New Universe: Tronconia
Smashwords
Edition
Copyright 2012 David Majlak
Smashwords Edition License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
CHAPTER 1
SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST
The Tronconian universe had banged itself into existence. Like a hammer striking a forge, sparks and matter flaying in every direction. Something was different about this one. There were more blue nebula that would take longer to develop than any other. The particular makeup of this universe had forced together a dense planet peppered with something blue as the light of three suns pummeled it relentlessly. The three suns revolved around a center point, pulling at each other, with the other planets in the system revolving around them in turn. Over hundreds of thousands of years, following collisions from asteroids that were orbiting ominously in the nearby belt, the peppered blue spread across the surface from the impact explosions to devour a good third of the planet. Upon closer inspection, it was a living crystal planetary crust. Once time had carved evolution into it, entire formations of crystal would pull themselves up, detaching themselves from the crystal blue surface, scattering pebbles and dust in order to herd together. They gathered near soft stone mountains and pillars that they fed on. These monsters were car sized volcano science projects, with transparent diamond shaped bodies you could almost see through, six pointed legs dulled from being walked on, and a tail on the back of them that always pointed at a 45 degree angle. Most of the crystals here were combinations of blue and green hues, but there were some, here and there, who could develop a more wild array of colors on their body. During their sleep cycles their legs and tails would fold up against their bodies, and they would resemble a transparent blue crystal volcano about 30 feet high, but would look closer to a pyramid than anything else. As the strand of fate came closer to these beings evolving from random unintelligent life into a civilization, much more time allowed the planet to become engulfed in this blue crystal. Arcs of crystal, a massive and rounded tsunami frozen in time had grown around hills. Arches and individual geometric shapes protruding from the floor. In order for them to thrive and exist, they needed a support base, somewhere to develop the next generation of themselves. Their planet's crust was all crystal. It had to be. They couldn't grow anywhere else. Their existence and development was rare indeed, and depended on this living crust to survive.
You would never see them reproduce just anywhere, and not even particularly in their own territory, which occupied acres at a time. Among the crystal that had absorbed the planet, the original peppered blue that had grown to consume the planet was where this species had originated from. This crystal provided the basis for their reproductive cycles, as the makeup of this original crystal had roots to the center of the planet, feeding life into the young juvenile crystals. It was a lighter blue than the rest of the planet, and couldn't decide whether it was turquoise, baby blue, or other shades in between, making it easier to locate when needed. When these crystals reproduced there, they would rub their tails together which generated a frequency to awaken the matriarch's crystal spores. With the matriarch being the largest and oldest of them as well as the only one physically allowed to reproduce, the frequency of the male would align and set the offspring's DNA. The matriarch would shiver, and as she developed goose bumps, these spores would rise up on her tail. From there, the juvenile crystals would develop for a few days before being plucked and placed or allowed to travel there themselves in this light patch for growth into an adult. They needed development time and stored energy to survive in the patch until it could reach the juveniles with sustainable energy and material to grow via the roots that reached for the center of the planet. In order to grow and survive once they were fully fledged adults, they needed to assimilate brimstone and granite, which they did by absorbing it through a beam port in the front of their bodies. It had a unique trapezoidal shape, broke up the rock, and transported it to their bodies for assimilation. It was osmosis for these monsters, but they broke it down in such a way that they could make it part of their bodies, slowly increasing in size over time. What these monsters didn't understand at the time, but what evolution had provided them, was that the rock they were consuming held energy. Not only did the consumption of this rock make them larger every time they needed to replenish themselves as they absorbed the material, but the energy within the rock kept them alive and gave itself to the crystal's life force. Those mating patches had roots accessing the energy contained in the rock beneath, to provide the juvenile crystals with energy they nor their matriarchs could give them to grow to the size they needed to survive on their own.
After several generations of crystal had come and gone, landslides, volcanic eruptions, shifts in the planet's surface that created rips and caverns, and some meteorites crashing on their planet, the crystals had understood the weakness of their makeup while they experienced the loss of several members of their group during these events. They were brittle. Tough, hardy, and eternal, but brittle and susceptible to blunt force trauma. The stones they broke down with their beams were the same way. Since they were eternal and had no necessary need for buildings because evolution provided them with all they required, they never created them or any other tools. They never made art or recorded anything. There was no specialized need for either because they lived so long, the eldest of the crystals were walking libraries of their history. If any of the crystals were curious, one of the older crystals would communicate through frequencies the way elephants do. They did not bleed, and so health wasn't a concern. They had no illness or culturally significant issues, and thus no research or development was necessary. There was no disease present to plague them. Upon the realization that any blunt forces could shatter such aged creatures, the eldest crystal had a thought. The elder had the idea they should combine the structures of their bodies with the surrounding exposed metals, spewed about across the planet by the volcanoes that pushed their way to the surface any place they pleased. At the time, there happened to be a volcano nearby. When one of their volcanoes would erupt, a select few that the elder had chosen would submerge themselves in the lava, and after they had emerged, the elder crystal would carve the cooling lava. There were many crystal volcanoes on the planet, but each one had access to a particular underground lake of lava made of different material. The one the elder had chosen was a steel volcano, though he had no clue as to what it was actually made of. It was more an experiment conducted to provide a solution to the only problem the species had come across, and they were willing to sacrifice themselves for the greater good of one another.
