A soft hum broke the relative silence of the cavern, letting Bazzalth know that one of the recombination tests had completed.  For now, he ignored it; the result would remain stable for a few days and he wasn’t yet finished with his current task.  The idle musing that this wasn’t his usual modus operandi crossed his mind, but he ignored it.  Still, as the day went on, he found that the thought refused to leave him, perhaps because, upon further consideration, it was quite correct.

Bazzalth had always preferred to focus on a single avenue of inquiry, a single experiment, a single set of tasks.  He liked to devote his entire intellect towards wringing every last drop of Knowledge from whatever his subject at the time happened to be.  If, for some reason, the course of the experiment called for a period of idling, he would fill those gaps with a small project that didn’t have a time limit, such as redesigning his tools for better efficiency or improved accuracy.

Looking back now at the last days, however, he realized that something had changed.  He currently had three concurrent experiments running, each completely unrelated to the others.  It had gotten to the point, he realized, that they were actively interfering with each other’s progress as he was forced to juggle the time and resource demands of each.  The whole process was highly inefficient and not something he’d done before.  So... why had he suddenly gone down this path?

A moment of introspection gave him an answer, one that he didn’t much like but had trouble refuting.  This irregular behavior of his had begun after Blake had departed, and after he’d met with Pari after more than a year of separation.  Thinking back, he concluded that he’d started the second experiment to fill a moment of downtime during the first, then added a third when the second had proved unable to fill all of his idle moments.  He was keeping himself busy, he realized—so busy that he had no time to let his thoughts wander, so busy that there was no opportunity for the emptiness to sink in.

Bazzalth was lonely.

Being alone was nothing new for him, of course.  He had spent the vast majority of his life in isolation, away from all the others who only looked down on him, mocked him, and treated him like he were little more than a tool and a toy.  But there was something different to this solitude than all the centuries before.  Something was missing now, something that perhaps had always been missing but had gone unrecognized until he’d finally had a taste: companionship.

Though their time together had been all too brief, those few days with the sarcastic crawler had been some of the most enjoyable and memorable of his long life.  And as for Pari, the brief re-convergence of their paths had reminded him of the way things had been when the small creature had called his dwelling home.

One time, she’d released some sort of smoke that blanketed the test chamber’s walls with a pink residue that had seemingly done nothing other than provide the lair with some additional color—that is, until they’d woken to find the chamber covered in a thick layer of mold-like fungus.  While the unforeseen interruption had hampered his planned studies, he could not deny that he’d accrued much Knowledge of a different sort in his twelve-day war against the shockingly persistent invaders.  Truly, fungal spores were the only form of life that could challenge dragons when it came to hardiness.

In the seasons after Pari’s first reluctant departure, his sister Tavreth had consumed his every waking moment with demand after demand, to the point that he hadn’t had a moment to process the void Pari had left behind.  By the time his days had slowed down again, he’d gotten used to the state of affairs again.  This time, he was afforded no such luxury.

What did it say about him that the two beings in his long life with whom he’d found the most companionship were a crippled crawler and a half-person hybrid creation of a past experiment?  He preferred not to think about it.  Instead, Bazzalth emerged from his lair into the evening air and took flight.  It was time to do his rounds.

Bazzalth was about five peaks north of the southernmost edge of his usual route when he caught the telltale glimmer of a single crawler’s soul far off in the distance.  Quickly, he dove to the ground, swerving behind the closest mountain.  Though he landed a long, long distance from the glimmer—far enough that even his superlative person’s eyesight, powerful enough to be able to discern the individual leaves on the plant life growing eight peaks away, could barely make out the figure clambering over a boulder—he couldn’t assume that distance alone would be enough to keep him hidden.  His recent experiences had shown him that crawlers could still surprise him with their capabilities, and he dared not assume too much when it came to the Accord.

He hesitated as he noticed a second glimmer on an adjacent mountain, then a third in the opposite direction.  What was this?  Historically, crawlers traveling through these mountains preferred to travel in packs, but these were each alone.  Something didn’t feel right.

Filled with caution, he decided to get closer and see what he was dealing with before he acted.  The list of things that people were not the best in the world at was a very short list, but moving stealthily was definitely on it.  Still, using the fact that his soulsight cared not for physical obstructions, he worked his way nearer, making sure to always have at least a mountain between him and any crawlers that might be able to see him.

Finally, when he felt that moving any closer would be too much of a risk, he stopped and surveyed the mountains once more.  Quickly he picked up more than ten souls slowly moving north.  Like the first three, the other seven were each alone.  Instead of the large group formation he was so used to, it was as if they were arrayed in a rough line that stretched east to west, with the whole line creeping closer.

While Bazzalth was not an expert on the habits and methods of crawlers—though his recent experiences put him on better footing than his peers—something about this felt off.  So many crawlers spread out so far suggested that they were surveying a large swath of land, but there was no need to do so if it was just these ten or so crawlers here.  One would need to scout such a vast area only if more crawlers were coming behind them—many more.

Bazzalth pushed his soulsight to its limits, spreading it as far south as he could.  His efforts were rewarded almost immediately, as suddenly hundreds of souls lit up on the very edge of his senses.  A low growl escaped his lips.  The force he saw at the limits of his perception was larger than any group he’d encountered in his centuries patrolling the southern mountains, and by a massive margin.

