"Log, PF plus eight Tellurian days. Lieutenant Seward reporting in.

"The raincatchers are working, thank God. It's still not enough. Jacob's contracted--something. I don't know what. Between that and the burns, he's consuming way too much of our water. Nobody would tell me that we have to abandon him, not after what he went through to get us here, but I know they're all thinking it.

"And they all know I'd kill them if they tried to force the issue."

--Recording recovered from Site Resh, reconstructed 1887 CE (restricted access)

----

18 Tumbling Blooming, 1886 CE

Over Vallus

Quetzals were like covered lungboats, except heavier and less stable, and therefore more sickness-inducing. Fortunately, Eztli's SOPHIOS could prevent motion sickness.

She didn't envy the red-blooded legionnaires with her, however. As the shredders loosed out the quetzal's open door and the bird ducked and wove, the dark faces of the warriors took on a distinctly greenish cast.

Eztli felt at her skinsuit beneath the left shoulder, where she'd secreted the vial containing the Last Era princess's blood. The quetzals, the Chimeras, the anti-air spore clouds, the whole aerobatic battle outside faded away.

Eztli saw the captive's indigo face, her shark-toothed smile. She heard the woman's voice echo in her head. 07041776. Yes, there was a heresy that spoke these numbers in hushed tones. A conspiracy of the weak-minded. My mother was certain that they lurked in the shadows of her court, intending to corrupt the pure hearts of our people. And this was the encryption key that led you to me? Perhaps my mother was right about the daggers in the dark. Do you face the same conspiracy?

And what of the deal that Eztli had made with Thiyyatt, speaking through a window of water as the regia puella stood ensconced in a genalysis unit more complex than any Eztli had ever interfaced with? Would Eztli come to regret her promises? I am the daughter of Regina Ittu of the Western Hives. Of course I know of all of my family's encryption codes. You wish to study these unknown signals? Bring me a device, and we will listen to the whispers of the dead past together.

They had. Those whispers had led Eztli here.

The whispers were only locations, latitudes and longitudes. For now.

But what if one of those signals contained more than that? What if Eztli had granted Thiyyatt access, in the hours when she wasn't working alongside the blind Nethress Erus Tvorh, to the lost treasures of the Last Era?

Thiyyatt was an unknown element, a spike of forgebone thrust into the muscular machinery of Nxtlu's quest for Imperium. Eztli's uncle, Princeps Tlalli, would not be best pleased to hear that Eztli had promised an uncontrollable, powerful Generosa of the Last Era access to General secrets.

The Princeps. His most recent conversation also resounded in Eztli's memory. The dead branches must be cut free, Eztli, both within the family and without. Cut free, like Yaotl. You are in Acerbia for the benefit of our bloodline, Eztli. Never forget this. If you cannot provide us the data we require, we will graft another branch in your place.

Well, the Princeps had lent Eztli these troops, and the Princeps would have his data. Perhaps not the data he expected, but data nonetheless.

"Clear view to a landing site," announced the pilot over the roar of the wind, the calls of the Chimeras, and the slapping of the guns' strikers. "All quetzals, this is Cuauh One, pheromone-marking landing site now. Prepare to follow us in."

The sound of claws raking across forgebone tore through the cabin, and the quetzal groaned. A malformed shape flashed past the window as they descended and spores filled the cabin.

The spore layer would kill a lungboat. Quetzals, however, used spinning blades like those of a samara leaf, and since they didn't rely on lungs for their propulsion were less dependent on the quality of the air they breathed.

The boat rocked to the side as something impacted it. Eztli steadied herself on one of the tendon-straps hanging down from the roof of the cabin.

The forests of Vallus appeared through the open crew door. They were three days' travel by skywhale south of Acerbia--Eztli had needed to visit the Duchy of Azcapotz in order to take command of the quetzals and the troops, since Nethress had forbidden Nxtlu military in Acerbia--and so the landscape was subtropical.

Hundreds of radio emissions. Dozens of coordinates. This was the closest one that Thiyyatt could identify?

Txaxan the inquirer rose on spindly legs to get a better look out of the door, but the crew chief shoved him back into his seat with one arm while swiveling the mounted shredder to track a Chimera that was following their descent. The gun barked, and a splash of blue-tinged blood announced the hit. The Chimera tumbled into the wet foliage below.

"I told you this was no place for you," Eztli shouted over the noise. Txaxan, as usual, paid no attention; his focus was on the jungle beyond the door.

