Boundless Evolution: The Summoning Beast

The disc lay warm under Veyra's palm.

A long pulse shivered through the stone, then two short. She breathed once and translated under her breath.

"Main asks: alive—where—mark—status."

Ash kept his voice low so it wouldn't carry, "Both alive. Injured: ribs, ankle. Holding. Side alcove off a choke. Draft pulls right."

Veyra pressed the notch, sending short–long patterns in careful sequence. They waited with the drip for long minutes—ten, then twenty slow breaths—before the relay quivered back a reply: tick–tick—tick.

"It's them," she said, listening. "Alive. Moving inward. They ask us to mark if safe and to describe terrain."

Ash angled his head toward the corridor. The draft still combed his nape from the same direction; no new grit hissed, "Safe enough. Tell them the throat here narrows into a flowstone curtain and a column‑forest. There's a dry shelf above a shallow gutter, not a ramp. Lichen throws a faint blue wash. No fresh Worker sign—only old, dust‑soft scuffs."

"Sending mark." Her thumb danced a brief burst. The disc warmed in her palm.

The disc ticked: long, short, short. Veyra's mouth twitched. "They say, 'Our side has a split throat, damp wall left, dry right.' They add, 'Echo says medium chamber ahead.' 'Can you triangulate?'"

"Not with this much cave," Ash said. "Tell them features repeat. Drafts lie. We can't draw a straight line through stone."

She sent the thought. Long minutes passed with only the drip. Then, a return.

"They say, 'Agreed. No fixed north up here. We need more shared points. Suggest leave signs. Carve runes?'"

"Too loud," Ash said. "Dust and pebbles only. Tell them we'll stack three small stones at the choke lip. If they find any three‑stack, it was us."

Veyra pulsed the code. The disc warmed under her palm. Long minutes dragged past before it answered. "They'll do the same. Three stacks at junctions."

"Done," Ash said. "Ask them if they have any way to fix location."

Veyra sent the question. After long minutes, the answer returned in three separate pulses.

"They answer: 'No true fix.' 'Only way is eyes and ears.'" She looked at Ash. "They're saying what you said. We just look."

Ash dipped his muzzle. "Then we look—small. Tell them we'll hold until you're stronger, then make short loops within sight of the alcove."

She coded the plan. Long minutes later, the relay hummed once in assent.

"Anything else?" Ash asked.

After long minutes, Veyra listened to a brief burst, softer than the rest. A smile flickered. "They say: 'Don't die.' 'Hold.' 'We're coming.'" She cupped the disc until its glow thinned to nothing. The drip reclaimed the room.

Ash let out a quiet huff that passed for a laugh. Soon after, he turned his head toward her, "How are your supplies. How long can you last if we stay put?"

Veyra's eyes traced the ceiling's broken teeth before she answered. "about half a day... I can extend it but I don't think I can manage more than a whole day," she said. "I've got two ration strips and a flask—half. You?"

Ash kept his gaze on the drip.

"None," he said, "I'm not carrying supplies."

"I can share," she offered.

"No," he said. "Keep it. I have a special skill: Realm Passage."

"What is that?" she whispered. "I don't know that trick—what does it do?"

"Realm Passage lets me move freely between Aegaryn and Terranis—me only," Ash said. "I arrive at a placed arrival point; I have one: the Valen Estate. Living passengers can't go; only non‑living things I wear or carry. I can return the same way."

"Terranis… the human world… you have a summoning contract with a human?" Veyra whispered.

Her tone immediately changing negative.

Ash blinked, momentarily thrown.

"I… yes," he answered.

She drew back a thumb‑width, eyes gone hard.

"Summoners," she said, the word like grit, "You wear a human's leash? A summoning contract?"

"Yes," Ash said, his curiosity growing at her reaction, "Is something wrong?"

"We don't just scorn them—we bury what they leave."

"Why?" he asked, low.

When she was little, her foster mother, Old Mother Ren, taught a tale about Sable-Maw, the Disreputed First Leader; her voice settled now into its cadence.

Ash tipped his muzzle. "Was it not Arvul who was the first leader?"

"You are not wrong," Veyra said, softer. "Because of what happened after, Sable‑Maw's name is a bruise among us; we do not accept him as 'first,' not anymore."

"What happened?" Ash asked.

Veyra drew a long breath; her voice settled into the cadence of an old telling.

—◦—

The Tale of Sable‑Maw and the First Circle

A black‑fog storm flattened the fen. Sable‑Maw chased lean game across a ring of salt and iron cut into a hummock; the ring bit his shadow and remade it. A voice rose from beyond the seam—Terranis—speaking through the circle. They made a pact across worlds. He returned different: eyes that parted fenmist, breath that smoked in summer, hide that turned speargrass and thorn. He dragged skiffs over winter crust, broke mire‑serpents from reedbanks, and hauled the old to high ground when the water rose too fast. The hamlets ate because he did this.

