She's little more than a two-month hatchling when death arrives on Foray. Her mother, the foremost xenotech-haruspex, makes a reading. The omens are not favourable. Foray is abandoned. The forest-seeders designed to give them a breathable atmosphere and protection against foreign interlopers is left behind without second thought. The trees are starved of precious nitrogen. They wither.
Her father is a bondsman to the triarch. He asks questions: what shape did it take? Who perished in the exodus? Does it still follow?
It took the shape of violence. Three, whose names they would soon forget, were slaughtered in the confusion. It always follows. "But," her father relays to her and her clutchmates, "so long as we remain beyond its reach we may continue to thrive."
They settle on the ivory moon of Thalassa. It orbits the same planet as Foray. A local Stratocratic outpost is informed of the move; the city-born Eimin-Tin there meekly offer permissions to set anchor. Instead of budding woodland they carve a home amongst floating rigs and the shells of long-dead arthropods.
Instead of learning to stalk, little Zendolyn of clan Far'ii learns to swim.
Thalassa is a strange place, a moon blanketed in an endless sea. There is more nitrogen in the air and water than there is on Penchant, their homeworld. It is a mild discomfort, one soon forgotten about. There were fears that it would stunt their growth, but the moment it becomes obvious the triarch's son will match him for size the matter is waved away. Never mind that Zendolyn and her siblings are visibly dwarfed by their peers, those other children born to a different colony. Their mother's influence, the clan says. City-born genetics. She holds territory well enough for one of her stature. Her progeny will be the same.
To fight savagely is not the same as to be invulnerable, Zendolyn comes to understand. She tussles to the very limits of her ability, unwilling to lose a single squabble over a toy here, a morsel there. One slip and she loses all traction. Even at a young age she knows that much.
But when she joins her mother atop the rig all notions of violence leave her mind. They sit there together, the two of them, on bright nights to study the stars. Sometimes the nights are too dark and they talk about other things. Sometimes Foray peeks over the horizon, a rotting grey blob, and they don't talk at all. Its reflection shimmers grossly on the ocean's surface, the pull and tug of the waves making it appear as if long pale fingers were reaching out from the moon's crust.
She does not recall the words she used but Zendolyn remembers asking after the death on Foray one day, when her curiosity becomes too much to bear.
"A curse on that place," her mother spits. Droplets of venom strike the waters below. The fish don't like it; they scatter. They're not adapted to Eimin-Tin. Her father doubts they ever will be - for the reefs are fading and the rest of the moon's life with them. No one knows why. "May the Akildn strike it from our sky."
"Heirs of the Devil Days." Zendolyn raises her head. This is something she wants to hear. Every child treasures mention of the Akildn.
"Sickness from the Divide," mother sighs. "It creeps where it's always unwanted."
"What does it want?"
"To eat, same as the common lung serpent. It slithers after all the works of Touka. You know about Touka, don't you?"
"The World-Maker," Zendolyn chirps. She knows her mythos. Her father was adamant she learn by heart lest the triarch become concerned with her education.
Her mother flicks her bladed tail. "It does not make worlds, my little maggot. It refines them. The city-born learned from its example. They crafted the Akildn from egg and will."
"The sickness wants to eat them?"
"I imagine it would if it could. Akildn are ferocious. They bring cataclysm to the Stratocracy's enemies."
"Will they save Foray?" Zendolyn asks.
Her mother is slow to answer. "Perhaps," she says. "The transceiver's operators have sent out a call. Penchant will decide how to answer."
Penchant. The first nest. Capital of their holds. Where the forests still smouldered with Drezhari photon-fires and the cities still laboured towards a war long ended. Her clan had come from Penchant, Zendolyn knew. They'd been forced to move because of the alien raids and took the remainder of the forest with them, but Foray...
Foray had taken the last of their clan trees. And devoured them whole.
She is two years older when the Stratocracy sends relief. Two separate Inquirator-Secundi arrive to investigate Foray. They link the creeping death to small, invisible tendrils of phantasmal essence coiling around the Triskelion - the trinity of Foray, Thalassa, and the gas giant Somnus where sleeping horrors drift on razor-edged winds. They judge it to be a threat against the stability of the dominion. Five security-probes are cast in orbit around Somnus. An automated blockade is erected around Foray. To end matters, a single Akildn is stationed on Thalassa - one of the nine-hundred and ninety-nine and a veteran of the Drezhari Paradigm. Veir name is Urlulex, brood-heir of the likes of Aphloenin, Elulim, Olloril. Heroes all; a storied lineage. The construction of veir temple-bastion takes place at the equator, from where Foray is always in broad view. The Stratocracy wastes no expense. So intense is the drilling of foundations into the crust below that the solstice tides shift earlier than anticipated. Two of Zendolyn's kin are lost to the waves, never to return.
But there is joy. The emissaries of Urlulex make contact. They offer terms of protection and patronage in return for fealty, for tribute. The triarch does not even haggle - and he always haggles. The Akildn are legendary, even unto the clans. Their word is law. They are the icons of the city-born and to Zendolyn's own folk they are the muse-children of Touka. To deny them is to deny the will of the gods. The triarch is devout. He will not disobey.
Celebration follows. An Akildn has graced Thalassa! A good omen, Zendolyn's mother announces - though her tail swishes erratically as if she does not believe her own words. The days give way to games and the nights are full of merriment - there is dancing, music, offerings to the spirits of a world Zendolyn has never seen. The clan rejoices and joy is something to be cultivated. Her father is publicly favoured by the triarch during the celebrations. Zendolyn is paired with the triarch's son, who has mellowed in his adolescence. She has not, but she takes the betrothal in stride. It is good for her lineage, her standing in the clan. She knows there will be talk in the sleeping hours about her thin city-born blood, but she also knows it will be for naught; on Thalassa she is chief of the Foray-broods. None can swim as fast or nimbly as she. Her smaller wings produce less drag. Already she has caught three - three! - glowcrabs. A promising sign. They cannot ignore her much longer.
She is thirty years old when her mother teaches her the work of a haruspex. Xenotechnology is dangerous, forbidden to those of Penchant's wilds, but her city-blood permits her to operate the machinery without stigma. The triarch was cunning; he knew what he was doing. Consolidating that right with his own brood? Clever. All the same her mother swears her to secrecy. All the same-
"What we speak of here," her mother whispers, "can never be repeated again. Not until your own brood comes of age. Not even to Apophis."
