The Wild Lands: Legend of the Wild Man (40 page)

The knowledge is sweet, but now he must find
his sister, his mentor, and escape before the prongelk doom them
all.

The band of primates hurry down the hallway,
but close to the end one of the monkeys shrieks in delight and Kao
cannot help but look. To his left, a room lies open. He follows the
monkey in to discover rows and rows of cages. Each holds a monkey.
Each is too small, little more than a bed and a bowl of water
crammed in the cages besides the monkeys. The monkey looks at Kao
hopefully, then to the prong sticking from his arm. Kao shakes his
head. He cannot sacrifice his last prong to save one monkey. Dozens
more would remain trapped. The other monkey stands in the doorway,
watching his every move. There is something to her eyes, something
about the way she watches him that seems familiar. He cannot tell
if it is the way she cocks her head, or how her wise eyes wait
unflinching for his decision... The other monkey whines and Kao
turns back to him. The monkey points to Kao's bone helm, but he
shakes his head no. The monkey understands. They may battle
kingcrows before the day is up, they will need weapons.

The Spire trembles as another prongbuck rams
it. Kao must act, he does not have time to think. His mind races,
scrambling for solutions. He has nothing at his disposal, not
enough prongs to waste nor the time to use them, all that is in the
hall are rooms filled with bones.

Kao grins. He hopes to tell the hermit of
this one, the time the hunter thought too much. The answer was
obvious, he had spent too much time thinking about it to
realize.

In a blink he is back snapping off antlers
from the prongbuck skeletons. The monkeys understand and join in
eagerly. Once they have a small pile, they scamper back and Kao
shows them how short circuit the control panels. Three monkeys are
free and they scramble for more prongs, keys to free their
brethren. Kao bends to scoop up another but the monkey with the
wise eyes grabs him and leads him from the room. Something in her
eyes is so familiar, not the blue-glow of the Hidden but something
deeper, too deep for Kao to fathom.

The pair reaches the end up the hallway and a
huge door. It is metal, massive and round as a river stone. Kao
pushes at it and with a groan it gives way. It opens up to shelves
of ground, neat little cutaways, like a mountain climbing path, but
more uniform. The monkeys scamper up them. One foot on every other
step. The hunter follows. He is not used to a surface like this but
he adapts.

They climb level after level of the steps. As
they ascend they see people resting. Kao expects the monkey to
threaten them but she does not. She understands, as does the
hunter, that they are terrified and pose no threat.

The lights flicker madly, the tremors are
stronger and faster. Kao fears not for his life, but he must escape
with whatever he can find of his people. The Hidden gods in their
home in the heavens do not have the same option. They know nothing
of the outside world, of the ground or the earth. They cower
together and whimper, a weak pile of bodies that reeks of sour
fear. They smell like wounded, trapped creatures, animals who have
accepted their death and wish for it to be quick and painless. A
pathetic way to spend their last minutes, Kao thinks, and he pities
them.

He brushes past as the monkey gestures for
him to come on. As they pass the people, Kao senses their fear
diminish. It still chokes the hallway that spirals up and up, but
shouts from the bottom bolster those at the top.

They shout as the hunter and his ally ascend
and leave them behind. He knows not the words, but their message is
clear:

They thank him for their lives.

Too soon, he thinks, and quickens.

Feast your eyes on the world below us. Nature has
saw fit to move the clouds and grant us vision in this darkest of
times. So feast on the destruction, relish our demise as our world
is taken out from under us.

Urea is not surprised to find her
panthera
so near the
biselk
. Her
panthera
did
as she would and stayed close to the danger to better understand
it.

Bolts of lighting bigger than
biselk
crack between black antlers harder than steel. No one is closer to
the action than her
panthera
, yet the one ton predator is
not particularly frightened. Annoyed, yes, concerned, definitely,
but feels no fear, that uninvited, unwanted, neural molecule that
causes synchronization to go fuzzy, like trying to see through the
clouds that shrouded the Spire.

