Down the Rail We Go.
Greetings and salutations, I am Varys Matthau, Orchard’s Parazoologist Premier! Heh, no, I don’t mean that with certainty, but as you well know, I am a studied and avid researcher in the biota that call the curious corners of this vast Verse home! From the Singing Snailwings of Orchard’s Horsehead Nebula to the emergent fauna of the Resurge-Verdance Sector. Yet, all of that is fairly close to home, isn’t it? That is why my next sojourn takes me further afield than ever before.
Lampeter. The decaying behemoth that marked more worlds than the brain could possibly imagine. Many have delved into the history of the line and the cultures that traveled across it for carousal, conquest, curiosity, and concern, but in those scattered worlds, left to rust and neon in many cases, I have heard that life can still be found.
I don’t mean those of a mind, like you or I, dear listener; no, no, the primal and pristine. I seek to discover what remains of the East’s Wilds… if anything remains. A risky endeavor, I am well aware. Yet, life has risen from devastation before, as I hope this trip will evidence as I seek the truths of the East.
I have stepped beyond the bounds of the familiar and set forth on my sojourns of calamity, with my end goal writ large: NEON.
The march east has begun. The world we come to next is one that has died time after time, yet life has still found a way to persist.
-
The Last Icey Gasp
GLACIER
I arrived in Glacier to find a desolate wasteland of cold stone and freezing winds, echoing with the faint cry of some terrible, distant grief. No visitors were on this line with me; the rail was partially frozen over. At times, I worried I would be thrown from the track as the lone car rattled on.
I am, of course, describing the train terminal. What awaited me beyond in the sunless expanse of Glacier’s Earth was a cold so profound I don’t suppose I will ever feel it again.
Of all the worlds I have visited, this one was the first to feel truly desolate. A world where the sun is the faintest point behind an eternal swath of gray, a night devoid of moon or stars, like the whole world has been pitched into the Nevermeant. Indeed, Lamplight is near radiant in comparison.
I had not thought the darkness would be so prevalent. Perhaps, subconsciously, I knew before delving into Light to seek the darkest corners first.
Regardless, Glacier is a world that has experienced calamity after calamity. Stories speak of a vast tree brought low, of a maddening scramble to survive, of an obsession with blood and iron. An ignorant world damning itself to an endless, choking winter. The few who survived were sturdy folk, jaded by the time Lampeter is reported to have found them. Most fled down the rail to greener pastures. I must say, for how far we humans have spread across the multiverse, we still have a distressingly eager propensity to destroy ourselves.
Before my venture, I was told I would need to find shelter swiftly. The few domains remaining in human hands were not far from the depots that still stood. Admittedly, I had no idea where I would be spat out. These domains were underground, kept alive by geothermal vents, the last of humanity, slowly withering away below ground while the terrible storm they created still swirled up above. Most who remain are mechanically augmented or cultishly devoted to the few Gods that could endure the cold: the Escapee and the Broken, who held the most sway. As I noted, they were insular. Near universally mistrustful of strangers, they demanded to see my eyes and refused ever to give me their names in the rare times I managed to gain entry.
But they are not alone in this world; other sophonts have learned to withstand the cold. In many ways, this world has returned to the hands of the Friend Under Hill, though, ironically, that name now fits the humans of Glacier better. They had less love for me, which, if even half the stories I picked up on the rails here were accurate, I could never fault them. They withstood the cold far better, their power of thaumic adaptation and alteration allowing them to weather the storm: thick pelts of wintry fur, wide, gleaming eyes, and widened ears; they were on a relative rise. I think, in time, they could tame portions of this world, even as humanity slips, perhaps deservedly, into obscurity. Despite their apparent isolation, I would learn that their comparatively bountiful ring-nations were interlinked by Ways, portal-roads that would come in handy during my sojourn. Still, I needed to use them with great caution and deference.
The endless night and constant winter wind killed most plant life in the first year, but a few survived and spread, reclaiming the land they had surrendered.
They adapted to the winter chill, learning to reach deep into the world’s heart to gather the energy they needed. Tundras of moss or forests of albino pines filled the few places where the ice did not entirely dominate. This general sparsity of plant life caused most remaining fauna to turn to carnivory to survive. Indeed, in many places the oceans had frozen over, creating vast expanses of ice, where little else dominated but the shrieking winds. Yet even there, I was told that life could be found after all I had seen, which came as little surprise. What did surprise me, though, was how fast things had advanced, new species appearing in centuries compared to the typical languid pace of evolution. The answer to that mystery awaited at the end of my trek.
UnRio
Lampeter deposited me in the iced-over ruins of a great city, which I would later learn was Rio de Janeiro. What stared back at me was a vast glacier filled with the shadows of skyscrapers and favelas. Only a handful of locations had been spared the ice: the coast where I stood and the highest portions of the surrounding mountains. The great Redeemer was defaced, near toppling over the edge of its demise, weighed down by the rusted wings forced upon it.
Brazil was the first to fall to the unnatural chill that rose to consume the world, for it originated within the “lungs of the world,” as many of Sol are taking to calling it, the vast Amazon Rainforest. I can’t say I understand the particulars of how this world was consumed in eternal frozen night, but from what tales I could recover, it was multi-tiered: a devastating sickness eating its way through the mundane faunal world, while a band of fanatics took the cure to be born of transmutation, untainted blood to “divine” metal, an effort to resurrect their dead divinity. Millions died. The cure never existed. This dread ritual spawned the eternal cold. I can’t say what the Foundation of this world attempted to do, either way. They’re gone now, and while the natural world has fought hard to adapt to the altered climate, what remains of humanity lurks within their bones. Bunkers, tunnels, outposts, but every year more of them go quiet; at least that is what those in UnRio informed me.
In a bunker meant to fit tens of thousands, only six hundred remain. Pale-skinned and perpetually shivering, they were stooped and broken. Not one understands why this befell them, but they have tried to survive as best they can; something in them is too stubborn to leave the only homes they have ever known. They were startled by my presence, confused by my comparatively hale appearance, but regardless, they let me inside their shrunken domain and asked a flurry of questions, only a few of which I could answer.
It was here, within this city, that I came upon the first of this world’s remaining fauna, with vast sections of the complex having fallen into disarray, with overgrown hydroponics guardians and mushroom gardens overtaking several layers, where the inhabitants hunted to supplement their meager diet of nutrient paste provided by a series of decaying, haphazardly repaired machines.
It seemed most of the fauna had descended from escaped or released pets/livestock, with Vinculadas (Oryctolagus cuniculus gigantus), rabbits of prodigious size, competing with Cugocacharro (Canis domesticus pascores) canines, likely descended from dachshunds or other ratter breeds, while being hunted by oversized feral cats the natives called Gritadors. These false forests were fed by artificial aquifers deep underground. I wondered how they kept them full until I observed a group of natives dragging a towering mass of carved ice and a nearly equally sized pile of metallic scrap towards a defunct elevator shaft.
