Chapter 108

[Here it is, people.  The chapter that started as a 8k word chapter and just wouldn't stop growing.  It really should be 4 chapters or something, but never let it be said that IrateRapScallion does not listen to the people.  This chapter... kinda goes places, so I hope you're ready for some awkwardness, especially near the end.]

Bazzalth grumbled as he brought the display polyp up to his eyes, the low rumble of interest gently vibrating the walls of his lair. It had taken him days to properly design and grow a window to the world within the world, the realm of the impossibly diminutive that made up all things. He’d made one before, many centuries ago, but that one had only been able to provide a picture of the largest that this tiny world contained. He required something more capable for his current subject of study. Something much more capable.

Within moments, the bioluminescent algae along the back of the polyp began to glow, the light providing a backdrop to the black ink slowly filling the translucent film that covered the front. The ink coalesced into an image, a crystalline pattern of maddening detail. As his powerful mind slowly parsed what he saw, Bazzalth realized with dismay that the pattern appeared to be a fractal one. Would he have to delve even deeper?

No, he decided. Not for now, at least. The pattern most likely continued as it did, only smaller, for many iterations. Perhaps, it even went on forever, endlessly repeating no matter how closely you looked. Not long ago, he would have thought such a thing impossible, but back then he would have believed a lot of what this crawler’s weapon did was impossible. To think that a material existed that could take a bath in a person’s blood for a period of five days and emerge entirely unscathed! Truly fascinating!

Only two other materials could boast a similar feat, though not entirely. A person’s flesh, obviously, also could withstand the blood pumping through it. However, in truth, even it slowly broke down when faced with the unending corrosive nature of a person’s ichor. The secret was that a person’s flesh was constantly regenerating, utilizing the profound energy imparted by the liquid to continuously rebuild against the onslaught.

No, outside of this obsidian-hued crystal, only one substance could survive a person’s blood entirely unharmed. That substance floated in a vat close by, seemingly trapped indefinitely in a state of half-death. Bazzalth took another long glance at his prized specimen, as had become routine since he had retrieved her days ago. He found some irony in the fact that her body, filled with and seemingly impervious to the most destructive substance known to personkind, could be laid low by something as weak as a crawler-made blade.

And yet, though her heart no longer beat and her mind no longer fired, Pari was not yet dead.  Not by his definition of the term, at least. He’d found that the individual biochemical compartments that made up her body still seemed to function on an individual level, seemingly pulling energy from the processed blood bath in which she was suspended. But more importantly, her soul remained the vibrant blue it had always been, showing not even the slightest hint of the dead souls’ grey. While such behavior went against everything Bazzalth knew of souls from millennia of observation, the reason for such a discrepancy was plainly obvious to his eyes.

The chains.

Hundreds of ethereal chains wrapped tightly around Pari’s spirit, binding it in complex patterns, the purpose of which he could not yet discern. So tightly were they wrapped around her that they warped the soul’s form into a nightmare mockery of its normal self.

But not all of them encircled her soul. Bazzalth could find them easily, now that he’d noticed their existence. Hidden within the mass of chains were chains of a different sort, larger and sturdier than the rest. Unlike the others, these chains did not wrap around the soul but rather seemed to have embedded one end directly into it. Of the dozens of these chains, five stood out. Along these five, and these five only, flowed the energy that kept Pari’s soul alive.

One end of each and every chain, of both varieties, led away from Pari, their incorporeal forms reaching south through the wall of his cave lair and extending across this vast world to connect Pari even now to the Vile One, the most horrid of crawlers to ever exist. Not only did this foul being’s machinations dare to tamper and defile Pari’s very essence, but they also refused him his prized specimen! After all, how could he conduct proper study when such an unknown variable was constantly interfering? Bazzalth found the situation utterly intolerable, and he vowed once more that soon enough that cursed creature would not escape his wrath.

Almost by habit, he glanced at the point where the chains met the wall. Early on, he’d marked the point where they met, so he could use any deviation to track the comings and goings of the Vile One. That was how he’d known of her approach some days ago.

It rankled him that she had escaped his grasp, but such was the price of caution. He didn’t dare slay the wretch, lest it turn out that her bindings lasted beyond death. No, he had to make sure he did everything that he could to try to free Pari from the crawler’s clutches before he took the final option. Only then could he get the unsullied data he needed, make Pari a part of his hoard, and fulfill his promise.

* * *

The day’s patrol proved uneventful, just like nearly every one since the day he’d been forced to send Pari out into the world, the day when Gretiem had...

No, there was little point to reliving the events of that day again. All that really mattered was that the destruction of the crawler city to the south meant that incursions into Bazzalth’s territory had almost entirely ceased. It made him wish he could fly higher. If that were possible, he’d be able to easily see so much further and his flight speed would dramatically increase, since he wouldn’t need to navigate the mountains’ treacherous crosswinds. But alas, to fly too high was to be spotted, and still this could not be permitted. It would be wonderful, however, as the circuit would take perhaps only a third of what it took each day now, allowing him more time for what truly mattered.

Still, this patrol was nearly over. He could see the entrance to his lair one peak over, and...

What was that rock doing beside the entrance?

Having lived in the same lair for hundreds upon hundreds of years, he knew every boulder, canyon, and crevice around. No large rock, about half the size of one of his fists, had sat there when he’d left earlier that day. His powerful eyes peered through the vast distance between them and spotted something unnerving sitting atop the stone: a small, quadrupedal mechanical device.

Quickly, Bazzalth’s gaze moved from the rock to his lair. Immediately, he spotted three live souls inside. What was more, he noticed that two of them were not blue but green, the soul color of the Vile One and her minions. They had somehow infiltrated his lair during his absence!

An almost instinctual fury burst forth inside him, and he let out a roar that echoed through the mountain range. They were after his lair! His possessions! His... his Pari! Her corpse belonged to him and nobody else!

Bazzalth’s wings beat once at full power, tripling his speed in a single moment and sending him hurtling towards his lair. He would show those impertinent beings what it meant to anger a person!

The fools had not even stationed any of their usual scavenged war machines outside the entrance, instead only leaving the one atop the boulder. That paltry machine stood barely a fifth of the height of even the smallest war machines they’d thrown at him before, and it even lacked the usual pathetic weapons the others possessed. Instead, it merely had the four legs and a somewhat swollen-looking, almost bulbous body. It would not stop him.

As he neared the entrance and the rock, the machine squatted low. He eyed it with a shred of suspicion, wondering what sort of plot it would try once he got closer. What he did not expect was for it to detonate. One loud crack later, and all that remained of the machine were tiny pieces littering the ground. Little of the rock remained either, a part of him noticed with detachment.

Bazzalth had no time to care about a malfunctioning piece of ancient crawler technology. Instead, he rushed past the debris and charged into the tunnel entrance. As he barreled through, he noticed the sundered membranes that he’d used for decades to seal the passageway scattered in pieces across the tunnel floor.  Thick as his finger and grown from his own mighty and durable flesh, they would normally open much as a sphincter would to allow him through while squeezing tight for anything else, forming a near-impenetrable barrier to entry. Only another person would be strong enough to force their way past. That and, apparently, one annoyingly resilient crawler.

He knew now what he would find before he even reached his lair. The two green souls meant two invaders. With the signs he’d seen already, he knew that these two would be the servants of the Vile One: the Scavenger and the Revenant. The Vile One herself would not be here; she lacked the courage to face him, as demonstrated in their last encounter when she had immediately abandoned her underlings in a futile attempt to escape.

True enough, he found the two a moment later as he entered his lair, but that was about all that followed his expectations. Much to his surprise, the lair looked untouched. His various devices and instruments seemed intact and unmolested. Even Pari still floated within her vat.

The interlopers appeared contrary to expectations as well. Unlike the Revenant, who carried herself warily and held her reclaimed weapon guardedly in front of her, the Scavenger lounged in a wheeled metal chair, seemingly entirely unconcerned with the situation he was in. Far more importantly, Bazzalth could see no chains on either of them! They were free from the Vile One’s bindings!

Something seemed off. Very off. But Bazzalth decided he did not care; he would not miss an opportunity so fortuitous. These crawlers knew how to free Pari and he would pry the necessary information from them using whatever means necessary. He would focus on the Revenant, he decided. She had somehow survived his blood mist bomb, a weapon he’d constructed specifically to slay her. Created using a specially processed aerosol variant of his blood, the destructive power of the mist was only slightly inferior to the raw liquid. If she could survive that, then he would not have to worry about accidentally killing her before learning what he needed to know.

The Scavenger let out a weary breath, barely audible even to Bazzalth’s superlative ears. The message contained within it, however, came across loud and clear: “Before you do anything stupid, look up.”

Bazzalth almost ignored it; the audacity of a lowly crawler giving him orders would normally have been enough for him to slay the creature on the spot. But everything still felt off; these were no ordinary crawlers, and Bazzalth couldn’t quite reconcile the situation with how composed the Scavenger appeared despite Bazzalth’s immolating rage. He decided to heed the crawlers words this once. He turned his gaze toward the cave ceiling for a moment and his thoughts momentarily crashed to a halt.

Small, bulbous-bodied machines, just like the one outside, covered the surface above them—hundreds, perhaps even several thousands of them—their bodies forebodingly still. It didn’t take long for Bazzalth to realize his previous misunderstanding: that exploding machine outside the lair had not been a malfunction after all. It had been a demonstration.

Just one of these tiny machines packed enough power to destroy a rock forty times their size. If they all exploded at once...

Bazzalth did the calculations several times, utilizing knowledge built over decades of studying the rocks of these mountains, and came to the same chilling conclusion each time.

They would bring the entire mountain down upon everyone and everything here.

A bluff. It had to be. No crawler would willingly take their own life; they were far too pathetic for such an act. But... but what if this one was different?

Bazzalth had full confidence that he would survive the explosion and subsequent collapse, and his hoard—locked safely within his prodigious mind—would thusly survive unscathed as well. But what of his equipment? His research materials? His exhaustive collections of samples acquired over centuries, each carefully organized and cataloged? Their odds of survival were far less encouraging.

He would have to rebuild and regrow everything—a new lair, a new suite of instruments, and all the rest. What’s more, he’d have to explain to his sister why his old lair had been destroyed, and if she found out he’d been bested by a crawler, then the pain of losing his equipment and collections would be nothing in comparison to what she would inflict upon him. With great anger and dismay, Bazzalth realized that the crawlers had their claws around his throat, not the other way around.

“I’m glad you understand the situation,” the Scavenger wheezed. “Know that I can detonate them at any time, and they will also detonate automatically should I die. So let’s all just have a nice little talk, yeah?”

“Talk?” Bazzalth growled furiously. “Crawler invades Bazzalth’s home, threatens Bazzalth, then wants to talk?!”

“Given what happened the last two times we’ve met, I thought it wise to demonstrate enough strength that you would be forced to view us as beings worthy of respect, rather than as two conveniently delivered snacks,” came the reply. “We came here to negotiate as equals.”

The furnace within him surged into action as his outrage grew. The disrespect! These crawlers thought themselves his equal? Preposterous!

His mind raced through several battle plans, discarding most of them immediately as they wouldn’t deal with the collapsing ceiling issue. He quickly settled on a rough plan of action: first, he would swipe the Revenant to the side, sending her into the vats filled with Ichor of Life. The Ichor could destroy even souls themselves, so it would be his best chance to take her out of the equation before she could respond. What’s more, the action would take him in the same direction and bring him close to Pari’s vat, meaning he would be able to protect his most precious data source with his body when the rocks fell. The rest of the lair would be lost either way, if what the Scavenger claimed about them exploding on his death were true.

“Not enough, huh? Alright...” the Scavenger moaned.

A number of robots scurried down from the ceiling—not enough to alter the threat, sadly—and took positions around various pieces of equipment. Bazzalth’s breath caught as he noticed two climbing onto Pari’s tank. There was no realistic possibility that the child’s delicate body would survive even one of those blasts.

“Look, I don’t want to do this, so don’t make me,” the chairbound crawler hissed. “The choice is up to you. And don’t fool yourself into believing this is a bluff. I don’t have much hope for my own life as it is, and she’ll live through it. Trust me, she lives through fucking anything.”

Bazzalth could barely wrap his mind around what was happening. His mind ran through countless scenarios, but all of them ended the same way: he would lose everything.

“Ten, nine, eight, seven,” the crawler counted.

Bazzalth could see no way out. He would have to treat with these pathetic creatures to avoid disaster. The indignity of being forced to engage with crawlers on an equal footing threatened to crush his spirit. He, the superior being, lowering himself to their level! If Tavreth ever found out...

“Six, five, four,” the crawler continued.

No, he would make this quick, and she would never learn of this shameful incident. But if she did... nothing she had done to him so far would compare. The thought terrified him, almost as much as the thought of losing his entire lair.

“Three, two-”

“Bazzalth’s benevolence for such impudence is short-lived,” he rumbled, hoping to keep the panic inside him from showing. “Speak quickly.”

“About time,” the crawler grumbled. He seemed to sit a little straighter, his head held a little higher. “Alright, then... I’m dying. I want you to heal me.”

If the moment hadn’t been so serious, Bazzalth would have laughed at the absurdity of the request. A person healing a crawler? Preposterous! No person would ever do such a thing! Not for a currently living crawler, at least! He had little inclination to even consider such a request, especially after the crawler had the gall to threaten him in his own home.

Still, how was he supposed to respond? If the Scavenger was already dying, then they likely cared less about their own survival--their behavior just now corroborated this. That just made the threat above him even more real. Negotiations were so frustrating! This was why it was better to just take that which you desired through strength, as any proper person did. The process was so much simpler.

“Why would Bazzalth care to heal crawler?” he replied.

“Because I can make it worth your while,” the Scavenger told him. “I can build you machines-”

“Bazzalth has no need for crawler machines,” he growled.

“Then I’ll give you something better. How would you like to study the body of somebody from another world? This is a rare, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

Bazzalth was so thrown off by the unexpected response that he didn’t know what to say. For the first time since he’d first encountered these crawlers, he took a closer look at their souls and found many more differences than just color. While the souls of other crawlers appeared a consistent, uniform blue, these contained a multitude of greens of various shades constantly in flux. Countless eddies spun and swirled in a violent maelstrom that reminded him very much of the surfaces of certain celestial bodies he’d studied twelve hundred years ago. Normal crawler souls would pulse very slowly, almost like a heartbeat. These seemed instead to vibrate almost imperceptibly but with tremendous vigor, almost buzzing in place. But most notable was their shape. Lumpy and misshapen, the souls contained a number of grooves circling their surfaces as if they were being squeezed by invisible snakes. The size of the grooves matched those of the chains still encircling Pari’s soul.

Were these crawlers truly from another world? The idea seemed hard to believe. And yet, their souls were wholly different from the myriad he’d seen over millennia. Combine that with the abilities of the Revenant and the Vile One, both several orders of magnitude more powerful than any he’d ever witnessed before, and he found himself shockingly willing to entertain the Scavenger’s claim.

What sort of knowledge could he glean from studying such a unique specimen? The opportunity to expand his hoard with Knowledge that no other person would ever be able to obtain enticed him beyond words. He could feel the yearning roaring within him, building swiftly in strength until it threatened to overtake his reason. But no person survived their early years without learning to wrangle that urgent, ever-present need. He pushed it aside and instead focused on another problem.

“Bazzalth cannot guarantee that crawler will be healed,” he warned.

“Come now, do you think I came here by chance? I’ve seen your work. You are, without a doubt, the greatest expert in organic science on this world by an absurd margin. If anybody can figure out how to fix me, it would be you.”

That his skill in the matters of life exceeded all others did not surprise Bazzalth. After all, the competition were merely crawlers. What hope did they stand against him? Still, his abilities were not limitless. “Not all things are possible. Yet Bazzalth will be punished for failure regardless? No.”

The Scavenger let out a weak sigh, though it seemed that everything he did was weak and listless. “So you don’t want your lair blown up if you try and still fail. I guess that’s fair. But I do not feel safe here exposed and alone. If I were to remove the bombs, then there needs to be another way of ensuring my safety and your cooperation. Hmmm...”

The crawler fell silent for a moment, deep in thought.

“What about a collateral?” the Revenant chimed in, speaking for the first time.

“Yes, a great idea,” the Scavenger replied. “A collateral will do nicely.”

Bazzalth hated collaterals. Other people loved to take what was his to force him to make them things they desired. It was part of the pain of being weak, he supposed, but that didn’t make it any more pleasant.

“What would make a good collateral for us?” the crawler continued, slowly looking around the lair. Bazzalth grew stiffened as the Scavenger’s gaze fell upon a certain body. “I know! Pari would-”

“No,” Bazzalth growled immediately.

“I must insist. Pari is the only thing here valuable enough to work.”

“NO!”

