For a thousand years, the great Citadel of 'BrightenRising' would rise from the top of a hollowed-out mountain known as the 'Spoke. Actually, it's full name was something very like "That Spoke That Came Loose From the Mighty Wagonish Thing the Gods Were Using At That Time to Haul the Outermost Stars Into Their Positions'-but the need for contraction was obvious.
From it's western slope spilled nine great tiers, or terraces; gem-encrusted with massive public houses, hanging gardens, administrative buildings, and trade facilities, sitting alongside several dozen squat towers, and rings of sturdy concentric fortifications that defended them; the whole lot intricately carved, polished, and fashoned entire, out of hard angled obsidian.
Although the surrounding lands were temperate, the heat that radiated from the glossy black stone, in conjunction with over a dozen hot springs, kept the many gardens of the Fortress in bloom throughout the year. The steamy, radiant heat kept alive thousands of tropical plants and trees that had been imported from throughout the South, including bloomferns, nightbeans, horsehead beans, knifenuts, baubleberries, and many varieties of wild grape from the coastal 'Plains of Yawning Sun', as well as beacon trees and purplefruit from the 'Southern Stretchmost' around the 'Citadel of the Iron Bowl', trollpeppers, fireberries, fly agaric, dragonlillies, kingsflag, dreameater moss, and a host of valued medicinal herbs, worts, and narcotics out of the 'Trollfens', sweetvines, hydravines, bloody angelvines, thousandthorns, dazes, and flowerfalls, from the 'Jungles of Judging', toadsmallow, goldenfloss, husknuts, secret hearts, crannog-berries, scarlets, and kill-me-quick, from the 'Infinite Mire' that lay beyond them; there were even candlenuts, and a few varieties of spice orchid and rare tropical plants and fruits, some as yet unnamed, from islands in the 'Seas Under Thirteen Moons' far beyond and below all the rest. The greatest and most delicate rarities were kept under obsidian-glass, and grown on or alongside the low cliffs that lined the guarded centermost volcanic pools, an area known as the 'Kingsquiet', a constantly, but subtlely-and-discretely-guarded place of relative tranquility and solitude in the midst of the populous, bustling Fortress, where nobles of the three ruling Houses, and more often their children, would traditionally hosted informal and semi-formal parties and family events, and where they would occasionally steal away to, for precious moments away from their trains of advisors, guards, and courtiers.
The lands around the Spoke lay at the eastern head of a shallow valley that had been carved out first by ancient ice, and then by lava, and then by ice again. A second great eruption had hollowed out and obliterated fully a third of the Spoke, clearing away the last of the glacier ice, and replacing it with a tarry slew of volcanic glass mixed with highly acidic mud, which drowned and slaughtered nearly all animal life in the valley at that time--over a thousand years before the founding of the Fortress--even as massive forest fires burned away, or drove away, the rest. The shape of the land itself was changed, resulting in a valley who's walls were carved in such a way that steam, as it rose from the many bubbling bottom springs, would inevitably linger until High Noon, a heavy wet gloom that burned completely off only on the hottest summer days.
From this peculiar geological trait came the appelation "TurningShadows".
Elves and satyrs had once lived in these parts, and within the primordial forest that once had filled the valley floor, had together built a Living City. The Cataclysm ended their rule long ago, and the sacred cave of their guardian spirit was smothered and long lost, buried beneath a 15 meter wave of basalt and burning mud.
A thousand years and more passed, minute by minute, as the acid in the mud wore away at the splintered volcanic glass, and then was itself leached out via the action of rainwater. The remaining gunk, mixed with tons of ash and the bones of many creatures, in time proved extremely fertile. Although few elves ever returned, immortal memories of fire, loss, death keeping them away, the trees did come back quickly, as did the happy, forgetful satyrs. In time the land bloomed again, wilder-more vividly, perhaps-than it ever had.
Within an ancient cave, carved and decorated with love and many elven treasures, lay the forgotten Guardian Spirit of the Land-a powerful and wise Spirit of Fecundity, Evolution, and Life Itself-with a mind and a memory far older and greater even than the eldest of goblins and elves. Clinging stubbornly to the tiny particles of life around it, the spirit had barely survived the cataclysm that had long buried the elf-grotto it called home. Somehow, it found itself trapped within the underground lake, cut off even from the formerly constant communication with it's brethren, seemingly by some particularly horrid inorganic toxin that had been released into the ground by the volcano.
