World Warden, page 42
Samantha shook her head. “That will not happen. She is now aware of the fact that we all know her Flower is her weakness. She may decide to kill us tonight, for all we know, or she may allow us to stew in our own fear before punishing us all for what I tried to do.”
“So…,” Oscar began.
“So we leave tomorrow,” Samantha indicated. “I would leave tonight, but Doran and I do not usually go on a foraging trip after dusk. If I summon him and she notices, she will stop us. Tomorrow, before dawn, we will leave as if we were going to gather fruit from the Nightmare Caves. If all goes well, we should be able to make the shuttle operational and return with it to pick everyone else up. If we fail or we need more time, we can always return on subsequent trips.”
“Wait,” Oscar said, looking at everyone else in turn. “If we’re able to pilot the shuttle, we’re leaving? Tomorrow?”
“Yes,” Nadja answered, her tone firm.
“But this is so sudden,” Oscar argued. “We’re not prepared to leave, are we? We need to pack food, and Eli and Tristan are coming for me. They’re coming this way. We can’t just leave.”
“Food is not a problem,” Laurie replied. “If the shuttle works, it should be fast enough to get us across the ocean in a few hours.”
“And we have not forgotten about your brother or his companion,” Samantha joined in. “We should be able to track them down with the shuttle and pick them up. We would all go together back to your colony from there.”
“But… but…,” Oscar stammered. “She will follow us, even if we escape. We would be leading her straight to Portree!”
“An inevitable conflict,” Nadja answered. “You will use the communications array on the shuttle to contact Portree and warn them of the danger, something for which they should already have prepared as well as they can. They have had months to ready any weaponry they have for the inevitable return of the queen.”
“The shuttle should be fast enough to give us a grace period of several hours to days before she arrives at the colony after we get there,” Laurie commented. “We will stand and fight with your people, but it is a fight that must be fought. They should be aware of it too. If they have not prepared well enough, then we will all perish.”
Oscar ran a hand through his hair, hard. “It’s… this is so sudden. I don’t even….”
“It is the only way,” Samantha said to him, placing her hand on his shoulder. “She may be powerful, but if we catch her by surprise and fight together, we have a chance. Are you with us, Oscar?”
He tried to steady the fluttering in the pit of his stomach. He was scared, yes. But he was also tired of being scared. “Yeah. Let’s do this.”
Chapter 25. Lyrana
IN THE wake of her name, all semblance of conscious thought vanished. Elias could only gaze in enraptured awe as the third wurl queen revealed herself at last.
She towered over them both, a gigantic sea serpent come to life. Her incomprehensibly long form rose above the surface in a cascade of water droplets that ran down segment after segment of shieldlike scales, tightly packed and angular. The armored plating on her body was a magnificent shade of glittering gold that warned of one thing only: danger.
She appeared to be massive, larger than either of her sisters could ever hope to be. Six disturbingly long tentacles erupted from breaks in the segments that made up her torso and writhed incessantly beneath the surface. When she cloaked again, her body blended into the sea itself, and it was distinguishable only by the beautiful bioluminescence that she gave off. The water became alive with the blinking lights of a thousand stars.
Lyrana dived down, and another large wave was the only thing to betray her motion in the wake of her descent. Invisible, she swam underneath them, and Elias was mesmerized by the bioluminescence from her body. It was impossible to ignore, the myriad points of light mysterious and alluring at the same time. He did not even attempt to flee when Lyrana surfaced again on the other side of where he and Tristan still floated. She became visible again and dipped her head closer to them, allowing him to look into her eyes for the first time.
Her head was as large as Sizzra’s had been, but it was adorned with finlike protrusions that looked almost like kelp strands, each of them a deep azure against the glistening cosmic shimmer of her golden scales. Her eye cluster, unblinking, sat amid an angular forehead that ended in the same monstrously segmented jaw male Singers had. Six long and sinuous whiskers dangled from it, and even out of the water they shone with complex sequences of light in shifting shades of white and yellow and blue. The brilliance appeared to run down each of the whiskers in a nonstop sequence, like the lights along a landing strip on a runway. Whenever she moved her head even slightly, the eye was distracted away from her dangerous maw and focused instead on the entrancing interplay of color underneath it.
