The Memory of the Devouring Flower

On the eve of departure, the red and yellow lights blazing above the northern sky— likely tantalizing the barbarous semi-humans who inhabited that frozen and unforgiving waste— the High Hyliadora, Dorna Corynelle, approached her least disastrous acolyte for final instructions.

“You are to weed and water while we are gone on pilgrimage,” she said, hissing her words through tight lips.

Should I remember to eat and drink as well? Perhaps to breathe?

“Yes, High Hyliadora,” said Lysariel. “It shall be done.”

The priestess regarded her acolyte with undisguised suspicion, narrowing her eyes as she searched her reply for insolence. Finding none, she closed the knapsack and slung it onto her back with a practiced ease.

“Against my better judgement, you are also to be left the keys to the shrine,” she said.

Lysariel merely gaped, all propriety abandoned to the shock of what the Hyliadora had just said.

“Not my decision. I was outvoted,” the priestess hedged, her displeasure showing in the way she threaded straps and cinched her waistbelt. “Nevertheless, the council's will be done,” she said.

“For Grunyma’s sake,” Lysariel stuttered, habit insisting even through her shock.

“For Grunyma’s sake,” agreed the Hyliadora, who turned to leave, affixing the pack’s tump-line to her imperious habit-shrouded forehead. Halfway through the door to her cell, she tried to turn back to Lysariel, but she became momentarily stuck and had to be helped—a situation that improved her mood not at all, although now the acolyte knew why.

Keys to the shrine? I’m to tend the Heliorex?

“Remember,” the priestess was grunting, trying to regain control of the ungainly knapsack, “Ashes, water, sunshine. Nothing else. Do you hear me?” She advanced until her face was within inches of Lysariel’s. “Nothing. Else.”

“It shall be done,” she whispered.

For a further moment, the Hyliadora glared. Then, without warning or preamble, turned on her heel and marched from the room. Her tromping, booted footfalls— heavy with resentment and the temporary abdication she’d been forced into— echoed in the unadorned, stone corridors of the abbey.

In the wake of her despondent exit, a deep silence settled on the abbey— a silence that echoed not only in its halls, cells, and courtyards, but in Lysariel’s heart and mind.

Gone! She’s finally gone!

She sat on the bed, relishing that peace as long as she could. And the longer she sat, the more it metamorphosed into energy. Excitement and liberation thrummed electric in her ribcage, like heat lightning from a summer storm. All of the obsessive oversight, the weight of the Hyliadora’s paranoid gaze, was gone!

When she could take it no longer, and the excitement compelled her into motion, she leapt from the bed where she’d sat and ran out into the corridor. Her feet flew, her heart leapt, and before long, they carried her out into the sunshine and the verdant smell of growing things. Past the courtyard of herbs and medicines, where yarrow, sage, and clove grew fragrant and tame; past the gates, where a pair of brethren watched her run, probably assuming to bid the sojourners a fond farewell; she even ran past the small, well-tended beds of roses that climbed the exterior, protective walls of the abbey, where the hungry clawmarks of greatbears gouged the dark basalt.

Finally falling to her knees in the soft, tilled earth of her secret patch of cultivation— Grunyma’s highest calling— she delicately interlaced her fingers through the stalks of ghost irises, velthorn poppies, and black larkspur. The freedom to touch— never bruising the petals, not that— but to feel the tactile sensation of the plants against the pads of her fingers was a forbidden bliss for which she had sufficient faith to feel at least a modicum of guilt.

Hello, my lovelies. At last, we are alone.

How the Hyliadora had discovered this secret patch of Lysariel’s private projects, she had no idea. The woman had eyes and ears sprouting from her all over, it would seem. Her discovery, however, had earned her the only piece of praise she’d ever received from the woman. “Earnest work,” she had called it— a truth pruned so aggressively that it was likely to wither. Her experiments had yielded brilliant results! Miraculous! Huge!

But, of course, all of that had come to an end once the great mistress of the abbey had discovered it, folding her acolyte’s discoveries into her own domain. After that, all experimentation ceased; only approved methods would be used moving forward.

Lysariel’s protestations had been met only with obdurate silence.

So, the growth that had marked them remarkable had also halted. The Hyliadora insisted that the doctrinally common fertilizers, pruning, and watering methods would lead to a better outcome in the long run, but refused to elaborate on what that meant, exactly. Worse, she had never once asked how Lysariel had achieved the results she had. From bulb to bloom in a week!

And now? Stagnation.

Well… that wasn’t entirely fair. The flowers were not stagnating; they were merely… natural. This left Lysariel deeply unsatisfied, feeling that she had been on the verge of a breakthrough, only to be curbed by the human embodiment of self-perpetuating tradition.

Ironically, she was too blind to see that it was the rediscovery of an older tradition that had led to the rapid germination and growth of Lysariel’s beloved flowers.

With a reverence she had missed, Lysariel placed the palms of her hands against the clean earth, closed her eyes, and focused her mind.

