At the end of the first age, long since passed beyond memory and into the dark annals of history and the divine writings, the- strange form, kind voice- had descended from the heavens, its speech the patterns of flame. In the mountain-shells it etched in the strata words of judgment and guidance, and from the great bone-beasts who burrowed deep in the earth it chose ten amongst them and anointed them- divine guardians, blessed sentinels.
The second age passed thusly, in a moment and an eternity as the voice of the flame and sky-brightness spoke, and granted unto them a voice to commune in transience. It told them of many secrets of the world, of planets and stars and impossible laws that underlied even the strata-writing of the venerable elders, those whose words forever knew the mountains. Lastly, before it rose into the heavens it bequeathed ten treasures of unsurpassable complexity, such that the burrow-sight of even the great guardians was unable to understand their magnificence.
It gave them a mandate- remember the visage of the one soaked half in blood, and diligently wait vigil until the day it would come before them. Then, it commanded, and wrote into the strata in an instant what would take an elder a lifetime, use the divine artifact and call upon it to deliver justice to the interloper.
Nine of ten heard and complied, eager to perform a task for the one that had brought them out of ignorance. One, however, braced its shell and bit its words, and carefully scrawled out in the speech of the transient a single question, praying it was not stuck down for its impetuousness-
Why?
The divine was not upset- rather, as the one remembered later as in its years as an elder then beyond, as it grew old and ever more powerful- it had been pleased. Because you guard reality. It had spoken, and even though its transient-speech was different from theirs, they understood. Everything’s been to prepare you for this- Primordial Fragment Blood would end all the earth in every universe, but you will help us prevent that.
The one wanted to ask more questions, but it chose not to press its luck- the- kind form, strange voice- told them of their purpose thrice more, and then it left in a swirl of fire, its message written into the bones of the world.
For a long time the bone-beasts lived alone on the stone and metal of the planet, crawling beneath its surface and carefully building upon the eons of those before them, elders guiding the younger- and the ten set apart from even those, quiet in their strange contemplation which crafted wonderous artifacts of metal and fire. They spoke rarely, and were understood less-
Things came to an end, eventually. Life had begun to flourish on the surface of their world as the intensity of the sky-cycles was tempered by the corrosive infections that ate into the unfurling leaves of the strata-script, greenery that spilled out across the oceans then clawed its way onto the cold stone of the land.
Two of the guardians found this- terrifying death, great desolation- an end, and in their arrogance sought to call upon the divine outside of their holy task. A great many of the bone-beasts flocked beneath them as they initiated the great ritual- however, the other eight retaliated in their might, shaking the foundations of the world and cracking the writings of the elders. Their fury smashed the two and their followers to pulp and fossil, and set off great wars that devastated the bone-beasts.
At the beginning of the third age, after the heaving of the mountains had settled and the fire of two more guardians had been extinguished by the others, nine tenths of the earth’s people had perished. The remaining sentinels mourned, but stayed resolute to the dictates of the divine even as the rot bit into their stone and ate at their shells.
They grew weary- and so, they slept.
The transients who rose with the lofty forests, plumage as bright as the sunlight and sky, would live their lives in the shadow of jagged mountains and immense ravines, spilt seas and beautiful patterns in the stone, and call their times the third age. The one who remained awake, who had asked why saw this, though they knew not why they called it that, and was amused.
The third age passed in relative peace, as different races rose under the pulsating life of the surface, briefly saw the sky and stars, and searched the earth, before dying off. Bird-kin and mammalkind, all varieties of life ascended and watched their empires crumble under the harshness of earth.
One of the ten, now six. It woke from the old slumber, and saw the transients with fascination. Though the five warned against it, it met the- strange forms, weak voices- and wrote to them, telling them of fire and skies, of base laws and the nature of the world.
Thus were the kin of the sky ascended, breaking from the cycle of civilization’s samsara, running across the earth like a second rot. Thus was the prometheus who had given them life slain for his impudence and exhumed beneath the sky where they would not join into the strata of the elders.
The one who had asked why asked again, but quietly- it did not wish to be sixth amongst those who had been slain.
The third age ended as the first of the forests tasted the construction of the transient, and the fourth age began as the works of a second rot burnt, but remained- no longer to fall as their transience fled. The one who did not sleep watched this, and was fascinated- an eternal life as theirs, to burn their presence into the strata, yet made of a million ephemeral parts.