They pushed the whole lot down, bowed their heads almost reverently, giving thanks to the “Saints Below”. Of course, this piqued my curiosity. After some trial and error, I found my way down into the deepest portion of UnRio’s sublevels.
What I found was marvelously odd.
An aquifer, artificial at that, if the eroded concrete was any clue. Within it lay another miniature biome, where pallid fish of surprising size shared space with a smattering of blind insects and amphibians that scuttled about the basin’s edge.
The ice sat on the edge, steaming in the comparative heat, sending tiny rivulets dancing down the nest of scrap metal that surrounded it.
The water began to ripple, small at first, then expanding, as bubbles spat and popped, sending clouds of steam billowing into the cavern's chill air. scuttling mass surged from the water, racing for the pile, orange light filling the cavern.
Beetles. Hundreds of rabbit-sized, obsidian-black beetles with powerful mandibles and thoraxes that radiated a faint orange light. They swarmed the metal; the sound of metal shearing quickly filled the room; as it did, the temperature surged.
This was not my first experience with metallivorous entities, far from it, but much of the time when an animal consumes something, the energy it gains doesn’t tend to radiate out of it near instantly.
With each scrap consumed, the beetles' thoraxes would swell, the orange glow intensifying. I soon slipped free of my heavy jacket as the whole cavern became like a sauna. The vast chunk of ice melted in moments, refreshing the reservoir.
This was my first interaction with the Besouro a Vapor/Steamer Beetles (Pheropsophus adcalefaceres).
This was the name for insects among the natives, who seemed to view them as servants of their “Saints Below". After the feeding period, I realized the oversized insects could be found everywhere within UnRio. They dwelt within a series of artificial and self-made tunnels, a secondary warren adjoined to the complex which they could circuit with ease.
The intentionality of this structure, combined with the altered behavior I would come to witness, has led me to conclude that this species is an artificial one, and a haphazard, but effective one at that.
I believe they were created using genetic sequences drawn from Bombardier Beetles, adapting their chemical defense systems to function like organic broilers, shifting their defense systems of spewing boiling-hot vapor and chemicals at foes into a system that can produce constant, manageable heat as long as their “furnaces” are kept fed.
Adapting them to consume scrap metal likely stems from an understanding that, in this dying world ensnared in ice, flora and fauna would become progressively rare and would be required for whatever survivors managed to reach bunkers such as UnRio. Their mandibles are reinforced, and their acidic saliva seems to soften their meals before they carve through them like living shears. They seem to prefer breaking them down into thin strips, curiously resembling an individual eagerly supping upon a bowl of noodles.
I did observe several beetles supplementing their diets with mushrooms they snatched from the rot farms, or the occasional cave critter that dwelt within their chosen feeding grounds. am uncertain if they actually get any nutrition from these “snacks”; after all, the urge seemed to strike them at random. It may, in actuality, be a form of enrichment rather than necessity. They were not skillful hunters; their ungainly bodies are adapted for neither ambush nor pursuit predation. Most attempts at living prey saw them flounder in the muck lining the reservoirs' shores while their target scampered away.
Their largest specimens were roughly half a meter long, with much of that length devoted to their bloated thoraxes. Their exoskeletons are smooth, almost crystalline in appearance, most closely resembling obsidian. Ornamental spines marked the back of each limb. They were remarkably heavy for insects, averaging nearly a kilogram. Likely born of their diets augmenting their carapaces, seeding the chitin with metallic elements, to both account for their larger size and contain the prodigious heat they produce.
With that said, they were not scalding to the touch at baseline. Prolonged contact with a calm specimen, as I personally observed, can lead to skin reddening and eventual discomfort. When agitated, however, they can burn through their reserves, turning their carapaces red-hot. They charge their perceived attacker, latching on with all six limbs and hugging tightly. This contact, the natives told me, can lead to permanent disfigurement. In some cases, amputations, born of third-degree burns combined with the enraged insect’s shearing bites.
I witnessed this firsthand when a Besouro a Vapor encountered a Gritador on one of the higher sub-levels. The latter appeared to be an adolescent, fresh to hunting on its own, and did not seem to understand the nature of its chosen prey. The beetle was nearly the same size as the cat and managed to wrap fully around it. The stink of burnt fur and the terrible shrieking that followed were distressing to witness, I assure you. The cat managed to wrench itself free of the beetle’s embrace, but I don’t think it got far. The beetle meanwhile went back to rooting around for additional food, partitioning a spool of copper wiring it had snatched from somewhere.
While I didn't witness the behavior in UnRio, according to the natives, Besouro a Vapor have a set breeding season but will occasionally begin spawning after a particularly nutritious meal. The process is said to involve little actual courtship, with the eggs laid on the edge of the reservoirs. The young are born without their metal-treated carapaces and need the water to stay cool during their first few weeks of life. The adults, for their part, are not swimmers but sinkers. While they can hold their breath for up to an hour, they tend to rest in the shallows while sleeping and remain terrestrial the rest of the time. I did see a few nymphs darting about the reservoirs I visited, but their bodies were so shrouded in steam that I couldn't get a clear picture.
Besouro a Vapor have a markedly long lifespan for an insect, with most living around thirty years before expiring. They tend to consume their dead, their metal-laced carapaces serving as extra fuel for their external forges.
I will say that these beetles are among the most emotionally complex insects I have ever encountered, largely revealed in their interactions with the UnRio’s human population.
I believe that whoever spliced them together added no small number of genes from common domesticates. Their interactions lead me to conclude that a feline originator is involved. They used their secondary tunnel system to move about the occupied levels. witnessed specific beetles returning to particular individuals every few days. They seemed to have a selection they were attached to, following them around as they worked, observing them, and most commonly cuddling up to them during leisure time. select few even left the bunker-city with the salvagers, being credited with keeping them alive when a surprise torrent roared down from the high ice.
Any reciprocal affection was met with a humming trill akin to a purr, and their bodies radiated extra heat. They would bring catches or bits of metal to their chosen people, tapping their feet impatiently if the gifts were ignored or avoided. They also showed the occasional feline proclivity of knocking things over and nesting within small containers. I take it these creatures were designed not only as a utility but also to have an instinctual draw toward humans, with their altered characteristics meant to endear them to the admittedly caged populaces.
A few of the freshly molted beetles took a shine to me during my time there, while the older specimens all seemed to have been particularly bonded with enough people by their own measures, as my attempts at entreaty were met with annoyed hisses and one near-burn. The youngsters, meanwhile, took to me quite eagerly, clambering about my coat or hiding within my boots. One devilish scamp with an albino shell took to stealing my sketching pencils!