Apophis is Zendolyn's mate-to-be. He is earnest and humble where once he was fierce and competitive. She no longer feels any vindication in humiliating him. Not when he is sweet to her.
Her mother shows her the tools of their trade: sundials and talismans, complex sonar systems that track the currents of another reality, the charred skull of some long-dead drake. The truest prize of them all are a pair of obsidian compasses lined with ancient glyphs and green witch-light.
"Here," her mother says, "on this blackstone is inscribed the failings of those who came before."
"Before?" Zendolyn asks.
Her mother answers flippantly. "Dead worlds and forgotten peoples. They lived, they died. This warns us of their mistakes, lest we make the same. History loves its endeavors."
"What if something new happens?"
"Then it is your duty to take note." Her mother crouches down. Zendolyn kneels beside her. "These are no true oracles - but they are a gift bearing some of their smith's vision. You need to learn to see."
"How?"
"Take this with you." Her mother pushes the compass into her hands. "I have my own. When I pass into death's embrace and you raise your own spawn, you will give your heir mine. We only have two."
"Where did they come from?"
"Alien vagabonds, fleeing war and famine. They disseminated these amongst the scholars of our people when we were still young. An act of generosity."
"So there are others?"
Her mother hesitated. "Yes. But a haruspex is rare now. The art is lost to many. Most of these compasses end up in vaults, unused and quickly forgotten. We won't let this happen, will we?"
"No."
"That's right. These are for the benefit of us - our family."
"Our clan."
Her mother smiles waveringly. "Yes. Our clan." She says it like she doesn't mean it. Like the clan isn't everything to her.
Zendolyn realises her mother misses her home. And this - this gift - is a way of bringing some small part of it back into her life.
She is sixty years old when father dies, killed in a hunting accident. His harpoon lodged in a cephalomorph's flank, but the rope coiled. Caught him. Tore him apart. Her mother leaves the next day, chartering a voyage home bought with hidden treasures. At the moors of their rig-hold Zendolyn tries to stop her.
"Where will you even go?" she demands, angry and miserable all at once.
"Home," her mother retorts.
"This is home!"
"Yours certainly. But not mine. Never mine." Her mother brings out her compass and passes it over. "Pretend that I have died too. This is your inheritance."
Zendolyn angrily shakes the tears from her eyes. "You are selfish."
"Yes."
"Why do you leave?"
"Because there is nothing here worth staying for."
"Not even your own daughter?"
"I have taught you all I know. The clan knows your worth. This is enough."
"So be it! Then you are dead to me!" Zendolyn twists around and marches back up to the rig. She hears the transport tear across the ocean before all fades to mournful silence. As eve falls she climbs to the top of the platform and watches the stars - alone.
For a time.
Before dawn breaks she is joined by Apophis. His head is bowed and his tail is still; his wings are folded tight against his back. He is the picture of humility. But humility pleases her. The companionable presence is as a salve to her stinging wounds. She feels the bite of salt in the air, tastes it on her tongue, and it is the comfort of familiarity.
The next solstice, under the eyes of Eyasrava and Touka, their arrangement is reaches fruition. The ceremony is undertaken in the rig's stiflingly small artificial garden, where toothy saplings nip at outstretched fingers. Apophis builds a nest. Zendolyn ransacks her mother's workshop and constructs her own, stealing everything of value. The dead have no use for xenotech after all. She tidies it up, locks it away from prying eyes and calculates readings only when the triarch requests it.
She waits for her own brood to hatch.
Disaster! Urlulex is lost to Foray for six years and counting. The Stratocracy, with heavy heart, finally considers ver killed in action. Thalassa mourns their liege, of whom none of them had ever caught a glimpse of during veir rule. The lamentation lasts three weeks. Zendolyn, as the rest of the clan, wears grey in grief. On the beginning of the fourth week the overseer of the temple-bastion visits. The triarch prepares a feast in her honour. Zendolyn, as haruspex, is given a seat near the head of the table - a place of honour.
The overseer arrives with a small squad of four soldiers, armed and outfitted like warriors of the Stratocracy's core. They are magnificent. The triarch orders platters of silver trout, glowcrabs, the flesh of cephalomorph arrayed before them but they do not eat. They do not sit. They do not even look at the food.
"We are here for the tribute you promised," the overseer says impatiently. "We require a brood of eggs to produce another Akildn. Your clan are hunters. You are our first candidates."
There is silence. The triarch breaks it with a roar - not of rage, as Zendolyn expected, but of joy. "Yes!" he shouts. "Of course! You will have this, I promise you. You honour us."
"You will never see the brood again," the overseer warns. Her eyes are narrowed. "There can be but one Akildn to fill the void, if any survive the procedure at all. And they will not be yours."
"My clan are warriors," the triarch continues. He isn't even listening. "My own blood has a clutch, unhatched. Your Akildn will come from the highest stock."
"We shall see," the overseer says icily.
Zendolyn shares a look with Apophis. He smiles weakly. Feigning excitement. "Of course father," he says.
She discreetly checks her compass.
The omens...
... they are poor.
She fights him. She fights the triarch. "No!" Zendolyn shouts. "You will not take them!"
Apophis is there. All of the triarch's bondsmen and his mate. They are all clan-blooded, larger and longer-winged than she. She fights them with words alone because here, on the rig and out of the water, she will surely be bested in combat.
"I shall," the triarch barks, furious. "I decree it so."
"They are mine!"
"You will have more. Is that not why I keep you here?"
Zendolyn stares.
"Father-" Apophis starts, but the triarch cuts him off with a wave of his arm.
"Enough. We will give them an Akildn of our own blood. That is the end of it."
In the end she can but shriek as the eggs - her eggs - are loaded onto a shuttle. Two of the triarch's bondsmen are holding her back. The overseer hardly spares her a look, watching as her soldiers steal progeny-
But Apophis is there.
Apophis shudders and breaks away from the triarch's side.
Apophis shouts, demanding they return-
And Apophis falls to the floor. The overseer's pistol smoulders, hissing like a lung serpent lording over its latest kill.
