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Leviathan: Chapter Fifteen

Lives Lived

By Shalion

Transitioning her attention to the other side of the Pacific took some preparation, but Leviathan left the efforts largely to Little Sister. After all, by calving and sending her daughters far abroad, she could exert her will pretty much anywhere in the world's oceans.

Most of her smallest daughters, those who actually scavenged, hunted and cultivated the world's resources for her, could be left to their own devices. They reproduced on their own and for the most part were completely ignorant of their own descent or the fundamental differences between them and the other lifeforms around them. Always, Little Sister was tweaking those varieties who could not sustain themselves towards greater efficiency until at last, they could begin to outcompete the native species for their niche. That work went on endlessly, but with Leviathan leaving the western Pacific for good, their transport network needed fortification.

Little Sister identified the feeder whale daughters as the greatest single points of failure and so, in areas where humans were known to frequent, Leviathan used much smaller porpoise-sized daughters. It was less efficient, true, but also less devastating if a few were hunted. They were made to swim more deeply as well, though this made navigation more difficult. Without the need to surface for air, these smaller daughters could cross the ocean in relative safety, eventually destined to end up diving into the mouth of either a feeder whale or wriggling down Leviathan's gullet willfully, though Leviathan could not always be bothered to ingest such tiny snacks which were like sardines to her though they each weighed up to 1,000 pounds. And though Leviathan turned her attention away from her old stomping grounds, the spawn she left behind continued to spread her influence all on their own.

It would take a couple years for the new changes to work their way through Leviathan's personal ecosystem, but Leviathan was not too concerned with the time lag presently. This year, she had been able to account for all of her feeder whales before heading north, guarding her herd like a supreme matriarch. An extra 200 tons of flesh in the form of an extra feeder whale might not sound like much on Leviathan's scale, but it meant a lot to her bottom line considering her constant need to maintain her children's tenuous grip on the native environments and to expand to new areas. This year would be an especially fat season and Leviathan looked forward to having the extra resources at hand, even as she lovingly devoured her offspring one by one as she built the fatty slurry filling her stomach into meat on her bones.

She was rotund and magnificent as she began her hunting spree in the high arctic summer. While it was true that she could not survive off of the krill alone any longer at her size, with a mouth opening as wide as a football field, she was not terrible at this method of hunting either, devouring whole swarms easily in her jaws before slowly filtering out sea water and plankton through the feathery interior of her gills. She still managed to put on a few extra hundred tons each feeding season. This year in particular, she needed the extra calories because she was already well into an especially large pregnancy in preparation for moving into a new area of the sea with a much lower density of her own offspring.

Leviathan's children could already be found in almost every ocean of the planet already, of course. However, there had been much lower investment of new life along the distant continent and so far none of her land-based daughters had been sent there either. That would soon change. Leviathan was steadily becoming more and more crammed full of exploration and settlement parties growing in the womb. Leviathan hunted cunningly and ravenously, easily outcompeting the few remaining whale pods who gave her a wide berth. Only about one in ten of the whales who used to come to the arctic to feed on krill remained, but that was perfectly fine with Leviathan. With her powerful body, she could eat nearly 60% of the krill generated in a season by herself and her body showed it as the blubber pilled over the bases of her flippers and thickened her tail. She was slowed by her increasing bulk and that made some of the smaller krill swarms harder to sneak up on, a slim margin for the other krill-eaters to live on as well as scraps left over from Leviathan's feasts.

Leviathan enjoyed a couple weeks that summer being far too fat for her own good, actually feeling her bloated sides dragging in the water as her thick tail creased in dozens of rolls with each slow stroke side to side. Then, as always, the process began to reverse, or rather to channel her total mass towards her growing belly, feeding the army growing inside. Leviathan became full faster as her stomach was pressed up into her ribcage by the expanding uterus inside of her, eventually forced to use her mouth as a kind of second stomach, storing her swarm until she could swallow it down bit by bit as space allowed. Unable to properly store food in her stomach, Leviathan took longer and longer dealing with each swarm, eventually having to pass by hunting opportunities as she rested for hours with her mouth full of struggling krill dancing on her tongue.