The Spirit of the Land clung tightly to it's meagre existence, somehow holding on despite the maddening loneliness of isolation, and began again to strengthen and direct what little life there was around it, as it searched, unsleeping, for some way out of the tiny home-become-a-prison.
Delicate rhizomorphs spread their tendrils into the soil, as more massive fungi pressed against the stone, testing the boundaries of the large but limited cave. The fish that had once lived in the waters of the grotto had quickly succumbed to the sharply risen acidity, but a few tough crayfish had survived on the shore, along with some waterwasps that had formerly used the grotto only as a breeding ground. The crayfish were accustomed to the life of a scavenger, and the wasps were evolved into colony creatures, and made their homes in hollowed-out helmet mushrooms, living off spores and fungal protein. Both were also altered to become extremely sensitive to smell, both in and out of water, even as their eyes gradually disappeared. Their counterparts: a tiny colony of armored worms that had survived the hostile soil, and a hundred strains of bacterium, were both greatly altered to quickly increase the liveability of the water and the soil, and to chew the limestone. The worms were further altered to produce an extremely powerful and efficient form of organic "cement", which the Spirit utilized to shore up the dangerously acid-weakened stone. Their actions-as well as perhaps assuring the integrity and very survival of the cave, itself-soon allowed the crayfish and wasps to return to the water, and increase breeding. The worms also had their ability to sense vibration sharply enhanced.
The Spirit worked it's will on the beings around it, harnessing every resource it's followers could reach. As the living creatures reproduced, breeds were selected and altered to be tough enough to survive, and to fit into a greater skein, where every living thread was incorporated into a greater whole. Soon, within years instead of the decades or centuries it might otherwise have taken, the Spirit ruled and served over a flourishing pocket-ecosystem.
As the cave could now support itself without direct management, the Spirit began to seek Knowledge.
The crayfish were directed to scour the cave's surface, skuttling over every inch of ground they could reach, testing the rock, soil, and even the ancient artifacts and treasures the elves had long left behind. The wasps did the same to the pool, their by now highly sophisticated olifactory senses checking and testing the chemical balance of the waters on an hourly basis. The armored worms monitored the slightest vibration within the mud of the cave, while special breeds were designer-evolved to swim down into the deepest depths of the pool, and then burrow into and search the bottom silt. A threat was discovered here, where the poison-whatever it was-had gradually begun to seep into the bottom silt, and would eventually come into contact with the pool's water.
To combat this, the Spirit manufactured three new breeds of bacteria that could survive on the bottom of the pool. One breed would provide the other two with continuing nourishment, while living off sediment in the water-and at the same time, continually test for elevated levels of poison-while the other two worked to prevent the poison's inception into the vital water supply. The toxin was far too deadly for the bacteria to directly consume, and so while the first breed, which were evolved into coral-like beings, would swallow minute amounts of the poison, immediately spawn, and then die immediately after, leaving behind a tiny particle of dense, unporous calcium. The second breed was designed to grow around these particles, creating a further protective shield, at the same time symbiotically housing and nurturing the dead "coral's" offspring.
Although this threat was now in check, the danger had only reinforced the necessity for greater knowledge and action. Soon, every living being in the cave had become a highly specialized analytical device. Even the fungi contributed knowledge in a limited fashion. New and strange varieties were created to drop their spores into the water, and then grow upon the protective bacteria. Other breeds grew on the walls, and on the fungi and crayfish, and some even floated in the air for part of their life-cycle.
Some of these new breeds were developed to recycle the oxygen in the cave, and to filter out various common, natural toxins, as the concentrations of toxic gasses in the air itself were becoming a risk to the life in the cave, other than the anaerobic strains of bacteria. The Spirit had no desire to release a wild plague upon the world, should it ever manage to escape, and so this potential was well-monitored, planned for, and combatted as well.
Aside all the checks and balances of the delicate ecosystem, a new variety of microbial fungus was evolved to deal directly with the substance that had trapped them all there:
Through many constantly-evolving protective layers and filters, this fungus would taste this poison trapping the spirit, although they never succeeded in breaking it down. This toxin would feed off of whatever death it could inflict, and unlike other poisons, would grow only more potent, more acidically destructive, with every life it doomed. Many lives were ended in this effort, every death personally felt and noted by the Spirit. The Spirit knew these sacrifices were necessary though. Eventually, even dragon-venom could be smothered under the weight of dead flesh, and the knowledge provided by those lives, and their ending, was very valuable, and stronger new lives were ever built upon the various foundations the dead had provided.
