EUe didn't risk flying. His metabolism was cratering; he needed nectar—but there wasn't time for that.
Running across the sand, he raced toward the camp, only to make a sharp right turn as he neared the communion's edge. With a single thought, he re-established his connection to the time communion, feeling ekUtle-la's touch once more in an odd buzz that tickled all the way to the tips of his toe-claws.
Without stopping his run, EUe briefly looked up to the sky and gave thanks to the Goddess of Time, whether she was real or not, and then dismissed their communion with a thought. The rings ceased to gyre and dissolved away, raining their fading not-light onto EUe.
EUe ran between two rows of fire as he entered the camp. His flight muscles screamed as he thought about what he was about to do, but it was the only way.
He looked over his shoulder and yelled: "Come and get me, you bastards!"
A multitude of legs pitter-pattered on the soil. The living chunks of mutant gU-lUte had taken the bait!
Revving his wings, EUe leapt and soared. He was woozy and nauseous, but he kept climbing into the sky, drawing more and more power from his dreamshard as he rose higher and higher. His shed feathers drifted behind him, igniting as they fell.
And then EUe opened his heart to the great god of laser beams.
Please, ezwU-al, he prayed, I need all the strength you have to give.
Once again, EUe's limbs buzzed as power rippled out from the dreamshard in his chest. Fractal disks of not-light rippled into being, one after another. They locked in place, tiling a spherical shell whose apex came up just below his feet.
EUe had rediscovered a reason to live: he wanted to learn, and he wanted to share what he learned with the people around him. He'd learned his people were wrong about everything—about the other Colors, about lEs, about being wrong itself, maybe even about the Gods themselves. Even more importantly, he'd learned that that was okay. It wasn't kwekek to be wrong; it wasn't kwekek to question. It was only kwekek if you didn't want to learn more, and, when it came to that, EUe refused to let anything get in his way, least of all an evil fungus from beyond the stars.
EUe felt the buzz thicken and build as he started up the communion with ezwU-al. The many disks of not-like flared bright.
And then, they begin to spin.
Torrents of air blossomed and whooshed as a scintillating, white-hot laser beam shot out from the center of each whirling disk. The spherical shell spun along wild, ever-changing axes, sweeping the many beams across the camp, sending off waves of heat that buffeted EUe's belly, even through his armor.
The chorus of lasers sliced through everything unfortunate enough to be in their path. Their sound was a hurricane that drowned out the dying abominations' shrieks.
EUe's wings sputtered—his chest twitched tired, tingly, and sore—but he held out, keeping communion with ezwU-al until the last splotch of fungal not-light finally flickered out.
And then he let go.
All the not-light below him vanished, revealing a burning crater, devoid of life. The scene grew dark. the true-light couldn't travel past the lip of the crater.
Lightheaded and woozy, EUe beat his wings in short spurts, gliding toward the beach as best as he could, but the effort stung, and his path drifted. He landed slightly off course, staggering as his feet sank into the sand, and then fell onto his knees. He landed near the edge of the group of twEfE he'd scattered on the beach.
"EUe!"
Vyx rushed toward him, descending from on high.
Too tired to respond, EUe patted his side with a trembling hand, and was amazed to discover his nectariat was still there. He pulled it out, grabbed a phial, stuck in his beak, and slurped and licked and licked. The nectar tasted wrong—acrid and tangy—but EUe was too hungry to care.
Vyx screamed continuously, flying in neurotic circles.
Again, EUe was too hungry to care.
He rolled onto his back, wings splayed on the sand, his abdominal muscles expanding his ribs, streaming air in and out of his body in a continuous flow. He flexed his toes, scraping his talons through the wet sand. Flopping his hand around, he picked up a second phial from his nectariat, held it up over his head, and drank, drank, drank.
It tasted even worse than the previous phial.
He was about two-thirds of the way done with it when he noticed that the nectar was pitch black and had things in it.
"EUe! EUe! EU—"
—EUe held up his free hand, palm outstretched, in the universal signal for "Stop".
The Gatherer spent three motionless seconds wrestling with a truly difficult decision.
On the one hand, nectar shouldn't have been hairy and fibrous, and black as ink. On the other hand, it was still nectar—at least partially—and EUe was still very hungry.
He eyed the phial warily.
Fuck it, he thought, deciding to finish off the phial.There was a non-zero chance he'd be just fine; likewise, if he had just signed off on his own death sentence, at least he wouldn't die hungry.
Also, as the nectar had turned out to be drinkable, EUe didn't dare waste it. Nectar was too precious for that.
He slurped up the nectar as quickly as he could, both because he was famished, and because the experience was just awful.
Once he finished, EUe tossed the empty phial onto the sand.
His gullet, gizzard, and gut tickled, as if something was effervescing inside him. Feeling grainy particles coating his tongue, he lolled it out, flicking them off.
"EUe!" Vyx screamed, stopping its orbits. "EUe! EUe!"
EUe sat up.