“You’d rather have this whole place blown to smithereens than loan us Pari for a few weeks? Really?”

“Pari-child is priceless data! Pari-child many times more valuable than puny crawler! Bazzalth will not give Pari-child!” he shot back. The Revenant tensed, resetting her stance and glowering his way.

“Don’t talk about comparing value when you don’t even know what I can offer you,” the Scavenger replied. Unlike the Revenant, he remained entirely unconcerned. “I didn’t want to do this, but I guess you’ve forced my hand. Give us Pari and not only will I let you study my body, but I will also share with you many facts that only I know. Facts from my homeworld. Think about it. Not a single other person on this world knows what I know. This is an exclusive, once-in-a-hundred-lifetimes opportunity, and I am offering it to you just this once. Take it now or lose it forever, because if you don’t, I’ll be too dead to tell anybody anything.”

More unique knowledge? Bazzalth hoard called to him, telling him to agree, but he could not. Not if it meant exposing Pari to the Vile One again.

“Let me give you a taste,” the Scavenger said. “In my world, there is only one moon. It was created by a collision of celestial bodies that knocked off part of our world as it was still forming.”

The hoard in the back of Bazzalth’s mind reached out, seizing the new Knowledge and pulling it in with gusto to consume, process, and incorporate within itself. Then, as it always did, it came back ever hungrier with new questions, new needs. How did the lack of the two other moons affect the world’s night? Was it darker? How did that added darkness change the nature of the life living there? What about tidal patterns? Bazzalth wanted to know. His hoard yearned for it greatly... but he couldn’t let himself give in from something so simple. While interesting, this Knowledge was, in the end, quite rudimentary.

“Bazzalth is not impressed. Bazzalth doubts crawler has much to offer.”

“Is that so? Then what if I told you our people have walked on our moon? Many times, even? Don’t know how? I can tell you so much about that and more. All you need to do is agree to our offer.”

Bazzalth’s hoard writhed as it took in the new data, unable to reconcile it with other Knowledge. Nobody could travel to the moons; such a feat lied deep within the realm of impossibility. Several people had tried before, including Bazzalth himself. As one gained height, the air required to counter the world’s ceaseless downward pull grew thinner and thinner, until there was no longer enough to stay aloft. What laid beyond that was naught but emptiness, the gulf between the end of air and the moon many, many times greater than that between the end of air and the ground below. And yet, this crawler had the audacity to claim such a thing?!

But what if it were true? Would the Scavenger be stupid and foolish enough to make such an obviously false claim as proof of his value? Something told him this was not the case. As far as crawlers went, at least, this one seemed more intelligent than most, and one who, given the machines above them, understood the dangers of dealing falsely with a person. No, he had told Bazzalth this precisely because it was impossible.

Bazzalth’s hoard screeched in hunger, its need greater and more powerful than it had been in a long, long time. It gnawed at his sanity, pushing him to do something drastic, to take the crawler and tie him down and pull every last bit of Knowledge from his tiny brain. But to do so would bring a great cost, a cost he could not abide.

All he could manage to get out was a simple, pained “How!?”

“Uh uh uh, that’s confidential until you agree to our arrangement,” the snide crawler replied. “All you have to do is say yes and I’ll tell you everything I can. I’ll even draw you pictures, whatever you want.”

Bazzalth knew he had lost, his will laid low by his rampaging hoard and the cruel crawler sitting before him, but he refused to submit so easily. A person fought until they could no longer fight. If he could not stop himself, he could at least do something for his prized data.

“Bazzalth has one condition.”

“What is it?”

“Crawlers must never return Pari-child to Vile One, and must reveal how crawlers became free from Vile One’s chains.”

“Free from the Vile One? Huh? Who is the Vile... oh... oh man...” The crawler began repeatedly wheeze so hard he began to tremble. It reminded him, in a way, of the noises Pari used to make when highly amused, only far more pathetic. “The look on her face when I tell her... oh, it’s going to be priceless! Oh, she’s- URK!”

Suddenly his body began to shake harder, almost violently. The chair metal armor he wore and the chair in which he sat began to shake as well, almost as if vibrating in sympathy. Even the crawler’s soul seemed to be quaking along with the rest.

The Revenant let out what sounded like a curse, bounding over to the Scavenger and ripping off his armor as easily as if she were peeling a fruit. Her actions revealed the crawler beneath the metal, giving Bazzalth his first glimpse at the true Scavenger. What Bazzalth saw did not bode well for the Scavenger’s life. Blood covered the crawler’s face and upper body, with more leaking out with every spasm.

“Help him!” the Revenant cried out. “Help him now or it will be too late!”

She hadn’t needed to say anything; Bazzalth was already on the move. He was not losing his lair, nor such a rich data source, over such a insignificant reason. Rushing over to one of his storage units, he pulled out a small vial of holnox venom. Vial in hand, he returned to the Scavenger and swiftly picked him up, doing his best to not crush his fragile body—years of experience handling Pari and other delicate samples helped greatly in this regard. Placing him upon the examination table, Bazzalth fed the venom to his injector array, selected one of an appropriate size, and began injecting the venom in small doses around the crawler’s body.

Quickly, the Scavenger’s quaking ceased. Bazzalth monitored his condition for a moment, making sure that the crawler’s weak breathing continued.

“What did you do?” the Revenant asked, quickly and easily hopping five times her height up onto the table.

“Holnox venom,” Bazzalth replied. “Paralyzes crawlers, interferes with nervous system.”

“Won’t something like that kill him?”

“Only if too much injected, but Bazzalth did not,” he told the worried crawler. “Scavenger-crawler is correct. Bazzalth is greatest in world. Bazzalth will fix crawler, then crawler will tell Bazzalth everything.”

* * *

“Hmmmm...” Bazzalth rumbled as he studied the model of the rocket that has supposedly carried living crawlers to a moon. A tiny model of a crawler stood beside the rocket’s base, putting into perspective the truly gargantuan size of the construct. Were a similar rocket designed for a person, it would easily surpass the height of the mountain within which he resided.

Bazzalth found it almost hard to believe that crawlers could be capable of building something so large from just metal. Stone, sure. He knew how certain crawlers could grow stone over time until a large tower or wall stood where none stood before. But metal? Never had he known of a crawler that could do the same for metal. Not until the Scavenger, at least.

For the first time, Bazzalth got a clear, unobstructed view of the Scavenger using his metal-shaping ability. Like other crawlers, the mechanisms of his abilities could not be seen to Bazzalth’s eyes. Through some undetectable mechanism, metal obeyed his will to the molecular level, much like fire materialized spontaneously at the bidding of other crawlers. His range appeared to be far superior to that of others, however.

Bazzalth wanted to study this in greater detail more than anything, but he doubted he had the proper instruments to truly make headway. He would need to do a bit of study with what he did have, learn what he needed, and then design and grow it. The process would take several days, but he had the time—fourteen days of time, to be precise.

The Scavenger had awoken only two crawler hours after his seizure, thanks to Bazzalth’s expert treatment, upon which the final arrangement had been agreed upon. The Revenant would take Pari for fourteen days, then return. Bazzalth had that long to stop the Scavenger from dying and learn as much as he could in the process. With the agreement made, The Revenant had cut Pari free from her vat and carried her away, followed by a long line of machines until none of the exploding devices remained within his lair. Then the questioning had begun, which led him to the present topic.

“How rocket made? Grown, like from stone?”

“No, nobody has powers on my world like they do here. Everything had to be made in foundries and factories and then assembled into the final version,” the Scavenger said. Well, not so much ‘said’ as ‘wheezed, hissed, and grunted with intent’. Bazzalth didn’t mind so long as he could understand the information contained within the noises.

“No abilities?” Bazzalth repeated with some doubt. “Then how Scavenger-crawler have ability?”

“I don’t know,” the crawler admitted. “I gained my abilities when I first arrived here. I can’t explain why. My body improved too, to the point where I could do things here that no human on my homeworld could ever accomplish. That’s how it is for all of us. We basically became superhuman when we got here.”

Bazzalth grunted, putting another topic of study onto his mental list, and moved on. He’d come back to that later.

“How rocket get to moon?” he wondered. Though he had not heard the term ‘rocket’ until today, he was well aware of the basic mechanism of such devices; he’d discovered and studied such rudimentary physics back in his first century. The cones at the bottom of the rocket were clearly vents for some sort of combustion, which would push the entire thing in the other direction. “Combustion not strong enough.”

“Sure it is, if you have the proper fuel.”

“Tell Bazzalth about proper fuel,” he commanded.

“Uh, well, you know about oil? The kind found underground, I mean.”

“Bazzalth is familiar.”

“It’s made from that.”

“Do not lie to Bazzalth,” he growled, shaking the table slightly with his anger. “How oil burn where no air?”

“You bring the air with you, obviously. Just the oxygen, to be specific.”

“Oil too dirty. Cannot burn enough to propel anything.”

“Well, you have to refine it first, obviously. It’s a far more complicated process than just burning oil you pump out of the ground.”

“Tell Bazzalth of refining process.”

The crawler faltered. “Well, umm... I don’t know it.”

“Crawler promised secret knowledge as part of deal,” Bazzalth angrily reminded the puny creature lying on the examination table. He had half a mind to simply end its sorry existence, hunt down the Revenant, and reclaim Pari at once. “Is crawler already breaking deal? Bazzalth can learn much from crawler’s corpse.”

“You can’t expect me to know everything!” came the frightened protest. “I’m not a chemistry expert, alright?! Ask something I know more about!”

The whole arrangement was looking more and more dubious by the moment. Bazzalth’s desire to study the Scavenger’s ability was about all that was keeping the crawler alive at the moment.

“Look, it gets far more feasible when you understand that the whole rocket was not going to the moon,” the Scavenger hurriedly continued. “It fired in stages like this. The bottom stage would burn first, then when it was exhausted, it would break off.” The bottom third separated from the rest of the model. “Then the second stage, then the third. I think these stages might have just burned pure hydrogen and oxygen, actually.” The model split apart until all that remained was a small piece at the tip. “Really, all of that was just to throw this tiny bit fast enough to make it to the moon. It’s kind of wild that they managed to do it at all, and they did it several times.”

Well, that did make a bit more sense, Bazzalth had to admit. With such a design, it might actually be possible to accomplish such a feat, assuming that the fuel could indeed be made strong enough. Hydrogen did release much more energy upon combustion than oil.

“Why only several times?” he inquired.

“Uh, I think it was very costly and it was decided that there wasn’t much that could be learned up there or something? They instead worked on making space stations, little permanent habitats that float above the earth outside of the atmosphere, and using them for research instead. That’s how I understand it, anyway. It all happened before I was born.”

His hoard ingested the Scavenger’s explanations and found them possible. Myriad possibilities crossed Bazzalth’s mind. A lair hovering above the world, far out past the atmosphere? A lair on a moon? One lair on each moon?! The possibilities!

Perhaps he’d given up too easily, swayed by the temptations of Knowledge within easy reach. If such puny crawlers could manage this, then Bazzalth could as well. Shivers of excitement down his spine. The pathways of Knowledge were countless. Ever larger his hoard would grow.

His hoard satiated for the moment, Bazzalth moved onto the main topic at hand. “Scavenger-crawler must remove garments so Bazzalth may study body,” he instructed.

The grey clothes flowed off the crawler’s body, forming a puddle to his side. So they had been created from metal! Bazzalth had not been sure. He had not thought the Scavenger capable of manipulating metal to such a fine degree. Bazzalth’s anticipation grew yet again as he picked up the crawler and laid him on another section of the table.

“Huh... that was... much more gentle than I would have expected from somebody with giant claws as bigger than my whole body,” the Scavenger remarked.

“Bazzalth has much experience,” he replied as he switched out the viewport he’d been using to peek into the atomic world for one much more familiar. He only needed to see cellular structure for this.

“Pari?”

Bazzalth just grunted.

“She would talk about you all the time, you know.”

Bazzalth paused, a flash of alarm rushing through him. Had all that time he’d spent training Pari to stay silent about him been for nothing? Had she gone out and told everybody all the things he’d told her not to? “What did Pari-child say?”

“Just about how great and wonderful and strong you were. That sort of thing.”

“Is that all?”

“She never told us you were a dragon, if that’s what you’re asking. We had no idea.”

Bazzalth let out a chuff of relief and amusement. He could live with these people knowing of his existence, even if word of him spread. With the crawlers pushing north more every year—the destruction of their city would only slow them down, not stop them—the existence of people would be discovered eventually. His job was simply to push that inevitability as far into the future as possible. What he could not live with was another person learning that he had raised and then released a half-person, half-crawler hybrid into the wild. It would bring about dire consequences that made him tremble just thinking about it. “Pari-child was good child.”

“Cutest little terrorist you ever did see.”

Bazzalth wanted to press further on the topic, to question the crawler about Pari and the Vile One. He wanted to know the circumstances of Pari’s death as well, plus how the Scavenger had managed to free himself. Still, he held off for the moment. Bazzalth did not trust the Scavenger’s answers to be free of falsehood. He had been far too lax the last time with the crawler known as Pyr and had almost lost his precious data for it. This time, he would study the crawler better first, learn his expressions, his way of speaking, his tone, until he could spot a lie properly. Only then would he begin.

Instead, he turned back to the matter of the crawler’s body. A pretty sight this was not. From the torso to the head, the Scavenger appeared severely unhealthy. While some muscle remained, the way the sweaty, pallid skin loosely covered the torso was a clear sign of the body shrinking rapidly. The sign appeared even more clearly on the arms, the skin sagging. Well, the arm, really, as the crawler’s left arm was little more than a stump severed above the elbow.

Yes, not a pretty sight indeed. Bazzalth had seen other crawler bodies in similar condition, especially when he destroyed their mines. Yet somehow, this crawler’s lower half made the upper half appear vibrant in comparison. He’d never seen something like the Scavenger’s legs before.

Waxy, white skin hung off bones with little in between, giving the false impression that the legs had been mummified in some way. Myriad dark blood vessels ran across the ivory skin, the hundreds of interlocking lines reminding him in a way of the weavings of various insects. These were not the legs of a living person.

How much of the Scavenger’s condition was caused by the state of these legs? How much of his legs’ condition was caused by the state of the rest of him? Bazzalth did not know, but he would have to find out, and fast.

First, he needed samples. Manipulating the controls on the side of the table with his claws, he sent weak nerve impulses along one of the table’s many manipulation arms, this one with a small blade at the end. The arm reacted to the impulses, the muscles at the base slowly contracting and bringing the implement steadily down.

He preferred to use these arms to his own when it came to delicate or detailed work. He had more control than if he used his own claws. It also let him observe better. It was hard to see your subject when your hands were many times larger and always obstructing your view.

“Hey, hey, hey!” the crawler hissed as the blade descended, tucrenyx flowing towards him. “What are you doing?!”

“Bazzalth requires samples for study,” Bazzalth patiently explained.

“Samples meaning what, you carve off a piece of me? Hell, no! I’ve already lost enough of my body, thank you!” The tucrenyx grew closer.

“Bazzalth must have samples or Bazzalth will be unable to fix Scavenger-crawler,” Bazzalth less-patiently explained. He set the side of his hand down between the flowing metal and the Scavenger, only for the metal to flow beneath and around it anyway.

“Then take some blood! That’s fine! Do a biopsy, even! But no lopping off pieces of me!” The metal rushed over the crawler’s body and hardened into a thick metal shell.

“Very well.” Bazzalth grumbled and changed out the blade for a small syringe. “Pari-child never complained.”

“Pari wouldn’t know normal if it smacked her in the face!”

Bazzalth was beginning to miss working with cadavers.

* * *

A low rumble escaped Bazzalth’s maw as he gazed at his collection of samples taken from the Scavenger’s body, trying to unearth the secrets held within. Inspection of the cells had revealed several enlightening, fascinating facts. The true question was what it all meant.

Fact One: the Scavenger’s cells gave Bazzalth undeniable proof of the crawler’s claims of extra-terrestrial or extra-dimensional origin. Though he appeared the same as all other crawlers, his cells were different enough for Bazzalth to consider him a completely different species from the base crawler that he mimicked. Bazzalth noted how the cells, though clearly different in appearance, seemed to still have sub-cellular structures that accomplished the same tasks as the local crawler’s. It was almost like two people independently writing the same story despite having never once met.

Interestingly, the cells taken from the upper, more-healthy half appeared nearly identical to those from the legs. Given the state of the body’s lower half, Bazzalth had expected to see some malformation or something, anything that would let him distinguish between the two halves easily, but no. The legs cells on their own seemed just as healthy as the others. The issue was that they weren’t on their own.

The entire lower half of the Scavenger’s body was a war zone, where his immune cells waged ceaseless battle against a horde of single-celled microorganisms. Bazzalth had never seen anything like this lifeform before. Not quite a bacteria, not quite an amoebic parasite, they attacked the crawler’s cells directly, seeming to puncture the outer wall and enter the cell, devouring it from the inside out before using the newly gained excess mass to split into two copies.

