Nicole was frustrated to find herself back in the black void, bothered to know the magic nullifier had failed to prevent it from happening. Ustrina was on her shoulder and yawning, as though she’d just woken up.
Looking around, Nicole expected to hear the three words she’d come to hate, but they never came. Instead, she heard faint whispers, as though two individuals were working together on some complex task, passing instructions back and forth. She couldn’t make out any meaning, since the words were in a language of clicks and tones she didn’t recognize, on top of being far too faint to decipher with any reliability.
“Hello!” Nicole called out, hoping to get their attention.
The urgency and volume of the two voices significantly increased, but Nicole still couldn’t understand their words. However, since she was able to make out a direction, she turned to face the source.
Walking toward her on the invisible surface she stood on were two strange, ant-like creatures, one with a body composed of orichalcum and the other with a body of red-hued granite, with orichalcum bands to hold it together. They were otherwise identical. They talked with each other as they walked, their complex language sounding almost musical. Each of them stood about half as tall as Nicole, but their body length was approximately the same as her height.
Ustrina’s head bobbed back and forth as the ants spoke, as though she were actually able to follow the conversation.
When they were within ten feet, they stopped conversing with each other and the orichalcum one addressed Nicole, clearly having difficulty with speaking her language, “H-he-ll-o.”
“Hello. I’m Nicole.” She pointed at the dragon on her shoulder, “Ustrina.”
“N-nic-ole. Oos-tree-nuh.”
They spent at least half an hour conversing very slowly as the ant seemed to gain understanding of how to speak her language aloud, though it actually seemed able to understand her every word from the start. The actual trouble it had was in pronouncing the words, probably because its mouth wasn’t designed for human speech.
Finally, once the language barrier seemed to have been sorted out, Nicole started over, “I’m Nicole. What should I call you?”
“Architect, Maker of Kurg.” It still spoke slowly, carefully enunciating each syllable.
“You built Kurg?” Nicole smiled, in relief, “That’s good news, because I need help. I’ve got a piece of Kurg stuck inside my mind that’s slowly killing me by taking over my brain.”
The ants conversed in their own language for a time.
The Architect was wary of the strange creature, the Nicole. With two arms, two legs, a nearly hairless body devoid of exoskeleton and bilateral symmetry, they resembled the Life Giver in many ways, but it was clear, the creature standing before the Architect inside the mind of the city was no immortal, as he’d initially assumed, based on appearance. By admitting a piece of the city was inside their mind and killing them, it implied the creature was mortal and therefore not one of the Life Giver’s kind.
The Architect was also wary of the little creature on the Nicole’s shoulder, having never seen anything like it, but in the end, he decided it was too small to be a threat, so he ignored it.
“What do you think, Irkith? I know of no way we can help him, but he might be able to help us.”
Due to the fact that they were without gender, the Ulkun language had no pronoun equivalent to ‘she’. The Architect understood the concept, in a theoretical sort of way, from having studied animals, but he had a hard time recognizing gender without first performing a dissection of the species and to him, ultimately, it was irrelevant.
“Tread carefully. If you lie and say you can help him, he may free us, but if he puzzles out your betrayal, he may grow angry. I advise honesty, but the choice is yours and the risk is great, either way, for we know so little of these creatures.”
After a brief moment, the Architect decided, “No. I can’t tell him the truth and risk remaining trapped until another miracle occurs. We will lie and claim we can help, in exchange for freeing us. We will use them and then depart, before our subterfuge can be known.”
“Very well, but I don’t like it. Tell as few lies as possible.”
Ustrina growled slightly at the end of the exchange between the ants, sounding almost like the growl of an adult cat, until Nicole shushed her.
“Exchange: help for help.” The Architect proposed.
Nicole nodded. It reminded her of chemistry: some atoms could accept an electron, while others could donate one and people were much the same. Everyone had desires to fulfill and only rarely was anything actually free.
Thinking she had nothing to lose and everything to gain, Nicole asked, “I’ll help you if I can. What do you need?”
“Freedom.” The ant responded, “City closed. Sealed within. Help.”
Moved with compassion, she asked, “For how long?”
“Time: measure how?”
Nicole took a few minutes to explain seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and then finally, years, taking care to describe each in simple terms anyone could follow.
“…and then a year is roughly the measure of time it takes for our world to orbit the sun. Does that help?”
The ant paused, as though working on a complex calculation, but answered just five seconds later, “Uncertain: three-million years? Trapped. Desire freedom.”
Nicole didn’t blame it for wanting freedom and she vowed within herself to free them even if they weren’t able to help her.
“You must have been very bored and lonely.” It seemed like a huge understatement, but Nicole didn’t know what else to say.
The orichalcum ant gestured with a foreleg at the other ant, “Not alone. Friend.”