The Friendly Furnace
It did sadden me to leave the affectionate little creatures behind. Still, even with their alterations, they couldn't survive Glacier’s surface temperatures for long. The few specimens I had observed that had somehow found their way out of the bunker and couldn't return eventually entered a deep torpor, starving to death. I would not dare risk their lives for an additional bit of warmth, any more than the offered guide who tried to follow me. My trek, on Glacier and beyond, is one I must take alone.
So I bade the little critters and the dour folk of UnRio an eventual goodbye, setting out to see more of this frozen world, far from what remained of “society’s comforts”. I had not expected to find myself hunted, however.
Doggerland
The Way I discovered on the outskirts of Rio was frayed, the chill so biting it seemed to be working its way through the magic as well. Luckily, my defenses held strong; the gift of a secondary coat from those I left behind in UnRio hadn't hurt either.
While it took an almost troubling amount of effort to open the way, the rush of heat that followed when it finally did proved promising. The flair of old magic melted the grasping ice, revealing a brief bloom before I stepped through. What I found on the other side surprised me.
Of course, it should be noted that the geography of numerous Earths can differ from Sol's expectations; as Orchard surely does, but from my studies, Glacier was a near-perfect twin to Sol until they went and butchered themselves, of course.
The encroaching ice would, of course, mimic that of Sol’s last glacial maximum. In some cases, this has held; however, as noted previously, one of the major glacial expanses within Glacier had buried the Amazon.
As such, I was not expecting to find an open, comparatively warm plain stretching before my eyes, dotted with a delicate mosaic of forests, the faintest mist of snow falling from above. No one would think this a lucky break, but given what my GPS told me, I was thankful not to be cast adrift in a frozen sea.
For the Way had deposited me into Doggerland Returned, that is the Sol appellation I believe, for the land bridge that once connected the British/Strathclyde Isles to the mainland. Once a thoroughfare for all manner of megafauna. From the lumbering forms I observed in the distance, such was the case once again.
I rushed to investigate, a folly on my part, for if I had taken more time to get my bearings, I would have realized a crucial fact: I was being hunted from my first steps there onward.
The reason for this plain became evident over time, as a combination of geothermal activity and geographic shifts left Doggerland situated within a sort of bowl. A vast glacier sat to the north, closing on a volcanic ridge to the south. Once again, I suspect some form of thaumic manipulation or alteration to be at least partially to blame for the latter’s emergence.
This bowl captured runoff from the volcanoes, creating vast, heated lakes that warmed the rest of the region enough for a sparse tundra to pull free of the ice, though a hefty helping of snow remained.
A miniature mammoth steppe, all in all, with a smattering of sizable megafauna calling it home, feeding on the black-tinted grasses that covered the plains, or browsing the evergreens and a curiously cold-adapted oak.
The most distinctive were: the elephantine-like Great Oxen(Ovibos mammuthus)with their shovel-like horns and trunk-like upper lips, the Neosivatheres(Rangifer ziraph) with their long necks and impressive headgear, alongside herds of sheep and diminutive horses that had grown thick, shaggy coats.
They eagerly avoided me, which took me by surprise, as I had figured that by now most beasts in this world had forgotten their fear of humans. I had been correct. I remained ignorant of their true fear for a bit too long, I must admit.
I was too busy sketching, wondering at their similar avoidance of a series of rounded mounds that dotted the plains.
I had been about to approach one when I finally felt the breath of my silent hunter at the nape of my neck.
I have dealt with numerous predators and aggressive herbivores in my day, so do not think me another fool. Sheathed in defensive wards and quick on my feet, I escaped a lethal blow, though my attacker still managed to snatch the spare coat from my back.
That was my first encounter with a Frost Terror (Terrabubos tacepelliparius).
Now, obviously, as I am taking the time to recite this tale to you, that was not where my story ended. I was assured of an early death in that brief moment. To my surprise, the beast raced off, leaving me no worse for wear, excepting the slightly more biting cold.
After that, I could observe the Terrors with relative ease, though I still needed to use memetic camouflage.
Resembling the vanished terror birds of Sol’s Eocene through Pleistocene periods, these birds, standing an impressive three meters tall at their largest, appear to be descended from the snowy owl. This is best captured in their large, anchored, forward-facing eyes.
Their beaks are sturdier and longer than seen in most owls, with a serrated, shearing edge that serves multiple purposes. While their wings are comparatively useless due to their increased mass, they have not shrunk over time; they keep them tightly clutched to their bodies, with a few exceptions.
Their powerful legs let them run at speeds comparable to an ostrich at full sprint, aided by unidirectional breathing that lets them stay in pursuit much longer than most of the animals they prey upon. Despite this, their feet remain curiously articulate; not only able to pin prey and maneuver through difficult terrain, but also capable of precise object manipulation. witnessed some standing on one foot for prolonged periods, using the other to adjust parts of their nests or fiddle with an object that caught their interest.
I noted one major difference between males and females, which I dubbed bucks and does. The former had a large ruff of feathers around their neck, resembling, in many ways, a lion's mane, which they used for intimidation or mating displays.
They tend to live in mated pairs, with multiple pairs observed coming together to hunt particularly large prey. Their feathers retain the stealth-adapted characteristics of their ancestors, which, combined with their white coloration and careful maneuvering, make them akin to ghosts.
They preferred hunting when the snow was heaviest, waiting amid snowdrifts, observing their chosen target for hours, unmoving, until they drew close enough, or at night, using their incredible eyesight to pick out the best targets. They would burst forward, assaulting from multiple angles, trying to panic the individual or scatter the herd and catch their chosen target off balance. Even lone individuals could accomplish this with a combination of natural speed and stealth. I witnessed one bold buck use this tactic to isolate a young Great Ox, despite the young beast being nearly double his size, bringing it down without even a feather out of place.
Lone individuals killed swiftly, using their beaks and talons to part the head from the neck, carrying off the corpse as best they could, while mated pairs took a distressing amount of time.
Whenever their prey eventually tired, the largest of the pair, typically the female, would muscle the animal to the ground and pin it. The smaller would follow up by making several cuts along the beast's spine or stomach, whichever was most exposed. They would begin peeling the hide off their chosen target, using their beaks to make additional cuts where necessary and their talons to pull it free. slow, careful process that takes hours. Indeed, it was quite distressing to watch. The prey rarely, thankfully, lived through the process, either dying from the stress or being put down by the bird that held it when its struggles endangered the work.
Neither bird would eat a bite until they had cut away as much hide as possible and piled it nearby, after which the meal would begin with gusto. They consumed every bit of meat they could find, flensing the bones clean. I watched them swallow as many bones as they could comfortably manage. They would occasionally carry off larger structures, such as femurs or rib cages. Typically, the larger of the pair would pick up the mound of stripped hide, while the smaller would hook the skull with its beak. They would then race off.
