The Last of the Ageless

by Traci Loudin

  Nyr uncrossed her legs and sat on her ankles. Several emotions warred for dominance on Dalan’s face.

  “Or,” Gryid said, “we can all keep them. They would be good in an emergency—we could try to help each other if nearby. With practice and concentration, we can both see and hear through each other’s devices, allowing effective two-way communication.”

  Nyr raised an eyebrow, and then winced as her wounds stretched. “I don’t like the thought of you being able to see and hear what I’m doing all the time.”

  Gryid’s lips turned up in a humorless smile. “If you choose to keep your devices, we’ll just have to find pouches to cover them up and muffle the sound. But remember that when your device is muffled, you won’t be able to communicate through it either. But like I said, you can still destroy them, if you choose. I can make up another batch of the solution for each of you. Though, it is dangerous.”

  Nyr pointed out in the field. “Gryid, go over there. Let’s see if this actually works.”

  The Ageless man walked away from them toward the dying fire, humming to himself. Dalan, Nyr, and Ti’rros all closed their eyes. Korreth remained silent, listening to the calming sound of crickets. He glanced at each of their pendants and their glowing dots.

  Nyr’s brow furrowed with concentration. “Ti’rros…” she said through her teeth.

  “It is difficult the first time,” the hybrid explained. “It takes concentration, so please remain silent for a few minutes.”

  Korreth found himself holding his breath as the three of them sat still. Dalan opened his eyes and nodded. Then he and Ti’rros waited for Nyr.

  She cracked open an eye. When she saw Dalan and Ti’rros studying her, she smiled sadly. “Caetl was right—I’m too single-minded for this stuff.”

  Gryid came back in their direction as Ti’rros said, “There will be plenty of time to practice.”

  Dalan’s brown eyes flicked to Korreth. “Realized a while back that we’d become something almost like a small clan of our own. Have only known you for a short time, and Gryid even shorter, but if you take the necklace, I swear to come if you call.”

  “And I,” Nyr said, glancing at Dalan and Ti’rros and nodding at Korreth. She smirked at Gryid. “Even for you, Ageless.”

  The Joey’s deep blue eyes met Korreth’s next, and for the first time, he recognized an expression on her stoic face: ambition, where once she had been driven only by duty to Dalan. “And I as well.”

  Gryid bounced his pendant in his palm. “I, too, give each of you my word that I will come if you call.”

  Ti’rros held Caetl’s pendant out to Korreth once more, its stony surface inert compared to the others. Korreth thought back over everything that had happened and wondered if anyone in his tribe would ever believe his story. Perhaps being able to talk to people who’d seen what he had would help maintain his sanity and serve as proof.

  Korreth reached out and took the pendant.

  Epilogue

  Dalan zipped through the canopy, letting the leaves slap his beak and wings. He dipped and flapped recklessly close to the trees, but he was home. He wanted nothing more than to see his family again.

  A tendril of thought touched Dalan’s mind, but not from Saquey. Dalan? Dalan!

  Dalan snagged a branch and folded his wings. He’d expected the sentinels to be the first to greet him, but he hadn’t expected that sentinel to be his sister Shemir.

  He let her feel his joy through the mental connection. Returned at last.

  In return, she showed him her relief. Joktinn kept saying you were the one to disappear this year.

  Has everyone else returned?

  Yes! A long time ago. The mourning dove flapped down to land next to him. Come on, everyone will want to hear what kept you.

  Will be a long story. He gave her a glimpse, and she launched from her perch.

  Go on ahead. Can fly faster.

  Dalan’s desire to see everyone else overpowered him, and he flapped onward. He felt other minds touch his and recognized them as other sentinels.

  Before long, news of his return traveled ahead of him. His tribemates gave him hearty welcomes as he passed. Three raptors surprised him, dominated by the large golden eagle, Dalan’s father Lethan. The other two birds were Mishnir and their mother Trudel. Their relief was palpable, caressing Dalan’s feathers like a warm updraft in the drylands.

