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  They appeared healthy and alert, so she opened her teat scales and let them at it. Eighteen more hungry neuters emerged within minutes, took stock, and slithered en masse. As they neared, Gace let out an ear-splitting warning. Three ran away, which eliminated them from the contest. Two ignored the warning and actually challenged her authority, which she rewarded by picking them up and tossing them back into the egg castoff.

  The remaining newborns came to a stop just short of their goal. She then whistled an assent command with inviting overtones and watched approvingly as four newborns slithered towards their suckling siblings, neither lowering their heads in apprehension nor fully raising them in hubris.

  "That makes things easy," she thought as she dismissed the losers until her favored drank their fill.

  Gace slithered to the three remaining eggs. One was still; one only moved a couple of times, and the last laid half within its egg with deformed, underdeveloped legs. She twisted around and brought her foot firmly down on each one in turn. She dispatched them without anger or bereavement, but simply from generations of practicality.

  The time came to attempt her experiment. The group of fifteen losers huddled together, forlorn and wretched but unable to improve their lot. Gace dragged the net-enshrouded reptile she had left in a corner and brought it to the neuters. She took her dagger and stabbed twenty or so narrow but deep holes in the body, pulled back a little, and encouraged the neuters to investigate. Slowly, by ones and twos, they approached the sticky, dripping fluid, tested a drop, and proceeded to feed, grateful if not enthusiastic.

  Gace carefully watched all activity throughout the next few days, but could discern no difference between the milk fed and the blood-fed, other than her favorites were growing quickly while the others did not seem to grow at all.

  ~o0o~

  Gace was on a lone hunt when the hidden mopis eggs hatched. Twenty-one exuberant, inquisitive young Sephians provided more excitement than she could handle at times. The blood neuters looked as if they would never grow beyond their one-foot length, which meant they had plenty of room in the cave to practice their gliding after scurried leaps.

  Their milk fed siblings had already reached their maximum four-foot length, and delighted in climbing the rocks outside to fly off thousand-foot drops, especially when they discovered thermal updrafts.

  Prior to the mopis eggs hatching, a probing blood neuter discovered the narrow decline and by crossing her legs was just able to follow the tunnel down to a tiny chamber. There she found fifty softball size eggs and innumerable prey animals, alive but unmoving. She slithered over to a juicy fluff-ball creature, extended her feeding teeth, and sipped a sample. The blood left an unpleasant burning sensation from the residual paralytic, so she went on to investigate an egg that had started rocking and cracking.

  A small triangle of shell suddenly fell to the floor and a tiny head appeared, followed by a miniature twenty-segmented mopis. The crocodilian head sniffed around, focused on one of the meat animals, and headed for its first meal. Although the mopis was twice as long as the neuter, the diameter of its sections was only three inches across. The tiny mopis had trouble finding a grasping point on the uninjured feed animal, so the neuter brought up a clawed foot and gouged out a bloody chunk.

  She offered it to the mopis, who looked at the offering, looked at the neuter’s face, then gulped it down in two bites. The mopis rubbed against the neuter in a show of affection and begged for more. The neuter was delighted! She just had to show off her new pet to the others. She tore off a few smaller pieces and led the mopis down the hall into the cave proper.

  The cave echoed with demanding whistles that questioned their sibling, which caught the attention of the milk neuters who came in to investigate. At first, the mopis was frightened of the attention and brought its tiny stinger around in threat, but it had bonded with the neuter, who reassured it with soothing whistles and firmly stroked the mopis' head.

  When she finished relating the full story twice, all the blood neuters rushed the small tunnel to emerge with the remainder of the eggs. The larger milk siblings demanded eggs of their own, which the smaller gave over without question, who also reminded them to bring out the food animals. Within the hour, every Sephian had assisted their mopis out of an egg and imprinted them with a first meal. Someone discovered they could teach the mopis' tricks, like fetch, follow, and roll over. Gace slithered in from her hunt to a circus-like scene that made her smile despite the chaos.

