For as long as Sh’khk and Zkuul could remember, they had lived in fear of the Serpent God. Now, the Serpent God was dying. Ebony Kalytrox, the black-scaled god of rock and time lay in a bleeding heap atop the mound, heaving, life slowly leaving his eyes. His hisses of pain echoed throughout the blackened valley, reverberating through their shells and shaking them to the core of their beings; the death-hisses of a god. They watched him suffer from their hut on the cliff, huddled together, unsure of what god-beast may have struck the blow.
“Hold me, Sh’khk,” Zkuul chittered.
“Of course. Whatever comes next, I will protect you,” Sh’khk brought her close, claw resting on her trembling chitin.
They were bottom-dwelling kzit — bug-folk, with hearty exoskeletons. They were the cave-borne, the wretched, the squirming, skittering insects at the taloned feet of the Serpent Gods. They were both bugs of the Ebon Crags, domain of the Black-Scaled One, whom all of the serpentkin venerated and all of the kzit cowered from.
Zkuul was born in a great brood; a single, wriggling larva among hundreds. She was a fat little grub, able to withstand the famine that came in her early youth, unlike many of her brothers and sisters. There was little remarkable about her besides the fact that she did not, in fact, die, like so many others did before she pupated and matured. This was true of her twenty-some odd surviving siblings. Her shell was hearty, as was her heart.
Sh’khk was of a different breed. She was the sole child of her mother – she had once had about seven siblings, but had killed and eaten them all as an infant, such was the way of her people. She was the child of an honored yet fading caste of hunters and warriors, and was trained in the art of the blade and the claw. Hers was a lithe and fragile shell, yet she possessed immense strength both within and without. She moved like the wind, and struck before her prey could notice.
They spent their lives in Kalyrox’s shadow; he who waited atop the ‘mount. Every so often he could cry out, and the serpentkin would flood out from the cities lining cliffs and high-crags; blades clanging against shields, voices raised in hisses of war. They would pillage and slaughter, break the shells of kzit, and take what meagre scraps they had gathered. Destitution was their only future. It was for this reason that the roundshelled and straightclawed tribes hid in the deep-dark, beneath the canyons and through the caverns.
The Barrens called to them both. Zkuul’s people were scavengers, and Sh’khk’s hunters. The caverns were dead, and had been for as long as any could remember. Though hostile, the Barrens were host to not many creatures, but enough to get by.
The two met beside the carcass of a landroach, grown fat and bloated and inevitably claimed by the march of time. Zkuul was hard at work packing clawfulls of carrion into dustworm-skin sacks when an arrow zipped past her and struck a smaller carrion-feeder at her side. Instinctually she rolled up into a dense, armored ball and cowered until the threat had passed.
It was the huntress’ humming that got her to peek out from her shell. She was like a barrenreed, so lithe she seemed ephemeral. And with her quick head turn, they had locked eyes.
A slim offering of food to Zkuul and they were talking. At first Sh’khk merely inquired if she had spotted any suitable prey recently, but, with the hunter strangely charmed by the small bug, the conversation shifted. It moved from matters of survival to matters of self,
“Where do you come from?” One asked.
“What is it like there?” The other asked in kind.
“What are your methods?”
“What do you care about?”
And they had made fast friends. The two had agreed to meet at the hammer-shaped rock formation due just east from the carcass within three days to share supplies.
More than just supplies were shared at the meeting. Stories were shared, as were hopes and dreams, fears and doubts. A pact between the scavenger and the hunter was struck then – that they would venture across the Barrens together, as partners. And so they did, often, meeting at the rock before setting off into the dust-choked wastes, where the prying eyes of the Serpent God rarely glanced.
They found many things in their travels. Crumbling hollow spires filled with artifacts, the works of those that came long before them, and statues coated so eroded and thick with dust their features could no longer be made out. They creeped through the seams of the black-scaled one’s domain, scuttling where the serpentkin’s eyes did not watch, gathering the refuse and detritus that tumbled down the cliffs from the great city above.