It was interested, but as ever it watched, sentinel for the time when the half-bloodied one came.
It was content to watch… but some time into the fourth age, before the strata had truly acclimatized to the great change, but long enough for the others to return to their slumber, something came to him.
………
A-ait Crimson-Eyed knew that letting Oi-i Blue-feathered convince her to venture into the deep-tunnels was a mistake. It had been weeks, and beyond the meagerness of their supplies, they had already nearly died. Three times.
“You weren’t this upset when we were being chased by the leggy metal-kin.” A-ait glared back and Oi-i danced back, laughter echoing strangely in the vast crack they’d been crawling through for the past few days. “And you were positively having fun with the ground-bug hive!”
“The ground bug hive was tasty, and less than a mile from the surface. The metal-kin was miles beneath the ground, chased us through labyrinthine burrows for days, and was decidedly inedible.” How he wished he’d stayed in the tree-cities, where he could fly more than a few feet without hitting his head against stone roofs, where there was a much smaller amount of deadly danger. “The priests told you not to go underground. They warned us about the metal-kin, and the dangers that can kill us without even blinking- but no, you just had to ignore them.”
A twittering laugh was all that met his speech. It wasn’t the first one he’d given, and no matter how much he spoke she just… insufferable bird! It didn’t help things that neither of them felt much desire to delve back into the mad tunnels of the centipede-like metal-kin… that thing terrified her more than the depths they trawled, ever deeper.
Treasure. That had been the reason they’d descended in the first place, but now they descended to ascend. In the legends the god-shells had woven the world from a story, and true or not there were certainly enough tunnels they should be able to return to the surface… somewhere.
Something glinted on the edge of their light where shadow warred with flickering artifact’s flame, and like the dimwit she was Oi-i fluttered up to the outcropping with a burst of excitement, forcing him to follow or be lost in the ageless dark. It was… a shiny spur of metal, twitching- scrabbling? An artifact? As Oi-i chipped away at the stone around it it suddenly shifted, pulling back out with the harsh sound of stone on steel before pressing itself to the hole-
An eye, beady, frenetic, and the harsh devlish light that shone from pinpricks above each of its many eyes, that ran through its rusted plates. It screeched, and redoubled its assault on the stone in front of it with all its many legs.
Oi-i glanced at her glowering companion with a sheepish smile? “...Run?”
They ran.
As they dove through the vast crack in the earth, flying as fast as they could with bare feet of space about them, the ceiling behind them exploded, disgorging hundreds of feet of scything metal limbs and whirring danger. The metal kin screeched something, two of its legs ever scratching those strange patterns in the stone around it as they cursed and flew away as fast as possible. “This is not an artifact!”
“But! If we slew it, we could bring back hundreds of divine lights!”
A-ait glanced at her as if she were mad. “Slay a metal-kin? Impossible. You might as well try and slay a god-shell-” the slant of the crevice quickly began to increase until they were almost vertical, eliciting a squeaked curse and quick roll that narrowly dodged several jagged protrusions and one of the metal-kin’s limbs. Frankly, it was a miracle they hadn’t ended up dead already with this much random danger appearing around them.
It was getting faster, with the downwards slope- its weight crushing through the rock with increasing ease each scuttling step. Flashing Oi-i a wing, she rolled off to the side, pulling on the essence of her being- fire mind, crimson eyes- the ephemeral heartblood, her lifeforce, willing herself not to wince as it was wicked off her being and into the half-sun medallion hanging from a hand.
A light-
Sunlight on a blasted landscape of stone, refulgent enough he couldn’t look at it, searing at her talons-
A beam of white-hot energy flashed out from her hand, dragging a line across the metal-kin’s carapace and leaving it red hot. A screech of pain dug daggers into his head, graceful flight transformed into a careening mess that bounced her off the walls twice before she managed to catch up with Oi-i. “I’m broken now. Thanks for that.”
“You’re welcome!” Perhaps there was some sort of reaction between two sources of such intense sarcasm, but if there was A-ait had never heard of it. Or, she thought as she glanced back as the enraged metal-kin barreling toward them, they’d died too fast to record such an illustrious find with the clergy. “Look! It opens up-”
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“Doge forward when we make it out there, then drop. It has more momentum than we do.” the crevice slowly widened, just a bit- then, in a blur and sudden darkness the walls dropped out far away from them, leaving them alone in an immense void.
