Chapter 34

The world was a blur to Haledon.

Around him, he heard the chirpings of conversation between Spark and Witch-Hazel as they chatted with the Sequoia Druids who escorted them back to the Astralaceaes. The streams of words they spewed were barely comprehensible to Haledon as he groggily rolled his head between his two friends, wanting to take part but not having the energy. And, all the while, the haunting moans of the Megacolides still sang in the back of his mind.

Before long, they stepped through the threshold back to the earthen floor of the Astralaceaes, and Haledon's clouded thoughts began to clear. While still nauseated and less than surefooted, his dizziness and the whale's droning song disappeared.

"Ugh—" Haledon groaned as Witch-Hazel scooped a limb under his shoulder, hoisting him up.

"Ah, much better." Spark exhaled as she stepped away from Haledon and stretched her arm. "You're a lot denser than you look, Haledon."

"I'm sorry," He said groggily as a sudden wave of exhaustion washed over him. "I—I'll try and—"

Haledon felt his knees begin to buckle as darkness blanketed his eyes. In an instant, his drained body went limp, and at that moment, he felt as though he was falling from the canopy of a tree. It was as though he was in his dreams, and the icy crevasse and nutrient lines, all at once. And as he fell, he felt nothing—he felt beyond nothing. He felt a void in his senses—an absence of existence in the dark.

Haledon awoke with a gasp, pushing himself up from the bramble wall he had been resting against, and as he began to observe his surroundings, his once-fogged mind felt clear. He quickly recalled the day, his experiences, and the steps leading up to the blackout.

"Ah, he's awake." A familiar voice called out as the small, furry figure of Mek-Tek approached. "How are you feeling?"

"Better," Haledon replied and felt at his head. "Less confusion."

"Yeah, Astra Druids appear to be missing a few roots that allow seamless integration. Your brain couldn't correctly process the Megacolides and needed to revegetate."

"Revegetate? How long was I out for?"

"Not long, about as long as it took Witch-Hazel to carry you the few pods here."

Haledon looked around the Hypogeal Nexus, not seeing anyone else.

"Where is everyone?" Haledon asked.

"Literally, just left," Mek-Tek replied as he turned and scurried back to one of the hastily grown alcoves. "I'm making progress on this Mechanite. If you're up to it, I could use some help."

"Yeah, sure," Haledon grunted as he pushed himself up. But his weak body quickly fell back to the floor. "Vastum. I'll—I'll be right there."

Mek-Tek looked back to Haledon and nodded toward him. "You rest." He said before reaching down and pulling the small orb from his backpack.

"Mek-Tek, I've meant to ask before...what is that?" Haledon probed as Mek-Tek inhaled.

"This?" He asked, looking at the orb as the cloud of white erupted from his mouth and nose with each word. "This is my medicine to maintain my level of sapience."

"Your sapience? I thought being uplifted was—"

"Permanent? No, well—it can be." Mek-Tek explained as his hands worked away, hidden within the alcove walls. "Each species has its own genetic rules for sentience and eventual sapience, and they're not always the easiest to maintain. Dolphins, sure, just a dose of modified blowfish toxin mixed with a few psychedelics and binding agents, and you have an uplifted mammal. But, take cats. Druids tried—for centuries—to uplift them. But in the end, nothing—not even a glimmer of sapience. Just...cats."

Haledon stared at Mek-Tek curiously.

"So," Haledon asked. "You have to keep consuming that vapour...or you become..."

"A squirrel—yes," Mek-Tek replied quickly, taking a drag off the straw and exhaling another vaporous plume. "Good thing I had it, too; it helped you well enough."

"Helped...me?" Haledon asked confusedly. "With what?"

"With your scrambled egg," Mek-Tek knocked gently on his furry head with the sphere. "I've seen dissociative unconsciousness before. And, well, the remedy for it isn't that far off from uplifting. A little of this, a lot of that, and finish off by aerosolizing it..."

Mek-Tek's voice trailed off as he stared into the alcove.

