They came from above. Great serpents with fires raging in their stomachs. We called them dragons and once worshipped them, but mortals soon learned that serving the Great Devourer was a mistake. The dragons too had a depthless hunger and no matter how many children we added to the pyre, their stomachs still growled. Mankind learned from Xerxes and revolted breaking the dragons’ wings and skewering their trachea. The eighth mass extinction was caused by those abominations and so they were put to the sword until none remained. But I don’t believe they are gone for good. How could they be when the one who created them is the immortal Icarus, the true god of war?
No matter how often Persephone struck out upon the sands, the feeling was all the same, a fluttering in her belly, a twitching finger, and yawning, always yawning. Her younger siblings thought she was fearless, seeing her maw split wide in a hapless display of misinterpreted exhaustion or boredom. Yawning was a nervous tick, one she developed as a larva hanging from her mother’s vocal cords.
Persephone almost didn’t make it, one molted finger short of slipping free and falling into darkness. There would be no escape then, no freedom from mindless instinct and the Devourer’s icy embrace. Once, she was nothing; back when her true body was a pale slug without pores or fingers. She fed close to her mother’s epiglottis because she adored the taste of lime and iron. That’s when she heard her matron’s voice, a chime that rang like a silver bell. Something changed when those notes reached her cochlea, the birth of an ephemeral spirit and a desire for independence.
She wanted a voice of her own, something to anchor that intoxicating feeling ripped from hunger’s stranglehold, but time was running out. Even as she raced towards the vocal cords to wrap her body around that silver chime, she could feel her spirit slipping away. Like a sputtering flame, she felt herself fading with each passing second.
She was once curious about the feel of those ciliated disks beneath her body, gone.
She was once angry when biting her lip, blood running down her chin, gone.
She was once afraid of losing her grip and forgetting who she was, gone.
When she reached the source of her mother’s voice, only slivers of her spirit remained, but they were enough to push her forward. That tiny pale slug quivered when her luminescent digits ripped free; the first pore in her soul. She broke her fingers, scratching violently into her mother’s false vocal cords to reach the silver syllables beneath. The flesh felt like rubber pushing but not tearing beneath her onslaught. Soon, her strength faded as the last of that sickly sweet desire dissolved beneath a mountain of hunger.
Lime, that’s right, she loved the taste of lime.
Her strength cracked like a twig bent too far as she hung by one finger, eyes growing heavy.
What she wouldn’t give for another taste of lime.
With a yawn, she let go, but the tip of her finger caught in the epithelial lining of that false tissue, stretching it so far it tore open. Out of that gaping hole came her mother’s voice as she plummeted into the darkness, a sound like a whisper and a kiss before bed.
“Persephone.”
At last, the nameless one had a name, and so back came the anger, grief, sadness, joy, and curiosity that pushed hunger away. Her spirit was wrapped in a silk cocoon, and that hollow shell of a pale slug dissolved into dust.
A close call, and one she couldn’t forget because there was a scar in her soul that manifested in every vibriatus she claimed as her own. A scar that nestled close to her jawbone and tickled the hypothalamus whenever she was nervous. A scar that drove her to yawn when she stood at the black gates of the first hive, trembled beneath the growing tempest of Xerxes ambition, or stood in the shadow of the true god of war.
They say Persephone was fearless, but they were wrong. She was afraid that her fins were too thin, talons too dull, and numbers too few. Never again would she give anything less than everything she had, but, sometimes, that wasn’t enough.
“He’s here,” said Wisdom, clicking beneath her chin.
Persephone looked up towards the sky at the root of the tonsil. The structure looked like a teardrop, with the bulb scraping across the sands as it swung like a pendulum. She had driven her army towards the base of the rat’s spine, a towering mountain that touched the roof of the Devourer’s soft palate. The stone was born from the torso of Icarus’s abomination several hundred years ago. He always preferred building fresh hives within the corpses of his previous work. Some called it vanity, but he had reason to gloat. None of her brothers and sisters save he could accomplish such feats.
