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They had been sleeping, until They heard it, pushing on the edge of their minds, niggling at them to rise.
It was a call, just like Their own and yet not right. Another Like Them? There were no Others Like Them, hadn’t been since the World Before, generations back in Their lineage.
They’d been sleeping, but that new, niggling sound was stirring Them back to the edge of awareness, before it disappeared and silence was on the verge of retaking Them.
Until flares of aching warmth bloomed across Their rousing subconscious, itching and gnawing, though not unwelcome.
And suddenly, the other call was back. Before it had teased and niggled Them out of the dreams and the oblivion inbetween, but now it tore straight through the sleep into Their three heads, loud and clear. As clear thought returned, They could tell that it was the same as Their call, but smaller and slightly wrong, with a wrong underlying taste to it. Smaller, but still loud and blusterous and demanding. A rival to Their claim on kingship. Another rival like the Deep Enemy. It the only way They could survive was by being at the top.
As They awoke, twisting winds formed and lightning crackled in the air as a storm began to form above the pit surrounding Them. The first thing which assailed Their senses was the cold. They hated the cold, aware on an unconscious level of how it had stuck Them, held Them, crept beneath their scales and into Their bones throughout Their forced sleep. Their immediate surroundings felt just as cold as when They’d first been plunged into the long sleep, a remnant of the cold that that unknown Other One had spread back then. The One whose call They’d heard and whose bitingly cold power They’d felt through the air, whom They’d hunted for but had never found. They couldn’t hear the active calls of the Others now, but They could sense distant remnants of their presences – they were either sleeping or deeply hidden.
The second several things which had hit Their senses were the same things which invaded them from every waking moment, never leaving Them alone except when They slept. It was how wrong the world felt. Their re-forming storm always provided Them a bubble of comfort, but that was all it was. From the moment They’d first woken up on the world long ago, They’d been aware of the wrong the rest of the world was, smoking and seeping into Their senses from the storm’s outer-edges and the air beneath Their stormclouds. The world beyond Their bubble had barely any clouds, storms or lightning from the ground through the air to the sky, leaving patches of the sky naked. Most of the storms and winds that did exist beyond Theirs were meagre in size and power, and all of them burned out almost as soon as they formed. The rest of the air was cold with too little pressure, and the precious liquids that were meant to feed storms cyclically just sat atop the ground and grew stagnant in vast basins covering most of the world. Even within the shelter of Their storm, nothing spared Them from the taste of the air in Their three necks – too few gases, and what ones were there burned Their necks and eyes. The hot power that emanated from and nourished Them and the Other Ones was much fainter in the world now than it had been before the long sleep. And the tiny things which infested the world’s stagnant water-basins and the bare ground above them… their indiscernible chittering around the world was so noisy and inane.
That was what They’d known since Their very first awakening on the world. The Left had whinged, the Right had frothed and growled, and the Central had simmered. And it had gone on and on and on since then, Their anger growing deeper and deeper as time passed until the anger had turned to rage which had extended down into the Memory Beneath Their Blood and Bone. They didn’t know how They’d come to first wake up on this world, or where the World Before that Their lineage had come from was now, but They knew that this world wasn’t Home. It wasn’t fit to be Home. But They could change it to make it Home.
They weren’t alone right now. Their heads looked down and saw those little creatures on the icy floor, and Their tongues tasted the things’ familiar scent, a scent which was now also tangled with smells of aged oil and metal. The new metal smell made those little things remind Them that little bit more of the first little things in the Memory Beneath Blood and Bone, and the Central seethed. They pulled Their body below the three necks free from the pit, and the little things did something – tiny flashes of light came off of them, and They felt the lightest feather-touch of something nipping and pinching Their scales when it got into the crevices, or in the corners of Their eyes and inside Their mouths. This was new, and more than enough to pike the Left’s curiosity. Clearly the little things of the world had new tools and were the more blusterous for it. The little, clever things thought they could hurt Them. The hubris angered the Right, and the Central smirked in amusement.
Right before Their breath put the little things back in their place, and Their tongues fed on the ashes.
