The solitary thresh had never known solitude. From its earliest sentient moments of clawing its way out of the egg into the seething tangle of its newly hatched nest mates, it had always known their thinkings and they had known its. The mind of the nest was as much a part of its existence as the dark ichor running through its body or the pus oozing from its hide. To be without the thinkings of its nest mates, even just the one with whom it had squeezed through the rent in the barrier to the Above, was as painful as a shaft of daylight falling across its face.
Not that thresh had ever seen daylight, of course, but the nest legends spoke of it in tones of awe and horror. And thresh could understand why. Even the bright moonlight that had kissed its hide shortly after it emerged from the ooze at the bottom of the flooded caves had set its bright opalescent pus tingling. And from what it remembered of legend, moonlight was nothing more than the merest reflection of sunlight. Oh, what horrors must await the thresh caught on its own and staked out by Men to meet the dawn as told of in the tales whispered to newly hatched nestlings.
No errant beam of moonlight had shattered the skull of its nest mate, however. That had been some arcane magic of the Above. It remembered the nest mate rubbing its forehead, disgruntled and snarling from tripping over the ruined masonry. It remembered it looking about.
A thunderclap.
A searing white hot spike of pain that ended abruptly with the very sinews of sentience shredded into bloody mush.
The solitary thresh felt its ichor run cold at the memory.
No matter what thinkings thresh thought of it, it could not reconcile the fate of the slaughtered nest mate with what it knew of the Above. No myth or legend spoke of magic that tore thresh apart with the violence of sunbursts. It was certainly not the lesser hazard of falling moonlight that had taken its mate, for what little moonlight there had been had most agreeably disappeared shortly after they’d arrived. The work of Sky Lords, no less.
The floor of the flooded cave system under the calfling settlement was a treacherous place, rotten with a maze of tree roots and sucking ooze and hard rocks that banged and scraped the hide as thresh fumbled about under the surface of water that ran thick with human waste. With a gut full of fermenting Man blood it could stay submerged for very long periods, but even so the creature was beginning to feel the burn in its lungs as it searched anxiously for the passage below. The torment of solitude was greater, however, calling it back to the nest, where it no longer would be alone with its own thinkings.
A splash a short distance away startled thresh and almost drew it back to the surface for an unnecessary breath of air. Forcing itself to swim lower, thresh might have cursed the fickle nature of the Sky Lords had it not immediately swum under a smooth arch of rock and found itself at the site of the breach. Thresh praised the Sky Lords for leading it there and offered abject groveling thinkings in recompense for having doubted them. When it kicked down for the floor of the cavern, its claws soon found the thick, gluey mud littered with the bodies and bones of small surface-dwelling creatures that sank down to decay in the ooze.
With a silent cry of triumph it drove its claws in deep and pulled itself down. The mud closed around its head, and for the briefest moment panic threatened to overwhelm the daemon minorae, but the choking claustrophobic feeling quickly cleared as thresh found itself emerging up through the floor of one of the sulfur pools in a cavern a short scuttle away from the nest it had left earlier.
Instantly the soothing balm of the nest mind spread over it. The chattering, skittering thinkings of its nest mates, the slower, more considered ponderings of Threshrendum superiorae and nest elders, and beneath them all the slow hot beat of the infinitely vaster and all but imponderable mind of the Low Queen. She of the Horde.
Thresh let go of all the pent-up fears and questions and shock and horror and awe and delight and wonder at everything it had experienced with its slain nest mate since they had stalked the minion all the way into the Above. This unexpected outburst of thinkings and feelings spread out through the nest in a wave of propagating shock. Hatchlings, newly broken through the shells of their eggs, ceased to tear and rake at one another, winnowing out the weakest of their litter. Nest elders stood staring at one another in blank disbelief at thresh’s memory of the Above, a place none but the Queen herself had seen for themselves. Fangr murmured darkly at one another, skinning back thin lips from needlepoint fangs and flexing long talons at whispers of the minion that had stolen into their realm before somehow finding its way Above.
