by wildbow
The man with the red hair was paying attention, his eyes fixated on the wood and the chains.
“All secure, sir.”
“Make doubly sure.”
“I did, sir.”
“I’ll rephrase. Take another two minutes, for my peace of mind. I’ll wait.”
Two minutes, the creature processed. It could recall moments when people had used similar language. Just a minute, you miserable old bastard. One, two, three, four.
“Do you know?” the man with the red hair asked, looking at the creature again. “When I said that, you relaxed your muscles at your shoulder, your mouth sagged, and your wings dropped. You subconsciously prepared yourself to wait.”
The creature understood the individual elements, but words like ‘subconscious’ eluded it. It took time to piece the statement together. Slowly, it put the whole picture together. It was careful to keep from giving any external signs that it understood.
“And you just tensed. That took you about twenty seconds. You damn well understand me, don’t you? It’s not just tone of voice.”
“Understand?” the old man asked. He barked out a laugh, smiling in a mean, condescending way that only people with power over others seemed able to do.
“Shhh, Harding,” the man with the red hair said. “Bite that tongue, keep it bitten. From the way this thing is acting, I’m guessing you went against my orders to avoid talking to it.”
“Hunh?” the old man made an unfamiliar, negatory sound. “I didn’t talk to it. Neither did they.”
“Did you talk around it?”
“You didn’t—”
“I told you not to expose it to speech. That means not talking to it, and minimizing how much you talk around it, unless you’re willing to put it in a hole in the ground or seal it in a case that will muffle the sound.”
“You didn’t say that!”
“I’ll have to talk to Stanley. Are the chains good?”
“The chains appear to be as good as the last three times I looked them over, sir.”
“Then open the door.”
Rusted metal squeaked against rusted metal as a large door was opened in the side of the building. A mass of lights outside the building illuminated the dust between the creature and the door. New, fresh air flowed into the building.
Exhilarating. The creature put the man with the red hair out of its mind. The new environment had to be studied, pieced together.
“So long as you’re pointed in their direction, it’ll be fine,” the man with the red hair said.
So many people were gathered. All were of the same type, that this creature associated with pain and losing progress and losing resources. Would they take it to pieces, now? Would they fall on it en masse, devour it as it had devoured its meals, pull it apart into its constituent parts to better analyze it, and improve themselves through the act?
They didn’t fall upon the creature en masse. Men held chains and hauled the creature out through the door, into this strange world of cold, of water coming down from the sky, and hordes of people who smelled like agitation and excitement.
Leashed to a large wagon, its path barred by the chains and metal around it, this creature saw as its brothers were arranged around it. Another pattern it did not understand.
☙
An explosion of sound, distant, followed by pain, so near! The creature keened. Fire burned it, and it keened even more. The foreign bodies that penetrated it were so much smaller than the axes, but they dug deep and they burned hot, doing so much damage on the way.
This creature was already working to build better defenses. The gaps in the bone lace closed even as damage was done, the creature dissolved unneeded organs and cannibalized them for resources. Slowly, the bone lace, closed, would total six overlapping skeletal structures of collagen and calcium, of keratin, and of crystal. Different combinations of material went into each structure. Flight would be impossible, but the wings did allow the creature to push against the air as well as the ground, flapping with more and more strength as it reconfigured how the muscles supported the wings.
Retreat was impossible. It was lashed to what the men had called the wagon, which was driven forward by men. Retreating was impossible, because of the wagon and the iron bars that blocked the way. Advancement meant walking into the pain and the fire.
This creature advanced, screeching. The weapons it was developing were new, too. These ones were old, considered and written into its bones long ago, a response to the loss of its brains, to the loss of heads. A memory from long ago swiftly became a reality today, scythes of bone on forelimbs and wingtips. The creature was turning back to old, forgotten ideas that had been deemed too resource-heavy, more responses to the cutting, strengthening the connections between cells, making the cells rigid and less likely to tear. It was a time-consuming process, one that would require ever more food.
Advancing was the better option, because advancement meant food. A scythe could cut into three men in a single sweep. Those men fell to the ground, too hurt to move, and this creature could eat them.
Many weren’t alive. Their flesh was lower quality, lacking moisture, riddled with wire and other things. This creature ate the wire, and muscle action worked to drag the wire to where it might be useful, joining the small fragments of metal in encasing the most important parts of this creature’s body.
The creature’s brothers were communicating with it. One had been developing a way to escape. It was ready, and had been ready before the red haired man showed up. All four had been biding their time, all four wanted so badly to stop hurting, to get away from the noise, the fire, the confusion and the pain. They had hoped to coordinate their efforts across the entire building, using all of their brothers, not four. If each one tried something at the same time, and some of the tricks and strategies worked, then they had a better chance than if one tried something.