A week after the elder had the idea, everything was prepared. The volunteers had been chosen, and the volcano eruption they were looking for had been predicted. The several large volunteers were lined up near the volcano and the plan got underway as the volcano had begun to erupt. Because the crystals communicated using frequencies, they could detect when the volcano would erupt before any of the lava could spew from its peak. The process was amazing. These monstrous crystal volunteers were just some ordinary grazing wildlife made of crystal. As large and docile as elephants or hippos. Just humming along, marching into the lava casually and without fear. The first of the volunteers submerged itself in one of the rivers of molten steel and returned, standing idly in front of the elder. The elder crystal worked on the first volunteer that had come from the lava, lifting his front legs as arms and producing thousands of tiny crystal fingers that it had shifted from the front of each arm to create a highly advanced and dexterous hand. It was making elegant circuitry on the volunteer's body as the lava cooled. The high number of individual fingers made them naturally small, and aided in preventing a sloppy carving. The lava became heavy as it cooled and the crystal the elder was working on simply collapsed, shattered, and crumbled. The elder had not worked fast enough and could not have guessed that something like this could have been a result of their experiment. They lost someone. He was 4,583 years old, being one of the guards that had protected them and their offspring for so long from the other aggressive wildlife on the planet and was no longer. Normally such a catastrophic event would cause weeks of mourning, a burial and the returning of the crystal to one of the dedicated mating grounds used for burials, and the reanimation of the crystal into a statue in memory of the deceased. Even though they could die, they were always remembered because when returned to these patches, the deceased crystals could still grow, but would become part of the landscape, recreated nearby as an effigy of their history as both a memory and continued support for the civilization. If everything were wiped out and two crystals survived, they could bury their dead anywhere on the crystal mantel, and start again. The deceased behaving and providing as new land, and a new mating ground. The meteors that would crash on this planet over time, had assisted with the spread of the crystal planetary crust, blasting parts of it across the surface.
Not to be discouraged, knowing full well that the volcano didn't erupt every day, the elder crystal summoned their largest out of the crystals that had been chosen to participate. It was an ogre of a creature called Buldo. The elder motioned to the lava, the largest dunked itself in it, and was strong enough to allow the elder to finish its attempt. The elder had worked faster this time, though the larger size of this crystal didn't make him feel any safer about losing another member of the herd. Success. All you could hear at first was screeching feedback from the crystal producing a vibrant yell that covered a large range of frequencies. The elder dug into the cooling lava before he lost his chance to make any adjustments, and with a sudden emission of noise, the ogre crystal realized he could speak, looked at the pile his former friend was now made of, and asked "Can I enter the water now? This lava is making me really hot! I'm not going to crumble like Trestic am I?" The elder nodded with his body and produced a frequency, telling the ogre crystal that if it entered water, both he and the cooled lava would crack and be destroyed. The elder didn't want to push his luck and crack another one of his members, and so motioned for them all to return to Anulaive and share what they had found with the rest of the herd. The ogre crystal's lava steps turned the ground it stepped on black, which crumbled away and was slowly replaced by the living floor. Normally the living crystal surface could survive lava, but not combined with the heavy force of the ogre crystal's footsteps.
After the first successful merging of metal and crystal performed by the elder, who was called Destron, he wrote down how and what he was able to do at the experiment's location. He carved the instructions into the oldest crystal floor they knew of with symbols and words only he could understand at the moment because it was so new, so that if anything should cause him to crack, the rest of his race could continue to survive as long as they could decipher it. It would also serve as a historical landmark. The next task performed would be to establish a language that they all could understand based on this, and share information with in case any of these walking libraries should cease to exist. However, since Destron was still living, he performed the rest of the conversions on the members of the group himself. He did this after they managed to create a container to store and use the lava by blasting off an acceptable stone, and then pecking away at its center. While the lava on the ogre crystal was still hot, Destron requested it carve up the crystal floor to make the container that would hold the molten steel, so that the conversion process would be more manageable. They hoped that by doing so, the risk of losing any more members would be greatly reduced. The ogre crystal would simply carve out the shape it needed by blasting the floor with its assimilation beam. Destron would be the last one to be converted, and with the extra time he had, he came up with plans to modify and work with the cooled lava, possibilities for future research, and topics to experiment with using other materials if they could find it in the same form they found the lava. Finally, he created the design he wanted to be applied to his body when his turn eventually came. He wasn't much smaller than the ogre crystal called Buldo, so they knew he could support the weight of the lava, but Destron insisted he remain in his original form until they found a method to change him that was acceptable. The smaller crystals couldn't simply consume enough rock at once to gain size just for the sake of being fused with the molten steel. The amount of energy stored within the crystals would resonate and produce a frequency capable of shattering the crystals from the inside. The more energy contained in the crystal, the more powerful the effect became. The smallest of the crystals were particularly vulnerable due to their thin shell, as opposed to the weathered and thicker shells the older and much larger crystals possessed. The crystals didn’t know about this, because evolution had limited the amount of material and energy they naturally would want to absorb, and so the issue never came up, their hunger stopping them on their own.