Shame upon unutterable shame suffused the collective mind of the warrior class that they should have been so humbled. First by a minion that avoided their watch and then by a thresh of so few years that had stalked the minion into the very Above, slaughtered the filth, and returned with a belly full of tribute. Returned also with a worrying memory of inexplicable and hostile magic.
The nest in its entirety released a silent gasp at the memory of the thresh that had died Above for no apparent reason. The survivor hurried down and down through the honeycombed tunnels toward the heart of the nest, encountering more of its kind the closer it got. Talons clacked and scratched at dripping walls as Threshrendum hissed and snarled quickthinking praise on the young adventurer for its triumphant return. Beneath their thoughts, however, thresh also knew their hunger for the meat fermenting in its belly, jealousy that one so low might now be raised higher in the thinkings of the Queen, and fear and even disbelief at the recall of that moment when thresh had died in the swamp. The prodigal daemon increased its speed, not conscious of any plans but driven by a need to return to the deepest, safest part of its nest, where it might sit and share its thinkings with those who might just understand them. Just outside the central chamber, where tunnels from all over the Horde realms converged, its progress was stopped by a short, simple command that landed in its mind like the hammer blow of a BattleMaster of Hunn.
Attend to your Queen, now, thresh. Guardians Grymm! Bear forward my tribute and attend.
Thresh staggered under the force of its monarch’s will. The press of daemonum that had been gathering around it, slowing its approach to the heart of the nest, all but dissolved as two Grymm warriors, standing at least thrice as tall and noticeably thicker in limb and longer of fang and talon, appeared beside it. They did not restrain thresh, did not even seize it, in fact. They may well have snapped off a limb had they done so. Instead, the two formidable killers took up an escort position on either side and began to move forward, carrying thresh along with them and parting the crowd by force of will.
They passed into and through a grand chamber of the nest, where a host of curious daemonum sniffed the air and observed the returning hero with shining black eyes and jaws agape. The small party hastened on through the crowd, past the communal blood pots, and on into a wide channel at the rear of the chamber that climbed away to the Queen’s private parlor.
Fear licked like flames at the edge of thresh’s thinkings as the small party approached their ruler and progenitor. Thresh was aware of an uneasy silence falling over the nest behind it as it climbed into the small winding tunnel leading to her chambers. All would be aware of what had happened, of where it had been, and none could understand. The Above had been barred to their kind for so long that some even doubted its existence. Not individually, of course. To question the memory of the nest and, more important, the Queen would never do. Such insolence could only end in the blood pot. But if one sat in one’s cave very quietly and opened one’s thinkings as wide as possible, one could just detect a faint stirring of doubt, almost beyond perception. Doubt, perhaps, in the idea of ever returning to the Above rather than doubt in their existence at all.
Yes, thought thresh. That was how it would prefer to imagine any such lack of faith should the Queen question it on the matter.
Her thoughts grew oppressively strong as they approached the innermost chambers. The thinkings and feelings of its nest mates, all of them, seemed to be crushed out of its mind by her presence. As though she filled thresh completely with her power and her knowing. By instinct, thresh dipped its head and fell to the floor in supplication as they entered. On either side of it the praetorian Grymm likewise went down, retracting fang and talon and dipping their heads, baring their necks for a killing stroke.
—You have tribute.
The Queen’s voice rumbled in its mind like the grinding of tectonic plates. Thresh abased itself, sliding even closer to the hard rock floor of the chamber.
—Attend me, thresh, and allow me to sup of this tribute that I might judge its worth and your fate.
Thresh cautiously inched forward, a little too cautiously, earning it a kick in the rear from one of the warrior attendants. That was enough to send it scuttling forward until a thought from the Queen brought it to a halt. Thresh concentrated and heaved, regurgitating the better part of the meal it was carrying in both of its stomachs. It retched and retched, emptying its guts lest there be any question that it had not rendered full tribute. So fulsomely did it vomit up the fermenting remains that its vision blurred and the room began to spin.
