Relict

   

    Trumuskerra advances. From its back, three rows of peaked plates creak under the wind, gathering the lightning bolts of the cloud herd. Its flanks display fossilized scars, where winged reptiles seek weak points to pierce with their beaks. Brief blood falls nurture entire broods, and imbue the landscape with dark red. Forests are reaped by colossal pressures and detonated by electrical discharges. Carcasses on fire are squeezed into lumps of coal and specks of diamond. The hoof rises, and begins an arch under which a fortress would fit.

    Trumuskerra advances. Hills of dung fill the craters pressed by its trail. They are peppered with inhaled seeds, strengthened by the divine labyrinth equivalent to organs in mundane creatures. Sprouts compete for nourishing territory with bark, thorn and poison. A sound rises above the thunder, the swelling of lung cavities. Twenty, fifty, two hundred, all. A cavernous neck belches a humid and foul horizontal tornado, breaching a granite slope. Migrations change course to avoid the shockwave.

    Trumuskerra advances, as always did when searching for a mate. As she has been doing for millennia. Chewing a dragon with more boldness than respect towards nature, the last of the Neades still seeks. This strong denied instinct is exhaled during its pass, fertilizing plains and toughening seeds. Komatai see this as the natural force in the cycle of life and death, creation and destruction. Ignore that if they decoupled such concepts, Trumuskerra could conceive from their faith, spawning an offspring of mighty beasts, avatars only of destruction.