During their weekly consumption of brimstone and granite near The Pillars, Buldo stormed into their community urgently needing to speak with Destron. After a few frequencies were exchanged, Buldo explained his news. "We've done it! We know how to use the lava in a way that won't hurt us, and the best part of it is that we don't have to melt it to our bodies!" Destron stood right up, crashing into his and everyone else's feeding area which broke much of what they were trying to consume, and releasing some of the energy contained in the process, generating grumbles from everyone. Destron went to move to where Buldo had made the discovery, moving as quickly and as agile as a 3 story spider. Destron was absolutely astonished that his successful first experiment could be improved upon so soon after learning about so many new and creative discoveries of the world in which they lived.
Destron arrived back at the volcano, which was where Buldo was working, and waited for Buldo to display his findings, impatiently tapping his legs on the crystal floor. "Sarca come here so we can begin." Buldo yelled to another crystal. Sarca was a more slender crystal, one of the younger ones in fact, but she was fast and could move herself in a way that no one else could. Destron had found her as a juvenile walking alone amongst The Pillars, and made her a part of their herd. She was asked to teach the rest of the community how to transform themselves once this new experiment was over, and everyone else had learned to speak the new language. She could have been a 5th generation crystal, but nobody knew where she came from, and she was a different color than the rest of the crystals but was otherwise identical. For every new generation of crystals, their shape and color changed. They knew this, but still couldn't visualize how Sarca had been formed down the line of crystals that provided her with the magenta and various purples covering her body. Had she come from another crystal herd? Was she a late bloomer? Now wasn't the time for such questions and would need to be addressed when less important things were occurring. After Sarca stepped in place right next to Buldo and a table put together with sections of the carved blue crystal with molded steel on it, Buldo showed Destron his findings in earnest. To keep him in the loop, Buldo carried over the molds he had put together that made the various pieces of steel on the table he would use in this experiment.
Speaking quickly, with the excitement hardly able to contain itself in his voice, Buldo said "You see sir, our crystal is brittle. It's not necessarily fragile but any kind of hard blow to it in the right place with the right weight and the right force, will crack us right open and cause what happened to Trestic to happen to any of us. We decided to try the experiment on Sarca because aside from you, she's the only one left we haven't tried something new on. Remember how you were marking the cooling lava on my body with your fingers?" Buldo said. Destron rubbed a few of his crystals together and nodded. "You see," Buldo said, "because of the ionization, frequency, and makeup of our crystal, we can actually merge with the metal as a support, a conductor, and a communicator! Our life force apparently behaves and enables the merge to do what it does. No forming is really necessary, except for getting the metal in its purest form." Destron tilted his body in confusion, trying to understand what Buldo was talking about, with all his fingers moving outward in a form of 'What the heck?' Buldo's findings were on the scale of showing computer technology to a civil war veteran. It just had to be explained, and Destron had no clue what Buldo just said. Destron continued to entertain him, his patience wearing thin, having been interrupted from his weekly meal to hear about things even he didn't understand.
Buldo began his work on Sarca with the tools and materials they had collected, and after just a few hours he was finished. Sarca gleamed a gorgeous royal purple with shades of turquoise and maroon in their sun's combined refraction. Buldo turned around to face Destron and said "Ok sir, let's show you what Sarca can REALLY do." And with that, Sarca began to transform herself. The metal that she had merged with became a bit difficult to maneuver with, and she voluntarily released some of it to the ground. Destron was not pleased, assuming Buldo knew what he was doing with the experiment, she shouldn't have been releasing anything. Buldo's face, now made up of shifting forms of steel, displayed an evident sense of worry and concern, as well as embarrassment after watching the reaction on Destron's face. Sarca shifted forms, and the parts of her simply moved to different places on her body. It wasn't anything like removing a limb and reattaching it, but watching the limb move from the joint, and slide itself over the body to where Sarca needed it. After everything had stopped moving, Sarca stood motionless for several minutes. Buldo became nervous, and touching his fingers together said "I'm sorry I don't know what happened sir. Things were going so well, I didn't even know she could move her crystal that way! This was totally unexpected! I'm--" and before he could finish, Sarca, who had shifted into a giant crystal ball with two metal X's through it with ski's attached, rolled off into the distance before Destron could even get up from where he was sitting to smack Buldo for his failure and arrogance. They were both amazed. Did she roll off on her own? Did gravity push her down that way? Did the metal do something to her body? They had to find out. Their future and likely the survival of their species depended on it.
CHAPTER 2
Down by the towers and mountains of stone, in what was a labyrinth of pillars only a few hundred feet from where the crystal herd called home, Destron and Buldo searched for where Sarca might have rolled off to. In the midst of the gray stones and the turquoise dust and floor they walked, looking and wondering if the modifications made to Sarca had locked her into one state. They were curious if she was among the pillars and unable to return home or was simply having fun with the new potential of her body. As they walked in between the towers of stone, Buldo noticed several crystal gargoyles perched on top of several of them. They were a mixture of black and magenta and had their clawed feet dug deeply into the stone. None of them were moving or even flying overhead, they didn't look particularly threatening, and so Buldo ignored them.
During the search, Buldo noted "It might be a bit difficult to find her between the sun's tint, the floor, and her natural color. The metal we added would cause her to blend in fairly well with the surroundings." he said, walking slower in a clear display of growing sorrow at unsuccessfully locating Sarca. The Pillars, which is what they aptly named the area, was a vast swathe of their territory, as large and wide as the Grand Canyon. It was where they would come to consistently replenish themselves because it was easy to knock over the old pillars of stone and assimilate the elements and energy found within. Knocking rock out of a mountain was much more difficult, if not impossible, and used up much more energy than was worth expending by using their beams.