A century passed, hour by hour, and the guardian spirit finally had it's answer: The toxin was a specific one, one that the spirit of the land instinctively recognised, and had dreaded over many others, even as the possibility of the others were disgarded: The toxin was draconic in nature, it must be, nothing else was such anathema to such a wide variety of living creatures. It must have resulted from a massive clutch of eggs, much larger than a normal spawning.
The answer atleast made a certain sense: The volcano was a truly ancient one, one that had long been trapped beneath a glacier. The spirit suspected that the glacier itself had an unnatural origin, although back through that many millenia, even the spirit's memory drifted off to near non-existence, atleast when it came to specific events. In any case, volcanoes such as this one would have made a fine home for a Dragon, and the Proto-Dragons of ancient times, crude though they were compared to modern wyrms, had been truly strong. Their nests were also larger, the eggs "glued" together with a venomous gel produced by the birthing mother. It was possible for such a clutch to have been imprisoned under the glacier, trapped in an endless sleep of cold stasis.
Dragonkin were as close to being enemies of the spirits of the land as any living thing was likely to be, and again the ancient wyrms had been moreso than the modern ones, as they were even further beyond the capacity of a Spirit of the Land to counteract.
Some of the wisest among sentients, some Spirits included, had speculated that Dragonkin had originated from a place Other than the Spheres of the World. To the riddle of how this could be, this Spirit hadn't heard a convincing answer, and could no longer ask... There had never been many with complete enough knowledge of what lay beyond the Spheres of 'Iridiana', the World Eternal, to make a good guess.
Some said that the eggs of the first Dragons had fell to the ground within hollow pockets of sky iron, or that they had flown here from one of the thirteen moons.
Others hazarded that Dragons were the mothers, or offspring, of some unnameable terror of the half-mythic realms that lay far beneath the Endless Echoing of the Twenty-Seven Underworlds, beneath the blood islands of Armok, in the nine anti-oceans of Hell, and even beneath the endless Vaults of Zin, which contained the dim dungeons where Armok forever chained His godly rivals.
If that were so, then Wyrms might once have fled out of the Dread Realms beneath, out of blue-litten K’n-yan, or red-litten Yoth, or even black, lightless N'kai, where it was said that Life...Life of the most awful, unthinkable existence, still existed however unspeakably, but where no Spirit could reach or communicate or command to order. That would explain much, but in the Spirit's experience, those-even some other Spirits-who had dwelled too long on speculation of those lands, or worse, sought them out, inevitably ended mad, and either became deeply corrupted, or quickly and unnaturally found themselves removed entirely from the Spirits' provenance.
Still others suggested they arose from a distant dimension, or had perhaps surfaced out some ever-benighted alternate branch along the infinite and infinitely-branched River of Time, but such questions might as well be cast into the wind, for all that they would ever lead to answers.
Wherever they arose from, dragons are, were, and always will be, the avatars of chaos and cataclysm, harbingers of great natural destruction, in some ways existing as a counterbalance to the guardian spirits. While they did exist within the natural order, unlike the many unnatural things that stalked the world, the Spirits of the Land still held no real sovereignity over them--a rare state for anything truly Alive and in the Cycle.
For all their great abilities and terrible strength, despite the power of their will and immensity of their minds, for all that time itself could never alone kill one of them, and would only ever make them stronger and more dangerous, and that they had the potential in turn to kill those who were true Immortals, dwellers outside of the Cycle, unaided; the most potent talent a creature with dragon blood running in it's veins possessed, was it's unlimited freedom. Nothing and noone, no being or force
in this Universe, or in It's immediate dimensional surrounds, could with certainty and impunity
command a Dragon to action or inaction, to grow, to evolve or change, or diminish in any way, if that dragon did not agree. Bargaining was always possible, and often quite amenable to the wyrms, but true mastery was beyond the reach of all.
There were a great many factors lending a true Dragon this unique state of ultimate untamability, but the basic nature of the deeply anti-thaomaturgic toxin surrounding their clutches and protecting their eggs was potent enough to scatter and nullify all of the myriad energies that a Spirit of the Land could bring to bear, halting the Spirit's means of influencing their part of the world, preventing communication with other Spirits, as well as any of the other strange powers a Spirit possessed, or might possess. Those same energies were intrinsic to the multiverse, and what a Spirit could not do, would be a limitation on very many other beings and Powers.
Such a virulent and hostile toxin would ofcourse prove harmful or deadly to most, if not all beings, as well.
