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But they weren’t plunged into darkness. Dimness, sure, but Garin’s eyes adjusted quickly and in moments he made out the familiar line of Sazahk’s nose and the cupid’s bow of his top lip by the light emanating from all around them.
“It didn’t do that in the cave we entered from.” Sazahk gazed about with wide eyes and softly parted lips.
“No, it didn’t.” Garin couldn’t tear his eyes off the wonder in Sazahk’s face, no matter how beautiful the glow of the organisms surrounding them.
In the awed silence, a faint static-y buzz whined from Garin’s pocket. They both looked at it and Garin fished out his tablet. The screen flickered and it chirped erratically.
“This didn’t do that there, either.” Garin turned the screen to Sazahk. It wasn’t broken or bricked. The screen was still perfectly legible, but it glitched and crackled as though Garin had dropped it a few too many times.
Sazahk opened his mouth and reached for the tablet, but froze with his hand midair, his eyes trained over Garin’s shoulder.
Garin froze too, adrenaline spiking through him.
But Sazahk’s face was delighted, not frightened, and he pointed slowly with his chin.
Just as slowly, Garin turned his torso to peer behind him.
There, a few paces down the passage, lit by the cool glow of the mycelium, stood an animal.
It took Garin a few moments to realize the animal was standing at all and not crouched on the ground. It was squat, its low-slung body propped up on short, stubby legs. But those legs ended in large, flat feet, and toes tipped with curved claws wicked enough for Garin to shift protectively in front of Sazahk.
It had the domed back Garin had clocked before and a long, thick tail that tapered at the end and flicked back and forth as the creature stared at them, tiny round ears pricked forward. The thick frame narrowed into a longish neck and a small, long-snouted head which cocked to the side like an inquisitive dog.
The creature’s body rippled with a rainbow of colors, and Garin realized it was covered in white scales that lifted and danced with color.
“Metachrosis,” Sazahk breathed with a note of awe. “Control of chromatophores is a marker of a species indigenous to Qesha. There are so few of us left.”
Garin didn’t know all those words, but he understood Sazahk was referring to the pinks and purples now playing over the creature’s scales.
Sazahk stepped forward, and the creature trilled, then bounded away with surprising agility for its stubby legs, displaying a sleek body as it pranced out of sight.
Sazahk sprang into motion, following the animal down the winding passage clogged with fungal growths. “Increased animal presence and increased mycelium stimulation could be entirely coincidental, related only in their similar need for shelter from the sun and the effects of the defoliants inflicted on the topsoil a millennium ago, but any link between them would be a groundbreaking discovery.”
Garin didn’t try to stop him, chasing after him and twisting his body this way and that to avoid another brush with anything that might disperse spores into the air.
“Of course, their very existences are groundbreaking discoveries, but on their own they don’t necessarily give us any insight into the remediation of the Dead Zone and fascination alone won’t provide a home for the Insects to?—”
Sazahk shimmied through two boulders and stopped talking mid-sentence.
“Sazahk?” Garin held his breath as he slid his face past a cluster of bell-shaped mushrooms. “Sazahk, what?—”
The words died in Garin’s throat as he stepped free of the crack and joined Sazahk.
They had found what they were looking for.
Whatever it was.
Chapter Eight
“No! No no no. Don’t touch that. Don’t eat that. That’s not good for you.”
Sazahk bit his tongue to stifle his laughter when Garin’s voice rang out through the cavern. He looked up from the readings scrolling over his glitching tablet screen to watch Garin chase after one of the long-snouted animals as it bounded away with a protein bar wrapper in its mouth.
Either the creatures he’d dubbed Fauna A had extremely poor threat detection, or they had extremely advanced threat detection and had correctly identified Sazahk and Garin as non-threatening. Within moments of them stepping into the cavern that clearly functioned as Fauna A’s primary den, the animals had displayed textbook curious social behavior.
Even Garin, with his particularly low risk tolerance, hadn’t been able to raise his gun at the first creature that pranced up to them, trilling and flashing pink. He’d just made an expression that looked like it hurt and let the animal sniff his pant leg. He’d drawn the line at Sazahk reaching down to touch it, but Sazahk had rolled right through said line, crouching and offering his hand for inspection to the animal’s twitching, whiskered nose.
Fauna A wasn’t dangerous. Anyone could see that. Even Garin.
