by Peter Fang
Toherd didn’t have to wait long before an engineer came running to him, trying to catch his breath. “Sir, we can hear the queen again. Her situation has stabilized, but she will have a long recovery time ahead. The queen requested more food. She also said it is urgent for us to contact Gregory Johnson. He will arrange to secure the queen with one of the blood children. I think her name is ‘Maria.’”
“Gregory Johnson?”
Toherd consulted his memory of every proxy and infected human in the nearby region and located two Gregory Johnsons. One of them was already disposed of a month ago due to an accident on the road; the other was a proxy that worked as an asset and real estate manager at an insurance company. Gregory was the one who actually helped Manfred to get the antique shop. Toherd nodded and realized why the queen wanted to contact Gregory, and it was to help connect Maria and the queen.
Toherd cleared his throat and ordered everyone, “All right, everyone, we have a singular focus from now on. The queen is alive but needs our help. Sue Wei and Liu Zhu sacrificed themselves for all of us, and now it’s up to us to keep the queen alive. Let’s get to work!”
“Sir, the queen––-she needs a maggot sent up so she can cast a spell onto Manfred.”
“Why would she need Manfred?” the large toad asked.
“She didn’t say, sir.”
“Very well, send it up and we will wait for more instructions. Send up other food items up from the storage. Get Lão Chóng as close to the queen as possible.”
Yhawri approached the Toherd closely behind. “Good call on the situation back there. That’s why you are in charge.”
Toherd nodded. “Thanks, my friend. I want to let you know you have been a great help to me.” Toherd patted Yhawri's neck. The move startled Yhawri. Toherd never touches anyone.
“Thanks, but we are far from out of the woods,” Yhawri reminded Toherd. “Lão Chóng is skittish, and we still have to search for all the human hosts on the surface. We need to feed Lão Chóng and the queen both, and you know when there is no food to eat, she will start devouring us.”
Toherd nodded quietly. “I know, but let’s just focus on one thing at a time.”
Once Toherd shambled away, Yhawri slithered past chambers of working toads and serpents. It then came up to a large breathing chamber guarded by two large toads. The toads recognized him and let him through without questioning him. Yhawri was in charge of the breeding chamber. Inside the chamber, it revealed a large nursery. There were rows of eggs of different varieties and sizes. Some were trembling with young serpents inside, others were semi-transparent yolks that bare swimming tadpoles; nearby, there was an enormous, obese creature that looked like a cross between a queen ant and a serpent. She was strapped to the ceiling and constantly pumping out eggs from her posterior. Next to her was a row of caretakers attending the eggs as they emerged. There were toad guards inside the chamber, watching the caretakers attending the eggs. Yhawri looked at the rows of eggs in disgust and then circled around the chamber to greet several top helpers and guards. He then moved up to a ledge formed from a lymph node outgrowth and coiled on top of it. It posed steady as it looked down on the chamber of eggs. Others in the room went back to their business, assuming Yhawri was there to inspect their work. Everyone knew of the predicament they were in, and as a member of the feeders’ team, they knew their goal was to produce as many eggs as possible, so no one saw Yhawri cast a mimic spell on himself.
Up on the ledge, you could get a sweeping view of all the activities humming inside the chamber: Carts of eggs were being carried off by the caretakers and moved to other smaller feeding chambers nearby, where new parasites were being cared for. The queen needed the parasites to infect the blood children. Then there was the glowing chamber to the right that gave off pulsating bio-luminescent lights. As the light lit up the chamber, you could see countless creatures quivering inside their egg sacs hanging from the ceiling. There was not much time left before the parasites hatched, so everyone was busy, and this was the perfect time to plan.
Yhawri gazed at the egg-laying female and could barely contain his despair. The female had no eyes and was almost like a machine, utterly numb and unaware of her environment.
He finally cleared his thoughts and whispered a spell; seconds later, his skin started to shed. The translucent skin peeled away quickly and as it reached the floor, it took on a life of its own. As time passed, the white, ghostly skin transformed into an imitation. When it was complete, it looked back at Yhawri and mirrored his moves.
“Stay here and stand guard,” whispered Yhawri. He then slithered into a small opening behind a flap of fatty tissue.
Once inside the tissue, he squeezed himself into a collapsed fatty tunnel. The tunnel kept going until it led to an inner sac chamber. There were other serpents there, hiding in the shadows. When Yhawri emerged, the chamber came alive with six other serpents, each like him with a human face.
One of the serpents wore a tattoo across his face. He looked unsure and spoke first, “We can’t stay here too long. We all have work to do. Are we sure we want to do this now? The queen is injured and master is dead. If we screw up now, we may spook Lão Chóng again and we will all die––-”
Yhawri ignored the tattooed serpent and whispered, “Is it almost ready?”
“Yes,” one of the female serpents answered with a hiss. “As you instructed, I have placed the spell seeds in the areas you told me. I almost got caught several times. One of the guards almost caught me near the entrance to the toad clan’s master hallway. Luckily I was faster and escaped into a gut vein—what an awful, smelly place.”