This was big—too big for him to be able to clean up on his own and guarantee he could prevent any witnesses.  He needed to report this.  Unfortunately, that meant he’d have to do something he had avoided for the past two millennia.  With great reluctance, he retreated and took flight.  It was time to pay his sister a visit.

*     *     *

Bazzalth did not have a habit of visiting other abodes often, but he’d done so enough to notice a few trends.  First of all, most people tended to make their homes expressions of their hoard.  Take Daravith, hoarder of Recreation, for example.  Not only had she turned much of her lair into a pool for swimming and filled the rest with an endlessly growing collection of amusements, she had even reconfigured the terrain outside for use in games.  While her case was on the more extreme side, it was not exactly an outlier.

Another example was Gretiem, hoarder of Friendship.  What bit of her lair he’d seen had been filled with mementos of her many relationships with others, objects that she said reminded her of the bonds she shared with their fellow people.  Bazzalth was unable to say for sure what else she’d done to her home, as Tavreth had arrived rather quickly and ejected him from the cavern before he could see more.  He supposed he could always go back one of these days and see what else lay within, now that the lair lay empty.  To his knowledge, it had remained uninhabited ever since the incident; while it was by most measures one of the best in the entire range, none wanted to tempt his sister’s wrath.  For all he knew, she’d destroyed everything inside, anyway.

Tavreth’s home, by comparison, was very spartan.  As he entered the main chamber, he noted that even his lair had changed more than hers in the many years since he’d last visited.  At least in his dwelling the layout and composition of his equipment changed greatly every few centuries.  His sister, however, had kept things largely the same as they had been over two thousand years prior.

Unlike crawler domiciles and Gretiem, most people tended to prefer a living space open and free from obstructions, meaning that Bazzalth could see almost the entirety of Tavreth’s domain from the moment he entered.  There was the sleeping area to the right, the bed made of fresh, clean, and unruffled furs.  What would count as the living area could be found straight ahead of him, the surfaces spotless and the implements neatly and precisely ordered.  Behind that, to the back of the cave, was what Bazzalth would call a training area.  He wasn’t entirely sure what actual training she did there, as he doubted his sister could use her true capabilities much while inside without collapsing the mountain down upon herself.  Still, the area was largely cleared of anything but several crude crawler dummies, a handful of larger pieces that were shaped suspiciously similar to a person’s throat and wing joints, and Tavreth herself.  Standing near the center, surrounded by broken and crushed dummies, she faced away from him, either unaware or unconcerned with his entrance.

All of these were, for the most part, in line with his memories of his last visit—including Tavreth standing in the training area.  The one thing that he didn’t remember was the mural covering nearly the entirety of the cave’s ceiling.  Vast, yet intricately detailed, it depicted a sprawling city built not on top of but from a gigantic mountain.  The metropolis appeared empty, devoid of the inhabitants that make a city more than a mere collection of adjacent structures, and while the architecture struck him as vaguely familiar, he found that he could not place it.

Had Tavreth created this herself in the last two millennia?  Or had she conscripted another, and if so, who?

His question died as his sister finally seemed to notice him.  Quickly turning around, her nostrils pulsing with surprise and anger, she glared at him like she’d spotted some fecal matter on her claw.  He reflexively shrunk away from her gaze, catching himself too late to keep it from showing.  He hated how, even after all these years, Tavreth could make him feel like a whelp without even having to move a muscle.

“Tavreth not give Bazzalth-brother permission to enter Tavreth’s home whenever Bazzalth-brother pleases,” she rumbled.

Bazzalth did not comment on the fact that she entered his home whenever she pleased.  “Bazzalth has information.  Information must be spread,” he replied instead.  “Crawlers come north—many crawlers.  Bazzalth cannot guarantee Bazzalth can prevent all from escaping.  Bazzalth... requests assistance.”

He held his breath and waited for the inevitable scornful comments about how weak he was and how much shame he brought upon their family for not being able to take care of some crawlers, but to his surprise, they did not come.  Instead, his sister’s gaze shifted to something else, something resembling a muted excitement.

“How many crawlers?” she growled, striding closer with purposeful steps that sent trembles through the stone beneath his feet.

“Bazzalth could not get close enough to know, but saw hundreds.”

“Hmmm... Tavreth must see with own eyes,” his sister stated, shoving him out of the way and pushing through the entrance.  Ignoring Bazzalth chasing behind her, she emerged from her lair and shot into the air with a flap of her powerful wings.

Bazzalth did his best to follow, though she did not make it easy.  Tavreth could fly far faster than Bazzalth, even with her increased size, and the air left behind in her wake was chaotic and hard to fly through.  Still, she needed him to show her where the crawlers were, so she kept to a pace that he could match as long as he pushed himself to his limits.

That was how she always operated, he thought.  Tavreth always seemed to act in ways that forced him to give everything he had to just keep up with whatever she was doing.  It was like she was rubbing his weakness in his face every chance she got.  He hated it, of course, but what could he do about it?  She was right.  They were all right.  Even with his unique abilities taken into consideration, he was weak, and there wasn’t much he could do about it.

Tavreth slowed down as they got closer to the area in question.  By now, the sun had long since gone to rest, ceding domination of the sky to the lunar triad.  In that semi-darkness, the two of them came to a soft landing—or as soft a landing as a person could achieve, anyway—and gazed southward.

