Thum-dum.
The beat of ages past, the tempo of ages to come. Once again, it called the brood. It called to him. It pulled him. Ten thousand fishhooks yanking at the Blackscale’s nerves, compelling him to move ever closer to where they all had been hatched.
Thum-dum.
His stomach growled, and he contemplated paying the price of pain for the easy calories of a beehive. It had been an entire moon cycle since his last meal.
Thum-dum.
The birds went silent, some taking wing to ensure safety, even if they were not worth the effort to hunt down. The way some fluttered away tempted his predatory nature for a moment, but he let his forebrain suppress the drive. Branches and logs snapped under his heavy clawed feet. He was almost on the last leg of the journey now.
Thum-dum!
He stared into the mass of trees, vines, moss, and duckweed. Locked on the destination.
Protect.
Provide.
Judge.
Guide.
The constant mantra rumbled deep in his hindbrain, in time with the pulsing of the land. Familiar, trusted, and eager to arrive. The females might require assistance with the laying.
Thum-dum!
For three decades now he had performed this duty, getting stronger and wiser with the passage of time. And he had earned this right through service to the greater genus of the Truescales.
Thum-dum.
The beat still pounded within, dredging up the familiar nostalgic contentment that only a homecoming could bring. He was at peace.
Minnows and other such miniscule fish were the only creatures daring enough to approach him. Tok could dimly sense them nibbling at him, searching for parasites and patches of his last shed that still remained.
Picking at the scabbing wounds.
The one on his thigh had been sutured shut with the heads of ants. He had had to enlist a traveling Redscale’s help with that. His claws too large for the process.
Thum-dum.
He slowed for a moment, giving the various species of snipbugs the chance to catch up as well to continue the grooming.
It is hotter than last year. His Instinct noted. Tok opened his mouth, letting the creatures swim in.
He enjoyed getting clean once again. Small mouths and claws pinching away at debris and parasites he didn’t know he had.
Thum-dum!
The pulse of the land would not relent. It wasn’t all too long before he found himself moving at full speed once again. He pushed the water out before shutting his jaws, letting the little cleaners live, despite his hunger. He wanted something more substantial.
Birds trilled and cicadas screeched incessantly in the trees, calling for mates. The dragonflies hummed over the water, big enough to devour both.
In the background, the constant pulsing wave of croaking amphibians, frogs, toads, and others rarely seen pulsed with a steady rhythm. The rhythm that called him home. The rhythm that was his home.
Thum-dum!
It was a rhythm that he matched as he made his way to his destination with deep rumbling growls, joining the chorus on his Instinctual trek back inland. The tempo was not just a frivolity, it was a deadline, a countdown, one which he had learned to meet time and again no matter what unexpected obstacles got in his way.
Even when Tok had to leave the water he matched the tempo he felt deep in his hindbrain. Walking up onto the bank and across muddy or stony islands, his feet shaking the earth with his passing.
Thum-dum!
Water cascaded off of him every time he walked up a bank, cutting across the looping bends of the lazily flowing swamp. An ode to the past, and a prelude to the rains that would come again. The cycles repeating as they always did. As they always should.
Like those rains, so too did Tok once again make his way to the swelteringly hot center of the Belly of the World, the Great Womb, the first and inevitable last place the devout warrior would ever know. If all things went right in the world.
It was one of the most sacred of places to all the Truescaled broods. A place of balance, of plenty, of life and death. Fresh water rivulets, sweet as honey, and stinking anaerobic mud pits, full of flies and mosquitos. A place where things came to live, to give birth and grow, and returned to, when their time was nearing its terminus.
His massive form slid back into the water, taking a moment to enjoy the familiarity of the process of going to his assigned post, the quiet of mind that allowed him to take in the swamp and all its facets as a whole.
Tok slid under the surface, muffling the sounds of the swamp and diving beneath a tree that had fallen across the river and still struggled on, as was just and right. Several new shoots strained ever higher for the sunlight out of the trunk.
At the same time, mushrooms boiled out of the trunk and bark, the fungal growth just like wasp eggs on a caterpillar, serving its parasitical purpose.
Thum-dum!
