Bastial Explosion (The Rhythm of Rivalry: Book 3) (30 page)

“I read them in various books.”

Marratrice turned to show Steffen a triumphant smile. “And I heard about the evesal vines from people I trust, which is a much better source than a book. They’re real. My Bastial stars, Steffen, I haven’t even told you the story yet and you’re already in disbelief. I’ve never met someone so skeptical. What’s made you this way?”

Marratrice was right. Why was he already set to regard her story as fiction?

He took a few breaths to think.

“I suppose it’s because authors know not to put words on the page and claim they’re true when they’re not. Books are sacred not only to those who read them, but to those who write them. What kind of person would go through the trouble just to lie? Writing a book doesn’t just take time and effort, it leaves part of you with whoever reads it. The kind of people who would lie instead of writing fiction have found other ways to deceive people—easier ways, such as telling their story to anyone who’ll listen. That’s why most lies are spoken and not written.”

“So if you read that this seed is hundreds of years old and came from an evesal vine in northern Greenedge, you would believe it?”

“It’s more that, because I haven’t ever read about the evesal vine—or any story about someone holding onto the seeds of an extinct plant from northern Greenedge—it’s difficult to believe. I read a lot of nonfiction, Marratrice. It’s rare for me to hear of something like this that I’ve never read about already.”

“Have you ever thought that maybe the book just hasn’t been written yet?” She had a wry smile.

Steffen didn’t want to argue. “Alright, I’m curious. Why is this vine special, and what’re you planning to do with it?”

Marratrice lowered her voice. “Don’t tell Javy Rayvender after I tell you.” She paused, waiting for Steffen to agree.

“I won’t.”

She cleared her throat. “The evesal vine doesn’t need anything but water and Sartious Energy to grow. But it grows fast, and if it isn’t given lots of SE, it will die. Growing along the vine is a fruit that’s a beautiful green color and is one of the most delicious in the world. When desmarls were small, people put them near evesal vines to guard the plants from bugs and feed them with the SE that the desmarls produced. But after people were forced to flee the north, only a few evesal seeds went with them, and people didn’t have enough control over Sartious Energy to keep them alive once they got big enough to produce fruit and new seeds.”

Steffen felt as if he had to interrupt before Marratrice got even more excited. “But the Slugari don’t have any control over Sartious Energy, which is why their spells are limited to light and heat.”

“Yes, but they have the best thing of all for evesal vines—a plant that takes in Bastial Energy and produces Sartious Energy.”

Steffen felt his jaw drop as he realized she was right. “The unistai flower.” Steffen had told Marratrice about it previously. It was a source of food for the Slugari. He’d seen hundreds of them last time he’d visited the colony. The Slugari ate the unistai’s meaty green petals.

“But wait a minute.” Now Steffen had to stop
himself
before he was overexcited. “If this seed has been in your family for all these generations, and all of you are sure it’s going to grow into an evesal vine, why hasn’t it been planted already?”

“None of the mages in my family have had enough skill with SE to be confident they could take care of the plant. It requires too much upkeep. But from what you’ve told me, the Slugari are the best gardeners in the world.”

“All this just for a chance at some evesal fruit? Could it really be that good?”

Marratrice had a smirk. “Wait until you try it.”

She really believes this is going to work.
Steffen didn’t have it in him to disagree. If she was this excited about planting some thousand-year-old seed in the Slugari colony, who was he to ruin that. There was one concern, though.

“You are planning on asking Queen about this, correct?”

“Of course.” She laughed. “I just have to wait until I have a chance to speak with her without Javy around. I bet Queen will be just as excited as I am.”

“I doubt that,” Steffen accidentally said aloud.

She scowled at him, and he put his hands up to block her stare.

“Sorry.”

When silence followed, Steffen couldn’t help but think of a question that he had no hopes of figuring out on his own.

“Why is this so exciting for you? You won't even have access to the plant’s fruit.”

“It’s not just exciting for me, but for my family as well. We’ve always dreamed of finding a home for an evesal vine. For all we know, this could be the very last seed—the last hope before extinction.” Marratrice went silent for a breath as she showed Steffen a glance of concern. “You really don’t understand how good it would feel to save a plant from extinction?”

“I do. I just hope it works.”

“As long as the Slugari can take care of it, then it will.”

How can she be so confident?
Her hubris didn’t seem healthy, making Steffen feel as if he should try one last time to convince her not to get her hopes up. But as they walked alongside each other, he noticed a glow in her green eyes. She seemed ready to burst as she stared at Queen, waiting for her chance.

At this point, all I would do is annoy her.
When people became this hopeful, there was nothing that could stop them. It made him think of men who’d chased stories of treasure just to get themselves killed or lost.
Blind optimism is the most hazardous form of stubbornness.
At least Marratrice doesn’t have her mind set on something dangerous.

But then Steffen had a startling idea.
Unless there’s something about the evesal vine that she’s not telling me.

His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of Javy and Jack arguing.

But when Steffen and Marratrice hurried forward to listen, the men stopped.

“It seems like you all could use some rest,” Queen suggested. “Would you like to stop for the night?”

“We might as well,” Jack said, tilting his head toward Javy.

“Fine,” Javy said. “But are we to simply lay on the dirt right here?”

Queen let out a light laugh. “No.” She hollered for a Slugari. One slithered over in a hurry. “Take the Humans to the nearest cove,” she told him in Slugaren, then turned to Javy. “Please follow him. When you and your party are ready to continue north after resting, let a Slugari know and they’ll call me over. Because of our antennae, we can send messages to each other farther than with voices.”

“Thank you, Queen,” Jack said.

“I would like to hear more about this dangerous discovery beneath Tenred,” Javy called after Queen as she started to slither away. “What do you mean by that?”