Eztli was glad Txaxan had insisted on coming with her. She could have forbidden him, but it was good to have her right-hand man nearby.

"Is that amber?" he asked, pointing. Eztli craned her neck around him and got a glimpse of a partially translucent golden dome a short hike away through the jungle. Then the leaves of the trees swallowed it up.

Legatus Thrush, the crew chief, leaned out the door, squinting. "Could it be the Golden City?"

The mythical site was rumored to be near the center of Vallus, where Chimera nests were most numerous. It would be several days' hike inland, at the very least, and whether such a city existed or not, the Chimeras certainly did. Their little flight of quetzals would have been torn apart before penetrating that deeply.

Txaxan snorted and saved Eztli from having to reply. "A ridiculous myth based on mirages. The spore layer glows golden in the setting sun."

Thrush fell silent. Tales grew in the telling, Eztli knew, but if someone had caught a glimpse of these amber domes through the spore layer, they might easily have been mistaken for golden buildings. Perhaps the myth had a basis in fact?

The nearby canopy rustled as the birds descended into the clearing. The moment that the quetzal's legs touched the ground, Eztli was on her feet, shoving past the crew chief and out the door.

"Era--!" the crewman shouted as a Chimera--part wolf, part octopus, part snake--slithered through the tree trunks toward her.

Eztli raised her pistol, aimed for one of the thing's eyes, and placed a forgebone bullet in its brain.

It kept coming, tearing up the ground debris.

The shredder swiveled next to Eztli's head, and she ducked as it loosed a fray of bone shards.

The Chimera kept coming.

Gunplay burst from the quetzal, though the other birds were landing nearby. "Friendly fire!" Eztli hollered, digging into the shoulder of her skinsuit and drawing out the vial of Thiyyatt's blood through the semipermeable membrane of the armor.

She uncorked the vial. The scent of violets wafted free.

The Chimera set claws in the ground and skittered to a stop, its saliva-dripping teeth mere inches from Eztli's face.

Nobody said a word as the other birds landed. Eztli placed her finger on the open vial and upended it, then placed a droplet on the Chimera's nose. If Thiyyatt had told her the truth, then the monsters should remain pacified.

She hoped Thiyyatt had told the truth.

"As I suspected," the crazed princess had told Eztli. "I have confirmed with the monster Nethress provided me that there is protection in my blood." Almost as an afterthought, she added, "A final birthright passed to me in the final act of my mother's life, perhaps."

If this Regina Ittu had somehow infected the Chimeras with an unwillingness to attack her daughter, that alone was an incredible feat. When the Last Era fell, wonders truly had come to an end.

Eztli waved two crossed fingers forward: Nxtlu finger-talk. Proceed. Her men disembarked from the craft, and then the quetzals took off again. They'd retreat out of Vallus and wait for her shortsphere transmission for dustoff.

"Legatus Thrush," Eztli said. The foreign-blooded crew chief nodded, looking monstrous in his black and red Blooddrinker mask. "We make for the amber dome. Gather the men." The legatus did so rapidly, and Eztli tapped a drop of blue blood onto each one's mask. When she was satisfied that they would be protected, she gave the order to move out, and thirty-six Blooddrinker legionnaires moved into the jungle, followed by the pacified Chimera and shadowed by monstrous shapes that kept their distances.

"So you concur that that was amber, Era," Txaxan said, hurrying to keep up with Eztli and grimacing as his sandaled foot splashed into a thin pool of slimy water between two ferns. "I am certain that this location has not been mapped."

Eztli nodded, her eyes scanning the jungle. "I agree on both counts."

Txaxan's eyes glimmered. The only time Eztli saw him demonstrate excitement was when there was new data to be analyzed.

The Amber City, Chimera nest and topic of a hundred folk stories about "Rex Chimerae" and the "Seat of the Symbiont", was two days' flight by skywhale away. The photographs that the rare expeditions to the Amber City returned with showed golden domes of sap rising above the steaming jungle. The nearby dome was no Amber City, but it looked exactly like one of the City's structures.

A satellite archive, two hundred miles away from the main city. Eztli knew why Txaxan was excited.

Shadows rustled fronds and leaves, causing them to sweat droplets of water. The Blooddrinkers were well-disciplined and kept their cool.

No attacks came. No Chimeras dragged men into the jungle.

"Ever wonder?" Legatus Thrush asked as they picked their way over gnarled roots--no, that was a fat snake resting as it digested something even fatter.