Bazzalth did not focus on his soulsight; he had no need to.  The glow of the fires burning in the crawlers’ camp was visible many peaks away even to his eyes.  Judging just by the small sea of fires filling a valley between two large peaks, his initial findings of “hundreds” of crawlers looked to be off the mark by a factor of ten, if not more.  This was not an expedition; this was an invasion.

He gave voice to the thought and Tavreth only chuckled.

“No, Bazzalth-brother, not invasion,” Tavreth corrected him, her throat rumbling with undisguised glee.  “Crawlers are invitation.”

*     *     *

The Confluence stood at the north end of the mountains, just south of the Hunting Grounds.  In all of Bazzalth’s long life, he had never seen it anything but empty; he had not yet hatched when the Accord had been created, and there had been no reason to use it since.  The Confluence existed to be the neutral meeting ground of all people, but people as a whole rarely found the urge to congregate.

Now, for the first time in his life, Bazzalth stood within the Confluence, his body perched on one of the many flat slabs that encompassed the central orator’s arena.  He did not sit alone.  On the slab to his right sat Tavreth, her eyes glimmering with anticipation for what was to come.  Other slabs were slowly being occupied as more people flew in and chose a spot.

Bazzalth felt a twinge of awkwardness and anxiety as Daravith glided over him and lightly alighted upon a slab as far away from Tavreth as possible.  She shot Tavreth a hostile glance before eying him with smug amusement.  Bazzalth looked elsewhere.  He had not seen her since his ill-advised trip to her lair, back on that night when he’d tried to heal Blake—a mistake he’d tried to forget.

Thinking back, he could see now just how much his desperation at the time had clouded his decision-making.  He’d had a choice between two sources of lightning, Daravith and the great storm known as Chalacc’s Fury.  In hindsight, Daravith had been an option with great risk and little benefit.  The only real benefit had been speed, but in the end he’d been able to harvest what he needed from the storm even after wasting his time with her, so the only reason to try her first had turned out to be pointless.

In return, visiting Daravith not only damaged his “battery” so that Blake’s healing had failed to fully complete, but also exposed him to possible danger.  His sister had forbidden him from visiting people like her from the opposing faction, and if she found out... well, it was a risk he’d decided to take to save his friend.  Luckily, the only people who knew were likely he and Daravith, and she wouldn’t risk revealing this either.  Tavreth already viewed Daravith with enmity; Daravith wouldn’t want to give her more reasons to want her dead.

Daravith opened her enticing mouth and spoke, her voice lilting with amusement.  “Little Bazzalth, tell Daravith... did Little Bazzalth’s find lightning after leaving Daravith’s home?”

Bazzalth froze, alarm coursing through his veins.  He’d forgotten how Daravith’s hoarding of Recreation often led to her making unwise decisions for the fun of it!  She wasn’t asking because she cared what his answer might be; she was asking to get a rise out of Tavreth at his expense!

True to form, his sister turned to him with barely restrained fury, and Bazzalth foresaw his end.  “Bazzalth-brother defies Tavreth to consort with enemy?!” she bellowed, the air around her radiating blistering heat.

Bazzalth cowered away from his sister’s scorching rage.  He knew that there wasn’t much he could say or do to mollify her when she became like this.

For her part, Daravith just laughed.  “Tavreth worried Little Bazzalth having second thoughts?  Afraid Little Bazzalth will switch factions?”

“Imbecile!  Bazzalth-brother would not dare!”

Since before his hatching, the people had been split into two main factions, each led by one of the two mightiest people: his sister Tavreth and Gretiem.  Each faction had been roughly equally matched; Tavreth’s faction, with several dozen members, had not been quite as large as Gretiem’s faction, but the average member had been stronger than the average of Gretiem’s faction so it had evened out.

However, now that Gretiem was out of the picture, her faction was floundering as several other people vied for supremacy.  While Daravith was the de facto new leader as of now, the future of their faction remained in doubt.  How long she could maintain control was hard to say, especially to one as ill-equipped for social matters as he.

“Tavreth desire to know why Little Bazzalth visited Daravith while Tavreth slept?” she teased from across the hollow, clearly enjoying her view of both Tavreth’s anger and Bazzalth’s distress. 

“Hmph!  Tell Tavreth nothing,” a pearl orange dragon interjected as he settled down on a slab on the Daravith faction’s side.  “As always, Daravith reveal too much to add mere crumbs to hoard.  Unfit to lead.”

“Silence, Xaertra!” Daravith snapped back, shooting him a scathing glare.

“Xaertra!” Tavreth roared, the heat cascading from her body seeming to redouble as she spotted the newcomer.

Another high-ranking member of Gretiem’s faction, Xaertra was easily the most reviled person alive.  Everybody hated him, and for good reason: he hoarded Secrets.  Driven by the same obsession to fill his hoard as everybody else, he dedicated his life to knowing all that he could that everybody else did not want known.  Not surprisingly, this caused everybody else to view him in an adversarial light, something that the man seemed to relish—or at least, Bazzalth presumed from his mannerisms.  It was hard to know what Xaertra really thought or felt about anything; like everything else about him, he preferred to keep his true thoughts and knowledge secret.