They walked through The Pillars for some time in their search for Sarca. It had been at least three hours when Buldo walked into Destron and fell over. "Why did we stop?" Buldo said, shaking the turquoise dust off his body. When he looked up he knew why. About 200 feet from Destron was a Homnigator. It was a creature native to the area with a peculiar evolution. It had a large gray stone beak in the shape of a pyramid that was pointed at the end. Tucked in right behind the beak were four green sacs with red lines in the center placed in a symmetrical X shape that continued into its torso. Attached to its body were 6 scaly lizard legs with fine hairs on it that detected and sensed the frequency of energy, which was how it found Destron and Buldo. Normally it would retrieve energy from the stone across the vast landscape, but here they were with much denser energy signatures, and this one was hungry. Each leg had 7 toes or fingers to provide an excellent grip on anything it touched. Its body ended in a strange tail with no pointed end that the Homnigator used in cooperation with its sacks to propel itself toward its target, smashing into it with its stone beak. Destron readied himself as the Homnigator screeched, filling its sacs with air. It was Destron's cue to act. The Homnigator compressed its sacs, and with its rapidly ballooning tail, propelled itself at Destron. Knowing Buldo was saturated in metal from the volcano, Destron flattened out his body and tipped over, allowing Buldo's metal torso to take the hit, knocking him over. The Homnigators would typically lunge at the upper part of the crystal's body because it was their weak point and easiest to break off. As Buldo's metal body deflected the Homnigator's blow, Destron lifted his front arms and brought them crashing down on the Homnigator, crushing its beak and skull that spewed out a thick luminous purple liquid, spraying nearly everything with it.
"What the heck was that?" Buldo said, poking the body and playing with the new liquid. As Destron went over the details of the creature and how he had learned to fight them while he was a harvester, he explained how it hunted. The Homnigator would blow up its tail, smashing into both stone and crystal alike. The Homnigator would take up the smallest pieces and crush them in its beak to consume both the dust and the energy within. Destron continued to go into detail, telling Buldo all he knew about them as they approached the end of The Pillars. The Homnigators don't hunt in packs, Destron described, rubbing his brow. Their species never quite forms a group, and they tend to mate sporadically. They could be found everywhere because their mating process caused the female's eggs move to the outside of the skin as it grew, falling wherever the Homnigator happened to be as it traversed the land. Their species survived only because the eggs needed no attention, and hatched within three days of falling off its mother. There were plenty of smaller creatures and stones around for the juvenile Homnigators to feed on like pop mites that were small energy ticks who obtained their energy from the leftover dust, and grew fat and popped when the Homnigator juveniles chomped on them. There were also stonesecs that resembled a long thin stone but had photovoltaic (solar) properties, and simply walked around soaking up the multiple suns' energy. When the Homnigators ate them, the stonesecs released small flashes as they cracked under the pressure from their jaws.
After making their way through The Pillars, they approached a cut off. Before them was a vast swathe of dune, littered with varying degrees of sand, pebbles, stones, boulders, and outright floating mountains among the shifting debris. Destron noticed something shining amidst the stone and sand, knowing that there could only be one thing that could shine down there. Sarca must have rolled through The Pillars, producing different sounds as the metal in her body vibrated and echoed through her crystal when she impacted each pillar, and eventually found her way down the other end of the dune. Buldo, relieved they had found Sarca, crawled down the side to greet her. As Buldo approached her, laying upside down against one of the sparse remaining pillars, Sarca said "Hey, there's this one metal piece that just won't bend and it's keeping me locked in here. Could you use your great strength and bend it for me?" Buldo bent the rogue metal piece with ease, but went too far and heard a snap. Buldo was greeted with a crunching whack to the head from Sarca's violent release and sudden expansion. A crack formed that could be seen passing underneath the metal on Buldo's head. "Whew!" Buldo said, "Even though it's the metal's fault for that, thank goodness I've got it! It would've taken me weeks to regrow that!" he said with quick sigh, rubbing his head looking for more fractures like a soldier whose helmet had deflected its first bullet. Having experienced a splitting headache for the first time in his existence, he slowly gripped his pulsing head which brightened and darkened with color from the pain, his mouth opening wider in a silent scream from the new sensation.
After Buldo had stopped paying attention to his own head long enough to see what Sarca had finally turned into, he couldn't move. Both Destron and Buldo hadn't expected this kind of result from the experiment. They knew Sarca could transform in ways no one else could, but here she was, changing forms from one to the next, bending and heating the metal to be placed anywhere she chose. Her first transformation developed a hunched over beast that walked on its fists covered with gauntlets, shoulder plates, and back armor, but was more jagged and shapely as geometry tends to be, instead of smooth, rounded, and fleshy. It was the closest resemblance to her original form. From there, she transformed into a giant centipede. Parts of her body snapping apart to move underneath her by the hundreds, working together to transport themselves and forming hundreds of legs covered in pointed metal with her front arms moving to the middle of her torso and transforming into large claws. After Sarca was finished, she looked at Buldo and Destron curiously, wondering why they looked the way they did. "What, no one has ever seen a crystal morph itself before?" She said. No, but it came to Sarca like it was second nature.