Under the water, white roots hung down from the underside of the trunk like the fur of an aged beast. They slid across his scarred scaled hide softly as he swam under them. Tok angled back up to the surface, water droplets and duckweed flying off of his nostrils as he exhaled explosively.
He once again had the honor of judging the challenge of one of the many clutches of Greenscale hatchlings. He would oversee the next generation of a different brood and the first steps of their development.
Thum-dum.
In this devout role he was tasked with protecting them, as best he could, from everything they were not equipped to handle on their own. If that was done, and if they were truly worthy to become a part of the brood, they would live. And if they lived they would be named.
The gods had planned for such trials for the Truescaled, and so it was a holy work to enact them.
It was only the extreme cases that he would act on, including culling hatchlings from the brood if they possessed undesirable traits. Traits that were memorized by all given the privilege of acting as a Provider to the next generation.
Deformity, idiocy, timidity, rigidity, madness. The mantra had changed, as it always did at this point.
Thum-dum.
Tok’s eyes swiveled in their sockets, sensing something. A disturbance. Which for his eight meter long form was always an opportunity to eat.
Slowly his muzzle lifted above the water, just enough to taste the air with his forked tongue. It waved back and forth as the forks spread apart.
Yes. There…
He could sense it there. In the tree. Its musk. Soon his eyes locked onto it. He dove under the surface. Crawling along the bottom with his hands.
Just… a bit… closer…
It wouldn’t sense him, it would be distracted with its own hunt in the canopy.
He gathered his legs beneath himself. Looking through the murky rippling water at his target.
Now!
With titanic force and a deep hissing snarl he shot up out of the water, almost his whole length breaching the surface. Claws spread. Jaw wide. Shooting up towards a branch that hung over the water. The cacophony of his attack startled many birds from their nests.
He bit down. Blood sprayed into the water. Feathering out like smoke as it did so. Mightily thewed scaled flesh coiling around Tok’s head and neck. The giant python trying to choke him out before he killed it.
He grabbed the head, muscles bulging as he yanked it closer. Straining against it. His air cut off. He snapped down again. Its head splashed into the river with a terrible grinding crunch of his powerful jaws. He yanked the still coiling corpse from his throat. Letting it wrap around his arm instead as he tore chunks free.
Its meter thick body looked more like a young tree than anything else. It had been in an ancient cypress tree, one so massive that the scale of the snake fit in well. Especially given its excellent coloring.
Tok knew it to have a spirit within. A Barkskin. It was what caused the colossal size of the tree. Still, it wasn’t uncommon for the flora and fauna of the Belly of the World to grow to titanic proportions, even without Aestralfolk helping them along.
The body of the python was writhing and trying to squeeze even as Tok tore off great gobbets with his powerful jaws, tearing the flesh and swallowing the chunks whole.
“Always hungry, young Tok.” said a voice, its timbre the groaning of limbs, the rustling of leaves, and the silent whisper of roots pushing through the soil all at once.
An illusion, all of it. But no less real for that.
His eyes shifted to the Barkskin, taking another large bite of the snake, ripping off another chunk, staring at them as he waited for whatever they wanted to say.
Barkskin were all unique, and this one, named Cydis, was no exception. Their form was similar to that of the fifth genera of the smoothskins, the El’narin, elves. Their skin matched the bark of their true body. Their glowing fuchsia irises were set in black sclera like a fiendkin, but with a constellation of glowing bright points within the void. They had head-fur of green lacy needles.
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
They met his eyes, as always projecting to be of his height. “So much like your great-grandsire.” They said, as usual taking their time in getting to the point.
Tok, forced by honor owed, shook his head, popping the vertebrae of his neck back into place in an attempt to suppress his impatience.
If smoothskins tended to focus too much on the present, then Barkskins were too tied to the past. Cydis fell into a reverie for a moment, and Tok joined them, appreciating the moment of quiet together, in spite of the need to move forward.
Thum-dum!
The moment passed though, his Instinct pulling at his legs to continue his journey, the intangible hooks making him itch with the need of it.
“What is it, Cydis?” He rumbled. Python blood dripped from his chin onto the ground in fat droplets loudly.
The Barkskin waved a slender hand from which long clever fingers sprouted. A fresh sprout pushed up through the leaf litter to absorb the crimson drips. “The cycle begins anew.”