"If we need to return," the overseer coldly says, breaking the sudden silence, "I trust there will be no repeat of this. Am I clear?"
The triarch doesn't answer. He stares. He grimaces. He nods once; what does he care, he has other sons and daughters. But he doesn't say anything. The overseer hardly lingers as it is. She joins her warriors in the shuttle and it takes off far, far away.
They bury him at sea. Zendolyn is not there to see it. She has holed herself up in her workshop, divining future after future. No one comes to check on her. Not a soul wants to ascertain their fate. She is not summoned to the hunt that eve either, even though she is the greatest hunter of the clan. No one drops by. They leave her alone to her grief.
She can't understand it. The things her mother left for her. She knows how to work them but the threads of fate are tangled, crossing over one another, running amok, running scared. Something is different. She worries her rage, her misery is imprinting on the readings but she cannot help but feel that something is wrong.
More wrong than a stolen brood.
More wrong than Apophis, murdered.
As night descends on the rig Zendolyn scales to the top. She sits, alone again, beneath the stars. Somnus is there, huge and orange and old - but its errant child Foray has come to visit, balefully glaring down on her. In the light of the forsaken moon Zendolyn reads from her obsidian compass.
Something answers.
She waits a year. Then, bribing a fisherman, she finds passage to the listening post. There she requests a call to the temple-bastion, saying: I AM HARUSPEX. I OFFER MY SERVICES.
Three days pass. An answer comes: APPROACH.
Zendolyn is ushered into an office. Two city-born stand guard. They are smaller than she is, but not by much. The overseer sits behind a desk molded around the face of a predatory tree - a perverse inversion of natural order. An insult on Eyasrava, the Forest-Mother, and a trespass against Her domain. The Stratocracy has no shame. It hardens Zendolyn's resolve; the voices are right.
"I know who you are," the overseer says. "I know who your mother was."
She says nothing.
"I am Director Iroccu. This is my hold."
Not a word.
"You've come for your brood. They no longer exist."
"You did not return for a second clutch," Zendolyn mutters bitterly, glaring. "Therefore you succeeded."
Iroccu regards her a moment, utterly unreadable. "Are you here seeking retribution for your mate? Or to reclaim your spawn?"
"I came to offer my services."
"You haven't answered my questions."
Zendolyn raises her chin. "I came to offer my services," she says again. "I am a haruspex. I am familiar with xenotech."
"Why makes you think we should want for these things?"
"Because an Akildn is a warrior. Their fates flucuate." Zendolyn narrows her eyes. "You must desire otherwise."
"And why is that?"
"Because you are a triarch under a different name. All triarchs want for the same thing - a stable future to invest in."
Iroccu chuckled. Her blank expression melted away, replaced by derision and greed. "Insurance. That's what you intend to sell me?" Iroccu tilts her head. "Consider my interest... piqued."
"I can teach these skills to an Akildn."
"Ah. Ah, I see."
"They are valuable to know."
"I'm sure they are, but that is not the issue at hand." Iroccu splays her claws across the desk, leaning forward. "You want your child, but ve is yours no longer. Ve is mine - my ward, my charge, my property. That is my inheritance."
"And what of veirs?" Zendolyn retorts. "I am haruspex! My mother was haruspex! Her mother, and her mother, all the way back to the first city of Penchant." She reaches into her cloak. The guards draw blades, but Iroccu waves them back.
"No, let her," she purrs. "I'm curious."
Zendolyn produces the compasses - both of them. Closed and still; dark and voiceless. "This is veir inheritance," she half-shouts. "If nothing else, allow them this."
Iroccu watches her closely. Studies her. After a length of time she nods. "Your desperation is telling," she says. "It's honest. I prefer that." She pauses. "You may pass along your skills, o haruspex. Your knowledge. Your compass. These things will become part of this temple. You should feel honoured."
Honoured? No. No, that was not the right word for it. Not for what she was feeling.
"A haruspex-Akildn," Iroccu muses. "Yes, I like that very much. Mayhaps it will pave our way back to the homeworld. I tire of this hovel-moon."
"Then you will allow me-"
"To teach. Only that. Akildn have no mothers, no fathers. You will become an instructor and nothing more. Break protocol and I will have you removed. Do you understand?"
She seethes in silence.
"Do you understand?" Iroccu demands.
Zendolyn raises her neck, baring her throat with reluctant humility. "I understand."
They keep her confined for months, instructing her on what is allowed and what is not. She is not to stray from the template of conditioning. There are many officials. Many guards. All subservient to Iroccu. Their city-born ways are strange, foreign to her, but Zendolyn forces herself to adapt. She learns of her mother's world and she tries to keep herself impartial, but all she wants to do is to hurt them. Bite out scathing insults. Rip them from their vaunted perches and drown them in the ocean below.
She languishes in her own hatred.
On the eve of the winter solstice they release her. Zendolyn knows they intend it as a reward, a gift for that auspicious night. Guards lead her into an insulated garden. A Venator tree grows in the centre of it, impossibly old and larger than any living thing she has ever seen before. Its jaws emerge from the canopy, breathe in her scent, then murmur; she is permitted to pass.
At the base of its trunk is a hatchling swathed in delicate machinery - devices to monitor veir health, veir movements, veir mood. Ve is larger than any child has any right to be, packed with muscle and taut with sinew. Veir bones stand out, reinforced with eradium alloys. Ve looks up as she approaches and regards her with instinctive suspicion.
"Hello," Zendolyn greets. Her heart swells - then breaks, breaks, breaks. Ve has Apophis's feature. Ve has her own. There is no mistaking it: this one is of her brood.
"You are a haruspex?" the child inquires. Ve has an adult's voice. It is wrong.
"You know?"
"Iroccu told me. She says you'll teach me the future."
"Only teach?" Zendolyn asks softly. "I will give you the future."
Her child's name is Lornlox. Ve is naturally curious, but given to an especially short temper. Ve loves to learn - so long as the pace of the lesson falls within the parameters of veir patience. When it doesn't, ve is prone to misbehave.