Destron motioned to Buldo, who asked "Sarca, is there any way you could make use of the metal to provide the most protection and stability against blunt forces?" Buldo thought this was the most magnificent thing he had ever seen. There were infinite applications. After a few moments of thought, Sarca made her final transformation. She had no idea what "blunt forces" meant, but there were only so many kinds of things in their world that could kill them, and so she did her best. She moved her body around once more, and finished with four legs whose feet, knees, and thighs were covered in metal. Her body represented a tank's turret without the cannon, allowing for 360 degree rotation thanks to the metal that acted as ball bearings, and a continuous line of communication between her crystal torso and legs. She left her assimilation beam uncovered by the metal, placed underneath the torso so that nothing was exposed to provide a chance to be hit with a well placed blow. She had succeeded. It was a great preliminary model as a new protective form, but provided the best protection and structural stability for an early configuration, and certainly wouldn't be the last form she or any of the other crystal beings in the herd would undertake. They were giant crystal amoebas, with no concern for which part went where and continued to function properly regardless. No single part of their bodies relied on any other in order to function, save for their energy core that made up their life force.
Without warning, Buldo started fighting with Sarca, testing her new form. Sarca was caught unaware, being hit with a downswing from Buldo, cracking her thigh underneath the metal. Sarca returned hits to Buldo, snapping off his hand with both of her legs. With Buldo vibrating with his rage frequency, he kicked her underneath her torso, sending her flying into one of the stone pillars above the dune. Destron toppled Buldo over with ease, putting the sparring match to a quick end and kicking up a cloud of turquoise dust that called a halt to the test. After Buldo got back up they went to make sure Sarca hadn't received too much damage and wasn't injured. Destron wasn't pleased, and thought the test had gone too far, pushing Buldo into one of the pillars on their way over to Sarca.
They reached Sarca after climbing the dune, unconscious and on the floor, the metal that covered the top of her torso appearing cracked with the crystal underneath being untouched. Destron shook his head, telling Buldo he needs to warn people because he doesn't know his own strength. Destron motioned to Sarca, walking away through the pillars back to the herd's regular territory. Buldo looked concerned. He scooped her up over his body and followed Destron back, wondering how they were going to wake her up, and what they were going to do in order to further the experiment, if Destron would even allow that at this point.
CHAPTER 3
Back at their territory, named Anulaive by the eldest crystals generations ago, where everyone was busy assimilating stone and energy, both Destron and Buldo were sitting in front of Sarca, patiently waiting for her to regain consciousness. It had been two days since she had been knocked unconscious. There were several patches of mating ground here, as it used to be a primary location for travelling herds that would pass through as the seasons changed and prevented significant movement. Buldo had placed her on one of the primary mating grounds, which was starting to saturate blue and green in color from the energy it was carrying up to the top to give Sarca, and heal any injuries she may have sustained during their fight. She was still in her tank form, tipped over and resting on her head with her legs stiff as a rock. While they were waiting for Sarca to come to, Destron and Buldo were discussing modifications, and the potential of what they had created. Destron and Buldo walked in a small circle, observing the natural wide cavern and the multicolored gravel floor that had developed over many years of injured crystals leaving parts of themselves behind. They thought, if this was just the beginning, what might they find where all the meteors were coming from? How could they even get there at all? What else could they do with the new knowledge they had so quickly acquired?
After some time had passed, Sarca came to. Buldo was right there waiting and blubbered out "I'm so sorry Sarca I don't know my own strength sometimes, are you ok?" Sarca said nothing. She was particularly upset with Buldo for not even giving her the chance to expect a battle against someone so much larger and stronger and older than she was. Buldo pleaded with her "Sarca!.." but Destron cut him off, suggesting that she should be given some time. Destron started to walk, motioning for Buldo to come with him.
As they walked, they discussed the possibility of using this new technology for bad intentions. Their species wasn't a jealous or hateful kind, so the discussion was short lived, but this was the universe. Anything could happen. Just as they were bringing the discussion to a close, Buldo and Destron heard a noise they had never heard before. It was growing in intensity, sonic booms were being created, and the sky was changing from its gentle yellow to orange. Destron thought if this got any worse, whatever it was that was occurring, the sky would be red. Buldo interrupted his thought process "We've got to find what's doing this to the sky, and where the heck that noise is coming from. I've never heard or seen anything like it in all my years." He said. Destron agreed and went back to Sarca because she was the only one who could transform, not having had any time to teach the others. She had just regained consciousness, but it could only be her.
Sarca knew something wasn't right. When Destron motioned to her, she knew what was going on. Sarca turned back into her ball form before Destron could say anything and rolled off to where she could best hear and see what was happening. Destron and Buldo would just have to catch up. Sarca made way for the dunes, which was where the action seemed to be about to happen, and continued to roll through The Pillars. She saw a meteor breaking through their atmosphere. It was a massive white rock, and was hurtling rapidly toward their planet. Pieces were breaking off, white smoke was everywhere, flames were being created underneath it. A trail of orange and red was left behind, twinkling in the sunshine as they tumbled in the air. As she continued to pay attention to what could destroy her home, she rolled off a cliff. It was only by her quick reflexes that she grabbed the edge of the cliff with her metal hand as she transformed a part of her quickly enough not to fall completely.