  One of the milk neuters noticed her and shrilly whistled, "Ma’am, look what we got!"

  Gace could see immediately that there was no danger, proven beyond doubt a moment later as the leftover eggs in the tunnel chamber hatched. The hungry, grumpy wild mopises came boiling into the cave looking for food.

  Before any of the Sephians could react, which is indeed quick, the bonded mopises attacked and slaughtered each interloper. When all lay dead or writhing, each victor returned to its master seeking praise, which each received in bountiful measure. Several of the blood neuters picked through the remains and delicately sipped from each body segment as if sampling tiny grapes. The milk neuters rolled their eyes at each other in mild disgust.

  ~o0o~

  The tamed mopises grew to the length of a mature Sephian female and acted just as fierce. They easily took to the bridle; their small masters lying atop them with their legs firmly tucked in between segments. They loved the hunt, and took whistled commands willingly, attacking or pausing at their master's pleasure, and only ate from their maniples.

  Gace glowed with pride. She had a tribe of the fiercest warriors ever imagined. Even the diminutive blood neuters could wield mopises with impressive skill. She had developed crude weapons, made from wood and bone but dreamed of arming everyone with flame-forged sand crystal. She used the hunts and trained her troops in tactics they thought were just fun, but which she designed for use against the desert dwellers.

  When Gace first arrived at the cave, survival seemed an impossible dream. Now, successful beyond imagination, she let her imagination and dreams grow. Weapons and other manufactured items, while satisfying, would only mean a status quo existence. Even the idea of vengeance had somewhat paled now that the means were at hand. What she most desired, in her inner heart, was an empire. And that meant mature females to produce progeny under her Chieftainship.

  She could, and would, perform a breeder-hood ceremony soon, but that would be to cement her power. What she really needed were females as tractable as her blood neuters. She tried to transform one of her milk neuters into female using her own blood, but the diet of animal blood, or at least the same side effect that seemed to keep them from growing and inhibited the transformation. The only solution was to capture some desert neuters.

  With her plans worked out in detail, Grace provisioned her troops with weapons and meat, both for them and their mounts, and they all headed down the mountain and into the desert proper. Their mopis’ seemed right at home as their twenty sets of legs effortlessly carrying them over dunes and through plains of sand. What had taken Gace over a week to cover during that terrible chase became a comfortable two day’s ride. They camped just out of sight of where the village once lay.

  Gace had a trio of blood neuters dismount and stealthily scout the village. They returned and reported dozens of Sephians both in and around the haphazardly repaired stockade walls. There seemed to be no organization other than the normal grouping of neuters around each female. She asked about the defenses, especially caltrops, but they reported no formal patrols outside wall.

  The plan was simple. They all mounted up, quietly made their way to a point straight across from the open, unguarded gate, and charged all at once. Gace let the six milk neuters lead and charged them each to capture a bandit neuter as soon as resistance allowed, then return to their base camp.

  Gace stayed in the middle of the blood neuters, safely ringed from immediate danger. As the small horde raced through the gate, whisper quiet on
the hundreds of mopis legs, the new inhabitants of the village gaped in shock, their maniples hanging slack from their faces.

  The milk neuters tossed drawstring netting they had tied to their mounts and quickly captured whichever grounded neuter caught their fancy. The females finally came to their senses and the compound echoed with enraged and frustrated whistles that commanded all remaining neuters to grab their weapons.

  The crystalline spears, well designed for hand-to-hand combat, proved useless against mounted foes, even armed as they were with only sharpened sticks. The mopis’ enjoyed both the carnage and the camaraderie of combat while they dispatched victims using both pincers and jaws.

  More than half the defenders lay dead in the first few moments. The rest deserted the village en masse. Gace entered her old village, dismounted, and made a leisurely inspection. She pointed out the better weapons and other practical goods for her brood to plunder. Grace obtained for herself, though piecemeal, the full regalia of a Chieftain. It complimented her medallion well. Taking a last look around, Gace rounded up her troops and rode home triumphant.