“I am aware.”
“Do not interrupt, hatchling.” The Barkskin snapped, hissing out the words with that strange accent of groaning wood, but with the correct amount of scorn, the proper prefixes. They took a moment to regather their thoughts.
Hatchling?
Remain calm.
It did rankle to be called a hatchling again. But Cydis, like all Barkskins, was one of the Ancients. Old enough to have fleeting memories of direct interactions with and accounts of the long extinct first genera. When they choose to apply their mind anyway.
“Take care you are thorough with this group of hatchlings, young Provider.” Cydis continued, unaware of Tok’s ruminations.
Thum-dum.
“I always do.”
Cydis sighed, the needles of the cypress rustled in the wind “I am aware.” They matched his tone perfectly, though the sibilant phrases still sounded strange in their woody accent. “This time… it is an important cycle this time.”
Tok nodded. Cydis was often correct, though always cryptic in their own way. The Blackscale understood it wasn’t by choice, though it tended to be exasperating. “Thank you for your advice, Ancient one.”
“Change comes, young Tok. A hatchling. A fulcrum. The fulcrum.”
“Fulcrum?”
Thum-dum.
“Something new. Something unique. Something that the world needs. A someone. Last and first. First and last.”
“Be more specific.”
“I am specific, hatchling. Now, pay attention this year. The trial of the new age begins soon.”
Trial… of a new age?
“You will see. You will know. You will see yourself. It is no coincidence. Change is needed.”
“Yes, Cydis.” He couldn’t really say anything different.
And with that, the illusion of Cydis retreated back into the tree.
Tok returned to his ground eating pace, hissing out his stresses loudly before sliding back into the water. Pondering the interaction as he swum to the middle of the river.
Thum-dum.
Four days later he approached his destination.
An ancestral island used for uncounted years by the Greenscales. One of many. An outcropping of mud, sand, and rocks deep in the swamp. Ruins were there, and the sediment had collected around them, forming the island. Rich with resources, trees, plants, animals, both predators and prey.
A microcosm of the Belly of the World as a whole.
A near perfect hatchery.
Thum-dum.
He sloshed out of the water, the rhythm finally calming as he left footprints in the sand of the island. What was left of the python now in an enormous knot from its twisting. He would have to take a proper ritual cleansing in the water later.
The diminutive Greenscales looked at him, each fat with eggs. Several were laying eggs even as he walked up. The nest was already made. He grunted deep in his chest in greeting, and they grunted back. Each of their scales paled for a moment, showing deference and respect. He lowered his chin, signaling his peaceful intentions.
Neither group had to do so. But rituals around color were important to the Greenscales. And it was proper.
Staying close, he built a fire. Weaving racks to dry what was left of the snake. He scanned the horizon. He would clear the island of the larger predators after this. The mothers could handle them for now, but the hatchlings would need them removed for the first few cycles of their lives.
Some of the mothers who had already laid came and took small portions of the snake, eating hungrily.
They signaled thanks, he grunted, barely glancing at them to further display that he was fine with that. They had made it. They were his responsibility until they left the shallows. That included protecting them from themselves.
A higher caste female growled and snapped at a lower when she came over. Tok growled at both, half lidded eyes swiveling to glare at the high-caste.
She grunted and cringed, flashing a brighter white of peace.
Good. Tok grunted. Caste mattered not when each was growing the brood. Not on his island.
Tok waited patiently, watching as they continued to lay their eggs. The females who had finished first helping to organize them into a neat pile that facilitated easy turning. He stretched out his hand to help them get the spacing right.
That would be one of his many duties in the coming days ahead. He would have to process the meat and possibly smoke it heavily once they were done, but that would be easy enough. He had supplies that he stored on the island, and a quick glance showed they still remained.
SNAP!
The resonant sound of a crocodile’s maw.
A pained yelp cut off into a gurgle before the sloshing of a deathroll.
They all turned to face the sound.
Tok was up and moving.
The Greenscales blended in, almost disappearing from sight as he passed. Some who had finished laying followed. A few even leaping onto his back. To help or to hide he couldn’t tell. Blending easily with his simplistic stygian coloring.
