Chapter 1: Chapter 1 – Tree of Light

Today was the day it would finally happen.

She could feel the coming of the storm. And soon, for the first and perhaps only time in her life, she would see it.

Or at least, so Mika prayed as she knelt in the darkness before her altar. The crystal clusters that grew from its surface glowed a faint lavender, their light too weak to illuminate anything beyond themselves. Her devotions complete, she sat for a moment in silence—paying heed to the song of the sacred depths. This evening it was the fluttering of moth’s wings, soft and frantic. And of course, the ever-present drip drip drip of water from the ceiling into the basin carved at the altar’s heart.

She drew in a great breath of incensed air and opened her eyes. Then, dipping a claw into the water, Mika traced the sign of the DeepMother over her breast. Finally, she stood and plucked one of the opalescent mushrooms from the abundance which grew from the walls. As she popped it into her mouth, it burst—silky-soft and faintly sweet—across her tongue.

“Mikanasha!”

Her keeper’s plump face appeared in the circle of flickering light overheard, down-turned ears quivering with nerves and narrowed pupils going wide as they adjusted to the darkness of the pit. A few curls of her silver-green hair fell forward from her usually meticulous bun.

“I’ll be right up, Ysski,” Mika replied.

“You must leave now, if you’re to leave at all,” warned her elder, already stepping out of view.

The princess withheld her annoyance as best she could as she climbed the ladder up to the main level of her master chamber. The poor woman was only seeing to her duty, after all—and Mika never quite made it easy.

“You have three hours exactly before you must be back here,” she said, thrusting a ceramic thermos into Mika’s hands. “Not before you turn back, but before you must be back.”

“I understand, Aba Ysski,” said Mika, looping the strap of the thermos over her shoulder. “Thank you. ” She hummed for Ixos, and he awoke. The crystal in his sigilic etchings glowed to life, and the stone construct lifted into the air to hover at her shoulder. Snatching up her hip bag, she tied it on as she made for the door.

“Your parents will have my hide if you’re not back on time!” Ysski called after her as Mika hurried down the hall, scrunching her nose. Leave it to her to know just what to say.

Hopping the main lift to the warren’s upmost level, the princess burst into the open air of UvRaska Caverns. It smelled much as it always did, a scent so familiar she hardly noticed it much of the time. The distinctive, almost floral tang of skyrstone, the mineral richness of wet earth. The sweet pungenace of fungal blooms. She wondered if UvSkorra would smell the same.

Probably not.

The Serpent Line was crowded with commuters, of course. Pair after pair of luminescent eyes fixed upon her face, and Mika drew up her hood as she turned to stare out the window.

Curving towers, sprawling warrens, raised canals and terraced gardens streaked past, the city lights smearing into whisps of pastel color against the darkness of stone and growth.

She drank it all in, grateful for the chance and even more so for its distraction. She was out for more than just the final juant through town that she’d begged of Ysska, of course. But if anyone had known her true destination, she’d never have been allowed to leave.

Stepping off the hovertrain, Mika hummed another command and Ixos dipped down beside her. She seated herself upon his curved back, and off they rode through Ischka District. She hadn’t the power to push him to great speeds, but it was still faster than walking.

The neighborhood was sparsely populated, filled largely with storehouses and somewhat dilapidated, half-occupied warrens. Avoiding what few people there were, they kept as brisk a pace as they could and made for the western cavern wall at its outskirts.

There, between two old storehouses, a crevasse opened at the base of the stone. It was so thick with overgrown shadowwort as to be barely navigable, and it was no wonder this sector’s Sentinal squated dusty and disused at its post. It was likely that not a soul had bothered to sing it awake in years.

Sliding off of Ixos, Mika squeezed her way through the dense clusters of shoulder-high fungus and up the lightless tunnel. Trilling at intervals, she pricked her ears as she discerned what lay ahead. Should have bound my hair up better, she grumbled to herself as a stray lock caught in a lichen branch for what seemed the thousandth time. With each heartbeat, her anticipation and anxiety grew. It’s taking so much longer to get there than I remembered.

