The Worlds of the Sheaf

Essca - Part 3

     The flight took the eastern route over the wilds of Momul. A desolate region bereft of human life where dozens of small rivers flowed out of the mountains and split into a thousand weed choked channels before rejoining in the lowlands to become the great river Sarel. The route took them hundreds of miles away from the direct route between the two cities but, with no eyes on the ground to note their passing, the two Gem Lords and their escort of a dozen wing guards would be able to approach to within twenty miles of Castle Gamuk without being seen.

     Lord Ruby scanned the horizon as they approached the eastern extremity of the steaming fenlands, looking for a range of hills he'd spotted on the maps, and when he saw it he pulled on the reins to guide Pyre in that direction.

     Tak hadn't thought of giving his gem steed a name. To him it was just an animal. A mutated variant of the horned lizards that swarmed like vermin in the deserts of the south. He felt some pride in what he'd accomplished, it was true, but what he mainly felt when he regarded the giant flying reptiles was regret and frustration that he'd never quite been able to accomplish what he'd been holding in his mind's eye as he mixed his potions and cast his spells over the embryos floating in their culture dishes. He couldn't look at them without seeing the failures and imperfections he'd never quite been able to eliminate. The tendency for their scales to dry out and flake in hot climates. Their poor night vision. Their extreme sensitivity to many common foods that meant the stablehands had to be very careful what they fed them.

     When he'd first showed them to the others, he'd half expected them to tut in disappointment and tell him to keep trying, so their delight and admiration had taken him somewhat by surprise. At least the creatures were easily trained, and showed great loyalty to their riders, that was something, but not a day went by that wasn't spent going over and over in his mind what he could do to improve the next generation. To eliminate the flaws and introduce new qualities. To bring closer the day when the magnificent beast he knew was possible would come crawling out of its gestation tank and screech in delight at its perfection.

     If the beasts the Gem Lords rode were flawed, though, the steeds ridden by the wing guards were even more so. They were based on the previous generation and were smaller than the reptiles Lords Ruby and Sapphire were riding, as well as being not quite as fast or graceful in the sky. They were fearsome enough to give Domandropolis undisputed mastery over the skies for the past twenty years, though, and were strong enough to carry one passenger in addition to their usual rider, if necessary. If they'd been fertile, capable of breeding on their own like other animals, they could have created a force to dominate the whole continent, but the great beasts were sterile and every individual had to be grown in the tanks. A difficult and time consuming process that only produced one live pup for every twenty corpses.

     Things had gotten a little better with the gem steeds. They had a live birth rate was about one in ten, but that still meant that Tak had pulled almost a hundred stillborn corpses out of the vats between the birth of his own mount and that of Midnight, the black giant ridden by Lady Jet. If Tak hadn't been able to teach the spells to his apprentices and delegate the routine work to them, he would never have been able to perform the research into the new and improved next generation. Even so, though, there was a part of him that knew he ought to be looking into improving the viability of the embryos and curing them of their sterility rather than adding still new features and abilities to the creatures. The trouble was that he just couldn't help himself! He had to keep tinkering! He had to keep trying to raise their intelligence, their flying ability, their visual acuity! It was as if he was driven, and not all the carefully chosen words of his fellow Gem Lords could help him.

     He put these thoughts out of his mind, as he guided his mount in for a landing on the bare, grassy top of the hill. The steed pulled itself up, deliberately stalling itself and killing the last of its forward motion, then flapped its leathery wings madly to lower itself the last few feet, landing on the damp grass with a gentle thud. Their wing guard escort landed around them, several of the giant lizards screeching as their bellies touched the ground, and Tak looked around anxiously to see if there was anyone nearby to hear. All he saw was flat and empty marshland stretching to the horizon in every direction, though. Not a single sign of humanity. Not a single sign that humanity existed at all. For all he could see, the whole planet might be like this. Just nothing but empty fenland from pole to pole.