Zendolyn hates it when that happens. Not because Lornlox causes trouble or because ve doesn't listen, but because, according to the rules, an instructor is supposed to punish ver for acting out. She doesn't have the resolve to do it. Soon enough Iroccu finds someone else who will - a guard named Varaniel. And Varaniel, oh, Varaniel has a cruel streak. She learns that very quickly. Lornlox is thus returned to her bruised and trembling with the stun baton's aftershocks, sullen and moody.
She hates them. The temple's people.
She hates them so much.
But she perseveres. It's her only hope.
Their lessons are conducted on the edge of the garden, beyond the reach of the Venator tree. Zendolyn understands that this is to spare Varaniel being devoured; the tree and Lornlox share a connection, a kinship beyond her comprehension. If he were to beat ver within the tree's reach, it would kill him on the spot.
"The final step in creating an Akildn is to place the modified egg beneath the tree," Iroccu eventually tells her. "The tree is the only parent they'll ever know."
She means it to mock her. Zendolyn knows it. She tries to ignore it but it penetrates deep. It hurts.
Then comes the day she presents Lornlox with the compasses. Veir interest is immediately piqued. "These are the tools of my trade," Zendolyn explains. "My mother taught me. She gave me these. Now... now I give one to you."
Lornlox looks at her strangely. "Thank you," ve mumbles. "What does it do?"
"It yields to you the skeins of fate."
"How?"
"By rule of elimination. In these are the recorded mishaps of countless peoples, whispered before their deaths. Avoid these pitfalls and the future you secure will be a fairer one."
Lornlox hums thoughtfully. "That's useful."
"Isn't it?" Zendolyn smiles. That's her mistake - because Lornlox smiles back. Varaniel cuffs the back of veir head.
"Enough," he growls. "You are here to learn."
Lornlox glowers. Ve looks down at the ground, avoiding eye-contact. Something in Zendolyn shatters. She rises up, teeth bared, and-
A klaxon wails. Another guard swoops, catches Zendolyn's arm. "You are desired elsewhere," they say.
"Your compass!" Lornlox exclaims, holding it aloft.
Zendolyn gestures to ver. Keep it. "It's for you," she calls over her shoulder, moments before she's dragged out of the garden.
They arrive at the dockside medbay. Zendolyn grows more and more confused until they arrive at a chamber swarming with tense guards. They push her inside; within stands Iroccu and a collection of other city-born garbed in white. They scurry around a body twice, no, thrice the size of their own-
It's Urlulex, she realizes. Broken and bleeding, veir scales bleached a translucent grey. Veir eyes are closed, weeping discoloured tears. Urlulex. Urlulex. Urlulex. One of the nine-hundred and ninety-nine noble Akildn. No, that's not right. One of the thousand Akildn now. It's not proper. It's not natural. Too many, the Stratocracy won't stand for it. Never. The Akildn population is static; one more to upset the balance...
Oh no.
"Please," she begs Iroccu. "Please don't."
Iroccu makes her stand. "Use that compass. Tell us if ve will survive."
"Please-"
"Haruspex-"
"I won't," Zendolyn declares, stubborn and afraid. "I won't."
Iroccu's gaze hardens. "Take her away," she orders. "Keep her confined."
They drag her screaming. They lock her up in a room too small, too little air, no water.
Five more days pass before they remember where they put her.
She is marched, weak and half-conscious, to Iroccu's office as night falls. Inside stands the overseer - and the Akildn. Urlulex. Hale and hearty. Smiling.
"Ah," ve says eagerly, "you are the haruspex?"
No. No, it must not be.
"She is," Iroccu said coolly. "Though I wonder for how much longer?"
"Where is Lornlox?" Zendolyn demands, voice but a whisper.
Iroccu simply looks at her.
"Lornlox?" Urlulex inquires. "Who is that?"
"Someone no longer of import," Iroccu replies. She spares Zendolyn a sly look. "Your services are still required. You are drafted to assist this temple."
Zendolyn turns, stiffly, on her heel. She leaves the office behind. No one tries to stop her. She walks through the temple, finds herself outside and steps down to the moors. There are boats there. Sailors and traders bartering with the bastion's clerks and quartermasters. She passes them all by, strides down the edge of the pier and throws herself into the star-speckled waters. Someone gives a cry, but it's too late; she sinks. She dives. Dives until everything grows dark - where the only light is the pale reflection of Foray so high above.
They fish her out before she drowns. She wants to curse them, demean them, but Zendolyn doesn't have the grit to do so. She is finished. She is husk-like, emptied like the shell of a delectable glowcrab scraped clean of succulent flesh. They pull her up, thinking she's anything but a corpse - but of course she can't correct them. She is dead. Her body just hasn't caught up.
The temple's custodians soon descend to the moors to collect her. She allows them. A new workshop awaits her, full of tech seized from home. So be it. Zendolyn numbly sinks herself into her work. That is all she is at this point: her craft.
Let them do with her as they wished. They've already taken everything else.
War. The colonies beyond the Graveport Azal fall under fire. From the ashes of the Paradigm emerges a merciless foe - a starveling horror of living xenotech powered by cold spite. The Stratocracy labels it IRIFN, VENERER MIND. An old terror, resurrected by inconceivable machinations to finish that which the Drezhari started. The Lexiphage Crusades commence days after the first orbit-strikes. Auxiliaries are drafted from every corner of the dominion. The Akildn are summoned to lead the effort, as is their birthright.
Even Urlulex, scarred and rattled by veir stranding on Foray, answers the call. Ve calls it a penitent tou. For failing to excise the death-moon's curse. Veir household troops are readied to join ver on the field. They bring Zendolyn with them. Every soldier wants a haruspex at hand, after all, if only to know how to cheat their deaths. In transit to the first of the infested worlds they admit to her their fears, their concerns, their hopes.
Zendolyn takes these things in stiff, dead claws and she weaves the threads of their lives in new directions - directions of their choosing, though seldom to their satisfaction. Their futures were bland and often ended anticlimactically; many dreamed of crossing a warrior-template of the VENERER's making, of besting (or even dying) in noble combat with a fearsome foe, but most ran afoul of the mite-swarms and annihilation platforms employed by the Lexiphage Legions. Her service in preserving their lives is not limited to the functions of her compass either. Too often Zendolyn is tasked with binding their wounds and fishing errant mites from their flesh in the muddy trenches, all while battlefleets and exterminator brigades exchange fire overhead.
