The Engraving

To the canopy. The outsiders would arrive soon. Young Frey of the upper merchant clan dug his claws into the Meeting Tree and pulled himself upward. A wave of hot air rose past him, as if ushering him to make haste to the landing pad. A flock of tiny olpicketts caught the thermal and dislodged from a nearby trunk. They, for a while, made the ascent with Frey, swarming around the trunk of the Meeting Tree, as if daring him to take a stab at their tender flesh. But Frey was not in the mood for a hunt, nor did he have the time for such predatory adventures.

There was trading to do.

He kicked his hind legs harder now, and leaped to a secondary branch. Frey took no heed of the dazzling height of his path. Now several kilometers above the surface, he danced over the gaps between each bough, mocking the formality of gravity as if it were a children’s story, told to infant Car’iil to prevent them from venturing out of the nests. Ever upward he spiraled, through the first barrier of leaves and fruits. The air was thinning now, and cooling. He could hear the hissing of the wind over the canopy.

The path became small and crowded. Branches thick enough to support Frey’s weight became rare. His dark brown fur receded to glow a cool blue-grey in the surface light. He felt his heartbeat rise, his breath quickened. Even though he was young, anticipation mounted on Frey’s mind. This would be his first visit to the surface since the Demons’ last raid.

He made more noise, his feet placement became careless. A taffik serpent screeched above him and coiled around her nest, warning Frey that further approach would end in death. For a moment Frey cursed himself, and started to control his breaths. He was never an acceptable hunter, and until he proved that he was, no female would ever consider him as a mate. He shuffled away from the taffik mother, and resumed his climb.

He finally reached the landing platform. The most unnatural thing to see at this height, it was sealed in a plastic dome and camouflaged by leaves, but upon closer inspection anyone could see it did not belong. Frey leaped from the Meeting Tree onto the metal surface. He stepped between two idle hovercraft and glanced down the docking strip. A long line of high speed flyers sat waiting for launch, wings folded back and cockpits empty. For a time, these flyers were used solely for the rapid transport of supplies and Car’ill between each clan. Flight over the Life-forest was undeniably quicker and easier than navigating the maze of colossal tree trunks on the ancient pathways built for the commute of the traitorous Demons. Unlike the gliders Frey flew when he was a child, these bulky craft forgo speed and aerodynamics for efficiency and durability. In fact, some of these craft are so old they may have played vital roles in the evacuations of the Car’iil clans from the edge of the Life-forest a century ago. Only Car’iil genius at mechanics and maybe some improvisation kept these ancient beasts of burden airworthy now.

A trio of large warriors from the lower Hunter Clan stood in the far corner of the platform, clad in ceremonial Rhinebarb exoskeleton armor. Leaning casually against a tree, their intense eyes followed Frey with suspicion as he approached, clicking their beaks twice as a formal greeting to one that they were unsure of rank.

Frey sighed. Even though they were of a different clan, such mistrust is uncharacteristic of the Car’iil. All Car’iil serve the Father Tree, and each other, no matter what their clan or rank. Such issues of rank should not matter on Caris, but this age was saturated in darkness, warping the minds and customs of the ancient Car’iil. Or so he had been told by his elders. Even though they were a “lower” clan, Hunters prided themselves on setting up their Tree villages lower to the untamed surface than any of the other clans. It was a direct contradiction to the hierarchy of the Car’iil, which states that the higher and more respectable clans are reserved the highest braches on the tallest Trees. They claimed it made them the Car’iil’s guardians against the evil spirits and wildlife that grew in the dark underworld.

Frey greeted then by bowing his head, a gesture of submission to ones elder. They nodded in return and turned their attention towards the tree. The old Car’iil named Vek descended from the foliage. He dropped down to the platform and landed with a fluid grace that belied his age. In his age, Vek’s fur had faded to a shade of pale grey, and like Frey, the silver patch of fur on his chest stayed with him through his whole life.