Thrush was a legionnaire, not a Generosus. He was not sufficiently evolved to be worthy of wondering about anything, but the scene was eerie, and Eztli would endure the conversation if it took her mind off of the fact that they were utterly surrounded by Chimeras. "Wonder about what, legatus?"

"Friendly fire," Thrush said, slicing the pie around a wide tree by poking the bayonet of his rifle around it. "Hold fire. All of those old combat phrases. What 'fire' are they talking about, anyway?"

Eztli recalled a trio of menacing steel turrets glistening in the gloom of a crashed Heavenwhale. She recalled spent bullets of lead on the steel floor. She thought of hundreds of images she had stored to a datavial, most of which she hadn't yet catalogued.

Friendly fire. Hold fire. Open fire. Range is hot. Why "fire," indeed? Did the answer exist somewhere inside those stolen images from the crashed Heavenwhale?

"A mystery," Txaxan agreed without sounding at all as though he cared. "Era, I believe we have arrived."

The fronds gave way to a wall of golden resin. There was little space between the dense trees and the wall itself, but this close to the building, Eztli could see of telltale signs of nesting Chimeras. Heaps of leafy debris. Bones of animals.

"Predators without peer, and many of them," Txaxan observed. "Wherever they nest, they ought to strip the area dry."

"Yet another mystery." Eztli glanced sideways at Txaxan. "A well known one. Why do you bring it to our attention now?" A hundred theories justifying Chimerical survival had been proposed, and a few dozen discarded, throughout the centuries.

"The question has suddenly become relevant to my own existence," Txaxan replied.

Only Txaxan could submerge himself in existential threats and surface not with fear but with questions of inquiry. "Perhaps you will discover the answer," Eztli said, leading the way with her pistol along the golden wall, which glimmered in the hazy sunlight beneath the leaves and the layer of spores. There was a nearby opening in the wall, and the foliage had been uprooted there.

The stench of rotting was almost unbearable, but the hike through the jungle had somewhat prepared Eztli's sense of smell. As Eztli pied the door, something growled in the darkness.

Nothing jumped at Eztli, though. Eyes like a panther's glinted within, watching with barely-restrained hostility. Or was that fear?

In beasts--both of the animal and the human variety--the two were often indistinguishable.

The pheromones from Thiyyatt's blood held; the Chimeras didn't attack. Eztli passed through the jagged-edged hole in the amber wall--the resin shell that made up the building was thin, and it looked as though a wild creature had gnawed the passage through it--and into the dark room beyond.

The smell of sulfur rose among the rot of flesh and unwashed bodies. Night vision, she commanded her SOPHIOS. Xenokaryotic organs formed in her eyes, and she could see.

Pillars rose from floor to domed ceiling three stories above their heads. The building was circular, though its outside didn't account for the entire external wall; it was probably only one of several structures in this Last Era compound.

Chimeras prowled through the room on arms of apes, legs of spiders, wings of birds and bats. Snarls, howls, and wordless expressions of hostility echoed in the dark and muggy chamber. Eztli thought of Yaotl's growling words.

Were any of these Chimeras like him? Had any of them retained their faculties? Were some of them ex-Magi, or were they all the descendants of generations of Chimeras?

Three dozen warriors filed into the gloom after Eztli, but none of the Chimeras attacked.

Eztli passed filthy nests, scanning her portion of the room. "Door over here, Era," called one of the Blooddrinkers. Eztli finished studying her portion of the interior wall, confirming that it was merely filth-smeared amber, before heading over to see.

The door in the curving wall was amber like the rest of the structure. It had a knob, though, and Eztli could make out faint, almost-effaced carvings on its surface.

Could Chimeras--those of them with hands--work devices as complicated as a doorknob? She tried it, and the door opened, squeaking as it did so.

The room erupted into a fury of sound: yips, squeaks, and growls. The Blooddrinkers raised their guns and their macuahuitls, but the Chimeras quieted down quickly.

Finger-talk was useless here in the dark, since most of her Blooddrinkers weren't Stigmatized to be able to see in the gloom and none of them were Magi. "In," Eztli whispered. "Maintain formation. Avoid antagonizing the beasts, but if they attack, fight like leopards and eagles."

One Blooddrinker per contubernium--squads of twelve--raised lumins as they moved into the curving hallway beyond. It, too, was made of golden amber, thus more like the gold-and-steel Libraratory than like the stone tomb that Nethress had breached in the past week. The resin formed into half-pillar structures at periodic portions along the walls, which rose to a peak barely more than a story overhead.

