Chapter 18: To Grow Things.

Rarely did anyone come to the river, and so, I considered it part of my own domain.

The villagers all had their routines and none of those routines brought them to this bend in the river before the sun had even fully risen. Ash’s own needless selflessness normally had her working until the afternoon at the very least. If I needed quiet contemplation, then this place was better even than my place by the village wall. I sat cross legged at the bank and extended my left hand toward a patch of dead grass.

“Bloom.” Warmth left my palm. The blinding white crossed the gap between my hand and the earth, and the brown stalks began to straighten. Color crept back into them until a circle of green sat in the dirt. The impression came with it. A memory that was not mine, one I did not want. It was the memory of rain, and of something that only ever wanted to grow and nothing else. I pushed the impression aside and moved to the next patch.

The set of wilted flowers I found were harder. These strange flowers had a complexity to them. They had petals that curled in specific ways, stems that held at specific angles. Simply flooding them with the Cradle was possible, but inefficient. It was more effective to coax these back with small wisps of white -this power demanded a gentleness that did not come naturally to me.

The first flower straightened. Its petals filled. The second followed. The impression was sharper this time -the feeling of sunlight through a canopy. These memories of the living were getting clearer the more I used the mark, and I did not know if I liked that. No, I did know, and I did not like it. I turned my attention to the dead tree sapling. It stood at the bank’s edge, barely taller than I was. The bark was grey and peeling. The whole thing looked like it would tip over in a stiff breeze. I extended my left hand, letting brilliant white light meet the dead wood.

The mana cost was much larger. It drained from my core in a single sharp pull. Almost I pulled away. I felt something about the bark change. It darkened, a single leaf unfurled from a bare branch, so pale and thin it was almost translucent. I stopped, stared at the thing before me. If this was life, then it was the shortest step up from death.

My arms were shaking. I sat back on my heels and let my breathing steady. There was a purpose to this. There were stages, and that meant I was only at the first one. Despite everything, nothing about my Line had changed so far. Perhaps each stage took longer than the one that came before it.

The river moved past me, catching the first real light of the day. The trees on the far bank were thick with green. Two somethings moved among them -a pair of small brown creatures, climbing the trunk of an oak.

I watched them. They were furred and oddly round, with dark eyes and long tails that curled around the branches as they climbed. One of them stopped and turned to the other. It reached out with tiny hands and began to groom the fur behind its companion’s ear. The other leaned into the touch and went still. I watched them for a very long time, trying to guess at the purpose behind this act. At the selfish motive. I tried, until I reluctantly acknowledged that there was none.

In the Demon Realm, there was no such thing. Every beast was a predator or prey, and most were both. A parent would eat the child and a child would eat the parent, given the chance. Even the domesticated ones had to be broken first. There were no beasts like these.

Zera would have wept at this. The thought arrived without permission. My hands were still on my knees.

She had been gone for four hours.

I had noticed, because I felt and saw everything in my fortress. Every stone was as much a part of me as my own flesh, and so when General Zera slipped back through a side passage in the lower eastern wing, I was waiting for her. She came around the corner and stopped.

She was tall for a demon -only one foot shorter than her brother- with red skin and a scar that ran from her jaw to her collarbone. Height aside, she did have every visage of a woman.

Zera’s arms were pressed against her chest, cradling something beneath her cloak. She glanced around everywhere, before she slowly stepped inside the fortress proper.

“Where have you been, General Zera?”

Zera froze for just a heart beat. “Your Royal Darkness.” She bowed, though the motion was stiff. She was trying not to jostle whatever she was holding. “I was conducting a perimeter survey of the molten-“

“Show me.”

Her jaw tightened. She did not protest or attempt to lie further -she pulled back the edge of her cloak.

The thing in her arms had six legs, and four of them bent in strange directions. Its body was a dark brown, mottled with patches of something that might have been fur. It had a single eye, set in a face that had a mockery of a snout. A thin, rasping wheeze came from somewhere inside it, and a line of dark drool hung from the edge of its maybe-snout. It was, without question, the most repulsive living creature I had ever beheld. It was also the only thing of its kind I had seen.

“I found it in the tunnels, my Queen.” Zera’s voice was steady. Her hands were not. “Its colony was dead. It was the only one left.”

“And you brought it here, to my fortress.” My voice was low. Hardly above a whisper.

“Yes, my Queen.”

The thing wheezed again. Its single eye opened fully, regarded me, and then slowly closed, as if the effort of seeing was too much for it. “[Inspect]”, I said, arm raised towards the beast.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

The blue screen appeared before me. The beast had no proper title, but the System called it a [Sighmaw]. An appropriate name, as that was what I wished to do right now. My hand was still raised towards the strange beast. One thought, and this Sighmaw and its miserable, wheezing existence would be over.

Zera’s face held nothing but acceptance. Zera’s arms tightened. Her fingers pressed deeper into the thing’s matted fur. Perhaps it would not be tactically wrong to keep this beast alive. After all, I had never seen such a creature and s-

I felt the pressure settle behind my eyes. It came without warning, as it always did – a weight at the base of my skull that pushed my thoughts in the direction they were meant to go. My teeth clenched. The pressure bore down. My mana stirred in answer, settling into my right hand, ready to unmake the wretched thing in one clean thought. Zera watched me and something in her eyes was strange. The demon did not say a word.

“You will inform me in the future,” I said, and the words came through my teeth, “of these indulgences, General. Every single one of them. Is that understood?”

Zera’s eyes widened. Then she bowed deeply, until her head almost reached the floor. I turned, and left my General and the pathetic stray she had brought to the halls of my fortress.

I blinked. The brown creatures had climbed higher now. The one that had been grooming its companion was now hanging upside down from a branch by its tail.

Zera would have known what they were called. She had known the name of every beast in every realm, even the ones she had never seen. Even the ones she never would. She would have already climbed the tree. The fool.

I watched them a moment longer. The Cradle pulsed, faintly, without my asking it to. I looked down at the Line and frowned. I returned to training. The precious silence lasted four minutes.

“Lysanfia!”

I turned. Sara stood behind me, three paces away, holding a stick. She was out of breath, which meant she had been running. Who would dare betray where I was to this girl? I was close to the village, but surely she still should not have come alone. “That is not my name.”

“Hi, Lysanfia!”