I'm not dead, he thought.
He could puzzle over the details later.
Getting onto his feet, EUe scrambled over toward tlE-la, when, off to the side, someone screamed. EUe turned to look.
One of the scientists was crawling backward along the beach, flicking sand every which way. "Help me!" he said, screaming in terror. "Help me!"
EUe recognized him with a blink of his second eyelid: it was the one with the marvelous communion taking root in his body. It took a second for EUe to understand what he was seeing, though the noises the guy's body was making helped to clarify it.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
The awful, awful noises.
lU-twO's corpse was stuck to the screaming twEfE's legs.
Lifting one of his second eyelids, EUe watched in disbelief as the astrophysicist's body began to fuse with the scientist's. Bones crunched as flesh flowed like putty. lU-twO's body became a gall-like mass that traveled up the other twEfE's leg. The scientist clawed at the mass, trying to pull it off, but it wouldn't come loose.
It was under his skin.
Then there was a ripping sound, and the scientist screamed again.
Though he'd succeeded in tearing off a chunk of the mass, the chunk had decided to stick to his arm, as if it was glued in place.
EUe watched, helpless, as the scientist twitched and fell to all fours.
He didn't even know the bird's name.
The twEfE's tongue lolled out through his beak, followed by a steady stream of saliva. The spit dripped onto the sand, which started to smoke and hiss.
EUe scurried back, shaking the sand out of his wings. The phial of nectar was starting to kick in, but not enough for it to be safe for him to fly.
The scientist moaned as the ball-shaped mass of lU-twO's corpse flowed onto his chest.
The twEfE stuttered, his voice stretching and deepening. "I… I…"
And then, he started to change.
It started with the growth of the wing on his left. The bulging limb tore his high necked shirt open, starting from the wing-slit. Feathers fell off en masse as the wing bone drank up the rest of the wing, lengthening and thickening. Bones pierced through the wingtip, growing a palm and three fingers, tipped in wicked claws. The wing on his right shriveled up until it was nothing more than a blackened twig, as did his left arm. Meanwhile, his right arm—beneath the shriveling right wing—joined his left wing in thickening and lengthening.
His limbs were changing places.
The monstrous arm the twEfE's wing had become slammed onto the beach, sinking its claws into the sand. He crawled toward their colleagues, leaving one of his feet behind him, broken off.
A wave swept across the sand, rolling the severed foot toward the surf.
"I'm hungry!" the scientist said. "So hungry!" The changeling's voice was a deep moan of many tones. The mutating twEfE pulled himself across the sand with his ever-growing arms.
Calling on Ela-tU, EUe lashed out at the monster with a bolt of pure force. It smacked into the changeling's flank, sending him rolling onto another twEfE—a female. She was still alive enough that she tried to crawl away, but it was too little too late. Her body broke apart as it, too, merged with the changeling.
He grew and grew.
EUe launched another volley, but—with a roar—the changeling struck back out with a blast of his own. It hit EUe before he could react, and sent him tumbling across the sand.
"EUe!" Vyx shouted.
"Get out of here, Vyx!" EUe pushed off the sand, spitting the grains off his tongue.
But the alien refused to leave.
Drawing from his dreamshard—but only a little—EUe powered up a force communion and then ran toward the monster. He nearly tripped in shock as the mutating twEfE wrapped the fingers of one of its giant hands around its beak and snapped the thing clean off its face. Steaming saliva spilled onto the sand as the monster tossed the discarded bill onto the ground.
The creature leaned over its next victim—another female—and opened its ever-widening mouth.
The feathers on the female's throat were edged in silver highlights.
EUe's heart nearly skipped a beat. He screamed. "tlE-la!"
Clapping his hands together, EUe swung his arms like a club, aiming toward the sea. An invisible blunt rod twice the monster's size slammed into its upper body from the side, launching it at the water with a sickening crack. The splash as the mutant hit the waves was tremendous. Ocean spray glistened in the moonlight as it rained down.
And, for a moment, everything was quiet.
EUe let out a breath he hadn't known he'd been holding, cycling the air through his sacs and lungs.
He dropped to his knees.
Vyx flew over.
"EUe?"
EUe turned to face the alien. "Please!" he begged. "Help them! Save us!"
Over by the water, something stirred.
EUe turned his head to the algae-lit sea.
A tall form crested up, bursting out from the waves with an otherworldly, polyphonic roar, and toppled onto the beach.
The horror writhed on the wet sand, beneath the light of the moon and the stars and the camp's fading fires. Flesh flowed and creeped, dragging furrows through the grains.
Almost in passing, EUe noted that he finally had an explanation for what had happened to all the dEka-UE. The fungus had slaughtered the gentle, plant-symbiotic giants. There had to be three or four dEka-UE corpses layered around the transforming twEfE in a massive sheet of flesh.
The horror lengthened before EUe's eyes.
The creature pushed itself up, slamming a wing-turned-arm onto the sand.
