LIVING STUMPS!
... Said him! Can you believe that!
Laugh all you want. You wanted to know, right?
>Ian slammed his glass on the table, unamused. He had that conversation maybe ten times by now<
Sure, sure, I won't interrupt you anymore. Go on, "kindless orphan".
You ever seen a real tree? Like the ones, the old ones near the central plaza. By the great elevator.
Yeah, I have. Majestic, aren't they?
Like that. Rough, not scaley, not silky, nor armored. Like a thick, impossibly flexible hide is what they wear, or are made out of. I've hear rumors they don't need that sort of thing. Clothes. Though they have innovated on a few pieces, I'm sure. Who wouldn't like to be tougher?
That still doesn't help it, 'runner'.
>Ian gulped down his last glass, and took a moment to chew on the small fruit pinned on the glass<
The one I saw at Niniveh. Must have been like two-eighty or three. About two storage units tall, can you picture that?
And one third as thick. Like a tree. Standing on its many roots.
Those damn legs, you can't even keep up with them when they move, as if gliding over the floor, without friction. Long, and rough.
The body is a little skinnier than what it initially looks like up close. They have wings, but they stay folded against their body like a tight cape.
Like I said. A walking, living tree stump.
Wings eh? Like a bird? Or a K'yen?
>Ian scoffed< Bird... Worse. Too many wings to count, They show too little, and I don't like to imagine what it would take for all of them wings to open up. >he pushed to empty glass aside< Virgil, let's call him that, it's complicated to explain.
He needed only two to glide, but those two wings made him look the size of a starfighter. Burning orange bright scales, I'm not sure what kind of fucked up chemistry or optics is happening, but it hurts.
Hurts?
It physically HURTS. Your eyes. Your mind. Their presence is soul searing and eye-bleaching. He never opened his wings towards me, only towards THAT thing after us. But I could feel it. Like the scale patterns on it were a window to another dimension, clipped into reality like a poorly edited movie.
I've heard about those damn wings from another hunter like you, who heard it from a target who was almost killed by one. "It's like staring into the naked face of God... or the Devil."
For lack of a better word, I'd like to say its panic, but I'm also trying to be very rational about it.
Maybe we shouldn't.
Now its getting interesting, runner.
It is not! No one should... I was lucky to be not the one in Virgil's path. Not the one he actually wanted to burn with his heat. Searing heat. Body heat. Like a pot of molten lead inches from your face, even when their wings cover their bodies. Papers ignited and plants withered just from proximity, as if he sucked the life from them.. Like a being straight out of hell, or heavens burning all impurity...
Their faces, triangular, like someone glued a clam or mollusk to the top of a column. Needlessly small eyes, more like needle holes for light sensing, inexpressive. Invisible mouth, or more like a beak that clacks and roars when it feels like actually making a sound.
Atop it, ribbons, like thin tentacles with a similar material that of the wing scales, like they are crowned by fire at all times... Virgil used one of those ribbons for illumination once, so I at least know they need light like us, but they are able to make their own.
It makes me wonder if they don't come from somewhere dark.
Perhaps. It does absurd me, though, that they have considered the near extinction of the Arrene a reasonable argument for a "Draw..."
What did the Arrene have or say to them? I can't think of a possible solution that could actually work. They have so little to lose with it, from what we know. Are they playing along? I don't know.
And I don't wanna know...
Are you Happy?
More like amused... You earned it. Next one is for him!
- M.O. Valent, 30/07/2025
