The beast Tronhadar roared ten thousand years ago as she roars today, from the frozen teeth of Krusu down verdant cataracts of canopy and mist. In our present age, soulless machines bind her to their will. In ancient times, however, Jade Dragon carved granite and loam freely beneath light of Two Moons. The violence of that caprice drowned our supplicants in squalor or bathed them in great prosperity.
It was the time of our Virtue. Emerald-chasers built redoubts on Dragon’s Wings. There, the debris of a million years fanned across the valley floor shaded by a cavernous green. Krusual hunted stag in the trees with spear and brilliant light in the earth with trowel. Horn of ancient buck, hue of faceted gem, these served as loki to our people. We honored Tronhadar and she confided in us her mysteries.
When the Nefantar came to Dragon’s Mouth, they gathered alluvial stones for their huts and scavenged wood for their long ships. The insatiable tribe came to desire our loki for their noses and ears. We had learned much hunting in Jade Dragon’s embrace, and held them against the sea despite their great numbers. With Krusual in body and Nefantar in claws, we traded emeralds for fish and balanced tension prevailed.
But balance would not last.
In a pit of ancient silt, emerald-chasers struck metal buried in some antediluvian age. Deft hands cleared silt to reveal a misshapen cylinder. Twice the height of a man, it shone like gold but sounded harder than any metal known to that time. Confronted by its unfathomable purpose, the pit crew’s excitement turned to an uneasy dread.
They called upon one who Dreams with Earth. Elder Slumbering Owl laid hands upon the gilded carapace and fell still. For two days, he dreamed with that thing in the mud beneath the trees. When at last he awakened, the emerald-chasers knew his command. They abandoned the pit and dug a new channel from the river. Inexorably, the brilliant hues of that forbidden loki faded beneath heavy silt. Our people left the forest as it appeared in years before even they prowled those shaded banks.
At the time of their discovery, however, a Nefantar merchant was examining gemstones nearby for sale in his distant bazaars. The alien metal filled that man not with dread, but overwhelming covetousness. In the moments of initial chaos, he slipped away and arranged passage on a skiff, leaving his grandiose barge – laden with accumulated treasures – behind.
Familiar with our ways after so many years of trade, the merchant changed transport and direction many times returning to Dragon’s Mouth. There, the Nefantar Suzerain refused to act on words alone. The merchant countered that he offered more than mere words, however, for he would only have abandoned his wealth for a discovery of even greater value. The Suzerain considered that a while, and then ordered his mapmakers work with the merchant to locate Tronhadar’s forbidden totem. Though the trader had fled before Slumbering Owl descended into the pit, Nefantar long disdained our people’s desire to leave dark secrets undisturbed. Expecting we should bury the idol where it lay, they resolved to claim it when the time right.
The Nefantar had grown fat on the bounty of their merchant fleets. While prosperity amplified their greed, it did not make them reckless. The Suzerain understood he required allies for this enterprise. Across the sea, Starkmanir occasionally spoke of mysterious artifacts. That tribe did not consider them dark things, but catalysts for knowledge and power. Still under light of Two Moons, these vainglorious despots plotted to seize what none should possess.
They intended to lull us into complacency with outwardly benevolent cooperation. Nefantar ferried Starkmanir to Tronhadar’s coast in their galleons. Men who knew nothing about gemstones, metals, or woods joined merchant caravans. They called themselves wise, and took care to survey our valley and regale us with the virtues of its study. Predictably, the sight of Jade Dragon’s wonders stoked their greed. They lectured us on progress, that together we might exploit the abundance in our possession.
Dreamers with Earth instructed us to aid them.
In this way, we came to know their desires – and what capabilities they possessed to realize those desires – as well as they. Some of our people professed to embrace the motivating greed of those ersatz benefactors. These collaborators revealed gem pits and stands of rare wood, slowly earning positions of confidence. The Nefantar and Starkmanir trained us in the use of their tools and application of their practices. Convinced their perceived superiority sprung from innate racial characteristics, thus beyond lesser tribes, the fools spoke casually around our people.
But the Krusual understood. We adapted.
Nefantar navies dominated the seas. From that, they preferred to fight at distance, hurling death with bows and large contraptions. The Starkmanir ruled an enormous landmass. Their cavalries and armored soldiers controlled enemies with coordination until heavy blades cut down all opposition. Together, these two considered themselves the military apex of our world.