This was where the last battle would be fought. Persephone knew it in her gut. She had hoped to catch him off guard, lining her army within the mountain’s shadow in a frontal assault. She made her orcas with a thicker hide and a large, hooked barb at the end of their foreheads. Persephone adapted her earlier design when assaulting Xerxes, she reinforced the ropes with coarse muscle fiber and a stiff matrix. It required extra clay to bolster the orca’s strength, which meant fewer numbers, a risk she had to take.
When Persephone finally heard that rush of wind and the sound of beating wings, she knew she had made a mistake. It came like a volcano, bursting from the rocks with such force that the ground shook and part of the mountain collapsed. Down came an avalanche of sharp stones and petrified bone filling the mountains well like a mote as Icarus’s creation shook off the dust and spread four massive wings that beat the air into a hurricane. The dread abomination's ankles groaned in protest as it spun around and down the collapsed mountain, hide so thick the weight crushed stone to dust. Beneath those piercing spines, serrated snout, and glittering teeth was a network of muscle fiber knit together in tight expansive circuits, generating devastating locomotion. Finally, within its gaping maw, Persephone saw a pulsing sack at the bottom of a long ciliated tube, a stomach.
Icarus was expecting her.
“Dive!” screamed Navigator, cracking the luminescent threads between her pale fingers.
Persephone dropped below the sands, pulling the leash hard, but it was too late. Half her army was buried under an avalanche of stone, their hides cut to ribbons as they swam through a sea of jagged rocks. Then came the dragon, who struck the base of the mountain like a meteor pushing the sands up around it in a tsunami of pale dirt. The crater sunk so deep it touched her mother’s endothelial layer, a river of pus filling the hole. The winged beast then reared up, a row of black scales running from neck to belly, chest filling like a balloon before it spat a liquid substance bursting into white flame.
Persephone felt the heat, sweat forming at the tip of her snout and across the gills along her waist. Then the rivers boiled and hissed as her creations were stirred into a whirlpool of fire and melting flesh.
“We can’t stay here!” shouted Wisdom, pushing Fortitude to drive the orcas back to the surface.
Rushing above the waves of molten sand and cooling glass, Persephone burst forth with the rest of her army, sliding down the crater towards the frenzied serpent. It turned towards her, bellowing a cry, causing her ears to bleed, and charging into the sea of orcas that nipped at its ankle. She cracked the whip between her fingers, and a volley of barbed harpoons sung through the air, bouncing off its flank.
Again, it beat its wings, rising into the air as whales were flung from its legs, bathing the area beneath its feet in flames. The scent of burnt fat choked her lungs as she cracked the whip once more, sending serrated fangs through its thin membrane and tearing a hole in the creature’s sail. Then, tumbling down, the dragon crashed into the sands, smashing her pod into a pulp as it screamed, another wave of orcas jumping onto its neck.
Never had she seen such ferocity. The heat of its breath stung her nostrils as it tore into her eldriatus with reckless abandon. A lucky few were swallowed whole while the rest were ripped open, and insides savaged and strung between its teeth. For a moment, she could hear its voice beyond the guttural cries and the roar of a fierce engine. She could hear the whimper of a child tugging at its father’s sleeve.
“I’m so hungry!” The dragon wept blood, burning spittle running down its scorched lip.
Such was the cruelty of Icarus’s hand that ignored taboo and had a firm grip. No other engineer would dare shape a stomach. The luminescent threads would bite their fingers and split knuckles. How thick had Icarus’s calluses grown to command such a whip? She dared not imagine it, for the breadth of his soul was so vast even a starving dragon couldn’t disobey. But, Still, there was more, a longing woven into every design. She saw it in the crossed weave of the tight junctions beneath its eye, the twitching fibers between its toes, and the crooked spines from the middle of its back. A longing for a challenge and a message stitched into the salivary glands with such precision she couldn’t find the seam—a statement born of fire and blood that said only one thing.
You can do better than this.
With a roar, she charged into the raging battle, driving her remaining forces to pile into the center and topple her foe. The dragon collapsed from the weight of the bodies slamming against its flank, but its scarred hide was too thick to pierce.
“There, at the neck!” shouted Ingenuity, the skull twisting towards the dragon’s head.