Nicole addressed the other ant, “What’s your name?”
The answer was a series of clicks and tones that almost sounded like ‘ear-tick’.
“Freedom. Help.” The first prompted and Nicole picked up on a sense of desperation, despite the verbal and body language differences.
“How can I free you?” Nicole asked, with a shrug, “I would need to find the piece of Kurg you’re inside of, right?”
Once again, the ants conversed.
The Architect took a moment to examine the external view from his portion of Kurg, confirming the collection of Kurg segments was still inside the stone vessel, though the dust in the storage chamber of the vessel had been disturbed relatively recently. The life stones were still missing, however, but from the patterns in the dust, they may have been returned and then taken out again.
Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.
“The Forbidden One has returned to the stone vessel.” He commented.
Irkith nodded, “While we were sleeping, no doubt.”
“We must direct this ‘Nicole’ creature to the Forbidden One, but we must convince them not to trust him. After all, he is duplicitous and slays his own kind. Who knows what he would do to this fleshling.”
Irkith shook his head, “What if the prophesy has been fulfilled? What if the dead really have been raised and he’s preserved the Ulkun as he claimed he would?”
“Impossible! The life-energy requirement would be enormous and the time alone would drive anyone mad. I only survived it because you were with me!”
Looking as though enjoying a private joke, Irkith chuckled, “Indeed.”
“If it had been possible, I would have gone with him to the Great White Sky Stone,” the Architect grumbled, “but the Kingdom of Ulkun fell by his claw and the Great Purpose has come to frustration! He can’t be trusted!”
“It would seem caution is in order either way. No one knows what evil might befall this creature if you’re right and we might never be freed.”
Nicole observed a very animated discussion between the ants, which somehow upset Ustrina, causing her to growl again, until Nicole scolded her, “No!”
Ustrina glared at Nicole as though frustrated, before growing quiet.
The Architect finally turned back to her, “Seek Forbidden One. Evil, dangerous. Kin-slayer, kin-eater. No trust Forbidden One. Obtain Kurg, flee!”
“What does the Forbidden One look like? How do I find them?”
“Ulkun: living stone. Stone flying vessel: Kurg within.”
Nicole was surprised by this little revelation, since Lyra was planning to introduce her to the leader of the Ulkun.
Getting back to the initial subject of conversation, she asked, “And once I’ve freed you, will you be able to remove Kurg from my mind?”
The ant wiggled its antennae, “Try: will do all can do.”
Nicole smiled and relaxed, latching on to this ray of hope, certain that if anyone could remove Kurg from her mind, it was the one that had made it.
She wasn’t encouraged by the possibility there was a cannibal among the Ulkun, but she’d burn that bridge when she came to it, preferably with highly-explosive magic.
“Thank you.”
Nicole was gone and the Architect was alone with Irkith, once more.
“Clever. You didn’t lie, but you did mislead him.” Irkith remarked
“What better lie than one made entirely of truth?” The Architect postulated, “I will do all I can to help this creature, but we both know nothing can be done, therefore I need do nothing.”
Irkith sighed, “I’m concerned by the small creature the Nicole carried. It seemed able to understand us, though unable to speak its concerns.”
“I’m not worried,” the Architect shrugged, “because the Nicole ignored it.”
When Nicole woke it was evening and Lyra was busy in the kitchen, cooking dinner, which smelled of frying beef. Ustrina was lying on Nicole’s belly, with her head resting between Nicole’s breasts, staring right into her eyes with a look of tired concern.
The little dragon made a small noise of complaint as Nicole slowly sat up. Just like cats, dragons slept or relaxed much of the time, but could be terribly active for short times between rest periods. With dragons, the rest periods could last as long as decades, at least for the adults. Currently, Ustrina seemed pretty docile, so Nicole carefully set her on the couch. The dragon quickly curled up with her head resting on her hindquarters, a move most creatures would never consider, even if they had a long enough neck.
Feeling the insistent intrusion of Kurg on her mind, she quickly grabbed the headband off the couch and slipped it back on.
After that, she sat on one of the stools at the counter that divided the kitchen from the dining area and noted Lyra was cooking hamburgers. So far, there were at least twelve patties, along with a plate of what looked and smelled like fresh-cooked buns. Lyra was cooking four more patties, as though preparing for a party, but Nicole knew better: a healing troll could easily become famished. They required far more calories and protein than a human, due to the magically-accelerated nature of their metabolism and Nicole had been through a lot in the previous few days.
She felt physically healed, but still a little tired and very hungry.
Lyra commented, “The two of you slept all day, aside from about an hour ago when I opened a package of beef. Ustrina wouldn’t leave me alone. I tried to refuse, but when she spat a little flame at me, I gave her a pound of raw, ground beef. Was that okay? I don’t know what she’s supposed to eat.”
