quiet and shy little thing, rubbing dark, dark eyes full of pain and grief.

“I’m a friend, we’re all your friends.” She gestured to her people with a warm grin. “And we’re trying to help someone very important to us out, save her from a bad thing. Can you help us?”

The kid blinked. “Help? I… want to help, I can do that.”

“Can you tell me your name?” Althea asked, hiding her nerves behind a fanged smile.

“Cec…” The child stuttered, folding in on themselves before speaking clearly. “Celia, my name is Celia.”

Oh, I had a feeling but… Althea ignored the keening cry in her mind that wanted to pull the child to her chest and run.

But a much bigger part of her wanted to butcher the creature responsible for harming her closest friend.

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

Her much larger hands dwarfed the hands of the child… entity collected from the memory.

“Can you tell me why you were there?” Althea asked gently, not wanting to frighten the human child.

“Papa is gone.” Was said with a fake cheerfulness from the child, enough to stop the group in their tracks. “He got really sick from an accident at work, and there was nothing anyone could do.”

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

Ajani swallowed nervously, ears twitching, regret dancing in his eyes. “That… that’s fucked.”

Hakim nudged the goblin with his elbow, shaking his head. “Don’t.” Her friend was clutching a sword made of human-steel, deeply infused with soul and might.

“Can you tell us where we need to go… to find you as you are now?” Althea followed the path her soul whispered to her, being kind to the far younger human.

The child’s eyes darkened. “You have to follow the pain, the line of suffering.” Her grip had tightened, and Althea felt her heart break. “That’s how you can help.”

Althea chewed on her lip. “We’ll be right there with you, okay?”

The gloomy child nodded, and dragged her forward along the floor of glass which made up the mental space given spiritual mass.

“Perhaps you can tell us about yourself?” Dinah broke the awkward silence as the group wandered, following the faint echoes of phantom pain.

Little Celia grinned, revealing an adorable front gap. “Oh there’s lots to tell. Umm… I really like dinosaurs, they’re amazing creatures that used to roam the Earth millions of years ago. Like… stego-saur-us, or triceratops, or tyranno-saurus! They’re related to birds, so they have… pneumonia… no hollow bones filled with air, and some have feathers.”

Ajani blinked. “Dinosaurs… didn’t we rename the Terreosaurs to that by using human texts?”

Celia’s eyes shined. “You have dinosaurs where you come from!”

“Yep, we do. They’re very amazing creatures, dangerous too.” Hakim kept the kid calm with his childish enthusiasm.

The fog split like it was cut, parting to reveal a scene which stopped the little girl in her tracks. Celia had a boyish cut and features, clinging onto her mother who gave a lethal stare at a group of thugs.

The… leader of the thugs was bald, and wearing strange tattoos. “You know… I don’t think it’s right for you to force your kid to wear stuff like that. It ain’t right, to bring that into our country.”

Celia’s mothers expression went cold. “I believe you should be turning right around, or things will get… unpleasant.” For you was left unsaid.

“Is this a human thing I don’t understand?” Ajani was twitchy, concerned even at the hostile intent of the humans. The scene was consumed by the fog, falling away into nothingness as they walked.

Another scent passed them by, that of a large smoking machine which had clearly been made by Celia’s eleven year old hands. She was running her hands through hair inches longer than the earlier scene, and a harsh voice cut through the light.

“Think, Celia, think!” Shouted an older voice in frustration.

“I remember a lot of little moments like that,” Althea blinked at the age growth of mini Celia. “Moments where I was scared, where people hurt me for what I was, or because I was there. Those were the big hurts… the small ones were always the ones where I felt like I did something wrong. The news didn’t help, when half the east coast was devastated by a great storm. The regular shootings, bombings and terror attacks, or laws made because people want me or other people to die.”

Althea swallowed, horror gripping her heart. “I’m so sorry.”

The cynical eleven year old smiled. “I know, it doesn’t get better.”

More fragments of scenes passed them by in that moment.