In a way, that was what everybody hated about Xaertra the most.  He’d revealed enough tidbits over the centuries to prove that he knew things that he should not know, but how many other secrets did he possess?  Every other person had to ask themselves what else he knew.  What other scandalous details of theirs did he possess?  Xaertra remained tight-lipped about it and seemed to revel in the reaction this caused.  Whether or not he actually knew something was another secret in and of itself for him to keep, after all.

Bazzalth was no exception to this paradigm—if anything, he had more to fear than the others.  His dirty secrets, while minor in impact, bordered on treasonous in nature.  He had, in essence, broken the Accord while simultaneously being the single person most responsible for its upkeep.  As such, Bazzalth despised Xaertra’s existence with a fiery passion even though they never interacted.

Did Xaertra know about Pari?  What about Blake?  Though he’d taken great precautions to hide both, precautions that only he with his Knowledge could manage, he still lived in fear of the day either came to light.  Should they be revealed, the Daravith faction would jump on the chance to weaken Tavreth’s faction and would demand his death for breaking the greatest of taboos.  Perhaps the fact that these had not been used against him yet was proof that he was safe, but he could never be sure.

Still, his and the others’ disgust with the orange dragon paled in comparison to Tavreth’s outright hatred.  Bazzalth didn’t know why she loathed him so.  Perhaps it was simply for the same reason as the rest of them, but he doubted it was so simple.  She’d already nearly killed him twice, with only the intervention of others allowing him to be here today.  Still, if he felt fear at confronting the person who’d nearly slain him two times over—and he must, Bazzalth had no doubt—he hid it well.

“Faction is doomed if all bow to Daravith,” Xaertra sneered, ignoring Tavreth entirely.  “Daravith too enamored with own amusement to head faction.”

“Daravith will teach Xaertra who is fit!” the faction leader roared, teeth flashing with menace.  She stepped out into the center of the hollow, her challenge clear.  Just as Xaertra looked about to step forward and answer her challenge, they were interrupted by a newcomer landing behind Daravith with a loud slam that shook the entire arena.

“Fighting?!  YES!” the new arrival cried, his hulking violet form towering over all but Tavreth.  “Zaivass will fight!  Bring Zaivass glory of battle and bloodshed!”

“Sit down and be quiet, simpleton!” Tavreth snapped, causing Zaivass to hesitate long enough for the others to retreat to their seats, tails between their legs.

“But Tavreth said—”

“Time for bloodshed comes later,” she told him forcefully, “should Zaivass even desire bloodshed later.”

“Zaivass will never tire in hunt for glory!” came the indignant response.

Tavreth chuffed in annoyance, as did most of the others.  A person’s hoard could have a deleterious influence on them, pushing them to act in ways that might not be fully optimal, but Bazzalth generally viewed them as beneficial on the whole.  They gave people a sense of purpose, a drive that animated them day after day through their eternal lives.  There were, however, a few people with hoards that Bazzalth would argue were actively harmful to them.  The hoarder of Personality, Zaivass was one of them.

During Blake’s visit, their conversation had at one point veered onto a tangent about mental illnesses.  Blake considered hoards to be a possible manifestation of something he called “Obsessive Compulsive Disorder”, a classification that made Bazzalth bristle with contemptuous disagreement.  Zaivass, however, reminded him of another illness the crawler had mentioned: something called “Multiple Personality Disorder”.  He possessed an ever-growing collection of unique and independent personalities and switched between them seemingly at random.  The list of personalities that Bazzalth had personally witnessed included one that loved terrible puns while also proclaiming imminent doom for the world over the slightest provocation; one that viewed even the most insignificant topic as something worth debating for days on end; one that spent hours concocting absurd hypothetical situations and repeatedly claiming he would turn them into stories very soon, yet never did; one scatterbrained and unable to focus on a single task for more than a few moments before becoming distracted by something trivial; one obsessed with sacs filled with lighter-than-air gas for some reason and who hyper-focused on inane details; one who delighted in disgusting others with vulgar images; and even one that was supportive and kind to him and his endeavors.  It was a shame that, with the myriad characters bouncing around in his hoard-blighted mind, the odds were that the nice personality would never resurface again while Bazzalth was around.

Zaivass’s condition meant that nothing he said or did could be trusted to last past the next breath.  His allegiance to the two contesting factions varied depending on the active personality, meaning he was effectively on neither.  The third largest person after Gretiem and Tavreth, he could have been quite a powerful and influential existence otherwise, but as he was, the others viewed him as little more than an annoyance—unless he was manifesting a particularly violent personality like he seemed to be right now.  In those cases, his strength and unpredictability made him frightening enough that most other people would balk at taking him on.

“No fight?” a voice muttered quietly to his left, causing Bazzalth to almost jump in surprise.

Turning his gaze in the voice’s direction, he found the red-brown hide of Culros perched upon the slab beside him.  How long had he been there?  Bazzalth had not noticed his arrival.

“Such wasted opportunity...” the hoarder of Loss mumbled to himself, a look of ecstasy on his face.  “Exquisite...”

A member of Tavreth’s faction, Culros lived in an ashen cavern that made even his sister’s lair look luxurious.  The one time Bazzalth had visited to deliver a requested creation, he’d found the place entirely empty except for the thick layer of ash covering the ground.  There had not even been a pile of furs to sleep on!  This was because, to fill his hoard, Culros acquired things and then burned them to nothing but ash.  Bazzalth had discovered this when, upon receiving Bazzalth’s creation—which had taken half a season of labor to manufacture—Culros had inspected it, appreciated it for a moment, and then promptly destroyed it right in front of him.  That was the day that Bazzalth had decided to never make anything for this muddy-scaled person ever again.