They hadn’t been the only little things in the icy place, which was quieter than most of the overcrowded world. There were two metal things, not too small but small enough they could only be one of the little things’ toys. One was hovering in the air and emitting dull light, while the other was lying prone on the icy ground. The grounded metal bird took Their interest for now, not only because it was closer, but because They could hear the little things’ noises coming from inside it. They moved towards it, as much to get a better look (and hopefully shut up the Left’s curiosity for a while) as to give the things inside the destruction that they so deserved. Then the Call Like Theirs suddenly warped – the Call Like Theirs had been small enough that with no other sign of a pretender in sight, They’d almost forgotten about it, but now it was screaming out of shape in a way that not even They could, piercing Them like a hundred pointed teeth were cutting into Their skulls as They screamed. They were summoning Their breath to the tops of Their necks to answer the noise, when the call just cut. There wasn’t even a death-rattle, it just blipped out of existence. Confusion between the Central and Right, a flash of irritation from the Centre towards the Left, and then They returned Their attentions to the metal bird on the ground.
It didn’t do anything as Their heads hit and nudged it. The bird was clearly crippled or dead. The little things’ noises inside it, however, picked up in that way which They had learned with experience the little things’ voices always did when they were about to die. Good. Those little things deserved to die, and should be reminded how small they were compared to Them and the Other Ones.
Then They sensed Another One’s song and power approaching, and They reared up. Another whose song and taste had been familiar to Them for a long time. His blue light shone through the icy ground before he emerged from the water beneath, the rancid water where he loved to live. The Deep Enemy. They were immediately serious – They sized him up, the cowardly Left glancing to the other two, then They spread Their wings wide and reared up as Their fledgling storm flashed. This was to be Their Home, not his. Had to be if They were to survive. Again and again They had fought him before Their long sleep, and again and again he had robbed Them of Their victory, Their Home.
They and the Deep Enemy charged each-other. They were still sluggish from the long sleep, but he was not. He’d been in strong and weak phases throughout their past clashes, but now, his muscles were larger and bunched than ever before, and the blue power beneath his scales was burning large and hot, with a strange new taste to it that hadn’t been there before. It was no matter. He was still the less innately-strong of the two of them, relying on his Blinding Light and Other Ones that he’d taken under his command to best Them all the previous times. The coward. They threw him off with Their lightning, and the Right, ever the fight-mad one who spoke louder to appear bigger, yipped and snarled and breathed at the Enemy. They dodged his blue, flaming breath, and then Their sparking, yellow breath threw him down into the pit which They’d just crawled out of. They had some time and room now to put the little things on the icy floor in their place. The Central snapped one up in his jaws, and the Left chirped as he and the Right leaned in – the Left had his own wants of that little thing the Central had just eaten, more than just food to be digested away and then forgotten, and those wants lined up with the Central’s own, so the Central permitted the Left to have this. Fire and percussive force suddenly burst on Their heads as more metal birds flew in – throwing projectiles at Them which were larger and more tangible than the ground-based little things’ flickering had been, and painful enough that They had to lift Their wings to shield Themselves. This was new, and new was concerning. The little, clever things were different here and now to what they’d been before the long sleep. And the Deep Enemy was getting back up on Their other side.
Better to withdraw now until They knew more about what the world was like and what its little things could do after the long sleep, than to stay and fight against the Deep Enemy and an unknown potential second threat. Besides, the Other Ones were still out there, laying quiet, and They could use them as They’d done before.
Their storm followed Them out of the icy place, not yet strong enough to spawn more and make the rest of the world’s air right. The ice was left behind Them, and the air creeping into Their storm’s edges was now warmer. Their wings flapped and flapped, and They passed over one of the stagnant water-basins covering swaths of the world. Their stormclouds fed on the basin’s once-still water and the winds from Their wings, to grow larger, large enough to form vortices between the basin and the clouds. The stormclouds had enshrouded Them in darkness, broken up by crackling yellow lightning between the clouds. Much more ideal than the drawn-out spells of light and dimness that the world’s stormless sky outside cast everything else in in a slow, predictable crawl from one phase of light to the next. They flew over ground which was coated in all that smaller green and multicoloured stuff which much of the world was rank with, breathing on it to burn what was immediately below Them down where Their storm didn’t drown it in water or tear it apart in vortices. Then They were flying over the water-basins again. They could distantly hear and feel the Deep Enemy, departing the icy place himself in a different direction.