Instead she paces and growls. Her tail flicks
across her vision. Urea embraces her frustration. She takes it for
her own. She can work with anger, it is like hunger, mostly. A dull
reminder that not all is good in the world, that action must be
taken. Anger, like hunger, focuses. They are survival emotions that
encourage success at the cost of others. Anger is different than
hunger of course. Hunger is predictable.

If an Evanimal knows that the mind inside its
own is also after food, pilot and puppet can cooperate. Anger is
not so easy to work with. Anger turns to rage. When that happens
Evanimals become weapons who seek nothing more than destruction.
Urea had ridden out rage before, in the early days, when her
panthera
still rebelled. Like gasoline on top of water, rage
needs to be burned off. An impromptu and exhausting hunt had solved
the problem. Rage was manageable to Urea. Anger could also turn to
fear, which must be avoided. Fear causes all to become mindlessness
and recklessness. They'd all learned of fear, Kao being their most
recent and accomplished teacher. Urea understands that if she loses
to fear the
biselk
will attack the Spire unchecked. And
given time, well, time levels mountains. The Spire's but a twig
perched atop a magma inferno. Fear cannot happen. Urea must be
brave and confident. She has to channel the anger, not be defeated
by it.

So channel it she does. She roars. She hears
it in two sets of ears. Her own human growl and the mighty bellow
that rumbles from the
panthera
's throat. Then, both brains
dumping adrenaline into both bodies, they attack. Her
panthera
embraces the quick assault, and Urea is thankful
for that. The
panthera
has been waiting, anticipating their
synchronization. Now the two attack as one, the perfect mixture of
mind and muscle, instinct and intelligence. Their united minds
launch the feline's body at the
biselk
.

Oblivious, amped on testosterone, adrenaline,
and a thousand volts of electricity, the brutes are essentially
giant bombs locked on the Spire. Each blast is larger than the
previous one. Every
biselk
is amazed at the power they
command. Do they see the Spire as an aggressor, or do they know its
inhabitants and their true power? Either way, they've disregarded
their petty rivalries for a taste of power and rejected the minds
that control them.

The largest prongelk rams the Spire. From
down on the surface, the view is spectacular. When the antlers
collide a bolt of lighting thick as a tree trunk forms
instantaneously between the
biselk
and the Spire, it arcs
high and cracks loud as the sky tearing asunder. Before the ball of
light radiates outward like an atomic blast, the
biselk
is
shoved backwards. The sound drops out, then everything goes black.
Urea doesn't know if it is the synchronization stuttering from the
power dip or a sonic boom combined with the
panthera
protecting her eyes.

Then they're back online. The
panthera
already charging towards the
biselk
. Good. They share goals.
Though Urea is not surprised. The ground is smoking, and here and
there dull red veins of molten rock shine from below. This will not
end well.

The massive herbivore bellows. A bolt of
electricity beneath its flesh courses down its spine then radiates
in every direction, down every bone. Sparks spray out of every one
of its dozens of points, its hooves. Slobber crackles with
electricity as it drips from his mouth. His eyes are wide, the
pupils so dilated that they fill his eye sockets. A nearly
invincible monster to begin with, his conductive skeleton and
nervous system are now so overrun with electricity and adrenaline
that his brain can't do anything but charge and bray.

The
panthera
leaps, flies over the
biselk
and neatly slices his spine with her claws in mid
air, just like Urea commands in her amplification chamber. The jolt
of power races up her black conductive claws and then her arm. It
supercharges the
panthera
's VRC, a hundred separate jousts
with the Spire concentrated into one flash of energy.

Urea's brain accepts the amplified data
coming from the chip without choice. She lands silently, black as
the sky behind the full moon. She hisses at the sparking behemoth.
Urea hears her human body hiss too, but she did not initiate the
action. It came from somewhere else. Was VRC synchronization that
simple? A little power and Urea is obsolete? No time to wonder now.
If the Spire goes down, such hierarchies will matter naught.