I had initially thought this was a form of food storage, keeping these tough yet still edible-by-their-standards materials for after a poor hunt or during particularly harsh weather fronts.
That was until I got the chance to observe one of their nests up close. Indeed, the mounds I had witnessed dotting the moorland were the work of the Frost Terrors. Despite their propensity for hunting in pairs, I found that as many as three couples, and on occasion an additional unpaired bird, would dwell in one mound.
It was risky going; even with my camouflage, the birds seemed to sense my presence, snapping at the air and letting out aggressive, lowing hoots. Luckily, they never directly pinpointed my location.
I managed to slip inside while most of the occupants of one nest I had been observing were out hunting; the other was deep asleep. The nest interior was markedly warmer, reeking of old meat.
As it should, considering the entire structure was made of the hide and bone they carried off.
In this manner, I suppose it is more accurate to call their domains yurts. Haphazard in appearance, perhaps, with the various bones set into the upturned earth with no true rhyme or reason. Frozen guano held them in place. The yurts were covered with the hides of their prey, with fresh layers added atop the old ones so they would freeze in place.
I wanted to explore more, particularly a central area which seemed to hold all the couple's eggs. Instead, I found my stolen coat jutting from the wall; a strange shiver went up my spine at the realization I had walked directly into my attacker's home. Lying down from atop it, as if the beast knew exactly what the “hide” it had taken was meant for, was the fractured upper mandible of a human. I promptly left.
While their nesting habits may seem markedly distressing, I will note that this is merely an evolution of the snowy owl’s own occasional habits, in which they lined their terrestrial nests with the bodies of lemmings.
I observed the Frost Terrors a little longer. While I am not entirely certain, many of their actions felt markedly purposeful. Their calls had shifts in intonation and pitch. Each of the seven I stuck with seemed to have a distinctive call for them in their lilting, hooting pseudolanguage. They played games. They showed signs of artistic expression in where and how they applied new hides to their yurt. They cared for the wounded, which I observed when the loner male returned from an unsuccessful hunt with a deep gash on his hip.
The others spent extra time grooming and checking him over as he rested, with one of the females readily regurgitating part of her meal for the wounded bird.
What followed, I can only say, seemed from my eyes to be a fit of jealousy from her actual mate, who attempted to force the wounded male to leave the yurt’s vicinity.
Shrieking screams, flashing talons, and overextended wings made for quite a display. To my surprise, it was not the wounded male who was turned out. Instead, the paired individual himself was run off, with his mate and the others sending him away with displays of their own. I believe I even saw his mate nuzzle the other male afterward—quite a scandal!
Unfortunately, I can’t say what came of it. N t long after the chicks hatched, all members of the flock were on heightened alert, eagerly hunting across the moor. W th my camouflage being quite a taxing ritual, I knew it was time for me to move on.
The Tundra Terrorizer
I located another Way, far to the south, where Doggerland's plains met the mountains. After a few days' travel, I began opening it.
My camouflage dropped as my concentration shifted to the Way. Just as the door sprang open, beginning to draw me in, I felt the searing pain of a dagger pricking the back of my neck.
I whirled, falling back into Way. The bird that had been sent off, the very same one that had attacked me at my arrival, had been dogging my unseen footsteps the entire time.
Thankfully, the beast knew nothing of magic, and as its beak clacked shut, I was miles away. The next creature I stumbled upon proved far less dangerous.
Amoni-Ram
My leap to salvation deposited me somewhere I never expected to find on Glacier. Amoni-Ram, the blessed first city of the Mekhanite faith/culture groups, spans the breadth of the Verse. Indeed, many aspects of the Mekhanite Faiths helped spread and maintain Lampeter, but I digress.
Amoni-Ram is as varied as the worlds that call it home. Atypically, its position seems to be a spatial anchor, positioned by accident or purpose within what those of Sol would know as the Arabian Peninsula. I have seen a handful of Amonis in my day, plus heard a dozen more stories.
Ranging from living metropolises at the forefront of parasociety, long-storied to the Broken Church, to being the impetus for its rise, to a lost legend of history, spoken of like El Dorado or Atlantis.
In Orchard, Amoni-Ram was a beautiful city of amber spires rising among a glade of towering pomegranate trees, set on the interior sea separating West and Greater Prasina.
On Glacier, it was the seat of the Mekhanite Resurgence, a haven of the Broken God’s Crusade that, in endeavoring to heal the world, damned it to its current existence.
The ice reached them in the end, too. I crept in, slaying their great furnaces one by one, a dreadful cold snap so fierce it shattered the dimensional bubble they had hidden away in. That is the story I learned from the ghosts that still walk its streets, chittering, mad things, who took me, with all my accompanying tech, to be one of their own.
If even half of that story is true, I think the Fae sought an eternal reminder of their Saint’s genocidal folly.
Of course, I am no exorcist nor anthrospiritologist; I am first and foremost a parazoologist. Here in Amoni-Ram, I chose to believe that if I ever found confirmation that life could thrive amid the sterile corpse of civilization, as NEON declares definitive, it would be here.
I was right.
From what I know of this city, it often lacked many living things besides humans, though some Mekhanites would dispute being so dubbed. Regardless, few animals actually dwelled within the city. E n less could be said for flora; antagonism with the chlorokinetic Daeva meant that even the smallest houseplant could be made a weapon. This meant that parks and gardens were taboo in the eyes of the Mekhanite.
I imagine they would have been quite put out by what the ruins had become. The road was carpeted with more than snow. Thick mats of moss were abundant. Yet within the towers themselves, I stumbled upon a surprising bounty.
Groves of vines emerged from somewhere deep below ground. They spiraled up in a corkscrewing pattern that then honeycombed out, fat with all manner of hybridized oddities, namely all manner of gourds. Additionally, a fair few melons and legumes caught my eye as I endeavored to climb to a high vantage.
This proved true for each tower I explored: islands of greenery amid the frozen grey, kept fed by the augmented reservoirs beneath the city. A meandering conversation with one of the spirits revealed that these had started as hydroponic gardens, born of necessity, with the eternal winter wiping out much of the extant farmland. Men of their ilk had grown beyond the need for food, but not all. Not to mention those who had flocked to their supposed protection. The towers were also secondary generators, drawing in sunlight through their solar-panel-laced windows. Now the sun's shrouded light provides just the barest trickle of heat that keeps the water in the reservoirs from freezing, though not sustainably.
From what I can gather, each tower has its own “season” of plenty, when the solar batteries reach their full capacity. The lights flicker on; with them, the vines begin their markedly swift march skyward. They bloom and gestate swiftly. In a matter of a month, in some cases, before eventually depositing their bounty to the floor far below, where they split on impact. The topsoil is born of this slurry of fruit pulp and the vines rotting when the power falters, letting the cold seep back in.