Like specks of dust- they glided out with a snap of their wings- and for A-ait a wince- the descent of the metal-kin almost inaudible from the sudden distance.
It was like flying under the dark night sky, like looking up to cloudy firmament and down to shadows upon the earth, like basking in the vastness of the unknown. For a few long minutes as they hovered it was just the two of them, lost birds in an immense void beneath the earth.
Then it crashed down on them.
An overwhelming torrent, pushing through their bodies and seizing limbs, grasping the very air and holding it still. A rush of not-wind, pushing at the nature of her being- lifeforce. Lifeforce of overwhelming majesty.
A slight shifting, and the crevice they’d been following snapped shut with a resounding sound. On the wall of the cavern- but it was not a wall, was it? A circle half a mile wide snapped open, jagged rock crashing to the ground with the suddenness of the movement… and they stared into a cerulean orb whose faint glow cast the entire cavern in impossible shadow.
Their will to move failed, their muscles burned. They could not breathe, for they were in the presence of-
Divinity. There was only one creature in the world so massive, so immortally powerful.
A god shell.
………
The third eye of the right hundred opened for the first time in a thousand years, as a disturbance clawed across its shell and jumped down in front of it. Had it been truly asleep like its brethren it would have taken something far, far greater to rouse it, but the one who’d asked, had waited. Patiently, it observed the shifting of the stone and felt the scratched report of its image-forged servants. It had not been expecting visitors so many miles beneath the earth.
Transients. It released the greeting of life-forces and saw their gutter like candles in a storm, so… weak. It had known that, but it was something else to see the weakness in front of them.
It shifted, just slightly, tunnel-sense showing it the proper direction to coil itself such that the ground trembled little and the elder’s words were preserved, and even hinted on how to keep the transients alive. They were… small. The image-forged had made them seem larger, but perhaps it missed the perspective of the surface. It had not been there since the second age, and it had grown greatly over the intermittent time.
Perhaps… perhaps it would be good to have the transients here, if only for a moment. Their life-force was surely too feeble to make the long burrowing back to the surface. Hopefully it would not be labeled apostate for this. It liked the earth, and its sacred duty must be kept.
Resolutely, it raised a claw.
………
The god shell moved. It was a ripple in the earth, its form pressing into the rock as it was mere earth. A single claw, the sharp tip of it alone taller than the tallest tree in the forest. It was like an entire mountain range come to life before their eyes.
A-ait wished, for not the first time this ill-thought adventure, she’d listened more closely in the sermons. There was a reason Oi-i was the priestess and he was the warrior! Normal birds did not meet god shells!
The mountain-sized claw- one of the hundreds he could see in the brief glance beneath its carapace- slammed down into the cavern wall with the force of a mountain, digging vast gouges into the stone. She would have liked to have been reassured that it only looked like it was trying to bring the ceiling down on them, but ‘forged the earth itself in their power’ was looking more and more like a slightly exaggerated truth rather than a fantastical fable.
Stone splintered and tore for a second more, and then there was silence as the claw plucked itself from the ground and hovered above its work. A series of long markings, artfully swirls and jotted… letters? She couldn’t-
“Holy tongue! It’s the written form of the holy tongue!” So that was what it was. Made sense, for a god shell to know their own divine language. “It says-” Oi-i clacked her talons in concentration as she stared at the gargantuan script etched into the earth beneath them. It was rather cute, in a way. “Uh… ‘hello. I am- curious one, slender form-’ I can’t believe those are names! There’s a lot of debate in the clergy…” she rambled on, but there was no response from the god shell as it watched them.
A-ait, after only a few minutes of baseless speculation on what couldn’t be more than a basic greeting, whacked her upside the head with a wing and dragged her over to the cavern. “I always knew that you’d be impolite, even to a god. Respond- ‘hello. We are explorers from the surface.’”
The god shell shifted- in what emotion she could not tell. She could certainly hope it was fascinating curiosity. “Uh…” Oi-i glanced over the new, much longer scrawl, then glanced over it again. “‘The tongue of transience is difficult in hard stone. You look exhausted. Come closer.’” Clearly it had some sort of ability to view lifeforce- otherwise it wouldn’t have been able to tell anything about them. They were about as different as creatures could get. Still, the god shell commanded, and so they complied.