It felt the presence of the Queen in its mind, stroking it and calming its fears as only a mother could.
—You have done well, nestling. I can smell the rotting hide of the minion you defeated. Praise be to you for your victory. And praise, too, for this gift of sweetmeat. It has been an age since we last fed on this delicacy.
Thresh was aware of movement in the dim red-lit cavern as something immense and powerful shifted in the gloom and dragged itself forward. It felt vibrations in the bedrock as the Queen pulled herself toward the steaming pile of human offal. It could sense fear leaking out of the closely guarded minds of the Grymm on either side of it and wondered how much of its own abject awe and terror they sensed by mere observation. Possibly none. The Grymm remained kneeling with heads bowed down. The Queen alone knew its thinking now. Jaws distended with a wet creaking sound, and one of her tongues shot out with a rasp, scooping up the pile of remains in one motion. Thresh felt her satisfaction, indeed her pleasure, at the meal as its own. It sensed regret at the meager provisions but excitement at the prospect that she might feast properly soon.
—There were others, you said.
Thresh was almost paralyzed by the majesty of her presence, but she insinuated soothing feelings into its mind and the small daemon was seized by a new and unexpected confidence.
—Yes, Majesty. Another of the Men. Larger and darker of flesh. We attempted to take it, but my nest mate was destroyed by strange magicks.
It felt the Queen’s skepticism at its thinking but knew that she could not deny the clarity of its memories. She knew its thinkings and feelings as though they were her own, and she could see in her own mind how the thresh had been destroyed as they moved forward to seize the prey. Thresh had the unprecedented and wholly unsettling experience of examining the memory with the Queen, pondering it with some of her reflected intelligence and her vast accumulated store of knowledge and lore. It learned more of Men in that brief moment than it would have learned in a lifetime of listening to stories around the blood pot.
Men, it learned, had pleaded with their gods to spare them. From all the Sects Daemonum. And most especially from the blood pots of the Horde, the mighty Hunn and leashed Fangr, the maw of ur-Thresh and the heavy claw of the Grymm. For whatever reasons the gods had seen fit to separate the realms, turning daemon on daemon for millennia. Of Men’s world now, the Queen knew nothing. But she well remembered them as feeble creatures. Not enemies, just food. They had no magicks. They cowered in caves and behind trees waiting to be eaten. They lashed together thin branches to shelter them from the sky and beat useless implements out of soft metals. Iron was unknown to them. Pushed to extremes, they might fight to preserve their young. But nowhere in her memory, which stretched back across oceans of time, had any Men ever conjured up magick enough to reach out and slay a daemon in such fashion.
Thresh had the merest idea that the Sky Lords may have separated the realms for that very reason: lest men and their beasts be hunted out. It also knew the contempt of Her Majesty for such thinkings. Who were the Lords Above to banish them? But just as important, where were these gods now that the barrier between the realms had been breached? Thresh was just beginning to get an inkling of his monarch’s thinkings on the matter when she withdrew from his mind and he found himself prostrated on the stone floor with only his thin and meager thinkings and the silence of the Guardians Grymm for company.
As it lay exhausted and sickened, it retained but one clear memory of the privileged violation.
It had not been her only servant to pass through the barrier. Her Majesty knew of others. Some great change was upon the world.
When next he heard Her Majesty’s thoughts, they came at a remove, not arising within his own mind as before but arriving within it as she spoke to all of them.
—This shall not stand. We shall not be mocked thus. Not by the likes of Men. My captains ur Hunn and ur Grymm, you shall gather the necessary forces and return to the Above with this thresh if the path lays open still. You shall secure our passage there. You shall learn the nature of these magicks that destroyed our nestling, and you shall lay our vengeance on those responsible. Come hence to me when these things are done and I shall make due preparations for my return to the world of Men.