In these “islands,” I found a smattering of small creatures, most of whom could enter torpor/hibernation. The Glassweaver (Gymnrhina vitruverus) was a rare example of a bird capable of hibernation, nestling in bundled clusters within translucent nests crafted of spittle. The Rust Toad (Rhinella ferrugodormiens)camouflaged itself as a lump of rusting scrap metal to throw off prey.
These were some of the most common creatures I observed across multiple towers, with slight distinctions in each, not to mention the unique specimens I occasionally encountered, like the **Hog Mole (Notoryctes phacochoerus) ** of the southernmost tower.
One beast stood out from the rest.
I saw them at first only as shadows in the sky, indistinct blobs soaring through the air only to vanish behind or within the very pinnacle of the wavering towers that marked Amoni Ram’s skyline.
One night, I managed to encounter one on the ground as it ventured into the tower where I had stashed myself for the night.
The Spring Heels (Osphranter turrimviatores). It moved strangely on the ground, resembling an inchworm, and at first seemed to have only three limbs: two at the front, one at the back, with a great frill of flesh rising from its sides. Its back was arched, lowering the front of its body to the ground more than the back. Dense gray fur covered its body. It seemed longest down its back, forming a sort of mane/mohawk. I attempted to get closer, accidentally sending a bit of masonry skittering across the ground.
Its wide, doe-like eyes caught sight of me, gleaming in the torchlight. It bared its teeth, sharp incisors backed by hefty molars, face both equine and rabbit-like in that moment, with long, twitching ears atop its head. Its back limb tensed. It hooked upwards, snagging onto one of the thicker vines with its foreclaws and beginning to climb. The “fins” unfurled, skin pulling taut to give its body an almost flat appearance as it used this new set of limbs to anchor itself. I was taken aback, as this was my first encounter with what appeared to be a mammal with an odd number of appendages at first glance. It ascended to the upper levels before I could learn more.
That was my lone ground-level encounter. With my interest piqued, I began trying to see them better in the air or find a way to their higher altitudes within the spires. Climbing them proved an endeavor, with some so worn down by the creeping vines, biting cold, and shrieking wind that they were completely untenable.
I pressed on regardless.
In the interim, I kept my binoculars trained on the sky, watching them parachute through it, their bodies inflated like great kites. The r “wings” were membranous, anchored to the forelimbs, with their much larger hind limbs serving as the actual power source for their flight. They rarely flapped their wings, kept aloft by updrafts and aerial currents born of the perpetual blizzard about us. In some ways, they seemed to swim more than fly through the air, their rudder-like tail doing much of the maneuvering and helping redirect them as they wove through the spires.
At first, much about them remained a mystery to me; I was forced to watch them below, dancing amid near-whiteout conditions, needing frequent pauses as the cold wrought horrid wonders against my defenses. Tha was, of course, until I found myself within the monolithic tower that marked the heart of the city, likely the royal palace in an age long past.
A historian, perhaps, would have marveled at the remnants of what must have been a last stand arrayed before me, especially the metallic angel, nailed to a curious throne of servers and gears with a wooden sword. My eyes were, of course, turned skyward, the sturdy construction mingled with sturdier greenery giving me hope of meeting the Spring Heels once more.
The climb to better catalog them was daunting, taking me a handful of days and introducing me to a cadre of new fauna that called this monolith home. When I finally did so, I found a dozen nests, woven from vines, stolen fabric, and insulation, hanging off the walls or, in some cases, dangling from the ceiling. Bey nd them was a shattered opening to a dreary sky. At this elevation, similar perches were visible atop nearly every tower in sight; closer inspection revealed that few were continuously inhabited.
Indeed, I thought that I had stumbled upon an empty nest, until one of the Spring Heels landed at their makeshift entrance and began inchworming its way inside. In better lighting, it was obvious that the animals were tripodal on the ground, with their foreclaws splayed flat rather than knuckle-walking, and their wide, flat tails planted firmly. Sitting back on its tail/haunches, it was just over two meters tall.
A fleshy membrane stretched from the elbows of its forelimbs to its hind limbs. The membrane kept the latter close to their bodies when they landed; in flight, these limbs splayed into wide wings like those of a bat or pterosaur, with a single hooked claw like a thumb that helped them climb or hold onto sheer surfaces.
Following the first arrivals, a handful more appeared, stumbling to a stop as they spotted me deeper into the interior, flicking their ears and stomping their tails in what I take to be threat displays.
The largest, a male with stormy gray fur and an impressive mane, reared up on its tail and flared its wings. He propped himself up on his backward-bending knees, making it appear almost twice as big as before. It lashed at the air with its foreclaws, making aggressive grabbing motions toward me until I activated my memetic camouflage.
It took them a fair bit of time to calm down properly. Once they did, I watched several of the smaller females clamber up the walls toward their nests. When they came back down to the ground, I noticed a feature that marked them as part of a particular family of mammals.
A pouch led me to believe they were marsupials, which my scanner confirmed, with their small occupants peering blearily around as if just woken from sleep.
Kangaroos, flying kangaroos. Quite a marvel; I was initially confused at their presence within the city. While countless earths differ from Sol and Orchard's expectations, what I had gathered from Glacier’s zoological treatises before the fall showed a close approximation to those expectations, with one marked difference that I will speak on later.
At first, I thought the animals were descendants of a menagerie within the city that escaped, adapting to take advantage of the bounty left to them in this frozen world, surrounded by the snow-choked deserts of Arabia beyond.
That idea went out the window the next morning, when the striking gray gleam of the rising sun revealed a monument on the horizon.
A great rounded stone, bedecked in a comparatively mountainous serpentine skeleton. Uluru. As for the colossal fossil, another casualty of humanity’s hubris on Glacier, I can only surmise.
The Spring Heels seemed to treat the central tower as a communal roost, with numerous herds trading places throughout the week I spent observing them. Females and juveniles seemed to intermingle readily, while adult males came and went from their perches on tighter time frames, typically avoiding one another. If two males arrived at the same perch, the larger male typically frightened the other off with a harsh cough or a wing flap.
They seemed to know, either through instinct or generational knowledge, which towers were in bloom and which had gone fallow. They did not eat often, with most only eating once per day, another adaptation likely meant to keep them from deforesting their limited gardens. With that in mind, this species seems to be on the edge regardless. Low population growth, similar at-risk food sources, and a limited gene pool, when combined with a unique environment, have set them up for eventual, stark failure. Such is the way of nature. Adaptations to survive one era are damning in the next.