This, A-ait would go on to think mere moments later, was a mistake. The claw that had been so ponderously writing snapped to the side, scooping them up with an abundance of force and dragging them back underneath the god-shell, pinning them to the underside of its carapace as it moved.
Hundreds of legs, reaching out from beneath its form, grasping the stone around them and dragging them forward, A grinding, resonant roar of stone against shell as they burrowed through the earth at speeds that left them seeing stars at each slight turn and shift.
Terrifying. Again, A-ait cursed Oi-i for convincing her on this featherbrained expedition. Carried along by a god shell. Nobody was going to believe her back home…
Light met them again as the divine crawled out into a truly massive chamber lit pale red by a sea of lava far below. As the god shell’s grip on them loosened and they were released into the cavern they saw the true scale of the things they’d stumbled across. The god shell was at least a hundred miles across from mandibles to jagged tail, rows of eyes running along its form. The cavern- likely almost a thousand miles from side to side. A small continent, nestled close enough to the center of the earth they could see the sea of magma subtly curve.
They followed the god shell to a small island filled with metal-kin of incredible sizes, silvery forms that dredged the magma and hammered out new structures of glimmering steel. A central dias floated upon the molten rock, upon which the god shell curled up, blue eyes staring at them.
Oi-i, the fool, went and landed on its head. Did she think A-ait could fight a god shell for her? Its wrath alone would make the skies tremble, and probably explode her too. The god shell shifted slightly- insomuch as a hundred mile long beast can do anything slightly, before settling.
A single of its claws, hours’ flight away, scratched idly at the metal dais, and a small metal-kin scurried up to them- almost making him blast it with his charm for how stealthy it was. It made no move against them, though, merely scratching small characters on the shell beneath them. A greeting again- and Oi-i responded.
………
“We are the kin of the sky.”
Interesting. The one felt its curiosity stir again as the- happy speech, blue dot- scrawled excitedly on its carapace. It spoke of vast open spaces, tenacious forests whose trees grew hundreds of feet into the air amidst craggy mountains still shattered from the war at the end of the second age. It spoke of society, a commune like it remembered from the shadowy days of its youth, yet even larger. More than hundreds- thousands, millions of transients, all unique.
Then, it asked a different question on which its interests settled- “are the legends true?”
“Which?”
A moment’s pause, an eternity with such an interesting occurrence in front of him. “They say the- divine shells- crafted the earth, writing a story so grand it came into existence. That the- divine shells-” it realized, then, that it spoke of the bone-beasts, and not of the divine that had graced them with its presence so long ago- “are of monumental power, and their words shape the earth.”
He waited for a moment, pondering the answer- if he did not speak in detail of their purpose, as they had been warned against, perhaps the others would not smite the one. “Partially true. A planet of this one’s size without its unique interior would have a crushing gravity.” It considered, and came to an epiphany. One that it had missed at first, yet should have been obvious- they could not read the strata. “To one with our tunnel-sense the strata of the world is like an open book. Generations upon generations have dug their tunnels and added to the history of our people…”
It paused, trailing off, eliciting a mark of confusion from the transients upon it. There was one, whose strata laced the entire world, more elegant than any elder’s. It spoke of fire- and reminded them of purpose.
“Above all, it is a connection to the most important part of our past, the moment in which the divine descended and chose its people, and wrote in the earth the mark of its presence.” It remembered, the little form for which he had learnt how to safely carry the small. It spoke of its kind form, orange like magma, fuzzy and quadrupedal, a single long tail which would dance on the wind.
It told them of a true god, and they listened, and learnt.
They told it of transience, and as when it had listened to the fire in mortal form, it listened.
It learnt.
………
The god shell told them of their deity. It told them long stories of ancient times, of the first age when it had been a child, of the mythical second age and the fire which had lived amongst the- bone-beasts, as they called themselves. Then, when a long conversation was finished, it grasped them once more in the claws it had used to commune with a deity beyond even itself and took them to the surface.
With its head just ever-so slightly visible in the vast sinkhole it'd brought them to, it scrawled a single sentence more onto the cliff-side- “Goodbye, and remain in good health.” Air at last! Sunlight! A-ait proceeded to be in a good mood until she felt her ‘slightly’ enhanced lifeforce. Oi-i was going to get it for begging a god shell for healing-
Then she realized they were on the other side of the world from where they’d entered, and the good mood was gone with the thunder and wind.