“They are coming,” he growled to Hunters, who assembled their staffs and plasma rifles. “Ah, Frey my young friend! You were able to make to climb. It is just as well, the outsiders would be most interested in meeting with a member of the Upper Merchant clan.” He grabbed a pile of supplies and tossed them to Frey’s feet, who bowed his head low at old Vek.

“The Merchant clan’s new chieftain had sent me to barter with the Outsiders for the acquisition of new weapons.” Frey said as he kneeled to sort his equipment.

“Oh?” blinked old Vek. “This would be the first time we mighty Car’iil would ask for help in a very long time. Such radical thinking goes against many of our customs,” he chuckled. The Hunters clicked their beaks in concurrence. The Car’iil was a prideful species. “I like it,” he continued with a slight nod. “It’s decisive.”

Frey slipped on a vest of light Fiber armor. “It’s not like we are shedding our dignity, or admitting that we’re overmatched by the Demon.” He said to the Hunters.

“Simply by accepting help from these furless outsiders, we sacrifice a measure of our self dependency,” a female Hunter muttered, priming the charge on her rifle. “If we cannot defeat the traitorous Demon threat by ourselves, then how can we hope to defeat a different threat in the future? What would we learn by accepting the help of the outsiders? What glory will we achieve? I will follow whatever the Upper clans may decree, but I still believe this:” She flexed her thigh muscles. “If we cannot survive the Demon’s genocide on our own, then perhaps we do not deserve to live on Caris.” The other two Hunters clicked in agreement.

Good-humored old Vek chuckled. “Perhaps. But you are all still young. When you reach my age and have seen what I have seen, and as Dock master have heard what I have heard, you learn that the only custom that we Car’iil should truly pride ourselves on is our adaptability, and will to do whatever it takes to protect our young. Nothing else matters. Not glory, not the hunt, not the return to our mountain cities, not the stubbornness of archaic fossils like myself to live by to the ways of old. Don’t you agree, Frey?” his old eyes settled upon the merchant youth.

Frey remained silent for a second. He held in his four fingered hands a long, elegant silver blade. He looked up “What? Oh, yes, master Vek.”

“The boy is wise beyond his years.” He nodded slyly. The Hunters clicked once out of respect and silently moved to the landing pad. Vek slung a rifle over his shoulder and followed. Frey, staring intently at the blade in his hands, stopped Vek. Could it be a mistake? No. But why would he give me a thing of such value? Is it proper to even question why? But Frey felt he must know.

Vek nodded slightly to Frey. “Don’t worry about it, Frey. Such a trivial item of war is useless to me, in my age. I am not as fit as I show,” he laid a hand on Frey’s shoulder. “Besides, young one, it’s only truly honored through use, and now it is more likely to find the cold, hard flesh of a Demon in your hands than in mine. I entrust it to you, Frey the summer-born, and trust that it will one day bring you honor as it had brought me.”

Frey regarded its golden hilt, wrapped along the top edge of the blade, which was engraved with a holy script of the ancients from the Father Tree. It read ‘To thine enemy that shall meet our rage, mercy upon you and your brethren.’ It represented a less civilized time on Caris, where the drums of war were louder and more thorough. Such times, Frey feared, were about to be reborn. “Why m-” he stammered.

“Ahhh didn’t I tell you? Don’t look into it my boy!” Vek laughed. “I had already made up my mind that I was to give it to whichever youth the upper merchant clan sent today. I would have given it to anyone, regardless! On second thought,” he eyes Frey mischievously “if I had know they were sending you, I would have been forced to reconsider.” He playfully nudged the younger Car’iil, who could only bow his head. Somehow he did not believe the old Car’iil.

The beautiful vibroblade had been passed down from elder to youth for hundreds of generations. It had been crafted by the Demon machines in the ancient times, when Car’iil and Demon coexisted. It was a legendary weapon in his clan, an item of historical and symbolic significance. Crafted in the finest reinforced silver fibers painstakingly folded over itself 144 times, and then polarized for unmatched longevity. But the main feature of the weapon was the hilt’s vibration cell, a high powered wave emitter that sent a million of micro-vibrations through its blade per second, allowing it to liquefy steel at even the slightest touch. Now, Frey vowed, the sword would once again be turned against its creator, just as its creators had turned against the Car’iil.

