Page 70 of King of Serpents

“No need,” he rumbled. “It needed to be done anyway.”

Buosoa smiled from her post, however, when he finally reached the door. “Excellent work, my prince. Consider it like ripping off an infected scale. It hurts for a moment, and you think you might die, but it all works out in the end.”

He stared at her for a long moment. “I suppose I have you to thank for leaving that meat you discovered with my mate instead of disposing of it?”

Her smile widened into an unrepentant grin. “Just doing my duty for the shinara, my prince.”

The corner of his mouth twitched in amusement. “Thank you,” he rumbled and he slipped out into the corridor, the heavy sound of the door sliding shut behind him.

He remained in place outside the royal nest, his eyes scanning the area. The queen’s nest in the upper shinara was too exposed for his liking. It was designed to sit at the head of a grand chamber where many corridors met. There were few Seshanamitesh moving through the chamber, moving from one corridor to the next, but his gaze came to rest on the far end side of the chamber and he stiffened. Gareiia stared back at him, her expression cold. The corners of her mouth curled, however, upon noting that she had his attention, and she slowly and intentionally turned away toward the smaller male obediently stationed at her side.

Dehv.

The male glanced at Therxian and looked away as Gareiia ran a hand down the crests of his gavo as she glided past him, leaving the male to follow dutifully behind her. Therxian’s eyes followed them suspiciously. She had clearly come from the direction of the throne chamber, but how long had she lingered there? Could she have heard anything? He doubted it but the female was suspicious and made him very uneasy. He considered following her, but given that she had very intentionally tried to trap him and was joining a group of departing females gathered in a farther corridor, he did not dare follow her. Not yet.

He turned slowly back toward the royal nest only to find Buosoa staring after Gareiia thoughtfully, her expression tight. He exchanged a look with her, and she dipped her head in acknowledgement before silently sliding out into the chamber to follow after her. She would be a far more capable spy than he would be. He would have her report on what she observed when he saw her the next morning.

Right now, all he wanted was to join his mate and enjoy some peace within her embrace. He also valued her insights. Perhaps she had some idea of how to convince his mother to leave.

Hissing to himself, he turned away, his tail whipping as it propelled him forward. Whatever Gareiia was up to, she would reveal herself sooner or later.

Chapter 49

Wrenching another rock away, Alex hissed painfully and lifted her hand up to note that she had torn yet another fingernail, breaking it low beneath the quick. That made five altogether. Three on her right hand and two on her left. She alternately blew on her fingertips and shook her hand to relieve the sting before cautiously stepping over the remaining rubble to enter the barricaded corridor.

It possessed an eerie darkness that could only be accomplished through the absolute and intentional destruction that had brought down the entrance. Although she had only seen the creative and tech aspects of Seshanamitesh sonic capabilities, she also knew that the species was capable of transforming their landscape by its use. It was how they built their shinaras and nests, but she had never considered how that same ability could be used as a weapon... until now. Even the corridor showed signs of stones warped out of alignment and half-cracked by some past devastation that sealed the entrance. She couldn’t see it, but she could feel it beneath her hand as she moved blindly forward.

It was chilling to consider. They could easily take out the entire colony if enough of them with that ability attacked at once.

But they hadn’t. Whatever the high queen personally felt about humans, she chose not to launch an all-out assault upon them and wipe them out. Alex didn’t think some colonies were so lucky. She remembered half a dozen cases where colonies had just disappeared. Darvel never gave any explanation for it, but everyone knew that one-by-one they had gone silent until there was only a fraction of the original number left planet-wide.

And what were the chances that every one of them was located near a shinara? She doubted many were as close as Raza was to the Aglatha. Unless every single cave system had a shinara buried deep within it.

She cocked her head, considering. She supposed it was possible. It just seemed highly unlikely.

Thankfully, there was a light at the end of the tunnel with all of this... literally. She was starting to see the faint glow of galthie blooming just ahead. It seemed that while the destruction effectively sealed the corridor, the western wing was intact.

Gradually the shape of the walls became more visible and defined, so that she no longer had to depend on what she could feel beneath her hand. All the better, in her opinion, given she had a good idea what sort of things scurried about in the caverns thanks to her time within Therxian’s nest. Although that was an extreme scenario in which the insects were drawn to it, just knowing that anything could be skittering around in the dark was enough to make her skin crawl.

