Page 26 of King of Serpents

“It is unfortunate that it has not caused any rumors that would dissuade the daughters of the noble family from pursuing my nest,” he muttered.

Alex frowned slightly as she nibbled on a bit of roasted and glazed carnucras insect. “Are you certain? Gareiia looked pretty ready to hit the deck the moment she saw that carcass come flying at her. A little too ready.”

Therxian’s gavo flattened as he considered her point. “Gossip would not circulate without my mother’s knowledge. I am just curious if she is minimizing it to make them more compliant, or encouraging it in order to exert some control over the selected females. It would follow through with her insistence that the breeding be done in my personal nest rather than in another location.”

“That... is kind of devious.”

His gavo flicked in acknowledgement. “That is my mother.”

Alex squinted at him as she offered more food. “She is kind of scary-smart, isn’t she?”

He held her gaze as he leaned in toward the skewer. “You truly have no idea. The court is manipulating her, but she is not as weak as she makes them believe.”

And they clearly believed that they had the queen completely within their control from what Gareiia said. He reflected on their foolishness as he pulled the meat from the skewer with his mouth. The noble families had played a dangerous game for many revolutions. And now he was there to bring it all down upon them.

Chapter 18

Therxian’s eyes narrowed as he peered down the long, narrow tunnel ahead of him. The length of his tail slid against the wall to his left as he studied the half-hidden access to the tunnel on the other side of the main corridor. Although located just outside the throne chamber, it was practically invisible due to the natural overlap of the walls. Unlike other parts of the palace, and the shinara itself, which were enhanced and carved out by sonic vibrations, this ancient tunnel was entirely natural and ignored as a relic of a begone time, its entrance framed by ceremonial drapes that gave it distinction and for the purpose of veneration of the ancestors who had dwelled within the greater depths of the original elder palace.

The tip of his tail twitched, tracing a sharp line on the stone wall, his eyes flicking one direction down the corridor and then the other. The greater halls of the palace were busier than he had believed. He originally thought it would be a simple matter to whisk Alex out when the guards were distracted by the departure of one of the noble daughters. Although there were guards and servants moving about, no one appeared to be watching him. As long as he was not trying to escape out into the shinara to cause some kind of havoc, they seemed unconcerned with his activity within the palace itself.

That suited his purposes perfectly.

Making no effort to conceal his movements so as not to draw unnecessary attention to himself by behaving suspiciously, Therxian entered the main corridor and made his way down the hall at a gradual angle until he arrived at the entrance of the hidden passage. With just a roll of his tail, he slid between the two wall segments, disappearing entirely within the belly of the palace.

Enclosed in the darkness of the tunnel, he paused, his gavo lifting slightly as his natural bioluminescence triggered. He didn’t extend his gavo very high, just enough to provide a small amount of light as he listened for any sounds of approach. If anyone found his movements suspicious, they would not hesitate to report his activities to the council. Tension tightened in his shoulders and wings, and his tail coiled tightly upon itself as he waited. The soft rasp of a Seshanamitesh closed in on the entrance to the tunnel. The sound was faint, but it carried in a light echo to him due to the natural acoustics of the tunnel. The pace was so deliberate and even that he had little doubt that it was a guard carrying out their regular patrol through the palace corridor. Not in the tunnel and not altering in pace. Eventually, they passed the tunnel, and the sound faded in the distance.

Therxian’s shoulders dropped with relief, his wings drooping slightly for several heartbeats. He hissed quietly to himself in amusement as he shook his head, his gavo quivering with his own disgust with himself. He knew that it would work, and yet he was reacting as if he had just engaged in the most challenging of hunts in the mountains of the Vehal. Ridiculous. He snapped his gavo and then lifted it once more, slowly extending the large webbing that ran from crown to the tip of his tail to its utmost. The illumination brightened the dark stone, the glossy surface rippling with pools of color. Therxian studied the wall with interest. It seemed that the ancestors put a lot of effort into polishing the old corridors of the palace. It took a considerable amount of work to get them to that state. Most black rock was only polished for small decorations and personal ornaments in the current age, relying on luminous singing crystals to provide the necessary lighting needs of the palace, whereas the common Seshanamitesh relied on cultivating galthie within their nests and coaxing them to bloom. He wondered just how far this technique extended through the old shinara beyond the elder palace.

His tail twitched, and he undulated through the tunnel, noting the slow, gradual shift in temperature and dampness the further he descended. There had to be an access point to the main cave system. Given that the current incarnation of the shinara sat upon the ruins of the deeper elder shinara, there would be numerous tunnels buried deep within the stone of the great Aglatha cave system from when the ancestors first retreated deep within the heart of Shangla to escape the killing heat of the sun. From what he recalled from his youth, those initial generations lived deep within the rock, not daring to venture to the surface. The council of noble matriarchs and the earliest queens kept the shinara buried deep until the Age of the Rising, when the hunters ventured beyond the caves to hunt within the nights of the desert, reclaiming a changed world.

In his opinion, that was the beginning of the end. Hunters were driven farther from the shinara, and greater burdens were placed upon them, even as the protections and rights of the Seshanamitesh males slowly began to decline. It seemed that more was lost in that period than he had realized. Entire methods of technology were clearly abandoned, and the architecture of the shinara was left in states of increasing disrepair.

