Searing 3, 122
Ecith does not have a lot of scientists in the modern meaning of the word, but it does have a significant population who observe the growth and changes of the land and inhabitants over the centuries. Among such, it is consensus that the extraordinary biodiversity of the continent stems in large part from two factors: the rapid growth and reproduction of many organisms and the vast quantities of elemental aether.
In such an environment, evolutionary pressures create many niche predators, hyperspecialized to take advantage of aspects of their prey which will make them extremely effective against specific types of food.
And so, it follows, some–blessedly rare–predators have evolved specifically to hunt intelligent prey.
One of those predators is the liar-beast.
Dear Carina,
Per my promise to regularly write, I am composing this missive. However, I am afraid that I must invoke a peculiar loophole; I do not wish to speak of what I saw in the jungle today, and I am under no obligation to write further. It is unlikely that I will wish to speak of it in the future. It is better that we do not take some things back with us.
Love,
Imogen Ward
Things were not going well for Imogen Ward.
It had become quickly apparent that the pain in her right arm from being tossed by the monster yesterday was indeed something serious. She couldn’t feel any break, but she wasn’t a doctor, so she bound the limb and prayed that no more giant lizards showed their faces.
That wasn’t the only bad news, though. While she camped, something had found her rations and stolen a significant portion. Furthermore, the ointment she was using for the bug bites was rapidly running out; she could not have imagined before entering the jungle just how much of it she was going to use.
Thankfully, sleep had done a lot to recover her aether after the struggle yesterday. Given how powerful the monster’s sonic attack had been, she had worried that perhaps her Pact Weapons (and, in turn, her own spirit) had taken long-term damage. But as the sun graced the morning sky, Imogen could detect no signs of serious overstepping. That was good news- with her right arm potentially out of commission, she was going to need to rely even more heavily on her Reaving if another beast attacked.
If the past few days had been torture, however, this one was strangely calm. The bugs were still there, of course, but she didn’t see any of the enormous phages which had haunted her trip. Minutes of daylight turned to hours, but not a single colossal beast or horde of golden lemurs showed their faces.
Her progress remained slow, however; as the day drew past, an ache developed in her side, and her legs seemed to grow heavier faster than before. Exactly what it was, she couldn’t say; perhaps just bruising, perhaps something more dangerous. Either way, even the strongest will could only ignore an internal injury for so long before they were forced to rest.
Begrudgingly, Imogen made her next camp before the sunset had even come, kindling a fire from the nimbus of her sword. After she set up camp and finished eating, she sat down, lying back against a mossy tree to rest. Though she didn’t intend to sleep, it wasn’t long before she dozed off regardless.
Eyes closed and unconscious, Imogen did not notice as the sun sank again below the horizon, and the shadows crept up from their umbral hideaways on the forest floor to darken the trees.
And in that darkness, something opened its eyes, looking to her distant fire.
Imogen awoke suddenly with a jolt. A deep, instinctive alarm.
The fire had nearly died, with only a few flickering tongues and embers to light the Sunsinger’s campsite. Unthinking, Imogen called forth her sword to rekindle the flames- only to stop, staring, as the argent light momentarily illuminated something tall and dark, moving out of her light before she could get a good look at it.
”Wh-”
“Good evening.”
Imogen’s scales quivered, her skin spasming slightly as barely-contained adrenalin through her veins. The voice which issued from the jungle was low, and clear, but too breathy and long, and just a bit wrong, as though the mouth the words were coming through had to chew on them to get them into the right shapes.
”Who is there?” She lifted her sword to expand the small ring of light around herself, but the shadows at the edge of the campsite remained unperturbed.
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Let's talk about you, Imogen. About your little pleasure trip into the jungle, and why you shouldn’t have come here, and what you’re going to do about it.”
If Imogen had been alarmed before, the sound of her name was almost panic-inducing. Who knew her name, all the way out here? Had someone followed her all the way from the city?
“You said it yourself, didn’t you? In your little lie meant for your best friend? As soon as the lemurs took your book, you should have turned around. That was a gift, Imogen. A gift from the gods of this land- a reason to turn around, a salve to your insane pride.”