“They’re here!” a Hunter called to Frey. The plastic canopy opened up and the five Car’iil felt the decompression as the heated air swirled and mixed with the nighttime sky. Above them, the sleek alien ship silently hovered above them, silhouetted in the blue light of Caris’ twin moons. In contrast to the distinct whine of their hovercraft, the outsider’s ‘spacecraft’ was admirably stealthy.

Old Vek approached the ship as it daintily settled down on the tarmac, flanked by the three Hunters and Frey. Frey nervously adjusted his fiber armor. Only a privileged few have ever seen an outsider, and every time someone told stories of their appearance and mannerisms, Frey had become more enchanted at the idea of meeting one for himself.

Out from the ship stepped three of the least impressive creatures he had ever seen.

Dressed in long white cloths that could not have held any protective value at all, three alien bi-pedal, tailless, furless males walked towards Vek. They carried no weapons, and were only followed by a hovering platform carrying black steel containers. The largest of the trio approached old Vek and bowed his whole upper body low, and the two behind him did the same. Vek responded with a bow of the head and oddly, brought his right arm up at a high angle and pressed the edge of his flat hand to his forehead, as if shading his eyes from the sun. The outsider trio did the same, bringing their meaty, clawless, but functional five fingered hands up. The Hunters clicked their beaks politely, and poor confused Frey awkwardly pressed his palm to the side of his head, trying to mimic the unfamiliar alien gesture.

The Large outsider bared his teeth, an odd expression to be sure, and one that could only be accomplished by the alien’s malleable facial skin. He remembered the stories of these outsiders told by his elders. He was a Human, the dominant organic of Earth, a land said to lie far away across the vast sea of Mother sky. Mammalian, predatory, highly social. At over 2 meters and 120 kilos, Frey knew he dwarfed all but the most impressive of the Human outsiders. The Humans had a similar upper-body as he, yet save for their heads humans were unfortunately bald. Both the Car’ill and the humans had, through evolution, been blessed with powerful shoulders and opposable thumbs.

Their lower body, Frey observed, was much smaller. The knees were not bent, causing the outsiders stood uncomfortably upright. Built for walking on open ground rather than scaling the trees of Caris. It was strange that they themselves have been born from the trees like the Car’iil, yet their species could not be more different. They have no natural defenses, save their whit and limbs. They have no claws, no tails, and no shells. They did not secrete venom, could not run fast, and could not reproduce at a high rate. How it came to be that such an odd physical specimen could dominate an apparently harsh ecosystem like Earth’s was beyond Frey.

Caris, he had been told, was slightly smaller than Earth. Its flora and fauna benefited from less gravity, and a thicker, more oxygen-rich atmosphere. Thus, Caris promoted flight in animals and size in trees. The main beneficiary, of course, was the Car’iil, which made their homes among the high branches and hunted parasites that were drawn to the trees sap.

“Evening, Master Vek,” the Large alien spoke in Frey’s language. “I see your young diplomat here requires time to refine his salute.” He glanced at Frey, who shifted uncomfortably in place behind the Hunters.

Vek chuckled, and grasped the outsider’s hand and shook. “Ah, Robert. This is young Frey’s first encounter with Humans. He is a very astute member of the Upper Merchant cl- Frey! Don’t be so tense. This is a great opportunity for you! Better to be casual then to dig your claws into your palms!” Frey tried once again to control his short breaths. Vek knows these outsiders? His body language suggests that they may as well be his nest brothers!

“Ah, so you are the young lad who is to accept the use of our Ion Cannons against the Robots?” the male Robert asked. ‘Accept’? Some negotiation this is. It seems that this had already been discussed ahead of time. Frey glanced to Vek, who nodded.