The smell wasn't nearly as bad here, and there were no nests. There were doorways, however, covered by crawling wooden vines that had long since replaced the original, and decayed, physical portals. Each contubernium chose a door to clear. Eztli joined the foremost, waiting for them to breach their entryway.

Txaxan wandered down the hallway past her. Smoking Mirror claim him! What was he doing? The hallway resounded as armored boots slammed into three doorways’ worth of overgrown vines at once, but Eztli barely had a chance to glimpse the overgrown flora inside her contubernium's room: it was most likely flesh from whatever local Tool ran this place. Her SOPHIOS filed a snapshot of it away in a linked datavial within her skinsuit for future reference.

Txaxan opened a door at the end of the hall and disappeared inside. Eztli drew up short at the sound of speaking and the lights that flickered to dim life beyond the doorway.

She came forward, pistol held at low ready, and commanded her SOPHIOS to enhance her hearing.

The speech was High Post-Exarchian. After two thousand years, it was rarely spoken, and the dialect was unlike any Eztli had ever heard.

Still, Eztli could make out some words and phrases. "Within the silver there lies the gem... invisible masters... I reach and speak and who listens?... The residue is incomplete, hear my words, hear my words..."

As the troops continued clearing the rooms off the hallway, Eztli moved through the doorway.

Opposite Eztli, grasping hands, peering eyes, and pumping veins bulged out of the amber of the wall. Next to this Tool interface, a wrought-iron stairway led up to a catwalk that followed the perimeter of the cylindrical room and led up to yet another catwalk a story higher once it had made a whole circuit. The three quarters of the curving wall not taken up by the body parts of the Tool, but by filing cabinets of amber that stretched up several stories. Hundreds of drawers of every shape and size were carved into the walls.

Vocal units pulsed in the Tool's half-bared flesh. "The sands should shake with my words... harmonies in motion..."

Txaxan stood in the center of the room. As Eztli entered, he stood aside, revealing a Chimera.

Kneeling.

In the center of the room.

It was a small thing: a skeleton rather than a mass of muscle, a weakling rather than a brute. As it rose and turned eight spider's eyes on Eztli, a shiver ran down her spine as she realized, without cause but with absolute certainty, that this was surely the most dangerous Chimera she had ever laid eyes on.

It spoke with a voice like a scratching bow across a violin from a mouth like a remora's. "Past... blood." It pointed a bony finger toward the Tool's grasping hands.

"Legatus Thrush," Eztli called, not taking her eyes from the Chimera in front of her. He and his men came trooping into the room. The Chimera eyed them curiously.

"Your command, Era?" asked Thrush.

"Get those drawers open."

Thrush and his men set to work. Knives and prybars of forgebone came out. Men grunted and heaved.

The drawers stayed closed.

"Interlopers... locks with no keys..." the Tool lamented. Eztli scented sulfur and blood as abcesses in the Tool's flesh up and down its quarter of the wall split open, revealing bone turrets no longer than Eztli's forearms.

The turrets loosed, cycling through dozens of bullets each per second.

A legionnaire screamed. Blood spattered. Fragments of bone pinged across the entire lowest floor.

Eztli ducked, but the turrets didn't care about her; they tracked the legionnaires who'd been attacking the drawers.

"Retreat!" Eztli commanded as her men took casualties. "Get out!"

The anomalous Chimera--a thing that could think, like Yaotl--stood in the center of the chamber as the bullets flew. As Eztli slapped her men and they dodged past her through the door, she caught one of the creature's numerous eyes.

It stretched its hand toward the Tool again. "Last Era... blood."

The Last Era. Thiyyatt was the last Era from the Last Era.

Keeping her head down, Eztli pressed past the Chimera and scrambled toward the Tool.

Misshapen hands--hands with seven fingers; hands whose fingers were big toes; fingers without nails; skin and scales and chitin--grasped for Eztli from the flesh of the Tool bulging through the wall as she fished out the vial of Thiyyatt's blood and placed a droplet on a weeping sore in one of the palms.

Immediately the guns stopped shooting. The room filled with the groans of the wounded and the dying. Eztli turned and found the eight-eyed Chimera considering her.

Its remoralike mouth split into a grotesque parody of a smile. As wounded men watched, it limped slowly toward the door. Even Thrush, the massive crew chief, stood by and watched as it disappeared into the darkness of the hallway.