”What the fuck is this?” This was making less and less sense. She hadn’t sent any of her letters home yet- it wasn’t as though the jungle was filled with wandering couriers. Everything the voice said hit home, but… who the fuck would know that she had been thinking that?
“You don’t need to ask any questions. You already knew alllll of this. And you know, by now, that you’re not going to leave this jungle alive. All that’s left to do is decide how to die.”
”...is that some kind of threat? You followed me all the way from Drathera to kill me?”
The breathing came heavier, as though the notion of killing Imogen excited the speaker. “No, you came all the way from Drathera to kill yourself. You won’t make it back if you turn around, and even if you reach the river alive, you can’t row one-armed for days.”
Rationally, it made little sense to argue with the voice–it plainly did not have her best intentions at heart–but Imogen found herself stung by the logic. ”The rivers of Ecith are well-traveled. I’ll run into someone.” She closed her eyes, trying to pinpoint the direction the voice was coming from.
“Admitting that you need help? Well, unfortunately sometimes late is no better than never, Imogen. You already know that the rivers are just as dangerous to an injured girl as the road. You’ll float, sun-dazed and insensate, until one monster or another breaks you in two. Crunch, crunch, and that’s the end.”
Obviously, the thought had crossed her mind. If her condition deteriorated any further, she’d be helpless on the water, unable to do better than pray that the next thing to find her was Orkhan.
“And even then, what if they are? You saw what happened to that man at the docks, Imogen. What do you think they might do to a helpless, uninked foreigner?”
Imogen’s eyes snapped open.
The liar beast paced slowly in a circle beyond the edge of the light, its nose flaring as it kept the Orkhan’s smell fresh. Its long, pointed tongue worked across its teeth, deftly darting between them as it worked its mouth to mimic common-speech.
In distant times, when the first Orkhan encountered the first liar beasts, they thought the monsters might be gods. The liar beasts knew everything. The liar beasts wielded the truth with such a terrible deftness that more than one Ork died begging Raxen for mercy. The liar beasts cut through all defenses.
It came as something of a shock, later, when the dragons determined that liar beasts aren’t even sentient.
”That… isn’t possible. You can’t have seen that.” Imogen had docked weeks ago, and the only people who had seen her watch a man be beaten bloody by an Orkhan woman were Jarn'uv and some random people from Sangen.
“The only thing you’re doing right now, Imogen Ward, is cowering. Cowering behind your one, dinky little magic. Cowering behind the fire the Sunsingers rightly said you weren’t ready for. Is that your plan to deal with the whole of Ecith? Summon up a flaming weapon and hide behind it, again and again? It’s only worked once so far, and you must have noticed that you can’t survive another success like yesterday’s.”
Imogen shook her head, but it wasn’t quite in denial of the words. That one was really impossible. Her initiation had been years past, on a different continent entirely. Nobody knew all of this about her!
…
Well, that wasn’t true.
”Who are you?” Imogen demanded again. When the darkness did not answer immediately, she followed up: ”Are you… me?”
The first clue was that liar beasts never attack groups of people. They would attack a man with his animals, even very clever animals, but they would not attack two men. Or a man and a child. Or two children. It was very important to their patterns that they get a target with no other sentient life nearby.
It was by directed study that the dragons had discovered that they would also flee as soon as a second person got within a few hundred meters. In fact, they would stop talking instantly. But why?
Simple. Liar beasts are clever animals, but nothing more than that. Their trick, the thing they evolved to give them an edge, was complex in function but simple in execution: they could mirror the consciousness of intelligent entities nearby. Like a funhouse mirror, it was distorted, suicidal, and would focus only on trying to hurt the mind which it reflected. This organ had no real connection to the liar beast’s mind- all it could do was talk, encouraging itself to abandon safety and perish.
But such a complex organ was imperfect in a lot of ways. With two sentiences to reflect, it would be flooded with useless, contradictory data, incoherent babble. And when the victim came to understand that the liar beast was just throwing their own fears in their faces-
There was a pause.
“Perhaps so.” the voice said, casually, “And consequently, the realization that you are living on borrowed time is also your own. You remember what your uncle always told you, surely? If you’re going to die, you should at least make a real go of it.”