They were launch flyers, relying on powerful tails rather than any of their original limbs. The process began with the Spring Heel clambering to the edge of its perch, then anchoring itself with its powerful forelimbs, using highly sensitive whiskers to detect the speed and direction of the winds rocketing around its home. They would “kick” off with their powerful tails, slamming them down with great force, jarring the rest of their bodies into the open air. Next, their wings fully unfurled, carrying them to their chosen grazing grounds after a few initial flaps before they leveled out.
Other adaptations for their high-flying lifestyles included thick eyelashes that caught snowflakes, a wide pseudo-trunk that warmed the air they breathed, plus a layer of blubber along the membrane of their wings that protected the blood vessels from the horrid chill of the winds they rode.
They fed mainly on the fruits the vines produced, spreading seeds among the varied towers, explaining the mosaic of plant growth I had previously witnessed with their dung. They cracked them open with their powerful foreclaws, using their jaws to partition them properly.
As marsupials, their young were born heavily underdeveloped and relied on their mother’s pouch for external incubation. This remained true amongst the Spring Heels. Their pouches formed a tight seal that let oxygen in while keeping the joey from dying of cold exposure or falling out during flight.
Larger joeys that had not yet gained full flight capability stayed in the nest. A set or trio of older females, marked by their white muzzles, looked after them. These “nannies” kept the young safe. They produced milk to feed them, along with mashed melon or gourd they belched up. They were also the main weavers of the nests I observed, using their surprisingly dextrous foreclaws to thread materials together.
Indeed, females who weren't caring for a joey seemed to have adapted to use their pouches to carry back food or nesting material. I observed one female draw a rotting curtain out of her pouch with a hint of frustration, mimicking a magician’s never-ending scarf trick.
Males, meanwhile, when not out on their own, lazed about the nest, resting near the edge, grooming themselves and any female or joey that got close, nipping off the rare parasites or bits of ice.
They did seem to be playing sentinel against something. Aside from the occasional “coughing” fight between unfamiliar males and one instance of a male trying to fight a ghost that randomly manifested in the space, I can’t honestly say what they were sitting vigil for.
I did catch sight of something that, at first glance, appeared to be just another Spring Heel, leaping from one tower to the next, more stockily built with a different membrane shape. I lost sight of it once it landed on the central tower. Not a moment later, the buck let out a hacking cough. In a flurry of movement, the females took off, gathering up their joeys as they went before bolting out into the storm. The male hung around a moment longer, staring down, ears tall, before it too vanished.
A Marvelous Macropod
After the incident with the Frost Terror, I let my better sense prevail over my curiosity and took my leave. My escape was far more laborious. When I finally returned to the ground, I found a Way waiting for me, where I was quite certain there had not been one before. When considering how frayed this world’s tethers had become, I was not entirely surprised. So I bid Amoni-Ram goodbye, finding myself in an even more desolate realm.
The High Ice
The ruin I left behind had been a near-perfect creation by once-human hands, or so I was told. What revealed itself to me was an unbroken expanse stretching from one horizon to the next. My breath hitched, born of an abrupt and profound change in elevation.
I had stepped unthinkingly into the vast reaches of the High Ice. I can’t say exactly where I ended up, for the High Ice is a term that denotes any of the towering glaciers that have come to rest across the breadth of the world, with much of it sloping down into the Low Ice that covers the surface of Glacier’s oceans, including a handful of particularly turbulent regions.
The Southern Plateau and Northern Plateau fit expectations of Sol or Orchard, I imagine, reaching out from the poles like clawing hands to bury tracks upon tracks of land. Another, the Central Plateau, has swallowed the Caribbean, much of northern South America, even branching across the Atlantic to take a bite out of Africa, the epicenter of the storm that ever swirled above my head.
Little lives atop these towering heights that aren't transient. Countless spirits of beasts and men alike linger there. They wail amidst the racing winds, but they assuredly aren’t living. Indeed, these plateaus are vast tombs, the remnants of countless cities with all that called them home eerily visible amidst the strikingly clear ice.
The expanse was broken up by brief fields of stunted mosses and lichens, all a pallid gray. Here, I observed a handful of the transient beasts that occasionally climb to these windblown heights, using the glaciers to circumnavigate mountain ranges or sheer coastlines, maneuvering through wind-eroded valleys.
Sleighdeer (Rangifer skatas), with their skate-like hooves, raced ahead of herds of overgrown marmots and the eager saber-fanged wolverines that stalked them both. Colo sal pelicans, with thick black feathers, nested along the glacier's edges where they met the intermittently churning sea. They rarely remained in place for more than a handful of days, the biting chill eagerly slaying any that lingered too long or were left behind.
One being has called this domain home its entire life. The enigmatic Howlers (Terracanthaster fifthus)lurk just beneath the ice or disguise themselves among the lichen fields. They occasionally reveal themselves, rising on their pentapodal limbs to about five meters tall. When splayed flat, they could stretch to near double that.
Their bumpy purple hide is covered in a thick layer of adapted spines that now function like insulating fur on their dorsal side. At the same time, their undercarriage is a variety of colors, ranging from pale white to dark chocolate brown. Hundreds of barbed tube feet cover their five arms. These tend to retract into the arm’s central cavity when maneuvering above the ice. Instead, they use a single “hoof” at the tip of each arm, resting just below their disturbingly human-like eyes. They tend to move in a slight circle, redirecting themselves as they plant four limbs and raise the fifth like a periscope to take in their surroundings.
They were solitary, silent animals most of the time, lying still atop the ice or meandering across it, except for one occasion: hunger.
When hunger drove them, they were anything but silent. The air filled with melting and cracking ice as their barbed tube feet got to work, releasing an acidic slime that weakened the ice before they wrenched it apart, tossed it aside, or ferried it down to their awaiting maws. They tunneled in a similarly corkscrewing pattern to their surface movement, leaving yawning slick pits that vanished deep into the glacier's heart as they searched for prey.
I am not fully certain how they hunt this way; perhaps they sense air pockets in the ice through vibrations in their adapted spines or with markedly powerful night vision. Most predators fail a good number of hunts. This might not be the case with the Howlers. During my short time atop the ice, I never witnessed a Howler return to the surface empty-handed.
I imagine creatures have adapted to live within the vast ice sheets rather than in their shadow or on top of them. After all, they have become the largest habitat on Glacier. The Howlers I saw clamber back to the surface never bore anything that had recently lived.
They were scavengers of the old dead. Frozen mummies, the corpses of animals, humans, and others, with permafrost-hard flesh beneath taut, leathery grey skin. They would sit back on whichever limbs were the rear-most at the moment to eat, revealing a maw of distressingly human teeth, powerful enough to bite clean through their mummified prey as easily as you or I could bite through a carrot.
All the while, orifices along their limbs would open, letting out a piping, haunting howl, akin to a pipe organ in pitch and cadence, eerily resembling a human voice at times.