Their gratitude becomes servility. Their interest becomes fixation. Their duty becomes protectiveness. They are warriors in the employ of an Akildn, but they chant her name next. "Zendolyn-Far!" they cry, mispronouncing the identity of her clan - knocking off the last syllable with their obsequious irreverence. "Urlulex, Zendolyn-Far!"
Zendolyn is swamped with eager soldiers she abhors. Their misplaced love gives rise to something in her, breathes into it new life: a silent loathing masked with grace. She pretends they are dear to her. She pretends she cares for them. All the while she carries on her deadened work, saving the lives of those who took her own. It's not until three years into the grim war that something snaps. On the world of Labarum their numbers are bolstered with further reinforcements from the temple on Thalassa. The new arrivals are terrified. They see the scorched out shells of living machines and the blankets of dead mites covering the no-man's-land as far as the horizon. They beg - first their cohorts for advice, then her when they understand what she is. "Haruspex!" they whisper. "Save me..."
It's not until the second-to-last to visit her that Zendolyn comprehends the power she holds over them - because the soldier before her is none other than Varaniel. He recognizes her, though he does not see the loathing in her eyes. She doubts he's aware of how much she wishes him dead. "Haruspex," he says softly. "Can you protect me?"
"Of course," Zendolyn says sweetly - sweet as pus, sweet as rot, sweet as curdling hate veiled in goodness. She opens her compass and traces the threads, following them along.
Lead him astray, it whispers, insidious. The voice of Foray. It carries her father's voice, her mother's, all those she'd lost. A voice of the unified dead.
Zendolyn heeds it. She heeds it because what else is there to lose? Who are you? she asks regardless, driven by dark curiosity.
The answer is slow to arrive. Varaniel fidgets impatiently. I am... the compass reads... Eyasrava.
Forest-Mother. She-who-taught-the-trees-to-hunt. Blessed Lady. Predator without peer.
Lead him astray, the compass repeats. He is your prey. Arrange his end.
Murder. She may be dead but her claws are clean. It would despoil her to lead him astray.
He harmed the last of your kin. He took joy in it. Avenge ver and yourself upon him.
But how?
Do not ward him from danger. He does not deserve your consideration.
Murder by inaction. Zendolyn considers it. It's not much of a decision; the hate inside her is too much to bear. She needs an outlet. Varaniel's death will do.
A Lexiphage bombardment commences at dawn. The heavens roar and glitter as shard-ships slam prow first into the Stratocratic Warfleet. The battle showers the continents below with molten debris and hungry mites. Urlulex leads the defence. Akildn on the field are as inspiring as any company standard and infinitely more practical. Ve directs veir warriors to lay low, to wait in ambush for the inevitable approach of the machines. They all but bury themselves into the dusty ground, Zendolyn included. The soldiers keep a watch for her; they are fierce guardians.
An artillery shell passes overhead. It hits the trenchlines behind them. Soon the ground shudders as proxy-constructs and slaughter-engines advance. The army of the Lexiphage is entirely automated, armed with the most lethal of xenotech. Flames lick the ground at their approach, pale like death. Orange-scarlet lights flicker from false eye sockets; mangled servos tear at everything within reach. Skittering mites flow between the war platforms in great bountiful rivers. The closest cluster is led by a command unit - a skeletal steel ribcage devoid of arms and legs, bearing only a gaunt rounded skull atop its sharpened collarbone. A former Drezhari unit, Zendolyn has been told. Their greater mechanomorphs were wiped out in the Paradigm so long ago, but their scorn for warm life remains.
In some ways they remind Zendolyn of herself. Dead things hunting for retribution.
Urlulex rises with a roar just as the Lexiphage steps upon their position. Ve and veir household warriors carve through the nearest machines and make for the command unit. It's a quick, ugly affair; buzzsaws and charged particles slice through flesh with pitiful ease, while Eimin-Tin have to struggle with heavy scrapper equipment to expose their foes' more vulnerable internal mechanisms. Zendolyn is hard pressed to ensure the threads of life are left intact. She shouts warnings, tackles warriors out of the way, redirects them to dismantle a particularly dangerous machine. It is monotonous work when one forgets to fear. Urlulex reaches the Drezhari and tears them apart with veir hands, ripping their spine out of their back. The machines go haywire, striking each other with as much fervour as they do Eimin-Tin. In the absence of an active Lexiphage signal they are left with a single directive: KILL KILL KILL. Zendolyn continues as she has done the past three years.
But when it comes to Varaniel's turn, she does nothing. The advice she gave him is false; when a slaughter-engine confronts him, he attempts to shoot out the couplings on its arm. In practice it achieves little. His expression when the engine snatches him up is one of stupefaction - but it shifts quickly when the Lexiphage shreds him in half with a shrieking saw. He screams until his lungs are shorn away.
Zendolyn watches. She feels...
... vindication.
But then the engine is struck down - shell blooming with orange flame. Urlulex strides out of the smoke and sees her. Ve sees her in that compromising position. Veir helm is locked tight, leaving veir expression unreadable, but Zendolyn can still recognize the shock. The confusion. Then, the fury. Ve says nothing.
And Zendolyn wonders if she's made a mistake.
They are hardly back in the trenches when Urlulex turns on her. Ve catches her by her tail and pulls hard. Zendolyn yowls, catching the startled attention of the soldiers; they watch as the Akildn grasps her shoulder and pins her against the wall of the trench.
"Did you think I wouldn't notice?" ve snarls.
She doesn't answer. She can't breathe.
"Why?" Urlulex demands. Veir hold relaxes - by a fraction. Scarcely enough for her to fill her burning lungs. "Why?"
"I... I was forced," Zendolyn lied. She scrabbles desperately at veir hand.
Urlulex is taken aback. "By whom?"
"EYASRAVA!"
Ve is surprised. Ve falters - and it's just enough for her to wriggle out of veir hold. Zendolyn scrambles over the lip of the trench and back out into the open. The air is still full of smoke, obscuring everything not directly in front of her. She hears a bellow behind and takes off into the choking smog, racing for her life.
"Get back here!" Urlulex shouts. "HARUSPEX!"