Where had this creature come from? Though there was always the remote possibility that this was some sort of rare local disease that Bazzalth had never seen before—even he could not find and catalogue every single species of single-celled lifeform in the world—he rather doubted it. Instead, he thought back to the crawler’s earlier words, when he’d claimed to only have gained great strength and ability after traveling to this world. If such a thing had truly happened to him, would it also happen to the variety of other organisms that also made his body their home? Bazzalth believed that, at least in this case, that had been exactly what had occurred, because the Scavenger’s superpowered cells were slowly losing.

He glanced over at the sleeping crawler, the small being’s chest rising and falling weakly beneath a large pelt. Did a similar disease exist within the Revenant’s body, or, perhaps, that of the Vile One? Why did they not display symptoms? Perhaps the Scavenger’s problems were two-fold. Perhaps they all did have something like this within them but each of their immune systems were keeping it at bay, while something which had happened to the Scavenger had weakened him just enough that his body began to slowly lose the fight?

Bazzalth’s thoughts immediately went to the spinal injury that had deprived the crawler of the use of his lower body. There had to be some relation between that injury and his current state. Bazzalth considered conducting a procedure or two to learn more about the injury, but decided now was not the best time. He didn’t want to risk waking his subject. The Scavenger needed every bit of rest Bazzalth could give him right now, or he might not live long enough for Bazzalth to learn everything he wanted to learn. That would be a disaster.

* * *

“Really? She got the artery too?” the Scavenger wheezed the next morning.

“Correct,” Bazzalth replied as he took another look at his readings from the just-completed procedure. “Complete severing of both nerve and blood vessel.”

“How did I not die from that? I should have died from that real quick, right?”

“Scavenger-crawler’s body different than normal crawler,” Bazzalth explained. The difference served as yet another stark reminder that Bazzalth was dealing with an extra-planar being. Any normal crawler would regenerate the damaged tissues at a steady pace. Their healing prowess could not stand in comparison to a person’s, of course—nothing on this world could—but they would likely have been fully healed within a matter of days. Their issue was surviving the initial injury. From his deep understanding of crawler anatomy, without immediate medical treatment, he knew that the average crawler with this exact wound would bleed to death far sooner than they would be able to heal enough to stop the bleeding.

The Scavenger’s body, on the other hand, seemed the exact opposite: a level of hardiness that possibly even outclassed people, paired with an utterly pathetic level of healing and regeneration. He’d found it utterly remarkable the level of strength the cells within his samples had displayed, even long after being cut off from nutrients and oxygen. Bazzalth suspected that the Scavenger would have been able to survive a far worse wound than the admittedly bad one he’d already received. In a way, he was surviving such a wound now, if one thought of the state of his legs as a wound caused by the infection within.

Once Bazzalth had finished explaining this to the Scavenger, the crawler just nodded slowly. “I see,” he said. “That also explains why I didn’t die when I lost my arm before that, too. I never had the chance to get that treated at all, but I survived just fine.”

“Correct.”

“But how does that explain the infection in my legs? If it’s as bad as you say, why isn’t it everywhere?”

“Bazzalth has theory,” he said.

“Oh? Let’s hear it.”

Not for the first time, Bazzalth found himself grateful that the Scavenger was at least decently intelligent. It was nice to have a conversation partner who understood what you said the first time and wanted to know more.

“Bazzalth believes infection within Scavenger-crawler from beginning, but crawler’s body able to successfully fight infection and hold infection at bay, so Scavenger-crawler detected nothing wrong. Bazzalth thinks that sudden loss of blood to lower body destabilized lower half enough for infection to gain clawhold. Deterioration of lower half continues from then.”

“Alright, I can maybe see that part. But again, why is it only my legs?”

“Crawler’s body has cell barrier in torso preventing spread of infection. Massive build up of immune cells from wound outward, all infection that come up die. Bazzalth believes body cut off lower part to save rest of body. Infection level in rest of body minimal.”

“Wait, what? There’s like a wall in my body blocking off the disease from my upper half?”

“Correct.”

“That’s... not a thing. We don’t have those.”

“Bazzalth believes body specially constructed barrier in response to danger. Perhaps special nature of body allowed for such mechanism.”

“It’s really weird to hear that I’m some sort of medical oddity,” the crawler mused. “So my body is just leaving my legs to fend for themselves? What happens when there’s nothing left?”

“Bazzalth believes infection will move upward in mass and break through barrier. Rest of body will be consumed.”

The Scavenger gulped. “Can you fix it?”

“Bazzalth has never found organism Bazzalth cannot kill,” he reassured the crawler. The crawler did not appear reassured.

* * *

“Hmmmmmmm,” Bazzalth rumbled as he stared into the magnifier.

“What’s wrong?” the Scavenger asked.

“Nothing,” he replied without looking away.

“Uh huh,” came the sarcastic response.

Now Bazzalth looked away, glaring at the annoying crawler. The crawler was not currently lying down, having constructed another wheeled chair from the metal he’d brought with him. Unfortunately, after having finished that, the crawler seemed to have nothing better to do than watch Bazzalth and make comments.

Bazzalth found himself appreciating Pari even more. The child had known how to amuse herself without having to bother him all the time. The Scavenger needed something to distract him while Bazzalth worked, but he seemed far too nervous to make his own and Bazzalth was far too busy to do anything about it either.

“That’s the sound you make when something didn’t go how you thought it would,” the crawler told him.

Bazzalth snarled lightly and went back to looking at the magnifier. He didn’t want to admit it, but the Scavenger was fairly correct.

“Well?”

“Chemical did not work,” Bazzalth finally, begrudgingly said.

“Which one? Weren’t you testing two?”

“Both,” he conceded.

“Both?! Didn’t you say that these were each powerful antibiotics?”

“Correct. Chemical Three is highly effective antibacterial agent, yet infectious organism entirely unaffected. Likely immune. Chemical Seven is strong anti-parasite substance. Initial test showed viability, over half of disease in sample perished. Bazzalth administered second test after survivors reproduced. Nine of ten survived. On third test, parasites are now immune.”

“It’s adapting that fast?” The crawler paused. “Actually, is that fast?”

“Abnormally fast.”

“Fuck...” the Scavenger moaned. “Can we just fill me up with enough to kill them all all at once?”

“Scavenge-crawler would die before infection does.”

The crawler sighed before falling into blessed silence.

Bazzalth returned to his experiments.

“Hey, Bazzalth.”

Bazzalth ignored the Scavenger.

“Hey.”

He took a deep breath, keeping his gaze on the magnifier and focusing on the important goings on within.

“Bazzalth, hey.”

Bazzalth wrenched his gaze from his important study to fix the crawler with another glare. “Does Scavenger-crawler want Bazzalth to fail?”

“Of course not! It’s just... I’ve been here for three days now and I can’t not ask anymore. Why do you keep calling me ‘Scavenger-crawler’? My name is Blake.”

Bazzalth felt like he was back in time, answering Pari’s inane questions, except Pari’s usually made more sense. “Scavenger-crawler is Scavenger-crawler because Scavenger-crawler scavenges.”

“Scavenges what? I don’t scavenge anything.”

“Old crawler machines, obviously.”

“You think I stole all my machines? You’ve watched me make some!”

“Bazzalth thought so before. Now, Bazzalth believes Scavenger-crawler builds machines using old crawler designs.”

“Well, fuck you, too! Yeah, a few of my parts are based on some stuff I found, like the memory units, but ninety percent of my robots are entirely my own design!”

Bazzalth blinked in surprise. While the back of his mind grabbed upon the new word ‘robot’ and devoured its meanings, finding it a pleasant modification on ‘machine’ with subtle but important differences, the front of his mind was more confused as to the sudden outburst of anger.

“Scavenger-crawler is upset,” he noted.

“I’ve been building machines and robots since my parents bought me a K’Nex kit for Christmas when I was nine, and I’m damned proud of it! How would you like it if I said that you just steal all your knowledge from some ruins you found?”

Bazzalth grumbled. Admittedly, he would not take such a claim very well. To say that one did not amass their hoard themselves was to question a person’s worth as a person. It was one of the highest of slights, serious enough to bring about even combat and possibly death. Luckily, no person was foolish enough to make such claims about another.

Still... “Bazzalth finds claim dubious. Robots constructed by Scavenger-crawler contain internal composition remarkably similar to old machines.”

“Oh come on, that’s like saying if I created a linked list, everybody else who comes up with the same thing is stealing from me,” the crawler griped. “When dealing with logical problems, it’s not uncommon for two parties to reach very similar conclusions. That’s just the nature of the field.”

He paused for a moment and Bazzalth took the opportunity to turn his attention back to studying what was important: the microbes.

“Hold up... you’ve studied ancient machines?”

“Correct,” Bazzalth said without looking up.

“Can I see them?”

“No.”

“Oh, come on! Please?!”

“Bazzalth disposed of machines two thousand years ago,” he informed his irritating patient.

“God damn it,” the Scavenger sighed, falling thankfully quiet again.

Unfortunately, it was not to last.

“So you must have been alive for a long time, yeah?” came the unwanted question not long after. “How old are you, Bazzalth?”

“Crawler agreed to reveal knowledge; Bazzalth did not.” Even if Bazzalth trusted the nosy crawler, one did not give up pieces of their hoard easily.

“You’ve been answering plenty of my questions already,” the crawler argued.

“Questions pertaining to Scavenger-crawler’s situation only,” Bazzalth pointed out.

“Oh, come on, spoilsport. I’m just curious. Everybody knows that dragons live a long time. It’s no secret.”

This time, Bazzalth could not help but look up. “Dragon?” he asked, pondering the word and all the information that rode upon it. Wings large enough to black out the sun, huge and sharp teeth, a domineering presence, and power—overwhelming power. All in all, it was not a bad word... but it was not ‘person’. “Do not belittle Bazzalth by using other term than ‘person’. Bazzalth will not tolerate disrespect.”

“You don’t get to have a monopoly on what counts as people, dude,” the crawler scoffed. “I’m a person just as much as you are.”

“Crawlers are not people,” Bazzalth growled. “Crawlers are crawlers.”

The Scavenger ignored the rising anger in Bazzalth’s voice and refused to back down. “And for me, people are people, and dragons are dragons. Besides, don’t act like this is some cut and dry rule that can’t be smudged. You do it all the time.”

“Bazzalth does not!”

“Then why do you call her ‘Pari-child’ instead of ‘Pari-crawler’ when she’s just as much of a crawler as the rest of us?”

Bazzalth felt himself heating up inside and let out a powerful venting snort, roasting the nearby area with flames and scalding-hot air. “Do not belittle Pari-child! Pari-child is half-person, with the blood of a person inside far more powerful than even Bazzalth’s and others’ blood. Pari-child is not like Scavenger-crawler. Pari-child is far superior in every way.”

“Tch... touchy.”

“Bazzalth is not ‘touchy’,” he rumbled. “Scavenger-crawler is simply incorrect.”

“Whatever. I’m going to get some fresh air. This place stinks of hubris and self-importance.”

Glad to have won, Bazzalth turned back to the magnifier and prepared to begin a new set of tests. He made no attempt to stop the Scavenger as the wheeled chair rolled to the edge of the table before growing legs and climbing down to the lair’s floor. The Scavenger would be back. The crawler needed him, not the other way around. At least now, for a moment, Bazzalth could work in peace.

* * *

Death came for them all, sweeping through them like a tsunami. Scores died, torn apart by the sheer lethality that came from mere contact. And yet, others survived, seemingly unharmed by the poison which claimed their brethren. Those that lived moved on, continuing their lives as if nothing had changed. They hunted, they ate, they multiplied. Another wave approached, and several more succumbed to the blight, their defenses unable to withstand a second blow. The others carried on.

Bazzalth looked away from the magnifier and rose to his full height, arching his back and spreading his wings out as he stretched away the tightness. He was in a foul mood. After the Scavenger’s tantrum, Bazzalth had worked through the rest of that day and through the night with little to show for it.

Nothing he’d tried yet had worked beyond the first dose. The microorganisms infesting the Scavenger’s legs were, by leaps and bounds, the most hardy microbes he’d ever seen, and he’d seen more than anybody. Toxins that could devastate other similar lifeforms at low doses would be shrugged off like nothing, even when the dose was increased to tens of times higher than what would normally be needed.

The microbe’s ridiculous adaptability only made things far worse. The Scavenger’s own hardiness allowed Bazzalth to use levels of poison that would kill a normal crawler many times over, so Bazzalth had been able to find single drugs or drug combinations that were at least partially effective against the microscopic scourge, but within two or three doses, those drugs would lose all potency and become useless. Once again, he’d never seen anything like it.

In most any other context, he would find this utterly fascinating, a new air current to ride on the hunt for Knowledge. In this case, however, it meant the extinguishing of many other currents, ones that he would never get the opportunity to soar upon again. As he counted his remaining time running down, Bazzalth couldn’t help but feel growing frustration at the whole situation.

Were the Scavenger’s body healthier, there was the possibility that Bazzalth could administer several doses of drugs that had showed initial success, greatly setting the infection back, and let the crawler’s immune system handle the rest. Unfortunately, he doubted that said immune system was up to the task at its current strength, and given the state of the body as a whole, the doses might be enough to kill the crawler all on their own. They were rather toxic to non-people, after all.

Counting the day of arrival, this was the fourth day that the Scavenger had been in his lair. Four days, and zero progress. Technically, he was making progress in that he was eliminating options for treatment, but that felt like progress only in the most literal sense. He was no closer to curing the infection and saving the Scavenger from death. He would find a cure eventually, he knew; no problem such as this could go unsolved forever when pitted against his mighty intellect. Accomplishing the feat before the death of the crawler, however, was a different proposition, one he no longer had much confidence in.

Perhaps it was time to cut his losses, he mused. There was another way to get great amounts of data from the crawler, data he would be able to trust fully, unlike some of the Scavenger’s earlier claims. There would be no going back after that, however. The act alone would break the agreement in full. Then, he’d have to figure out what to do about Pari and all the other complications that would arise from that.

Not just yet, he decided. After three full days of interacting with the Scavenger, Bazzalth believed he had enough of a read on the crawler to better detect lies and falsehoods. Before he decided to take radical action, he would see if he could get what he wanted most without it first.

“Scavenger-crawler,” he rumbled.

“Once again, name’s Blake,” came the reply. Not exactly an acknowledgment, but good enough for the moment.

“Bazzalth has more questions.”

“What else is new?” the Scavenger snorted, looking away from a small screen that hung in front of him. The screen hung from an arm that protruded out from his chair near the side of the examination table, where he sat every day while not being treated or studied. Bazzalth preferred to keep him there, close by where he could keep tabs on him when Bazzalth was busy with something else. “Well, that was the deal. Ask away.”

Bazzalth decided to start with a big one, something he’d been pondering since the first day. “Why does Scavenger-crawler prize Pari-child so greatly?”

The Scavenger tried to hide it, but Bazzalth could see it now—the slight tension off the neck muscles, the slight flush in the face, the way his blink lasted longer than normal. Yes, three days had been enough to know the next statement would be suspect at best.

“I don’t know what you mean. I only chose the child because the way you had everything laid out in here implied you valued her more than other stuff. The vat was raised up above the other vats and everything.”

“Then why crawlers chase after Bazzalth after Bazzalth retrieve Pari-child? Why crawlers return days later?”

A fraction of a moment of hesitation. Not much, but Bazzalth was wise to the signs now.

“We were bringing Pari back to her grandfather, or so we thought. We didn’t realize you were the grandfather, so when you took her, we tried to get her back. Once we realized the truth, we dropped it. The second time was a coincidence. We were here for something else.”

Bazzalth leaned forward. “Why else crawlers within Bazzalth’s domain?”

“Mining,” came the quick response. Too quick. “I need more cantacrenyx crystals and they’re hard to find, so we were looking for more deposits up in the mountains.

Bazzalth knew now that the Scavenger could restructure his robots at will, so it was not infeasible that there was some truth to this one, but it felt wrong in Bazzalth’s gut. Every single robot there had been fully equipped for war.

“Where is Pari-child now?”

“Staying in a village in Kutrad, though I don’t know which. We decided it was safer for all of us if I don’t know where. You’ll get her back after you fix me and the full allotment of days are up.”

As the crawler spoke, Bazzalth noticed several signs of falsehood with each sentence, until the final sentence. Then he saw all of them. It took everything he had to not crush the pathetic creature right then and there. The crawlers intended to rob him of his prized data! He vowed to not let this disrespect go unpunished, but he held off for the moment. Crushing the Scavenger could wait.

