Sunborn Rising: Beneath the Fall by Aaron Safronoff - HTML preview

The trio began searching the Middens for Kudmoths the very next day. They found nothing, and it was the same every buckle for weeks.

Barra’s mother was busy looking for support among the Arboreals, so it was easy for Barra to disappear for hours at a time and borrow whatever she needed from the abandoned study. She brought entire sheaves to the group, and the three pored over her father’s research, learning what they could. They devised a plan for capturing the Kudmoths. Now, they only needed to find some.

As night after night passed without a sighting, Barra worried that Tory and Plicks doubted her story. There were lots of reasons why they hadn’t found anything yet. Maybe the Kudmoths heard them coming, or only came out at specific times, and maybe they were in completely the wrong part of the Middens. It was hard to know.

Their plan for capture came from Plicks and Tory. They gathered trapwillow moss and arranged the strands into a net. Setting trapwillow into a mesh demanded patience and precision because the resin-sticky strands were difficult to manipulate once they were torn from the bunch. If the job was done well, the end result was a dense, almost invisible curtain with a hole in the middle. The hole was big enough for one of them to pass through unfettered, leaving any chasing Kudmoths stuck to the net. The plan was fine for everyone except the bup setting the trapwillow. That bup had to spend hours cleaning his or her fur, and the tacky resin tasted the way rotting bark smelled.

Plicks was the unlucky one this time, and he was licking at his fur like it was torture. Barra remembered the last time it was her turn and almost gagged. He looked miserable.

Barra realized it was getting late. She stared through her brushy hiding place to see how Tory was doing. They made eye contact. He was far away, on the other side of Plicks, but the shaking of his head was clear. Disappointed again, Barra started out from her hiding place to call off the hunt. But she saw movement beneath the preening Kolalabat, and froze.

She waited and watched, perfectly still. Plicks didn’t notice the growing pool beneath him. Barra wondered if she’d been staring too long into the darkness and was only imagining things. But the shadow continued to grow, and she knew it was the Kudmoths. They moved like thick liquid spilling over the bark. She turned to signal Tory, but he’d already marked the threat. Plicks was in trouble. Undetected, the Kudmoths had gotten closer than the bups had planned. Tory was already moving and Barra joined, stealthing toward the growing mass of insects, her camouflage rippling as she moved. As scary as the Kudmoths were, Barra was overjoyed that she was no longer the only Arboreal who’d seen them.

The oily, thick pool spread fast, and Barra hastened her pace. She didn’t have much of a plan, but she thought that she could at least distract the Kudmoths, maybe get them to chase her. She’d outrun the tiny terrors before and she was confident she could do it again.

Oblivious to the darkening branch below, Plicks was still busy cleaning himself when he saw Barra reveal herself. His face twisted up in confusion as he watched her arch her back, raise her tail, and recoil onto her haunches.

Baring her teeth, Barra hissed, and the slow-flowing Kudmoths became still all at once. Thrashing the nearby foliage with her tail, Barra created a threatening rush of noise ten times bigger than she was. She whip-snapped the bough twice, announcing a challenge. The Kudmoths clicked back at her in a cascade of flipping wings. Knowing she had their collective attention, she bolted through the hole in the trap and ran. The shadowy pool rapidly sublimated into a dark sentient cloud that followed after her.

Seeing the opening, Tory dropped down near Plicks. He grabbed the Kolalabat in one arm and leapt away. Free hand and feet interchangeable, Tory tore through the treescape like they were falling sideways. When he finally looked back to see if they were being followed, he saw only leaves and branches waving at them.

Barra swept up and down the boughs with fluid grace, a rush in her heart pushing her farther and deeper into the Middens. She started off so fast that she had to lag a bit to make sure the insects stayed on her trail. Confidence built up inside her as she went. Even when she stumbled or misjudged a jump she turned it to her advantage, taking the acceleration with her, racing onward.

Flashing through the treescape, Barra realized the Kudmoths could keep up with her every move. Suddenly fearful, she regretted bringing them in so close. She hoped she’d given Plicks and Tory enough time to escape.