Fighting its way past the dead men with metal inside them, the creature hurled itself forward until the chains were taut, metal straining. It swept its claw and scythe out, reaching for a woman that had been giving orders to the stitched.
The scythe didn’t reach far enough.
Shoulder muscles relaxed, then the joint shifted, only a part of the overall configuration holding. The limb extended half-again as far. then cut flesh. It pulled the limb back, dragging the body back with it, and pulled its shoulder back into place with muscle action.
Every step of the way, it was hurt more, it advanced more.
Its brother wanted to act, now. This creature readied itself, tensing and drawing low to the ground, as if preparing for another lunge.
All across its body, the anchoring points of muscles on the lacework and plates of bone shifted. Organs that had had nothing to do with physical prowess could all contract and relax, and each of these organs settled into a new anchoring point.
This creature had been given instructions to display strength.
Wings flapped, and limbs bit deep into the road, crushing the material that road was made of. It clawed at those who it could reach as it plowed forward, but those targets weren’t the goal.
Behind it, every chain was pulled so tight that metal threatened to fuse into the metal it had been pulled against, other links threatening to break. Wagon wheels scraped on the road.
Two of the other three assisted this creature in hauling forward, dragging the wagons that had restricted their mobility. This creature could hear the exclamations of surprise and fear.
“What the hell!?”
“Shit, shit shit!”
“What in God’s name!?”
A chain that bound one of this creature’s brothers broke. Relieved of the tension, the chain flew back, striking a man.
More exclamations. A scream.
The fourth creature remained where it was, feigning a wounded appearance. It was now caught in the tangle of the wagons they had dragged behind them, hidden by those same wagons.
That fourth opened its mouth wide an
d upheaved chunks of flesh. Some of those chunks wriggled, flopping on the ground.
Much of the food they had been given had tasted of the same things that vast expanse of water in the distance seemed to smell of. These wriggling chunks were fish, in a manner of speaking, but they were brothers too. It was a long, hard journey to the water, but to all appearances, that water was free of the people that cut at them. There would be more fish there.
This creature might not get free today or tomorrow. It might be cut away at until nothing was left, but if others of its kind existed, they would remember and they would return.
This creature could hear distant voices.
It wasn’t sure of the direction, but another blast of fire and heat marked the use of one of the artillery shells or grenades. This blast targeted the wagons, and it targeted the brother the creatures had tried to keep hidden.
Fire ripped away the lives of the youngest brothers, the fish-brothers who had been meant to seek the water, to eat and to grow until they were strong enough to come back. Fire wounded the fourth brother, who had just performed his role. Wood was broken and chains came free.
This creature saw the opportunity, and it doubled back, turning its back to the men who kept shooting it with guns, who kept cutting it and burning it.
It could see its brother, injured, and it could smell all of the things its brother was saying.
Pain, fear, confusion. Trying this, trying this, trying this, trying to—
Loss.
Lost hope. Lost tools. Trapped. No movement.
Anger. Fury.
Loss. Loss. Loss. Pain.
This creature heard all of the noises, primal, primitive, too simple. It knew its brother was broken. A piece of the other creature had been lost, and it wasn’t a gland, an organ, or a growth.
It heard the noises, and it answered by opening its mouth. Its brother didn’t even protest or fight.
This creature devoured the greatest meal it had ever had, and then it pulled that meal apart, so that every part could be taken in, moved like the wire and the bullets had been moved, or pulled apart even further, into constituent elements.
Hunched over, this creature used the wagons as best as it was able to shield itself from the hostile, horrible outside world.
Dimly, it heard the cries, as people saw it doing what it was doing.
For them to be so opposed to a meal that was so good, it was impossible for there to be anything good to them.
It heard the cries of fear, and it memorized them, as it had so recently memorized words like artillery, gun, grenade, wagon, and scythe. Those cries were written to memory, as the existence of the creature’s brother was written deep into the bone plates it was growing.
☙
Existence was frustration, endless pain, always at the hands of these creatures. Every advancement was met with more hostility. When the bullets and fire were no longer enough, the warbeasts attacked. After the warbeasts were the artillery shells and the grenades. One step of advancement, and one step of loss.
This creature was four times the size it had been when it had left the building, streamlined. It had learned how to break down the metals and wood that penetrated its flesh and battered its internal skeleton, and now it turned those metals into better protections.
Its brothers were dead. It had eaten another one of them, but had been kept from eating the other. A lone chain still connected to its shoulder, but the loops of metal that the chain was bound to, once encircling this creature’s neck and shoulders, were now migrating out of the creature’s body. Those loops had been passed between organs and muscle structures, which disconnected to let it pass and reconnected behind them, and in time they would be free, left to fall to the ground.