Bazzalth knew the course to take now. First, he slyly waited, studying another two possible cures. Neither of them proved to be any better than the rest. Having separated his next actions from the earlier questions long enough to avoid suspicion, he turned to the crawler with a grave face

“Scavenger-crawler,” he began, earning a grunt of recognition, “Bazzalth requires new inspection. Current data is insufficient.”

“Mmmm,” came the acknowledgment. Before the crawler could put up a fuss, Bazzalth lifted him and his seat as one, moving them to the main examination area of the table.

“New inspection requires injection,” Bazzalth explained. “Injection will allow Bazzalth to get better data.”

“Yeah, sure, whatever,” the crawler replied, not really paying attention, his eyes focused on the screen. After more than three days of procedures, the Scavenger’s vigilance had grown lax. Bazzalth would make him regret that.

Heading to the back of the lair, Bazzalth pulled down a container filled with small canisters grown from bone. Pulling out a specific one filled with a creamy green liquid, he inspected it to make sure it had not degraded since being stored centuries ago. As expected, the vacuum-seal had held perfectly, preserving the truth serum in perpetuity.

Through the course of many years, Bazzalth’s crawler experimentation had led to a wealth of unusual discoveries. One of the most unexpected was the revelation that a specific enzyme, found in the nectar of a vine that grew to the far north, interfered with a crawler’s brain in very specific ways, interfering with their ability to lie and resist impulses. The crawlers would know, in a sense, what was happening to them as they blurted out answers to questions they desperately didn’t wish to answer. Their stress levels would rise, their bodies becoming tense, their heart rate rising significantly, etcetera, until the drug eventually wore off and brain function returned to normal.

Bazzalth worried a little that the Scavenger’s body would not be able to handle the mental stress, but that was about it. The Scavenger was lying, both in general and specifically about Pari, and that could not be tolerated. Bazzalth would have his Knowledge, even if he had to break the crawler’s mind. After all, while an incredibly unique crawler, the Scavenger was still just a crawler in the end.

The Scavenger didn’t even blink as the truth drug entered his body, the treacherous substance working towards his brain with every heartbeat. He seemed entirely unperturbed, bored even. That changed quickly.

Bazzalth’s sharp eyes caught the very moment the drug began to take effect. The Scavenger’s pupils suddenly dilated to their full width. His left eye opened wide, while his right upper eyelid—and the upper one only—slid down to half-cover the right eye. His body went stiff as a board... before going completely limp.

Bazzalth blinked. That wasn’t how events were supposed to proceed.

“Wha’... wha’ did... wha’ did ya do ta me?” the crawler asked with a slurred wheeze. Bazzalth had no idea how one could even slur a wheeze, but somehow the crawler managed it easily. Bazzalth grew increasingly worried as the crawler slowly slumped to the side, drool beginning to drip from his mouth as his lips widened into a content smile. “Heh, heheheheh, heeeeeeeeee... I feel gooooooood...”

Bazzalth tried not to panic and only half-succeeded. What was he supposed to do now? This was the exact opposite of what he’s desired. Would the crawler even feel compelled to answer his questions? And could he trust those answers? Bazzalth didn’t know. Still, what else was there for him to do at this point?

“Where is Pari-child?” he began.

An amused giggle bubbled up from the crawler. “How would I know, silly? I’m not there, I’m here!”

Bazzalth couldn’t hold back a groan. A wasted effort after all. But then, before he could take action, the crawler kept talking.

“She’s prob’ly in Stragma now... tha’ was the... the plan, anyway. Gabby’ll... she’ll do it. Not like the others, ’cept Arlette maybe. Gotta get the twerp ta Stragma quick ’n’ stuff.”

Bazzalth’s suspicions were confirmed! Scorching anger built within his gullet, but he kept his composure for the moment. “Crawler lied to Bazzalth!” he accused.

“Duhhhhhh!” the Scavenger retorted.

Bazzalth had not expected such a complete and brazen confession, though given the state of his counterpart, perhaps he should have. Mentally off-balance, he asked the simple question that came to mind first: “Why?”

“’Cuz yer scary, dummy! ’Specially when yer angry. Why else? Ya always get mad when... when I talk ’bout the little imp. Why would I wanna tell ya tha’ ya won’t be gettin’ ’er back? Then ya’d get real mad, so ’t’s a good thin’ ya don’ know tha’.”

Bazzalth did indeed find himself getting even madder than he already was upon hearing the news. “Bazzalth will retrieve Pari-child,” he growled.

“Can ya, though?” the crawler replied, the serum making him seemingly unable to experience the fear he claimed had kept him from telling he truth all along. “’Cuz she’s alive again, or she’s ’bout ta be. Was I wrong? I thought I was onta somethin’.”

Now Bazzalth didn’t know what to think. The Scavenger had a habit of showing flashes of disturbingly high intuition, and in this case he was spot on with his deduction. “Pari-child cannot return to life,” Bazzalth deflected. “Bazzalth already resurrected Pari-child with blood concoction. No substance will work again.”

The Scavenger broke down into a fit of giggles. “C’mere, c’mere, lemme tell ya a secret,” he hissed quietly.

Begrudgingly, Bazzalth leaned forward.

The crawler whispered so softly that Bazzalth’s great hearing almost didn’t pick it up, as if the crawler were revealing the great forbidden truth of the world. “The mitochondria is the... the powerhouse of the cell.”

Bazzalth felt a headache coming on as the little creature began to uncontrollably snicker. How was that a secret? Was he trying to say that the path towards a second resurrection went through some sort of reactivation of specific part of a cell? That made absolutely no sense!

“Nonono I’m kiddin’ I’m kiddin’ I’m kiddin’ I’m kiddin’ I’m kiddin’... c’mere c’mere, I’ll tell ya fer real this time...”

Against his better judgment, Bazzalth leaned in again and listened to the crawler’s whispered secrets.

“Inertia is a property of matter!”

The crawler’s snickers returned with added snorts for good measure while Bazzalth contemplated performing a live dissection on the spot. The crawler’s mirth sputtered out as the snorts and snickers turned into a weak coughing fit.

“Okayokayokay fer real fer real this time,” he wheezed once the coughs had subsided. “There’s a way ta brin’ somebody back ta life without drugs ’n’ stuff. Time travel! Push ’er time back ta... ta b’fore she died an’ ’t’s like it never happened!” He then proceeded to wiggle his eyebrows up and down, which meant something, probably.

“Impossible!” Bazzalth growled. To think after the first two time, he had fallen for the crawler’s tricks a third time as well! What nonsense! “Temporal manipulation impossible. Localized temporal manipulation even more impossible.”

“I knowwww, riiiiighhhht?! Tha’s wha’ I said!” the Scavenger giggled. “But ’t’s real!”

“How could crawler know?”

“The Stragmans, they have a way ’n’ they already... they already brought back thousands of people! I met one!  Bu’ nobody’s supposed ta know! ’T’s a secret! So don’ tell nobody, ’kay?”

Bazzalth found himself hurriedly reevaluating the entire situation. This revelation, if true—and it seemed as if the Scavenger believed it, at least—changed a lot of things. That there existed a being that could do what he could not in this regard... his pride chafed at the thought. Yet at the same time, an entire new realm of study had just opened up to him. Temporal mechanics... how incredibly exciting!

“Why crawler not simply tell Bazzalth from beginning?”

“Why would ya have believed me? I wouldn’t have believed me. ’N’ ya already tried ta... kill us twice. How would we even tell ya? ’N’ do ya even want ’er alive again?”

“Yes,” Bazzalth immediately replied. An alive Pari would only have more time to grow and provide Bazzalth with even more data in the future. But some things still didn’t make sense. “Why bring Pari-child to Bazzalth if such method exists?”

The Scavenger let out an amused snort. “’Cuz we didn’ learn ’til after we go’ back. Learnin’ ’bout it b’fore would’ve been too easy.” His grin faded some, and Bazzalth could feel the crawler’s mood shift. “This stupid world... ’t’s like ’t’s made ta fuck ya over. Nothin’ bu’ pain.”

Bazzalth continued to push his lines of questioning, unsure how long the serum would remain effective given the already abnormal response. “Why Scavenger-crawler come to Bazzalth when Scavenger-crawler could be healed by Stragmans? Stragman procedure would guarantee success, correct?”

The crawler grew quiet, a disconcerting change from his previously effusive demeanor. “I could... if I had ta, I guess...” he admitted. “I did ask ‘em b’fore, ya know. They said no, but I could... could force ’em if I really wanna. Bu’ I only went ta them ’cuz I thought they were the only option. I’d lose too much ta use ’em if there’s a chance I... I could avoid it.

“I jus’ wanna be me, ya know? ’T’s not fair tha’... tha’ Pari doesn’t have ta lose anything. Jus’ rewind ’er ta righ’ b’fore when she gets killed, no problem. But... but me? Nnnnnnoooooooooooooo, my wounds’re too old. I’d lose ev’rythin’. All tha’ knowledge... ev’rythin’ I learned the last few years...

“I can’t do it. I can’ give up my knowledge... ’t’s too important. Knowledge’s too important... makes ya who ya are. Defines ya. More important than anythin’. I wouldn’t even be me anymore. I’d be... be somebody else... somebody dumb. I like being me, ya know? How could I throw tha’ away? Ya get it, right? The others... they don’ get it. But ya get it. I know ya get it. Tha’s why I like ya. Ya get it.

“’N’ hey!” he chortled, his good mood returning. “If ya somehow can’t save me, they can bring me back if it comes down ta tha’, so make sure ta keep my body, yeah?”

Bazzalth did not reply, the crawler’s earlier inebriated words still echoing through his mind. The Scavenger understood. All the other people had always mocked him, calling his hoard pointless. “A waste of time,” they called it. “What use it Knowledge without the power to use it?” They’d never understood, and he’d long come to accept that they never would. But this crawler... this measly little insignificant being... he understood. Somehow, he knew the truth as Bazzalth did.

Bazzalth didn’t know how to take this. It was almost too much, this sudden onrush of confusing emotions and sensations. To think that another being finally understood, and even viewed his own understanding positively as well... But it was a crawler! Could Bazzalth even allow himself to feel this way over a crawler?

“Bazz, buddy, wha’s... wha’s wrong?” the crawler asked. “Yer lookin’ weird. Ya hungry? Let’s make waffles. Nothin’ a good plate of... of waffles can’t fix.”

“Nothing is wrong,” he refuted. “Bazzalth is simply not... accustomed to such sensations...”

“Yeah, ’t’s hard bein’ lonely.”

“Bazzalth is not lonely.”

The Scavenger scoffed. “Hey, ’t’s alrigh’ ta be lonely.”

“Bazzalth is not lonely,” he repeated. “Bazzalth can fly out and visit other people whenever Bazzalth desires.”

“Ya haven’t left yer lair since I came. Nobody came ta visit, either.”

The admission came grudgingly. “Other people do not understand Bazzalth.” He didn’t know why he was even saying this out loud, to a crawler no less. Perhaps he was just so shaken already, his mental state thrown into upheaval from a moment ago, but he found himself speaking aloud thoughts that had been with him for his entire life. “Being around other people only leads to pain. ”

“I know tha’ feelin’... tha’ feelin’ when yer in the middle of a crowd... an’... an’ ya look out... an’ all ya see is people who look like ya, talk like ya, act like ya, and ya say... ‘why can’t I connect with... with anybody? There’s all these people, why do I feel so alone?’ An’ tha’ feelin’, it grows. It grows an’ it grows an’ it grows until ya just... ya just wanna go away to some place where there’s nobody else around and shut yerself away, ya know? ’Cuz then, at least the loneliness is somethin’ ya chose. Yeah, I know tha’ feelin’ all too well. ’T’s okay, Bazz. ’T’s not yer fault.

“Ya know wha’ would really... cheer ya up? A big ol’ plate of waffles... haven’t had ’em in forever... could prob’ly make ’em back at the fortress, bu’ ’t’s not the same without the maple syrup, ’n’ they don’ have anythin’ like tha’ here... I know, ya could figure it out, yeah? Make maple syrup! Yeah, let’s get lotsa waffles with loads of syrup!”

“Silence,” Bazzalth growled, ignoring the foolish creature’s ramblings about food. He couldn’t let this go on any longer. He could feel himself losing control as old, unburied memories and emotions rose from the past to bombard him all over again. It was already almost too much for him to handle. And the crawler’s words, striking home with almost supernatural accuracy... how had the Scavenger known? Or was his experience perhaps not as unique as he’d always believed?

But more importantly, he had a time limit and much more he needed to know. “How Scavenger-crawler escape from clutches of Vile One?”

“Hah? Vile One? Wuzzat?”

It seemed the crawler’s memory paled in comparison to his own. “Third crawler-”

“Oh! Oh yeah! Heh heh heh... I don’ get it. Wha’ ’re ya talkin’ ’bout, clutches? Sofie don’ have it in ’er to put people in clutches... well, she kinda did...”

“Bazzalth could see chains binding Scavenger-crawler’s soul before, same chains that bind Pari-child. Scavenger-crawler’s chains now gone. How?”

“Chains? Wha’ chains?” the crawler asked, trying his best to look around, which only resulted in him limply flopping in place once and giving up. “I don’ see no chains.”

“Chains made of soul energy, only Bazzalth can see.”

“Ya can see souls?! So coooooooooollllllll! Wha’ do... wha’ do they look like?”

“Not important. Chains bound Scavenger-crawler before. Chains gone. How chains gone?”

“I dunno, mannnn... tha’s like... too much fer my head right nowwww... Maybe ’cuz she took the restrictions away or somethin’...”

“Vile One removed chains?” That made no sense at all to Bazzalth, unless... “Scavenger-crawler freed as part of Vile One’s ruse to get Pari-child?!”

“Pffft!” The crawler shook with what Bazzalth believed was laughter, and Bazzalth immediately began to worry about another seizure like the last time. Luckily, that did not come to pass, at least yet. “Sofie? Naw. Tha’ girl’s too honest. Stupidhonest. Not a chance. If she removed... if she removed the chains, ’t’s because she fucked up ’n’ she’s tryin’ ta un-fuckup or whatever. Undo ’er mistakes ’n’ all tha’.”

“Crawler cannot truly believe that Vile One did not intend for bindings,” Bazzalth protested, aghast at the naiveté of the impaired crawler.

“Why not?” the Scavenger shot back. “Ya wanna... ya wanna know the truth? Ya wanna know? We’re... we’re allllllllllll fuckups. Me ’n’ Sofie ’n’ Gabby, three giant fuckups. None of us know wha’ we’re doin’. We’re all jus’ tryin’ ta keep our heads above water ’n’ hopin’ the next wave isn’t the one ta push us under fer good. We’re all just... fuckups with too much power and not enough sense.

“I... I killed somebody, ya know... well, I killed lotsa... lotsa people, really... but this one, I didn’ mean ta do it. I jus’ like kinda went...” He made a small shove with his arm, sliding it forward slightly along the arm of the chair. “...boop! ’N’ she was dead. Jus’ like tha’. Boop!

“’N’... ’n’ tha’s not supposed ta be how it is, ya know? There’s this saying in my world... with great power... comes.... comes........ you gotta be responsible with it.”

Bazzalth had never heard such a stupid saying before. Power did not come with responsibility at all! In fact, one might argue that the more powerful one was, the more freed from responsibility they became. After all, what were those weaker than them going to do about it?

“But I’m nothin’ compared ta Sofie,” the crawler rambled on. “She’s the queen of fuckups. I booped one person, bu’ she... here she was goin’ ’round the world boopin’ people lef’ ’n’ righ’ ’n’ she didn’ even know ’til jus’ recently... it’s like finding ou’ ya’ve been a serial killer fer a decade in yer sleep. What’re ya supposed ta do with tha’?” He sniffed. “But at the same time, she booped me too so fuck her, you know? Heh heh heh heh.

“Ya don’ have ta make Sofie do nothin’ abou’ these chains or whatever, Bazz. Trust me, she’ll get rid of ’em fer ya. I can tell. She’s... she’s always pokin’ ’er nose inta ev’rythin’... carin’ too much ’bout ev’rybody in the... in the whole world. Tha’s why she feels guilty now ’bout ev’rythin’, even if it wasn’t ’er fault. Prob’ly thinks Pari died ’cuz of her too, the idiot.

“But ’t’s okay, we’re gonna bring ’er back ’n’... ’n’ ev’rybody’s gonna be happy again ’n’ yer gonna fix me ’cuz yer... yer the science dragon and ev’rythin’s gonna be alright. Ev’rythin’s gonna... gonna be...”

The crawler’s head dipped for a moment before righting itself. Bazzalth could see the crawler struggling against the urge to sleep and only marginally succeeding.

“Hey, c’mere,” the Scavenger slurred, his eyes drooping. “C’mere c’mere c’mere c’mere c’mere.”