“Let me see the rest of the seeds,” Yhawri whispered. His voice rasped with excitement.
The female serpent led the way past the small sac they were in and into another hole; everyone followed her behind. They came into a separate chamber now filled with various shapes of glowing fungi: one resembled a dragon’s head with bright red horns protruding from the cap; another one had exquisite web of skin growing over the stem, and finally, there was an enormous fungus growing in the corner of the chamber. It was much bigger than the rest. Yhawri crawled gingerly over to the large fungus, coiling up next to it and admiring its growth. It was a luminous fungus that glowed in a blue hue. Its stem was planted on a corpse. As the blue hue glowed, it revealed the corpse to be a dried-up toad. It appeared that everything inside the body had been sucked dry and its skin was as tight as a drum’s skin.
“Excellent! This blue dragon cap is our prize, and our chance to take back control of Lão Chóng. It has been over a hundred years since our clan was in charge. Aren’t you all sick of taking orders from the toads?”
Everyone nodded eagerly.
“Are we sure this room is secure? Toherd had his mind melded with Lão Chóng's; he could hear everything,” one of the smaller serpents whispered.
Yhawri demurred, “Of course! I cast the spell around the key areas, but Lão Chóng won’t feel a thing. The toads won’t know even if they were standing next to their master hallway’s entrance. They have grown ignorant and lazy, which is to our advantage.”
“What if the queen finds out later that we killed Toherd and all of his lieutenants? She could order Lão Chóng to devour us at any time.”
Yhawri tightened his coils, his tail rattling in agitation. Yhawri approached the small serpent and stared at him intently.
“Curse the rules! You think the queen really gives a damn about our lives? We are all slaves down here. All she cares about is herself. We are just lowlife workers. The toads may think they are doing an honorable job, but that is why they are the fools. Like you guys, most of them were not here the last time the toads took over control from our clan. I was young then, but I will never forget that day! They killed off all of my friends and tried to use their spells to wipe out our memories. I was the only one that still remembered everything. There were two hundred of us back then; after the mutiny, there were only ten of us left. They took my wife a
nd turned her into that egg-laying machine outside, and kept us to breed as food source for the queen. I’m the only one left from that time, and I promised back then that their bad deeds will be repaid.”
“Why didn’t they kill you?” asked another serpent.
“They needed some of us to make more serpents. We also had secrets and spells that they desired, so they kept us alive.” Yhawri turned away, hiding his pain, then spoke distantly, “The queen didn’t do a damn thing––-it was business as usual the next day.”
“Did Manfred know about this?”
Yhawri laughed, “That happened hundreds of years ago––-Manfred was not around back then. As much as we all liked him, I don’t think he would have cared, either. He was willing to lock us down here with Lão Chóng when he attacked the queen. If it wasn’t for us, we wouldn’t have been able to break through his spell and send Bit up to stop him. On the surface, they don’t really care what we do down here, so long as the queen gets her food and spells. It’s our war down here, our future. I have been keeping track. For the last one hundred years, the toads reincarnated two hundred and sixty-three times; can you guess what is our number?” Yhawri waited for anyone to answer. When no one did, he answered. “Ten! There were only ten serpents that were reincarnated.”
The serpents in the room were all now agitated by the story, and Yhawri looked on with satisfaction in his eyes.
“When do you want to execute the plan?” The young serpent nearly lunged forward as he forced the words out. It was the first time he heard the details of the account, and the anger inside was boiling over.
“Soon! Wait for my signal. I know exactly the time to take care of that fat toad and all of his cronies. Once we get rid of him, the rest of them will fall in line. I wanted them to know how we feel––-how I have felt for so long. I waited for this moment for a long time.” Yhawri slithered away from the group and made a circle with his body. He pointed his head towards the center and enunciated each word carefully, spitting out each syllable with such care that it was like tasting the revenge in his mouth.
“Last time the queen was injured, the toads did everything to keep us very busy because they knew it was a vulnerable time. It’s no different this time. Toherd will tell you that we need to keep our focus on the queen, but in fact all she really needs is just food, and she will recover on her own. I lived through a coup before, and I know she won’t have energy left to care about the turmoil down here. The toads will run all kinds of drills to distract us. But they won’t know what was coming.”
They coiled their bodies tightly in anticipation; they could hardly wait.
“Well, what is the spell?” the female serpent asked.
“It is a single spell that hits the toads’ biggest weakness. Once the spell hooks them, they will be in a trance, and we can take out anyone we want.”
“Where did you learn this? If it was this easy, how come we didn’t just do it long ago?”
“Because only when the queen is injured is the spell effective. I found this spell long ago by accident, when Queen had an incident and she was temporarily disconnected from Lão Chóng. My mind was linked with hers, and I had access to the complete code and description of the seeds in the nursery. I have been studying all of the thousands of spells in secrecy. This spell will allow us to take control of Lão Chóng when the time is ripe.”
“So, what is our plan to execute?” one asked.
“Be patient. We will cast the seeds from our fungi in order. You heard the queen’s desire to choose one of the blood children that paid her a visit. I think we want to help queen choose the other blood child.”