And they slew many monsters, too. Though little Zkuul lacked the fine claws of her partner, she was crafty, and fashioned slings from barrenreeds and projectiles from stone. No longer did Zkuul’s tribe subsist on carrion — they instead tasted fresh meat thanks to their combined efforts, and Zkuul shared her creations with Sh’khk, and by extension her tribe, to help in their hunts.
Crouched beneath a rocky outcrop beside the corpse of a rockdelver fairly slain, the two resolved that they would bring their tribes together. With the Roundshells’ numbers and tools, and the Straightclaws’ strength, they would not have to starve any longer. Perhaps they could carve a real place out in the world for themselves, and be more than mere insects.
Sh’khk held Zkuul close in her arms, their trembling shells intertwined.
“Sh’khk, I made something for you,” The small bug piped up.
“Hmm? A gift for me? You should know that Straightclaws prefer to earn our rewards.”
“It’s an important gift,” She protested. “I have it right here.”
She dug out of one of her satchels a pair of necklaces. They were simple, fashioned from tough tautgrass that grew in the deep lowlands. A fragment of a ridgeback’s shell and a chip off a cragdarter’s talon hung from each.
“Such craftsmanship…” Sh’khk murmured, lifting one of the necklaces up.
“One for you, and one for me. Shell and claw. They are to symbolize the covenant between our tribes, and all the wonderful memories we’ve made together.”
“I love them,” Sh’khk cooed. “And I love you.”
The pair crossed the barrens to return to Zkuul’s tribe with news of their new union. About halfway there, between the Roachpits and the Threshold Caverns, a deafening sound ripped all across the Ebon Crags. Kalytrox was enraged — they had no way to imagine how or why, yet his cries of fury were unmistakable. The howl of the Serpent God shook the cliffs and sent stone and rubble tumbling in mighty rockslides as the ground beneath them quaked.
When they returned to Zkuul’s home cavern, they found naught but rubble. The earthquakes had caused a cave-in. All that remained was the debris, and her brother Kluk, half-crushed beneath a boulder. All the others must have been trapped inside.
The two spent hours desperately digging, hauling boulders out of the way, straining their shells to work as hard and fast as they could, but it soon became apparent how absolute the destruction was.
The Straightclaw tribe’s doom was of a different, perhaps grislier nature. When they had returned to the moss grotto where they dwelled, they found mountains of bodies. Butchered straightclaw warriors and civilians alike, alongside the bodies of serpentkin. As Kalyrox still raged atop his mountain, it became clear that Sh’khk’s people had not been the subject of his rage. Merely collateral damage. There was no point in burying any of them, for the Straightclaws’ shells were fragile and fleeting, and would crumble to dust not long after their deaths.
Left homeless and destitute, their peoples wiped out and their dreams shattered, all the two partners had was each other. In their despair, the barrens called to them yet again, and for some time they wandered her expanse. Aimless vagabonds with nothing less to lose. It was in the dark depths of that loss that they met a strange figure.
He stood out there, in the far distance, enshrouded by the screaming winds and the blowing dust, staring up at the black sky. He could have been mistaken for a dustroach, yet his shell was rounder, his posture more dignified.
“Hello, sir?” Zkuul called out across the plateau, her words fighting against the wind to reach him.
He did not acknowledge them. As they got closer, it became apparent he was humming to himself. Without further prompting, the gazer turned to face them. His eyes were milky pools, dancing with fire and mist and time. So heavy was his gaze that it felt like an avalanche; their shells growing heavy while looking into his eyes.
“Why, hello there,” He said, his voice kindly and calm.
“What are you doing out here in this dead stretch? There is nothing for miles,” Sh’khk contended.
“I could ask the same of you, travelers, but I have a feeling I know why you’re here. You seek a new home after losing the last. Sole survivors of two kindreds, denied a future by the lords of this age.”
They were taken aback. “H-How did you know?” Zkuul stammered.