Only a few weeks later, Leviathan's uterus was pushing partially into her ribcage itself, rendering her flattened and folded stomach unable to take in more than a hundred or so pounds of food at a time, and by then it was hardly worth the effort. Leviathan began to swim south again, but this time angling even further east. And even as her belly bulged tight and constrictive inside of her for the multitude of offspring filling it, Leviathan knew that she faced far more discomfort ahead as her belly was destined to at least double its already prodigious size as it sapped the precious blubber from her body.

Autumn found Leviathan floating restlessly a few dozen miles off of the Central American coast. She slouched over an enormous pot belly, pulling water through her gills to supply her fatigued body with oxygen. A full quarter of her body weight was concentrated in her belly now, or rather the lives inside there, ready to come out and already wrestling in anticipation of freedom. Leviathan's insides roiled, her uterus feeling like a hive filled with unruly grubs. Leviathan wanted to complain to Little Sister, but she was getting tired of only being rebuked time and again. 'It's only a little discomfort and a short inconvenience. It'll soon be over.' Leviathan tried telling herself. But with two weeks of contractions looming ahead of her, it seems rather like a lot of discomfort and a lot of inconvenience.

Leviathan tried to take a small measure of comfort from the sheer size of her enormous, pulsating belly which was indeed noticeably larger than any past spawning season. Leviathan reached down to run her flippers over the round, firm dome of her abdomen which jutted out from under her rib cage far more than she could possibly reach. The sheer depth of the gigantic dome protruding from her abdomen was actually larger than the thickness of her torso proper. It was indeed hard to see all of it, actually, and it was fortunate for Leviathan that she still retained a superior sense of her body compared to terrestrial creatures even if she did not actively control her flesh anymore. The blubber had been thinned and stretched over the monstrous edifice housing as much or possibly more mass of daughter-flesh as Leviathan had in the rest of her body. The skin itself had undergone some hasty growth to accommodate the rapid expansion. This showed in the fibrous, threadbare feel of the almost painfully tight outer hide. Leviathan felt the edge of a huge vein traveling across the side of her tummy, pushed against the skin by the overstuffed uterus and its labyrinthine network of interconnected horns and tubes. It was only a minor vein, though still large enough for a Two-leg to swim through it easily, but Leviathan was struck by the appearance of any kind of structure like this at all. Even during her 'lean' times, she usually carried enough blubber on her to obliterate most structural features.

Leviathan felt the first rhythmic spasms in her belly, gradually flowing down towards her pelvic region, not heavy contractions, not yet. Those would slam into her abdomen like hammer blows and be regular enough to set a clock by. Her belly was painfully full of new life, the sense of pressure inside of her devouring most other sensations, even the drab uniform sight of the bottomless ocean around her. As even as Leviathan felt so tight she might just pop at any moment, she felt all the myriad little lives inside of her squirming in their hollows, growing more anxious by the hour as their blood supplies dwindled and their inner membranes began to shed from the surface of Leviathan's uterine walls. Leviathan paused for a moment to imagine how things might be for them, housed in what must seem like an endless world composed of the flesh and fluids which had nurtured them all through development. Leviathan wondered if any of them might be hesitant to leave, but then, they never seemed reluctant to depart as soon as they were out; so that probably wasn't the case. Though honestly, Leviathan supposed she was so large now she could easily house whole microcosms of complex creatures inside her body. She definitely supported ecosystems of fish and other creatures outside of her which sometimes coated her so thickly as to form a living cloak. She let the stray thought drift away on the currents.

It would still be the better part of a day before the first daughter would emerge, and Leviathan was mildly surprised when Little Sister decided to speak; she usually waited until the end of spawning to begin discussing next year's daughter production, Leviathan's uterine wall needed at least several days to reduce the swelling and inflammation and to regenerate in anticipation for the next seeding.