The sound of oscillating tones grew in intensity until a muted blue person alighted onto a slab across the Confluence.  Gendayn, hoarder of Patterns, swayed back and forth as she smacked the stone beneath her with an ever-increasingly-complex beat that merged perfectly with the warbling sounds created by her ability.  Loud and obnoxious, Gendayn lived the furthest north of all the people—not by her own volition, but because nobody wanted to deal with her constant noisemaking—and often seemed lost in her rhythms.  When she wasn’t, she was usually wrapped up in her quest to “find the Pattern”, a single, endlessly complicated pattern that explained all of reality.  “All is connected,” she like to proclaim, though little of what would follow made any sense to anybody but her.  For example, she’d once asserted that the red-topped chullubs, a species of small lizard commonly found in the northern hunting ground, were all actually incredibly sophisticated tracking nodes that interlinked to form a widespread surveillance network tasked with tracking the spread of mormott worms across the world.  When met with Bazzalth’s disbelief, she’d simply told him that it was not her fault that he could not “see the truth of the pattern”.

With Gendayn’s arrival, Bazzalth looked around at all the occupied slabs.  The hollow was nearly full now as many of the other people had filtered in during this time.  Bazzalth even spotted both Nortam and Olzrynth, which surprised him.  The reed green Nortam hoarded gemstones and other rare materials found beneath the ground.  While some others derided his hoard as little more than glittering stones, that did not stop him from spending most of his time digging deep beneath the earth, hunting for more and better specimens with great gusto.  An encrusting of just-cooled lava still caked onto parts of his body told Bazzalth that he’d been far down below just a few moments ago.

Olzrynth, in contrast, barely moved at all.  As one who hoarded Dreams, he spent nearly every moment asleep, waking only to do the bare minimum to not starve or die of thirst before returning to slumber for seasons at a time.  Bazzalth liked Olzrynth more than most any other person present, simply because the granite grey sleeper left him alone.

The fact that Tavreth had managed to somehow wrangle even these two into attending this Congress spoke to its incredible importance.  Though the others here did not know it, their lives were about to change drastically.

Looking around again at the host of people from all over the mountains, Bazzalth realized that everybody had arrived.  Well, everybody except one.

“Where is Maylanth?” he asked Tavreth.

“Maylanth not needed this day,” came the offhand reply.

Not needed?  The second-in-command of Tavreth’s faction, the Daravith to her Gretiem, wasn’t necessary?  Bazzalth shook his head.  Clearly, his sister had a lot of confidence in their position, something Bazzalth did not share.  Though the news they had to share would shake the foundation of their society, ideological flexibility was not something he’d noticed in most of his brethren.

“Silence!” Tavreth roared, bringing the cacophonous cross-chatter down to a low murmur.  “Tavreth shall speak!”

“Who says Tavreth speak first?” Daravith challenged.

His sister snorted.  “Has Daravith forgotten Accord?  Tavreth called Rite of Congress; Tavreth speaks first.”

Unable to find a worthy retort, Daravith let out an indignant huff and backed down.

“Assembled people of Gholtenar!” Tavreth continued.  “I bring you joyous news!  The days of the Accord will soon be over!”

The crowd erupted with a great clamor that was an approximately half-and-half mixture of cheers and irate disbelief.

“Big words!” Xaertra roared, his voice cutting through the din.  “Accord is pact decided by and bound to all!  Now Tavreth thinks Tavreth can choose pact nullified?  Or Tavreth faction finally become overconfident in strength?”

Tavreth laughed smugly.  “Tavreth not decide Accord nullified.  Crawlers decide for all people!”

The assembled people exploded with roars of confusion and anger.

“Crawlers send incursion of great size into mountains!  Army of thousands travels north as Tavreth speaks!”

Cries of outrage echoed off the hollow’s slopes, and Bazzalth watched as she drank it all in.

“Tavreth asks, should crawler army be left alone?”

The assembled people answered loudly in the negative, with even most of the members of the opposing faction in agreement with their adversary.

“Hold!” Daravith cut in.  “Why should Daravith trust Tavreth’s word?”

“No need!  Tavreth propose hunting pack to exterminate incursion.  Daravith can join and see for self.”

“Hmmm, if true, crawlers must be purged from mountains.  Accord requires action,” Xaertra chimed in.  “Xaertra will go.”

“Daravith go as well,” the faction leader quickly chimed in.

Gendayn volunteered to join the hunting party, as did, to Bazzalth’s surprise, Nortam—did he want to see what sorts of jewels might be found among the crawlers?

“Tavreth presents glory and bloodshed opportunity, as promised,” his sister said to Zaivass, but contrary to expectations, he shied away.

“Many crawlers sound bad.  What if too strong?  What if Zaivass get hurt?”

It seemed that he’d switched to a new personality sometime during the assembly.  Sadly, this one seemed...

“Pathetic,” Tavreth grunted turning away.  “Very well.  Hunting pack is Tavreth, Bazzalth-brother, Daravith, Gendayn, Nortam, Xaertra.”

“Weakling not needed,” Nortam scoffed.  “Five is enough.”