In Tronhadar, we would deny them every advantage.
Their low estimation of our ingenuity sealed their fates. When Nefantar barges at last set upriver in numbers, we offered no resistance. In accordance with Starkmanir practices, they traveled many paths to mask threatening intent and obfuscate objectives. But their maps were our maps, and their hunger for the idol was long known to us.
We waited for them to pass.
When the last barge entered forest dark, we rose from silted waters and descended from the trees. On muddy banks, we raised bows of Nefantar design, fashioned with our mastery of wood and pitch. Decks burned and death raced through tight spaces. Our warriors armored themselves with only mud and determination, slashing with short blades from low stances. The Starkmanir could not don their armor in time, and fell screaming as we severed muscle and tendon in exposed legs. Chaos down river signaled attacks further up. Our narrow lines swarmed the invaders like the forest’s ferocious ants, and their buoyant fortresses burned.
Yet, it cannot be said the invaders lacked courage or skill.
Nefantar were accustomed to fighting on ships, while Starkmanir fielded Matar’s most disciplined military. Had we not disguised our capabilities for so long, our wave would have surely broken. Badly outnumbered, none of our boarding warriors survived. But neither did any of the lumbering vessels. Burning, beached, deprived of navigators and manpower, the armada returned to Jade Dragon’s breast. Of the enemy that reached shore, some few commanders coordinated a retreat through the trees. Those reaching Dragon’s Mouth numbered at most a quarter of their original force. The Krusual would not soon be underestimated again.
Though we drove the invaders back, Dreamers with Earth commanded that our people trade the darkness of valley floor for that of caverns deep. They knew the Nefantar would return with ruthless force to claim their gilded prize. Unwilling to wait on more Starkmanir, their Suzerain pulled catapults and trebuchets from his warships, and began to burn his way toward the artifact. We made no effort to slow that advance.
Our remaining warriors streamed southward along Krusu’s hidden paths.
Reaching the sea, we sacked Nefantar settlements along the coast all the way to Dragon’s Mouth. The walls of that fortress were high and we made no effort to scale them. Instead, we burned their farms as they had burned our forest. The Suzerain gained an idol; his people lost Dragon’s Mouth. Many fled to islands beyond our reach, but their lord would not escape the ultimate consequence of his avarice.
The artifact was too dangerous to move in ships of that time. Exceptionally dense, the risks of it shifting and capsizing any transport loomed large. The Nefantar secured it in their depopulated fortress while alchemists set to work on its mysteries. With only nonsensical devices, those primitives should by all reasonable expectations have accomplished nothing. However, as Slumbering Owl dreamed, the cursed artifact itself desired to communicate. Fisherman far out to sea perhaps glimpsed the first indications of its success as a colossal shadow rippled across our world. On the peaks of Krusu, we soon caught sight of the horror in our looking glasses. A grotesque thing, it tumbled slowly through clouds.
Like the rotting carcass of a gargantuan termite queen, the vessel disgorged a rain of larva as it moved. Thousands upon thousands of globules splashed down upon the waves. We prayed they held creatures as desiccated and lifeless as the behemoth that birthed them, but our expectations ran to the contrary. Clearly intending a more controlled encounter with our planet, and therefore not travelling at the speed of an errant meteor, the vessel nevertheless remained a flying mountain. When it hit the delta of Dragon’s Mouth, the shock of surf, mud, and shattered rock alone destroyed all signs of Nefantar settlement in the region. Then came the rest of the ship, breaking apart, welling with flame, exploding – hurling debris and inferno far and wide. What the Nefantar failed to burn in their advance perished to the consequence of that aggression.
The cataclysm impeded Tronhadar’s flow, heavy toxins poisoned the earth, and invisible death lingered in the air. Jade Dragon’s deep greens remained orange and foul for many, many years. We would have descended into that decomposing maelstrom to hunt what larva might have lodged in our former home, but we saw only death and swirling decay from our icy peaks.
It was at sea where the new menace gathered, thousands upon thousands of globes – all within reach of the Nefantar. With an eye on future returns even in the face of present loss, that tribe scooped up the droppings. Inside each, like seeds in a pomegranate, the Nefantar found pale, frozen creatures densely packed. Many of the ancient support systems had long ago failed, but still an uncountable alien horde revived.