There was another pained cry, and he saw her dragging herself onto the bank. “Help..! Please…”
Her right leg was gone.
Horribly mangled. Blood sprayed from her arteries onto the ground, her clothing from living in the world of the smoothskins rent asunder. Her belly swollen with eggs.
Even as he watched she tightened the leather strap of her bag around her leg, jamming a sheathed dagger in and twisting brutally, making a tourniquet and cutting off most of the blood flow. Her hands shook.
Shock. She needs help.
Hunt! Kill! Threat!
The scales near the injury flickered through a multitude of hues as the severed nerves rebelled against the wound.
She was a spectacular specimen, almost two meters tall. An ideal of physical prowess, larger than her peers. Her bloodline had to be protected.
“Go! Now!” He rumbled at the females on his back, pointing at her. Something else was wrong. He couldn’t tell and needed to act.
They leapt down, dragging her farther up the bank, away from the water, even as he entered it, bellowing his challenge. Her skin flared white in fear, brownish yellow patterns shifting across it, showing her terror and shame for all to see, her body ruined with the loss of her limb.
He noticed as he passed her. Her belly wasn’t smoothly round.
No… NO!
Threat! Kill!
With a mighty splash, a huge crocodile, something close to eight meters long, breached onto the shore. Its snout was scarred, yellow-green eyes focused on the females. The missing foot and leg still dangled in its teeth before it tossed it farther into its mouth. Swallowing as it stepped forward.
“Die!” Tok kicked it under the chin, knocking its head back and staggering the beast. It hissed angrily, clearly unhappy at this sudden appearance of another master of the swamps.
My place. Mine! Claimed! His Instinct snarled.
How dare any other apex even come within a hectare of here!
Furious anger burst forth from deep inside Tok. The female had made it to the island. He could not let her die before laying. Nor could he let this beast live.
Protect the mothers. Protect the offspring! The drive rattling his bones with the force of his ingrained convictions. Fueling his rage in knowing that this beast had harmed both.
He bellowed out a challenge, not just to the crocodile. It echoed out into the swamp, a deliberate declaration of his presence and wrath.
Woe to those who do not heed it.
He slammed his foot down and the earth shook.
The Crocodile inflated and snarled back, hissing threateningly with a deep gurgling rumble underneath. It thought it could fight him off, that it could hold ground.
My ground!
Death was all that waited for any interlopers in this place, and its name was Tok.
His claws whistled through the air and mauled the croc’s face. Snapping jaws made Tok step back, growling.
He couldn’t retreat. It would put the mothers in danger. So he charged.
The Blackscale slammed into the croc, and it snapped at him again as the warrior crushed it like a python with his arms. Its tough claws scraping against his thick black scales. Twisting and turning. Trying to angle its jaws to get in a bite. The force of the tackle lifting the croc up off the ground.
Tok’s claws gripped tightly, and he snapped down on the beast with his own teeth to help pin it in place. A combined weight of ten tons smashed into the river with a terrific CLAP and slosh as both predators snarled and gnashed at each other.
The tooth chipped by the squire’s hatchet broke. That was fine, it would grow back.
The muscles in his neck and shoulders strained against the crocodile’s writhing form as they sank into the river. The current pulling their bulky forms downstream, away from the island.
The murky water was dyed crimson. Caused by mostly superficial scratches. He managed to grab the snapping jaw when it was closed as they bumped against a boulder. Letting him free his own as he held the creature’s shut. He clamped down on the muscles in the neck of the beast instead. Getting a better grip, not piercing the beast’s hide.
A clawed hand searched for the eye. Finding it, bursting it. The thrashing got worse with the beast’s pain.
Tok’s head smashed against the boulder, cracking the stone.
The crocodile broke free of Tok’s grasp with a desperate twist. It snapped down managing to latch onto his shoulder painfully. They splashed back under the water, churning up mud and dying it maroon with their blood. Tok’s lungs screamed as he grabbed the forelegs of his opponent.
He forced his way above water to take a breath, growling.
The crocodile tried to start a deathroll.
Tok spun with it to keep his shoulder intact, lifting his feet and trying to keep up with the spin.
POP!
Bubbles streamed from his mouth as he groaned in pain.
Exploit the weakness!