  Dalan, where have you been? Are you alright? What happened? Their thoughts bombarded him, and theirs weren’t the only ones. Other tribemates and extended family approached from every direction, inundating him with emotional resonance.

  Is a long story. Am fine. Dalan found a perch for himself, and his parents did the same.

  The cacophony of dragonflies’ wings surrounded them, but when Saquey joined Dalan, the other dragonflies all found trees to cling to. They stilled their wings in respect for their new comrade before returning to their noisy hovering.

  Who did you bring back with you, son? Trudel asked, as was polite when a child returned home an adult bonded to a dragonfly.

  Is Saquey. Dalan flashed them a mental image of his and Saquey’s first moments together. As though sensing the attention, Saquey sent him an image of rodents on the forest floor, and his stomach gurgled. He let the dragonfly go on ahead to find some prey.

  Must be thirsty, his father said. Let’s go back home and you can tell us what happened there.

  Need to talk to the elders too, Dalan put weight into his words, letting everyone listening know he’d discovered things that could impact their tribe’s future.

  Good, because the elders wish to conduct your ceremony tonight, a faint voice said. Dalan’s grandmother had projected her thoughts over a much longer distance than he could. Her thought had also shown him her location not far from the elder’s circle.

  Let him get some food first! Mishnir protested. Is exhausted, I can tell.

  We convene at sundown, another of the elders whispered.

  The crowd of birds and other climbing creatures around them dispersed at those words, their curiosity held in abeyance. Shemir joined them, and together, the siblings headed back to their parents’ house for a meal together.

  Perhaps his last, once the elders found out how badly he’d broken the Ancient Teachings.

  Alone in the clearing, Dalan stood in his birth form. Five dead trees formed the perimeter of the glade, and five omdecu clung to their trunks—the elders of his tribe. They climbed up and down the trees, searching for a comfortable spot. Their dragonflies hovered nearby.

  Sundown this deep in the forest meant near complete darkness. As the rest of his tribemates filled the trees at the edge of the clearing, Dalan transmelded into the omdecu.

  The physical changes didn’t hurt nearly as much as they had before he’d left the Omdecu Tribe. His vision improved as he transmelded into his secondary form, allowing him to distinguish the dragonflies’ colors now—the brightest being his grandmother’s vibrant red companion Sepp.

  In minutes, a hundred or so omdecu and other creatures clung to trees deeper in the woods. He waited silently, trying to stifle the urge to look for his friend Joktinn. More tribemates came to witness his ceremony than he’d ever seen at past rites.

  Saquey circled overhead before coming to rest beside him. Though he hadn’t realized how fast his heart had been beating before, Saquey’s presence calmed him.

  His grandmother settled into position on one of the dead trees, which had never decayed in all the years he’d been alive. Only the sounds of dragonfly wings and the wind whipping through the trees disturbed the clearing—a storm was coming. Saquey rose up to swoop around the glade, as happy as Dalan to be home.

  He glanced at each of the elders in turn—Dalleka on the far left, his grandmother Gavainya on the tree next to her, Sinnach in the middle, Heidhi on the right, and Tarran on the far right.

  Have bonded with this dragonfly? Everyone nearby could hear the elders’ thoughts.

  In answer, Dalan
opened his mind and sent an image of himself first seeing Saquey on the offerings in the drylands. He imitated the elders’ method of broadcasting the thoughts to the area rather than toward a particular mind. He showed his people how Saquey had joined him in battle with the felines, and felt collective gasps ripple through his audience. Then he sent the sound of Saquey’s name.

  Saquey, the elders’ voices echoed in his mind. Everyone else remained silent.

  The name of my son Athegal’s dragonfly, Gavainya said. The subtext of her words said, Family. Honor. Mortality. Because intention and connotation could be more easily felt than said, no one overexplained while transmelded.

  Then you are an adult, the other elders said. Man. Declare it so.

  Most of the rest of his tribe mentally spoke more clearly than the elders did. Dalan supposed that acting, thinking, and talking together for so long made the elders’ mental speech less defined.

