The Wyrms of &alon

Interlude 3.28 - Der Abschied


EUe's head hurt. He pushed off the sand, coughing and gagging, only to keel over and retch up some of his gizzard stones.

Oh Gods…

The stones were coated in fungal fibers. Yes, the fibers were disintegrating before his eyes, but that didn't make things any better!

EUe spat onto the sand, and spat again, washing the acrid, sweet taste of his tongue. Then he rose to his knees and shook out his wings, flicking the grains from his feathers.

"EUe! EUe! EUe!"

EUe turned toward Vyx's cries. He barely noticed that dawn was on the horizon.

Vyx floated toward EUe, passing over the bodies on the beach.

Afterimages of solid black and white echoed across EUe's field of view. He couldn't feel his left arm, but that hardly mattered. He batted his second eyelids, cleaning the sand from his eyes, and then reached to rub his eyes—or tried to, at any rate.

His left arm wasn't moving. It hung limply at his side, greyed and shriveled, its colors faded and dimmed.

Stuff like that happened when you pulled too much from your dreamshard.

His mouth and beak were in disgusting shape, filled with the salty sand and so much worse. He flicked grains out with his tongue, coating saliva along the insides of his beak.

"Vyx!" he said. "Vyx!"

EUe's vision was starting to return to normal.

Over the bluffs, the fires burning in camp had long since petered out. EUe saw his rescued colleagues' bodies in the pale light of the unborn morn. His eyes immediately darted over to the familiar silver glint of tlE-la's painted neck feathers—the ones that hadn't fallen out.

He clambered over to her, crawling across the sand, flipping her onto her side once she was within reach.

Vyx cast light on the female's body as he floated toward her.

"No…" EUe shook his head. "No no no no no."

His head rang as he stared.

tlE-la's body was putrid and frail. Her eyes were spiderwebs of darkness. Feathers spilled out from the sleeves and hems of her Utal-a, sticking to the half-dried splotches of black ooze matting the surrounding sand. Something like a mushroom grew from her right eye, cresting a finger's length above her face. Ulcers tore through her neck, limbs, and face, while impossibly fine green dust sizzled on the beach.

One of her wings spasmed. The convolution spread rapidly, rocking her entire body, splattering black ooze onto EUe's face. He wiped it off with the back of his hand, only to yelp as a burning pain broke out on his hand and face.

As he skittered back, EUe realized, to his shock, that the black ooze on the back of his hand was bubbling. In a matter of seconds, the stuff shriveled and dried up, along with the pain and the burning sensations. All that remained was a flimsy layer of gray, like sun-baked pond scum. The gray flaked off his hand and fingers as he moved, crumbling into dust.

tlE-la opened her beak. Her voice was a weak rasp. "Mama…?"

EUe looked up at the floating hexagonal prism, and then pointed at tlE-la's frail form. "Vyx, help her! Help tlE-la, quickly!"

The prism made a soft cooing noise. It angled down toward the ground, as if sagging in defeat.

"Mama… sing…" tlE-la muttered. "I… I…"

Her body sputtered. Black ooze trickled out from her lolling beak.

EUe tried his best to remember her heartsong and then sang it as accurately as he could, but it was a pale, hesitant imitation of the real thing. Even so, it seemed to be enough for tlE-la, whose beak gently twitched as she joined him in fragmented song.

"What were they like… Mama…?" tlE-la muttered. "I… I want…"

She let out a feeble gasp, and then she was still.

EUe warbled in heartbreak. His body puffed up with feather-quivering dread.

"tlE-la, wake up!" He grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her. "Wake up!"

But she didn't.

Wings flaring, EUe rose to his feet. With rage, he turned to his alien companion.

"Why didn't you help her?! You had all that time! Why didn't you…?"

EUe's voice trailed off as his eyes finally adjusted to the dim light of the approaching dawn.

"Oh Gods…"

He saw what had become of his colleagues' bodies.

Shaking his head, he stepped back, inching toward the surf. "No. No… it can't be…"

The Gatherer fell to his knees.

Everyone he had rescued was dead, though many were even worse off than that. Their bodies lay cold and still on the sweetly salty sand, spattered in black ooze and green dust, ravaged by ulcers and necrosis and the roots of all evil. Little jungles grew out from the openings in their bodies, spreading out across the sand.

"I don't understand." EUe looked up at Vyx.

"Vyx heard twEfE die," the prism said, in its voice of tones. "Vyx learned new words." The device turned toward one of the corpses. "That one taught Vyx good words. Vyx is… sorry."

"Sorry?!" EUe said. "Sorry for what?"