At that end of the corridor, Alex came to a stop in front of a new, glowing barrier. She paused, mostly due to surprise at seeing a curtain of glowing vines, but also to admire it. This wasn’t galthie, nor was it any of the cultivated blooms that she’d seen growing wild in the other courtyards. This was altogether very different. It wasn’t just the sprays of tiny flowers glowing on the vines, but the vines themselves gave off a silvery glow. She trailed her fingers on them, and the individual vines briefly brightened, the glow rippling along them in response to her touch.

A smile touched her mouth. Of everything she might have imagined behind the barricaded corridor, it was unexpectedly quite whimsical.

Drawing back the curtain of vines, the whole world shimmered for a moment as the curtain of vines slid over her and fell away, giving way to the glow of the galthie flowers positioned strategically into a thick overhang. From there the corridor brightened with vibrant blooms as they led to a courtyard dominated by small luminous waterfalls that spilled down one wall into a shallow pool. It fed into numerous channels that were cut away to form rivers winding through the floors, around which various cushions and lounges were placed, before disappearing beneath the wall opposite the fountain. What was more, the floor appeared to be laid with some sort of tile that she had never seen anywhere else among the Seshanamitesh. It was glazed and fired similar to old earth relics, bearing patterns reminiscent of swirling waters and waves, and possessing hints of something like mica, making them shimmer within the light of the galthie and native blooms.

And, unlike the other courtyards which ran rife with glowing blooms of various kinds, the western courtyard was spectacularly different. Silvery drops of mist drifted through the courtyard, creating an aethereal beauty even if it further chilled the exposed skin of her cheeks. It drifted over the carved-out channels and among the furnishings and few large, decorative pots filled with tall, reedy plants that emitted puffs at random intervals of luminous pollen. It was truthfully like some kind of alien fairy marsh, the streams of which were filled with numerous blooming aquatic plants that seemed to be rooted within underwater containers.

“Hol-y shit,” she whispered. “Why the hell would anyone seal off this part of the palace?”

Hopping carefully over the artificial streams, she made her way across the courtyard to the dominant door at the other end. That was the room she undoubtedly wanted. She had quickly come to notice that each wing possessed a master chamber, so that the established layout was a mirror to the royal nest that headed the royal residential quarter. They were always the most immediately accessible from the courtyard and also possessed the central vantage point of the wing’s view over the shinara. It was her guess that each wing was connected somehow to a specific line with its own head, around which the smaller nests of the family clustered—though she was clueless as to significance of each and their relationship to each other and the greater shinara.

The closer she got to the door, however, the more she noticed the signs of a struggle that had once passed through the courtyard. While the giant pots stood unmoved, there was one to her left that lay toppled over, the side of its belly broken open, spilling dirt and wild growth that had taken root in it everywhere. It was the most obvious sign, but it drew her attention to the smaller ones. Broken pottery, stains of what might be splattered blood, and small items discarded or dropped carelessly. Her skin prickled with unease... but then she came at last to the short corridor that led into the nest and entered the room to find... chaos.

Scrolls were flung everywhere, all of which were badly torn and water-damaged, and furniture was tipped over and broken. Shelves that once held the scrolls littered the floor with frames constructed from broken reeds amid split and crushed woven baskets. Even the singing crystal lay shattered, as if the life of the entire wing had been snuffed out completely. Alex stood at its foot and stared morosely at the chunks and shards of crystal strewn out over the floor. Tiny grains of crystal crunched beneath her foot, but she paused as she caught a sound akin to a faint stream of notes echoing through the room. She followed them to the far wall where she noted several small fountain-like openings of various sizes, each of which spilled into bowls that were likewise of differing sizes and materials. Together they created the soft, harmonic sound filling the chamber. To its left, in a narrow crevice, mostly hidden by the luminous vines hanging along the wall, stood a lone reed shelving unit that had somehow escaped destruction. On several of its shelves it boasted crystals of various shapes, colors, and likely unknown providence as she didn’t recall the miners recovering anything that even remotely resembled them from the mining operations. There were also several small, sealed bottles of unknown substances.

Her fingers skimmed them with curiosity as she allowed her sense of touch to add to what information she could discern from the weak light entering the crevice. But there, tucked into the dark corner of one shelf, her hand paused as her fingertips drew across something dry, thin, and crinkly. She felt the brittle crispness of the material beneath her fingers. Very slowly, she curled her fingers around it and drew it from the crevice.

A scroll! It was obviously very aged, but it appeared to be in good shape, nonetheless. She barely dared to breathe as she carefully unrolled it, revealing long written passages with accompanying illustrations. Unlike the damaged scrolls scattered everywhere, the characters all appeared to be clear and legible. There also appeared to be painted studies of various kinds of plants that became increasingly numerous the further she unwound the scroll.