The room started to panic after they heard the suggestion.
“You want to go against Queen’s desire? She will skin us!”
“No, she won’t!” Yhawri’s voice resonated with authority; his sharp eyes scanned across the small room and met everyone’s quivering stares. “I will release the spells when the time is right! And we will have our way with the blood child’s choice. That’s all there is to it. This is not a debate!”
“But why do we want the other blood child? What is wrong with the chosen one?”
Yhawri snickered. “Think about it. We are secretly growing our magic seeds, but they are not yet ready. By my estimation, the toads will make contact with Maria to infect her before our seeds are ready. Once they get Maria, it will be impossible for us to connect with her with a different spell. We will then be locked out of this deal. To stop them, we have one spell that will make their cast on Maria ineffective. They will inevitably start to panic, and we will cast our own to take over Lão Chóng and Elise. Queen won’t care if she has only one blood child to choose from, and the toads will be cut off.”
“When is that time? How do we know when we can be free of this chain?”
“Patience––-I know when the time comes, and you will hear my call. We have to wait until we get close to Maria. We need to connect with her from here, or else our spells won’t last. By the time the queen recovers, our spell will have set in, and she won’t care who’s serving her down here. She gets what she wants, but for us, we must seize this chance.”
A marble-patterned serpent raised her voice, “We are forgetting one thing, aren’t we?” A gray serpent gathered enough courage to slink forward. “What about Master Manfred’s replacement? Where are we going to find him? Our Queen always had a guard, and we always had a master. We can’t go without a master for too long. I worry Lão Chóng will soon decline without the master’s care.”
Yhawri cast a chilling stare at her. “Don’t be stupid! Who do you think the toads will sacrifice when the food runs low? Without Manfred and with our queen injured, soon there won’t be enough food to go around for everyone, and then it will be us on the dinner menu. So, either way, we are dead if we don’t succeed. What we need to think about is to make our plan work. There is no future for us if we let others control our fate.”
The female serpent shook her neck as if to remind everyone the golden ring that was tied to each of the serpent. “So, I think toads knows the history too. I would assume they anticipated this scheme after the previous master died. What prevents the toads from locking us down using the rings around our neck? As long as we have the rings around our neck, they will have the upper hand.”
“Leave that to me. What do you think I have been doing for the last century? I figured out the spell to disable the rings when the time is right. There is a gem inside Toherd’s stomach. It is the key to unlocking our rings. We need to kill him first and extract his gem; then I can issue the spell and all the toads will be paralyzed. That’s the time when we can take off our rings and put them on the toads. I will then take control of the gem and the swap will be complete!”
The thought of enslaving the toads was sending them into a frenzy.
They almost lost contact with the queen, and by a narrow margin, they managed to survive a near disaster. Toherd did not want to think about what could have happened if they were not able to reconnect with the queen. Lão Chóng––-this place they called home––-would have been their graveyard.
He lumbered slowly away from the main chambers where most of the clan members were busy going about their duties. He saw Yhawri taking a route headed towards the egg chambers. Toherd knew Yhawri enough that he liked to visit the eggs chamber to visit his wife; just like himself, he needed some quiet moments to gather his thoughts. It had been a whirlwind of panicked motions from both clans. Somehow, the knowledge that the connection with the queen was severed leaked out. Toherd remembered he gave specific instructions not to spread the news right away to avoid chaos, but the information still filtered out. Could it be one of his engineers? Or maybe it was Yhawri, whom he considered almost his equal, yet could never fully be trusted. All the years they survived together led Toherd to know Yhawri like his own family. He knew Yhawri was still a serpent, so he could never be fully trusted. This tragic incident could not have been planned by Yhawri, but he kne
w Yhawri was a schemer, and an opportunist. There was no greater opportunity to make a big impact than during a great upheaval. Everything they saw happening suggested that Yhawri and his clan members might be up to something. Call it a hunch…Toherd felt an uneasiness churning in his stomach, knowing Yhawri was probably plotting away, but none of his clan members had spotted anything unusual.
One way to put his mind at ease was to hook into Lão Chóng's mind. Lão Chóng heard and felt everything inside its body, and only Toherd had access to its consciousness. If there was anything going on with Yhawri and his clan, Lão Chóng would have heard or felt something.
But hooking into Lão Chóng's mind right after their harrowing experience was a dangerous act––-it could cause Lão Chóng to panic, and they might lose control of it again. Toherd paced inside his small chamber trying to recall if there was any hint from Yhawri that would warrant a deep link with Lão Chóng. After much contemplation, Toherd just couldn’t risk not knowing. He had to make contact with the queen using Lão Chóng. He needed to explain to the queen what had happened––-although he thought they were all betrayed by their Master, Manfred. Now all the previous secret pacts they had made with Manfred would be exposed. There were not many, but the few that they kept under wraps with Manfred could not surface. He was sure that there were moles down here, and not of the furry sort. The sooner he could explain that to the queen, the sooner he would be at ease.
Part III
Paths to Perdition
A raging torrent feeds on the smallest ravines
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