“Tavure, Grunyma,” she said, barely above a whisper. “By my will, Ossira. I become Emyrval.”

As though not even a day had passed since last performing the ritual, the furnace of Thauma ignited in her belly. Instantly she became aware of the remains of her breakfast, digesting in her stomach. Her blood, too, was full of fuel she could feed that hungry fire. Beyond that, she was also dimly aware of her body’s fat stores— the fuel of last resort.

But what need did a botanist have of that? The texts— molded, worm-eaten, and only half-intelligible— from which she’d gleaned, and then adapted, these techniques spoke of fat burning as tantamount to death from starvation, which confused her. Wouldn’t a priestess of Grunyma prevent starvation with her talents, rather than create it?

Well, it didn’t much matter, in any event. She was always flush with food when she came to visit and nurture her little plants. The fire in her belly demanded it, now that it was awake.

“Zelysoss marentara, seed to root. Gruthema, let the sacred soil be made. Tavure, hunger, I give that you may grow.”

At the invocation, the fire in her belly quickened, and she felt the nourishment she had taken flowing out of her, partly feeding the fire, but also lancing through her palms and into the soil. Through her connection, she sensed the richness with which she had invested her garden—far more than a handful of ashes could ever impart—and could even smell the promise of growth and bloom as its aroma rose from the warm soil.

She ended the ritual before it burned more of her than she could spare. Lysariel stood, smiling, and admired her blooms. Already, they seemed to stand a little taller, their colors displaying a brilliance she had missed.

Satisfied, she offered them a single, benevolent nod and left them to their growth.

Then, she spun on her heel and skipped in the direction of the shrine; she had another secret to probe before the day darkened.

The shrine to the Heliorex stood tall and vaulted on a crisply manicured lawn. The white limestone of the shrine featured tall, narrow windows of stained glass, and a pinnacle that featured an emblem of the sun in ever-bright, hammered gold.

The intended reverence, however, was somewhat muted by the common gardening equipment that the Heliorex’s minders had leaned up against the building’s white walls. A bucket, a watering gourd, and a bag of composted manure fertilizer all stood their post, looking listless and bored.

Time to meet the deific unblooming blossom.

The meaty, stone key fitted the lock, though it turned only reluctantly. The bolt drew back with a sound like cracking bones, and Lysariel pushed the door—indistinguishable from the wall to the uninitiated—swung wide with surprising ease. If the lock had aged poorly, the shrine itself had clearly not.

Coming face to face with the Heliorex, Lysariel’s heart arrested for the space of three or four beats. Then, mercifully, took up its old rhythm again.

The bud was enormous— cyclopean, even. It took up nearly the entire interior of the shrine, whose roof was twice again as tall as she. Beyond mere height, it was also as big around as the trunk of an ancient sycamore she had once met, a tree so ancient that it had stood rooted across eight generations of her progenitors. That encounter had left her awed; the sheer scale of it, combined with the visceral memory of her first Thaumatic connection to a living thing, had convinced her she would recognize true size and age when she met them again.

Now, standing in its presence, she knew— knew to a certainty— that nothing could have prepared her for this encounter. She’d craved it, dreamed of it, but could never have imagined it.

Ash, water, and sunshine? And that’s all? I don’t believe it— can’t believe it!

The common temples to Grunyma, which peppered rural townships, concerned themselves with fertility, crop rotation, irrigation, and the countless methods of sustainable cultivation that kept civilization fed. This, in turn, allowed for the development of the arts, philosophy, economics, and craft. And yet, it was mostly sustained by water, fertilizer, and sunshine.

Somehow, Lysariel found the idea that this enormous, impossible blossom had been cultivated and brought to its current size only through pedestrian application of Grunyma’s arts offensive. Perhaps it was because she knew the abbey was at least as ancient as the rituals she’d dug up in Grunyma’s library at the basilica. Perhaps it was because she knew those rituals shaved time off of the cultivation calendar. Perhaps it was because she wanted to be the one to bring it to blossom.

Whatever the reason, Lysariel the acolyte did not hesitate even briefly before plunging her fingers into the scrawny patch of bare soil surrounding the Heliorex.

“Tavure, Grunyma!”

Where, before, the incantation had been a reverent whisper, now she spoke it with the fire of her conviction. In response, the fire in her belly kindled, not into the timid flame that usually awoke, but as a blazing brazier.

Even in the heat of ambition, Lysariel did brace herself as she extended a hand to touch the bud. What would she sense when she connected to it? A part of her wondered what the Heliorex even was; certainly there was no other plant like it in the world. This thing was the abbey’s entire purpose.

A delicate velvetine coated the outside of the bud. Distantly, it reminded her of Loquat leaves in early spring. It was, however, the only similarity she could draw between the alien plant and her own, admittedly extensive, tactile experience regarding the green and growing things of the world. Otherwise, it felt spongy… and… pregnant, somehow. More, even before she extended herself into the bud, she sensed its anticipation, as if it had been waiting. For her, maybe, or someone like her. Someone who knew what she did, could do what she could.