”He did say that,” Imogen admitted, her voice gaining strength. She might not understand how she was talking to herself, but the uncertainty had been worse. After all, if there was anyone she could come out ahead of in conversation, it ought to be herself. ”But I’m not at all convinced I’m going to die.”
“Really? Why wait to find out, Imogen? What happens if you do survive, you get to go to some village in the middle of nowhere, buy daddy’s special treasure that he hasn’t even bothered to talk to you about, and go back to spend the rest of your life cleaning floors and standing guard outside of safe houses?”
”That might have been too many jabs in one sentence.” Not that they didn’t sting, just a bit.
The liar beast didn’t rely on insulting prey to death, of course. That did happen, from time to time, but the vast majority of its kills were about distraction more than anything else. Even once a victim understood, in some fashion, what was going on, it’s hard to ignore your own insecurities. All it needed to do was wait for the Orkhan woman to grow too riled or too calm while she traded barbs, and it could strike like lightning.
“More jokes? Yes, that’s what you were taught. Make jokes in a bad spot, keep your spirits up. The jokes don’t change the fact that you’re running out of time in the middle of the jungle, and the only person responsible is you.”
”You think death’s a heavy price? Please, you saw what they were charging at the trading post.”
“Another joke, because you know the truth. The Sunsingers beat that much into you, surely? You can act flip and lie to the world about your own mistakes, but you can’t fool yourself.”
This was getting nowhere, and she was, predictably, very good at getting on her own nerves. She wanted to keep it talking, to identify exactly where “she” was… but the voice was coming from different directions. Was it circling her? Did it even have a body?
Yes, it must- she remembered the flash of skin and fur she’d seen when she first summoned her sword. It feared the light, then.
“And as for Carina-”
Imogen conjured her partisan, the golden spear forming in a flash, and hurled it at the voice. The fire-limned spear flew true, and she caught a glimpse of a tall, lanky creature dashing out of the way, back into the darkness.
”Almost got you.” Imogen called, although it had dodged her cast pretty convincingly. She recalled the spear to hand, and it sailed gracefully back from the road.
There was one more way she might be able to get this fucking thing, but she deliberately pushed it from her mind. No way to tell how complete an access this monster had to her thoughts.
“Altogether, it might be safest for her if you don’t come back. You’re a liability to the Railrunners; you were discovered three times in a month when you set foot in Kalzasi, and this new Kelgarde woman isn’t like her predecessor. Carina’s smart, stealthy, and good at improvisation. She could make it if you weren’t playing the albatross on her neck.”
”Yeah, well…” No ready comeback for that one.
“And the Railrunners, they assign you to do things which might get someone killed. That’s fair, that’s what you signed up for. But if she’s got to do them too, well. All you’ve got to do is mess up once, and now you have two deaths on your hands.”
Imogen stared at the fire, silently. The light from her Pact Weapons seemed to be getting dimmer. Were they getting dimmer? Or was that just her imagination?
“And the Railrunners have her doing important, safe work, except where you and Gerhard come in. And then, suddenly, it’s dangerous. You remember the Warrens, don’t you? Do you think she’s ever been closer to death than while in your ostensible protection?”
The voice was getting closer as the light from Imogen’s weapons receded. As she thought about how she had failed her best friend, time and again, they faded until they were barely glints of flame in the darkness. Imogen could see outlines of the thing as it stalked slowly into her camp.
Imogen waited, alone with her own thoughts.
“And,” the voice said, so close that she could feel its hot breath, “It isn’t as though she l-”
Imogen’s spear erupted into flame again, casting the monster into stark relief as she rammed the weapon directly into the monster’s sternum. The attack cut the creature off, and it screamed, issuing forth as several tones–both inhumanly high and low–all at once.
”Got you, fucker.” Imogen hissed, twisting the spear. The monster stumbled backwards, pulling away from the weapon, and then bounded off into the night. She could hear it crash into one tree, and then another, as it sought to get away as quickly as possible.
The Sunsinger glared into the dark night after it, and spit into the embers of her campfire.
