Part One: THE WYRM OF UNDERLOOK Chapter One Each year when Shesheshen hibernated, she dreamed of her childhood nest. Oh, the warmth of it. A warmth unlike anything in the adult world, soft and pliable heat keeping her and her siblings alive. In that warmth, they were fed raw life. Her father''s ribs, rich in marrow, cracking delicately in their mouths, and providing the first feast of their lives. His fat deposits were generous, and his entrails sheltered them from the cruel winter elements. If Shesheshen could have spent her entire life inside the nest of his remains, she would have. But all childhoods end.
Hers ended when one of her sisters bit off Shesheshen''s left heel. Her siblings matured too quickly and hungered for more than their father. Shesheshen had to defend herself using jagged fragments of their father''s pelvis - his final and most gracious gift. The assault was a gift from her siblings, too, for she spent a week dining on their savory carcasses. Mourning wasn''t natural to her. She missed the succulence of her siblings for some time, and had the errant moment of nostalgia for sharing their body heat. Little of her prey was memorable. Of her mother, she only remembered her wide maw and the artificial steel fangs she''d worn.
Still, Shesheshen would always miss the nest that her father had made out of himself. He had been a good parent, and a better setting. Nothing matched that nest. These ruins were little more than an unloved cave. Where weather had caved in the ceiling, ornery spruce trees grew and plugged up the gaps. Poison ivy and spiderwebs were the few decorations, overgrowing everything architects had once labored over. Deep beneath the ruins lay an underground hot spring that some aspiring human had connected to a bathing room. Nowadays the chamber was flooded with humid murk, gone brackish and amniotic from Shesheshen''s excretions.
It was nearly opaque down in the waters. They were a refreshing place to hibernate through winter seasons. The quality of the water was likely why hunters hadn''t found her yet. Her lair had unwelcome visitors again. They did not even wipe their shoes. She heard them before she saw them. The water of the hot spring stretched into so many cracks in the building''s foundations. Sounds from all ends of the property traveled through the network of water, alerting Shesheshen when something worse than a bear was coming.
"Good gods, above and below. Rourke? Do you smell that?" "Yeah. Like death without the sulfur. This is no wyrm." There were two visitors. Both human men, with two feet each, trampling over the weeds at her threshold. They paused in the foyer, snuffling and fighting with their gorges. Her foyer opened to many hallways, and one would lead them to Shesheshen.
It was fortunate they didn''t know which one. She had to act before that changed. The one called Rourke said, "Malik, don''t pass out on me. Put your mask on." "I''m fine," the one called Malik said. "The contract is for a wyrm. Could it be an Eastern wyrm? From the Al-Jawi Empire?" "Those smell like burned bread. This just stinks of infection.
I''m telling you, whatever is in this place isn''t a wyrm." The one called Malik spat upon the floor. He didn''t clean up after himself. "Then what is it?" The one called Rourke muffled his coughing, probably behind a fist. "I''m not sure. But we need priests. At least three of them." Shesheshen liked priests.
They tasted righteous. "Did I hear you two mention priests?" Shesheshen had thought there were two. She was wrong--distracted and foggy-headed from having her hibernation interrupted. Whoever had yelled was a third voice, matched by the clank of heavy armor heading into her foyer. She listened carefully around his footfalls; the noise of his gear was cacophonous, but she believed this third man was the last. The one called Malik said, "Sire Wulfyre, from certain environmental details we have reason to believe we need religious assistance--" "For the last time," the third man interrupted, "my family is not employing the entire region. You said you were experts. Experts don''t need to hire bonus people.
That''s the point of expertise. You want priests now? Do you two hunt monsters or just pray at them?" The one called Rourke said, "Sire Wulfyre, you''re not going to want to come in here yet. The odor is overpowering." "Don''t tell me what to do. I''ve slain lords. The Wulfyres have killed off wyrms since--" His words dissolved into wet choking sounds. The metal plates of his armor clicked musically, to Shesheshen''s sense of it, as though he was bending over. This third man was definitely retching.
She hoped he had a helmet on so it painted the inside. It would serve him right for trespassing. Rourke said, "We warned you about the odor." Sire Wulfyre said, "Next time come outside and warn me. Give me one of your breathing masks." Malik said, "This is sensitive equipment." Sire Wulfyre said, "Equipment my family is paying for. Now find this wyrm and kill it before I go looking for monster hunters who actually hunt.
" Listening to all their words was exhausting. They were so noisy for professional killers. Any self-respecting hunters would''ve used the element of surprise. Why, if Shesheshen had been cold-blooded enough to kill people as a source of income, she would''ve slipped in here while she slept and poisoned the pool with rosemary and lye so she''d die in her sleep. But Shesheshen was not a monster hunter. She was prey. Three armed visitors, and she was still weak from hibernation. From the weakness in her flesh, she ought not have roused for weeks.
Tensing her soft tissues made them tremble as though threatening to liquefy. She didn''t have the strength for a great battle today. She had to do something, and soon. These murderers couldn''t be allowed to find her room and corner her. They''d do something awful like set the place on fire or collapse it atop her. She opened pockets in her flesh and took in her first real breath of the season. The air was stale, making it feel as though icicles were forming along her innards. She shuddered, using the air to puff out her body, and emerged from her pool.
Water streamed from the many lumps of her body, gone loose from weeks of slumber. Her lumps sloshed warm water across the stone floor, until she was wholly exposed. All that submersion in water left her flesh sodden white. She took a step, and collapsed against the nearest wall. It was always tricky, getting the hang of being conscious again. Hopefully the monster hunters hadn''t heard that. It would be embarrassing to die in this state. Most bones that she kept inside herself during hibernation digested down to nothing.
Her kind did not naturally have many solid structures, anymore than hermit crabs on the north beaches naturally had shells. Her mother had worn prosthetic steel fangs to compensate when she hunted. That one memory of her mother taught Shesheshen the importance of keeping tools around. Along the floor of the bathing room lay iron rods and dense stones, which she''d left out last season. She rolled across them, letting them cut through external layers of her flesh with a sting that felt like waking up. Her innards squeezed those rods and stones, aligning them into a loose skeletal structure. A steel chain once used to bind her now made an excellent spinal column, flexible without breaking when trebuchets lobbed debris at her. Inside her chest, where humans put their lungs, she placed an open bear trap.
It was her prized skeletal possession. It did not trap bears anymore. Instead, she kept it as a secret pair of jaws, for when people need to be bitten. The harder ends of her makeshift bones tore apart her insides, and her poor tissues had to generate cartilage and tendons to adjust. It was an ache that left her shuddering against the wall. Was this how getting older felt? Wulfyre was louder now, audible through the limestone walls and down her hallway. He hollered, "I want the wyrm slain before Mother reaches the countryside. Do you know how upsetting it would be for her to encounter that thing? Of course you can''t.
Now you say you don''t even know what it is." Malik''s voice was softer. Shesheshen had to strain to hear him. "The creature has left many markings in the stone that could be claws or teeth, and we haven''t found any droppings yet. We''re still deducing what it is." "Father died fighting this thing, so I can promise you my family knows what it is. It''s a wyrm." That was a familiar word.
Shesheshen had been called a wyrm many times, often by startled priests. She''d also heard drakes, harpies, qilins, kappas, and giraffes called wyrms. In her experience, it was a slur for whatever thing greedy humans wanted dead and were too afraid to kill themselves. "Wyrm or not," Rourke said, "if you really want this thing dead, there is only one way to go about it. To purge it and harm it enough to slay it, you''re going to need to burn this lair to the ground." "Oh yes. I''ll just burn a stone building. Thank goodness I hired professional.