Lyrana’s neck and most of her body were covered by other dangerous-looking and yet delicate rays that reminded Elias of the fins of a Terran lionfish, but he suddenly realized that, although she had appeared massive at first glance, her heft was mostly an illusion. Her neck, thin and scale-covered, looked almost fragile. Her body underneath the water was quite slender as well. The bioluminescence and the interplay of the kelp-analog as it swayed made her appear enormous, but she was in fact a creature of delicate beauty, the intricate protrusions that covered her a filigree of fascinating and misleading complexity. Even her tentacles were slim, several times longer than those of an adult Singer male but looking as if they had been made not for power, but for dexterity. Her rudder-shaped tail underneath the surface was the only part of her body that appeared to be muscular and strong, but it was partially hidden by the kelp that enshrouded her like a veil, and Elias was not able to get a complete picture of the queen. She was a living mystery, a being that lived in a medium Elias would never comprehend.
“We…,” Elias tried to say, but the words were silenced by her glare.
Lyrana opened her enormous jaw and began to sing.
Elias lost control of his body. He and Tristan sank again beneath the waves, and as they did Lyrana descended with them. As soon as they were fully underwater, her song was audible in all its multitonal beauty, and Elias was enraptured. It was a voice unlike any he had ever heard, a song that was true music, unlike the primitive and simple repetitive beats Singer males used to paralyze their enemies. Lyrana’s melody was everywhere, in the water and inside Elias’s mind, and as she dragged them down into the depths without ever touching them, Elias knew only wonder and awe.
Underwater he was able to admire Lyrana’s true beauty. Her delicate body, veiled in kelp, glowed in the darkness and appeared to sway without moving, like algae moving with the tide, like the arms of an anemone in an ocean current.
Something was burning in Elias’s hand. He was devoid of volition, surrounded by salty ocean water, and yet something was burning him.
The song got louder, and Lyrana approached, her tentacles fanning out around her like those of a monstrous jellyfish. Her whiskers swayed and spread out, commanding his attention. There was only light and motion in the water, only music, only wonder. As if in a dream, he faintly remembered he needed to breathe. There was pain in his chest, but it seemed unimportant. All he wanted to do was listen to that haunting melody that threaded itself through his consciousness and built a hypnotic tapestry that coiled itself around him, smothering him. It was a refreshing and constricting embrace he did not ever want to end.
The burning in his hand increased until it became searing pain that jolted his consciousness awake in a burst of clarity.
Stop. Stop singing.
The song reached a crescendo, and his mind went blank again. It was dark everywhere now. The magnificent bioluminescence was gone. Lyrana faded from view as if swallowed by the darkness. Elias was alone, sinking still, and he felt abandoned and forlorn. Where had she gone? Where was the music and the light? Why was there so much pain in his chest? Why was there so much darkness?
His hand throbbed with heat again, and he came to, shocked.
I’m—we’re drowning! Narev!
Something torpedoed through the murk and grabbed Elias around the chest, a rough and metal-tipped claw that surged up with him in tow. The contact cleared Elias’s mind even more. He realized Narev was saving him.
Get Tristan!
Narev did not slow down. He brought Elias up to the surface of the water and kept him there. An instant later Vanor and Siv appeared with Tristan.
“Tristan, are you okay?” Elias asked.
Tristan coughed up some water. “I think… so.”
Lyrana came up at that moment, silent now, and looked at them with another paralyzing glare. She sent out a massive mental wave, and Narev stiffened next to Elias. The Spine wurl sank into the water, helpless, along with Vanor and Siv.