The crawler wanted to prank him again, Bazzalth knew, but he humored the little thing anyway and moved closer.

“Put yer hand... claws... whatever... put ‘em up in fron’ of me... yeah... now make a... make a fist...”

Confused, Bazzalth did as requested, only to watch as the crawler made a fist with his hand as well. Using his chair arm to move the arm, the Scavenger brought his tiny fist up and tapped it against Bazzalth’s so lightly that Bazzalth would not even have felt it had he not been paying rapt attention.

“Bam! Heheh,” the crawler chortled as he unclenched his fist and wiggled his fingers in a strange manner. “Brofist.”

Bazzalth had no idea what was going on. “What crawler do?”

“Brofist, mang! Means we’re friends ’n’ stuff now. ’Cuz we’re bros, ya an’ me. Science bros! Heheheeee... science rules!” The crawler slumped over a little more, his eyes drooping further. “Hey, listen... listen, ‘kay? I’m... I’ma take a nap fer a bit, ‘kay? If my mom calls, tell ‘er... tell ‘er I want waffles fer breakfast...”

The Scavenger’s head fell once more, and this time, he did not recover. Bazzalth gave him a quick inspection and verified that he still breathed, then finally allowed himself to relax a little. His head still felt like it was spinning, his world having been put through some strange, inebriated whirlwind. He struggled to come to grips with the various thoughts and feelings rampaging through his head.

Almost magically, Pari would return to life. The bindings on Pari’s soul, and the rest of them, were supposedly accidental and would be resolved for him? It was almost too outlandish to accept... but Bazzalth had trouble believing that the impaired crawler had been able to tell any substantial falsehoods, affected as he had been. Which only made the other stuff the Scavenger had said even harder to deal with.

Kinship.

When was the last time another had expressed such kinship with him? Never, he realized. Not from any other person, not even his own sister. There was Pari, of course, but that had been quite different. She’d expressed affection and adoration, yes, but never kinship. No, nobody had ever understood Bazzalth, not like this crawler did. Not ever once.

Bazzalth did not believe in the concept of miracles, only in extreme statistical outliers. Only now, looking back, did he realize that one such outlier had just occurred. Against all expectations, Bazzalth found he greatly desired for the crawler known as Blake to live to see another day. No, more than that. Simply curing the crawler’s infection was no longer acceptable. He would find a way to restore the Scavenger’s—no, Blake’s—body to its proper form, so that Blake would be able to live a long and proper life—for a crawler anyway. Then the two of them would unlock the mysteries of the universe as.

Returning to his chemical storage cabinet, he pulled out several other vials, each filled with a compound that would help mitigate the lingering effect of the last injection. One by one he administered them, watching with satisfaction as the crawler’s fitful sleep eased into a soft slumber. Then, he turned back to his magnifier and began to prepare another trial. He had a task to complete, after all, only a handful of days to do it. He would not fail.

* * *

Bazzalth looked up from his work the next day as Blake woke with a weak and weary groan. “I feel like utter trash... what the hell?” the crawler muttered.

“What can Blake-crawler remember?” Bazzalth asked, trying to hide his nervousness. He’d run numerous tests through the night and unfortunately come up with little, as usual. It had gotten to the point where Bazzalth had set into motion a second plan in the hopes of finding an alternate route to a solution.

“Finally calling me by my name?” Blake asked, surprised and pleased.

“Bazzalth spent time reconsidering and decided that Blake-crawler’s ability is worthy of slight recognition,” Bazzalth told him.

“Great, glad you finally joined the winning team,” the crawler replied. “But anyway, I remember... I was playing Tetris, and you said you needed another scan or whatever, and then you needed to give me something so this scan would get better data than the last one, and then...” He shot Bazzalth an angry look. “I don’t remember anything after the injection. Did you drug me?”

“While Blake-crawler’s body appears like other crawlers, body is actually entirely different on cellular level. Chemical Bazzalth injected presented unanticipated side effects in Blake-crawler’s unique physiology,” Bazzalth explained. Technically, he’d told no falsehoods.

Alarm played across the crawler’s face, and Bazzalth internally felt relief wash over him that Blake had been fooled. “What did it do to me?”

“Blake-crawler showed signs of mental impairment, then lost consciousness. Once Bazzalth decided that Blake-crawler was not permanently harmed, Bazzalth decided to leave Blake-crawler to recover.”

“Wait, so... are you flying blind here, medically? You have no idea what any of your test drugs will actually do to me?”

“Correct. Bazzalth does use cell samples to help judge safety, but unforeseen side effects still quite possible. Bazzalth neglected to test inspection drug, though unwanted effects would not have revealed themselves on cellular level.”

Blake sighed. “Great. Wonderful. Well, do you need me for anything now?”

“Bazzalth does not.”

“Aight, I’m going to play some more Tetris. I had a serious streak going last time before you interrupted me. Let me know if you need something.”

The cavern descended into an awkward silence for several moments as Blake returned to his Tetris and Bazzalth took a moment to tend to the growth of his new device.

“Three thousand twelve,” Bazzalth finally said.

“Huh?” Blake replied.

“Bazzalth is three thousand and twelve years old.”

Blake blinked. “That’s... that’s really old, dude.”

“Incorrect. Bazzalth is youngest person.”

“Be that as it may, three thousand years is still a crazy long time to be alive, dude. You must have seen quite a lot of things in your life.”

Bazzalth didn’t know what to say to that, so he just huffed a non-committal reply.

“Hey, have you ever heard of a dude named Othar?” Blake inquired.

Bazzalth snorted. “Bazzalth knows of no person known by such.”

“No, I mean, what about ‘crawlers’ named Othar? From a long, long time ago? Supposedly a really powerful guy.”

“Bazzalth has never heard of crawler known by ‘Othar’ either,” he told Blake.

“Damn...” Blake swore. “Thought I finally had a lead... what are you doing over there, anyway?”

“Bazzalth is checking growth of new machine to inspect Blake-crawler’s body.”

“Oh neat, I want to see!” The crawler’s chair sprouted insectile legs once more and carried him down to the floor, across the lair, and over to Bazzalth’s side. “I’ve been super curious about how you make your stuff.”

The frame of Bazzalth’s new device stood a little more than twice Blake’s full height and four times his height and length, a tall rectangular structure made of bone and held together by sinew, all growing within a solid gelatinous base.

“What’s this jello for?” Blake asked.

“Everything,” Bazzalth replied. “Base is created from Bazzalth’s blood using other device-” He pointed to a large chunky device on the other end of the his lair. “-and imprinted with desired hormones in desired pattern. Once seed is planted, machine grows through base, using base as nourishment. Hormones adjust type of flesh in what places. When finished, last of base is burned away, leaving completed design.”

“Hold up... you make a block of jelly and you kind of draw inside it what you want?”

“Correct.”

“And then what do you put in it?”

“Small piece of Bazzalth’s flesh.”

“Any part?”

“Correct.”

“So your whole body is like stem cells? They just grow into whatever you tell them to become with the hormones in the jelly?”

“Correct.”

“Jesus Christ, you built a biological three-dimensional printer. I know some enthusiasts who would die to see something like this. This is wild. Nothing like this would be possible on my world. Our biotech is way behind what you’re capable of, and we have thousands of people working on this stuff.”

Bazzalth just grunted acknowledgment again, but inside he felt rather pleased to hear this.

“One thing that I’m still confused about, though...” Blake continued. “Why go through all this trouble, when you could just make machines out of tucrenyx and cantacrenyx instead?”

Bazzalth scoffed at the ludicrous question. “Why Bazzalth waste time on non-functional machines?”

“What do you mean, non-functional?” The chair twirled in a slow rotation, then back. “Does this look non-functional to you?”

“Blake-crawler’s creations only work now because corruption almost gone,” Bazzalth explained, as if he were explaining something simple to Pari.

“Corruption? What corruption?”

Bazzalth blinked. Could crawlers not feel it like he could? The subtle tingle that ran through his whole body, so omnipresent throughout his whole life that he would not even notice it for centuries at a time?

“Corruption weak now,” Bazzalth continued. “No longer strong enough to impede energy flow.”

Blake stared ahead with a slight frown on his face, an expression that Bazzalth had learned meant Blake was thinking about something.

“Bazzalth,” he said after a long moment. “How long has it been since the machines started working?”

“Less than two years,” Bazzalth replied.

“When was the last time they worked?”

“Bazzalth cannot say. Ancient crawler machines have not worked for as long as Bazzalth has been alive.”

Blake grew quiet. “Huh,” he finally said. “I’m... I’m gonna go play some more Tetris.”

* * *

“Why are we doing this, again?” Blake griped. “I don’t see how this will help me live.”

“Increase in scope of study required to search for possible cures,” Bazzalth reminded him. “Also, Blake-crawler agreed to study of body. Bazzalth would lose much opportunity if Blake-crawler dies before Bazzalth can research properly.”

“Fine, whatever. Are you sure this is going to be safe?” the invalid crawler asked as his metal chain carefully lowered him into the reclining flesh seat within the middle of the new sensor device, now fully grown and cleaned off.

“Safety remains in question with anything concerning Blake-crawler’s body,” Bazzalth replied, “but Bazzalth believes sensor will pose little danger.”

“I hope you’re right,” came the reply. The muscles beneath the chair contracted, pulling the seat down flat until Blake was fully horizontal.

“Blake-crawler understands sign? Knows procedure?”

“Yeah, yeah, don’t worry about it,” he stated.

Bazzalth’s hoard thrummed with anticipation as he awakened the machine from its slumber by sending a blast of searing hot flame into the input tube. The fire warmed the flesh and blood within, allowing the flesh of the machine to better access the energy flowing through its channels. The conduits especially were going to need as much energy as they could get.

Within the center of the device was a small platform large enough to hold both Blake’s current seat and a melted down square of metal that had been Blake’s chair just moments ago. Several oval circles made of bone surrounded that platform, and they began to spin within the machine, rotating around Blake horizontally, vertically, and every way in between, moving faster and faster and faster until they formed a blur that glowed with the power of Bazzalth’s transcendent life force. From above, Bazzalth looked down upon the machine and the crawler within, peering through two thin but vital membranes at the being inside and hoping his suspicions were correct.

Since the beginning of this arrangement, one of Bazzalth’s biggest questions had been how Blake could do the things he did with metal. The mystery stoked the old embers of perhaps his greatest research failure, further enticing him to investigate.

The problem was, Blake had no real idea how he could do what he did. He knew how to harness his power but not the mechanism by which it functioned. That was not good enough for Bazzalth.

This machine was his single solution to both that problem and the problem of solving Blake’s health. If it worked—unfortunately, not even close to a sure thing—then he would get a glimpse into a world he’d never before seen and hopefully get another lead towards restoring Blake’s body at the same time.

After mining Blake’s understanding of his abilities as best he could, Bazzalth had made some small but crucial modifications to his design, adding a second membrane over the top of the machine while modifying the one already there. The two membranes sat atop each other, and each could be pulled into the machine like an eyelid with the simple squeeze of a polyp. One membrane now contained as much molecularized tucrenyx, as Blake called the metal, integrated into the structure as possible while still remaining transparent. The second membrane had a similar treatment, except with cantacrenyx, the cloudy crystals that powered all his devices. These two materials were the two that seemed to interact with Blake’s powers the most, and in them Bazzalth placed his hopes.

As the machine approached maximum power, fed by the life force within and spurred on by his primordial fire, Bazzalth flipped between the two membranes with great eagerness. At first, nothing, but then... a shimmer on the crystal membrane. Bazzalth focused the full force of his prodigious eyesight upon it and gasped.

He could see it! Barely, but he could see it! An exotic energy, something never before witnessed on this world, saturated Blake’s body from the top of his head to the tip of his toes. Perhaps it was simply a byproduct of the lens through which he viewed this hidden world, but the energy seemed to swirl about in countless little eddies like the tiny currents of a deep and placid lake.

Bazzalth could have looked at it forever, but his new machine could only run at this capacity for so long before needing time to recover. He checked his instruments, seeing what, in anything could be properly quantified. Disappointingly but not surprisingly, few of his best instruments showed any reaction at all. He did not yet know how to measure this new energy.

One instrument, however seemed to get a reading of some sort: his durbidian harmonics gauge. The gauge hovered ninety-three, around the readings of a normal crawler. Well... that told him little, or it told him a lot. He wasn’t quite sure yet. He would have to keep an eye on it.

Bazzalth held up two claws over the machine, the signal to Blake to begin to use his ability. The crawler’s gaze went to the metal block beside him and Bazzalth watched with rapt attention as the formless shimmer seemed to extend from Blake’s body and envelope the metal as well. The metal began to change form, the shimmer matching it.

Bazzalth chuffed with glee. The image he could see was murky, with poor definition, but such was to be expected from a prototype. What mattered was that he had uncovered the basic mechanism behind the crawler’s strange ability. A wonderful first step, one which he knew would not be the last.

The instrument suite once again showed little reaction at all, except the durbidian harmonic gauge, which was... not average anymore. Very unaverage, in fact. How intriguing...

On a whim, Bazzalth concentrated on his soulsight. The green glow of Blake’s soul shone brightly, its gleam nearly blinding. Bazzalth had seen this before; whenever Blake or the Revenant had used their abilities, the luminosity of their souls would spike. Though Bazzalth couldn’t see too well, it did vaguely appear to him as if the energy was flowing in and out of the soul, cycling through it for reasons unknown. He couldn’t make out anything more.

With the scanner soon to run out of energy, Bazzalth initiated the resting procedure and watched as the machine slowly wound down. Once it had entered a sleep state, he opened the top and removed Blake and the metal.

“You looked way too happy for this to have been a bust,” the crawler remarked. “What did you find?”

Bazzalth told him of his general observations and conclusions.

“So a nearly invisible energy is inside me, and I control it to use my power. Interesting...” he hummed. “Did the energy decrease or anything when I used it?”

“Scan machine lacks instrumentation to answer such question definitively and Bazzalth’s view lacked detail, but Bazzalth observed no reduction in energy.”

“So how does this compare to normal Observation or Feeling?” Blake inquired.

Bazzalth went quiet, his mood souring slightly.

“What is it?” Blake asked.

“Bazzalth cannot answer because Bazzalth does not know how crawler abilities work,” he begrudgingly admitted. “Bazzalth studied question for many years when young, but could find little. Bazzalth chose to wait and return to topic after accumulating more Knowledge and experience.”

“Eh, no shame in knowing when to put something down. There comes a time when beating your head against a wall is no longer worth it, and smart people recognize that,” Blake reassured him. Bazzalth felt a sizzle of relief that the fellow researcher agreed. “But so, you didn’t learn anything at all? Nothing whatsoever?”

“When fire Observation begins, noted spike in soulforce from soul. Soulforce buildup disappears... then, nothing. Fire appears. No energies detected, no trace of reactions. Bazzalth never found how fire manifests. Same with stone, water, and others. No mechanism found.”

“But mine is different?”

“Correct. Durbidian harmonic readings imply different mechanism than standard crawlers.”

“Hold up, durbidian what now?”

“Durbidian harmonic frequency is frequency of soulforce. Frequency of soul is within range of frequency of world. All crawler souls maintain frequency close to frequency of eighty-five. Person souls similar. Frequency outside range implies different origin of soul.”

“And mine was?”

“At start, ninety-three.”

“That’s pretty close to eighty-five, isn’t it?” Blake replied, seemingly dubious.

“Correct, is within range. However, once Blake-crawler used ability, frequency changed.”

“To what?”

“Unknown.”

“Huh?”

“Frequency too high for gauge to measure. Could not get reading.”

“How high does the gauge go?”

“Eight thousand three hundred fifty two,” Bazzalth stated.

“Wow... okay then...” Blake grunted.

“Bazzalth believes reading proof of Blake-crawler’s extra-dimensional origins.”

“Some higher-frequency plane?”

“Correct. When accessing ability, soul’s durbidian harmonic frequency returned to original frequency, possibly to access energy and ability.”

“Why doesn’t it always just stay like that, then?” Blake wondered.

“Unknown. Possible adaptation to local environment.”

“This whole soul thing is still so weird to me,” his counterpart sighed. “Actually, wait a minute! How do you know this whole thing about different frequencies meaning different dimensions? Wouldn’t you only have Scyrian souls to look at? Or have you seen something like this before?”

Bazzalth hesitated. “Bazzalth will not speak of kaersha,” he finally said. “Is forbidden.”

“Kaersha? What’s that?”

“Forbidden!” Bazzalth repeated for the stone-headed crawler.

“All right, all right, message received...” Blake reluctantly gave in. “So I guess the real question is, does any of this help make me right again?”

The crawler’s words dragged Bazzalth down from his high with a stinging blow of reality. How did this new knowledge help? At least directly, it didn’t, and Bazzalth had gotten so caught up in the joys of discovery that he’d lost track of this fact.