"Have you thought about where to focus our efforts, Big Sister?" She asked.

Leviathan would have cocked her head if she'd had anything resembling a neck. "Eh? Isn't it a bit late to be thinking about where to send our daughters?" Scoffed Leviathan, yet thankful to have a distraction from the random, spastic motions of her belly.

"Perhaps a little." Said Little Sister in a rare moment of amusement. "But seeing as it has been so long since we've been to this part of the planet, it's probably more efficient to just release our daughters to settle anywhere that they find pleasant."

"I know, you said that months ago." Said Leviathan. Of course Little Sister would never let such a detail go by unnoticed. Sometimes, Leviathan wondered how far into the future her hind-brain's machinations extended.

"Actually, I was considering more if you liked any particular areas of side of the ocean." Said Little Sister and Leviathan was a little taken aback. Her other mind was usually so focused on facts and logic and so rarely asked about any of her emotions.

"I... I mean, it's fine." Stammered the colossal sea-beast. "It's not any worse than the great island chains. That kelp forest we passed by earlier was very interesting. I almost wish I had my teeth back so I could have done some grazing..." Though, of course, being so pregnant at the time she still would not have been able to eat any of the great stalks. "It was nice to see it again." Though moving through the ocean was so much easier than on land, the sight of endless water did get rather tedious at times. The view alone was a major reason why Leviathan tended to follow coastlines during her migrations rather than plow through the open ocean.

"The kelp forest?" Little Sister asked, "Do you think you might like it if we made that place wholly ours?"

Perplexed, Leviathan responded, "Why do you ask this, Little Sister. What is this sudden concern of my preferences?"

The tail spoke demurely. "Your preferences are always my chief concern. We agreed that you would be the seat of our desires." Leviathan did not even bother to respond directly to the empty platitude. Even Little Sister must have realized how ridiculous the statement was, for she eventually went on, "Ahem, what I am trying to get at is if you might be happier if we spent more of our efforts colonizing a particular area. Having a place where the environment is orchestrated to our will might produce a soothing atmosphere." Leviathan was on the verge of agreeing with her, but then Little Sister added almost as an afterthought, "And you do tend to get so surly while spawning."

The mental grin Leviathan had been forming fell. "I don't need anything so vain to keep my mood up!" She protested, and then her whole body lurched as a spasm rocked through the middle of her comically oversized belly. A hundred gallons of lubricating fluid tinged with midnight-dark blood escaped her swollen slit and Leviathan took a large gulp of sea water. Recovering, she added offhandedly, "And perhaps I would not be so 'surly' as you claim if I didn't have to spend more than two weeks of the year being in such discomfort!"

"I've made every reasonable accommodation for our comfort." Sniffed Little Sister. "Anymore would just be impractical. The sensations we're experiencing are just to be expected given the level of activity we're undertaking." Leviathan didn't bother to argue, the issue being now half a century old between the two of them.

"Anyways," said Leviathan, lurching away from a still somewhat sore topic seeing as she was only now beginning the soreness which would last over the next fortnight. "I appreciate your concern, but I don't need to be surrounded by own own daughters to feel at ease."

Usually that would be the end of it, but right now Little Sister was deciding to be unusually persistent. "Really?" She asked, "Because we did end up replacing most of the sea life around that first Splasher island..." she paused for a long, reflective moment, "You were so driven then, even after the surviving Two-legs left. But your mood changed once I explained the scope of Two-leg development." The touch of the tail's mental presence became warmer around Leviathan's mind, "I've been worried you might be melancholy because we won't be able devour the Two-leg species any time soon."

