On iridescent wings she soared, borne aloft by the wild thermals sweeping up the sides of the valley. To the west the setting suns were orange yolks dipping into the hard, stony crust of the horizon. A sheer thrill ran through Zildiz’s body; it was time once more to fulfill her glorious purpose.
Among the glittering, pebbly shores and hissing reeds of the wetlands far below, prey-forms emerged into the cooling dusk. Thick clouds of winged kester-gnats jostled fiercely for their mating rights, each one as long as her forearm. Meanwhile, tall water dancers rowed across the surface of the placid lakes and estuaries, their oar-like limbs sending them jetting forward, keeping just ahead of the schools of carnivorous nerids which splashed after them, sleek silver bodies flashing through the air.
Zildiz tracked one such school through the bulging set of compound eyes that took up most of her face, tucking her limbs and two pairs of wings and plummeting into a steep dive. Catching this prey-form required absolute precision as she streaked so close to the surface of the water that she felt the tips of her toes getting wet. Pulling up at the last millisecond, Zildiz shot out with her legs and snatched a nerid right at the apex of its leap, her clawed feet piercing through its armored exoskeleton to fix it in place while the other kept its thrashing mandibles from reaching up and disemboweling her. Quick as lightning she reached down with her mouth and bit into the base of its head, wrenching it off in one quick motion and then squeezing the sides of its abdomen so that its guts turned inside out like meat from a sausage casing.
Zildiz gobbled down the juicy morsels and flung the empty casing aside and immediately began casting about for more. Her exomorph’s two pairs of wings were each more than seven meters in length and granted her omnidirectional flight. She flitted back and forth and side to side, snatching nerids wherever she went and strewing their empty shell casings in her wake.
Like most of the aerial caste, hunting took up most of her day. The sheer amount of calories burned per minute of flight meant that she had to feed incessantly throughout the small window of time afforded to her in the hours of dusk. But far from being a nuisance to her, Zildiz exulted in her role in the order of things. What better way to serve the Vitalus than to trim the excess within the system, filling her belly all the while?
It was only these precious moments of opportunity that she felt truly alive, sheer exhilaration accentuating her natural desire to prove herself. For though her adolescent body had yet to grow into its prime, Zildiz did not believe in taking things slowly.
Feeling a sudden hankering for larger prey she zipped after one of the water dancers, darting right between its tall legs and hovering in place right below its abdomen. The beast mooed and lowed like a buffalo and tried to row itself clear. With a flick of her wrist Zildiz unsheathed her mantid limbs, the jointed blades unfolding from her beneath her forearms, serrated teeth sharp as razors.
With a single swipe she severed the water dancer’s twiggy limbs and seized its falling body with her teeth, dragging it ashore on one of the mudbanks surrounded by tall bamboo thickets. Since it was too heavy to carry in the air she folded her wings and climbed up the sturdy grasses, the water dancer clamped firmly in her jaws. Perched on the top of the swaying bamboo, nibbling daintily on the still-twitching carcass, Zildiz watched as the sky turned bronze and then a deep russet, the first evening stars peeking shyly behind the thinning clouds.
She let out a contented belch and reclined among the branches. It felt good to look upon the perfection of the All-In-One and to know she had a place within Its holy design. She was a Gallivant, the apex predator at the very pinnacle of the food chain.
But they were more than just that. Gallivants were the greatest creations of the Vitalus, partners and protégés in the never-ending effort to perfect the living systems of Arachnea. It was the Gallivants who pruned the tree of evolution, shaving off the excess species while shepherding others in their mutual struggle to survive. It was flattering to think how much faith It placed in them and how indispensable they were to the great scheme of things.
She was still musing on this when the All-In-One decided to disabuse her of such delusions.