"And you did that...with your sphere?" Haledon finished what he expected Mek-Tek to say, only to be met with silence.

Adjusting himself, Haledon leaned far enough to see Mek-Tek beyond the central nutrient tree. The small form was still perched in the alcove, standing at the edge of swirling orange spores.

"Mek-Tek?" Haledon asked, pushing himself up.

His body ached with each motion, crying out in exhaustion and pain from the day. But after a moment of struggle, he managed to pull himself to a standing position.

"Auxilium radicitus." He chanted out with a wave of his hand.

Thick coiled vines lashed out from his armour, connecting with the ceiling and wall. Taking cautious steps across the room, Haledon watched as the roots held fast to his weak body, supporting most of his weight. And, upon reaching the extent of a tether, a new vine would erupt from his SOIL to the ceiling before detaching the old line.

As Haledon made his way to Mek-Tek and the alcove, he saw the Druid's fingers twitching around the spores. At the center of the orange column, the small shape of the Mechanite writhed against the force that held it. Haledon approached cautiously, remembering the burning pain in his side and instinctively gripping the concealed scar.

Resting a hand on the wall beside Mek-Tek and his project, Haledon’s supports quickly tethered him into a near-sitting position beside his companion.

"You woke it up," Haledon remarked, staring intently at the metal insect.

"How else could I talk with it?" Mek-Tek replied, his attention focused on the creature before him.

"Talk? You can talk with it?"

"In a manner of speaking.” Mek-Tek corrected. “They don't have words like us; instead, they display electromagnetic fluctuations that we have determined to be some form of communication."

"So, if the Druids knew this, why haven't they tried to communicate in this electromagnet—?"

"We have—I have, a few times." Mek-Tek interrupted.

"What happened?" Haledon quickly followed up, leaning in to examine the insect.

"Well, let me tell you, you can't talk with dead Mecharrion—which is what Carnyx Druids produce. And Mecharrion left alive...well, they're even harder to chat with." Mek-Tek looked back to Haledon, quickly inspecting his vine swing before turning around and reaching a paw towards the top of the alcove. "Mind grabbing me that apple?"

Looking up, Haledon noticed the pale-yellow apple that grew above. With ease, he reached up, took hold of the fruit and lowered it to Mek-Tek.

"Here you go," Haledon said, watching Mek-Tek take hold of the fruit and inspect it. "What's that for?"

"Before you can reap a harvest, you have to plant the seed," Mek-Tek remarked, and with a flick of his wrist, the apple decomposed in his palm. He reached into the mush, plucking a black seed from the core, and inspected it closely.

"I've been monitoring the Mecharrion E.M. radiation for a few seasons,” Mek-Tek continued. “And in that time, I've learned two things. First, direct Mecharrion to Druid conversation is impossible—we're just...drastically different biomes. And second, the standard Mecharrion communicates at an incomprehensibly fast rate. Take, for example, this little bug.”

Mek-Tek reached over and pointed towards the Mechanite. Taking another pull from his sphere, the pungent scent hit Haledon’s nostrils, and with full lungs, the Druid continued.

“Since I placed the Mechanite into this alcove and awoke it, it’s radiated nonstop with unintelligible electromagnetic data. So, I thought, what if I ran that information through the Astralaceaes Nucleus to filter it into understandable organic signals? Use the multispectral analyzing capabilities like a cognitive wetland, and filter out unnecessary data points."

"And?" Haledon asked.

"And we're about to find out if this ecotone works." Mek-Tek finished, placing the seed into the column of spores.

Haledon felt himself holding his breath as he watched the apple seed slowly float through the cloud. Setting down on the back of the Mechanite, roots immediately began to crawl out over the metal body. The insect's squirming intensified as the thin white hairs found their way through the microscopic breaks in the armour.

"There, see," Mek-Tek shouted excitedly and pointed towards a pair of cotyledons emerging from the seed. "It's germinating."