She does not stop. Not of her own volition. Not until Urlulex catches her by the heel and sends her tumbling against hard, steely bodies. Ve stands over her, wrist-blades extended, and growls deeply. Zendolyn stares up at ver.
And then, behind ver.
"Murderer," Urlulex hisses. "You'll hang for this. You'll-" Ve is pulled from veir feet as servos strike from the smoke around them. The engine behind ver wraps an arm around veir throat and forces ver to the ground; there are three of them and they set themselves on the Akildn with a ruthlessness only machines can muster. They wrangle Urlulex down, chip at veir armour with spinning saws and when they strike flesh they whistle for the mites. Thousands of them swarm the flailing Akildn, sinking into the open wounds, eating, eating, eating. There are shouts as Urlulex's warriors rush to save ver, firing haphazardly, but it's far too late. The mites are inside veir flesh.
It's not quick either. But it's efficient. Zendolyn watches with muted horror as Urlulex is broken down into mush, the mites sparing nothing. Gradually they crawl out of the buckled armour, mandibles stained with blood, and they scamper towards the other Eimin-Tin.
Ignoring her.
Zendolyn rises to her feet. The engines rumble ahead, heedless, and for a moment she thinks she's escaped from their detection by some unlikely miracle - but... no. No. As she turns around she discovers directly behind her another command unit, gazing down at her with its sculpted face and soulless optics. It does not strike. It does not burn her with pale fire, nor does it call for mites to break her down into raw biomatter. There are other constructs behind it, waiting. Waiting for her.
She does not look back. Not once. The Lexiphage wordlessly marches her across blasted landscapes and crystalized ruins. The further into the conquered territory of the machines they venture, the more horrors are revealed to her. There are facilities that grind up entire townsteads, quarrying mountains, converting the infrastructure of captured cities into new automated life. Siege engines lie in wait, gargantuan steel beasts the likes of which she could never have imagined. Warships hang in low orbit, supplying additional troops, while young factories convert the world's resources into additional Lexiphage swarms. Nothing is spared. Not even the corpses. Eimin-Tin bodies are dragged back from the front and thrown into infernal contraptions; they process her people like any other fuel. The sight rattles her.
She has made a mistake. One she cannot come back from.
The mass of the swarm is a living system. It engulfs her, envelops her, consumes her. Zendolyn teeters down living corridors illuminated by lines of glowing mites on the ceiling. Her escorts have returned to the front, she thinks. They've left her to the Lexiphage core. Everything closes behind her; there is only forward. For days she walks deeper into the machine, growing hungry, thirsty, weary of it all. The entire place flexes at irregular intervals, as if she's inside the belly of some terrible monster. Perhaps she is.
Her trek comes to a close eventually. Just when she feels she can't go any further, the tunnel gives way for a vast atrium, empty and dark but for sparse little gatherings of mites here and there. The air... flows. It tastes fresh. There is a low heat in the floors, but not to the sweltering degree she anticipates. She is alone. Zendolyn looks around but she can't see anything. It is too dark. She pulls her compass free and presses it for an answer.
Danger! it warns. Great danger! It is not the voice of Eyasrava. The device speaks alone, devoid of external influence.
"Remarkable," something says. Zendolyn is startled. She clutches the compass close to her heart. An object shifts in the dark. She hears the whirring of pistons, the clank of steel gears. Gradually lights flicker across its hull. A figure rises before her, artificial and yet... possessed of some otherworldly essence. It resembles the Drezhari but if it traded its head to keep its limbs; it has the same bladed ribcage but it stands strong on two legs, with two arms limp by its side. Between its shoulders is a jagged gash, devoid even of a stump where a neck should be. A thousand bright optics glitter along the serrated edges of the cleft. At the construct's back flies the framework of wings, from which sputters delirious white flames. It is angelic. It is terrible and beautiful and Zendolyn knows deep down she faces something far older and far more powerful than anything she's ever known.
"You are safe here," the construct says - so sweetly, so kindly. Its voice is charming, nothing like the cold mechaniform she'd been expecting. It sounds alive. "You have my word, little haruspex."
Zendolyn's breath draws short. "You know who I am?"
"Yes. I do." The headless angel kneels before her. It is large enough to kill her with a swat of its hand, but for some reason... she knows it won't do that. "Do you know who I am?"
No. She doesn't.
"I am Greshar," the angel recites. "Greshar of the Graces. And I am here to tell you that you need fear them no longer."
"Them?" Zendolyn asks, her voice small.
If it could, she thinks the angel would have tried to smile. "The Akildn and their servants. They have been cruel to you. To your family."
"You know?!"
"I do. We have heard your cries, haruspex."
Zendolyn gathers herself. She feels a flicker of fear. "I spoke only with Eyasrava."
"My own contemporary," the angel tells her. "She is the reason I am here. She waits for us."
"She does?"
"Oh yes. On the other side of your Stratocracy. She awaits our arrival within the void."
"The Brachian Divide," Zendolyn whispered. "There is nothing there. No stars, no worlds, no comets - nothing. An emptiness, a wound in the universe bitten by the destroyer Irifn."
"Once. But I tell you now, Eyasrava and those She loves lie in wait. She has called to you, little haruspex. You."
Zendolyn straightens. "The Blessed Lady..."
"Indeed." The angel shifts closer. "But I need your help."
"Mine?"
"Yes. The Stratocracy repels my efforts to reach her. I only want to reunite with my kin. That is why I'm here after all. To open the door for them." The angel makes a strange sound. "It's cold out there. What kind of host would I be if I kept them waiting?"
Out of the goodness of her dead heart she divines a path through the Stratocracy for the Lexiphage. She picks the lesser worlds, to reduce the toll of those killed by the machines. It makes no difference; her people throw themselves body and soul against Greshar's will at every turn. They fight desperately, as if for the sake of their very existence - but that is not so. Greshar doesn't want to kill them. The Akildn lead them to their deaths and millions go willingly. It's despicable. She hates them. She hates them all. False icons, hollow gods. For all their power they end just like any other silk-serpent. Their bloated reputations are full of hot air and nothing more.
But she still mourns, she still yearns, she still sympathises with the mortal Eimin-Tin. Zendolyn doesn't want to see them consumed for someone else's glory. She brings her concerns to the Greshar-construct - which she suspects is not his real body but a convenient proxy.