Reaching up, the Blackscale warrior felt blindly against the skull of the beast, vision too clouded by mud and blood in the water to see.
He found the base of the skull. With a rumbling snarl of yet more bubbles he pressed his claws against it with all his might. Muscles rippled in his arms and chest. Pressing against the teeth painfully.
But the beast could not be allowed to live.
And he was not allowed to die.
The thick hide held for a moment before they dug in, and he pushed them in even farther. Punching through the back of the skull. Finding the brain. Twisting. Scrambling. Separating the seminal column of the reptile.
The beast went still. Tok broke the surface, dragging its carcass behind himself by its tail.
He tossed it with a wet slap into the mud of the bank, ignoring his slowly bleeding wounds. His thick hide had taken the brunt of the damage, and any actual rents were completely superficial. The bitten shoulder had been pulled out of its socket however.
He knew it could have been much worse.
He walked to an overgrown pillar of stalked stone bricks, and slammed his shoulder against it, snarling as the joint popped back into place.
Victory. Contentment. Meat. Then, after a breath, duty!
The female! Shaking off the pain, Tok rushed back to the nesting area.
She lay there. Dead.
The others, with a solemnity that couldn’t be understood by outsiders, had done the necessary thing and sliced her body open right there and then. Pulling out the slimy and now blood coated eggs to place with the others.
There were only four. Her womb was a sickly mess of yellow yolk. One of the eggs was clearly stunted. They were still placed in the communal nest with care all the same.
Three. That littlest one wouldn’t hatch.
Terrible odds to place on a whole bloodline.
Ritual.
Her corpse lay in a pool of its own juices, rent asunder by the beast and the necessary actions to save her clutch of eggs. Without question the other mothers had placed this clutch a bit closer to the center than the others to give them the best chance possible.
They all knew that she had earned a place for her young by reaching the island. Her sacrifice made their success all the more critical, as it would represent the end of a thus far successful family line.
Ritual!
“Her name?” He rumbled.
“Gix.” The largest remaining female said, almost fifty centimeters shorter than the dead one had been. “She told us to cut her open while she breathed. To see that some were whole before her end.” She looked at the little one. “She saw the last one, then died.”
He grunted in approval.
“Hero’s rights.” He declared.
As one, they flashed a golden yellow. The rich color of egg yolks. Agreement. And a silent prayer.
With the same reverence, Tok lifted her now lifeless form to his jaws. Bones snapped and blood spattered the ground. Nothing wasted, everything was given to the success of her final clutch of eggs. Only a skull and her possessions to bury on the island to mark her sacrifice.
The other females watched, a sea of approving yellow eyes.
Who knew, perhaps the ancient gods would show favor to her offspring in their own ever changing and fickle ways.
And so, this Gix received a heroic burial, all useful flesh utilized, the skull stripped away to the bone. A rock was fetched from the river by one of the other mothers. Another dug a hole, the sandy soil beneath removed.
He buried her things and then the skull. Carving her name on the stone with his claw. He wondered at that name for a moment. It was like his own in some ways.
The grave was next to the nest, next to a dense patch of bushes and vines, a place of importance for all to remember, a place that would be maintained for decades to come.
Tok then settled in, taking up watch once more. There were still many mothers yet to finish laying. The veterans helped the new mothers through it. And he remained vigilant.
He tore a bush out of the ground, chewed the leaves into a poultice, and pressed them against the minor wounds he had received. He spat out the juice.
The female Greenscales all waited for the last of them to lay her eggs. Then they left as a group, each giving him a bow with another flash of a paler hue before swimming from the island to the far bank, disappearing into the foliage.
Now came the toughest part of his duty. Waiting for the eggs to hatch… and after that, judging the trial of the hatchlings. He wondered how many would survive this year.
Looking at the last three eggs.
Thinking of the first death of the brood. Gix.
The last egg to come out of her, so small. That one would die.
He thought of what Cydis had said.
Last and first. First and last. Myself and change. His tongue flickered out from between his lips as he hissed thoughtfully.
The cicadas buzzed as the sun beat down on his back.
PATREON! It is currently at 20 chapters ahead, and will always be at least 15 ahead! All money there goes right back into making the series as good as I can, and every cent of it is appreciated more than I can say.