“Use of new Knowledge may become apparent in future,” Bazzalth surmised. Or, so he hoped.

“So, it didn’t do jack for me right now, then.”

“...correct.”

“Then what is left?”

Bazzalth pondered the conundrum with a dour mood. The latest experiments had provided nothing of immediate value towards Blake’s recovery. Bazzalth’s myriad tests continued to come to the same set of conclusions: either the drug proved ineffective, was not effective long enough to matter, or showed itself to be too powerful, destroying the infection but also the host. The middle ground was the most frustrating. Watching the microbes adapt and overcome each of the drugs every time, and within such a short time too, just made him feel powerless sometimes. To be beaten by a single-celled organism! Truly the most humiliating defeat one could possibly endure. But what else was he supposed to do, except keep trying? Nothing seemed to be able to consistently defeat this lifeform. Nothing except Blake’s own body, at least.

Bazzalth froze as a flash of realization coursed through him. Of course! What a fool he’d been! Why hadn’t he thought of it sooner?

“There is another way,” he declared.

“Really? What is it?”

“If Blake-crawler’s body is only force capable of defeating infection, then Bazzalth must bolster Blake-crawler’s body so that body can overcome infection entirely.”

“You can do that?” Blake asked, somewhat dubious. “How?”

“Would require large infusion of life energy,” he explained. “Dangerous. Would require proper transfer method to ensure success. But only option remaining.”

“What do you mean, ‘dangerous’?” Blake warily inquired.

“Bazzalth developed method to temporarily boost lifeforce of others eight decades past,” he told the crawler. Those experiments had been some of the first steps on the winding path that had eventually led to the creation of Pari. “Tested on variety of animals and found improper processing led to incompatibility of lifeforce. Incompatibility could lead to death, or worse.”

“Or worse?!”

“Those that did not die immediately manifested heavy mutations,” Bazzalth said, his mind going back to those days. The malformed extra limbs, the bizarre growths and tumors, the agony. Bazzalth was not one to empathize with his test subjects, but even he found himself regretting some of the outcomes. “Those that died were the more fortunate.”

Blake did not appear enthused by the information. “I think it’s best if we avoid that route, perhaps? Try something else?”

“Incorrect. Bazzalth sees no other options with acceptable chances for success within remaining time frame. Worry not, Bazzalth has perfected proper processing procedure. Bazzalth believes Bazzalth can have working solution within several days.”

“But my biology is different than normal,” Blake pointed out, still not convinced for some reason, even after Bazzalth’s fully confident assurances. If Bazzalth said he could make something that worked, shouldn’t that be enough? Bazzalth was the foremost authority on these matters, after all.

“Correct. Bazzalth must run extra tests during development.”

“Meaning...”

“Meaning Bazzalth needs more samples. Many more samples.”

Blake groaned.

* * *

Bazzalth watched the centrifuge spin with great satisfaction. The machine was one of his favorites, endlessly useful and, thanks to centuries of design improvements, elegant as well. Right now, it was busy separating the various elements of Bazzalth’s blood for further processing. For Blake’s body to be boosted by lifeforce, large quantities of external lifeforce would be needed. Only Bazzalth’s superlative lifeforce would serve as an acceptable source for something this important. Few sources could even provide enough lifeforce for what was needed, anyhow. It was basically just people and Pari.

His mind still boggled at the sheer unfathomable amount of lifeforce held within that tiny child. Blake had told him that just drops of her enriched blood were enough to burrow a large hole down into the very depths of the world, and he believed it. It was a shame that lifeforce was largely useless when it came to power, or she would have been perhaps the most powerful being alive. Instead, she’d remained a largely defenseless little half-crawler child until her death.

Now that she would be returning to life, would he be able to see her again, or would he have to wait for her second death? No, he needed proof of Blake’s claims, even though he did not doubt them. He would make sure that the crawlers presented Pari to him for inspection.

Soon enough, the centrifuge finished its task and Bazzalth moved on to the next step: processing certain elements of the blood to alter the lifeforce to a form that Blake’s body could absorb and use. This part was tricky. It took a good deal of time and all of his concentration. So, of course, Blake was asking stupid questions again.

“Who would win in a fight, a dragon or a leviathan?” the crawler wondered.

Bazzalth paused, wrapping his great intellect around the inanity of the question. “A person, obviously. Leviathans cannot breathe out of water.”

“Yeah, but what if the dragon fought in the ocean or on top of it?”

Bazzalth blinked. “Why would person ever do that? Stupid tactics.”

“It’s a hypothetical, Bazzalth. A scenario conceived to facilitate argument and debate.”

“Why would any person want to debate such ridiculous topics?”

“Because it’s fun?”

“Bazzalth doubts this.”

“Never mind. I’ll get you to understand the joys of dumb arguments someday, but not today, I guess. But speaking of which, I am curious... are leviathans related to dragons?”

Bazzalth set down his tools for a moment and turned to look Blake in the eyes. “Advice for crawler: do not ask question again. Others would crush crawler just for asking.”

“Oh, is that another one of those touchy subjects? What about leviathans as a whole? Can I ask about them, at least?”

“Bazzalth will allow it.”

“Are they intelligent?”

“Bazzalth has only ever observed animalistic behavior. Data suggests no, but sample size not large enough for definitive evaluation.”

“I guess that makes sense,” Blake conceded. “How big are they really? I’ve only ever seen one, and from a distance, and I think I only saw part of the head. I looked absolutely huge, though.”

“Leviathans vary in size but are indeed massive. Small leviathans often larger than Bazzalth.”

“Jesus. Glad they’re stuck in the ocean and I’m not. I just wonder how many of them there are. It seems like the oceans wouldn’t be able to support a lot of them, given how much they must eat.”

“Data hard to gather, given environment,” Bazzalth replied. “However, people only require one meal every twenty or more days. Possible that leviathans also-”

Bazzalth’s speech came to an abrupt halt as he caught the glow of a powerful soul entering the range of his soulsight. A jolt of fear ran along his spine as he recognized the familiar aura.

“Hide,” he hissed. “Blake-crawler must hide, immediately.”

“Huh? What’s going on?” Blake sputtered.

“Now! No time! Hide under bed furs!” he roared as he rushed to a small container near the lair entrance and pulled out a handful of large waxy tubes. Without hesitation, Bazzalth took a deep breath and blew flame across the whole bunch, lighting their tops. As they burned, a thick, pungent scent emerged from each, masking the smell of crawler to his nostrils.

Bazzalth hesitated to call these wax cylinders “candles”, but he had to admit they were at least in part patterned after Pari’s creations and informed by his experience with the child. After having to send her away, he’d decided to create these should a similar situation ever present itself. He had not expected to need them for several centuries, at least, so he felt glad he’d bothered to make them already instead of putting it off.

Still, these maskers would only help hide the smell of crawlers. They would not save him if she got suspicious anyway.

Blake, fortunately, had the good sense to listen to Bazzalth without his normal backtalk. His chair was already on its way towards the back of the lair, his cadre of smaller robots following close behind. The crawler was doing what he could, now it was up to Bazzalth to do the rest.

Bazzalth emerged into the late afternoon light just as his sister touched down, the ground shaking from the impact.

“Clear skies, Tavreth-sister,” he greeted her as calmly as he could.

“Calm skies, Bazzalth-brother,” the towering figure returned.

“What brings Tavreth-sister?”

His sister chuffed, annoyed. “Cannot Tavreth simply wish to see Tavreth’s only blood relation?”

“No,” Bazzalth replied, a sliver of desperate courage working its way into him. “Would go against thousands of years of experience with Tavreth-sister.”

The larger person did not take the truth well. “Tavreth has called for Congregation in ten days,” she snarled. “Bazzalth-brother will attend.”

“As Tavreth-sister wishes,” Bazzalth replied. If this was all she had come for, then perhaps everything would be alright after all.

“Bazzalth will present results of kaersha research at Congregation,” his massive relative added.

Bazzalth felt his blood run cold. He hadn’t touched that terrible stuff in over a year, despite her instructions to focus on it. He just found it so loathsome that he did everything he could to avoid it. To be honest, he had no idea how Tavreth didn’t feel the same. Did she not feel the sheer repulsion he felt? No, she did, she simply was strong enough to overcome it.

“As Tavreth-sister wishes,” he repeated, his mind whirling. How was he supposed to be ready in just ten days? And he had a more important commitment hiding inside right that very moment! He’d have to fit as much as he could in the few remaining days after Blake left. There was no way he could work on kaersha with a crawler around.

“Very well,” his massive kin stated. She turned away, her sky-shrouding wings unfurling, only to stop halfway.

“Dearest brother...” she growled, her deep voice sending tremors through him and the ground alike.

Bazzalth’s already-cold-running blood froze over as she held up a massive handful of rubble. Several small pieces of metal could be seen sticking out from the rocks. He’d gotten so distracted with Blake that cleaning up the wreckage of his robot had completely slipped his mind!

Tavreth picked out one of the pieces with a gargantuan claw and held it up to her equally gargantuan eye. “Dearest brother, Tavreth does not appreciate being lied to.” The sheer menace in her voice was enough to make Bazzalth’s legs shake.

Tavreth did not bother to ask what it was, and Bazzalth did not bother to tell her. He knew that she knew full well the nature of the pieces in her grasp.

“What Tavreth say about crawler machines?!” she roared, her thunderous voice almost a blow unto itself, shaking Bazzalth to his core. “Bazzalth-brother disregarded instructions to study pathetic machines instead!”

“Incorrect! Bazzalth would not dare!”

“Then why crawler machine outside lair?!”

“Bazzalth encountered broken machine during patrol near crawler mine. Did not dare leave device near crawlers, so took back and destroyed.” A lie, and not the best one, but the only decent one he could come up with in the moment. He just hoped that she would not catch it. What other options did he have at this moment? To admit the truth was to invite disaster!

A mammoth hand shot out and grabbed Bazzalth by the throat and pulled him closer. “Must Tavreth remind Bazzalth-brother?” she hissed furiously. “Tavreth knows when Bazzalth-brother lies!”

Of course she knew. Bazzalth should have known that would never fly with her. But...

An idea flash through his mind as her claws cut through his scales and into his skin. Perhaps he could use this to his advantage a bit?

“Then listen to Bazzalth,” he croaked out. “Bazzalth has not been studying crawler machines. Bazzalth understands Tavreth-sister forbids doing so.”

Both entirely true statements.

Tavreth glared at him for a moment. “Then, perhaps Tavreth should verify Bazzalth-brother’s claims,” she growled, releasing him and stepping forward.

Bazzalth stood no chance of stopping her as she brushed him aside like one would a blade of grass. Before he could say a word, she was already half-inside the tunnel. Apparently, one did not have to invite disaster for it to arrive anyway.

“Lair stinks,” she remarked with a snort upon entering.

“Lair requires fumigation at intervals,” he replied. Once again, a true statement, just not one pertinent to the current situation.

Tavreth looked around his cavern with a critical eye, looking for anything amiss. Bazzalth knew that she had no idea of the functions of any of his equipment, so his only fear was some piece of Blake’s machines still lying around somewhere. To his immense relief, neither of them spotted anything of the sort.

Stepping deeper into the cave, Tavreth continued her search, working her way towards the back of the cave. Bazzalth fought with himself, trying to keep his rising nervousness from showing up on the outside as she grew closer and closer to the bed of furs in which Blake hid.

Almost as if she knew, Tavreth stopped over the large pile and sniffed deeply. Bazzalth’s breath caught in his throat.

“Bed reeks. Bazzalth-brother should have replaced bed furs years ago.”

“Bazzalth will replace furs soon.”

His sister took a quick breath, and before Bazzalth could even react, she spewed out a blast of flame so hot that it caused even Bazzalth to flinch from the heat.

“No!” Bazzalth could only watch in horror the pile of furs and everything within them turned to ash within a moment.

“Bazzalth-brother will replace furs now,” she stated with satisfaction.

An incredible source of unique Knowledge. An enrapturing object of study, full of priceless mysteries. Somebody who understood. The only one who understood. Gone. All gone.

Bazzalth had no words. No thoughts. The magnitude of his sudden immeasurable loss pushed anything else from his mind, leaving him numb as his sister by blood but not by mind walked up to him all self-satisfied, continuing past and out of the lair.

Bazzalth followed.

“Tavreth only desires best for Tavreth’s dearest brother,” she smugly said once outside.

“Tavreth-sister desires Bazzalth be Tavreth-sister’s minion, nothing more,” he bitterly spat from behind her, the sort of thing he’d always thought but never had the courage to say. Perhaps he was just too filled with mourning to care anymore. “Tavreth-sister has only ever cared for Bazzalth as means to more Power.”

Surprisingly, for once she did not strike him or worse. Instead, she only looked back at him with contempt. “Tavreth does much for Bazzalth-brother. Is not Tavreth’s fault if Bazzalth-brother cannot see. Perhaps if Bazzalth-brother were not embarrassment to lineage, Bazzalth-brother would be able to challenge Tavreth, but Tavreth and Bazzalth-brother both know day will never come. Ten days, dearest brother. Ten days,” she said again as her wings unfurled. With a mighty leap, she catapulted into the sky and within a moment she was gone.

Bazzalth did not move until Tavreth’s soul left his soulsight. Only then did he dare reenter his abode, his heart heavy and a boulder within his gullet. Immediately, he went to the charred remains of his bed.

Nothing remained but black char atop melted rock.

Gone. Lost forever.

Unable to contain his sorrow, Bazzalth let out a roar that seemed to shake the heavens themselves. His fists slammed into the nearby wall—once, twice, three times—leaving behind a series of cracks and shattered stone. A second cry erupted from his maw, threatening to shake the stalactites from the ceiling.

Damn his sister! She’d known what she was doing! She had known he’d been hiding something in the bed from the moment she’d walked in. This was all about teaching him a lesson, he knew. Keeping him under her claw. But what could he do about it? He was too weak, and he would always be too weak!

A sound crossed Bazzalth’s ears, giving him pause: a soft knocking coming from somewhere nearby. He went quiet for a moment, and a breath later, it came again.

Taptaptap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Taptaptap.

Bazzalth’s hearing led him away from his former bed and over to a nearby storage container. He bent over to listen.

Taptaptap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Taptaptap.

Something was in his storage container. Something alive.

Bazzalth unlocked the container and practically ripped it open, only barely managing to preserve the integrity of the chest in his haste. He looked in, and, squeezed between two rows of vials and looking back up at him, sat one slightly-frazzled looking crawler.

“Phew! Thanks, Bazz, it was getting mighty sweaty in there,” the crawler said as his chair lifted him out.

“What Blake-crawler doing in supply container?!” he asked, flabbergasted.

“Well, I figured hiding in the bed was a terrible idea,” Blake told him. “That never ends well in the movies, you know. So I asked myself, since you lighting those smelly-ass candles meant that my scent would be a problem, where would there be the least airflow so I would be the hardest to find by smell? I figured one of these was the best bet. You store shit in here for a long time, right? Years and years? So that meant it had to be airtight.”

“But container has lock,” Bazzalth pointed out.

“You’d be surprised how little locks matter when you can just pour liquid metal into them and work them from inside,” Blake chuckled. “Just didn’t expect the seal to be so strong from the inside. So, is everything alright?”

“Yes,” Bazzalth half-lied. He still had the kaersha problem, but that was a problem for another day.

“You sure? You seemed to be roaring really loud just now.”

“All is within acceptable parameters.”

“...you thought I’d died, didn’t you?” Blake accused him with a mischievous smirk on his face.

Bazzalth tensed involuntarily. “Of course not,” he lied.

“Ah ha, you did, didn’t you? You thought I was dead and it made you upset!”

“Bazzalth suffered momentary loss of composure, nothing more,” he huffed, turning away from the insolent creature.

“Awwwww... buuuuuddddyyyyyyy, that’s so sweet! Gimme a hug! Come on!”

“Silence.”

Bazzalth weathered the indignity as the insufferable crawler mocked his weakness by creating a pair of metal arms from his chair and wrapping them around Bazzalth’s nearest claw. Perhaps it would have been better if the impertinent creature had perished after all.

* * *

The serum manufacturing process continued through the next day. Bazzalth concentrated on each important step, while Blake sat nearby and told him how he could make everything so much better if Bazzalth just did it Blake’s way. Because the crawler knew how to do the work so much better than Bazzalth did, apparently.

“I’m telling you, dude, computers are the way to go. Computer science revolutionized my world, and it can take you just as far. You could probably even make organic computers. Your different devices around here all have some sort of minor proto-brain, right? Take that a step or two further. Make living computers and automate all these menial steps so you can be free to focus.”

“Bazzalth has limit to what can be grown,” he told the over-enthusiastic crawler. “Risk of device sentience increases with complexity of device nervous system. Sentient devices break.”

