The Battle Majestic (Round 4 - Magpie Skies)

Originally posted on MSPA by Schazer.

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Light-dark. Light-dark.

The shuttle zoomed up and out of the amphitheatre that was Oxbow, each glass doorway at each repetitive station registering only as a gloom-shattering burst. Station W-7 flashed by without any new passengers to join the two Yaggs, and their strange, conscious cargo.

About twenty seconds ago, the sixth station from the bottom end of the line registered as a fourth flash of light upon the motionless heap of green by Guft’s feet. Sen blinked, and parted his jaws a little to taste the air. Everything to the behind left of him was obscured by a tangibly painful malevolence, that seemed to register across most of the Tender’s senses. But the still-leaking gash on his head wasn’t what was occupying Sen.

Light-dark. Dark… light-dark.

It was like a heartbeat. Day and night, a measured, slow pulse befitting a beast as large as a planet. Light-dark. Day-night.

But it was too fast.

Day-night. Day-night. Day-night. Time as a plant could only measure it, flickering as ephemerally by as the lifespan of the little animals which crawled in the leaf litter. It felt wrong, it felt out of step and dizzying and disorienting and-

Accommodate. Insinuate. To bemoan the change was a waste of ever-quickening time. Keep up. Speed up. Between the flickers of devious light, the tunnel was faintly luminous green. Were Guft to glance down at his feet, he would’ve seen the synaptic sparks leaping from seed pod to seed pod in a faint, but ever-quickening circuit.

Krad did look at it. The little lights were whirling round really really fast. Krad wondered if they’d suddenly stop if he touched one of the seed brown thingies. The Yagg extended a hairy finger over the pod in the green creature’s shoulder, and prodded it.

Sen’s eyes snapped open. The World Tree on his shoulder exploded in a frenzy of white, hairy tendrils, ensnaring Krad’s hand in half a second. The Yagg tried to yank his hand away, but the roots sensed the heat, the moisture of warm flesh and sprouted long spines, pinned deep into Krad’s fingers. Roaring with pain, the wild swinging of his hand only yanked a thoroughly disgruntled Sen to its feet.

And the roots did not stop growing – in the Bubble Universe, Yggdrasillus had climbed to the sun in a matter of hours. Here, a day flicked by every twenty seconds. The Yagg didn’t stand a chance - roots snaked up his arm and across his chest, piercing him with spines, spines sprouting more burrowing, thirsty roots. Sen just kind of took it in his stride, snarling at Guft and swinging a few talons to warn the other Yagg to keep his distance, swaying unsteadily all the while as Krad thrashed about. Guft could only stand agape as his colleague’s howls weakened, before the club was hefted and swung at Sen with a furious bellow.

The Tender couldn’t duck or dodge, not with the Krad-consuming World Tree still embedded in his shoulder. Avoidance proved unnecessary, as a resounding crack echoed through the transport tunnel, Sen raising an insanely fast forearm, countering the blow with a seed pod.

Then the shuttle jerked to a halt, and Krad’s root-strangled, lifeless body crashed on top of Sen, who screeched just because he could. The chute doors slid open, bathing the bewildering scene in light bisected only by the shadow of an astounded Dim Cyrris. The Dejaan’s expectations of the Yaggs hadn’t been sufficient to assume they’d make it from the cargo tunnel to Warehouse 17, but it took more imagination than a practical man like Cyrris could muster to envisage a scene like this. The World Tree’s victim was starting to become little more than a hairy suggestion of a silhouette, as the voracious plant digested the poor creature. Sen made a foul-tempered ratchety noise from somewhere beneath Krad; Guft was about to say something when the Dejaan strode forth and punched the emergency chute lockdown, his features both startled and grim.

Would a net do the trick? Cyrris wondered to himself, as he strode with nervous purpose to the nearest depot. No, it’s likely to injure itself… aha.

The Dejaan snatched up and shouldered the device, ran his talons over the wall of keys, and grabbed one of those before making his way to the vehicle bay.


Sen heaved himself up as the Yagg-shaped knot of roots uncoiled and crumbled to dust, save for a few snaky taproots which wrapped their meandering way over the Tender’s skin. Guft was furiously pounding the locked door, but the movement had a peculiar slowness to Sen’s perception. Like he was underwater. One root curled questioningly at the edge of the Tender’s vision, the white tip unfurling with a burst of luminosity. The tip was brushed like a sundew’s, dotted with neon nectar. It was only bright enough to bathe Sen’s questing, already-green tongue in a slightly less natural hue, but it was merely a taste of things to come. There was the subtlest twitch after Sen licked the flower clean, as the tendril got rid of the now-useless floral appendages. The toxic nectar triggered something. A sense of immediacy. A sense of hunger, unchecked.

Reward. Hunger. Find soil, find food, in the dark. Burrow. Insinuate. Grow. Conquer. Reward.

Sen took one jerky, hyperspeed attempt at a slow stalk. Another step. Another. The roots snaked through the darkness, seeking out more food.


Guft’s pained roars sent a chill down the Dejaan’s spine, returning as fast as he could drive the ute. He mentally counted in his head the time taken for the doors to reopen after a station lockdown, conceding there would have to be some explanation for what he now guiltily conceded would be two dead Yaggs, not to mention West Track being shut down like this.

Ah well, no gizzards, no glory, he thought, sneaking up to the door release and slamming it.

The Tender was baring its needly teeth at Guft, chattering mockingly as the World Tree’s roots enveloped him. Cyrris gulped his sense of bravado disappearing as fast as it came, planted Sen securely in the sights of his gun, and fired.

A barbed dart, attached to the harpoon gun with a slender, polymer tube, embedded itself in Sen’s neck. He turned with a snarl, but the tube had already expanded as the gun pumped out copious amounts of quick-setting foam. Sen got one irked claw in the stuff, overbalanced, screeched green murder, and got quite a few World Tree roots stuck in the foam as they lashed in the Dejaan’s direction.

It took three full canisters to subdue the monster, but Cyrris didn’t care. Struggling with the large white lump, he considered yelling at the Yagg for assistance, but stopped with shock when he saw the state of his injuries. Guft was punctured all over, and without blood-sucking plants plugging the holes he was shaggy hair was swiftly staining red. He was slumped against a wall, breathing ragged and convulsing with pain.

“You need medical attention,” Cyrris said, somewhat unnecessarily. There was no impatience or snap to his voice. In fact, it sounded legitimately concerned. And scared. “And we need to contain this- this thing.” Guft just nodded, took a deep breath, and peeled himself off the wall of the transport chute. A sticky red stain remained as he got his meaty fists under one end of the incapacitated Tender, and lifted it. The Dejaan struggled with the other end, the pair manhandling it onto the back of the ute. Cyrris jumped in the driver’s seat; Guft sat down on the back with enough weight to make the whole vehicle shake a little. Yaggs were tough. But this thing had killed one in mere minutes.

The avian floored it, heading at full speed for Warehouse 17.