“Y-yes.” Frey managed to stammer. These Humans seem to be on our side. He thought. But something made him uncomfortable. His presence here was only a formality. Such a radical change of policy in the Car’iil’s struggle against the Demon had not been decided here, or in the Merchant clan, and possibly not even on Caris at all. By people who may not even have been Car’iil and do not have their best interests in mind. Life on Caris was to give and to receive. What do these humans want? They are social beings; would it be foolish to assume they just want to be friends?

Frey pushed the thought back in his mind, and followed the group as they moved away from the dagger-like ship.

“We will take the walkway.” Vek announced to the group.

“As you wish,” Robert nodded, running his fingers through his white hair. “Although, I must admit I was looking forward to leaping about between the branches this time.” He muttered with a mischievous grin. One of the human males behind him rolled his eyes upward. What an odd statement Frey thought. They are clearly incapable of moving even ten meters into the forest in such a way. Let alone managing the whole trip. Frey looked up and saw that everyone, Human and Car’iil, was looking at him. It was then that Frey realized that he said that out loud. Frey, buddy, you are a mess right now.

“I… err…”

One of the smaller Humans patted him on the shoulder, showing a toothy smile. “Don’t worry, it’s only a joke.” Ah. Stupid, Frey. Unfazed the Human Robert pushed a button on his belt, and the hovering board glided forward. Walking now, he rested his hand on a container.

“Vek, my friend, I am impressed that your people had finally allowed yourselves to accept our help. This can only lead to good things for everyone.”

“Yes, Robert, it surprised me too. Although they’re not exactly my ‘people’, keeping me cooped up in that damned watchtower for almost a decade now.” Vek replied. Kept? I thought old Vek was there by choice. It seems that there is more going on in Caris than the Elders are letting on.

“Pretty soon, we will be able to give you access to our Urban Assault Walkers and high altitude bombers. Those Robot cities are massive and your old hovercraft simply won’t cut it in open combat.”

“One can only hope it will not come to that. If things work out, this war of attrition that has eroded Caris for millennia will end very quickly. We Car’iil will finally be able to leave the forest once more, as our ancestors did and rebuild the great cities in the mountains. And this time, we won’t let the A.I. get out of control.”

“Oh, controlling the Robots won’t solve anything, Vek.” Robert said as the group descended down the walkway into the lower level of the forest. “Your culture was the cause of the Robots uprising. The Car’iil were too trusting a few millennia ago. You never had met an equal enemy before, and you had no reason to suspect that the Robots would make a power grab. We humans feared this from the very beginning, and at first we controlled Robots with something called the Three Laws. What we came to realize was that preventative rules like the Laws were in fact reactionary. Against *Human* nature.

"We assumed that since Earth’s A.I. was built by humans, it would maintain human traits like aggression. It didnt occour to us that A.I would act in ways completely seperate from their programmers. At first the Laws gave us a sense of security, but we soon undersood that we didn’t need them at all.”

Vek stared at Robert intently. “Interesting,” he mumbled.

Robert continued. “The tribal Car’iil were far too trusting at first. You are not as competitive as we Humans were and you didn’t worry about how powerful the Robots were getting. Our history was marred by overpopulation and infighting.” The group walked past a Car’iil female in labor, latched to the trunk of a tree with a second midwife female waiting under her waiting to catch the infant. “Your species does not give birth to more than one child every 12 years. Despite your age, you never had been put under the kind of stressful evolution that we had. I think it caused you to not be ready for the discovery of A.I. You were such a peaceful species, and being driven out so early in the development of both you and the Robot-kind only further destroyed any chance of coexistence between your now separating species.”

“And what exactly helped you, the more war-like species, to get along so well with your creations?” the female Hunter asked.