She started back toward the trapwillow net, slinging herself around a branch with her tail. Barra charged headlong into the black cloud. The Kudmoths only had time enough to form a weak mesh, and Barra broke through easily. But the Kudmoths didn’t give up. Instead, they were incensed by the closeness of their prey, and they flew even faster than before.

When Barra saw the trap area ahead, the muscles of her arms and legs were burning and tightening up. She’d run farther than she’d thought, and now, she was running rigid. She dashed toward the almost invisible mesh, spotted the hole, and jumped. But fatigue sapped the burst from her legs, and she didn’t get the height she needed. She stretched out mid-air, trying to bend herself around the strands. She couldn’t avoid them all. A portion of the net was ripped away with her, tangled in her fur. Landing awkwardly, her ankle twisted, and her chest listed forward. The roughness of the bark gripped and tore away tufts of her fur, but she kept running. Behind her, the cloud was thinner, but still intact and gaining.

Driving hard for a group of dwellings she knew well in the crush of dens, Barra pushed for a second wind. She was scared, and saw no sign of Tory or Plicks as she stole occasional, furtive glances into the treescape. She hoped they were out of harm’s way, but still, seeing either would have given her some confidence. Not looking again, she decided she was alone and focused on the maze of dens ahead. A deformed roof porthole marked her usual entrance. The connections among the dens had formed from generations of collapse and regrowth, and Barra figured the Kudmoths couldn’t know them as well as she did.

She dove in without hesitation. The Kudmoths followed.

The first den—like the rest in the crush of the Middens—was stretched, and strange, with thick and crooked branches growing up around everything. But Barra didn’t stop to look around. Sliding beneath what must’ve once been a table, she slipped through an obscured hole into the next den. She wove in and out of the overgrown rooms, from den to den, as fast as she could. Her arms ached, and her legs burned, but she was a needle sewing a unique pattern into the fabric of the treescape. The Kudmoths didn’t know the pattern, and she lost them.

Confident she was out of view, Barra reversed and jumped toward a high space over a doorway. Above the doorway was a collapsed portion of wall just large enough to hold her, and she reached for it in desperation. Barely clinging to the top of the frame, she pedaled her legs in the empty air. Fear dumped one last flood of adrenaline into her veins, and she hauled herself up.

Heart pounding in her ears, she tried to focus. Slowing and deepening her breathing, she tested her stealth muscles. There was tightness in the action, but she gritted her teeth against it, and bore down. The Kudmoths were coming.

They entered the room in a flurry of clicks, red eyes flashing on and off. Out of the cloud, one pair of floating red points flew toward her, and as terrified as she was, Barra forced her eyes closed. She listened as the creature flew around her face. It came close enough that she could feel the breath from its small wings disturb her whiskers. Time stretched and her heart slowed. She didn’t breathe. The Kudmoth hovered even closer.

She thought she was spotted for sure, and prepared to make another run for it. But the curious insect delayed only a moment longer, and then returned to the cloud. Barra listened. The entire cloud was moving away. She opened her eyes to slits and watched as the smoky insects were exhausted from the room.

Barra waited, and when no Kudmoths appeared, she waited some more. She was terrified of giving herself away by moving out too soon. Only when she’d waited much longer than her patience normally would have allowed did she crane her neck out to take a better look.

Maybe two measures passed, she wasn’t sure. She hoped she was rested enough to make a run straight for the Loft. Sampling the air with a burst of quick inhalations, she detected nothing of the wet, fungal smell the dark bugs exuded. She swung down from her perch gingerly, but didn’t let go. There was a sudden loud noise through the wall, and she retreated to her hiding place and stealthed again. Barra wasn’t sure how much more tension she could take. The urge to run was almost irrepressible. A shadow appeared across the doorway—

—and Plicks entered the room.

“Barra!” he exclaimed in an excited whisper.

Tory ran in when he heard, and then followed Plicks’ gaze up to Barra. “Well, that was an adventure,” Tory said. His posture was nonchalant, but he couldn’t hide his relief.

Barra let the tension fall out of her body as she jumped down. “I’m so glad to see you! What happened to the Kudmoths? They’re gone?”