“No, Bazzalth-brother comes,” his sister shot back.  “No witnesses.”

*     *     *

“So many,” Nortam commented as they all gazed down upon the mass of invaders taking a midday pause to rest and eat.  “Crawlers breed like tunnel moles.”

Having watched the crawlers all morning, Bazzalth had to admit that they were well-organized and coordinated.  They moved through the mountains with slow but deliberate precision, their rows and files never losing cohesion as they marched along the thin passes.  When they came upon terrain that would prove troublesome to a large group, certain crawlers moved forward to use those reality-modifying abilities they loved so much and alter the terrain just enough to allow passage without wasting more time than necessary.

The hunting pack flew far above the mountains—as high as they could go and still see their prey below—to keep their profiles so small that the nearsighted crawlers would never notice them, let alone make out their nature.  As an added measure, they kept themselves between the crawlers and the high sun, just to be sure.  Hunting worked best when the prey didn’t see you coming.

“Is time,” Tavreth declared.  “All understand plan?”

The others confirmed they were ready.

“Hunt will be too boring,” Daravith complained.  “Daravith propose game: person with most slain wins.”

“Fah!” Bazzalth’s sister snorted.  “Too easy!”

“Tavreth overconfident,” Gendayn countered.  “More to hunt than brute force.”

“Words too easy,” Xaertra cut in.  “Only actions matter.”

“Indeed!  No more delay.  Clear skies and good hunting,” Tavreth intoned.

The pack split, each of them diving towards the ground with a different vector, and the hunt was on.

The crawlers had stopped for their meal on a plateau surrounded by several mountains that created four different ways out: north, south, east, and west, roughly.  The southern passage, through which the invaders had come, was by far the widest of the four.  If the crawlers tried to escape en masse, they would most likely retreat in that direction.

Gendayn fell fastest and hit first, crashing down upon her preplanned spot on the southeastern edge.  With a deafening bellow, she let loose a long blast of her frost breath, freezing hundreds of unsuspecting crawlers into solid white statues in a matter of moments.  Nortam was not far behind.  Channeling his momentum into his earth-shaping powers, his impact sent out an earthen shockwave that tore through the crawlers on the western edge like a tsunami, tossing them high into the air like leaves in an updraft.

Daravith came third, gleefully giggling as she swooped down over the and released blast after blast of lightning from her maw.  Each of the countless bolts struck a crawler, superheating the water inside them as it passed through and bursting their bodies like overstuffed gall sacs before chaining into the next crawler, then the next, and so on.  Xaertra finally landed on the eastern edge, his body spewing forth a voluminous and mysterious fog that quickly spread over the eastern camp.  Even from above, Bazzalth had trouble seeing what happened inside, but he caught glimpses of crawlers writhing in the mist, faces red, eyes bulging, and hands clutching at their throats.

Last but definitely not least, Tavreth slammed down atop the northern side of the crawler formation, her massive size and weight causing tremors strong enough to knock over everything nearby.  She practically glowed with outright fury, her body so hot that nearby items like bedrolls and packed tents immediately burst into flame.  Opening her maw wide, she unleashed a roar that shook the mountains themselves, followed by a blast of her personal breath attack.  The wrath of the earth made manifest, a cone of molten ash and flame wreathed in lightning erupted from her throat, sweeping over all before her and instantly incinerating everything to dust.

In no more than a handful of moments, the entirety of the crawler presence had been surrounded and a full fifth of them was dead.  Bazzalth did not blame them for the frenzied terror that followed the sudden ambush.  Swarming about like lechek beetles around a destroyed hive, they did everything all at once.  Some ran about in a panic, others froze in place, many tried to flee, and—to the crawlers’ collective credit—some competent leaders even managed to quickly organize their underlings and attempt to fight back.

All of these proved futile, of course.  The panicked crawlers found themselves running from person to person; they died still searching for salvation.  Those that went still died just as fast.  Those that tried to flee found themselves penned in, as each person knew to let none pass.  They tried to climb the cliffs and mountainsides, but such a task was easier said than done and took time—time they did not have.

Those that resisted fought bravely, but it was for naught.  Most of their weapons could not even pierce the peoples’ tough hides, and the few that did found their blades quickly destroyed by the ichor they released.  Their manifestations of fire, ice, stone, and the like proved equally ineffective.  Even outnumbering their opponents a thousand to one, the damage they inflicted was inconsequential and each person would be finished healing before the end of their flight home.

Finally, as predicted, the remaining third of the crawlers broke and made a desperate bid to escape to the supposed safety of the south.  This was, of course, the reason why the southern end was covered by both Gendayn and Nortam.  They were, naturally, more than up for the task.  Gendayn continued to freeze all who came near with her frost breath, all while she shifted and swayed to some sort of pattern that only she could hear or know.  Her sonic ability manifested, sending out intermittent powerful low-frequency pulses strong enough to shatter her frozen victims into minute pieces.  Bump.  Bump-bump.  Bump.  It was like Bazzalth was listening to the heartbeat of the world itself wreaking havoc upon their enemies.

Meanwhile, Daravith began to blur, two afterimages that mirrored her body exactly appearing seemingly overlaid with her body except slightly out of position.  Those afterimages split, sliding left and right until they no longer touched and there were three separate Daraviths standing side by side.  Suddenly the two copies stopped mimicking the original Daravith’s every move, as if they’d been disconnected from the main body, and began moving separately.  The three Daraviths each released their own blasts of lightning, and one swept out her tail to crush a particularly agile crawler against a boulder.