“Ah. Well, it was simply really, in hindsight. We Humans wish to help the forms of intelligence on Caris because we thankfully got it right the first time. Unlike you Car’iil and your Robots, we on Earth evolved with our A.I. Over time, both sides balanced out and things never really escalated past hypothetical and religious reservations. Humanity bore A.I. out of the Information Age. By that time, Humans had spread across the entire planet, and everything was interconnected. Globalized, if you will. Frankly, the Robots on Earth had nowhere to go, whereas your Robots were made and kept in isolation by one individual tribe. The forests on Caris make it impossible to create a decent information network. Radio signals would not reach more than a few hundred meters under the canopy, and the thick atmosphere creates interference, so the technology was never developed here. In effect neither did space travel. You were simply not ready for each other.”

Frey nodded and gathered the courage to speak. “But would the Demon- I mean Caris’ Robots be so different from Earth’s Robots? If different A.I.s are built with the different assumptions of their creators, but continue on to evolve depending on the environment in which they are contained… that would make them less of a collection of clockwork and gears and more of an actual species that happen to rely on universal numerical principals.”

Vek’s chest swelled with pride. “Very astute, indeed.”

Robert nodded “that’s correct, young Frey. That is why control over a sentient form of intelligence, organic or not, does not improve the situation.”

“Just one thing, my friend,” Vek said to Robert.

“Yes?”

“We Car’iil, as you know, follow a Code of Honorable Conduct in combat. As it so happens our kind was not ‘driven’ out of the mountain cities millennia ago. We left.”

“Oh? You suppressed your inner warriors and gave up? Commendable, but very unlike you.”

“It was unfortunately was a necessity. We would have continued to fight, but we could not.”

“Necessity? To give up war? Why?” Robert asked. Vek slowly turned to look at his alien comrade.

“Because we were too good at it.” A Hunter whispered.

“We would have destroyed the planet if we did not. Such irresponsibility would have been deeply intolerable. Even the Demon has restrained itself from burning down the forest.” Vek said. To which the white-haired outsider smiled,

“My friend, once again it appears we both still have something to learn from each other.”

The hover board began to rapidly warble in a foreign tongue. Robert responded in his native language. A look of concern permeated on Vek’s face.

“The transport droid has detected multiple anomalies entering his sensor range,” Vek translated. “Anomalies moving at several meters per second.” Robert asked the droid something, and it responded with a very clear six clicks. He and Vek made eye contact. Vek continued, looking to Robert, “Moving in formation…”

A Hunter stepped forward, eyes burning with intense passion. “How big is it’s sensor range?” Vek looked at him, out into the shadows of the forest surrounding them. In the tense silence, Frey began to hear echoes of the high-pitched whine of mechanical death. “Fifty meters.” Vek whispered.

A Hunter lighted his laser sword. The Female Hunter spat a curse, and unslung her rifle, charging the power cell. “They’ve got us. They’ve got us.” She whispered. Robert tapped furiously onto the keyboard in his belt, and then ran to place his hand to a scanner on the droid. A container opened as the Humans and Vek rushed forward, pulling out white and silver rifles. The hunters gathered around Vek, who thumbed a switch on the Human ion rifle. It instantly hummed to life, and He and the Humans brought their weapons shoulder length, cross-scanning the branches above them.

“Frey!” Robert hissed. Frey immediately snapped to attention. He realized he was standing by the edge of the great walkway, staring down to the shadowy infinitude of the surface. The whole Life Forest held its breath. “Frey! Put your weapon away! Get to the Merchant clan! Tell them what’s happened. If the Robot Mainframe gets hold of these ion weapons, they will start manufacturing warriors that are immune to it. Tell the Chieftain that we were ambushed and blew the stock.”

“That Demon…” A hunter stared accusingly at the transport Droid. “It lead them right to us!” He turned to face the driod.

“No!” Vek cried, but it was too late. The Hunter slashed his foreclaw through the Droid CPU. The repulsors died and with a loud thud the machine hit the ground. “Fool! It’s a HUMAN Droid! It was telling us where they were coming from!” Vek roared.