“Third Chechen war intensifies after bombing of Kremlin—” Static flared. “Civil unrest spreading across the United States after Hurricane Beryl—” Devastating images spread across the dancing fog, entire cities flooded, bodies floating in the waters. “Drought across South America as Amazon begins to collapse—”

The next scene was far more defined. Celia was sitting on a couch, watching some human play… listening to the distress of her mother.

“Aaliyah please, what’s wrong… no… they couldn’t have, we stopped them, we…”

Celia frowned and changed the channel to a news broadcast… which went down the instant she made it. There was a sense of unease, an itch at the back of her mind that Althea didn’t enjoy

She changed it again… and flinched at the sobbing of someone from the other room.

“We failed.”

The little girl changed the channel to one from a foreign country, speaking a harsh sounding language. There was a window revealing the scenery of a large city… and a sudden flash of light outshining the sun in the sky.

Glass warped and melted while human skin and hair caught aflame, and the news host screamed. They sounded like they were praying, once they noted the vast incoming shockwave.

The great wave follows, blotting out the sun, the people move, in fear and terror before the great mass of air rushes in and—

The broadcast ends, and Celia tosses the remote, shattering the screen. The girl was trembling, dark eyes wide with terror and deep set agony.

The scene shatters apart, revealing more fragments. An image of the Earth, of the realm of humans… and a hundred flashes of light lighting up what Celia had told her was the Middle East. But she never told me this.

Dozens of other lights were spread across other regions of her world, each singing the death knell of a city.

“This is…” Dinah couldn’t even finish the sentence, horror in her eyes as she watched entire cities be vaporized in a blink.

“A hundred and fifty cities went up in smoke that year, killing forty five million people in a matter of seconds.” The child’s words were chilling, fire dancing in dark, dark eyes. “The soot injected into the air caused mass famine, killing half a billion in the first two years. It took four years for the climate to recover… and then we started to boil instead of freeze.”

Half… half a billion.

She could now understand why her friend seemed to enjoy their world despite its dangers. Her world wasn’t any safer, a dying planet with dying people who knew in their heart… there was no hope for them.

“Humans don’t have magic, how could they do this?” Hakim was afraid, her friend was afraid.

Little Celia turned to him with a dark smile. “Humans have gotten very good at understanding the world and its rules… and how to use those rules to kill.”

Hakim shivered.

Althea clenched the phantom’s hand, and gestured onward. “What’s next?”

“Don’t know, not with those things in the way.” The child shrugged, and Althea growled as the fog parted to reveal a multitude of light-spirits. They were nameless spirits, sentient monstrosities barely more than animals.

Three launched forward in vicious strikes, and screamed as they slammed against the barrier created by Ajani. Darkness devoured their light, and Althea smirked.

She opened her eyes to reveal Form, to look into the depths of the spirit’s Nature.

A Child of Cassiopeia, the False Mother, was whispered into her ears. The feeling was insidious.

They were going to have to fight the spirits if they wanted to save their friend.

Well, I won’t give up. Not today, not ever.

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

Spirit corpus gave way under her claws, bursting apart into raw ephemera. To her left Hakim cut another light spirit in half, which fell prey to the resonance of binding-and-severing infused into his weapon.

It was an inspired tool, designed by both Celia and Hakim working together. First it would sever the weave of magic, then bind it together, causing immense damage to a spell or a spiritual being. It was a potent weapon, inspired by experiments with the chain glyph.

The spirits didn’t stand a chance, as their very Nature was severed and remade under the cutting edge of the nameless blade.

Other spirits were warded off by Ajani with his spells, with cleansing smoke, or binding energy to hold them in place. Then they were disincorporated with the sheer violence available to Dinah’s claws. There was a pull there, from the princess as she conjured the forces of war and battle into existence.

In a very literal sense, the princess embodied war, able to manipulate war, conflict and strife with her energies. Able to intensify or dampen the concept in her role as herald.

Here and now it served as a means to keep them fighting, influencing their success, making it easier to strike, easier to move, letting them draw on her sense of conflict and battle to dodge, to move, to attack.

“Rage, fly to me, and grant my fists the power they desire!” She kept mini Celia behind her as rage-spirits sank into her fists, driving a lunatic strength into her muscles. A shockwave followed a haymaker into a spirit made of orbs of light, and killed it in a single strike.