"Vyx cannot help twEfE. Vyx scared of sick. Sick attack Vyx."

"What…?" EUe said. "But, you're here to fight the plague. You're…"

"—Vyx see twEfE world from far away. Vyx think twEfE be like builders. Vyx hope twEfE save Vyx from plague. But plague… follows."

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

EUe's whole world spun.

Gods…

Vyx's kind hadn't come to his world to defeat the fungus. They hadn't even come to UlU to fight the fungus alongside twEfE. No, they'd come hoping the twEfE could defeat it for them!

"But we can't do anything to stop it," EUe said. "We need your help!"

"EUe not get sick." Vyx hovered close. "Vyx does not understand. Vyx wants to understand."

"But—"

—Vyx turned toward the horizon. It took EUe a second to realize what it was looking at.

The great crater. The mines.

"—Other Vyx get sick." Vyx turned to face EUe. "But… this Vyx not get sick, because of EUe."

EUe's eyes widened.

Could it be?

"Because of me…? But the scan! You scanned me, that—"

"—Vyx scan so that Vyx know EUe is not sick."

"It… it didn't cure the plague?"

EUe's wings sagged in tandem with his hopes.

"Yes." The floating prism yawed from side to side.

"But wh—"

Warmth pulsed from the dreamshard in EUe's chest, and in that warmth, he found his revelation. His wings shot up, as did his tail feathers. Realization bulged in his eyes.

He whispered softly. "—My dreamshard."

Everyone knew that dreamshard implantation changed you. Apparently, those changes included imperviousness to the evil fungus from beyond the stars.

"It's the dreamshards." EUe cried out in despair. "It's my fault." He looked over his brief colleagues' corpses, and then let his hand come to rest on tlE-la's unmoving chest. "You were right, tlE-la." He shook his head. "We were wrong."

He'd thought Vyx was here to help them; in truth, Vyx was the one looking for help. EUe had thought his time inside Vyx had somehow managed to keep him plague-free. Instead, it was his presence that had kept Vyx plague-free!

He let his head hang low. "Gods forgive me. Maybe, if I hadn't left the others alone, they would have lived. I… I'm…"

He crooned a lament.

"What is dreamshards?" Vyx asked.

"A gift from the gods," EUe said. "We get them from a hole in the sky. They let us make big communions."

"Where is your dreamshard?" Vyx asked.

EUe patted his chest. "Inside me."

"Why?"

"It is not safe to go into the hole in the sky. You need a dreamshard to defend you, and make you strong."

"What is strong?" Vyx asked.

"Strong is one with strength," EUe explained. "Strength is when you can do many things, and do them well."

"EUe is very strong," Vyx said, softly.

But he couldn't accept the alien's praise. "It doesn't matter!" He lashed out with his one good arm, flicking up sand. "So what if I'm strong? What does it matter if I can't use this strength to make a difference?!" He folded his wings flat on his back, but even there, they shivered. "After all this time, I finally felt like I had a reason to live again, and now it's gone. I have nothing, Vyx! Nothing!"

"EUe keep Vyx safe from plague," Vyx said. "That is not nothing."

EUe looked over the bodies. None of them moved.

Gods…

He turned back to Vyx. "You really can't save us?"

Vyx let out a mournful, cooing tone. "Vyx cannot."

It would have been so easy for EUe to let himself go; to fall on his back, wings splayed on the sand, with his eyes to the sky. He could have watched his world die like that, and when he couldn't take it anymore, the Great Dream would be there, in the Temple, waiting to take him away. He could put all his cares and woes to rest in the Great Dream's eternity.

"Vyx need EUe's help," Vyx said, rather plaintively. "Dreamshards keep EUe safe. Dreamshards keep Vyx safe, too."

There was a long silence.

"Can EUe get dreamshards for Vyx?" the alien asked. "Please, EUe, help Vyx go away from here. Away from plague."

As tired and broken as he was, EUe just didn't have the heart to say no.

He splayed his toes in the sand.

"Dammit, old bird," he muttered.

EUe sighed a deep, deep sigh, one he felt down to his air sacs.

"What?" Vyx asked.

EUe shook his head. "It's complicated." He swallowed hard.

Yes, giving up would have been the easy way out, but it would have also been terribly selfish—and, ironically enough, pretty damn kwekek, too.

Apparently, there were kinds of kwekek behavior even EUe could oppose wholeheartedly.

He stared at the hexagonal prism. "If I give up, you'll be as broken as I was when Uka-yen died, won't you?"

EUe couldn't do that to Vyx. He liked the little guy too much for that.

Vyx tilted to the side, perplexed. "Uka-yen?"