Ecith does not have a lot of scientists in the modern meaning of the word, but it does have a significant population who observe the growth and changes of the land and inhabitants over the centuries. Among such, it is consensus that the extraordinary biodiversity of the continent stems in large part from two factors: the rapid growth and reproduction of many organisms and the vast quantities of elemental aether.
In such an environment, evolutionary pressures create many niche predators, hyperspecialized to take advantage of aspects of their prey which will make them extremely effective against specific types of food.
And so, it follows, some–blessedly rare–predators have evolved specifically to hunt intelligent prey.
One of those predators is the liar-beast.
Searing 3, 122
Dear Carina,
Per my promise to regularly write, I am composing this missive. However, I am afraid that I must invoke a peculiar loophole; I do not wish to speak of what I saw in the jungle today, and I am under no obligation to write further. It is unlikely that I will wish to speak of it in the future. It is better that we do not take some things back with us.
Love,
Imogen Ward
Things were not going well for Imogen Ward.
It had become quickly apparent that the pain in her right arm from being tossed by the monster yesterday was indeed something serious. She couldn’t feel any break, but she wasn’t a doctor, so she bound the limb and prayed that no more giant lizards showed their faces.
That wasn’t the only bad news, though. While she camped, something had found her rations and stolen a significant portion. Furthermore, the ointment she was using for the bug bites was rapidly running out; she could not have imagined before entering the jungle just how much of it she was going to use.
Thankfully, sleep had done a lot to recover her aether after the struggle yesterday. Given how powerful the monster’s sonic attack had been, she had worried that perhaps her Pact Weapons (and, in turn, her own spirit) had taken long-term damage. But as the sun graced the morning sky, Imogen could detect no signs of serious overstepping. That was good news- with her right arm potentially out of commission, she was going to need to rely even more heavily on her Reaving if another beast attacked.
~~~
If the past few days had been torture, however, this one was strangely calm. The bugs were still there, of course, but she didn’t see any of the enormous phages which had haunted her trip. Minutes of daylight turned to hours, but not a single colossal beast or horde of golden lemurs showed their faces.
Her progress remained slow, however; as the day drew past, an ache developed in her side, and her legs seemed to grow heavier faster than before. Exactly what it was, she couldn’t say; perhaps just bruising, perhaps something more dangerous. Either way, even the strongest will could only ignore an internal injury for so long before they were forced to rest.
Begrudgingly, Imogen made her next camp before the sunset had even come, kindling a fire from the nimbus of her sword. After she set up camp and finished eating, she sat down, lying back against a mossy tree to rest. Though she didn’t intend to sleep, it wasn’t long before she dozed off regardless.
Eyes closed and unconscious, Imogen did not notice as the sun sank again below the horizon, and the shadows crept up from their umbral hideaways on the forest floor to darken the trees.
And in that darkness, something opened its eyes, looking to her distant fire.
~~~
Imogen awoke suddenly with a jolt. A deep, instinctive alarm.
The fire had nearly died, with only a few flickering tongues and embers to light the Sunsinger’s campsite. Unthinking, Imogen called forth her sword to rekindle the flames- only to stop, staring, as the argent light momentarily illuminated something tall and dark, moving out of her light before she could get a good look at it.
”Wh-”
“Good evening.”
Imogen’s scales quivered, her skin spasming slightly as barely-contained adrenalin through her veins. The voice which issued from the jungle was low, and clear, but too breathy and long, and just a bit wrong, as though the mouth the words were coming through had to chew on them to get them into the right shapes.
”Who is there?” She lifted her sword to expand the small ring of light around herself, but the shadows at the edge of the campsite remained unperturbed.
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Let's talk about you, Imogen. About your little pleasure trip into the jungle, and why you shouldn’t have come here, and what you’re going to do about it.”
If Imogen had been alarmed before, the sound of her name was almost panic-inducing. Who knew her name, all the way out here? Had someone followed her all the way from the city?
“You said it yourself, didn’t you? In your little lie meant for your best friend? As soon as the lemurs took your book, you should have turned around. That was a gift, Imogen. A gift from the gods of this land- a reason to turn around, a salve to your insane pride.”