The
biselk
she scratched brays and
whips his head around, searching for his attacker. The
panthera
has vanished into the night. The
biselk
sees
another behind him, already pawing the ground for another joust.
Instincts, adrenaline, or the field confuse the Alpha. He lowers
his horns and charges the smaller
biselk
. The two collide,
their momentum multiplied by the obscene amount of energy they
carry. Once the lighting fades and the sonic booms echo off into
the caldera, the two of them are lying face to face, their horns
locked together. Either dead or unconscious, they are
incapacitated.

Success.

She continues with another pair of
biselk
, timing her strike to make blame. Urea thinks she
initiated the attack, but is not certain, it came so soon,
too
soon. Control is irrelevant. If the panthera understands
the strategy, they all may live through the night.

A reprise! Sing! Raise your voices high! Let the
Prince and Princess know who they fight for!

When Skup enters the King's mind he is not
greeted with the same cold resolve as Urea's
panthera
afforded her. The King is terrified. He is flying high above the
electrical mayhem below, while more than a dozen birds as big as
him chase. Instantly, Skup is nauseous. The
vultus
is flying
every which way as it dodges attack after attack. Each
vultus
gains altitude on him, then dive bombs, one after the
other.

Skup pumps his arms with the bird and feels
him rise. Nothing is injured yet. Feathers are still mostly intact,
no torn tendons. Only the one blind eye for handicap and more than
a dozen to one odds. Close enough to a fair fight.

Skup can hardly see though. Between the
tenuous connection and the bird's fear the VRC is feeding him
imperfect data. Now and again the whole image goes digital, and
Skup is left staring at the inside of his eyelids. Still, he has
some control, and he knows how to get more.

Skup
chimes, but has no idea if it reaches the other
vultus
pilot, for she does not reply.

Like all waves, the strength of the Spire's
Electromagnetic field doubles in strength as he halves the distance
between the source and himself. He pumps the King's wings once
more, then goes into a nose dive. Faster and faster they fall, the
vultus
slicing through the air like light through space. He
can hear the other birds behind him, trying to keep up, but they
don't practice flying in the predawn dark like Skup and the
one-eyed King do. They pull up.

In an instant Skup and the King are just a
few yards above the charging
biselk
. The synchronization is
stronger now. The bird's confidence returns and the Spire has
enough juice to keep the VRC well powered. Though every
biselk
's collision with the Spire causes a blip in the
connection, The King's forward motion makes his placement
predictable.

he chimes his protege.

Down they swoop towards the
biselk
.
Skup won't be able to face the flock with these interruptions in
the the synchronization. The
biselk
need to stop
attacking.

They swoop low and graze a
biselk
with
talons bigger than Skup's forearm. The herbivore bucks its antlers
instinctively, but he pumps his wings and avoids the danger, though
already the bird's wings crackle with electricity like thunder
birds of legend. He swoops low again, and this time manages to
scratch up one of the
biselk
's backs pretty good. The
biselk
stops its attack, pain overriding even the
electricity in its body, but the run is not exactly a success. With
direct contact a massive charge of electricity transfers from the
biselk
to the
vultus
. Suddenly the
vultus
mind
is right alongside his. They are sharing the body, Skup is not in
control.

He feels the hidden shards of antler and bone
in his wing polarize. They start to rattle and shake any time he
goes near one of the
biselk
. He feels the
vultus
ask
him
WHAT NOW
? Nothing more than that, the question is
universal, beyond words. The shards are interfering with their
flight. They were Skup's idea, so they are Skup's problem. He pumps
The
vultus
wings hard to shed the disturbance and watches in
amazement as the shards rocket towards the
biselk
, fast as
lightning. Skup targeted only one
biselk
, but instead the
intense electromagnetism from every member of the herd draws the
shards like gravity pulls the moon. Each shard finds a target with
a small blast of lighting, a crack of thunder, and the
biselk
bleat bloody murder into the night.