“Dragons don’t need food, because they live on belief, but they’ll eat just about any raw meat, according to my research. Sometimes they cook their food first, but by ‘cook’ I actually mean ‘light on fire.’ It’s the old shining knight vs. dragon thing. Usually the knight becomes metal-shelled barbecue. Of course, the cooking method varies by dragon. Some spit acid, some ice and one rare type I read about spits bolts of lightning. The exact details seem to be different in every story, aside from a few things in common, like scales, sharp teeth and they sleep for long periods on precious metals or at least fairy gold.”
As Lyra pulled the last set of patties from the pan, Nicole began to eat, eventually devouring all of the hamburgers, aside from the two Lyra ate.
“The nullifier fell off and I had another strange dream.” Nicole admitted, “I was in the void again, like the previous Kurg visions, but instead of talking to those stupid things, I came across a couple of ant-like people, made of metal and stone. I think they were Ulkun.”
“Did they say anything?” Lyra asked, looking concerned.
“They asked for help in a broken form of the local language. They told me to seek out the Forbidden One-”
“Easily done.” Lyra smiled, “The Ulkun call their leader the Forbidden One. His real name is Ogomid.”
“You know him?” Nicole asked with surprise.
“Yeah. When you’re up to it, we’ll be visiting him. It took some doing, but I convinced the council to let us go for a visit. We’ll be taking an official envoy with us, of course, but we’re free to bring whoever else we like, so you should consider who you’d like on the team. The Ulkun live in a mountain valley surrounded by harsh terrain with some vicious wildlife. We’re going to need good fighters to defend the team and everyone will need to be ready for hiking, since we don’t dare land directly in or even near their settlement. Some hardy dwarves would be ideal.”
Bothered by the warning of the Architect, Nicole asked, “Do you trust this Ogomid fellow?”
“Yeah. He’s very honest and direct. It’s very hard to hide anything when talking telepathically, which was how we spoke, for the most part.”
“Okay, it’s just that the ants told me not to trust him. They called him evil, dangerous, kin-slayer and kin-eater.”
“It’s complicated.” Lyra nodded and reached across the counter, to give Nicole’s hand a comforting squeeze, “Ogomid is dangerous, but only when angered, as we once managed before you were born. We accidentally destroyed their king’s life stone, as part of a counter-attack. An Ulkun life stone houses their soul and when destroyed, can never be restored to life. As it turned out, though, Ogomid didn’t think we were sentient. At the time, he’d been collecting life energy to restore his people and we just happened to be in the way. Your aunt Nicole, the same you were named after, sacrificed her life to deliver a message to Ogomid: she told him we were sorry.
“After that, the war ended and we signed a peace treaty. To mark it as an unbreakable pledge, Ogomid scratched a line into his life stone, beside another, much older scratch.
“As part of our discussions, he told me the entire story: the life of the world was dying out, because there were too many Ulkun, constantly consuming the life energy of every living thing. Their king came to Ogomid and asked him to preserve the kingdom. In the end, he agreed, but as a result, Ogomid worked the people to death, without breaks to rest or eat. He collected their life stones and flew to the moon, to let the life of the planet restore itself. He killed the people knowing that one day he could restore them. To an outsider, it sounds evil and it probably even looked that way to his people, but Ogomid succeeded and very few of his people were permanently lost, with the king among the dead. Last I heard, Ogomid is effectively their new king.”
“So, this guy is basically both their devil and their messiah?” Nicole was not comfortable with the idea, “That’s pretty weird.”
Lyra shrugged, “Somewhere down the line, he got so old he forgot his own history and only knows the story from having read what he chiseled into the walls of the tunnels he lived in for just over three-million years. He’s literally not the same person that set out to do it all in the first place, but he is the one that pulled it off. He almost forgot his own name, since he can’t even say it, based on a command from their first king, which he can’t countermand.
“The Ulkun follow orders from whoever is in charge, almost the way a robot might; as far as they’re concerned, it’s impossible to disobey their rightful ruler.”
Nicole cringed, “So, the crazy guy in charge killed them off just so he could bring them back to life three-million years later, all to preserve the life of the world and no matter how crazy the order, they’ll do anything he says?”
“Yeah,” Lyra looked uncomfortable at Nicole’s summary, “I guess when you put it like that, it does sound bad…but Ogomid was…well, the Ulkun just don’t think like us. You can’t put a human perspective on them, especially since they can live for millions of years. Any human would have been utterly insane after spending that long alone, but the Ulkun tend to think so slowly that the kind of lonely madness I’m thinking of might never take, if they stayed busy and on task the whole time, which seems to have been what saved Ogomid.”
In the end, Nicole decided she would take the measure of Ogomid herself, totally unsure who she should trust, aside from Lyra.