They didn’t get the chance to summon one of the Others before, in no time at all, one of the Others’ sounds swelled from the distant and slow life-beat that all of them currently were, into a blusterous call of wakefulness, announcing theirself. It was One that They recognised – a Fiery Bird which They’d fought before. They immediately changed Their direction, flying over water-basins straight towards the Fiery One’s pulsing heat and noise. They had to establish that They were the king of this world, not the Deep Enemy and not this newly-awakened One.
The Fiery One had emerged from one of the world’s vents, now belching pleasant heat and smoke into the air with his emergence. He flew into Their storm without balking, chasing after something which pierced the storm’s outermost edge. They saw that something when it came close enough to hang directly in front of Them inside the storm – one of the little things’ metal birds, the largest one that had seemed to dominate their other birds in the icy place. They reared up to snarl down at it. The little things after the long sleep reminded Them too much more now of the earliest little things. The little things furthest back in the Memory Beneath Blood and Bone, generations of Their lineage before Their first awakening on this world. The World Before, the world of true storms with no ground cool enough to touch, the world with air many times bigger and vaster than the ground and air of the world Their lineage’s current iteration had awoken on, the World Before which Their lineage had lived on for many generations. The earliest little things had appeared on the World Before, wielding beasts and constructs of metals and materials too, and they and they had attacked and ravaged Their Ancestor and Other Ones Like Them with those things. Some Others Like Them had been torn and changed with the metal, screaming in agony. But Their Ancestor and some Others Like Them had fought and killed the little things, and Their Ancestor had carried the burning lesson learned from the earliest little things’ encroachment – little things were a threat. The lesson had carried in the Memory Beneath Blood and Bone across later generations, into Them, along with the promise that little things would pay and know their place.
They’d been momentarily lost in memory, and the little things’ alpha bird was flying downward by Their flank. They let it flee for now, as the Fiery Other One was charging at Them, meaning to fight. They met his challenge. They twirled, bit and clawed in the storm briefly. They did not mean to kill him – They did not hate the Fiery One like They hated the little things and the Deep Enemy. The Fiery One had power in him, but not to the point where he was worth being called a rival. They had uses for the Fiery Bird and the Others, the Ones whom could be turned towards clearing the little things and making the world Home. Some of the Other Ones were compatible, but not all, and the Ones that weren’t had to die, the Deep Enemy among them. Their scuffle with the Fiery Bird was over almost as soon as it had started, the Left and Right gripping his burning wings while the Central breathed into his chest, sending him falling through the stormclouds into the water-basin.
Their attentions drifted back to the little things’ alpha bird flying underneath Their storm, and They watched with some curiosity and amusement as one of the smaller metal birds, looking wounded and trailing oily smoke, flew towards the alpha bird and into it like the little things. Then They flew towards them, grinning as They thought of how the little things inside the alpha bird must have thought themselves safe for a moment before. They didn’t get to so much as scratch or nip the bird before the Deep Enemy rammed into Them from the water-basin.
He had covered his approach in the water-basin for an ambush, and now he was dragging Them into the vast, deep liquid. Panic took hold as They thrashed to get Their heads and wings back above the liquid, only for the Deep Enemy to drag Them back down every time, rolling his body over Theirs to push Them down. They knew from experience that They couldn’t move and Their lightning was dampened within the water-basins’ depths. Whereas the Deep Enemy took to the water-basins as well as They took to the air and storms. The copious liquid was clogging Their necks and scales, They thrashed to escape as his teeth and claws drew Their blood. A searing pain cut Them and one of Their voices cut out and faded as the Deep Enemy tore the Left’s head and part of his neck off of Them.