This creature tensed, waiting for the next attack, the next warbeast or the explosion that would scatter chunks of its flesh, vital materials.
That attack didn’t come. For the first time since the fighting had begun, it felt respite. Hungrily, it began working, diverting resources within the engine that was its body, rapidly patching up the worst of the damage. As the damage closed up and the wounds were protected by a covering of healthy flesh, it prepared to be strong, to be fast, and if it could get far enough away, it was prepared to deliver spawn, to spew them out in a location where they might be able to find the water.
“The bastard.”
The red-haired man’s voice.
“I shouldn’t be surprised,” the man spoke. “I told the Baron I would take care of you… but I didn’t think he’d leave me with no help at all.”
The creature turned, and it identified the source of the voice.
The red haired man was atop a wagon, a burned and battered hulk of wood that had been used as protection from incoming fire.
This creature understood that if it attacked, the red haired man would hide inside. It would have to be decisive, to cleave the wagon apart and cut the man to pieces before others could hurt it and drive it back.
“The war’s over, creature. You’re done. You did what you were supposed to do,” the man said.
The voice was calm, easy. The only voices this creature had ever heard that sounded like it were the voices of one man to one of his fellows who had been shot. A gentle, soothing sound that would ease a life into oblivion.
This creature did not want oblivion. It tensed, muscles moving, ready to be strong.
A bullet struck. That bullet punched through bone and then opened up within the creature, tearing, six pointed claws extending in different directions from a central point, reaching further as they traveled.
The second bullet caught this creature in the shoulder joint. Muscle that had already disconnected was left unable to reconnect to a configuration better for brute strength.
Knotted, armored in its own skin, strong from the outside to the inside, every process aimed at being able to fight and to stay alive, the creature felt the bullets strike home, one after the other. Each one opened up in ways that made the damage worse, made it hard to pull things back together, to reconnect.
The creature turned, and it ran, a lopsided gait. It heard shouts, felt the slack in the chain change.
Men, twenty or more, held the chain. Their feet dragged against the ground as the creature ran.
One of them, or all of them working in concert, seemed to find a way to catch the chain on something.
The creature felt the metal loop tug and tear at flesh inside its unwounded shoulder. There was hurt, which was bad. The loop didn’t come free, which was bad.
Frustration. Loss.
The creature made the sounds and respired the ideas in a coded language of four compounds pieced together.
Then, for the benefit of those who hampered it, those who had hampered it from the moment it was aware enough to recognize the actions for what they were, it roared. Men covered ears, some staggered and even let go of the chain.
The creature hauled back, as strong as it could be with one shoulder torn and the other riddled with the foreign bodies, but the chain remained caught.
It was between two buildings, the chain extending between it and the people, who shrank back and away.
Only the man with the red hair approached, standing ahead of all the rest.
The creature reconfigured its throat, its mouth, its musculature. Organs were brought into place, already pumped full of gas, ready to be used. Shoulders, back, belly, wings, hind legs and tail all tensed.
The man with the red hair whistled.
An attacker struck, silent, indistinct, a flurry of slashes and claws. The creature retaliated, swiping, and struck air. The attacker was faster, sleek, covered in hair-fine razors, so quick that it couldn’t be met in combat.
Tense, the attacker waited, pacing. The creature was forced to turn, to keep the foreign attacker in its sights.
The damage had been so mild, but it had scored armor plates and slid between plates to cut into flesh with surprising ease.
The creature roared
at the attacking enemy. The enemy was silent, but for a scratching noise of spine against spine.
“Cannons are pulling into place, sir. We’re almost ready.”
The creature watched the man with one eye, the white spined creature with the other.
“Good bye, primordial,” the man said.
The creature, the primordial, turned and fixated on the man. The white spined thing attacked again, and retreated from a retaliatory bite.
The muscles and organs had come into place, the sacs of gas were loaded and ready.
“Nnnno,” the primordial spoke, using a mouth buried inside its toothy maw, using the sacs filled with smoky air.
To this, even, the man with the red hair did not respond. He was not willing to give even that.
The primordial worked, processing, pulling from all of the little clues and details it had observed since entering this painful, ugly world that seemed so determined to claw at it and drag it down, to hamper it and take away from it.
It knew its assailants were ordered, that one man listened to another. That the old man had ordered all the others back at the stable, that the red haired man had ordered the old man, and that even the people who had been fighting on both sides gave and took orders.
It thought about the exclamations, the outcry it had heard with every feat of strength, every time it had killed more men than usual.
The primordial sought to convey that it was better, that it needed to be listened to, not attacked.
To declare itself a higher authority than even the red haired man.