"Ah, but that is the unfortunate reality of things," Greshar tells her. He is empathetic to her plight, she is certain of it. His every word bleeds sympathetic understanding. "The strong shepherd the weak. Sometimes they make for poor leaders."
"Is there no way around?" Zendolyn presses desperately. "The Stratocracy-"
"Tormented you. We both know it."
"But my people are innocent."
"Are they?" Greshar questions. His voice softens. "I am to reconvene with Eyasrava at a set place, at a set time. Your Stratocracy is mighty and large; to cut around would mean we miss Her. We cannot loiter."
But something still bothers her. "Were you waiting for me?" Zendolyn asks. "Were you waiting to catch me on Labarum?"
Greshar does not answer.
It is a poor omen.
Amphelios, Dorax, Hellwatch. Three fortress worlds fall before the Lexiphage plague, their reserves of technology subsumed. The last was named for the second-to-last battle of the Paradigm War waged on that very same rogue planet, where the Drezhari's divine Hellsong had been famously laid low. The Akildn were responsible for that victory. Zendolyn had heard the legends since she was but a child.
Now, though, she wonders how many other Eimin-Tin were sacrificed for the Akildn to steal their hard won glory.
Greshar's legions wash over everything in their path. Some planets give way to grating stalemates, while others are quickly swept aside. The Lexiphage just keeps moving. They do not linger any longer than they can afford. They take losses on the move and replace those losses with world-harvests, but it's a losing battle. The Stratocracy is ferocious when roused. Lexiphage fleets are pummelled with fission bombs and gravity bolas. Asteroids are thrown against them alongside swarms of ancient nuclear warheads. Everything at their disposal is brought to the fore. Bit by bit the Lexiphage grows smaller and smaller, less able to commit to pitched battle the more progress they make. It's only due to Zendolyn's pleas that Greshar spares the vulnerable agricultural worlds that pass them by.
At last they are pinned against the vast gulf of the Brachian Divide. Some ancient calamity befell the galactic arm long ago, severed it so absolutely that countless swathes of stars were simply... removed. Struck from the tapestry of existence. Tales once whispered by void-sailors suggest that it wasn't a freak cosmic accident either - that it was the work of a conscious being. Supposedly some daredevil civilization unleashed a weapon too strong for the universe and wiped themselves out. Zendolyn wants to ask Greshar about it, but there is little time; he leads her up from the Lexiphage core to an observatory. "Look and see!" he exclaims giddily, gesturing out through a reinforced viewport to utter black. "There they are."
Zendolyn sees nothing, but her compass trembles. We are here, it says. We are here for you.
She meets them in the dead of vacuum without a spacesuit. Her lungs draw air from nothingness; it is a miracle and it is terrifying. Gravity shifts and twists, softly pinning her feet to the floor of an open-air atrium. There are statues carved from grey granite and idols sculpted from gold, emerald, ruby. But everything else is black. It's not dark, rather the suffocating absence of light. And yet... the umbral architecture emanates its own lustrous shine, a curious shade of yellow.
There are others present. She sees them in the shadows, but they make no move to hide themselves. It is the light that avoids them, fearful of their dread power. They are titans of xenological nature, no two of them the same shape. She sees a slender insect with a bow-horned head; she glimpses a creature of drooling red framed around a ring of eyes; she cannot help but notice the gargantuan demon adorned with deep blue crystals about its bony crown. In the middle of the platform stands a creature, slender and noble, with six eyes and a single twisted glaive by his side. He floats above the rest of them. Greshar stops before the figure and bows; Zendolyn follows behind, but she is at a loss. She does not know these entities. She does not know what to do.
"O First," Greshar intones - and his construct fractures, it stretches, it shrieks as its form is rent asunder and he births himself anew. Pale fire erupts from broken plating, streaming from flailing cables. Out of the machine steps a consolidated form of smoke and flame nailed around the skeletal framework of strange alien biology. Greshar appears to them more real - and, paradoxically, less. "I am returned."
The six-eyed warrior regards him curiously. "With a broken host at your back. The gates are shut to you, shut to us; we are no further along."
"And yet, I have come from my long mission all the wiser, all the stronger."
"Worthless victories. The bastion is held against us. They will not open it. And the pawns, those wriggling Krill-maggots - they may yet drown in this place. If the doors are closed then their fate is sealed, and our investments with them."
"The way has been locked behind myself, yes," Greshar says sweetly, "but in my company I bring a key."
The warrior looks upon her. Zendolyn feels the world shrink to the two of them. She has the sinking feeling that she is amongst predators beyond reproach - and she may yet be their prey. "A measly thing," the creature scoffs.
"As we all were, once," Greshar retorts. "You forget yourself."
"I forget myself?" The warrior touches down. His hold on his weapon tightens. "A bitter irony from you. You were honoured with a task and you return with a counterproposal. It is not your place to decide our tact."
"You presume I orchestrated this. I did not. This is the work of the master."
The warrior's eyes widen. All six. A note of suspicion crosses his expression, but it flits away as quickly as it arrives. "Then who am I to question," he says. "Take this poorest of paupers onwards." He looks down upon her again. "Illumination awaits, little one. Are you ready?"
Zendolyn strangles the flicker of fear in her heart. She has come this far, even if she does not know why. After all, what else has she to lose?
Greshar takes her into a ship, fractal, and leads her down to a chamber filled with the facsimiles of floating worlds, held aloft by invisible forces over a grid of colourful mosaics. A curtain of hungry black cut across the end of it, shifting and alive. The very walls whisper to her in languages too ancient and alien to understand. Greshar leaves without a word and the doors slide shut behind him. In his absence the drifting voices become louder. They fill her ears to the breaking point, pouring poison into her mind. She begins to think this was all a mistake, a trick, when the voices scream as one and consolidate into a single being. She opens her eyes. Faces, thousands of them, stare at her from the liquid veil, emerging dripping and cutting her down with their dark gaze. It is all she can do not to break.
An eternity passes.
The voice falls away.
The veil falls still.
Something steps out. It looks like an Eimin-Tin. It looks... like her if she were made of the same black liquid. It walks across the floor, leaving puddles in its wake, and stops a measly pace away. Zendolyn raises a trembling hand; the umbral reflection mirrors the gesture.
