Waverider Expedition - Tikirri
The descent began in silence.
Mist rolled through the pass of the Kretazh Rim, pale as bone dust. Below it stretched the crater, vast, circular, impossibly symmetrical.
Venera stared down and whispered, "The maps said nothing of this."
"Because no one's ever come back to write about it," Decimus said.
Selene tightened her cloak. "We shouldn't be here. The air feels wrong."
It did. The air moved, pulsing faintly like breath.
They went down anyway. The mission was simple: chart the inland route, confirm if trade caravans lost in this region were being raided by bandits. It was never simple.
By midday, they reached the crater floor. The earth was slick, veined with black resin that glistened like oil. The smell of fungus and metal hung thick.
Then the sound began.
A low, rhythmic clicking, echoing from the walls, too regular to be wind, too alive to be stone. Venera raised a hand, and they crouched by a ridge of hardened resin. Beyond it lay a valley of movement.
Thousands of shapes swarmed below, tall, jointed, gleaming. They moved with mechanical precision, building towers of amber resin, their limbs weaving and fusing them like molten glass. None spoke. None looked up.
Selene whispered, "Dear gods... they're people."
"No," said Decimus quietly. "They're one."
At the center of the crater stood the Spire - black as night, rising straight into the clouds. Around its base, the swarm moved like blood around a heart.
They turned to leave.
And found a Tikirri standing behind them.
It was tall as a man, plated in green-black chitin, its head a crown of faceted eyes. Its mandibles clicked once, twice. Then a voice slid into their heads, not words, but a pressure that formed meaning.
"Demons. Fractures. Infection."
Venera drew her sword. "Back!"
The Tikirri lunged.
Decimus met it mid-leap, blade striking chips off its armor, but not penetrating. The impact threw them both to the ground. A shriek rose, not from its mouth, but from the hive itself. Every creature below stopped moving.
Then they began to climb.
Venera shouted, "Run!"
They ran.
Resin tunnels twisted upward through the crater wall. The sound of pursuit grew, claws clattering, a thousand echoes overlapping. The walls pulsed, sweating amber. At one turn, Selene stumbled and fell onto a membrane-like surface that flexed under her weight. She gasped. Faces floated beneath it, human and not, half-dissolved in amber, their mouths still open.
"They eat the lost," she whispered.
Venera hauled her up. "Move!"
They burst into a chamber lit by bioluminescent fungus, soft green light glistening on rows of pupating shapes. Some were insects. Some weren't.
At the center hung a mass of white silk, a cocoon the size of a ship. Inside, something stirred, vast and slow. A voice filled the chamber, layered and ancient.
"The Queen dreams. Her sleep must not be broken."
The air thickened. Their torches flickered out. A cold whisper brushed their minds. You are cracks in the world. You must be sealed.
Decimus swung his sword into the cocoon. It burst open in a scream of steam and stench, and hundreds of small Tikirri gushed out. A gout of black ichor hit the floor, hissing. The hive shrieked in unison, thousands of voices, one agony.
They ran again, blinded, gagging on the smoke. The tunnels convulsed, closing behind them.
Venera's arm bled where a claw had raked her. "Up, there!" she shouted. A sliver of daylight burned at the end of a rising shaft.
They clawed their way toward it as resin dripped from the ceiling, burning through cloth. Decimus was last through, dragging Selene by the arm. The opening sealed behind them with a sound like a heartbeat stopping.
They lay gasping on the rim, the crater silent below.
For a long time, none spoke.
Finally Selene said, "They weren't evil. They were whole. We were the wound."
Venera stared into the mist. "Then may the world never heal."
Decimus wiped his blade clean. "We'll seal the path. No one else goes down."
He kicked a loose stone over the edge. It tumbled once, twice, and vanished into the haze.
From below came a faint, distant clicking, patient, steady, endless.