Antelligent Design

5. The Ancient Itch

Somewhere in the Forest Expanse, a predator lay. Old and implacable, it had hunted these tunnels for hundreds of years. How many creatures had perished between those jaws? How many torn by those claws? It was a number too vast to have meaning. Uncountable.

In the early times, where the memories are dim and blurred, it hunted with such intensity, such ferocity, nothing was safe from its grasp. Nothing could escape its immolating breath. Many tried: powerful beasts, the old kings, beasts grown fat and idle, content to rule their own tiny ponds and venture out only to sustain themselves.

They had all been hunted down, dragged from their lairs and consumed, fuel to the ever-burning fire. The predator had grown strong, powerful. It revelled in that strength at first, seeking more powerful prey, greater challenges, descending ever downward.

But the one known as Garralosh had grown too strong, too fast. When the call had come, Garralosh hadn’t realised what it was at first. It was vindication. Triumph! Her long years of struggle, the lonely hunt, had finally borne the ultimate fruit. Recognised for the prowess, the bottomless strength cultivated with the broken bodies of fallen enemies.

It had come too soon. Swiftly the announcement came, then a pull began to exert itself on her. Descend, descend, descend! Every day, every hour, every second, the call tugged. An endless itch that demanded to be scratched.

At first, it was fine. Garralosh wanted to descend, wanted to seek her rightful place alongside her peers in the centre of this world. But when she tried to get there… blocked, prevented, barred. No matter where she went, which paths she travelled, they were always there, pushing Garralosh back, fending her off. Barricades she could not break through, defences that did not yield to her assault, warriors who did not fear her jaws.

They fought so many times. Garralosh killed them, feasted on them, but was never able to break through, always forced to retreat.

And the pull. It grew every passing moment, insistently tugging at the soul. Descend, descend, descend, DESCEND!

Desperation followed. Then rage, world-burning, soul-immolating rage. Still, there was no breakthrough; Garralosh could not breach past the hated soldiers in black. They tracked, harried, harassed and repelled the great predator every time it drew near the borders. They had erected a cage around it, and no matter how desperate, the beast could not escape it.

Then the madness came.

Garralosh shifted her massive bulk, cracking a few trees against her scales. It irritated her, to think back to that time when the madness consumed her. She’d charged at the blockage, storming the defences. Battered and bruised, she had killed many but paid a hefty price. Finally, the black shirts brought out their champion and they had done battle.

BOOM!

She angrily thrashed her tail, sweeping away a swathe of the forest in one moment.

The human had been incredibly strong. Their duel lasted hours until finally one of her arms had been smote from her body, the grievous wound forcing her to flee. Even worse, that hungering axe had cursed her flesh, inflicting an unending agony and preventing the limb from growing back.

Even now, many years later, the effect of the curse still lingered. A dull ache that refused to fade. The arm was still not completely healed, despite enormous efforts.

Her children watched her from a distance. She could feel them, hesitating to draw closer as they knew the danger of being caught within range of her jaws when the rage struck her. Unable to fight, tormented by the constant tugging at her core, she’d started to raise these children in earnest. An army to help her break the blockade and make her way deeper into the Dungeon at last.

Carefully, she’d nurtured the first generations, then allowed her children to roam free, letting the strong feast on the weaker monsters in the upper layers before returning to join the ranks of her army.

She had been prepared to wait. Wait until the tide of her crocodilic children was overwhelming before storming the black shirts and tearing them to pieces.

But the wave happened. The Mana surged, easing the painful drain on her core. Higher and higher she could rise in the Dungeon until she was close enough to the surface to direct her children out of the Dungeon to annihilate the cities of the humans that barred her way for so long.

The thought of those people crushed and consumed by her children filled her with glee. She wondered if the black shirts down below knew what she’d done? Did they cry? Gnash their teeth and weep with rage?

She hoped so.

Vaguely, a part of her wondered if she should feel any sorrow for the thousands she killed. Perhaps once, she might have.

When Garralosh tried, when she reached far back into the depths of her mind, she could remember a time when she wasn’t a creature of the Dungeon. She’d been something else, soft and pink, vulnerable and weak.

She could no longer remember if those memories were dream or reality. There were only vague memories of her first years in the Dungeon. The fear, the terror, the sheer exhilaration.

But even those fractured memories, of a softer world and a different her, they didn’t feel peaceful. Recollections of blood and her hand, without claws, but with a knife.

Garralosh shifted her weight slightly, then levered herself onto her feet.

Whatever she had been before, whatever she was now, she was extremely confident of one thing.

She had always been a monster.

GRRRRRRRROOOOWLLLLL!

The rumbling of air through her throat caused the trees to shake and the rock to crack. She turned to where her strongest children had been widening the tunnel for her. She could barely fit now, but it would be enough.

With a surge of Mana and her powerful strength, she rushed forward, every step carving huge gashes into the stone beneath her feet. The ground itself trembled, and she rushed past her gathered children, into the tunnel and then up.

The Mana had grown high enough now, impossibly high. Enough to open the surface to her, where she could see the ruined cities for herself. She would crush everything she found and devour the humans whole until their bodies quenched her hunger for vengeance. She would rampage and kill, harry and hunt until the cursed black soldiers abandoned their posts and rushed to stop her. Then she would destroy them. Feast on their remains, and finally, finally, she would answer the call and descend to join the Ancients.

Her lips drew back from her obsidian teeth in a crocodilic grin.

She would claim her rightful place at last.