Those pitiful beings spent eternity frozen in a pristine environment only to awaken in a primitive society on a world with an active ecology. Pestilence claimed fully half almost immediately. But many tens upon tens of thousands survived. These were not the architects of the proto-titanic civilization that birthed them. They were common stock, the kind of beast relegated to transports prone to failure. Trapped on a savage world, any tools that might have bettered their lives lost to catastrophe, many fell into deep depression.
But the loquacious Nefantar saw potential profit in all things.
These feeble, moaning aliens presented opportunities beyond their burdens. Even before language barriers fell, the Nefantar showered their guests with writing utensils and urged them to record the past. Given the susceptibility of the aliens to disease, those notes – scribbled rapidly in a doomed language – would become a link to impossibly ancient times. When the imperative to survive evolved into a desire to prosper, the Nefantar began to realize returns on their investment. The newcomers called themselves Sebiestor, and possessed a perspective on technology other tribes could not then match. As the pace of innovation quickened through their influence, many across Matar grew removed from discomfort. Increasingly capable machines carried Man’s burdens for him, and the indolent called that progress.
In return for teaching Matar’s children how they might someday become desiccated larva in a doomed behemoth, the Sebiestor requested a land of their own. Reluctant to relinquish territory, the Nefantar pointed at unwelcoming Mikramurka. The inhospitable nature of that continent suited the Sebiestor tinkerers well. But for many, particularly our people, those forbidding wastes were a land of sacred trials.
Krusual called to the shaman’s path would descend Krusu’s northern face seeking wood for a crossing kayak. Wrapping themselves as they had learned, initiates braved the frigid waters between Houdea and Mikramurka. From shore, they traveled north to the icy plateaus of Leng. There beneath merciless heavens, wendigo priests ruminated on a trial. My own test was that of the Twin Wolf. Survivors faced returning to Krusu greatly weakened, for there was little sanctuary in that frozen hell… until the Sebiestor brought their villages to its hot springs and frozen fjords.
We could not dislodge them. Nefantar controlled the seas and supplied their pets well. Eventually, the tinkerers tamed even Leng’s glacial skirt. So it went across all of Matar. Farmers forgot to farm, fishermen to fish, stonecutters to cut, thinkers to think. The time of Virtue fell to that of the Machine. We watched as men degenerated into larva rotting in the gut of a leviathan. But we struggled against that dissipation, some of us, even as the suffocating darkness grew absolute.
“Our struggle must not end!”
The old man lunged across the table. Despite youth and training, Elar Bh’uut could not react before a ferocious grip pierced the soft spots of her shoulder. Pain denied her any ability to move or speak. She had finished classified military training only a week ago, and to this point felt proud of her accomplishment. But now, an octogenarian’s iron fingers bruised the elite glow. Elar arrived in Hek’s Krusual Tribe facility only the day before to receive a new type of cybernetics. If she had them already….
With that thought, the old man’s story washed over her once more.
Elar had not originally wanted to listen. Her companion took his seat opposite her in that dive only after she’d settled down with her drink. Better to listen than retreat, she thought, though history had suffocated her for all of a nowhere life. Finally, she was going someplace. Finally, she would be free to make her own history! The old man spoke with great passion, igniting sparks of pride in her soul. Elar rejected those, intellectually.
Now was no time for tribal grudges.
Pain weakened her reservations. The old man’s forearm was horribly scarred and undeniably human. She had not received her implants. But would they have made a difference? There was more to his grip than strength. His eyes paralyzed her as surely as the pain. Neither terrifying nor unnatural, they were deep. Through them, Elar saw he was dying. Onlookers approached. She wanted to call out for help, yet the claw denied her. A nearby Brutor held up his hand, signaling others not to interfere.
No, no – the old man was dying! Help him!
When the ancient’s soul passed, his terrible grip did not diminish, though his eyes finally closed. Elar moved one arm, slowly, and then lost the will to break free. Why didn’t anyone help? A large hand covered hers gently.
“He made his choice,” the Brutor said. “What is yours?”
“I will return him to Jade Dragon,” she replied after a long silence.