Therxian paused before a larger, unbroken wall of polished stone. It was a great pool of colors that grew brighter until he could clearly see his own reflection upon the bright surface. He murmured in wonder before continuing on, navigating twisting, descending paths, many of which were broken. Noting that the floor gave way completely just ahead, leaving a gaping black hole leading down to the abyss, he extended his wings and flew the short distance from the first part of the tunnel to where it resumed on the other side. The exposed depths could be a route out of the Aglatha, but he was not convinced. It would require further careful exploration at a later time. For now, finding a new hiding place for Alex took priority.

As he passed over the abyss, he could hear the soft trickle of a spring and the distant echo of rushing water from far below him. It was probably one of the subterranean rivers that led to the great falls that surrounded three sides of the Aglatha. If natural springs were likewise running through the rocks in their downward quest to meet with the river, it was little wonder that the tunnel had given out. There had to be considerable erosion within the cavern the deeper he went.

Perhaps it was what eventually led to the split-off of the Uralial from the Seshanamitesh line. The cool waters deep within the hidden depths of the cave system would have offered refuge as their species fought to adapt to the changing climate. The scales of an Uralial were softer and possessed a shimmer that surpassed even the legendary ancestors of the Seshanamitesh. They had evolved to be suited to the deep-water caverns while the Seshanamitesh adapted, their scales thickening protectively and developing numerous vents for cooling themselves in addition to changes in their own biology that led to the formation of the ethin by which they were able to track the hours of sunup by the units of water vapor in the air. And he was certain that the deep elder tunnels of the shinara were both the key to that part of their shared history and perhaps part of the answer for what the shinara should be going forward into the future.

He landed heavily on the other side of the tunnel at the point where the floor resumed once more, his tail snapping around his lower coils, and he remained tensely in place, cautiously testing the strength of the ground beneath him. When he was certain that it was not in danger of crumbling beneath him, he started forward again only to be momentarily blinded when he rounded a bend into a massive gallery filled with countless overgrown galthie flowers in full bloom. Raising his hand to shield his eyes, he squinted against their light. Despite the pain he was currently in... he was impressed.

Gradually his eyes adjusted to the brightness, and he lowered his hand to inspect the flowers closer. He slithered closer to the wall, his gavo lifting inquisitively, adding to the overabundance of light in the space. A steady trickle of water caught his attention and drew him to the carved stone fountain spout that emerged from amid the blooms, pouring water into a large, suspended basin. Water overflowed it, draining back into the rockwork from which it came, but it was clear that the structure was intentional for providing fresh water. He turned slowly, his eyes drifting over the high walls. The galthie flowers grew in strange formations among some of the walls, and he moved closer, gently detangling and removing excessive plants to reveal sculpted reliefs of proud and powerful females and their mates. And foremost among them, towering in gigantic proportions, Shangla and Higthar. They seemed to face together in one direction towards a narrow corridor that branched off the main tunnel, though the small tunnel was a tangle of galthie flowers that impeded all progress through the passage.

The position of the deities suggested one of two possibilities: it was either a worship area, or it was part of the royal residential area within the elder palace. Either option would offer a comfortable place for Alex. Drawing his wings in closer, he folded them around himself to form some protection against the tangle of plants as he pressed forward. Plants pulled at his wings uncomfortably, but he pulled himself free with impatient strikes of his wings beating the air. The conditions were tight, the plants nearly choking the air with their perfume and their petals tightly filling the space. He hissed venomously as a thick root system became thickly entangled around one wing, their long, dragging vines and dangling roots twisting and knotting around it. Therxian snarled and flapped his wings with a burst of forward momentum, pushing him the remaining distance from the small tunnel and directly into a round room carved elegantly with towering statues along the perimeter, a bathing pool at one side, and a deep sleeping nest at the other.

He whooped softly, his head bobbing with the flutter of his gavo in celebration. The royal residence. He found it. He would need to fill the sleeping nest with sufficient bedding, but this was a far more fitting space for Alex rather than imprisoned within his quarters. The walls were shockingly barren of galthie and bore trace signs that a fire had once swept through the chamber, but water was plentiful, and the room was large and clean. And more importantly, it was safe.

Seeing a singing crystal in the center of the room, he hummed the proper frequency and smiled in satisfaction at the way the polished walls took up the glow. That would not be suitable for the long periods where he would be absent, however, so Therxian immediately returned to the gallery and carefully selected the healthiest and most abundantly blooming plants. Carefully detangling their roots from the system covering the walls, he carried the plants back into the nest and began to strategically place them in spots where they would bring the most optimal amount of light into the nest. It was not until he was satisfied that he returned to gather bedding and share his findings with Alex.

To his surprise, she seemed displeased.

“I see,” she mumbled, and she cast him a doubtful look. “And just how far are you able to take me without anyone noticing?”

“Not far at all. Literally right beneath us,” he replied.

Her eyes dropped to the stone floor, her brows knitting. “I don’t get it.”

Therxian made a small sound in his throat, his expression softening slightly with his amusement. “As you’ve probably noticed, much of the palace, as well as the dwelling of common Seshanamitesh, are carved into the cavern’s rock. But the entire shinara is sitting above what was the previous shinara, the elder Aglatha,” he explained.