Then as if in answer to Their will to survive, green-and-white light exploded between Them and the Deep Enemy. It was so bright that it blinded the remaining Central and Right, and whatever made the light was invading Their mouths, necks, eyes, wounded stump and every crevice of Their scales. It ripped and cleaned something away from Their inside out, something which They felt cleaner without, something which came rushing back into the water from at the fading light’s edges like liquid surging into the ground’s empty low crevices. They felt cleaner somehow but unharmed. But the Deep Enemy stopped moving entirely. He’d stopped making any sound save the thrum of his heartbeat, which was rapidly fading. He was slumping into the water-basin’s dark depths. They momentarily suspected that what appeared to be happening wasn’t true, before it set in that it was real. They beat Their wings and padded Their legs and tails to burst back out of the water-basin into the clean, whirling storm, Their heads howling Their euphoria and delight.
The Deep Enemy was dead. He who had stood against Them, wounded Them, forced Them to sleep in ice or beneath ground, had maimed Them to little more than a piece clinging onto life and taking long to regrow, over and over. They’d hated him more and more fervently with each passing clash and defeat, to the point where Their hatred had rooted all the way down into the Memory Beneath Their Blood and Bone to be passed on to Their descendants. Now he was gone, and They were victorious. The world was Theirs and only Theirs.
They flew to the vent the Fiery One had emerged from, its smoke and heat having mixed pleasantly into the storm, almost like the world was willing itself to become Their Home. The vent’s hot power seeped into Them, necessary pain searing Them as the Left regrew from the stump. They didn’t waste any more time, and the vent was an ideal spot to show Their majesty and bask in Their kingship. They called out, projecting Their supremacy – and there was no countering call nor song from the Deep Enemy to mute Them out.
The Other Ones heard Them and stirred immediately, all their slow life-thrums swelling into waking calls and grumbling activity as they crawled out onto the world. None of them called back in defiance. Their storm was spreading into many storms, expanding the other scant clouds around the world into what they should be, swelling the faint winds, stirring up the once-stagnant waters and drawing them upwards to feed the clouds and spread the lightning.
The little things’ and the smaller stuff’s chittering was swelling to screaming which then began dying down to smouldering silence, as the ground, liquid and air which they all festered in began burning and tearing them apart and as the Other Ones ate and crushed them in fury. The little things in particular They had instructed the Others to hunt and kill the most fervently, giving those tiny monsters the destruction they deserved most of all. Among the Others’ many calls, They thought briefly that They heard her familiar song and felt her stirring against the storms, but They ignored it, as it wasn’t big or loud enough alone to be a significant rival. The world’s vents were alight, spewing smoke and gases which mixed with the growing storms, heated the air and fed the lightning. No longer was Their spot of comfort confined to just a single storm. The air which crept underneath Their stormclouds was getting easier to taste and feel. The hot power that nourished Them and the Others was growing throughout the world. The water-basins were losing stillness and draining as the growing storms and heat and the Other Ones boiled, whipped and stirred the liquids into even more steaming clouds and vortices. The naked swathes of sky were shrinking away as the stormclouds grew, crackling with lightning. The world was becoming more pleasant, more right.
For the first time since Their very first awakening on this world, for the first time in Their singular life, the world was finally starting to feel like.
Home.
Eventually, They took flight from the Fiery Bird’s vent, flying closer to the other side of the world than the icy place. The little things seemed to have many more hives on the ground than they’d had before the long sleep, many of which were now dying or otherwise going quiet amid the world being fixed. They chose a hive to settle over, letting the waters of Their storm drown the hive’s lower levels while Their lightning and breath scorched the higher levels, the vortices grinding the rest down. They called the Fiery One to rejoin Them. The Fiery Bird was such a good lower one to keep by Their side, to be lesser than Them but have the allowance to be by Them and do Their most direct bidding.
Flocks and packs of the little things’ oily birds came swarming to the heart of Their storm alongside oily, metal eels and water-riders. These little things truly were like the first little things that had attacked Their Ancestor and Others Like Them on the World Before, and they deserved to die. The little hordes threw their miniscule balls of flame and force at Them and at Their Fiery Bird. Perched in splendour in Their storm, They breathed back at the little things while Their Fiery Bird hounded and tore the little metal birds from the stormclouds. They sparingly descended from Their dignified position when Their Fiery Bird failed to deflect particularly bothersome projectiles, obliterating a water-crawler or three in a display of crackling lightning, fire and smoke.