“Not entirely,” said Plicks as he stepped forward, holding up a bellflower. Inside the container there were several swirling, agitated insects.

Barra inspected the contents. “You caught some!?”

Inside, the amorphous group of bugs congealed in a way, and became a simulacrum of a vicious animal that sneered at Barra. She peered closer, mesmerized. With her nose almost touching the container, the imitation bit at her and she fell back, startled.

Plicks said wryly, “We’ll probably need to transfer them to something stronger.”

“How’d you get ‘em?” Barra asked, astonished as the insects returned to their shapeless, swirling flight.

“As soon as we realized they were following you, we went back to the trap,” Tory said, beaming. “We knew you’d come back that way.” He added, teasing, “Nice jump by the way.” He reached out and touched one of the numerous strands that still clung to Barra’s fur. He tugged at it, and Barra flinched away.

“Hey! Don’t do that!” she said, wrinkling up her nose at him. “It’ll take days to remove this stuff.” She pulled at another sticky strand.

Plicks went on explaining, “As soon as you raced by, Tory and I checked the net, and all of these buggers were just stuck there like we thought they’d be! We dropped whole strands into the bulb because they were eating through them so fast. I mean, look, there’s nothing left of the net in there now.”

Tory added, trying to be funny, “Maybe the Kudmoths will clean you off if we ask them nicely.”

As though gravity tripled in an instant, Barra felt her limbs become heavy and slow. Breathing was hard. Her stomach felt like it was in her feet. She wasn’t strong enough to move.

Worried and confused by Barra’s grave expression, Tory apologized, “I was only kidding.”

Barra had forgotten his comment if she’d even heard it in the first place. Her tongue was thick and stuck to the roof of her mouth. “You saw me?” She rippled her stealth muscles. Looking down at herself, large patches of trapwillow entangled fur were not only visible, but emphasized by the rest of her body fading into the background.

The boys looked at each other, not grasping the situation. But they didn’t need to understand to know they were in trouble, because every entrance to the room was outlined in black. They stared in disbelief.

“Run!” Barra commanded.

Plicks was slow to react, but Tory was already in motion. He scooped up the Kolalabat and tossed him through the porthole in the ceiling. Kudmoths swarmed away from the opening, and then billowed out after him. Tory’s momentum carried him toward a window, and he jumped through it. A swarm of Kudmoths followed him as well, but there were many more. Insects flew into the room and blocked the exits.

Barra barged through the wall of Kudmoths and out the door. The swarm followed close, and Barra worked hard to stay out of reach. The miasmatic cloud drove her down, forcing her ever deeper into the Middens.

Barra panicked. She made bad choices. She missed her jumps. Instead of redirecting the acceleration like before, she fell haphazardly. Her ankle complained, but the pain was barely noticeable as the alarm in her head screamed for her to ascend. Out of control, Barra ran inexorably toward the big emptiness between the Middens and the Root, toward the Fall.

She saw a blur of purplish gray rolling through the thinning branches of her descent. It was Plicks. Looking up past him, she saw that Tory wasn’t far behind. The bups were funneled down together. Barra was desperate to conceive of an escape, as their options disappeared with the branches into the ether.

She made her way closer to her friends. They saw her and tried to close the gap between them. They flowed around each other in a braid as they maneuvered away from the Kudmoths. Barra bellowed, missing a branch. She was freefalling. Tory lunged at her and the collision sent her flailing toward a hold. She was safe for the moment, but Tory didn’t make it to the branches. Quick to react, Barra lassoed the heavy Rugosic with her tail and pulled him over. Her claws dragged from his weight.

Plicks was tumbling by and Tory reached out to him. He caught the flailing Kolalabat. Her tail strained from the extra force, and her claws cut deeper into the slender branch. Sharp pain, and her eyes were tear-blind. She squeezed them shut, hard. They clung to each other frantically, trying not to think of what was beneath.

Barra held.

The branch did not.

Barra heard the snap-crack of the wood—not with her ears, but with her heart. Her eyes burst open and she watched the bottom of the Middens fly away.

The bups fell into the void with nothing to hold onto but each other.