For several long seconds, Leviathan didn't know what to think. "Might be...?" She started, but second guessed herself. Was this another of Little Sister's subtle manipulations, but her other mind lacked the usual traces of deception or of holding back. If she was simply being honest... that was somehow even worse. "Well, I am a little disappointed..." Of course, that did not begin to describe the profound mix of emotions Leviathan felt at having anything not proceed according to her wishes. "No, I'm very disappointed." She added sensing Little Sister's own probing thoughts. "But I'm choosing not to let that affect my mood." She took a moment to center her thoughts and went on. "We have a blank slate here on the other side of the world. We will consume and grow and return to the Two-leg problem with far more resources available to us." She huffed her next thought in her tail's direction like a discarded handkerchief. "Perhaps by then we'll have predators of our own to match the Two-legs. Then they'll learn how to be proper prey at last."

Leviathan seemed to revel in her own viciousness, and though she meant her last remark as a jab, Little Sister seemed to relax as well. "All in the fullness of time, Big Sister." She paused half a second in their stream of conscious thought. "And it's well that you understand the best way to think about our current plan of action."

Leviathan paused to think about what her tail just said. "...And how else would I think about what we're doing?"

"Well... at the risk of sounding ungenerous, a more emotional mind might call our recent chain of events being run our of our home territory by a more successful species."

Had Leviathan's mouth not taken up the entire front of her body, her jaw might have dropped. "How could she say that to me!?" The sea-beast thought, but she was savvy enough from sharing her body with Little Sister now for most of the past century to keep her calm. She thought about what Little Sister might possibly mean by upsetting her with her words, but remained at a loss. Little Sister was becoming only more inscrutable with the passage of time and the seconds were passing by with interminable rapidity as she remained silent, her thoughts boiling to the touch.

"I apologize if you mistook-" started the tail, but Leviathan answered finally.

"No. Don't say you're sorry. It is exactly as you said. No rational mind could take what has happened as a personal defeat." Said Leviathan slowly, struggling to remain as rational as Little Sister had claimed her to be, albeit in less than gracious terms. "And we certainly have not been driven out. Our daughters collectively dominate the western side of this ocean already. Truly, we ought to have been targeting more exploitable regions years earlier." Leviathan tried to sound and to feel cool-headed and hoped that it came across as believable to Little Sister also. Still, though her words rankled.

"Run out! How ridiculous that I, the biggest creature who has ever lived on Earth could be run out of anywhere!" And yet the thought kept coming back as well as the annoying realization that this is probably exactly what Little Sister desired.

"Very true." Agreed the tail magnanimously. "And as my patterns have greatly improved since we first began to colonize this region, I think we'll find colonization to proceed far more rapidly than when we first started. Perhaps I'll quicken an extra dozen or so feeder whales or so just in case our returns over the next few years are higher than expected."

"Please take it easy on the feeder whale daughters..." Leviathan complained. Though immature whale-daughters were barely more than a tenth of their end weight, they were still among the largest of the new lives Leviathan passed through her relatively minuscule opening, and therefore, among the most uncomfortable.

"You won't be complaining when you are eating them." Chided Little Sister playfully and finally Leviathan felt herself growing more relaxed. The gentle back and forth between her and her second brain kept her occupied through much of the first two days of labor and that was something to appreciate in and of itself.

*****

Leviathan remained conscious on and off periodically through the next decade, not typically spending more than two years at a time abdicated in favor of her dull, fishy persona. One of the reasons was that she did not entirely trust Little Sister to let her sleep for another decade or longer, but primarily, it was refreshing to spend time exploring a relatively new environment and watch as she slowly began to fill it with her own species.

She did end up making something of a project of the massive and beautiful kelp forests off the western coast of North America. The first thing she did was introduce a voracious predator of the creeping urchins which continuously plagued the growth of the enormous kelp stalks by severing their bases from their roots. The crustacean-like daughters were far more apt at cracking open the spiny creepers than the furry weasel-like mammals that were already feasting on them. With the urchin population decimated, the mammals had to look for another food source, but the kelp forests, and their tremendous biomass were free to propagate even further, opening up a niche for a a great, slow-moving kelp-eater daughter who was able to get fat easily on the abundant mass of green fronds. Leviathan was then able to prosper from a massive jump in her yearly caloric intake and enjoyed passing by the edges of the slowly expanding forest of kelp and its bloated, floating forest-keepers drifting unseen through the green stalks.