Strength called followers. Sable‑Maw gathered bands into a single lead and taught the Kin a new tool: the summoning contract. Words could be bound to marks, and marks could bridge the seam. Grain and cloth crossed over; iron that did not rust in brine; salves that cooled fever. Anchor‑stones were set in clean ground, and the plates on the far side answered. A golden age took root—nets fuller, winters shorter, roofs tight to rain. The Kin kept their river ways but walked with new tread.

But power glows in the dark, and paper remembers who signed it. After Sable‑Maw's death—in a white‑cold that iced even summer pools—the marks woke to other voices. Clauses the Kin had not read grew teeth. Plates on Terranis called, and bonded beasts felt the tug through stone. Work was counted from afar; levies rose when reeds were lean; tribute was tallied in cords and skiffs. Two of ours—Lalla of Drift‑End and Ibrin of Longroot—were pressed through the circle to work city pits "until the debt lay flat." Their knotted cords came fewer each season until they stopped.

The callers on the far side learned to pull at the worst moments. A plate would warn like a bell, then drag like a hook. A hauler mid‑crossing vanished into someone else's need and returned with shoulders shaking and eyes not quite here. The hamlets learned to wait with ropes ready and prayers unsaid.

Then Varruk came.

He returned after Sable‑Maw's death, out of the reed margins with winter in his beard and the fen still on his boots. In Sable‑Maw's days he had ranged wide and kept his own counsel; when the contracts were signed, he stood apart. Now he gathered the scattered bands and spoke plain: choose kin or chain.

He called the Kin to the First Circle's hummock where the Anchor‑stones stood. There were no humans in Aegaryn to strike; the danger came through the seam. On the far side, a Terranis magister raised the Beacon Plate and spoke the calling names. The rune‑lines brightened like moon hair in ice, and the pull went through bone. Varruk set his hands to the foremost Anchor and bled when the tug tried to take him; the Kin set theirs beside his. Together they heaved until the stone cracked. They broke the ring—stone, mark, and call—and smeared mud into every cut so no new plate could drink its song. The pull slackened. The hamlets held.

Old Mother Ren taught us the vow Varruk forged that day: No Oath to Dryhands. The ancestors tied promises to kin‑bond and shared work, not to seals. They said a dryhand loves a mark because a mark loves a chain. The ancestors tied promises to kin‑bond and shared work, not to seals. They said a dryhand loves a mark because a mark loves a chain. Each spring on the reed‑rise we bind three green reeds with eel‑cord, smear them with fen‑ash, and tuck frog‑bone bells inside the bundle so the wind can say the vow for us. The children carry the bundles on poles; the elders cut a fingertip and press a print on the cord—blood, ash, and water—so the promise is owned by all three.

—◦—

She swallowed, "That is why my people—the Murkfen Kin—carry an old, almost innate hate for humans. It isn't rage for its own sake; it's caution taught with our milk and our dead."

She glanced at him, voice lower, "I might be wrong about you. I don't want to paint you with their brush. I don't know your bond—only the harm we've lived. So hear me plain: do not use Realm Passage."

Ash felt his ears tip back. He kept his voice low so it wouldn't carry, "I hear you. And I see the point—truly. But the Valens are not the men in your stories. I helped their grandfather and they fed me, asked, listened. They were the ones who gave me my name. When they offered the bond, they said 'choose.' I did."

"Humans choose pretty words," Veyra said, the caution back like a knife laid flat, "Debts bite later. I won't believe a house different because it is yours. Not here. Not now. Don't open that door."

He felt the prickle along his ruff despite himself.

"You're taking my bond and painting it with mud from a story you hate," he said, "They are different. If there were a plate that tugged me, I'd bite it like Sable‑Maw before I turned on you."

Veyra held his gaze, "You believe that. I don't believe them. So we're at a wall."

Ash breathed with the drip to keep the anger from sharpening his words, "Then we climb the wall with rules. I won't use Realm Passage because it's convenient. We set when, where, and how."

She stared a beat longer, then gave the smallest nod for him to go on.

"Two rules," Ash said, "One, no casting unless we both agree—both—unless one of us is dying. Rule two: you're fully awake, able to keep watch while I am gone."

Veyra weighed each line like a stone in the palm, "And you tell me before you even think to open it."

"Yes."

"And I say 'no' unless the cave leaves us no other path."

"Yes." He let his annoyance bleed off with the answer, "I won't prove your stories right."

Some of the knife in her voice eased.

"Consensus, then," she said, "No Realm Passage unless both say yes—or one is dying."

Ash set his forepaw over her fingers so she could feel the weight, "Agreed."

She squeezed twice: "okay."