  He let his doubts and anxieties seep through as he directed his thoughts into words, Am I? Before leaving, given a goal: to solve a problem. Only created more.

  Though he couldn’t unravel his thoughts and images of his travels, the elders absorbed them.

  Sinnach told him, Wait.

  His grandmother sent him reassurances and a distracted, Wait, as though his unbridled thoughts and feelings were interrupting her while she tried to talk to someone else.

  Show us more, they said a moment later. So long. Lost. Dead. Afraid. Unbelievable. Gone, said the subtext of their directed thoughts. He felt their suspicion, their dread at the implications of some of his thoughts.

  As best he could, he started at the beginning, showing them everything he could remember of what happened before he bonded with Saquey. About how he’d killed, assuming he was defending life according to the Ancient Teachings. About how he’d prevented justified vengeance. With those images and thoughts he sent out a tendril of questioning hope, but the elders let no opinions of his actions slip.

  As Caetl had taught him, he submerged his fear that the very essence of the Ancient Teachings would be in doubt by the time he finished his tale. He showed them Nyr giving him the necklace and let his emotions about the necklace bleed through—confusion, concern, paranoia, anger, frustration, and finally, uncertainty. Then he went through his memories of how he’d freed the trapped Joey, but beneath the word Joey, he put the subtext hybrid, promising to explain more later.

  Surely you see, that was a problem solved, one of the elders pointed out.

  Dalan showed his memory of the later conversation with Nyr and Ti’rros, letting them hear Nyr’s question and the Joey’s response—Ti’rros would rather have died than be saved by one of the inferior races. None of the elders spoke up after that, so Dalan continued, showing them as much as he could remember, as clearly as he could.

  Soon he lost himself in the memories and no longer felt the grass beneath his paws. He let them experience his doubled surprise when Nyr’s clan appeared from nowhere, followed by the clan of Purebreeds. The brutal fight. How he’d fled with Ti’rros and even Nyr. Their first encounter with the Purebreeds, and then the mystic—his emotions overpowered him, and he paused there. No one urged him on, allowing him a moment of grief.

  Next he showed them the Wizard’s town and the trees whose arms spun behind his hut. And then he showed a collage of memories about the cyborg, which elicited exclamations from his tribemates. The story went on and on, and by the time he finished, he was exhausted.

  Dalan glanced around the clearing and was surprised to see that no one had left. Some of the youngsters were curled up, asleep. He’d created a disruption with the late hour—no schooling for the kids tomorrow. When he looked to the sky, he discovered it already was tomorrow.

  Interesting, the thoughts of the elders coalesced. Need to confer and to rest and to think on what you’ve told us. Will question you more tonight. About what you’ve learned, or what you think you have learned, of the Ancients.

  The elders’ dragonflies burst into motion at that pronouncement, their wings buzzing as they pushed off the trees to hover in the air. A soft rain began to fall.

  Truly completed the trials? Dalan swallowed his nervousness.

  Bonded with a dragonfly, haven’t you? Echoed the thoughts of a few of the elders.

  Am considered an adult then, a tribemate? Solved no problems.

  The warmth of their reassurances washed over him. Of course. Solving a problem was never meant to be taken quite so far, Dalan.

  Solved several problems, many of which you may not even be aware.

  Have also created other problems, as you feared, but don’t worry about that now.

  As the rain fell in earnest, their thoughts wrapped around him like a warm blanket, soothing him. A tension that had been building in him since he’d met Nyr finally relaxed. He was back where he belonged, and he’d passed his trials. Saquey circled around him, as though congratulating him.

  He was now a true member of the Omdecu Tribe.

  After sleeping through much of the day, Dalan returned to the clearing as the storm let up. His family and other tribemates gathered once more in the fading light, anxious to understand the implications of his news.

  He’d left the tribe as a boy, hoping to return and be accepted as a man by his people. But he’d instead returned as a traveler, a storyteller who had seen things he wasn’t meant to have seen.