She could see scenes flashing by her, a crying Celia holding a pink letter with a hint of shame. Her mother hid her sobs, reading a letter from a person who was no longer in their lives. Abandoned.

An older Celia, thirteen or fourteen with messy hair and dark clothes, raw fury and contempt visible in all respects. Bitter and lonely, leaving messes and disaster and chaos in her wake. Scars littered her arms and legs, marks left by her own lack of care for herself.

An animal fury drove Althea forward. Whoever is forcing this on her is going to pay.

“There.” The memory-Celia pointed, blowing up a bubblegum bubble, now thirteen instead of eleven. “That’s where you can actually do something that matters.” Childish curiosity and hope had been replaced by bitterness and angst.

At the center of the web was a massive cocoon made of glass silk, and Althea watched in revulsion and apprehension as hundreds of limbs swaddled the person caught in their center.

It was Celia, twitching and as fingers made of stars seemed to rip into her mind and spirit. A hand made of thousands of stars and hundreds of fingers, brutally pushing into her forehead.

The stars grinned cruelly as they plucked through memories, and she saw the Form of the monster in front of her eyes. How it enjoyed torturing the girl, how it’s knives and blades of pure mind cut into the essence of who Celia was.

HATE.

“You…” Althea felt her wild rage surge upwards, only her own fear holding her back. You’re not a freak for being angry, for being wild, for being different.

The curling fingers waggled cheekily.

Oh? The trespasser has friends? Are you seeking to die as well?

The voice was female, rolling with entropy, with the buzzing cry of stellar radiation and magnetic ripples in the great void. Starburst eyes blinked into existence, with a toothed smile made of shards of star-flesh.

This human is quite a specimen, she touches the void that is mine to wield. She will die and suffer and scream, you can not change this. That is your lesson Children of Calafia.

Althea reached out for her friend, for the person who had reached out and accepted her for who she was. Who was going to die at the hands of an arrogant monster of an Other. Her Nature screams for release, her wolf assaulting the walls she had placed after years of bullying and pain.

And found nothing barring its entrance.

Never had the wrath, her own nature and violence swelled so high. So strong. So undeniable. Pain raged through her flesh and spirit, and she howled, shaking the very weave of the Unreal.

The instant the walls went down, her body exploded. Muscles and tendons ripped, healed and reformed in milliseconds, fur sprouted in stop motion spurts, as spirit corpus blended with material flesh. It was an agony as sweet as the thrill of the hunt and the taste of prey. The lunacy of the moon and the dark, the order of Green things and endless life.

Muscle and bone and tendons and skin cracked and broke and expanded. Legs lengthened, and toed feet turned into paws ending in claws, bones snapping like twigs, muscles threading apart like string. Organs wriggled like worms, shifting and warping into new positions. Her skull split apart, pushing forward into lupine jaws ending in a muzzle. Her spine creaked as a tail burst out from it, flesh forming around white bone.

She grew and grew, passing, seven, eight, nine feet, as bones and tissues and organs set into a horrifying amalgam of flesh and corpus. A wolf of honey gold and earthen brown fur, and eyes reflecting pale gold.

I am going to DEVOUR this bitch!

Althea leapt forward at a fifth the speed of sound, calling the void to coat her claws and fangs.

The entire cocoon shattered as the void exploded into being around her claws, a raging scream sprouting from a hundred mouths.

You DARE!

I DO!

She slashed at the so-called god, shearing through spiritual flesh with ease, and rolling into Celia. The rest of her friends didn’t hesitate to turn the monster into a pincushion, with spells stabbing into the shocked Other.

She held Celia against her furry chest, and jumped off a flailing limb as the spirit world began to suck in air from holes in its existence.

She landed next to Dinah, who stared at her with a bright gleam, biting her lips.

“Ahh. Congratulations?”

Althea responded with a canine grin. “Woof.” She joked, sticking out her tongue. She pointed to the larger of the rifts… leading elsewhere.

Dinah’s own grin was shark-like. “Oh? You believe they lead to our enemy?”

She nodded. Yes I do.

The dragoness hissed. “Good. We have a god-creature to destroy.”