With an almost languid motion, the Singer queen approached once again and raised two of her tentacles above the surface of the water, where she held them, motionless, above Elias and Tristan.
She did not speak, but Elias sensed something close to curiosity, mixed with anger and something else, an emotion that was muddled and hard to recognize.
Lyrana brought one of her tentacles down as if she were about to grab Tristan and crush the life out of him.
Stop! Elias shouted in his mind, and he held aloft the thing that had been burning his hand, even in the water, the iridescent spine he had not let go of and that had allowed him to break the spell of the song and call for help even as he had been about to drown.
The effect was immediate. Lyrana hesitated and lowered her head to look more closely at Elias’s only weapon.
“That’s right!” Elias shouted, treading water awkwardly while holding the spine up in the air. “This belonged to Sizzra. Your sister.”
He received wordless acknowledgment, and her curiosity intensified.
“We mean you no harm. Please, let us go.”
Lyrana’s eyes glowed more brightly for an instant. There was a question in her look. With a start, Elias realized that he could understand, even though she did not use words.
“You don’t know what we are,” he said aloud. “We’re… we’re from another world. We came here. From the stars.”
Every bioluminescent point on Lyrana’s body flashed bright white at the mention of the word stars. She bared her teeth, radiating hostility.
“No! Stop!” Elias shouted. “We want to live in peace. We’re not here to hurt you. We’re just passing through.”
Curiosity again. Slowly Lyrana closed her fearsome jaw.
Elias exchanged a quick glance with Tristan, who appeared to be at a complete loss for words. Then he looked back at Lyrana.
“Just let us go, okay? We don’t know why the Singer males brought us here. We’ll go and never come back. Okay?”
Lyrana turned to look behind her, and Elias realized that all the Singer males were standing on the atoll, watching the scene unfold. Upon seeing them, Lyrana projected acknowledgment, even fondness. The males, hesitant, waded into the water.
“We’ll go,” Elias repeated. He reached out with his mind and was able to locate Narev and Vanor underwater. Siv appeared to be close by. “We’ll swim away. We won’t go near your Flower at all—”
Lyrana screamed, a mind-rending noise that was the diametrical opposite to the beautiful song from before. It was a sound born out of desperation and pain and loathing. It paralyzed Elias completely, and even after it was gone he realized he could still hear it, or part of it, echoing in his thoughts.
Lyrana’s bioluminescence shifted horribly, and dread clawed at Elias’s heart as he realized that the beautiful blue-and-white pinpoints of light on her scales were now glowing blood-soaked red.
Aghast, he watched the Singer queen as her body stiffened in response to the terrible color. Her eye cluster glazed over, and her tentacles, so graceful and slender, became crooked parodies of themselves, bending inward like the legs of a dead spider.
Hunger.
The thought was like a grenade blast in Elias’s mind. It was louder than anything he had ever heard, louder than the song, louder than life itself. And it did not come from Lyrana.
Horrified, Elias turned his head slowly until he was able to look behind him.
It was the Flower, its beautiful petals gone dark like the void, reaching forward as though with invisible vines that wanted to pull Elias in to choke him, to devour him and everything else in the world.
Lyrana jerked forward in the water and snatched both Elias and Tristan out from the surface with terrifying strength. She held them aloft and began to squeeze.
Stop! Elias shouted in his mind, because the air had been forced out of his lungs. His right arm was pinned against his body, and he could not use Sizzra’s spine. Stop! Please!
The hunger pulsated again, and Lyrana echoed its ravenous demand for nourishment. She stiffened as though gathering her strength.
Lyrana! Don’t do this!
She ignored him. Lyrana coiled her tentacles tighter, drew both Elias and Tristan back, and then threw them forward at the ravenous Flower.
Elias sailed through the air and barely had time to brace himself for the impact as he crashed into the water and sank. This time he was free to move, however, and he quickly resurfaced again.