As she hung there she could see for miles. The blue crystal floor was getting darker. Could her planet feel this imminent threat? Was it preparing for something? She couldn't tell whether it was the new color of the sky interfering with the sunlight, or whether this was going to be worse than she imagined. The meteor was heading for… another crystal herd?? As she pondered the existence of another crystal herd no one had known about, Destron and Buldo nearly fell over the cliff, sliding and skimming off rubble and debris that was caught at the edge. Buldo called out to Sarca, not being able to see her. Sarca was hanging right by his feet and spoke up at him "I'm down here you blind gargoyle..." she said. Buldo was startled at her being so much closer than he expected, and looked at her saying "Give me your hand! I'll pull you up!" "No," she said, "you and Destron need to come up with a plan. This isn't going to end well and it's incredible that we've found another crystal herd! I've got to get down there and help them." And with that, she let go, returning her form to a ball and rolling down the hill to get to this herd she and the others thought shouldn't exist. She thought her herd was the only one on the planet, and because of the age crystals can achieve, such reproduction should have only been found with her herd because of strength in numbers. Who would have made their own herd when there was protection and plenty of available rock energy around them? Who would put themselves through isolation when it wasn't necessary? More importantly, where were they getting their energy from? She might never get to have any of her questions answered if things went horribly wrong with where this meteor was about to land, making Sarca move even faster.
As Destron and Buldo considered the implications of the fact that there was a second herd, and that there could possibly be more, the meteor struck the herd Sarca had found. As the meteor fell closer to the herd, it created several booms before separating into three pieces, and impacting on and around the herd, startling even the perched gargoyles on the pillars, causing them to awaken and fly back home in fear. Destron sat there shaking his head slowly, knowing that he could not bring back the deceased. The only thing he could trust, was the thought that the new protection they had created from applying the metals to their bodies needed to be improved in case another such disaster was around the corner. Too many events had happened like this over their lifetimes that had taken so many members of their herd that he was determined to stop his species from being unnecessarily killed. It was so ironic that all of these events would happen so close together, and how fortunate it was that they had caused these new inventions to exist at all, never mind how fortunate it was that another herd existed. Destron pulled Buldo away from the cliff and walked back to Anulaive. Sarca would bring back a report soon enough. Other herds had to be found before a similar fate happened to them. What if this catastrophe incited the volcanoes? What if the ground opened up across the planet? Any number of reactions could turn things worse than they had yet experienced before.
As Sarca approached the small craters created from the meteor splitting before it slammed into the ground, she discovered some crystals had survived. The meteor hadn't completely destroyed this unknown herd, and she went to help who she could. She returned to her tank form, walking among the debris of stone and meteor alike, and shattered crystal limbs and pieces, inspecting everything. None of them were responding or moving. Crystals that should normally be alive weren't moving. As she walked through their remains, she noticed the unshattered crystal, and remains alike, were changing color. She didn't know why this was occurring. Was it from the meteor? Sarca moved the meteor debris around, but it was just ordinary rock. Where the heck did it come from? These crystals should be shattered and dead, not whole and dead. What could do that? As she continued to generate questions in her head she noticed orange dust scattered about the floor and rock, but paid no attention to it.
As Sarca was pondering the situation she found herself in, the largest piece of meteor still intact had shook and started to crumble, splitting off, revealing a luminous golden powder with red streaks running through it as it startled Sarca back several steps. There was nothing she could do for these crystals as she looked around, and as she started returning to Destron and Buldo to share what she had found, one of the crystals had began to move. She turned around and waited. The crystal had started to turn from its natural blue form to green, and as it stood itself up, it started to turn yellow. She tried to communicate with it but it wouldn't respond as she walked closer to it to strengthen her frequency's signal. Sarca wasn't comfortable with this, but what if this herd communicated differently? As the once dead crystal had finally stood on its previously shaky legs, it charged at Sarca. "Yikes!" she thought, returning to her ball form. She had to see what the heck was happening to these crystals, and so she rolled herself around ground zero, avoiding these aggressive crystals until she would learn enough or didn't feel safe anymore.
The crystals that were whole, all started to change color and get up, turning from waves of blue and green to a slowly infected and sickly yellow and orange color. The crystals that weren't, floated off the floor and were pulled to the ones that were, and were quickly absorbed. The golden powder inside the broken meteor produced a flash, and the now orange crystals started a coordinated effort to catch Sarca. She knew it was time to leave and blazed a path home. As she rolled out of these angry crystals' reach, she watched them start to consume the rock and its energy around them. The largest of the survivors rumbled so violently Sarca could feel it a mile away. As she arrived to where she last saw Destron and Buldo at the top of the cliff she fell off of, she watched as the orange crystals began to consume everything around them. Crystal herds had never consumed that much energy, and so she sat in wonder, curious as to what might happen next.