Bazzalth had always wanted to study Daravith’s clones.  Solid while not material, sentient but soulless, and lasting as long as she could maintain them—a bit less than a day, from what Bazzalth understood—they fascinated him on multiple levels.  They were extensions of her that were not her, with all her beauty and charm, and he’d always wished he could have even half a day to study the mystery that they represented.  Alas, she’d refused, even after being offered a dozen creations of her choice, meaning all he could do was study them from afar as he did now.

Above the chaos he floated, his wings catching the many updrafts generated by the massacre below as he tore his eyes away from the intriguing doppelgangers.  He made no effort to partake in the slaughter taking place below; his job was not to fight but to watch—to spy every crawler who had enough speed, strength, and luck to successfully make it past any of the others and to erase any last hope those fortunate few might have of living to see the sunset.

After so many years of experience, he was very good at his job.

*     *     *

“Lies!  Impossible Gendayn slay so many!” Nortam snarled.

The group soared north, victorious, on their way back to their homes.  Almost predictably, the conversation had quickly turned to who had won Daravith’s game.

Gendayn scoffed.

“Not fault of Gendayn that Nortam cannot count!  Perhaps if Nortam spent less time crawling through dirt for shiny rocks, Nortam count past five.”

With a roar, Nortam veered hard right, slamming into Gendayn, who twisted just in time to catch the blow with her front claws.  Tangled up, the two of them plummeted from the sky, a twisting ball of slicing claws and gnashing teeth hurtling towards an unlucky cliffside below.

The rest of them glided onward, unconcerned.  Bazzalth barely blinked at the sudden outburst of violence.  All of them were worked up from the hunt and needed a release.  Gendayn had apparently decided that fighting with Nortam was her preferable method.  There was a reason that she’d used those specific words, “shiny rocks”.  Referring to his hoard as such was the most efficient way to trigger Nortam’s aggression—something young Bazzalth had found out by accident many centuries ago.  This time, Gendayn would likely fare better than he had back then.

They’d both probably be fine.  People were hard to kill, after all, especially in a one-on-one fight.  In fact, Bazzalth could count on one hand the number of people who had died at all.  His sister was responsible for most of them—at least if his suspicions were correct about a certain former faction leader.

For the first time since the battle ended, Bazzalth’s sister spoke.  “Crawlers will not overlook and cannot ignore such loss.  People cannot stay hidden any longer.”

“Yes, Accord has no meaning now,” Xaertra agreed.

“Accord clearly had little meaning for long time,” Daravith admitted with a frown.

“Good, others understand.  Time comes soon to erase crawlers from world.”

“Absolutely not,” Daravith immediately spat back.  “Daravith will use crawlers to fill hoard.  Will make excellent toys.”

“Whole world of new secrets to discover,” Xaertra added wistfully.

“Wretched fools!  Why still not understand?!” Tavreth spat, seething so intensely that Bazzalth could feel the heat washing off her from more than a wingspan away.  “Tavreth explain over and over!  Crawlers must pay for deeds!”

“Crawlers can pay from under Daravith’s claw.  Why waste valuable resources over events before Daravith’s hatching!”

“Such thoughts led to death of people last time!  People were complacent, and now see results!  Confined to corner of world, trembling at thought of discovery while crawlers repopulate!”

“Tavreth always roaring about doom, doom, doom!  Crawlers weak and pathetic!  Daravith could have stomped every crawler today without help!”

“Daravith blind and stupid!  Crawlers ambushed and unready!  Others much stronger, and crawlers only get stronger with time!  Crawlers must not be allowed to live!  Too dangerous!”

“Other crawlers much stronger?” Daravith repeated.  “How Tavreth know?”

“Indeed,” Xaertra cut in, a smug, knowing grin plastered on his face, “how Tavreth know about crawlers at all?  Almost as if Tavreth secretly broke Accord multiple times...”

Even though he had also broken the Accord—once again, in a very minor and completely unimportant way—Bazzalth could not help but gasp.  “Tavreth-sister!”

“Xaertra!  You dare accuse Tavreth!” Bazzalth’s sister roared.

“Xaertra!  You dare keep so important fact from Daravith!” Xaertra’s faction leader roared.

Xaertra just looked at them both with an expression of sublime satisfaction.

“Need Daravith remind Tavreth that price for breaking Accord is death?  Daravith will enjoy watching Tavreth’s execution.”

“Tavreth should slay both mongrels here and now for such disrespect!”

“Does Tavreth truly think Tavreth alone can defeat both Daravith and Xaertra together?” Xaertra asked, his voice dripping with derision.

“Tavreth strong, but overestimates self,” Daravith added.

“What proof Xaertra have?” Bazzalth finally asked.

All three of the others turned to him as if they’d forgotten that he’d been there—likely, they had.

“Hmph!  Bazzalth-brother correct!” his sister stated.  “Is only Xaertra’s word!  If Xaertra have proof of accusations, Xaertra accuse Tavreth long ago!”

“Matters not!” Daravith chuckled.  “Accused or not, rumors spread quickly.  Tavreth’s faction will falter and Daravith’s faction will rise.  Tavreth cannot stop Daravith’s impending conquest.  Clear skies, Tavreth!”