”What the fuck is this?” This was making less and less sense. She hadn’t sent any of her letters home yet- it wasn’t as though the jungle was filled with wandering couriers. Everything the voice said hit home, but… who the fuck would know that she had been thinking that?
“You don’t need to ask any questions. You already knew alllll of this. And you know, by now, that you’re not going to leave this jungle alive. All that’s left to do is decide how to die.”
”...is that some kind of threat? You followed me all the way from Drathera to kill me?”
The breathing came heavier, as though the notion of killing Imogen excited the speaker. “No, you came all the way from Drathera to kill yourself. You won’t make it back if you turn around, and even if you reach the river alive, you can’t row one-armed for days.”
Rationally, it made little sense to argue with the voice–it plainly did not have her best intentions at heart–but Imogen found herself stung by the logic. ”The rivers of Ecith are well-traveled. I’ll run into someone.” She closed her eyes, trying to pinpoint the direction the voice was coming from.
“Admitting that you need help? Well, unfortunately sometimes late is no better than never, Imogen. You already know that the rivers are just as dangerous to an injured girl as the road. You’ll float, sun-dazed and insensate, until one monster or another breaks you in two. Crunch, crunch, and that’s the end.”
Obviously, the thought had crossed her mind. If her condition deteriorated any further, she’d be helpless on the water, unable to do better than pray that the next thing to find her was Orkhan.
“And even then, what if they are? You saw what happened to that man at the docks, Imogen. What do you think they might do to a helpless, uninked foreigner?”
Imogen’s eyes snapped open.
~~~
The liar beast paced slowly in a circle beyond the edge of the light, its nose flaring as it kept the Orkhan’s smell fresh. Its long, pointed tongue worked across its teeth, deftly darting between them as it worked its mouth to mimic common-speech.
In distant times, when the first Orkhan encountered the first liar beasts, they thought the monsters might be gods. The liar beasts knew everything. The liar beasts wielded the truth with such a terrible deftness that more than one Ork died begging Raxen for mercy. The liar beasts cut through all defenses.
It came as something of a shock, later, when the dragons determined that liar beasts aren’t even sentient.
~~~
”That… isn’t possible. You can’t have seen that.” Imogen had docked weeks ago, and the only people who had seen her watch a man be beaten bloody by an Orkhan woman were Jarn'uv and some random people from Sangen.
“The only thing you’re doing right now, Imogen Ward, is cowering. Cowering behind your one, dinky little magic. Cowering behind the fire the Sunsingers rightly said you weren’t ready for. Is that your plan to deal with the whole of Ecith? Summon up a flaming weapon and hide behind it, again and again? It’s only worked once so far, and you must have noticed that you can’t survive another success like yesterday’s.”
Imogen shook her head, but it wasn’t quite in denial of the words. That one was really impossible. Her initiation had been years past, on a different continent entirely. Nobody knew all of this about her!
…
Well, that wasn’t true.
”Who are you?” Imogen demanded again. When the darkness did not answer immediately, she followed up: ”Are you… me?”
~~~
The first clue was that liar beasts never attack groups of people. They would attack a man with his animals, even very clever animals, but they would not attack two men. Or a man and a child. Or two children. It was very important to their patterns that they get a target with no other sentient life nearby.
It was by directed study that the dragons had discovered that they would also flee as soon as a second person got within a few hundred meters. In fact, they would stop talking instantly. But why?
Simple. Liar beasts are clever animals, but nothing more than that. Their trick, the thing they evolved to give them an edge, was complex in function but simple in execution: they could mirror the consciousness of intelligent entities nearby. Like a funhouse mirror, it was distorted, suicidal, and would focus only on trying to hurt the mind which it reflected. This organ had no real connection to the liar beast’s mind- all it could do was talk, encouraging itself to abandon safety and perish.
But such a complex organ was imperfect in a lot of ways. With two sentiences to reflect, it would be flooded with useless, contradictory data, incoherent babble. And when the victim came to understand that the liar beast was just throwing their own fears in their faces-
~~~
There was a pause.
“Perhaps so.” the voice said, casually, “And consequently, the realization that you are living on borrowed time is also your own. You remember what your uncle always told you, surely? If you’re going to die, you should at least make a real go of it.”