"HEY!" Buldo showed up without Destron, nearly startling Sarca back down the cliff. "I thought something might have happened to you down there and I came to get you." He said. Sarca blushed maroon at the thought of someone caring that much about her. Crystals take hundreds of years to create relationships, and she thought she finally had found what it felt like. She started to tell Buldo about what she saw when he interrupted her. "Look! What in the heck? That's not natural… that's just… it.. THEY CAN'T!" Buldo said. As Sarca turned her view back to the orange crystals, she saw them vibrating. She thought she might have been affected by the flash from the golden powder in the meteor, because those orange crystals were splitting. She thought she might have been looking at them cross-eyed. A mirror image? She knew it wasn't her, because Buldo was just as terrified. The more energy and rock the orange crystals had consumed, the more intense the effect became until finally one crystal met its limit and actually formed a second identical crystal. Buldo let out several screeches and squeaks. "We need to go. NOW!" Sarca said. She was no teacher, and she wasn't very old, but she knew bad when she saw it. As with anything in the universe, only so many copies can be made before things start to go south.
A HORSE! A HORSE! MY KINGDOM FOR A HORSE!
CHAPTER 4
As Buldo and Sarca returned to Anulaive, they met with Destron to explain what they saw. Destron wasn't happy, but at least they had some time. The natural development of their planet left many variations in altitude, and the orange crystals wouldn't be approaching their herd anytime soon, but if there were more herds out there, they needed to be warned and helped. While Buldo and Sarca were out in the dunes observing what was happening, Destron had finally created the method to produce the transformation he had been searching for. They needed time, and it was going to be close, but it had to be done. They needed to be defended, now more than ever, and Destron finally had come up with a plan.
Buldo took a look at the plans Destron had carved into the floor, and understood what needed to be done. He called for the herd to help him build a forge, to collect some of the lava from the nearby volcano after he put together several more containers he would make from carving out sections of the crystal floor, and to bring him some energy from The Pillars. As the resources Buldo needed were brought to him and piled several feet high, the rest of the herd slept. Buldo would work throughout the night as the herd was continuously and slowly feeding him with the resources he needed, knowing he was the only one capable of producing such work. Buldo had loved to tinker with things in the past. He was scolded for it, but he would play with some of the deceased crystal and the mating grounds as a juvenile to see how they would interact with the world around him.
During the delivery of the resources Buldo needed, one member of the herd spoke to him. "While I was down in the Pillars getting you this stuff, I found a crystal cave full of these magenta and black crystals. I went inside a bit, but it got really dark and I was afraid to go any deeper inside." Destron just happened to be walking around to keep an eye on his herd and happened to hear the conversation, walking up to them both. "I've been in that cave before," Destron said, "and the generations before you have spoke of what it contains. That cave is the home of the crystal gargoyles that feed on the energy contained in the stone pillars that we collect ourselves. When it gets dark, they return to the cave in order to sleep and grow. Legend has it there is a massive gargoyle deep inside the cave that produces the smaller ones, but it has never been seen before, probably because the cave is so deep and we have no naturally portable light sources." Buldo looked at them both and thought "Nahhhh..." and returned to his work.
The next day, the herd had awoken beneath a massive shadow. As they came out from their dens, they would each find an obelisk, large and imposing, towering over them hundreds of feet in the air. Sarca was particularly impressed. She knew her transformation ability was unique, but this was something else on another scale entirely. Sarca found Buldo still working on the obelisk, asking what it was for. The creation was massive. You would need hundreds of crystals standing on top of one another to reach the top. It had blue pulsing streaks up and down the sides, pipes all coming out of the top, and two massive doors in the front with carvings in it. Buldo stopped what he was doing and sighed, not having had a break for several hours and trying to remain patient. "This is The Forge." He said, "Because our crystal can retain memory, which is why when we bury our deceased they grow in their image, I've created this as a sort of factory. One of us steps in, The Forge is closed, the lava is poured, the crystal I've applied to it will automate the carvings and build up each of us, and while we wait, the crystal walls will display how to transform the way you do. It's just not finished. I need you to be the first one in so the wall can copy your information." Sarca was apprehensive, but she was sure this was the only way to save her planet. She was particularly nervous about the size of the doors that were required as she walked slowly toward it, and the much smaller size of their natural forms that would certainly be eaten by the large structure.
As Sarca stepped inside, observing the matted black stone and blue energy tracers inside the cylindrical structure, she wondered how something so large could transform something so small. More streaks were found inside, and she could feel the lava above her. The ground inside was different. It was raised up and structured. How could something inanimate do anything at all? Before Buldo closed the door, he spoke with Sarca for the last time before leaving her alone inside. "You need to transform into your natural form. Put all the metal underneath you, The Forge will do the rest. Oh, and one last thing, no matter what happens, remain calm. The Forge will do everything it should, but if you move around too much I'm not sure how it will react to you, and could bring the entire thing down on top of you." He said. "Great." Sarca thought with a slump of her shoulders. The only way out is a death wish. Her normally royal purple turned pink out of uncertainty. "Go ahead." Sarca said. "I hope you know what you're doing." She sighed quickly, twitching her legs from anxiety she was trying to hide. Buldo's color turned darker. He was just as nervous, but with a bottomless pit feeling, and so closed the door with hope and prayed things didn't go any worse than they did in his first experiment. He thought to himself, "Maybe I should have done a test run on a Homnigator to see what would happen to it." but he drove it from his mind, noting the last thing they needed to deal with was a giant predatory mutant.