Laughing heartily, Daravith and Xaertra veered off and sped away with mighty flaps of their wings.

“Tavreth will win in end!” Bazzalth’s sister roared at their retreating forms, but other than sending a scathing glower their way, that was all she did.

Seeing that they were near his lair, Bazzalth descended.

To his surprise, his sister followed.  Upon landing, she glanced in the direction the others had gone and snickered, her rage seeming to have suddenly evaporated into thin air.  “Fools,” she muttered.

“Why Tavreth-sister happy?” Bazzalth could not help but ask.

“Daravith doing exactly as Tavreth wants, Bazzalth-brother.”

Bazzalth blinked.

“Let faction of fools grab crawler’s attention,” she continued.  “When time comes, Daravith and Xaertra and crawlers will all burn to ash.  And Daravith will never know... because Bazzalth-brother will never talk to Daravith again, yes?”

Before Bazzalth could even react, he found himself slammed against the mountain that housed his lair, Tavreth’s massive body flattening him up against the pulverized stone.  He gasped and squirmed as her vise-like hands latched onto his front left leg and the base of his left wing with bone-shattering grips, but her vastly superior size and strength rendered him as weak as a newborn crawler.

He could feel her crushing him with ease, her dominating pressure bearing down not only upon his body but more so upon his mind.  She was serious this time.  It became harder and harder to think as that oppressive weight bore down upon his thoughts, his sister’s will overwhelming his own.  No commands came through the link this time, only fury and an intense feeling of betrayal.

“Tavreth not forget Bazzalth-brother consorted with enemy faction.  Bazzalth-brother knows Daravith is forbidden!”

“Bazzalth had no choice!” he gasped.  “Needed—”

His words cut off, replaced by a cry of pain as her grip on the base of his wing tightened and she began to pull.  He knew from experience that she could just slice through his flesh with her obscenely sharp claws, but that would be too quick and simple.  Bazzalth recognized the kind of situation he was in all too well.  This was not about inflicting injury; this was about inflicting pain.  This was about reminding him of where he stood and venting her frustrations.

Though he’d been through something like this many times before, Bazzalth had no answers.  He was helpless against her and always had been.  So, he did what he always did: he focused on breathing.  Breathe in.  The excruciating agony he felt as his skin began to tear wasn’t real.  Breathe out.  That torturous feeling of the muscles and tendons that connected his wing to his body snapping one strand at a time was all an illusion playing in his mind.

Breathe in.  This wasn’t happening.  Breathe out.  This wasn’t happening.  Breathe in. This wasn’t happening.  Breathe out.  This wasn’t happening.  Breathe in.  This wasn’t happening this wasn’t happening this wasn’t happening this wasn’t happening this wasn’t—

“Tavreth will not tolerate betrayal,” she growled into his ear.  She gave one final pull.

What emerged from Bazzalth’s throat could scarcely be called a scream.  No, it was more like an anguished whimper that wished it could be a howl—the sound of a person completely and utterly beaten.  He writhed impotently, blood spurting from the socket where his wing should have been and flowing down his shoulder in large globs.

Holding out Bazzalth’s now-detached wing, Tavreth bathed it in a blast of infernal flame before contemptuously tossing it aside and stepping away.

“Tavreth will be watching Bazzalth-brother closely from now on,” she told him.  Spreading her wings, she took off with a massive blast of air.  Within a moment, she was gone.

Bazzalth lay still for some time, panting and trembling as the blood continued to drip onto the earth and form large pools of sizzling rainbow liquid slowly eating their way deeper and deeper.  The flow soon started to slow as his body began to stanch the bleeding and grow skin over the wound.

Eventually, the wound healed over, but he was now a one-winged person.  His left wing would grow back eventually, but it would take days and days before it was fully whole again, and his body would require much more food in the meantime—food that he would have to hunt on foot now, a much more complicated and time-consuming process.

Still, though he no longer leaked and the entrance to his lair was just steps away, Bazzalth made no effort to rise.  Instead, he thought about all of the sudden and monumental developments he’d witnessed.  Things were going to change very soon—for him, for the people, and for the crawlers.  The world was about to become far more chaotic and deadly for those he cared about.

He wanted to warn them.  He really did.  Pari was going to be in danger.  Blake, too.  They had no idea what was coming their way, just like the crawlers the hunting pack had massacred.  They needed to be warned.

But...

Bazzalth couldn’t do it.  His mind kept replaying his sister’s final words.  All his life, Tavreth had treated him like a disappointment, a liability, and a mark of shame.  She’d bullied him and hurt him more times than he cared to remember.  But, even so, he was her brother, and as her brother, she’d extended to him a measure of trust that she gave to no other person.  That was gone, now.  He’d risked it to save Blake’s life and it had come back to haunt him.

She was wary of him now.  He wouldn’t be able to get away with all the little breaches of trust he’d gotten so used to.  What would she do if she learned that he had a friend who was a crawler?  What would she do if she learned that he’d warned that friend about the people and about her?  He could not imagine the magnitude of the agony she would inflict on him.

They... they would be alright, he told himself as what remained of his wing joint throbbed, a constant reminder of his helplessness.  He didn’t need to risk himself to warn them.  Blake was capable and Pari was always full of surprises.  They’d be alright.  Surely, they would be alright.