Chapter 22:

ANIMAL CONTROL - PART VI

THE RETURNERS – ISEKAI RESCUE AGENCY

My littermate, fiercest of the Feh’linne tribes, is the bedrock of our unity.

Nya’lah’s sacrifice, her willingness to not see the future she would make, was her gift to us all.

Like creation myths of old, the Lioness killed the great Scarab, but was poisoned in the act, and from the black and gold of their entwined carcasses sprouted new life for our world. From her came light and sound, from the beast came dark and silence. In all things, there must be balance.

For many generations there had been imbalance. The Scarab digging themselves into the Earth, gnawing at its bones, emitting black smoke from their poisoned wings. We Feh’linne could do nothing.

We choked on ash.

We hid in the ancestral plains.

We kept to ourselves, and yet they came.

Our homes and history taken from us by their insatiable hunger.

Facing the barren sea, high cliffs above an empty nothing, our tribes made camp and awaited the inevitable. All but Nya’lah.

She alone struck back at the Scarab.

Dragging me with her on raids into the smog filled dunes. We delved into their tunnels and their hatcheries. Smashing all that could be, looting all that could be, bringing havoc in a desperate cry as our people lived on the brink.

Gradually more stood up. Men and women, young and old. We created war-bands all along the coast. An army the breadth of the continent.

We took a step.

The Scarab did not notice.

They did not care, we were insignificant to them, even in such numbers.

When one after the other we rose up. No longer plundering, but exterminating. No long uncoordinated and random in our efforts, but organised and focused. Our bravery was rewarded.

Step by bloody step, bathed in ichor, we retook our home.

Then the Great Scarab spread its wings.

While we attacked by land, it dropped poison on our young and old from the sky. It flew overhead with the buzzing drone of death. A swarm of one that could blot out the sun.

We had nothing that could reach it.

Nothing that could pierce its carapace.

Nothing, that is, until Nya’lah called for a hunt.

She was not of noble birth, no princess to the tribe, but she was brave and willing. Gifted in her strength, speed, and senses.

Had she lived, I would not have been Queen.

I took the role in her memory, and she would have ruled wiser and more dignified than I.

Though not the most gifted of our warriors or tacticians, as she had not been born to nor tutored in the ways, merely forced by life out of necessity to fight, she took to being a Lioness when called.

Nya’lah hunted in the deep desert. Alone.

She sought out, in secret, the origin of the Scarab.

Eventually finding their lair – a vast crater, a wound cut into the planet’s crust itself – there inside sat the great one. All black shellac and noxious fumes.

We followed her.

We raced to our doom or salvation.

No idea of when the beast would fly again and envelop our dwindling shelter in ash.

While it lay, fat and gloating, we could kill it.

If it took wing, it could be another year before it roosted again, potentially settling elsewhere. Our search would have had to start over. Our efforts would have been for nought.

The Feh’linne blitzed. What equipment we had, we took. What weapons, what steeds, what provisions, we exhausted.

We were to succeed or perish.

Nya’lah kept us going.

She focused our rage like a beam of light. Burning to the tip that aimed to pierce our enemies blackened heart. Warming to those around her in need of hope.

The battle maiden from whom we all drew our strength.

I followed my littermate to our all but certain end. Anxious that our forces too weak, too hastily formed, but bolstered by the same fervour as the rest.

We followed the Lioness wilfully.

The Scarab knew we came.

They had multiplied.

Dug in and fortified around their great and terrible sire.

We were unprepared for a siege.

Our only hope, a single strike.

The first wave splashed against their walls as ripples in a bucket.

We had to aim for the heart alone, and their drones became a ribcage in defence. The Great Scarab buried deep within.

We broke the bones to root it out.

Our own splintering to fragments in the dust and dunes.

At the tip of our spear, Nya’lah flew.

When fuel ran out, she took to foot.

When weapons ran dry, her teeth and claws remained.