Others answered, creating a haunting melody that swept across the High Ice until even the eternal wind was forced to take a back seat to their eldritch song. I picked up five unique, lengthy notes they alternated throughout their meal, each seeming to worsen a growing headache burning behind my eyes, until I chanced upon my memetic camouflage and found the sound curiously deadened.
I had planned to observe them longer, but on my fifth night atop the High Ice, I witnessed something I can only describe as a ritual, which led me to flee that maddening plateau.
One of the Howlers had come across a corpse it could not have retrieved on its own, a whale I would learn in time. It had clambered back to the top of its hole, now howling a completely new note. Within moments, other Howlers appeared, moving faster than I had thought possible, nearing seventy kilometers as they spun across the ice.
It didn’t take long for fifteen of the creatures to arrive. Together they descended back down the tunnel, widening as they went, spiraling down in a tight, almost methodical pattern.
I waited nearly an hour for their return, and up they came, dragging the desiccated corpse of a truly titanic cachelot, skin bleached by the ice.
They began tearing away at the corpse, singing their “dinner hymnal” when something both awe-striking and haunting occurred. They linked their raised arms in a great circle around the body, their eyes intertwining then fusing. Their bodies inflated, before letting out, in unison, a truly keening howl as they continued to gorge themselves.
Even now, I am not certain whether I observed a mating ritual or something altogether more esoteric, but their call, for a moment, seemed to part the clouds.
I was taken aback by the sudden emergence of the night sky, countless sparkling stars shrouded in the neon-green blanket of an aurora.
I marveled at this clear display of innate thaumcraft for a moment before I realized that lights were emanating from the Howlers, spilling from an orifice on each of their backs. The howl only grew louder, the chewing more frantic, their bodies flailing, tugging on each other as if wanting to tear apart once more. They didn’t, the flailing only growing more frantic. I saw shapes approaching, ghosts, countless, marching in time with the pulsing song, arms stretching towards the spinning storm of false stars.
I rose to my feet as their voices took on a markedly human cadence. Their cries changed from those of a haunting pipe organ to the sobs of a newborn. My shielding crashed; I felt a cold spike lance toward the center of my brain.
I ran.
A Hoarfrost Horror
Faster than I thought myself capable of. The sound followed me, eager as a hunting hound. Praise be to whatever Gods or Spirits are left watching Glacier, I stumbled upon a Way. Heedless of the danger, I threw myself through it.
The Rootvale
The High Ice vanished. I regained my senses, surging from the towering snow bank I had landed in; the vista was replaced by an unexpected sight: a towering leviathan of verdant bounty.
Once. Now it, like so much else of Glacier, was dead.
A sequoia, the height and breadth of a mountain, its branches shattered and choked with ice. A horrid black blight spread where a whole arm had come free, now scattered about its exposed root bed, shards of it embedded in the ground like skyscrapers.
Beyond them, in the small valley it stood above, I could see a flickering green light. Close by, askew, rising from a windblown snowbank, I found a sign reading "Klamath National Forest". Dozens of Fae runes were painted over it.
I had thrown myself directly into a Fae fane. Judging by the buzzing hum that filled the air, they knew it too.
I put some thought into hiding; with my camouflage damaged, if not outright broken, I would have needed more basic means.
It was too late. The first of the Fae appeared from the blizzard in an instant, regal and antlered, her face filled with detached rage. A dozen more followed after.
They seemed to sense that I was not of Glacier before I admitted as much, explaining my mission in the shortest of terms. Still, they herded me at spear-point toward the tree.
It quickly became clear to me that this place, Rootvale, the lead hunter explained after an hour into our walk, was the original epicenter of the cataclysm that consumed Glacier. The Foundation coat of arms peered out at me from a heap of truly ancient rubble. All around it, hundreds of headstones marked with Fae runes.
The Fae, for all they had suffered, were rising once more. Indeed, many of my captors seemed young, their oldest memories of a world already swallowed by the eternal winter. Their leader, alongside a handful of others, I believe, had lived to see the fall.
Their limbs bore coiling scars at the joints, thick bands of scar tissue building atop scar tissue, while their backs or chests bore the precise patterns of a surgeon’s blade, carved so often, so deep, that they created furrows and caverns across their dermis.
I had taken the stories of humanity tearing the Fae apart to stave off their destruction as metaphorical… a naive thought, considering my current sojourn concerns the depredations of apocalypse.
Their leader, who refused to name herself, and thankfully never deigned to ask mine, mentioned that the great tree surrounding me was much the same. A great font of primal power, a gift of the Mother, that the folk of Glacier had forsaken in abandoning belief for the cold certainty of the laboratory.
The tree had been tied to the faunal web. With each blighted branch, the natural world decayed in turn. The Fae had taken precautions of their own, hiding way cuttings even as the Broken Children sought to trade their blood for iron to escape humanity’s eventual doom.
They succeeded by crafting an entirely different apocalypse. The cold swallowed the blight just as eagerly as it did everything else. Yet, with the cuttings, the Fae managed to stabilize this world’s biosphere, keeping it going even as it grew colder with each passing year.
I had witnessed the fruit of their labor time and again as I skipped between the Ways, but I was graced with a surprising kindness. A chance to observe their self-proclaimed greatest achievement. Not a species warded from desolation. One returned from beyond the brink!
Amid the roots of the deceased Tree of Life, I was brought before its successor: a patchwork creation, bonsai-like in shape and size, and a beast the likes of which I can honestly say I have never seen.
The Great Tusker (Duro scrofa). Typically, I relied on my scanner to fill in gaps in genetic information that weren’t readily apparent during my years studying multiversal mirrored and convergent evolution.
With the Great Tuskers, that device seemed completely baffled. Its lineage was an empty road map, cast astray from all else I had discovered and cataloged. Typically this occurred with species created whole cloth by divine intervention, or at the hand of reality warpers, but even then there is a thread to go on, something they were thinking of or had observed that allowed for a semi-accurate guess.
That wasn’t the case here. With the context given, I have concluded that the Tusker’s branch of Animalia - if they even are Animalia, which I will get into later - was completely carved away by the original tree's demise. A unique form of life in the multiverse. Until humanity devastated it.
Though not all, the Fae credited a handful with working with them to save what had become the new tree, before the “Metal Eaters had gone mad”. Their graves number amongst those we passed.
Back to the Great Tuskers. By appearance alone, I am unsure the untrained eye would truly realize how alien they were, even with the visible oddities. They stand, on average, about two and a half meters at the shoulder, with the largest specimens I observed nearly five meters in length, weighing up to 2000 kilograms.
