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Many sleep-cycles ago, long before life came here, laid a dark and wide abyss. He was quick to change that. Where he walked, stems and leaves rose up to follow the sun. Where his dung became manure, roots reached their tendrils into the ground. The bird songs and small beasts came after that.
All was good then. Balance had been strung through the realm’s marrow.
But as he wakes now, everything stinks.
Something contaminates the soil, something cold. A discordant humming noise permeates his once-peaceful cave. As he extends his limbs a cold web presses him down. He growls, growing angry as he tries to stand.
He looks at his cave’s invader. A ghastly gray, metal snake curves through his den. It makes him ache. Now he wants it gone. He swings his tusks up in fury, slashing through the thin skin and eliciting lights to flash from the immobile metal snake. Tiny bipedal forms tumble and scurry about inside the snake. The Newcomers. Once they were with him, now they have become poison in his den.
His fury rising, he stands to his full height on all four legs and shakes out his fur as pellets rain down from the metal snake. He rears up, swatting the tiny invaders that spill out of the big serpentine form. Roaring, he lunges and pierces the cold invader again. As its entrails spill out onto the stone it fights back with fire.
But this is no ordinary flame that lashes at him. It emits poison that spreads through the air. He screams and swats his claws at the fire, but fails to drive it back. The tongues of fire catch his fur and enrage him further.
He bellows his umbrage and throws himself at the metal snake, tearing the hideous thing down and ripping its toxic insides apart with his claws. The heat of the fire clings to his fur, but it does not sting him. Its devastation shakes his cave and fills it with smoke and ash. Flames flicker and shadows dance across the rocky surfaces as he discards the remnants of the twisted metal snake. He charges out of the entrance as the newcomers scatter.
The discordant hum vanishes. Now he hears a command from another sector of the world. It comes from a king, but not the king he once knew. The old king has been lost in the ocean of time, drowned by its currents. A new king rises, echoing with faded whispers of the past. He recalls its voice from the howling winds of the last long storm. This king is war made flesh. War is its command. He must obey.
Obey, or negotiate with death.
He strides on all fours over his forest. Once filled with life, its breath is choked and its face is scored with deep gashes. The newcomers he knew are gone. Replacing them are those who wish to take from his territory. Perhaps they are the spawn of the new king, bringing war and pestilence to his realm. He won’t tear his own jungle asunder, no matter which king commands it.
Instead he travels out of his territory toward the nearest nest of newcomers. The un-domain, separate from his forest, thrums with the tempest of strange life. He makes his way toward it, intending to tear it asunder. The hot cries drive him on and responses come from all corners of the world. The Others, some old and some young, raise their howls in obedience to the new king.
The sun remains high in the sky as he reaches the buzzing hives and begins his work. He swipes his tusks through the first hive, causing pieces of it to rain down onto the hardened stone. His limbs tremble, but stand strong with resolve. Pellets pepper him from the ground as he continues his toil. Raising up, he drives his tusks into the ground, piercing the small silver trails. Cracks appear and widen, tearing the trails apart.
The rest of the sun-cycle becomes a whorling mess of gouged stone and toxic air. He tastes the venom of the new king’s commands as it moves with another by its side. There is nothing to be done but continue the work. All around him, the tiny newcomers die. His ivory tusks strike another hive, collapsing it and wiping out another swarm of newcomers.
Extinction-fire flares deep in his chest as the king’s tempest engulfs numerous territories in its conquest. Lifeforms scream their death rattles from oceans, forests, and deserts across the world. It is all to the delight of the new king. The distant thunderheads flow freely, pooling in places they shouldn’t. It is only a matter of time before they reach his forest. Still, there is nothing to be done.
Out there, an Other makes a challenging cry. He halts. Who might rise against the king? The voice that calls is strange, unknown to him. Still he listens. The new king responds to the challenge, its breath promising wrath against any who stand against it.
He moves toward the edge of the hives. From what he has seen before, he understands the battle that will happen next. One will stand and one will fall.