“I have a sense for these kinds of things,” He chuckled. “These lands are beautiful, are they not?” The gazer asked, looking out into the far distance.
“I hardly think so,” Sh’khk replied. “There is only death and destitution in these barrens.”
“They have a melancholic beauty. A world so vast, yet so small,” He ruminated.
“What is it that you seek, gazer?” Sh’khk asked.
“I am a Witness, and I have come to watch as the die is cast.”
With those words, he turned and started off into the distance, his many legs rolling across the rock.
“Wait! Where are you going!?” Zkuul called out.
“Perhaps we will meet again, at the crossroads of history,” He replied, his voice carried on the wind.
A mighty gust blew in, kicking up a giant cloud of dust. When it started to settle, he was gone. Only his humming still lingered in the air, carried off by the wind into the black sky.
Longer still did the pair wander aimless. Nothing in particular got them to settle down at the edge of that windy cliff-face, besides perhaps their weary legs and creaking bodies. Slowly but surely, they built a hut from the shells of slain beasts.
It was years before they bore witness to Kalytrox’s end. One moment, it had been a normal morning, when they supped upon fungal juice and ate the meats of previous hunts. The next, the Serpent God was careening into the air, and with an apocalyptic crash broke upon the rock-mound at the bottom of the valley.
The sight was unthinkable. Never before had Kalytrox shown any sign of pain. So deep and vast were his wounds that draconic blood poured in waterfalls, spilling across the landscape. A distant chorus could be heard. Strange, alien hymns which overpowered the howling of the wind and the cries of the dying god.
And then, a flash. An explosion. An apocalyptic wave of heat washed over the landscape. There was something in the sky — searing and brilliant. A beacon which turned the forever-black sky white and filled it with a fire most fierce. The kzit, who had always lived in darkness, were completely blinded, their senses overpowered by the newly born Sun’s inferno. And through the fire and the wind and the roars, they could make out words in the chorus, so powerful they breached the barrier of languages. They rattled their minds with their psychic strength.
“Velrin, O Descender,”
“Lead us to the foundation of our new world!”
There was a silhouette in the light – one with two arms, two legs, and no shell or scales to speak of. He had not claws, but hands, and with them he would build the New Gods’ grandest work.
And there on the far cliff, they glimpsed him, just for a brief moment. The Witness, staring straight at the new sun.
“So that’s how it turns out.”
The pair, and the lands, and the world were enveloped in the white.
***
Clement Radolf had been delving deep into the Gloom, those tunnels which wound deep beneath the surface of the world, for quite some time now, in search of history and fortune. The human adventurer often found himself missing the sun’s comforting light. It was easy to forget how crucial its warmth was when you were without it for so long.
His sack was heavy with plundered treasures of long dead civilizations and weapons to defend himself from the burrowing ripperpedes and cruel vyrkyn who stalked the deep tunnels.
He slid down a ledge as pebbles and dust kicked up into the air around him. He looked above himself, checking for any overlurkers that might have been clinging to the ceiling. This place seemed safe, for now.
He surveyed the area around him. Merely heaps of rubble as far as his autotorch would illuminate. One didn’t make any notable discoveries without a keen eye, though, and surely enough he spotted that one of the rock formations couldn’t have been natural.
He approached it slowly, one hand on his flintlock pistol. As he got closer, small hissing creatures skittered away or tunneled into the rock to escape. Inside, there was little of note, besides the petrified remains of some kind of vaguely humanoid bug creature.
It was clutching in one claw a petrified shell fragment and talon, while another pair rested on the ground at the husk’s side. There was an imprint upon the ground suggesting they had once been necklaces. Mere baubles, their meanings lost to history.
B.E. Summit is a writer who seeks to explore the annals of fictional histories, of rises and falls, of ruin and memory and of the people who live through those painful eras. They have years of writing experience in a variety of forms and a passion for visualizing surreal, curious worlds in hopes of sparking the imagination.
