Empyrean Iris Story Collection

Keep Them Warm

"So you're telling me we found another sentient omnivore species." The commander grunted ripping his boot from a watery patch of mud and nearly crashing into the swampy water between two twisted tree roots.

Sunny reached out with one of her four armored arms, and caught him by the back of his pack pulling him back upright. He nodded a thanks to her and adjusted his gear. Behind her Ramirez ducked under a low hanging branch slogging through a pool of knee-high water, adjusting the containment pod, holding Krill more comfortably over both shoulders.

Krill, comfortable and warm inside his containment pod, watched the marines, scientists, and a linguist struggle through the mud under a covering of impossibly tall twisted trees their canopy blocking out all light that might have dared cut downwards towards the watery floor below. "Not entirely sentient, I suppose." Krill answered , "Unfortunately the way in which they communicate is going to drastically reduce their ability to create complex structures and perform mathematical equations."

Together they maneuvered themselves over a root, which at some point in the distant past, had decided to grow upwards instead of down. At about four feet high, it had changed its mind and arched back down into the water. Perhaps it had been smaller then, but at four feet wide, the root was an absolute monstrosity now.

The trees themselves were massive, challenging, and sometimes outgrowing the legendary redwood forests of the western Americas, but unlike the redwoods, these trees didn't stand tall and proud. Instead, they chose a twisted path much like the branching veins which made up a human vascular system. They twisted and undulated interlocking past each other with branches that were well over two feet wide in many cases,and stretching to over four feet wide in others. No one direction was good enough, and the trees twisted ducked swirleded and reached grasping for any sort of light to be found.

On top of the darkness cast by the trees and the soggy nature of the forest floor, it was also horribly hot and humid giving the impression of a microwaved wet blanket thrown over the world. Where heat from the upper canopy met the cooler air of deep forest pools, it created a perpetually thick mist which writhed and undulated through the trees, leaving only the shadowy impressions of twisted trunks and clawing branches past distances greater than 50 feet.

"They communicate primarily through pheromones and heat modulation. From what I understand, the language in itself isn't precise, and really only works in generalities and feelings than it does in absolutes."

Commander Vir kicked a rotting log out of the way ducking as a massive green bug buzzed over his head and into the fog. Turns out the hotter and more humid a planet gets, the bigger the bugs get, "But we were still able to communicate with them.

KRill nodded from inside his case, "Yes, generally speaking.For a species that cannot communicate in absolutes, I hear they are quite reasonable. They seem willing to accept our friendship, and have..... invited, I guess, us to participate in some sort of primitive ritual."

The commander nodded scrambling over another tree branch, "Alright, so..... where are these things anyway." His boots hit solid ground, covered in some sort of wet spongy fungus and glanced down at his GPS. Behind him the other marines went silent heads lifted towards the sky in shock.

"Fuck me." ONe of the marines whispered scrambling back behind a tree root.

Commander Vir turned and nearly fell into the water again eyes locked onto the creatures descending from high above.

They were huge, about the size of large horses, and horrifically spider like in their construction, or perhaps an ant. They had large-scale abdomens connected to a thinner thorax. All together they had ten appendages, three pairs of spider-like legs on the abdomen which, instead of ending in a pod or foot, ended in a sharp pointed spike. On the abdomen, they had two arm-like appendages, with two many joints and strange waves tentacles instead of fingers