”He did say that,” Imogen admitted, her voice gaining strength. She might not understand how she was talking to herself, but the uncertainty had been worse. After all, if there was anyone she could come out ahead of in conversation, it ought to be herself. ”But I’m not at all convinced I’m going to die.”
“Really? Why wait to find out, Imogen? What happens if you do survive, you get to go to some village in the middle of nowhere, buy daddy’s special treasure that he hasn’t even bothered to talk to you about, and go back to spend the rest of your life cleaning floors and standing guard outside of safe houses?”
”That might have been too many jabs in one sentence.” Not that they didn’t sting, just a bit.
~~~
The liar beast didn’t rely on insulting prey to death, of course. That did happen, from time to time, but the vast majority of its kills were about distraction more than anything else. Even once a victim understood, in some fashion, what was going on, it’s hard to ignore your own insecurities. All it needed to do was wait for the Orkhan woman to grow too riled or too calm while she traded barbs, and it could strike like lightning.
~~~
“More jokes? Yes, that’s what you were taught. Make jokes in a bad spot, keep your spirits up. The jokes don’t change the fact that you’re running out of time in the middle of the jungle, and the only person responsible is you.”
”You think death’s a heavy price? Please, you saw what they were charging at the trading post.”
“Another joke, because you know the truth. The Sunsingers beat that much into you, surely? You can act flip and lie to the world about your own mistakes, but you can’t fool yourself.”
This was getting nowhere, and she was, predictably, very good at getting on her own nerves. She wanted to keep it talking, to identify exactly where “she” was… but the voice was coming from different directions. Was it circling her? Did it even have a body?
Yes, it must- she remembered the flash of skin and fur she’d seen when she first summoned her sword. It feared the light, then.
“And as for Carina-”
Imogen conjured her partisan, the golden spear forming in a flash, and hurled it at the voice. The fire-limned spear flew true, and she caught a glimpse of a tall, lanky creature dashing out of the way, back into the darkness.
”Almost got you.” Imogen called, although it had dodged her cast pretty convincingly. She recalled the spear to hand, and it sailed gracefully back from the road.
There was one more way she might be able to get this fucking thing, but she deliberately pushed it from her mind. No way to tell how complete an access this monster had to her thoughts.
“Altogether, it might be safest for her if you don’t come back. You’re a liability to the Railrunners; you were discovered three times in a month when you set foot in Kalzasi, and this new Kelgarde woman isn’t like her predecessor. Carina’s smart, stealthy, and good at improvisation. She could make it if you weren’t playing the albatross on her neck.”
”Yeah, well…” No ready comeback for that one.
“And the Railrunners, they assign you to do things which might get someone killed. That’s fair, that’s what you signed up for. But if she’s got to do them too, well. All you’ve got to do is mess up once, and now you have two deaths on your hands.”
Imogen stared at the fire, silently. The light from her Pact Weapons seemed to be getting dimmer. Were they getting dimmer? Or was that just her imagination?
“And the Railrunners have her doing important, safe work, except where you and Gerhard come in. And then, suddenly, it’s dangerous. You remember the Warrens, don’t you? Do you think she’s ever been closer to death than while in your ostensible protection?”
The voice was getting closer as the light from Imogen’s weapons receded. As she thought about how she had failed her best friend, time and again, they faded until they were barely glints of flame in the darkness. Imogen could see outlines of the thing as it stalked slowly into her camp.
Imogen waited, alone with her own thoughts.
“And,” the voice said, so close that she could feel its hot breath, “It isn’t as though she l-”
Imogen’s spear erupted into flame again, casting the monster into stark relief as she rammed the weapon directly into the monster’s sternum. The attack cut the creature off, and it screamed, issuing forth as several tones–both inhumanly high and low–all at once.
”Got you, fucker.” Imogen hissed, twisting the spear. The monster stumbled backwards, pulling away from the weapon, and then bounded off into the night. She could hear it crash into one tree, and then another, as it sought to get away as quickly as possible.
The Sunsinger glared into the dark night after it, and spit into the embers of her campfire.