When she spoke the incantation, it poured from her as poetry.

“Gruthema ossira—

My root to yours.

Emyrval in flesh,

Zelysoss in will.

I open and become.”

As the power—Thauma, in the language of the long dark Myrcevian Empire— extended from her palm and into the plant, at first all went as she had expected, and had experienced before. But as her essence penetrated it, the Heliorex reached out through the connection—and seized her mind.

Lysariel felt the will of the Heliorex expressed not as fingers, but as tendrils of vine. A part of her knew this was only a mental manifestation of the plant’s identity—just as her own essence had taken the shape of fingers. But that did nothing to dull the sensation: ivy crawling into her skull, wrapping itself around her brain. She screamed, first in surprise, and then in pain as the vines bore down on the grey lump of meat behind her eyes. But no echo answered her. The shrine swallowed the sound the way dry, overturned soil drank rain.

Then, she began to see, to remember, and in her final moments, to be.

Lysariel was a citizen of the sky, walking roads paved with a spongy flesh that reminded her of jellyfish; she went barefoot on these roads because life in the sky-city disregarded the need for shoes. Everything there was comfort, made to conform to the human shape. Nothing so intractable as steel or stone existed up there; the hardest substance they knew was crystal, and that was so responsive that it would grow or degenerate at a though or a gesture.

Only… at the center of the city was the thing. The machine. The chaos engine. The Choir of Endings.

A part of her wanted to dismiss it. Every Caelanthian knew of it, though none of them had been told anything about it, precisely. They simply… knew. In that shared special way they had that none of the ground-walking humans of the world seemed to share.

Yet, despite the lack of telling, and that special way of knowing, none of them seemed to know precisely what it did, if it did anything at all at the present, or would do, if the terrible machine was merely dormant and waiting to be switched on. Nobody knew; everyone was afraid.

A dormant Manifold stirred as she passed, and she felt her insides shiver. She’d heard stories, recently about them— the flesh engines that ran Caelanthia. Rumors of rebellion, which was so remotely improbable as to be ridiculous, and of nascent sapience among them, which was outright impossible, were beginning to circulate in the art houses and forums of the city.

With a shiver, she dismissed these disquieting rumors, and tried to enjoy her walk. Overhead, a Sky-Leviathan flew its lazy track across the sky, a rider on its back, singing its strange song in perfect, distant harmony. Watching them brought her a moment of peace, of freedom. She could forget, at times like these.

And then, behind her now, the supposedly dormant Manifold stirred again. Hadn’t all the surplus Manifolds been deactivated? Just for peace of mind? Hadn’t they council announced that they’d all—

Harder, this time, she pushed the thought away. Things were peaceful; the rumors were merely a potent piece of gossip.

But a part of her still stirred. A part of her thoughts lingered on the Choir of Endings.

A part of her wondered.

All of these things passed through Lysariel’s mind at the speed of dreams. It was felt, thought, sensed, and over in a breath.

Then, her brain burst like an overripe fruit in a tightening fist. Blood cascading from her nostrils, she collapsed onto the soil. This time, the actual tendrils of the plant, which ran underneath not only the shrine, but the entire abbey and even into the very bedframes on which the priests slept, engulfed her and dragged her beneath the soil.

One of the brotherhood discovered the open door to the shrine, and sighed. He saw the freshly turned earth, knowing what it signified.

Another one, then.

Taking a moment before relocking the shrine, he took a moment to gaze up at the Heliorex. Was it larger? He thought it was. As though an infusion of hearty fertilizer had fed the thing.

In some ways, it was too bad. In others, it was inevitable.

Inexorably, humans were drawn to repeat the mistakes of ancient Caelanth. They craved dangerous knowledge, power, and true autonomy, which any humble fool would understand was merely an illusion of the mind.

Nevermind that almost no living human had ever heard of the fallen cities of that long lost civilization, or of the relics— potent, Thaumatic, and incredibly dangerous— that they had left behind. The Heliorex, of course, was one of these. As best as they understood, it had been a part of a living archive, used to store the memories of citizens for posterity. Once, supposedly, there had been thousands. Now, there was just the one.

Well, the patriarchs and matriarchs at the highest levels did not want the thing destroyed— even if it could be destroyed. But, they didn’t seem to want its knowledge to spread, either. So, they cultivated it, kept it contained, and avoided interacting with it in a way that might stimulate it. Make it remember.

And yet, it had eaten another acolyte, apparently.

What had she fed it? Manure? Foolishness. That was why it got her. She’d awakened the thing.

Ashes were enough, though only barely. Keep it starving; keep it quiet.

And yet, every once in a while, an acolyte with delusions would try to prod it into wakefulness, whether they knew that’s what they were doing or not.

Just so long as none of them learned whatever it knew.

The nameless brother closed the door, ruminating. He was not looking forward to telling the Hyliadora.

This was the third acolyte she’d lost to this foolishness in her lifetime.