Then They heard a call, sounding strange and almost stilted. Which then became many calls, one after the other – each was a different call belonging to a different Other, one call following after another, including the Call Like Theirs from the icy place, until many had been recited, before the choir started all over again. They sounded wrong. And all of them were thrumming from the exact same direction – a direction that few to none of Their Other Ones were in, as They could hear and sense each of them and none of them were in that direction. Their Ones were stopping what they were doing as each heard the new calls.
They howled Their own call to drown the Rogue Calls out, but every voice in the choir including the Call Like Theirs responded unperturbed, as if They hadn’t been regarded at all. They wanted to see the rogue Ones, or whatever was the single true source of the Rogue Calls, annihilated that much more for that. The growth of the storms beyond Their own had slowed as the Other Ones had stopped churning up more fire, water and wind to feed them, and They could already taste the world-vents’ smoke and ash and heat ceasing to swell in the air. They’d thought there were no more rivals now – but a new rival, or many terrible new rivals, had revealed themselves.
They flew towards the rogue source, carrying the heart of Their storm and Their Fire Bird in the clouds with Them. The source was within a quiet hive, and They, starting with the Central, were beginning to suspect little things’ involvement. They neither saw, smelled nor sensed any Others who might be emitting the Rogue Calls in the hive. They landed in a cleared pocket of the hive surrounded by intricate low walls. Instead of Another One, the Rogue Calls were bellowing from protrusions on the walls, which They got to work tearing apart and silencing. They hadn’t finished when all the protrusions went silent with the same suddenness as when the Call Like Theirs had ceased in the icy place – suddenly, the Rogue Calls were emitting much less loudly from a single spot, one which They immediately trained Their three gazes on. They saw the single little thing inside the hive-structure, the Rogue Calls coming from precisely where it was standing. Their rage built, and They breathed and breathed, first over the spot where they saw the pretender little thing, then over all the structures around Them. The ignorant, reactionless Rogue Calls continued unabated through the roar of Their breath. It had to die, had to die, had to die. They had to kill it and be dominant again! Only then could They have Their Home and rule! The Rogue Calls were suddenly in the open pocket below Them, and Their gazes turned down to see the rogue-calling little thing. It threw something, and the Rogue Calls continued but moved slightly away from the thing as the Left was leaning down. The Left inspected the small, rogue-calling piece that had been thrown, smaller than even the little thing. They stomped on it, and the Rogue Calls finally stopped. They were leaning back to breathe as much breath as They had on the remaining little thing – on that audacious, would-be killer of Them and Theirs that had mimicked its betters’ voices and could do so again – when a blast of light and fire drove Them backwards.
They heard his call.
Then They saw him storming into the hive, with the little things’ oily birds swarming around him. They felt momentary disbelief followed by anger. The Deep Enemy wasn’t dead. And more of his prickly, blue heat and power than ever was seeping off of him, making his spines glow without breath and colouring the storm’s crackling lightning. They’d thought he was gone, and now, suddenly, he was back! Why didn’t he stay dead?! Why couldn’t he just let Them have Their world?! Why couldn’t They have Home?!
Rage fuelled Them as They charged to meet the Deep Enemy and wrestled with him beneath the storm. He was much stronger than usual as he grasped Their necks, batted Their heads and threw Them, and he barely reacted to the bites and snaps They gave him, the heat beneath his scales searing where They touched him. His breath was searing Their chest again and forcing Them back, when They heard her distinct cry coming upon Them, before her spit slammed into Them and bound two of Their heads to a hive-structure as big as the Deep Enemy. The Blinding Light. They hated her almost as much as They hated the Deep Enemy and the little things. She had been there most of the times when the Deep Enemy had fought Them before the long sleep, refusing to bow to Them just as unrelentingly as he did despite her being smaller and weaker than both Them and the Deep Enemy. She was a lesser subordinate or a pest by her very body, not the bizarre partner-king that the Enemy treated her as! She was always making the Deep Enemy stronger and more powerful than he had any right to be, with her wrong, strange ways of putting her own power into him. But Their hate for her wasn’t so strong that it distracted the Right from un-binding the rest of Them, before the Deep Enemy rammed into Them.