The first she felt of the attack was a powerful tug on her leg that sent her toppling from her perch. In hindsight, the only thing that saved her was the half-eaten body of her prey which became lodged between the bamboo shoots, and which she held onto for dear life as a barbed tongue covered in adhesive slime wrapped itself around her ankle. Looking over her shoulder in alarm, she saw ferns and fronds on the water’s surface pushed aside to reveal an enormous horka toad, fanged mouth gaping wide to receive her.
Knowing she had only seconds to act before the monster swallowed her whole, Zildiz swung her mantid blade at the grasping tongue, only for the leathery flesh to turn it aside. Feeling the hot flush of terror she sawed at it with the teeth of her blade and was rewarded with a geyser of blood. Croaking in agony, the horker toad gave another terrific yank, wrenching so hard that the carcass she was hanging onto like grim death came apart in her hands. Zildiz fell to earth in an ungainly heap, a startled cry loosed from her lips as the beast bounded in for the kill. At the same moment she sawed through the last of the tongue and ripped herself free, then kicked off the ground with both legs, wings shuttering at blinding speed to enable a vertical takeoff, the toad’s jaws clamping shut inches away from her toes.
“You forget your place within the All-In-One,” Zildiz told it.
“Ribbit-ribbit,” it replied, hopping after her and pawing at the severed stump of its tongue. Recovering her poise, she darted in and to the side of its face, and before the amphibian could turn to face her, rammed her clawed feet into its swollen eye, gouging and tearing. The horka toad flopped back into the shallows, blood and vitreous fluid muddying the waters.
But Zildiz was far from finished. Her blood was up, and she was angered by its impertinence at interrupting her reverie. She hovered in close, baiting the creature to spring for her again, presenting her shimmering wings like a matador spreading his red cape for the bull, her intention being to put out its other eye. Once blinded she could then take the creature apart at her leisure. She would carry home chunks of the quivering flesh for the brood grubs back home—the children were always hungry. Besides, she would be doing the biome a favor by putting it out of its misery. The All-In-One had designated these horka toads an invasive species which had wandered in from the northern flood plain habitats. Their predations threatened to unbalance the delicate equilibrium of the wetlands, and the sooner they were dealt with, the better.
With its one remaining eye the horka toad fixed her in its malevolent glare. She saw its hind legs bunching up for a final spring and smiled, preparing herself for the kill.
Yet for the second time that day came the unexpected. The water all across the wetlands began to quiver and shake, a million tiny ripples radiating outwards to lick at the pebbly shores, the product of an immense ground tremor which flattened the banks and crumbled tons of sediment into the wavelets, clouding the tides with silt. Frightened, the horka toad beat a hasty retreat and dove into the safety of the cloudy waters.
Was it an earthquake? Zildiz wondered. But it couldn’t be. The All-In-One had not made arrangements for seismic activity or volcanic degassing during this cycle. In the rainforest far to the east she could hear the crash of rotten timbers giving way and ripping through the canopy. Turning her gaze to the south towards the karst canyons she heard the awful grinding of rock slipping along fault lines and the thunder of distant avalanches.
To gain a clearer picture she switched from the mosaic-like imagery of her compound vision to her pair of simple eyes. A rising plume of dust obscured much of the region, reaffirming her hunch that a volcano had erupted. Squinting hard, she could just barely make out familiar landscape of the Amit mounds, each one as tall as mountains and crowned with jagged spires, the feeder towers which regulated the atmospheric conditions of the subterranean lairs of the Amits.
Zildiz blinked. Was it her imagination, or had she just seen a shadow moving behind that veil of dust? No, that couldn’t be right. A trick of the light, perhaps? Sure enough, the debris soon settled to reveal the same familiar peaks that she’d looked upon her entire life.
Except there was a new mountain jutting out among the brown crags of the central massif. Grey and glinting in the dying light of day, it was like nothing she had ever seen before. Except, that was not entirely true. It had two arms, two legs and something that vaguely resembled a head, but the absurd immensity of it made her reject outright the possibility that it was humanoid.
Just a trick of the light, Zildiz told herself desperately.
But then before her very eyes the mountain walked, and everything came crashing down.