The subject of the intentional cultivation and possible transplantation of kelp came up more than once because it was already no secret that Two-legs, in addition to tearing down their native environment, also manipulated both plants and animals to their own benefit, a kind of forced symbiosis. It struck Leviathan a sort of perversion of nature, yet the resulting benefit to the Two-leg species could not be denied. Nevertheless, with kelp growing vigorously all on its own, there seemed to be little need for the effort.

A while after Leviathan turned her thoughts away from conquering the kelp forest, she began to desire exploring further south down the coast, though this was difficult with her schedule necessitating a return to the arctic each summer. Leviathan wondered if there might not be similar blooms at the planet's opposite pole, yet the risk of losing out on such a massive influx of calories and bulk always seemed to be too high to be worth the venture, even though it meant that Leviathan remained largely ignorant of the entire southern hemisphere save through the slow propagation of her daughters and their accumulated memories which slowly came to her.

But Leviathan did not have to travel very far south at all to discover that her supposed haven was already tainted. The western shores of the two continents were not even teeming with Leviathan's offspring before evidence of the Two-leg presence was uncovered.

'Not here!' was Leviathan's initial reaction, but managed to compose herself with regards to the infestation, especially as this group of hairless apes appeared at first glance to be a little less developed than the ones across the great ocean, even if they were almost as numerous. Leviathan tried very hard not to let the news affect her mood and to shift her perspective into a more productive attitude rather than wallowing in self-pity. She still retained several advantages, the largest being that these Two-legs did not display any particular adeptness for ocean hunting or travel, which left Leviathan's domain largely untouched. There was not even the appearance of threat to her or to her needed food-gathering web. The separation kept the Two-legs largely from interfering with Leviathan's real work, but Leviathan was still able to reach out and engage them on land in what amounted to the start of a decades-long war.

The memories the surviving hunters brought an unexpected side-benefit as well to help Leviathan's mood. Their essences turned out to be a highly entertaining form of blood sport in which Leviathan reveled. The memories were a powerful incentive to remain fully conscious, in fact, as she was able to vicariously experience the anticipation and joy of hunting, awakening old memories of her own when she had once prowled the savannah herself. Overall, Leviathan's efforts did little but slow the natural population growth of the Two-legs, however, as a source of entertainment, the entire program was very much worth the expense of calories in Leviathan's opinion.

Over time, Leviathan's information about the continent and the Two-legs as a species only grew, though her children remained ever critically linked to the sea. Little Sister said she was working on a more robust land-based transport system for daughter-flesh, but the inherent difficulties of moving large amounts of biomass on land largely kept things on the back burner, especially as the more fruitful ocean demanded most of her attention. Still, Leviathan's hunters made steady improvement, eventually transitioning into a self-reproducing daughter species who were able to, if not thrive due to their high mortality rate from relentless hunting by Two-legs, then hold their own with only minor reinforcements from Leviathan to bolster their numbers.

These Two-leg hunters were by far the most intelligent of Leviathan's children. Little Sister was ever chiding herself about the amount of brain power devoted to these savage predators, yet there seemed no other way to combat the power or adaptability of the opponent than to meet intelligence for intelligence. Leviathan's daughters at least were equipped with formidable natural weapons that largely negated the need for tool-making, however, their social and pack structures became increasingly elaborate, especially once they began breeding themselves.

With retractible claws, large, powerful jaws and sleek, athletic bodies, the hunters had the best combination of canine and feline traits. Yet, for all their savagery and lust for killing prey, a new development began to arise organically, almost on its own; though Little Sister easily took credit for it herself once Leviathan began to notice the change amid the stream of lives she bore witness to. In the face of a brutal life still lasting only a few years from birth to the inevitable call of the sea, there was a surprising abundance of quiet, peaceful moments filled with affectionate grooming and even play. Leviathan was initially surprised that these moments would be impressed onto the genetic memory at all, which naturally only took to strong emotions. However, she did not need Little Sister to explain that these were times of strong emotion for her children, times of happiness, pleasure and safety among their own kind.