“Uh... what? That’s a thing that can happen?”

“Correct,” Bazzalth. “Bazzalth created many... mistakes when first researching. Machines experienced pain and other suboptimal sensations.”

“Then go with inorganic,” Blake pivoted, not missing a beat. Transistors. Microchips. You would be able to offload a bunch of work, though you’d need to create a generator first and a whole power system and... yeah, there’d be a lot of setup. Still worth it, though.”

“Worth how?” Bazzalth asked, unconvinced. He had a working system already, why spend precious time creating a whole other system that was not guaranteed to be superior? And it would resemble crawler machines enough to risk angering his sister. “Bazzalth does not require external computation like crawlers. Bazzalth can compute everything Bazzalth needs with mind.”

“Well, it’s not like we just use computers for number crunching, you know! There’s the internet, for example. Connect a bunch of computers together around the world and you can do all sorts of things. Like, talk to other people from across the world with ease.”

“Crawlers can already talk across world without computers,” Bazzalth pointed out.

“That’s not the same at all!” Blake objected. “Can they order three pounds of sour apple licorice and a pair of size fourteen sandals and have them show up at their house two days later? No!”

“Bazzalth always comprehends meaning in Blake-crawlers words, yet so often understands nothing.”

“It’s called ‘online shopping’. You can connect your computer to another one somewhere across the country and tell it ‘I want a sixteen-ounce jug of cat treats, a water bottle, and two USB cables’ and then they get sent to you. It’s great! You don’t even have to leave the house!”

Bazzalth’s attention latched onto the last sentence and he reevaluated the utility of inorganic computational machines. The vision of a future time, where he could just have all his experimental materials brought to him and he never left his lair, floated through his mind like the wild delusions of a fever dream. Could such a wondrous world even be possible? It seemed too good to ever be true.

A more immediate reality called to his attention as a nearby machine—organic and versatile and very much fine without inorganic computational processors, thank you very much—let out a hiss of steam. The first test serum was finally complete.

“Bazzalth requires samples,” he told the crawler. “True tissue samples.”

Blake swallowed. “Not blood?”

“Not blood.”

“Can you make them small, at least?”

“Worry not, Blake-crawler. Bazzalth will take samples from legs, so Blake-crawler will not feel it.”

“That doesn’t reassure me, dude,” Blake replied, but the crawler’s skittishness mattered little. There was not much he could do to stop Bazzalth, anyhow.

Soon enough, Bazzalth had his samples, six slices of skin and muscle, each about the size of the crawler’s smallest toe. Blake had stopped complaining once the coagulant had set in and stopped the bleeding in the leg. Bazzalth didn’t even know what the little creature was whining about. A superficial wound that small was nothing. Bazzalth doubted he would have even noticed it was there.

Taking the first sample, he set it on a small platter and set it on the examination table where both he and Blake could see it. After loading the smallest syringe arm with some of the test serum, setting up the proper sensors and gauges, and calibrating the instruments, he turned to Blake. “Observe,” he commanded as he manipulated a syringe arm to release a drop of the serum upon the sample. The drop, about a tenth the size of the sample, landed and flowed around flesh, coating it from every side.

The effect was immediate.

The tiny sample swelled, growing at a tremendous pace. Long, dark, curly hair seemed to burst from the skin, growing in thick, tangled chunks so thick that it could be mistaken for fur. The skin beneath it grew a sickly yellow, its texture rough and covered in bumps and lumpy growths. The entire mass had more than tripled in size, the muscle beneath it all the biggest source of the expansion. Bazzalth could see the muscle fibers struggling against each other as they grew every which way instead of all in one coordinated direction. The most striking feature, however, was the new blood vessel sticking out of the lump of flesh. Almost twice as large as the biggest blood vessels in Blake’s body, its open end gaped at them, begging for blood. There had been no blood vessel large enough to note before the serum had been administered.

“What the flying fuck did I just watch?” the crawler groaned. “Thank god I’m too weak to vomit right now.”

“Serum is not properly synced with Blake-crawler’s lifeforce. Failure to synchronize resulted in catastrophic growth.”

“That’s a tumor. You’re going to give me cancer.”

“Incorrect. Proper serum will bring different result.” Picking up the mutated sample, Bazzalth moved it to the area with the magnifier and, with the care and precision of somebody who’d done it a million times before, sliced off several thin pieces for inspection.

“Hmmmm,” he rumbled after a moment. “Serum is success.”

“You call that success?!” an appalled Blake wheezed.

“Correct,” Bazzalth replied, checking more slices and finding the same result in each one. “Sample fully eradicated infection. Next step is adjustment to mitigate side-effects.”

Blake let out a weary, uneasy moan, his gaze never leaving the mutated sample. “I don’t know about this anymore, dude.”

“Nonsense,” Bazzalth snorted. “Quest for knowledge continues.”

* * *

“Well, it looks better than the last one, at least,” Blake hummed the next day as they inspected the new test with the second, updated serum.

The results of the new batch looked much like the last, only with the severity of the mutation cut by half.

“Indeed,” Bazzalth agreed. “Progress is acceptable. Final version will likely be ready by end of tomorrow.”

“So that’s... how long from now is that? I don’t even know what time it is right now since I disassembled my suit. How do you even tell time in here with no natural light or anything? I don’t see a single thing that looks like a clock.”

“Bazzalth counts,” Bazzalth told him, earning him what he thought to be a disbelieving stare. His ability to read crawler expressions was improving swiftly with all the recent experience, but he still wasn’t always sure.

“You count,” Blake replied, his tone confirming Bazzalth’s initial expression evaluation.  “Like, just constantly count in the back of your head for hours without stopping.”

“Not hours, millennia,” Bazzalth replied, somewhat confused about what part of this simple statement was so hard to understand. “Do crawlers not count time? Is simple.”

“We have something that does it for us, like any rational being! Who would want to manually keep track of time that way?”

“Relying on outside source for internal knowledge is folly.”

“What, do you not have any books or anything? Do you not write stuff down?”

“No.”

“That’s crazy. What if you forget?”

Bazzalth let out a loud snort. “Impossible. Bazzalth does not forget contents of hoard.”

“Didn’t you forget to patrol just a few days ago?”

“Different,” Bazzalth huffed. “Did not forget, merely slipped from mind in excitement.”

“Okay, whatever you say, bud.”

* * *

“Did it work? That looks... normal. The good kind of normal.”

Bazzalth inspected the latest test sample with a critical eye. Indeed, the result appeared as hoped. Healthy skin and muscle, as if he’d cut it from a physically well crawler and not his diseased companion here.

“Will this work on all parts of my body? Like, my nerves and whatnot?”

“Serum should affect all cell types equally,” Bazzalth replied, slicing the sample thin for inspection.

“So, like, I could walk again? Maybe get my arm back too?”

“Both likely,” he told the crawler as he put the sample beneath the magnifier and observed the magnified image with great satisfaction. “No trace of infection. No side-effects.”

“Well, hot damn! So we’re ready to go?”

“Incorrect. More testing needed to confirm.”

“Really? You still have doubts?”

“Incorrect,” Bazzalth replied again. “Bazzalth simply must make sure all aspects are optimal before administration. Only single dose will be possible, so must make sure that all variables within acceptable ranges.”

“What do you mean, only a single dose is possible?” Blake inquired.

Bazzalth grunted and brought the arm containing the test serum back over the sample. “Observe.”

A single drop fell upon the tissue, and the effect was immediate.

“Holy shit!” Blake hissed as the sample turned black and began to smoke. Within a moment, nothing remained upon the dish but a tiny pile of what looked like ash.

“Second dose always causes cellular destruction and molecular decomposition.”

“Alright, in that case, maybe test things a few more times,” Blake allowed.

The following tests went as hoped, continuing to display full cellular regeneration and complete eradication of the infection. Finally, Bazzalth felt fully ready to begin the end of this entire ordeal. “Serum complete,” he pronounced. “Time for treatment.”

“Hold on,” Blake said. “Before we get started, I have to take care of something.”

The crawler retreated to the far corner of the lair, a single one of his small helper robots following behind the chair. Once far from Bazzalth, the robot scampered atop Blake’s lap. Blake stared at it silently for a good long while. Then, apparently done, the robot scarpered from the lair, rushing into the tunnel and disappearing.

“Don’t worry, just leaving a will and instructions,” Blake told him. “You know, in case something happens.”

“Nothing will happen,” Bazzalth growled, rather offended that Blake would even think that his treatment might go wrong. Bazzalth was the greatest master of organic science, after all; even Blake himself had said so.

“I know. Still, can’t hurt, right? It will just go hide a few mountains away. If something does happen somehow, it will let the others know.”

Bazzalth moved Blake to another side of the table, where he’d prepared a large array of injection arms, while Blake abandoned his chair and any other metal, lying naked on his back.

“Ready,” the crawler stated.

Slowly, Bazzalth lowered the various arms, inserting each needle into a different part of Blake’s body until the crawler looked like a pincushion. He’d expected some sort of griping, but to Blake’s credit, he stayed silent, though Bazzalth did note that Blake’s eyes were firmly shut.

Once all the needles were in place, Bazzalth began the injection of the serum. All the points of the body needed to be injected at the same time, which was why he’d needed to use so many and all at once. Quickly, the syringes emptied and the serum was fully within Blake’s body, merging with his blood and spreading to every corner. Bazzalth hurriedly removed all the needles.

The effect was... not immediate.

“Is something happening?” Blake wondered several moments later. “I don’t feel any different.”

“Patience,” Bazzalth replied, though that was mostly to hide his own rising panic.

Nothing was happening. No regeneration, no growth, nothing. Now twenty heartbeats after injection, there should have been massive signs of improvement, at least.

Something was wrong. Something was very wrong. Bazzalth did not understand. All the tests had proceeded as desired. They’d seen the results just that day many times! Had he somehow overlooked some critical factor? He needed to look again.

Manipulating his blade arms, he took a thin layer of white skin webbed with black from the crawler’s diseased foot and moved it to the magnifier for study. Looking at the cells through his equipment, he found... healthy cells without a single invasive microbe to be seen. Bazzalth blinked and checked again. Finding the same thing, he looked down at the sample itself. Healthy, pink skin sat on the observation plate, without a single blemish anywhere to be seen.

Baffled, Bazzalth hurriedly took a second sample from right beside the last one, except this time, he did not move it from Blake’s proximity immediately. Instead, he stared at the sample and waited for it to manifest the same changes as the last one. Nothing happened.

Confused, he began to carry the sample to the magnifier when he noticed the change begin. White became pink, while the black web receded until it soon disappeared entirely. Before he even made it to his magnifier, the sample had taken on a similar appearance to the first. Bazzalth remained baffled. It was like the flesh had been waiting for him to take it away from Blake before-

He froze as realization crashed into him. Of course! How could he have been so stupid? All of his tests had been on Blake’s tissue, but the samples had been outside of the influence of Blake’s body’s exotic energy! That was the only difference! The energy had to be somehow interfering with the transmission of lifeforce, keeping it locked within the serum! Only when removed from the whole and free of the energy field could the lifeforce spread to the flesh! That had to be it! How foolish he had been to not realize such a critical complication beforehand?!

But how to get around it? He highly doubted the energy could be removed. It was likely as much a part of Blake as the crawler’s love for random tangents and inane questions. Nor did Bazzalth know how it could be circumvented. But... perhaps it could be overcome. What he needed was an external energy to counterbalance the interference. If the combined energy became strong enough to overwhelm Blake’s exotic energy, it would theoretically allow the lifeforce to break through. But Blake’s exotic energy was mighty. A vast amount of energy would be needed to be strong enough to counterbalance it. Where would he be able to find enough energy for the task?

A chemical energy might do the trick, but he only had a handful of options on hand, and all of them were likely to do far more harm than good. Nor did he have a simple way to convert his own prodigious power into a compatible form. He did have a small electrical generator stored away that he’d created for use with chemistry research, but that nothing that could create the level of power he needed right this moment. If only he hadn’t recycled his old, more powerful generator nine centuries ago!

But that had always been the way he’d worked, hadn’t it? He prepared for his experiments ahead of time, designing and growing whatever equipment he needed beforehand while recycling the old, unneeded items. There was a limit, after all, to what he could fit into his lair, and what was the day or two needed to grow a desired object to the likes of him? His system had always served him well. Until now.

For the first time in a long time, it seemed that his methods had come back to bite him in the tail. Exposed to Blake’s body, the compound would not be stable for too long—half a day, at the very most. He could not afford the wait required to grow a generator strong enough for his needs. But what else could he do?

Fortunately, Bazzalth had an idea: if he didn’t have the time to create the energy in his lair, then he would have to go outside and “harvest” it. Unfortunately, the only two options he could think of to accomplish this were highly unpleasant, to say the least. The things he did for Knowledge...

Retreating to a storage shelf on the far side of the cave, he pulled down a device he’d created long ago, back when he’d been but a whelp first studying the basic nature of matter. The object had a fairly simple construction, with a smooth, rectangular body made from bone and a metal rod sticking out on each end. Taking it in hand, he left the lair—ignoring Blake’s confused protests—and took to the sky heading north.

The air was still that night as he flew between the peaks, a rare occurrence that let him increase his speed even more than normal as he swerved between the moonlit heights. Forty seven peaks later, Bazzalth descended towards what had once been a normal mountain but now was missing the upper two-thirds of its mass. This artificial plateau was covered by various geometric patterns surrounded by precisely manicured hedges, from checkerboard to hexagonal to other more abstract designs. Some of the spaces were empty, save the patterns, while others contained all manner of sculpted stone formations. Given that he didn’t see the owner of these gardens within them, he landed to the east side of the former mountain and approached a tunnel that led down into what remained of the once-mighty peak.

“Daravith,” he called into the entrance.

“Enter,” came an enticing rumble a moment later.

Bazzalth took a moment to settle his nerves before he did as instructed. He had no trouble fitting inside; this tunnel had been created by somebody larger than he, though that could be said about every other person. The tunnel declined as he went, going ever deeper into the base beneath the mountain. A newcomer would likely wonder if such a design would prove a mistake, as all the nearby rain would flow down into the tunnel, flooding the lair below. Anybody who had been inside before, however, would know that this was not a flaw but a feature. In fact, the ground around the tunnel entrance had been purposely sloped towards the entrance to collect as much water as possible.

Bazzalth’s ears picked up the sound of splashing echoing along the tunnel, telling him he was nearly there. Sure enough, just twenty breaths later, he emerged into a large cavern similar to his own but much larger. Unlike his lair, a full half of the cavern was filled with water, creating a large pool that surrounded a central island. Just a single path led from Bazzalth’s location to the land in the center.

Within that pool, not too far from the entrance, lounged Daravith. Lying on her back, she kicked her front feet out playfully, sending a small surge of water flying towards Bazzalth before rolling over and standing up. With an amused rumble, she climbed from the pool to saunter over to him.

Bazzalth didn’t even manage to react to the water flying his way; he barely even registered as it cascaded over him. His gaze and his mind were too preoccupied watching the water wash down Daravith’s pristine, alluring horns, her large, powerful chest, her deadly sharp claws. Tiny droplets clung to the scales on her firm, strong muscles and lithe but powerful tail, glimmering like gemstones in the ambient glow of the moss on the walls and ceiling.

She was so, so beautiful... and she knew it, which only made her use it mercilessly against him for her own amusement. Bazzalth hated interacting with every person living in these mountains, but Daravith was easily one of his least favorites. He hated the way his body would grow hotter, his heartbeat increasing and his thoughts growing cloudier. He didn’t know what to do with this rush of feelings and he resented the loss of control. His thoughts were the only thing he still had full control over when around another person, but she had to somehow twist even them. Yes, he loathed being around Daravith, but he had little choice this day, as Daravith was also the only person who could breathe lightning.

Daravith came to a halt less than a tail’s length from Bazzalth, towering over him with her much larger stature. Easily more than one and a half times his height, she represented the more usual size of a person, compared to Bazzalth’s diminutive presence.

“To think Little Bazzalth would seek out Daravith all on Bazzalth’s own,” she purred, looking down upon him like a red-throated tree drake eyeing unsuspecting prey on the ground below. “Daravith has been thinking Daravith needs to have Bazzalth make Daravith more toys. Daravith has been ever so bored.”

Bazzalth had wondered why she had not appeared at his lair in the last several hundred years. Before then, she had “visited” him frequently, sometimes even more than three times a decade, to force him to make toys, games, and other items of amusement whenever she got too bored. The problem was, as a person who hoarded Recreation, Daravith was always bored—extremely so. She dedicated her life to all manner of games, competitions, novelties, relaxation activities, and anything else that might help while away the days, but every person knew that one’s hoard could never be satiated, only quieted for a time.

“Little Bazzalth has brought a gift for Daravith?” she purred, glancing at the device Bazzalth held in his claws.