  He’d grown familiar with Saquey’s presence while on his trials away from home, but now he needed to acclimate to the dragonfly’s constant presence in his tribelands. He smiled up at his companion.

  He came out of his transmeld and stood before the elders in his birth form so he could hold up the necklace, bound in black cloth. Then he unwrapped it, letting everyone see the purple stone and the pink dots within. He paused, irrationally afraid he might hear the Wizard’s voice. Then he tied the black cloth around it once more and fell to the forest floor on all fours, returning as fast as he dared to his secondary form.

  The elders began with the topic of the Ageless.

  When Dalan told them—again—about one of his first conversations with the Wizard, Dalleka interrupted, Go back. Said something about history and who started the war last night. Tell us more.

  Dalan reminded them of the Wizard’s words about how technology had been misused during the Catastrophe.

  No, something very specific. Try to remember exactly what he said.

  Dalan closed his eyes and thought back to the day he’d met the Wizard. Recalling such a mundane part of the conversation was difficult when so much else had happened that seemed of greater consequence. Said Zen was three times more powerful than any other Ageless… Asked if the Catastrophe was because of an invasion.

  His eyes flew open as he remembered what the elders had sensed on the edge of his memory. The Wizard said the aliens showed up, putting ships all around the Earth, and the Ancients thought they meant to invade. The Wizard’s opinion was that his fellow Ancients fired the first shot.

  The thoughts and emotions coming from the elders jumbled together. He sensed them thinking, The All-Seeing Eye. The Fragment. The Ancient Teachings.

  Abruptly, their thoughts went silent and they conferred amongst themselves before continuing his interrogation. Throughout the night they interrupted him, sensing something at the edge of Dalan’s memory, or hearing discrepancies in what he told them versus the previous night. They asked him questions about the Ancients and made him repeat what he’d overheard the Ageless say, examining words Dalan hadn’t considered important at the time.

  Over and over they had him show them the tanks in Kaia’s temple, the lab, and the strange bodies inside, though Dalan himself hadn’t seen them—Saquey had shown him. He repeated what the Ageless had said about the Joeys and the Catastrophe.

  The elders’ opinions echoed his own—that the Ageless couldn’t be trusted to tell the whole truth about the Catastrophe. Regardless, the bodies of the K’inTesh spoke for themselves; there were too many sim
ilarities between them and the Joeys to be coincidence.

  Dalan looked up through the break in the canopy to see dark clouds billowing overhead, blocking out the dawn. The elders’ questions grew further between, and they conferred more and more amongst themselves.

  As the clouds moved in once more, he felt the mood in the clearing shift. The elders had come to an agreement. To Dalan’s surprise, the five of them transmelded, shifting into their birth forms. They addressed not only him, but the entire tribe, gathered in the trees bordering the clearing.

  He sensed his tribemates’ consternation, most of them never having seen the elders in their birth forms.

  “For far too long,” Dalleka began in her quavering voice, “the Omdecu Tribe has remained secluded from other tribes. The sound of hundreds of dragonfly wings is a warning our neighbors no longer ignore. Also no longer communicate with anyone outside ourselves. Trade, yes, but only with our most trustworthy neighbors. Rarely receive news of what lies beyond the forests. Youngsters like Dalan remind us about the world outside our lands, about how other peoples progress.”

  Tarran took up the words next. “In the earliest days of our tribe, our ancestors learned of their remarkable gifts when the last omdecu spoke. Began collecting animals in danger of dying out, those creatures whose numbers dwindled months and years after the Catastrophe… when mutations edged out their more natural counterparts and new predators came into existence. Took them in, trying to preserve them for future generations, and became them, taking them into our blood.”

  His grandmother was the next to speak. Gavainya gazed into Dalan’s eyes, though he remained in omdecu form. “But if invaded by outsiders, our ability to remain guardians of these lost animal spirits is in danger. Carry so many extinct species in our blood. If wiped out, so too are they. The powerful technologies Dalan encountered prove these artifacts are resurfacing, a fact we can no longer ignore. The Ageless woman, Soledad, escaped.”