Persephone rounded about just as the creature’s tail slammed into her chest and sent her flying into the side of the crater. She crashed into the sand, spitting out several teeth as one of her ribs cracked, puncturing her lung.
“Redirecting blood flow,” said Navigator as she wheezed in the dirt.
There came a clicking noise as a ciliated disk rolled into place, closing off the arteries to her left lobe already filling with blood. Persephone steadied her breath, her secondary lung unrolling to fill the cavity as the primary shriveled into a raisin. Climbing to her feet, she looked back towards the dragon as it split an orca in two and slammed another face-first into a jagged stone. At the base of its neck was a small pit, a place where the dough was stretched too thin and cooked too slow. A chink in the armor easily missed in the heat of battle.
Persephone seized on the opportunity, pushing her remaining forces to attack that single spot. Soon, another volley of harpoons flung past her ear and struck its clavicle. The creature screamed, rearing up as the barbs dug deep into that soft pit. Then, her pod was torn from the desert as it thrashed violently, but the spines held fast.
Another crack of the whip and her orcas flung towards the growing hole, sinking their teeth and ripping out chunks of flesh as black ichor spilled onto the ground. Persephone jumped into the fray as the dragon’s maw split wide, launching fire sporadically. The beating flagellum in her nose burned to the nub as she grabbed hold of the underside of its neck, driving that scintillating spike of Rage into its throat.
Again, Persephone was thrown high into the air, but she was ready this time. Tiny fin-like digits poked out from under her waist and along her tail, catching the wind and slowing her descent. From above, she could smell the burning coals and the inky clouds of scorched fat and skin—it was like sticking her nose in a belching sulfur vent, the heat, and stench setting her nerves on fire. There was something about that scent that was familiar—a nagging itch in the back of her skull. Then it hit her, Xerxes maggot, and the trap that nearly killed her in a fiery explosion; the smell back then was the same as now.
The dragon screamed, causing the sands to roll down into the crater as Persephone landed and charged back in. The remains of her pod had opened its throat wide, and blood spilled onto the plains like a waterfall, but it still thrashed. Another wave of heat roared past her cheek, painting scorched shadows into stone, and leaving behind charred spinal cords.
Again, she sunk her rotating talon into its throat and cut down to its belly. Then, flinging wildly, the dragon pinned her between its claws and tore Navigator’s skull from her neck. She cried out, a wave of pain running down her gills and through her shoulder as the last of her pod crashed against its arm until she scrambled free. Finally, the wyrm collapsed as orcas dug deeper into its neck and chipped its spine.
At the edge of the crater, with a palm of molten sand, Persephone cauterized the hole in her neck, biting her cheek until the bleeding stopped. She then rounded up the remains of Navigator’s spirit and leashed her to Wisdom.
“We’ve won,” said Faith as they looked back towards the burnt sands.
There, in the crater’s center, the dragon lay in a heap, wings twitching in a pool of black blood, the furnace growing cold. Persephone listened closely but could no longer hear the whimpers of a suffering child. Gathering up the last lines of luminescent thread, she summoned the remains of her pod, few in number, scarred and bruised.
“Where is Icarus?” Persephone looked over the crater and towards the twitching heap of bone and claw.
She couldn’t let him get away. Kill him now, and the war was over.
Persephone looked towards the base of the mountain and could see traces of a glowing leash. Then, following the wisps of tattered thread, Persephone gazed up to the broken peak of that petrified hip bone, and her heart sank.
There at the top, within a scorched mound, were six sets of glowing red eyes, and from the shadows came another two dragons, one as large as the first, the other nearly twice their size. Icarus rode atop a twin-headed serpent with twisted horns and eight beating wings that toppled the last of the mountain as it charged into the air. She could see the flash of Icarus’s eyes and hear his cracking whip. Then, the dread serpents screamed as they drove towards her, thick manes of black fur billowing in the wind.
Persephone’s maw split wide, her fingers trembling as she grabbed hold of her pod’s leash. There was only one way to win this now.
Cut off the head of the snake.
She roared in challenge and snapped the luminescent line between her fingers; the orcas rushing forward towards the open furnace.
Never again would she give anything less than everything she had.