Bazzalth gulped, trying to ignore the smell of her scent as it wafted into his nostrils. “Bazzalth comes with request.” He held up the device. “Daravith fills lightning containment unit with Daravith’s lightning breath.”

She chuckled. “Amuse Daravith for three seasons and then Daravith will consider request.”

Bazzalth grunted his refusal. “Lightning must happen now. Bazzalth will return later if necessary.”

Daravith’s tail whipped out towards his head faster than he could react and struck him hard enough to send him stumbling and nearly knocking him into the pool.

“Look at Little Bazzalth, unable to withstand even gentle touch. So weak and pathetic!” she laughed. “Far too weak to demand conditions.”

She was upon him before he could ready himself, her larger, stronger body easily overpowering his and pinning him onto his back. Bazzalth’s heart beat even harder and faster as she leaned in close, her humid, musky breath almost caressing his face. His body blazed ever hotter, especially in certain parts where he wasn’t accustomed to feeling such heat.

“Someday, Daravith will take Little Bazzalth and Little Bazzalth will become only Daravith’s toy. Little Bazzalth will create endless amusements for Daravith and fill Daravith’s hoard until Nartrill catches Treuvax.” She slowly ran a razor-sharp claw along his neck as she effortlessly held him in place. The touch sent a chill shiver running down to the tip of his tail. “Were Little Bazzalth not part of Tavreth’s faction, Daravith would have done so already. Tavreth will not protect Little Bazzalth forever. Daravith is looking forward to that time. Daravith will be ready.”

“Lightning required to complete task for Tavreth,” Bazzalth gasped, hoping to use his sister’s name and the fear that came with it in a last-ditch effort to get what he needed. Tavreth would not appreciate it, but he would deal with that later. “Daravith desires Tavreth’s rage.”

The other person snorted contemptuously. “Daravith will not bow so readily. Even without Gretiem, Daravith’s faction strong. Tell Tavreth to come instead if Tavreth desires lightning so greatly.”

Before Bazzalth knew what was happening, Daravith had picked him up and he found himself hurtling up the tunnel and into the tunnel wall. Stunned, he pushed himself to his feet as Daravith turned her back on him and lazily glided into the nearby water.

“Go now,” he heard her say, “and next time, Little Bazzalth must remember Little Bazzalth’s station.”

He didn’t need to be told twice.

Moments later, Bazzalth emerged onto the surface and took flight once more, heading west towards the nearby ocean. His course quickly took him over the Sea of Lamentation as he fervently tried to clear his head and pull together his scattered, discombobulated thoughts.

There’d been some sort of need inside him, one vastly different than that of his hoard which he was used to. Though he’d felt it several times before, he still didn’t understand this need or why it sometimes appeared from nowhere when confronting certain other people. He hadn’t been ready for the power it had held today, however. It had been so strong that a part of him had wanted to say yes right then and there.

His resolve had held, of course. After all, if he were to do nothing but create new amusements for Daravith for the rest of his life, what would happen to his research? Who else would plumb the secrets of reality? But he knew, deep down inside, that his days of joyous research were running out. He lacked the power to oppose Daravith, whenever she eventually decided to come for him. She would force him into the role she desired, whether he wanted it or not.

Perhaps the worst part was that, as far as strength went, she was around average. He found himself grateful that only Daravith seemed to be considering this. If others also desired to bind him to a life of servitude, he didn’t know what he would do.

The thought made him appreciate Tavreth’s presence in his life—a rare feat. But he knew deep down that she protected him not because of their shared lineage but for her own, more selfish reasons. She needed him, and that was that.

As moons grew closer to the horizon, Bazzalth finally spied the outer cloud layer of his second option: Chalacc’s Fury. Nobody could remember when the massive monsoon had first appeared; it had always been there, like the sun or the moons. Lazily meandering near the center of the Sea of Lamentation with the occasional detours to glance off the surrounding landmasses, it reminded Bazzalth of the great eternal gas planet storms he’d spotted through his telescope when he first decided to study the celestial bodies as a young whelp. Though its strength could not be compared to said storms—if his calculations were correct, those behemoths could swallow all three moons with ease—Chalacc’s Fury was no laughing matter. Its harsh winds and roiling lightning, especially near the center, were more than powerful enough to dissuade even the mightiest person from approaching without a good reason.

Tonight, Bazzalth had a very good reason. He’d hoped, foolishly, that Daravith would be accommodating enough to assist him in his moment of need, and had decided to try her first because she was closer. Now that... that had happened instead, Chalacc’s Fury was the only readily available source of the powerful lightning he required.

Strong crosswinds buffeted Bazzalth as he pushed through the outer edges of the storm. He clutched at his lightning containment unit, worried that it would slip out from a sudden unexpected gust. The solid device’s weight pulled his front down, making the journey even more taxing, but he persevered for the sake of Knowledge.

The howling gale battered him now, nearly picking him up and sending him spiraling towards the brine below. Sheets of rain as thick as his wings were wide pelted him endlessly, impeding his vision. Even his potent muscles were beginning to protest under the constant strain, but he pressed on.  Only a little further and he would be close enough to the heart of the storm.

Then, through the rain and the wind and the mist, he sighted his destination: a wall of cloud so dense that it could be mistaken for solid stone were it not roiling so violently. Thick cords of lightning arced across its surface, with bright pulses beneath telling of many more within.

Holding the lighting containment unit out before him, Bazzalth hurtled into the vortex and waited for the inevitable. He didn’t need to wait long. Just moments later, he felt the tremendous buildup of power all around him as the air itself seemed to crackle and thrum. The storm answered his request with great enthusiasm. Blinding bolts bombarded him and his device, knocking him momentarily senseless. Debilitating pain followed as the lightning coursed through his body, but he fought through it, banking and flaring his wings to their maximum span. The storm obliged, hurling him out with a violent force.

Bazzalth tumbled through the air for several heartbeats as he regained full control over his body. Soon enough, his tumble turned into a glide and he turned towards home, the storm’s winds working in his favor now.

Once, long ago when Bazzalth had been but a half his current size, he’d first decided to uncover the secrets of Chalacc’s Fury. It had only taken several moments for him to realize just how over-matched he’d been then, and so he’d declared that he would return when he could overcome the storm’s might. He’d returned several times since, each attempt ending the same as the last.

Now, though more than twice the size and many times the strength of the younger Bazzalth, he still was no match for the monsoon’s boundless rage. He’d lasted only moments within the inner storm and, had he stayed too much longer, would have suffered injury and possibly even death. His people liked to think themselves to be peerless beings, unrivaled in power; Bazzalth himself was no exception. But he found it wise to remember that they were not invincible. Chalacc’s Fury stood forever as the ultimate reminder.

The remaining trip back went quickly and uneventfully. Two of the three moons still hung in the sky when he alighted in front of his lair. Proceeding through the tunnel, he entered the cavern to find Blake lying just where Bazzalth had left him, except surrounded by several small machines less than a third Blake’s size. They each resembled the same basic structure as the larger robots Bazzalth was used to seeing from Blake, except instead of an arsenal of weapons, they each only had one thin, dexterous arm with a small claw at the end. With each claw Bazzalth noticed small bits of what looked like crawler food.

With great care, one of the robots lowered the claw and deposited the food in Blake’s mouth.  His mouth worked slowly and weakly, the simple act enough to strain him. He swallowed, another seemingly exhausting process.

“Glad I decided to bring my own food, just in case,” the crawler said as the robots scattered upon Bazzalth’s entrance. “If I’m going to die, I’d prefer something quicker than starvation, thank you very much. What the hell did you rush off for, anyway? You didn’t even seem to hear me when I was calling for you.”

“Bazzalth needed to harvest for procedure.”

“Procedure? I thought the procedure failed.”

“Correct. Healing compound did not activate. Too much energy resisting reactions. Bazzalth has developed theory to counteract energy.” He set the lightning containment unit onto the examination table not far from the crawler.

“Well, shit. And to think I’d given up. This is why I came to you. I knew you could do this,” Blake told him with a warm smile. He glanced at the unit. “So is that part of this... theory or whatever?”

“Indeed,” Bazzalth answered as he turned away to look for the rest of the necessary equipment.

“What is it?”

Bazzalth reached into a storage container, moved several other old devices aside, and pulled out two long metal cables, each with one end terminating in a solid sphere. “Lightning containment unit.”

“Lightning containment? You mean a battery?”

Battery? Bazzalth examined the unfamiliar word, as well as the intent that came with it, and found it most agreeable. It summarized the lightning containment unit well while being more efficient. He would use it. “Correct.”

“Are you sure that this procedure or whatever is going to be safe?”

“Blake-crawler’s condition too severe now. Safe procedures will produce unsatisfactory results,” Bazzalth informed the crawler as he pulled out a lightning-proof mat from the bottom of the same storage compartment, as well as manacles made from the same material. Both of them were leftover from certain experiments he’d done on crawlers several centuries ago. “If unsafe procedure fails, Blake-crawler will die regardless.” The sound of a soft sigh behind him suggested that perhaps this logic was not enough for Blake, so he decided to reassure the crawler. “Bazzalth sure either result will provide fascinating data.”

“But it should work, right?” Bazzalth noted how Blake’s wheeze increased in pitch and seemed to sound a bit... tighter, perhaps? His still limited experience suggested that the crawler was becoming worried. Strange that his assurances had not worked.

“Bazzalth estimates success odds at approximately sixty four percent,” he informed his guest as he picked him up and placed the mat beneath him before setting it down.

“That’s all?!” His subject was clearly growing more agitated as time went on. It would be best to begin the final procedure as soon as possible. Bazzalth connected the first cable to the battery and placed the spherical end to Blake’s right. “What are you even going to do? That battery is to power a machine or something, right? Right?”

“Energy within must be counterbalanced by energy without,” Bazzalth explained as he fastened the manacles first to the table and then to Blake’s arms and legs.

“Let’s hold off for a bit and talk this over.”

“Cannot wait, serum will break down soon.”

“No, no, wait, let’s step back and think this-”

“Prepare for pain,” Bazzalth advised. Placing the second cable’s end to the crawler’s left, he completed the connection.

Blake spasmed against the restraints as the lightning arced through him, his face contorted into a mockery of it normal self. As Bazzalth watched, he couldn’t help but note how unprepared for pain the crawler appeared despite his clear warning on the matter. At least the lightning coursing through Blake’s chest kept him from screaming. The screams of crawlers annoyed Bazzalth, one of the many reasons he preferred his test subjects to be already dead.

The putrid scent of burning fecal matter informed Bazzalth that Blake had voided his bowels. With a loud gag, he spat up the contents of his stomach as well. Bazzalth noted the low volume of vomit with encouragement. Nourishment was important when it came to healing.

All around the lair, the sound crashing metal echoed. Bazzalth glanced away from his subject for a moment to assess the noises. What he found were Blake’s robotic creations scattered around the cavern, each spasming as violently as their creator. Slowly their forms degraded, the metal melting away until all that remained were cantacrenyx crystals lying in puddles of liquid tucrenyx. How utterly fascinating! He would have to find a way to study that later. For now, however, his focus needed to be on Blake himself.

Getting his microscope to focus on the writhing crawler was a near impossible task, so Bazzalth would not know if the process was working as intended until completion, which would not come for another twenty-two breaths. Until then, he could only wait.

The lightning continued to rampage through Blake’s body, but as the process neared the thirteenth breath, Bazzalth noticed something was wrong. Blake’s writhing magnitude was dropping, as if the level of pain was decreasing rapidly. Yet, according to Bazzalth’s calculations, it was far too early for his body to have healed. Was the current weakening?

As if to answer the question, thick plumes of smoke began to spew from the battery at an alarming rate. Rushing over to the newly befouled device, he blew a steady stream of air towards the source of the smoke to get a better view. A small, hairline crack ran along the bottom and side of the container! Where had this come from?! It hadn’t been there when he’d left the lair!

The scene of Daravith hurling him roughly down the tunnel to her lair crept back into his mind. That must have been when the damage had been done. Or maybe the battery had been unable to hold up to the strain of the lightning inside it? Perhaps both?

No, the reason mattered little at this point. What mattered was that the battery was losing charge quickly, and there was nothing he could do about it. The damage had already been done. Blake’s treatment would not continue for much longer, meaning he would not receive the full benefits of the serum, not even close.

Slowly the lightning faltered, going from dozens of separate prongs to ten to five to two to one. Finally, with a pathetic sputter, the last line petered out and the lair returned to mostly silence.

Bazzalth leaned in, studying the still-twitching form of his subject. Listening closely, he heard the weak but present sound of a heartbeat, each beat getting slowly but steadily stronger. Blake would live, it seemed. Exactly as planned.

Well, perhaps not exactly as planned. Cut off prematurely, the serum had not been able to fully restore Blake’s body: Blake’s left arm remained missing. On the other hand, his legs had filled out greatly, no longer the shriveled sticks from before. They looked like actual legs now, with visible muscle and everything, and Bazzalth could see no sign of infection.

After removing the battery and the connected cables, Bazzalth fetched a container of water and splashed it on and around the crawler to wash off the area. When that proved to be not enough, he fetched a second. It ended up taking five containers before Blake’s body appeared fully clean. Picking the unconscious crawler up, he moved him to another area of the table, away from the water, and covered his naked body with several furs.

Blake showed signs of stirring not long after, quicker than Bazzalth had expected.

“What the fuck, dude,” he muttered weakly. “You couldn’t even get my consent before you put me in the chair?”

“Bazzalth did not put you in any sort of seat,” Bazzalth corrected him.

“It’s a figure of speech,” Blake answered, as if that somehow explained it. “Still, I-” His eyes shot open. “I’m talking. I’m talking! It worked!” Overeager, he tried to push himself up from beneath the furs, only to thrash about ineffectually.

“Wait,” he muttered, pulling the furs off him. “My arm’s still missing! My legs! I still can’t feel my legs!”

“Process aborted prematurely due to battery failure,” Bazzalth explained. “Body was not able to fully heal.”

“...and that’s it, isn’t it? That’s all I get? Can’t do it again.”

“Second dose will cause rampant cellular degeneration and destruction,” Bazzalth reminded him.

For some reason, the crawler began to chuckle. “Oh, right, of course! Of course it does! Since when has this world ever given me anything I wanted? Ahaha!” His complete right hand curled into a fist, and he began to slam it into the table over and over with enough strength to send noticeable tremors along the top. “What a fucking idiot I am! What a loser! Ahahahahaha!”

Bazzalth didn’t know what to think as he watched Blake laugh uproariously while shouting insults at himself. Was he happy or upset? Or...

“Is Blake-crawler mentally well? Such laughter may indicate brain damage.”

“Oh, if only,” came the guffawed response. “Hope is one hell of a drug, man. The comedown is rough.”

“Give Bazzalth hope sample and Bazzalth can try to produce antidote,” Bazzalth told him.

For some reason, Blake found Bazzalth’s simple statement of fact to be the funniest thing he’d ever heard. He doubled over in hilarity as Bazzalth looked on, nonplussed. Bazzalth couldn’t help but wonder if he would ever fully understand such illogical creatures, or if he even wanted to.

“Hoooooo, booooy,” Blake wheezed when his cackling fit had finally died down. “Was that a joke? You’re telling jokes now? There’s a chance for you yet.” He sighed. “I’m just bummed. I was really looking forward to being able to walk again. You don’t know what you got until it’s gone, as they say.”

“While regrettable, outcome was always many standard deviations from likeliest subset when Blake-crawler first arrived. Only fools clutch at such outliers. Blake-crawler should consider that even current outcome was unlikely,” Bazzalth enlightened the misguided crawler. “Bazzalth agreed to attempt to halt death. Bazzalth did not agree to bring Blake-crawler to perfect condition. Blake-crawler should rejoice in eradication of infection, regeneration of leg musculature, and increased vigor. Blake-crawler will likely live long life with current condition.”

“You know what? You’re right. I shouldn’t be upset about this,” Blake said, seemingly to himself more than Bazzalth. “Even without my... legs and whatnot, I haven’t felt this good in years. My body feels strong, and the pain is completely gone!” He held up his right fist in front of his face, relaxing his hand and then reforming a fist over and over. “I was able to work with less, I can work with this. I can. I can.”

Tucrenyx began to flow up the table and form around Blake, beginning to form a suit of armor like the one he’d worn before. Quickly, Bazzalth reached out and grabbed the crawler, pulling him from the metal before it could solidify around him.

“Hey, what gives?” Blake whined.

“Did Blake-crawler forget? Several days remain before end of agreement. Now that Blake-crawler is healthy, Bazzalth can cease holding back. Blake-crawler’s body has so much more Knowledge to offer, and Bazzalth will harvest every last drop.” He eyed Blake with gusto.

Blake gulped.