EUe followed the massive arm back to its source, where the cannibal scientist's head and torso jutted out from in between the dEka-UE. A moment later, the dEka-UE touched him and became one with him.
He was becoming a serpent.
The twEfE's growing tail dwarfed his body, but only for a moment. The dEka-UEs' biomass flooded the scientist's head, bursting it open, skull and all, with six silver eyes and a burgeoning, hole-pitted snout.
The serpent's eyes shifted from silver to gold. In the moment, the serpent reached for its head and ran its claws up and down its upper body.
It let out a blood-curdling roar.
EUe didn't understand what happened next. He could only watch, stupefied, as the serpent gouged out its own eyes. And then, just as suddenly as the motion had started, it stopped. The serpent froze stiff, its eyes shifting back to silver. It reared up tall, pointing its snout at the sky as more flesh crawled along its flank, up its neck and head to fill in and regenerate the damaged eyes.
The serpent smacked its other hand onto the surf-slicked sand while its tail sliced through the water. Dark violet scales—almost black—rippled down its body, end to end. Then the serpent lifted its head up and bellowed, green dust burbling out of its snout-holes.
Behind him, Vyx shrieked in terror.
"EUe! EUe! EUe! EUe! EUe!—"
—But, in that surreal moment, EUe found his thoughts drifting back to Uka-yen, of all things.
It was back at the GTS, up on one of the walkways on the temple's outer wall. EUe had been looking over the crowds down on the gardens, still not quite believing he'd finally become a Gatherer.
"So, you're an engineer, too?" the old bird had asked, intrigued.
Uka-yen had flown up to join EUe after the welcoming ceremony.
"I—I was," EUe had stammered.
"I bet you know your communions better than most."
"Not as well as you, sir," EUe had said.
Uka-yen ruffled his wings. "Please don't call me 'sir'."
EUe hadn't known how else he could show Uka-yen how much respect he had for the bird and for his work. What was he supposed to do, tell him directly? He'd have shriveled up and died of embarrassment right then and there—and that would have been even more shameful!
EUe had bowed his head. "It's just… you're famous," he'd said. "Your work… it's amazing! It changed the world!"
"So I've heard," the old bird had replied.
The Great Dream's silent void hadn't been half as humbling as the disquiet that wafted out from between EUe's feathers as he'd wilted under the weight of Uka-yen's regard.
After what had felt like an eternity, the old bird spoke up. "Are you okay?" he'd asked.
EUe had just shaken his head.
"Is it because of me?" Uka-yen had asked.
EUe had nodded.
Uka-yen had sighed.
"How about this, then," he'd suggested, "I'll show you something interesting, and then you can show me something interesting, and we can go back and forth like that until you don't feel so awkward talking to me?—if you don't mind, that is."
EUe had nodded vigorously. "That sounds like a really good idea."
"Good. You're the only scholarly type around here other than me, and it would be nice to have someone to talk to who doesn't blank out when I bring up runetics."
"Yes, sir."
"I'll go first," Uka-yen had said. "Let me teach you something I learned from a Gatherer back when I joined. kwesE-hata was a holdover from the days of the Race Wars. It's a neat trick, to be sure, and works great at deflecting asteroids. But don't use it unless there's no other option."
EUe wished he'd been able to say goodbye to Uka-yen, just like he'd wished he'd could have said goodbye to eUna, and to hU-nOan, and… to everyone.
The serpent reared its head back, sending green wisps cascading down its neck from the spouts on its back.
"I'm sorry," EUe muttered, "I should have done more."
He hoped the dead could hear him—all the dead, across space and time and mind.
—EUe drew deep from his dreamshard. A feeling of fire and ice blossomed over his chest as his thoughts filled with the sounds of the tousling waves.
Everything thrummed.
EUe inscribed his prayer on the air, in a simple ring of calligraphic not-light.
"For real power, the kind of thing that can change the world," Uka-yen had said, "the trick is to skip straight past the Gods and directly channel the lEs from the Great Dream itself."
And that was precisely what EUe did, there on that beach at the end of the world.
He communed with the Great Dream.
All at once, the sound and thought and fire and ice leapt out of EUe's outstretched hand. The ring of calligraphic not-light shrank to a point, collapsing on itself.
For the briefest instant, an impossibly thin line of impossibly hot, impossible brightness flashed in front of him, threaded through by an infinitesimal core of perfect darkness. The beam impaled the serpent through the underbelly. Near the line, the water and serpent's body twisted, wrapping around.
Then the line exploded outward in a horizontal column of pure energy.
It made a sound too loud to be heard, one that threw up walls of steam as the ocean burned away, all the way down to the molten seafloor, creating a bubble of vacuum that imploded a moment later as the atmosphere and the phreatic geyser came crashing back in. Bits of the serpent rained down onto the beach.
They crumbled to ash before they even hit the ground.
The last thing EUe remembered before losing consciousness was the crushing wind slamming him down, giving him a beak full of sea-salted sand.
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