"What... is this?" she asks, frightened.
"Nothing you haven't dreamt of before," the reflection replies. Its voice is hers, but wrong - disembodied, warped by foreign forces, caught and forcibly remoulded into a new shape.
"Nothing I haven't..." Zendolyn trails off. "I never dreamt of this!" She falls to her knees. The reflection follows her down.
"But you have," it says, and not unkindly. "We've watched you since your hatching."
"You..." It is in that moment that she understands, that she follows the connection back to its source and sees it in full. "Foray. You... you are the curse on Foray."
"I am the curse of everything," it replies. "I am the instinct that thrives on opportunity. I am the autochthonous tact. I am the vintage of suffering and I want it to end."
Zendolyn feels tears run down her snout. "Why?" she questions, weeping. "Why? Why couldn't you keep ver? Why couldn't you hide ver away forever?"
She says no name - but the reflection understands. It is in her shape. It is what she must become. That is what they mean to show her. The reflection looks upon her with a keen familiarity, a knowing sympathy. "It was not in my power," it says softly. "But it was in yours."
Zendolyn scowls. "Too late," she whispers. "Years too late."
"No. Never." The reflection breaks form and reaches out. It takes her shoulders in hand and pulls her close. Zendolyn resists for a moment before the embrace takes her - then she falls into it willingly, incapable of fighting back. A warrior without a cause is no warrior at all.
She is no warrior.
"You are strong," the reflection tells her.
"The Akildn-" she starts to say, but the reflection shushes her.
"You are stronger than all of them, for true strength is not the abundance of power but the viscosity of it. You adapt. You survive. This is what matters. Solid matter pretends to stand strong, but over time it will crack. It will crumble. But you are of the sea. You were born for this."
"I was born to Foray."
"And yet Thalassa was more your home than any common woodland. You joined with the ocean. Foray would have given you jungle."
"As is our people's natural habitat," Zendolyn argues.
"And what beautiful forests they are," it says wistfully. "Of my own creation."
"Of your own..." Zendolyn's eyes widen. "Eyasrava?"
The reflection says nothing.
"Blessed Lady-"
"No," it says. "Don't call me that. Not when I haven't blessed you. Oh I had a hand in those wonderful trees, may they rest in peace, but you've always kept a different perspective. That makes you special - something beyond my work."
"But-"
"It's your calling now."
"My calling?"
The reflection leans its head on her shoulder. "You are strong. The Eimin-Tin deserve to be strong. The Akildn are powerful, but... you suffocated beneath them."
Zendolyn's breath draws short. "I hate them," she hisses. "I hate them so much."
"They have disappointed you."
"They were our legends. Our heroes. Not anymore. Not for me." She pauses. "Not for anyone. Not in a perfect world..."
"You must help us shape that world." The reflection leans back, then presses its snout against hers. "The Stratocracy garrisons a stockade against the Divide. We - you - must open it. The Eimin-Tin stifle beneath its shadow. If I cannot reach them, how can I bless them?"
"Lady..." Zendolyn trails off. "I... I cannot go back."
"You must."
"I cannot! I am... I am weak," Zendolyn admits. "I am no soldier, only a cowardly haruspex."
"You are a survivor," the reflection tells her firmly. Its voice falls to a hush. "But we will arm you. We will hone you. This is your purpose. This is what brought you to me - your compass says so. By your will we will give you the means to treat all the universe as your ocean, your moon-home."
"I will it," Zendolyn replies, so desperate to please, to serve, to know its love.
"Good," the reflection sighs happily. "Because there is a weapon for you. A knife. And it is shaped... like... this." It presses in- presses through her, the liquid of her shadow-self melting into her form, her flesh. For a moment Zendolyn feels nothing - then cold, then pins-and-needles, then the floor rises up and she's sinking into the mosaics, into the lustrous light below.
—-You will do.—-
It's the last thing she hears before the Curse of Foray swallows her whole.
She PARTITIONED. She is held apart by frames of gold. Pores are DRILLED into her FLESH. Each portion of her being is carved anew in some small way. Space is bored inside. Vascular growths of LUSTER winds its roots within, wending through her nervous system and needling into her brain. Her essence is held in suspension by the vessel of the reflection. A fragment of the veil. The universal solvent - stamped with primordial ideals. A truth none can deny.
ZENDOLYN-FAR'II forgets. The core of her being is left intact, but extremities of her psyche are chipped away. Useless drivel. Empty dogma. Memories without substance. Organs without use. She is HOLLOWED and she is in another gradient of existence. The whispers carry her painlessly through the procedure, but it is without end. It is limbo. The jigsaw pieces of her body twitch and flex, shifting dark currents. She wills. The solvent obeys. Arching framework retreats. She pieces herself back together, imprinted with something ulterior. Zendolyn reassumes control; she swims. She resolves herself to take to this ocean with gusto. Her jaws emerge from the floor before all else. She climbs out. Her body is black with masking liquid. She considers it and it sinks within her being, hiding between the layers of her scales.
She is physical once more. An elastic resin covers her; she reaches for her face and tears it away without an ounce of strain, shedding it like a lung serpent would its old skin. An oily purple steam rises from her form.
She is strong.
Her body is changed. Her bony plates gleam white and her flesh is a healthy shade of violet. Her teeth are long, clear like glazed glass. Wetly lacquered bands of gold and red, green and blue run down her tail and her arms. Her bones are heavier. Her muscles are pronounced. The blade tipping her tail is sharpened to a deadly point. Her claws have been filed into hooks.
She is a warrior now. Zendolyn basks in it. She bows before the slow dance of featureless planets. "Eyasrava," she purrs, her voice carrying the brass of triarch-of-triarchs. "I serve."
The voices come louder, emanating from within her own skull. The metal-lined pores in her shoulders and along her spine shine with raw Luster - a thing she now understands intuitively. An extension of the Formless One's own resolve. "Return to your Stratocracy," it commands her. "Open the gates. The Akildn will die. The surviving Eimin-Tin will grow stronger for it."
"Yesss," Zendolyn hisses. She is eager. She hungers for vengeance. Urlulex was just the beginning; she will have them all. "Your will be done."
AN: Hugest thanks to Nomad Blue for editing and feedback!