That omnipotent toxin flowed in the veins of all dragons as a main and intrinsic component of their blood, helping to protect them from outside influence and dominance, as well as doing all that another poison might do to protect them, and as it made up a large portion of their very blood, as well as various other bodily secretions, it was inseparable from them. Combined with the physical might and wide variation of their bodies, their often supremely powerful minds, and the implacable, adamant will, temper, and stubbornness of the adult dragon, and beyond those some other, inexplicable and ill-defineable magicks that it would seem Fate Itself might have taken upon Itself to lay upon the Draconic species', it was no wonder that wyrms were so often feared, and even sometimes worshipped.
The same weirdly potent toxin that flowed in every draconic vein was what the spirit was now surrounded by, trapped in it's cave like a bubble in a sea of deadly amber.
Another century passed, and another, day by day. Why was it taking so long for the eggs to hatch? An immortal spirit by it's very nature wasn't ever an easy thing to snuff out, but the mother of such a large brood could manage it, and would. The energies from an obliviated spirit would help replace the ones she'd spent giving birth, and even such a primitive wyrm, perhaps with a comparatively primitive mind, as some wyrms had in those ancient days, would know by instinct to attack a trapped and limited spirit. Such a chance would rarely come for a dragon to remove that great of a threat, with so little risk to itself.
There would ever be, after all, so few very great threats.
The spirit prepaired for it's annihiliation, but not idly.
As the seconds passed, as the years went by, the spirit spurred it's few charges on. The fungi ground their way through stone and rock, spawning spores to fill the ever widening cracks, as the armored worms produced their cement-secretion to keep the stress on the stone in check.
The caustic toxin could not quickly be rendered harmless, but it could be trapped-if temporarily-within fungus bodies, and such fungi now worked above the grotto's waters. A new strain of bacteria had been developed, which could now concentrate the venom in larger quantities, safely within the portions of the limestone itself, while yet another strain now dug the deadly venom from other parts, like the tiniest, shortest-lived, and most fecund of miners, who would die and simultaneously reproduce, with every strike to the Earth. Crayfish with specialized claws and unusually sturdy shells became transport for both the microbe-miners, and the fungi that would grow over the envenomed stone, rendering it eventually harmless.
By this process, nanometer by nanometer, a tunnel began to form and widen:
A dragon has a presence and strength of will even beyond the comprehension of most other beings, but a Spirit of the Land embodies will, itself, and that will is the will of life itself, the will to survive and overcome and prosper, without reservation or ruth.
By the measure of the seasons, thirteen hundred and three years and a dozen days or so passed since the volcano rendered the Spoke asunder, and then on or very close to the thirteenth day, a widening crack was made in the stone that finally led not to more poison, but to the floor of the deepest chamber of a cavern system which was filled with damp air. Two days later, like an exhaled breath, a million bacteria suddenly evolved bioluminescence, and that bottom cavern began to glow.
The mind of the dragon cannot be commanded or directly acted upon, but other beings can be influenced, and the spirit now needed more tools and greater allies. The spirit was still weakened by the long period of near-total confinement, but as it began to touch the greater world again,
it's strength was already returning. More importantly, it came again into contact with it's fellows. The shocked surprise, joyful greetings, questions and information, along with the feeling of great love, great rightness, and great belonging entering the Spirit's mind from a hundred different directions, had as substantial an effect upon it as the wall of mud had had, over a millenium ago, and for a moment the Spirit simply allowed the sensations to wash over it.
Spirits of the Land are inherently unselfish, and inherently unceasing. The Spirit had a task to do, and knew it's time was very limited before the dragon might awaken, or it's eggs might hatch, and only a moment later it resumed it's work:
Using the luminescent glow like a beckoning lantern, the Spirit began spreading it's influence through the cavern. The process was frustratingly slow, but the presence and power of the other Spirits was powerfully restorative. So long diminished, the Guardian Spirit soon found itself capable of abilities it had thought long lost. Reaching out to the first new being it had touched it's mind to in over thirteen centuries, the Spirit cast the mantle of it's increasingly awesome presence over a tiny amphibian, joining with the mind, and then taking on the semi-physical form, of a tiny protean olm that quickly grew into a similar size, shape, and dense musculature of a giant gila monster, improbably healthy, who's translucent, vibrantly alive flesh glowed pinkly from within.
It felt good to exist within a body again, to actually feel the slick stone beneath clawed feet, to taste the moisture in the air on a long sticky tongue, and to actually hear with real ears, the tiny echoes of activity in the cave behind it. It's old Form had been that of a great, gold-alight, vesper bat, and the Spirit now took inspiration from this memory.