Their general physical features seemed to draw from several faunal branches, yet refused to fit squarely in any family. Thick fibrous fur, somewhere between the hide of a musk ox and the skin of a coconut-covered rough, semi-scaled skin, which in places resembled the keratin defenses of the pangolin. Their tall ears are almost equine, yet almost lagomorphic. Their humped backs, broad, splayed legs, and short, thick tails most closely resembled a fusion of a bison, or similar bovine, and the Scutosaurus of Sol’s Permian era. Despite that, all their feet end in seven toes: four hooves at the fore, two splaying pseudo-thumbs on each side of the foot that aided climbing and grooming, and an almost root-like appendage on their heel that was impressively strong, helping them anchor in place during confrontations.
Their heads were quite wide, most closely resembling those of dicynodonts with heavy beaks, wide, doleful eyes, and lengthy tusks; theirs were more akin to a pachyderm's, projecting from the back of the jaw and haloing the beak like a set of mandibles. According to the Fae, they shed these tusks yearly, with each set growing just a bit larger as they age, often curling; indeed, their eldest had a set of tusks with a single completed corkscrew.
The inside of their mouth was where things truly got odd: in place of teeth, independent, motile bone “saws” shifted back and forth, turning whatever they consumed into a fine paste that they then swallowed. Scans of their internals revealed a structure that spoke little of Animalia and more closely resembled flora or fungal specimens.
I found no sign of a heart. Their brain seemed spread throughout a nervous system that more closely resembled a mycelial network. Instead of a true stomach, they had a winding fermentation system that broke down their mashed food until all that remained was sweet-smelling yet highly flammable gas, which they expelled through wide nostrils set high on their snouts, akin to those of sauropods. They had multiple “lungs”, yet no visible sexual organs. I took several organs along their spine to be immense chloroplasts, given their structure. Indeed, I observed one specimen on a particularly “bright” day somehow extruding these organs from hidden pockets high on its back to draw in as much sunlight as possible.
All of this says nothing of the handful of organs I observed that I could not make heads or tails of. All in all, they were fascinating creatures, ones I admittedly falter to classify as true animals, which the Fae seem to agree with, claiming they were “Older and Greater”.
While their biology was befuddling, I must admit in action I found them not unlike the large herd animals they resembled. A few distinctions did exist.
The first was their intelligence. At first glance, I thought their cognition was comparable to that of the suidae they quite vaguely resembled, or to that of a particularly bright canid, showing clear problem-solving skills by clearing rubble or moving heavy loads without needing direction from the Fae they lived alongside.
It became clear they could fully understand a good chunk of the Fae’s language. The Tu kers responded to it with their own vocalizations, in what I came to recognize as affirmations, agreement, confusion, or even dismissal; the latter was the rarest. Furthermore, my multiversal translator functioned as intended, marking them as a near-sophont, if not fully sophont, species. They showed keen interest in my strange words; a handful of the younger specimens could be heard attempting to mimic my voice. Their chirping cries were near-parrot-like in their accuracy. I am not entirely sure they understood exactly what they were saying.
Beyond that, their emotional intelligence seemed incredibly high, as they vocalized distress at the sight of even the smallest injury to any of their kin or Fae companions. Indeed, the “scars” left only on my clothing by the Frost Terror attack made them grumble about me on my first introduction, keeping me from progressing deeper into the vale. At the time, I thought it was just general curiosity. Still, one of my captors explained my unharmed nature after a particularly large specimen began clacking its beak in “dissatisfaction” with the Fae’s treatment of me. Afterw rd, they explained the situation to me in a manner I can only imagine was far more terse.
I observed them similarly “nannying” other animals that entered the vale, clacking their beaks and humming over them if even the slightest bit of injury was noticeable. To my surprise, these animals let the towering Tuskers pick them up. They then ferried them to the nearest Fae, where grunting “demands” for aid grew ever more persistent.
It was both heartwarming and near comical to watch an older Fae stare blankly up at an insistent Tusker holding a Fae child in its beak, the only injury being a missing tooth.
Then came their bonding ability, which I believe evolved in parallel with their developed empathy, felt so deeply that it sank into their very DNA. They could bond with another living being, granting them a modicum of strength and persistence. Bondmats are less often affected by sickness, can live longer, and eat less, somehow sustained by the affection the Great Tusker has for them. The tw can sense each other from as far as a kilometer away. Additionally, they seem able to converse without words, perfectly reading each other’s body language and possibly each other's thoughts.
The Fae of the Rootvale are admittedly few in number, but the Great Tuskers are fewer still, so only a handful of them have become bonded. Both entities see it as something to aspire to.
This is proven by how the Tuskers breed; I came to learn. Great Tuskers have no apparent sexual organs, leading to a fair bit of confusion regarding the stability of their population. Unlike many occasions in the past, I was able to observe the remedy. The Tusker did not rely on each other to produce more offspring, but on their Bondmates. Now, in the wild, I can only imagine this would cause no small amount of difficulty for the Tusker population in the future, but I am told they were long-lived beings. Much of them remains a mystery lost to desolation; this process may not be entirely proper. I suppose Great Tuskers could form bonds with each other. I did ot witness this at any point during my investigation.
Instead, I observed one Great Tuskers, a melanistic individual with a stunted tusk, follow its Bondmate around to an almost obsessive degree. The Fae was visibly heavy with child. I initially believed I was observing more of the Tusker’s “nanny” behavior until I noticed a strange growth protruding from its abdomen.
Great Tuskers do not give birth; they bud, akin to plants or mushrooms. More importantly, this happens only when their bond is about to have a child. This allows the young Tusker to bond with the infant as soon as it falls off its parent, which seems to boost the child’s health and help it rest more easily through the night, allowing the parents to rest better as well. The image of the diminutive, downy-furred “pup” curled beneath the infant like a living bed was quite adorable. I hope my rendition does it justice!
All of this combines to make a creature perfectly suited to be a guardian or caretaker. Whether this was their natural condition or the result of how they were shaped, I cannot be certain. Some of the Fae that deigned to speak with me said Glacier’s humans had long held them in high regard, as companions, mounts, and livestock guardians, tied to them from an age before they even tamed the first hound. I find this admittedly hard to believe.
When I finally asked my captor-turned-host what the Great Tuskers truly were, she leveled a cold gaze at me. Her words still ring in my ears, even as I have traveled multiversal miles down the rail.
“Another gift the humans squandered, when we weren’t even allowed our names. As we have remade our mantles, we have remade the noblest of Aeterns; we will remake a dozen more.”
Aeterns Returned?
I had longed to ask more, to study the tree and the magnificent creatures it was said to produce, but I knew that if I lingered any longer, I would abandon my true goal. I can return to Glacier in time; I have only one chance for NEON.
Humanity’s time is over on Glacier. Still, life continues into a new, wilder age. I hope to see it, somewhere down the line. But for now, I must find my route further East. The lines have begun to atrophy; the scant faces I have seen on my journey between realms are now distant memories.
What awaits me next… is a book that broke its binding, but I will say more another time. This has been Varys Matthau, signing off.
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