The battle raged and she never relented.

Until there was no other choice.

A violent thundering struck up.

Their broodmare began to take wing.

Its guardians redoubling their efforts to repel our attack.

Nya’lah cared not.

Our remaining forces made a wedge and raced into the mouth of hell.

Scarabs flooded the crater.

Lava bubbled in its depths.

A hole in the earth to its very core.

We took heavy casualties, but eventually made it to our foe. Blasting through thick shell with charges, spilling into the cavity, filling its veins as venom.

There may have been some warriors left outside. We know not how many, as the Great Scarab took flight. Many were lost that day, but all the Feh’linne were saved through their willingness to spend life.

The remnants of our war-band sought out the beast’s vitals. We severed wings, crushed its heart, and deep within its cavernous body, the Lioness stalked the Scarab’s very soul.

We were hunted by shadows down every artery of the creature. Picking us off to the last.

When only we remained, Nya’lah and I, the smog this vile scourge had endeavoured to encase all the world in, coalesced into a form to oppose us. We entered battle with the spirit of all Scarabs itself.

The black mass lashed out.

It tore and rent its own shell from the inside out to get at us.

We hid and fled, darting down capillaries, slipping through the very entrails of the monster.

The shadow of death chased us, unrelenting.

As vines of ash filled the Great Scarab’s failing shell, we made it to the base of its skull. A final act awaiting us. Decapitating our nemesis so that they may never rise again.

Dark tendrils whipped at us, lingering smoke wavered after each strike as wounds in the air, before being reabsorbed into the mass. Filling the chamber with a screen of swirling soot.

A black canvas behind which a black figure worked to destroy us.

One lash slit my leg, another cut deep into Nya’lah’s shoulder, we bled and it emboldened the shade.

As the crooked bones of the Great Scarab fell about us, the beast itself began to fall from the sky. I became pinned by one such splinter while my littermate fought on.

She whirled in the shadows. Her golden mane, a mass of flame. A feral beauty in the dark.

Upon noticing my plight, she wrenched me free from under the pile of twisted carapace, only to be pierced again by a spine of smoke.

Blood sloughed from the wound.

Her very heartbeat on show.

Slowing with each breath and motion.

Nya’lah smiled even in those moments.

Sharp teeth snapping at the world.

The shadow loomed, ready to take us both, but she would not allow it.

The Lioness threw herself into darkness.

At first, it wisped about her, but as she beat and clawed, a core around her fury formed.

I knew all I could do was watch.

I was too weak, too crippled to help. My leg crushed, its weight anchoring me in place. I would have cried out, had I the breath in my lungs. The pain equal to my rage.

A shower of wet painted my face.

An eternity passed as the Great Scarab plummeted.

At first, I knew not what I perceived, but as Nya’lah lay still atop the billowing smoke, spikes of black and red came into focus through the dark.

In a final desperate act, it had skewered the Lioness to the spot. Spires flung in all directions, the smog settled lifeless while my sister died.

Air returned to my throat.

I screamed and sobbed.

I crawled across the tomb to her side.

I lifted her hand and pressed her cheek to mine.

Cold.

Drained.

Motionless.

Two things more happened that I remember.

In some blur, there was a final spasm by the slain brute.

A spiteful attempt on my life, so that none may walk away from our fight.

With her final heartbeats, Nya’lah’s palm shot up in defence, was impaled, yet she gripped it tight with dying strength. Nothing more to give but a deadman’s hand.

No words.

No look.

Barely a sigh for her death rattle.

A chain of soot about her wrist, ensnared in the Scarab’s final trap.

Then, at the last, she reached for me.

I went to hold her, but she pushed me back.

Not enough to make me move, only enough to take the keys to our freedom.

Detonator in hand, the Lioness breathed no more.

“Live.”

I did not hear the click.

I only, in a faint and distant memory, recall myself slipping from her side.

I woke days later in our home.