“I’ll explain it when we get there,” Queen said. “For now, sleep.”

The Slugari brought them toward a crevice in the wall. When Steffen was closer, he saw that it opened into an alcove where about thirty Slugari seemed to be sleeping. Their escort pointed within.

“In here?” Javy asked.

But the Slugari didn’t speak common tongue and showed no sign of replying.

No matter. Javy already knew the answer as soon as he asked. This was clear by his expression. “Well,” he whispered. “Let’s sleep for a few hours if we can. I’m sure it’s the middle of the night above ground.”

The Slugari seemed to be sound sleepers, none of them waking as Steffen and the others removed their packs and belts. Marratrice appeared to be holding in a giggle the whole time they were getting settled.

“This is so strange,” she whispered to Steffen.

As soon as he lay against the hard dirt, Steffen dearly missed the flower bed of begardeens. Luckily, he was exhausted enough to fall asleep quickly.

The next day—or what their party assumed to be the next day—they were following Queen through the cavernous tunnels once again. The Dajrik no longer accompanied her. “Busy with other tasks supporting the colony,” Queen explained. “Without him, we never would’ve been able to live down here.”

“How did he end up down here with you?” Steffen asked. Jack and Javy were behind, discussing something in hushed tones.

Queen grunted at Steffen’s question. “I’m not sure if you realize what you’re really asking.”

Steffen stepped back, worried he’d encroached on a forbidden subject. But when he noticed the twisted smile along her mouth, he came closer once again.

“I don’t believe I know what you mean,” he admitted.

“You’ve just asked me to tell you a story, a very troubling story to recall. Even worse, you could’ve already heard the story before coming down here and saved me the trouble.”

That confused Steffen even more. He checked to see if Marratrice understood, but she shrugged back at him.

“Two of your companions, the Krepp and the Elf, heard the story from other Slugari the last time you were here. Though they were more curious about Doe and Haemon than the Dajrik. You’ve at least heard of these Slugari, right?”

“Yes. They lead the Krepps,” Steffen answered.

Queen bent her body for a glimpse behind at Jack and Javy. Whenever she twisted in this way, long wrinkles formed deep in her flesh. “It looks like those two are still bickering, so we have some time.” Queen straightened out and slithered onward. “I’ll tell you under the agreement that you’ll remember every detail and share the story with anyone else who asks, so I won’t be forced to repeat myself. I don’t like this story. Understand?”

Steffen nodded.

“We Slugari didn’t used to live underground but in the mountains in eastern Entja instead. We refer to them as the Dajrik Mountains, and you’ll find out why soon enough.” Queen already seemed tired, glancing around as if looking for another Slugari to take over the story. But then she sucked in air through her mouth and continued with a somber tone.

“The mountains were home to us for hundreds of years, if not more. We lived with not one, but three Dajriks.”

“Three?” Marratrice covered her mouth.

“Yes three, each of them older than they can remember. But the problem with a Dajrik’s age is that the older they get, the worse their nightmares. They get so bad that eventually the Dajrik can’t sleep more than an hour without being awoken from a feverish dream, leaving them even more exhausted than when they’d first shut their eyes. There’s a plant that acts as a cure when mixed with Bastial Energy—the rujin flower. The Dajriks have no control over Bastial Energy. This is why our two races get along. We melt a thousand rujin flowers and then trap the substance in a hard casing that the Dajriks can wear around their neck. It only needs to be close to their bodies to work, and it lasts about fifty years before the potency of the substance is no longer enough and needs to be replaced.”

Steffen had never imagined there were more Dajriks that still could be alive within Ovira. It took all of his willpower not to ask if they were. He figured that the more interruptions, the less likely Queen would be to finish the story.

“But Slugari started disappearing,” Queen continued. “At first it was young Slugari and it was assumed they’d gotten lost within the mountains. But then Slugari of all ages went missing. It turned out that there was an incident. Enraged by some accident caused by a group of Slugari, one unstable Dajrik killed them and ate their bodies to hide his actions from everyone else.”

Queen paused, her beady eyes dim within the folds of her face. “This is the part I hate the most,” she said. “The Dajrik enjoyed the taste of us, continuing to kill and consume us in secret. Eventually enough came to be missing that we knew something was wrong. By then, this Dajrik had been confronted by the other two. It admitted that it ate the Slugari, raving about the taste. One was curious to taste Slugari, and the other wasn’t. I imagine you can guess which Dajrik is still with us.”

Steffen and Marratrice nodded.

“Soon, our Dajrik was the only one who hadn’t eaten any Slugari, and he was already in discussions with our leaders about the problem. He convinced the other two Dajriks that he’d begun to eat Slugari as well, and he set up a meeting deep within the mountain where they could discuss the issue and figure out what they wanted to do. But what the other two Dajriks didn’t know was that ours had set a trap.

“He collapsed some of the mountain in front of their only exit after they entered the meeting space. He knew they would be strong enough to move the pile of rocks and escape, but it would take them days. This gave our Dajrik and all of the Slugari plenty of time to leave the mountain.”

Queen’s two front teeth bit down and curled the bottom of her mouth. “But that was only the beginning of our problems with other creatures. Krepps were spread throughout all of northern Ovira, which our ancestors discovered as soon as they left Entja. Pretty soon we came to realize we weren’t safe above ground. Not only could the Dajriks find us, Krepps began to hunt us.

“There was one major battle before we dug deep into Ovira. A few tribes of Krepps had come together and attacked. Our history says that we outnumbered them fifty-to-one, but we still were forced to run, leaving thousands behind to die.”

Steffen couldn’t help but ask. “The Dajrik being on your side wasn’t enough to win the battle?”