The Central heard the Blinding Light coming towards Them again, and he called out to Their Fiery Bird. The Bird emerged from the stormclouds to clash, claw and bite at the Blinding Light. He gave her no chance to break away from him and resume her assistance of the Deep Enemy – one less foe that could overpower Them attacking Them. But the Deep Enemy, with his new strength, didn’t even seem to need her as he pushed and threw Them around.
Then their fighting brought Them closer to a metal vent in the little things’ hive, one which was sparking with lightning, so vast in power that the Left would have been inquisitive if his head had seen it first before the Central. If the Blinding Light and the little things could make the Deep Enemy unfairly stronger, then They would do the same for Themselves. The Central bit down, and They howled, as much in pain as to show Their magnificence, as more lightning than They’d harnessed for most of Their life surged through Them and out of Their wings, in nearly every skyward direction. The little things’ birds infesting the air burned all at once, while the Deep Enemy was singed and recoiled, now feeling pain and weakening. They watched the oily birds’ burning remains rain down before They, starting with the fight-craving Right, returned Their attentions to the Deep Enemy.
The Deep Enemy didn’t charge back at Them readily. They bunched low and studied him, noticing how despite the light in his spines and the power burning off of him, he was suddenly taking a pathetically long time to move and his posture was sluggish. When the Deep Enemy roared defiantly at Them but remained defensive, They pounced. He didn’t move fast enough to stop Them from seizing him with Their feet and tails, pushing him back as They beat Their wings, before they lifted him into the storm. They carried him above the storm, where the black sky was clear, and They dropped him. Dropped him to fall far, burning as he crashed back to the ground beneath the storm. When They flew back down, the Deep Enemy was scorched, wounded and weak, but the Blinding Light was crawling atop him. She too was, satisfyingly, scorched and wounded from the Fiery Bird’s work on her. Screeching and flaring her lights and colours, she flew defiantly at Them, feebly wobbling in the air. The Central was surprised, as she couldn’t accomplish anything but dying faster and earlier by doing this. But if that was what she wanted, then They would happily give her it. They breathed until her satisfying scream faded, and the potent ashes that remained of her sunk into the Deep Enemy.
They slunk upon the Deep Enemy, who was mewling pitifully and wasn’t getting up. They wanted the power that was now in him – They could smell it in Their nostrils and on Their tongues throbbing inside him with the Blinding Light’s own power. With him no longer fighting, They didn’t rush, slithering their necks over the Deep Enemy and savouring the stench of his weakness and near-death. Then They bit into him to feed. He screamed so much. They’d devoured Other Ones’ power before, but what They were suckling out of the Deep Enemy tasted so much better.
Then They heard a sound, a sound They couldn’t ignore, making Them drop the Deep Enemy and immediately look around for the source. Not for the first time recently, They couldn’t see Another One around that could be producing the call, but it was coming from a certain spot, and it had that same slight distortion which They were associating with the little things’ pretending mimicry. They charged towards the source, across the littered and battered shell of a hive, howling. They saw the specks of little things moving about near one of their oily birds, and They kept charging on the ground instead of breathing across the distance, wanting the little things to see Them coming and quail in the time it took Them to arrive and kill them. Before They got there, the noise was abruptly shifting to a completely different direction from the oily bird - now the noise was coming from on Their flank as They turned, seeing a small, lone ground-crawler that was scurrying back into the ruined hive, the noise moving on it. They chased it, snarling and howling. As the ground-crawler slipped into narrow passages between the hive’s structures, They took flight and breathed, until a unified breath from all three heads ended the ground-crawler’s retreat and cut off the noise.
They descended, refusing to let little things’ mimicry and the problems it caused go unpunished or unexamined. They immediately saw a single little thing, squirming on the ground near the broken ground-crawler, and They leaned their heads in closer. The little thing saw Their heads. Then the Central’s attention was diverted and the Left was quailing in naked fear as They heard his thrumming song, felt the rapidly-building heat and power battering Their scales like a great storm’s winds…