"Broken, broken, broken, but the Last Era repairs, what does it repair, what does it repair," the Tool muttered.

A half dozen drawers across the same number of floors of walkway slid open on railings of bone and amber, muscles and tendons. Eztli breathed out a sigh of relief. "Thrush, gather the wounded." She opened one of the drawers that hadn't slid open on its own, but the stench of rotting meat greeted her and so she closed it again. "Those who are not seeing to the injured should check the closed drawers. Txaxan."

"Era." Txaxan strode up the walkway to the second story.

Eztli would get to the ones that had opened of their own accord soon enough. She pulled a second drawer open. A biological sludge sloshed at the bottom of the cabinet.

"A final gift," the Tool intoned in a deep, commanding voice. Its lucidity shocked Eztli. "My last duty to mankind discharged. My new duty begins."

Roars and snarls came from down the hallway. The sounds of hammering strikers, bone bullets burrowing into flesh, and screaming men followed a moment later.

Eztli ran into the hall. The two contubernia who'd remained behind to clear the rooms had taken close combat formation in good order: macuahuitl-wielding Blooddrinkers in heavy armor or protective Stigmata in front, blocking the passage; those with guns behind.

Eztli pressed through the shooters. She could practically feel the force of the wave of Chimeras against the front line of her men; the shooters couldn't take their shots unless the pressure let up.

Snarls came from her men and Chimeras both as claws slashed, tentacles whipped, acidic spit sprayed. One of her macuahuitl-wielders fell, and Eztli used his back as a springboard into the midst of the monsters.

Three misshapen Chimeras turned on her. She placed a shot from her pistol into one's eye; ocular fluid spattered her face as the monster fell. Her tongue flicked to sample its rank taste.

Thorns of vengeance.

Eztli's Symbiont released millions of tiny xenokaryotic spores into the corridor, taking chemical guidance from the taste of ocular fluid and settling on the bodies of the Chimeras.

Eztli parried the talons of a bird-thing's feet with her forgebone pistol, whipped the gun around with her wrist, and placed a shot into the thing's abdomen.

The back of her skinsuit hissed as acid splattered it. Claws battered her to the left, and she would have fallen to the ground, but one of the monsters caught her in four arms.

It opened its snake's mouth wide to swallow Eztli.

Bone-white vines as wide as Eztli's finger erupted from its lower jaw in a shower of blood and plunged through its upper vine, blocking its mouth. Obsidian-sharp thorns gleamed along the length of the vines.

The Chimera, an immobile weight wrapped in ivory thorns, fell as Eztli stepped back out of its grip.

A thicket of bone surrounded Eztli, moving in discrete Chimera-sized clumps as the thorns of vengeance converted the monsters' masses into veins of impaling bone. The beasts broke, flooding away from Eztli and back toward the entrance to the amber building.

Eztli stepped back as her blood-crazed men surrounded her. The shock troops left a corridor open so the shooters could loose at the back of the Chimeras retreating into the main room.

"Report, Thrush," Eztli commanded over the sound of the strikers and the pinging bullets. Her command moved forward, flowing past her like a wave and harrying the retreating Chimeras.

Thrush slapped his chest with a fist. "Seven wounded from the turrets, three serious, plus one dead. Five more wounded from the Chimeras. Two dead."

Would it be worth it? Would the Chimeras return? "Three minutes. Then we move to extract. Call it in with the shortsphere." Thrush nodded.

"There's no need for three minutes," Txaxan said from behind her. The spindly inquirer stood respectfully with his wrists crossed behind his back. "There remains nothing here, I'm afraid, Era. While you were fighting, I checked the opened drawers and a cross-section of the closed ones."

"Nothing at all?" Eztli asked.

"No, Era."

Nxtlu was not a sentimental Gens, but that didn't mean that Eztli enjoyed throwing away lives for no purpose. "Thrush," she commanded, "move out. There remains nothing to be done here."

As Eztli left the building and entered bright sunlight, she saw the ranks of the Chimeras retreating through the trampled vegetation outside the hole in the wall.

Ranks? Chimeras didn't maintain ranks. They were rampaging beasts, not men, yet these seemed to be moving in an orderly fashion. A military fashion.

The eight-eyed Chimera followed them steadily like a file-closer. As the final rank vanished into the greenery, the Chimera turned, its--his--eight eyes blinking and studied Eztli.

Then he, too, disappeared into the jungle.