“GO, Frey! Now!” One of the Humans said. It was a way out of the fight. It is to dishonor oneself and one’s bloodline to cower away from battle- especially when it meant leaving your brethren behind. But Frey knew he was no warrior, and looking at Vek, he understood that this was above him. Above any single Car’iil.

He leapt straight up into the canopy, twenty feet overhead. The whine of the approaching Demons silenced. The Humans and Car’iil below scanned their surroundings. A glint of light glanced upon Frey’s eyes.

From directly above.

Robert fired first. An intense beam of blue static lanced upwards and collided with the source. A smoking metal spider fell limply through the branches. The group scattered to avoid the 500-kilogram corpse of an Airborn Tracker demon. Pack hunters.

In silence the seven trained their rifles to the canopy, red laser sights exposed in the smoky humid air. Frey climbed higher on his trunk. Where are they? He thought.

The Grand Walkway exploded under them. Two massive steel arms grabbed a Human and pierced the Female Hunter. Her scream reverberated over the plasma fire. Two more Demons scaled the edges of the platform, and a third flew out to the right and tried to land on top of Vek. Robert rolled under a slash from the nearest Demon, and from his back fired up into the advancing Tracker. A Hunter roared, scaling the destroyed Transport droid as leverage and leaped over the Walkway’s edge, onto a sixth spider-machine climbing up Frey’s tree. He lit his laser sword and in a rage drove the blade straight down into its head.

“Demon!” He screamed, wide eyed and salivating. The Demon wrapped two of its six legs around the Hunters chest, pinning him. “Demon!” he roared “DIE!” As he tried to move the blade in for the kill, the Robot pulled him apart. His body torso completely separated from his abdomen. The third Hunter screeched for his fallen friend and unloaded his plasma rifle into the crippled machine until it overheated. The charred scrap began its long descent to the surface as the one Tracker tried to tear up through its hole in the walkway. A Human stood waiting over it and stuck a grenade to his head.

“No. Fuck you.” He spat in its face and kicked it back down through the hole. A column of fire rose up through its berth and smoke shot out each side of the platform. The Human ran back to the third Hunter, who was desperately trying to salvage a Human ion rifle.

“Shouldn’t have kicked it…” He muttered, accepting an Ion rifle dropped by the first human. A Demon rose over them from behind the refuse and pounded down on the two with its front legs. It hoped over the pile and lifted their dying bodies in the air, and drove them straight down into the ground with a sickening crunch.

“No!” Vek shouted but turned his attention back to the other remaining Demon. Robert stood, staring down the first Tracker, and it turned to tower over the old Human. He slowly reached to his belt and pressed a button.

From the wreckage of the Transporter droid a high pitched buzz rose in volume. The Demon’s compound eyes considered the pile. And then was incinerated in a white hot blast of light. Robert was blown straight back and landed in a crumpled heap 5 meters away. Frey, temporarily blinded and ears ringing, flailed for a higher branch, as if trying to escape the muffled hum and burning pain like a dumb animal.

His hearing faded back in to the sound of Vek screaming in agony. His charred body writhed on top of a downed Tracker. The last of the Demons, its metal hide unfazed by the hot shrapnel, circled around the poor old Car’iil.

No.

A dagger-sharp metal leg rose, gleaming in the blue light.

Get over there, Frey.

GO.

A metallic clan ran out as steel met bone and flesh.

Frey held back a scream from the branches above. His vision blurred. His world turned red. He felt himself glide trough the trees, but could care less. He felt intense nausea and fury, begging to be released from his soul. He watched the blood and wreckage flow around him, but all that mattered, all that he could see clear and sharp was the Demon, crowing over the remains of his master.

He hid silently in the darkness, muscles coiled and breath deadly slow. The Demon turned, unaware. It walked under Frey’s tree.

In the darkness two cold yellow eyes glowed and the low hum of the vibroblade kicked on.

‘To thine enemy that shall meet our rage, mercy upon you and your brethren.’

Civility had died. Now was the time of thorough vengeance.