But with her next trill, she heard it—the second-to-last bend before the tunnel’s culmination. Her heart swelled and she pushed faster forward, leaving a wake of ravaged fungal brush behind her. Ixos whirred and chirped, struggling to keep up. Rounding the final curve, Mika caught her first glimpse of sunlight—bright and rosy blush. Frowning, she pulled her goggles down over her eyes. The smoky crystal soothed the sting.

If it’s that light out, perhaps I was wrong.

But no, when she reached the tunnel’s tiny opening, she peered out to find the sun low in the sky beneath a mountain of cloud that spanned from horizon to horizon. Or at least, what she could see of the horizon. The view was bordered to the north and south by the black, toothy peaks of the Cruxjaw. And throughout the vast canyon between them and spilling all the way to the edge of the sky was the Rooted Sea. Its canopy churned and whispered as the wind whipped its branches, and through the film of the Boundary, Mika caught the scent of a storm.

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She’d only ever smelled it once before, but the memory never faded. Her entire body tensed, her heart seeming to miss a beat.

It’s only a matter of time now.

Forcing herself to relax, Mika pulled the thermos from her shoulder and settled in to wait. With the first sip of the nutty elixir she hummed approvingly— Ysski had brewed it extra strong. Bless her heart.

As she sipped her kavka, she stared through the iridescence of the Boundary and imagined what it would be like to step past it—or even just to stick her head through it. To breathe that outside air into her lungs unfiltered and unfettered, to taste the storm in the sky.

But even a lungful of fresh Overworld air wasn’t worth alerting the Core of a breach and sending the whole city into an uproar.

Who cares, though? A part of herself whispered, a part she usually tried to ignore. What are they going to do, punish me? She laughed bitterly to herself at that. They’re already sending me away…what worse could they do?

The moments crawled past and grew long, until Mika found herself whispering a prayer over and over again beneath her breath.

Please. Please. Please strike soon. Please strike soon.

Tears stung her eyes as it grew ever more likely that she would be forced to leave without ever having seen it. But then the scent of storm intensified. And in the distance, the landscape darkened as rain sheeted from the clouds, blowing ever closer. The sun slipped beneath the edge of the world and was gone.

And then she heard it—the, great low rumbling that she knew must be thunder. Her heart leapt like a frog trapped in her chest, ears perking forward just as a brilliant light rent the sky.

It was so beautiful her soul sang at the sight of it. A great branching tree of pure light—white at the core with a violet glow—that stretched from sky to Rooted Sea.

Lightning.

She was grateful for her goggles, for without them her eyes would have paid a painful price. Behind her, Ixos chirped and whirred, crystal inlays flaring bright as he drank of the excess energy flooding the air.

In less than a heartbeat, the tree was gone.

With bated breath she waited for another roll of thunder, another glorious flash, teeth nearly piercing her lip in her fervor. She waited until she couldn’t wait any longer. Until she had to turn back.

And as she did, the sky issued a growl so deep she nearly lost her footing. Spinning on her heel she caught it just in time—a second great and glowing tree, this one striking much closer. Ixos danced and spun, beside himself with the feast. Mika grinned so wide her face hurt, and didn’t stop grinning until she’d nearly reached the tunnel’s other end again.

But as she brushed past the last bloom of shadowwort and out into the main cavern, the princess froze in her tracks. Something was wrong. Very, very wrong. Her ears came up and forward, catching distant screams and the thunderous footsteps of Sentinals. There were people out in the streets, some of them panicking, most of them talking. Leaping onto Ixos’ back once more, she sped up to the nearest group.

“Excuse me, what—“

There was a rapid pounding of feet, a crash, and then the most horrible sound Mika had ever heard rent the air. An echoing, thousand-layered shriek of horror, pain, and rage all at once—the emotions so visceral they sank into her blood, her bones, became hers. And then it appeared—surging around the corner of a storehouse and down the street, straight for them. At the very sight Mika’s bowels turned to water and her mind rebelled, refused to make sense of what her eyes beheld.

It was many bodies, and it was one. It had hundreds of eyes, thousands—all glowing and slit-pupiled, grotesquely familiar. It had limbs that were made of entire bodies, scales made of limbs, its great axe-shaped head was itself composed of many mouthless heads. And when it opened its gaping wound of a maw to scream again, there were inside and all down its throat countless smaller mouths, all of them shrieking as one.

Everyone turned, everyone screamed, and everyone ran.

 

Including Mika.

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