“Tristan!” Elias shouted, and the two of them swam until they were next to each other. Elias reached for Tristan’s hand and held it firmly.
“The water,” Tristan said, teeth chattering.
It was ice-cold. Elias felt again that awful sensation, as if there was something in the water that was draining him of everything. The cold reached into his body and beyond, leeching his energy, his will, and his mind.
“We need to m-move,” Tristan stuttered. “We c-can….”
But the hunger towered behind them, and they were forced to look back. They had landed less than a meter away from one of the huge vines that protruded from the surface of the water and met at the nexus of the ocean, crowned by the Flower of the Deep.
Elias let go of Tristan’s hand. He was compelled to swim until he was at the vine, and he grabbed it, pulling himself out of the water while slipping occasionally on its slick surface. Tristan was close behind him. Together they climbed it and reached the place where the vines had coiled into themselves and made a large spiral-shaped platform above the water on which the Flower rested. Elias jumped onto this platform, feeling the leathery toughness of the vines underfoot as he landed. They thrummed with energy, with life.
With hunger.
The two of them now stood in front of the Flower and looked at its petals, which were a velvety black still, each projecting a yearning and reaching and grasping. Although it could not move, Elias still felt as though the Flower was pulling him in with irresistible force. He was close enough now that he could also sense the heat coming from it, a searing sort of energy that would destroy him if he dared approach it, as it had destroyed Sizzra, who had touched the Flower of the Earth. The proximity hurt. Elias was so deeply attuned to the life of New Skye that he realized he could never touch any of the Flowers again, not without being destroyed.
But this one tugged at his will. It forced him to take another step forward, closer to the veritable furnace. It needed him, it yearned to consume him and everything else in existence. It was an emptiness that would never be satisfied until it devoured the entire world, full of the same relentless pull that had kept Sizzra trapped in a mountaintop cave for decades, but here it was much stronger. The Flower Elias was commanded to look at was diseased, wrong, warped. The horrible black petals looked as if they had died.
Another step forward. Elias began to sweat, trying to avert his face from the infernal blast that was the energy coming from the Flower. It was unbearable. As soon as he touched it, he feared his entire body would go up in flames, enduring in an instant what that horrible smoldering wound had done to the flesh on Sizzra’s snout over agonizing weeks and months.
He took another step. The next one would be fatal.
He lifted his leg, and the air was rent by a song.
It was not the complex melody of Lyrana. It was a simple thrum that paralyzed Elias just as he was about to meet his doom. He could not move.
Thrum.
The voice of a Singer male, louder. Elias heard frantic splashing nearby.
Thrum.
Now the voice was joined by three others, juveniles, and together they prevented Elias and Tristan from moving forward to their destruction.
Thrum.
The hunger radiating from the Flower intensified, but at the same time the song that kept Elias motionless shifted, commanding him to move away.
He tried, and there was an agonizing moment of teetering conflict between the two forces wrestling over control of him. Elias began to sweat and tremble, the muscles in his body contracting forcefully as though he were attempting to move an enormous boulder out of the way.
Thrum.
With a snap, the ravenous will of the Flower was overwhelmed by the song, and Elias stumbled back, falling down hard on the rough surface of the platform.
The pain of the fall helped. Blinking, Elias struggled to get up and slipped on several large, jewel-like golden scales that were strewn about on the platform itself.
He had barely managed to stand up fully and glance over at Tristan when the hunger surged again, clawing at his will, demanding to be fed.
“Run!” Elias managed to shout to Tristan, but then he lost the ability to talk and took a step forward, closer to the Flower. Then another one. Everything was happening again, and this time he was too close to it. Its will could not be denied.
From the water, two large shapes surged out with a large splash and climbed the vines up to the platform in a shocking display of agility, Singer juveniles slithering over the ground on their many tentacles. They were still singing, but their voices had no effect anymore. Eyes blazing, without even stopping their forward momentum, each rushed at Elias and Tristan and whipped out one of their tentacles.