As Sarca was placed in darkness when the monolithic doors of the Forge had slammed shut, with just the lava above her to provide small amounts of ambience next to the light provided by the pipes inside, she felt the grooves in the floor where she assumed her legs must be placed. She pulled her tail in close to her body, moved the metal underneath her, and hoped. The floor rose up to connect with her belly and she nearly turned white. Crystal just above her head slammed to the other side of The Forge, plunging her into complete darkness. In the center of it, crystal grew down to surround her head and started to glow. The crystal in front of her illuminated, displaying her memories of transformations and noting her feelings during them. As the last of her memory was copied, the crystal died down, and she was returned to the darkness. "That wasn't so bad" she thought, but she had no idea what would happen next and hoped it was as gentle as copying her memories, unconcerned with how Buldo had managed to get it to do so in the first place.
The walls around her, the floor, and the short ceiling she saw had closed in around her body, and begun to pull her apart. She freaked, but didn't move as Buldo asked, hoping things wouldn't get any worse. She wondered if this would be the end of her. She cursed Buldo for making her his guinea pig, and while she was busy doing so, the ceiling had returned and disappeared back into the wall of The Forge. "Am I still alive? Where is my body? Am I part of this thing now?" Sarca wondered. She tried to assert her will on the building, but nothing happened. A few moments later, and the lava poured down the sides of the wall. The energy their herd had collected started beaming in the center as the lava was splashed onto it with bursts of air from the walls. The crystal began to grow, pushing the lava and the crystal toward the energy. Blue flame could be seen coming out of the pipes outside The Forge.
Buldo was nervous more than he ever was. The Forge had stopped operating. The blue streaks no longer pulsated or shined. It had rumbled for a brief moment, and stopped. Buldo shouted at The Forge "THE DOORS ARE STUCK! FORCE THEM OPEN!" And with that, the doors were blown off with an explosion and rays of light everywhere. It was opened with such force that The Forge's doors had cut themselves into the crystal arch that signified Anulaive. The arch had been created from a constant wind current that blew against the back side of it, pushing up liquefied crystal over the edge that had been spewed up from a crashing meteor and slowly but continuously growing the arch over time. It was finally historic, and something that would never be forgotten. Hands appeared from the dark entryway of The Forge instead of legs, grasping the sides, pulling itself out. Buldo turned white. Destron simply sat down next to Buldo and gave him a large pat on the back, nearly pushing him over and returning his color to him, as well as his senses and self confidence.
It was definitely Sarca. The traditional royal purple she always was came out from The Forge. She was massive. A giant of giants. Her torso was a slender, but well shaped diamond. On her back were two diamond shaped wings that had been cut in half, with portions of the bottom glowing green, as the energy she contained would expel itself here to give her thrust. Dust was being kicked around from her wings. Her arms were covered in metal, with slits in them showing the energy underneath. Sarca had become a crystal giant. Buldo yelled up to her "Let's see what you can do!" And so Sarca concentrated, tornadoes were being kicked up behind her from the force of her wings, finally lifting her off the ground. She realized with amazement that she was flying. Her imagination raced, she fell to the floor nearly crushing Buldo. As she remembered the herd she found being destroyed, she no longer rumbled with frustration but took control over her new body and flew off to see what the rest of her new self could do before she flattened him.
Buldo was jumping up and down, rolling around ecstatically. He watched Sarca fly off into the distance, and forgot he needed to do the same to the rest of his herd. "Nuts," he said, "I forgot to tell her it was important we get everyone on the same page… Ugh. Ok people! You saw what happened! Let's go let's go let's go! Get me more lava and energy!!! I need that door put back or we're not going anywhere!" Destron was quite pleased with his work, and went back to his den, waiting for everyone else to be transformed, because he would be the last, just like before. A few members of the herd got on one side of the door that was dug into the crystal arch and blasted it gently with their beams, pushing it out and slamming to the floor as it dropped. They all moved in together as a group, hauling the giant door back to The Forge.
CHAPTER 5
As Sarca flew over her home of Anulaive, leaving trails of particulate green and purple behind her, she surveyed the blue and gray landscape for the meteor that landed. Everything looked different from up here. She noted that The Pillars was a large lull in the landscape with hundreds of pegs in the center as she re-established her internal compass. It reminded her of when she had her first transformation, and surprised her how many times she must have bounced around on her way to the dunes. Looking out across the horizon, she could see the various dunes and shifts in elevation. The planet was unique in that way, almost representing a random combination of steps only a colossus could take if it were on a mountain jogging path. As she sought to look farther out into the distance, her eyes started to morph on their own, bewildering her, stuttering the thrust from her wings and leaving clouds of smoke in the sky as she clumsily lost altitude. "What the heck, I didn't ask for… why can't I see!??!" she said, and as she panicked, her eyes returned to normal as she regained height, trying desperately just to look at her own two hands.
Sarca took a deep breath, and decided to try one more time. That didn't hurt, and though she couldn't see for a few seconds, she was curious as to what her body was trying to do for her. As she tried to look farther into the landscape, her eyes once again shifted and transformed themselves into vision goggles. The Forge had changed her eyes to contain several lenses, allowing her to shift the crystal within them to shift her focus. "Oh ho?" she said. "Isn't this nifty… I'll have to thank Buldo when I get back… now where is that giant hunk of crap ruining my planet…" she wondered to herself, feeling out her many new functions. The vision goggles that her eyes had transformed into had many uses, one of which was a binocular feature. She wanted to see into the distance? The transformation performed by The Forge allowed her body to develop into whatever her survival needs required, almost evolving her at will for whatever challenge stepped in her way.