EUe raised his beak toward the fading stars overhead. "Uka-yen was a twEfE. He taught me, Vyx, just like I taught you."

"Uka-yen taught you how to speak?" the alien asked.

"He…" But EUe stopped. He pressed his tongue against the roof of his beak.

And then, just like that, he fell down on all fours and squealed in pain and terror; a quivering, miserable bawl of fluff.

Vyx floated close in concern. "EUe?"

That's when EUe had another realization: he could tell Vyx about Uka-yen without fear of death or judgment. But before he could even open his beak, another, far more painful realization smacked his conscience.

EUe took every ounce of pain he'd ever felt and released in a single shriek pitched so high, it nearly cracked the sky.

The sound echoed like all the lost lives.

Then, with his face feathers all ruffled and puffy, EUe raised his head and nodded. "Yes, Vyx, Uka-yen did teach me to speak." He quivered his beak. "But not language, no. He taught me… another kind of speech."

"Another kind?"

"I taught you what words mean, Vyx, but Uka-yen taught me how to use them." EUe swallowed hard.

"How?"

"I spoke against my people's ways, and because of it, they called me kwekek; it means a coward, someone who is weak, and afraid and does not do what everyone else agrees should be done. So… I ran away. I left my life, and everyone I knew, and… you know what?"

"What?" Vyx asked. The alien had yet to learn to tell the difference between a genuine question and a merely rhetorical one.

The alien's naïveté made EUe whistle.

It really was endearing.

"Running away from my life made me into the coward I did not want to be," he said. "But Uka-yen didn't run. When we found that giant dreamshard, he said what he thought. He said what he felt."

"What did Uka-yen think?" Vyx asked.

EUe laughed, bitterly. "That twEfE were wrong. He said it was bad that we destroyed so much, and that we would destroy even more. He tried to stop that, and, as a result, hUen-dE killed him. He knew hUen-dE would kill him if he said what he said, but he said it anyway."

Vyx replied to that with a sad, drooping tone. Mournfully, the alien drifted toward the ground.

"Before," EUe said, "I didn't understand why he would do that. But…"

"—Now, you do." Vyx finished EUe's sentence for him.

EUe looked up at the sky. "Yeah." He sniffled. "He… he was being brave."

He finally understood his own kwekek. His act of cowardice hadn't been in daring to protest tradition's command to send eUna and hU-nOan to their deaths, and grieve their ends once it had; no, his compliance was his cowardice.

"Uka-yen had the courage to fight for what he believed in," he said. "I… I didn't. And, because of it… the people I loved were taken to their deaths."

And that, he realized, was his greatest regret of all.

EUe dug his fingers into the sand and squeezed. "We could have run away together. We could have tried to hide. But… we didn't."

That was true kwekek: not having the courage to help your loved ones in their time of need.

"I'm sorry, Uka-yen," he said. "I should have fought alongside you. I should have destroyed the giant dreamshard." He raised his voice to the heavens. "That wasn't how I wanted to say goodbye!"

At that exact moment, a marvelous idea bloomed in EUe's head. It ran down his spine in an electrical tingle that sent his wings up as rigid as trees.

Was Uka-yen smiling down on him from the afterlife?

But no matter.

EUe whispered in excitement. "The giant dreamshard…"

"EUe?" Vyx asked.

Uka-yen had given his life to try to stop that magnificent find from being used out of the fear that, in using it to colonize the rest of the solar system and beyond, the Ecumene's plans would lead to the resurrection of warfare among the twEfE.

The Race Wars would come again, more wanton and terrible than ever before

But what would happen if Vyx got the giant dreamshard instead?

Ideas rapidly multiplied in the Gatherer's mind.

For a moment, he stared at tlE-la's corpse. He wondered if, in the afterlife, perhaps she might have gotten to meet the love-struck Sapphire who'd sung their heart out for one of her ancestors.

With Uka-yen gone, it fell to EUe to tell the old bird's story, just like it had fallen to tlE-la to keep the Sapphire's heartsong alive.

And now, that too, was part of his story.

Lifting a clump of sand off the beach, EUe relaxed his grip enough to let the grains trickle down between his scaly fingers.

If given the choice, he'd rather have something to live for than not. And he had been given that choice. Even now, it floated nearby, tittering softly, shaking side to side—a child of a distant star, scared and alone, far, far from home.

Rising to his feet, EUe beckoned the floating prism with a wave of his good hand.

"EUe?" Vyx asked.

"Come with me. I think I have a plan—and a question."

"Yes?" Vyx asked.

"Can you fly?" EUe asked. "The rest of your body, I mean."

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.


Use arrow keys (or A / D) to PREV/NEXT chapter