He rushed over to the other side of the alcove and quickly signed Druidic runes into the air before the Mechanite. Vines reached out from the walls like eager hands, swiping at the air, looking for something to grab. Two tendril-like vines took hold of the cotyledons as a second pair reached over, connecting with the base of Mek-Tek's skull.

"Whoaaa—!" Mek-Tek released, his eyes going wide as he stared at the machine. In an instant, the Mechanite's body went limp within the cloud.

"What—no!" Mek-Tek followed up with a frustrated outburst.

"What happened?" Haledon asked as he leaned in and stared at the insect.

"You want to know what happened? Let me tell you—for a moment, I was connected to the Mecharrion!"

"What? The seed—you...I thought it was supposed to allow you to communicate."

"It did so much more. I could feel something...a-a—survival instinct. I could sense it trying to escape back to the main Mecharrion. And when I dug my roots down that hole, trying to find the big bad beast, it detected me and shut down the Mechanite—" Mek-Tek snapped his fingers. "Like that."

"It detected you?"

"Oh, definitely," Mek-Tek said with a smile.

"Why are you smiling?"

"Don't you see?" Mek-Tek replied as the cloud of spores disappeared, and he took hold of the limp machine. "This changes everything we thought we knew about the Mecharrion. This shows they have, at the very least, base instincts for survival. They're not merely mindless machines, consuming resources for replication and continued consumption. The Mecharrion on this ship has been here for months without killing a single Druid. It developed a way to hide in plain sight and observe us in our environment. When outmatched, it fled, and when it felt it was being pursued, it covered its tracks. Have you ever heard of a Mecharrion like that?"

"Before meeting you, I had never heard of a Mecharrion. I had never heard of anything beyond the Astralaceaes." Haledon replied sheepishly.

Mek-Tek stared at Haledon curiously as he drew on his orb, inhaling deeply.

"Yeah, you got thrown into it, didn't you?" He said, exhaling a cloud of vapour. "To answer my question, the Mecharrion have always been very direct in their tactics. Land near an objective, take control or die trying."

"Doesn't seem wise. Seems like a waste of resources."

"Yes," Mek-Tek said as he paced closer to Haledon. "Exactly. Why would an advanced civilization continue to throw resources unsuccessfully at a planet? If they're trying to consume for their creation, why squander your valuable resources? There's plenty to harvest in space without loss due to conflict. So why would they do that, you ask? Let me tell you—" Mek-Tek took another drag off his sphere before continuing to talk.

"I initially proposed that Mecharrion were of a base level intellect, with a very action-reaction mentality. They consume, they replicate, and they repeat. This was until they came against Earth, and their process failed. The Carnyx held them back, denying them Earth's metals and halting their efficient replication process, meaning they couldn’t repeat. Since we halted their process, I initially thought that they'd continue repeating until we were destroyed or they ran out of resources and, consequently, destroyed themselves. And, you know, my hypothesis seemed accurate.”

Mek-Tek made his way around the alcove's edge and stopped before Haledon.

“We fought...repeatedly, in the same action-reaction manner for centuries. But now, suddenly, we have a Mecharrion breaking the rules of their coding—" Mek-Tek paused, seeing Haledon's confusion, and clarified. "Their form of genetics, meaning they're evolving new soldiers for unique roles, like an ant colony dividing the ranks."

"What does that mean for us?" Haledon asked.

"For us? Out here? Probably a quick death in a few hours. For the rest of the Druids spreading out across this galaxy, a lifetime of running. Hiding from a creature that could hide itself in the form of anything, anywhere."

"But now you know the Mecharrion are different...something has changed. Isn't there something we could do to trick it or capture it?" Haledon asked, panic coursing through his veins. "Maybe shoot it out into space?"

"The Mecharrion don't fall for tricks. They’re pre—" Mek-Tek stopped, taking another drag from his sphere as his eyes darted from Haledon to the Mechanite. "I've got it." He finally released, followed by a cloud of vapour and a series of squeaky coughs.