  ~o0o~

 

  Gace felt twitchy the day after returning to the cave. The captives lay dejectedly under guard in a back corner while everyone else's spirits were still high from their victory. Minor squabbles broke out over possession of certain weapons or other items, but good-naturedly.

  The next day she experienced stomach cramps and assumed she was experiencing a severe bowel problem. She thought she excreted an extremely large fecal lump through her cloaca, but to her surprise had laid a single extra-large egg!

  First off, Sephians lay twenty-four eggs without exception. The second issue was that she had not ingested any female Sephian blood, so how could she produce an egg? And the egg itself was four times larger than normal. What did this mean, and of more import, how should she handle it?

  Her thoughts went around and around, and suddenly came to a stop when she thought back on her original deadly encounter with the mopis. Her near starvation and the intensity of her first battle-fury led her to drink the mopis' blood. That had saved her life, and made possible an interesting future, but did that also induce the egg? The gestation time fit, and she was the only mature Sephian, who ever drank alien blood. Would it prove to be a nightmarish hybrid? And would such a creature be an asset? With all the unknowns, she decided simply to wait for the egg to hatch. There were more immediate concerns with which to deal.

  Before they left the village, Grace had filled a pair of fluid storage jars with blood from dying females. She gave the jars to a milk neuter who forced the captives to drink. She ordered a watch kept, and personally removed their breeder teeth with a sand-flamed dagger the moment they showed. On reaching the last new female, she hesitated and made another possible connection between procreation and blood. She ordered the female bound but left her teeth intact, at least for the present.

  ~o0o~

  The entire population of the cave gathered around Gace's singular egg and earnestly watched as it began to hatch. Gace stood close but kept one maniple on her sheathed dagger. Everyone remained perfectly still so that the new Sephian entered a preternaturally quiet world. She made eye contact with Gace and stretched a yawn. Something about the exceptionally large neuter was indescribably familiar, but Gace could not place exactly what. Then she noticed; three rows of tiny teeth. She was born a mature female!

  A whispered whistle floated from the attending audience, "Look, she's a mini Chieftain!"

  That's when it hit her. She called for a polished sand-flame plate and saw in the green tinged reflection a perfect image of the new hatching.

  Whether from her early upbringing, genetics, her later experiences, or just historical forces, Gace was a genius never repeated among her kind. Using the fully toothed female captives as a control, she discovered and organized modern Sephian genetics. Upon that knowledge, she built the foundations of one of the most powerful monarchies ever to exist.

  In traditional Sephian procreation, the blood of a mature female quickens the transformation of a neuter into a female while engendering a pregnancy, or simply impregnates a mature female. Neuters raised on non-Sephian blood remain in their adolescent form for life, even if later given milk or adult Sephian blood. Once a mature female ingested non-Sephian blood, they then gave birth, once, to an exact clone, but were thereafter infertile.

  Gace used this knowledge, along with many more raids on desert Sephians, to create a solid caste system, with her and her clone descendants at the pinnacle, followed by a warrior court of milk neuters also of her descent, supported by immense numbers of servile blood neuters, and ending with enslaved female milk mothers forced to provide suckle for the warrior class.

  ~o0o~

  Over the next two hundred years, the mopis-riding mountain dwellers, later designated Sidmopisans, reached a stable relationship with the desert dwelling Sephians. Desert villages grew into city-states, followed by increased trade, manufacture, and the arts. Sephians actually reached a higher level of culture than the somewhat barbaric Sidmopisians, but since they remained secretive and in the mountain regions, their relationship was mostly one of reasonable tribute.

  Then blight swept through the desert and decimated eight out of ten food plants over the next ten-year period. Few Sephians knew that Sidmopisians lived off blood, but those living near the mountains knew that somehow the blight was not affecting them. Sephian refugees, starved and dying, surged into the mountains to seek succor and refuge.