The Spirit reached out and located a few bold members of a much larger colony of horseshoe bats that had flitted down from the cavern heights to investigate the glow. Touching the minds of the bats, the spirit found and chose an old but still strong female who had flown farther than the rest. The spirit let go of the rest to grip that one more tightly, in both mind and body, and upon that bat the guardian spirit worked a Change.
As the Spirit fully gripped the bat, the cells of her body were immediately reborn, age and decay evaporating like a mist as the once-mature, well-aged female was reincarnated in the flesh, returned again in an instant, to a foetal state.
Under the will of the Spirit, in this protean state, the form of her body began to greatly shift. The bat's body and limbs grew suddenly long, bones stretching and lengthening in an overpowering sensation of pleasure/pain that rendered the bat unconscious almost immediately. Tiny wings
on the sleeping creature grew into great leathery sails, and were tipped with
complex and extremely dextrous six-fingered hands possessing long black claws, each hand having two opposable thumbs. Two more limbs sprouted from her ribcage, collarbone splitting in twain, twisting and splicing into her shoulders, until a pair of secondary limbs, insect-like, formed into long arms, and then clawed hands, these with three strong fingers and a single, opposable thumb.
Below these arms, where nearly invisible teats had been, now grew six smallish but well-formed breasts lightly covered in a fine velvet pelt, in three graduated sets.
The bat's skull grew to a hundred times it's original size, as it's brain became several dozens of times as complex, and far more adaptable. Instinct became overshadowed by the ability to define, to reason and make choices. Muscles grew and expanded, hard and powerful across the lean frame, and then the whole shape was smoothed and made graceful, more clearly feminine,
skin becoming silky, velvety, rather than leathery, eyes turning into deep violet pools, jaw and lips filling out, as the face took a shape akin to what the spirit recalled as being aesthetically pleasing, from it's memory of the elves, and the vocal muscles grew stronger and more flexible than a parrot's. She would be a monster to many, but not wholely monstrous to look at, and not unbeautiful--for some.
Some few, perhaps, atleast...
As the bat slept, the spirit more fully invaded it's mind, keeping the bat-thing unconscious, opening her mind to a constant stream of vivid dreams, and then using those dreams to communicate and transfer knowledge. For a long time, the Spirit taught her in this way, and imparted to her the Spirit's plans. Finally, the spirit removed the bat-thing from her original destiny, granting her an unlimited lifespan, free of age and natural decay.
The thing that had been a bat now became a fully sentient being, a woman who only dreamt she was a bat.
The bat woman had to be prepaired; for she had a message to deliver.
The guardian spirit, before it was trapped, had been in communication with it's fellow spirits, and upon it's escape back into the world, that communcation was immediately resumed. The spirit knew that the elves had departed too far from these lands to arrive in time to stymie the Dragon, or to stop the eggs from hatching. The spirit needed other allies, and it knew where to find them, and how to bring them here.
Bacteria breed and evolve extremely quickly, and are capable of breeding and evolving far faster while under the influence of a guardian spirit. It had not taken so very long for the spirit to will the bacteria into a shape and form that could safely displace the toxin, and it took less time to light up the cavern to draw in the bats.
It didn't take much longer for the entire cavern to be alight, or for the bacteria to dig seven large harlequin opals from the mineral-rich walls of the greater cavern. Blind crayfish gathered the stones, and with the aid of the bacteria, polished them under the careful direction of the spirit, and then with their tiny but powerful claws, the crayfish began to tear into a large fungus that had long become fossilized from the toxin's touch. The leathery fungus was extremely tough, but many claws working at once, under the direction of the Spirit, quickly worked and wove the material of the fungus into a fine drawstringed pouch, which it decorated with the Spirit's mark--a raised abstraction of an olm. As a final touch, the guardian spirit-who in the dim light of the cavern had indeed taken on the hazy shape of an immense olm-took several thousand of the bacteria and entirely removed their ability and will to breed, while granting them, like the bat woman, lives of unlimited length. Into these bacteria, the spirit
deeply imprinted several commands. These bacteria then moved into place, and the symbol of the olm on the pouch began to brightly glow.
Lifting them with their feathery mandibles, waterwasps placed them gently into the bat woman's hands.
With a first startled gasp of air into newborn lungs, the bat woman's huge violet eyes fluttered open, and for the second occasion of her birth, she awoke.
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Topic: The Birth of an Artifact (Read 19923 times)