Douglas Niles - Feathered Dragon

Then, in the dead city, even the rats fell still. A tremor rippled through the earth. Mount Zatal, lost in the gray fog above the valley, rumbled.

And the statue began to move.

The swath of death cut through the jungle like a cosmic scythe, leaving behind torn tree trunks, shredded brush, and the skeletons of any creatures foolish enough to stand before the inevitable advance of the ants. Whole meadows became festering swamps of brown mud, while great tracks of forest were reduced to bare, twisted trunks and a decaying wasteland of rot and waste.

The track followed an apparently random route, twisting and turning at whim, fording the occasional streams of the Payit jungle or easily cresting the steep limestone ridges that sometimes jutted from the land. It followed a northerly course, then twisted east and south, even turning around and crossing itself as it again swung to the north.

The track may have seemed random, but it was not.

In fact, the giant ants followed the commands of an intelligence every bit as keen as it was evil. Darien used the march to gain absolute control over the ants, directing them to follow her commands. She narrowed the column to a file of five or six ants abreast when she wished it to move quickly, for she found that she could turn it more easily this way and avoid obstacles such as marshes or thick brambles. When she desired a wide swath of destruction, she broadened the column; though it moved more slowly, with a hundred or more ants marching at its head, it left nothing living through its broad path.

Each of the ants was a mindless monster in its own right: bigger than a huge jaguar, with a mechanical intensity that knew neither fear nor dismay, each ant marched and attacked and devoured wherever and whatever its mistress commanded.

All the while Darien’s mind seethed with hatred. She grimaced at the pictures in her mind of humankind, its miserable failings and faithlessness. She spat her venom upward at the thought of the arrogant gods, wreaking havoc among the mortals at no risk to themselves.

And she drove her ants, the thousands of massive insects that spewed from the bowels of the earth, ready to obey her every command. Finally she felt ready to begin her revenge.

This region of Payit, though sparsely populated, hosted several small villages. It was toward one of these that, at last, she marched her ant army. Soon she reached the fringe of jungle around her goal, and she looked across several small fields of mayz toward a cluster of thatch huts.

Wait, my soldiers.

Her command, silently compelling, reached all of her subjects. The leading ants held at the edge of the jungle while their brethren marched up to join them from behind. Gradually the marching file expanded into a broad front of twitching antennae and slowly flexing mandibles. Black and hulking, the ants trembled with energy, yet remained in place. As more and more of the army reached them, Darien smiled thinly.

Forward-kill!

Now the rank of massive insects broke from the jungle, sweeping through the fields of mayz. Great jaws snatched the grain from its stalks, devouring ears, leaves, and all. Jerking forward with steady momentum, the ants quickly scuttled toward the village.

First to see the horrifying attackers were several women who were gathering corn when the nightmare horde suddenly burst around them. They screamed only for a second, dragged down even before they could turn to run.

Their screams brought men running from the huts, and they met the ants at the fringe of the village. The powerful forelegs of the soldiers knocked their weapons aside and cracked the bones of these warriors. Then the insects’ mandibles seized them with bone-crushing force.

The first rank of the ants ripped through the line of spearmen, whose missiles merely bounced off the hard insectoid carapaces. They tore and crushed, ripping limbs away and leaving bleeding, helpless victims still alive to face the hunger of the second rank.

Screams rang through the air, sending flocks of noisy parrots and macaws squawking from the trees. All the villagers not caught in the first wave of disaster turned to flee. The ants scuttled awkwardly after these morsels and quickly overtook most of them. The smallest humans, the ants snatched up and carried back to their new queen. The larger ones, they cut dawn where they caught them, tearing them to pieces so that each ant could carry a portion.

With the swiftness, if not the grace, of deer, they raced among the buildings and through the small village square. Without pause, the ants overran the tiny cluster of huts, probing inside each building, emotionlessly gobbling those too infirm or young to flee. Soon they started on the thatch itself, tearing and ripping until the buildings fell in ruins.

The center of the village sheltered a small pyramid, topped by a typical Maztican temple. The ants swarmed up all sides of the structure, brushing aside the few warriors who stood in their path. At the top, the village priest stood in the temple door, brandishing his stone dagger. An ant sliced his arm off at the elbow before he could strike a blow. Another seized his foot and dragged him, screaming, down the pyramid steps, while still more ants plunged into the temple building itself, tearing at the wooden walls with their steel-hard mandibles. Soon the entire building collapsed, crashing around the stone altar “in a heap of rubble.

Somewhere within, a brazier must have contained hot coals, for shortly after the collapse, a wisp of smoke erupted from the wreckage, In moments, orange flames licked upward, and soon the ruined temple crackled into a hot blaze. Sparks, wafted by the gentle wind, floated tantalizingly over the dying village. Some of these nestled among the heaps of torn thatch, and soon the ruined huts began to burn.

In a few minutes, there was little sign of any human habitation here, save for the squat stone pyramid amid the glowing piles of crackling ashes and coals.

At the edge of the clearing, the driders watched the destruction with grim satisfaction.

“You have found us our army,” hissed one of Darien’s driders, a sleek male with a powerful longbow. He, like the rest of her kin, had looked quietly on while the ants attacked.

“My soldiers kill very well,” agreed Darien.

Lolth, too, was well pleased by the carnage, though of course her driders could not know it.

In the embrace of the Plumed One, may we live to see another day.

The door to Lotil’s hut crashes inward, and a great beast stands there, slavering- It is monstrously tall, green of skin, and possessed of long, wicked claws upon its fingers. The crimson brand of the Viperhand throbs on its chest. Its black, sunken eyes focus on the featherworker and me as we cower in the corner.

But then the presence of Qotal becomes manifest.

Lotil’s loom, decked with feathers and cloth, stands in the corner. As the beast advances, the partial tapestry tears free from the loom. It floats toward us, then hangs motionless in the air, between the monster and our terrified selves.

The creature stands dumbfounded, but no more so than I. For upon this uncompleted scrap of tapestry appears an image of a place, an image rendered so clear, so unmistakable, that it would seem to be the place itself.

The beast stumbles backward in confusion. Finally, silently, it departs from the house. I stare, transfixed by the image before me.

Then the blind featherworker beside me, who cannot see the sun in the noonday sky, speaks.

“It is the Pyramid of Tewahca,” he says, and I agree.

Luskag felt a strange mixture of sadness and pride as his dwarves marched past. They left Sunhome in the care of the young and the old, while all the strong adults-males and females alike-joined the file toward war. All across the House of Tezca, he knew, the other villages of desert dwarves mustered as well.