  The ruling Chieftain Gace, not quite the genius her great-great-grandmother clone was, made up for that lack of greatness with increased cruelty and cleverness. She allowed large numbers to pass through her guarded passes, but only mature females and the price of admission was their breeder teeth. She also moved blood harvesting, by now a fully functioning agricultural industry, into secretive underground facilities akin to temples. Any of the slave class that learned the secret of food production was publicly tortured and killed, mysteriously accused of crimes against the monarchy.

  The new royalty put the slave class to work building immense stonework palaces and public buildings, and the blood neuters rose in status as Sephian overseers. The ruling class gathered the harvested teeth into necklaces and used them as convenient monetary units, and life, at least for the nobility, was pleasant

  ~end~.

  Chapter 4: Scout & The Sidmopisians, Part 2

  Weeks passed since Scout walked beyond the last stand of Imuqi crops. He spent two full days crossing a barren buffer zone before the landscape slowly gave way to an increasingly diverse ecology. The landscape remained gently rolling hills covered in monotonous, knee-high steppe grasses, but his enhanced hearing echoed with the sound of myriad animals chattering through their daily lives. Meandering lines of moving grain-tops gave evidence of constant scampering just outside his reach.

  Overhead, a never setting, never moving sun soon browned his skin, replacing his underground dweller's pale pallor. Occasional light breezes tempered the temperature to a pleasant warmth, and the rich black soil gently toughened feet that spent a lifetime walking the spongy, living floor inside the warren.

  He found random trickling streams that satisfied his thirst while the chaotic enormity of knowledge in his head leaked enough facts concerning the local fauna that he never hungered. The constancy of travel, rest, and repast both calmed and restored his spirit.

  Scout as yet had no firm plans other than a desire to track down the fate of humans. He was still in the early stages of adjusting to the non-integrated partitions that now comprised his mind. The further behind he left Imuq, the less his identity as an Adjudicator remained in his consciousness until he finally lost all sense of self and was content just to experience life as an experiential Tableau Rosa.

  Uncounted days passed before the rocky ground began to slope and required more concentration to navigate safely. The streams merged into a minor river, lined with a variety of s
mall trees and bushes, so he needed to decide whether to attempt ford or follow the water downstream.

  Factoids filtered into his awareness that pointed in a relative north-northwest direction towards the last known human metropolis. Still, on some level, Scout was not ready to face his human heritage and whatever implications it may hold for his self-image. He chose downstream for the time being and entered a soothing, ambulatory fugue state.

  ~o0o~

  Scout snapped to awareness, not from any philosophical conclusions or mental regeneration, but as a result of an explosion of pain centered on his nose. He also realized he lay flat on his back, looking up into a drizzling overcast fog. He sat up and gingerly explored his nose, broken, puffy, and painful, and looked around for whatever had hit him. There was nothing.

  He stood up and noticed his feet had become gnarled and calloused, and his arms and legs showed thin, wiry muscles. He had evidently wandered from the river, which loudly cascaded out of sight to his left, and stood on a small, featureless clay-dirt plateau. The light rain made the clay slippery and he might have fallen on his nose, but then again, he had come to on his back.

  Scout slowly walked in an expanding spiral, at a loss to explain his injury, when his right shoulder bounced off nothing. At least, he could see nothing. He looked in the direction of the obstruction, only partially obscured by the rain that hit a barrier and sluiced oddly.

  There was an abrupt change in the character of the ground where the rain was blocked, and the light was of two different colors on either side. As if drawn with a straight edge, the thinly vegetated red-clay soil beneath his feet became a wasteland of bright pink triangle-grained sand.

  Scout cautiously approached the dividing line and slowly bent down to investigate, which saved his skull from a sharp crack as his head softly collided with an invisible barrier. He placed his palms against the unseen wall, explored it into the ground, as high as he could reach, and several steps in both directions. On the other side of the unseen barrier, a second sun began to shine from a much lower angle than on his side. It was also more of a blue-white than cream yellow and created convection waves of heat near the ground.