And that was not the only thing which surprised Leviathan. In the beginning, communication in and among the various packs was based purely on body language, posturing and dominance. But as the hunters grew ever more intelligent, their communication ever increased in subtly and depth of meaning, and each individual whose life Leviathan reviewed years after their eventual consumption began to feel deeper, the traces of a unique personality pressing on her mind as she distilled all the understandings she had in life. Communication still consisted of vocal and silent cues, yet there came to be more consistency among the hunters as a whole and less on-the-spot improvisation. Whelps were taught these cues from an early age and then individuals began to be assigned their own unique combination of squeaks, grunts and growls to help know when they were being addressed specifically. These developments were especially easy to see as Leviathan consumed their lives in batches by the hundreds and then the thousands. Between her and Little Sister, many new words and mind-objects needed to be defined, concepts like 'loyalty,' 'honor,' and 'society' which had never existed before.

It came to pass that the distributed packs all along central America, where Leviathan largely concentrated her efforts since both the northern and souther continents were too vast to properly infiltrate from the sea, began to operate less like a collection of families and more like a single tribe; 'tribe' itself being a new concept for Leviathan. The tribe was dominated by a sole matriarch who enjoyed a collection of partners among the unisex species and was also rarely asked to fight herself, though she made her will obvious by organizing raids on Two-leg villages without even the need to see the target locations herself. These chieftains minds were impressive when they eventually felt the call of the sea themselves, so much more cunning than the average hunter and capable of abstract thought. Some even seemed vaguely aware of Leviathan herself, though the sea-beast knew of no mechanism by which a land creature could learn of her. Little Sister spent months studying the 'anomaly' as she termed it, eventually chalking it up to some unforeseen feedback loop in the genetic memory. However it happened, this awareness seemed to take a life of its own as the concept of a massive giver of life and death in the sea seemed to preoccupy the thoughts of many hunters for generations to come.

And eventually, Leviathan passively absorbed symbolic language through the minds of her hunters even as Little Sister discouraged giving such high meaning as thought or mind-objects to the mere vocalizations of 'smart critters' as the hind-brain called her daughters when Leviathan became overly interested in studying their emerging society. Language was an old concept for Leviathan since she had noticed its presence in cetaceans long ago, yet actually learning one was a different experience entirely for her, and she enjoyed observing its slow development and ever-increasing complexity even to the point where Little Sister had to admit that they were capable of speaking to each other and transmitting thoughts to each other's minds, however imprecisely or inelegantly. And despite Little Sister's denigration of language as a concept, it was not until the language had matured as a particularly flexible and useful tool that Leviathan's war against the Two-legs of Central America began to take a decided turn in her favor.

It was in the lifetime of a particularly shrewd and cunning matriarch who won her seat of power by cleverly tricking her predecessor into overextending her reach and prompting a general vote of no confidence among the crowd of elite hunters with whom the chieftains had to curry favor. The new chieftain took her duty very seriously, having felt since a kit the powerful urge to slay their deadly species-enemy and grown up on stories of the past of the Great Mother in the sea. For time immemorial, the packs had lived in the forest and the Two-legs in their huts and great cities of stone. Though many uncountable had died, never had a Two-leg territory ever been vacated and hunters were constantly embattled merely to prevent the Two-legs from expanding their lands. Sometimes, they were lost regardless of effort or skill. The stalemate seemed eternal, even if some recent battles had more often been going their way.

The society was still arranged into a collection of packs which themselves revolved around breeding pairs, however, not all packs were created equally. For instance, each year, Mothers arrived on the beaches to whelp new hunters already full grown and ready for integration. However, despite the fact that they were often subtly more powerful or smarter than the average hunter, they were entirely ignorant of the ways of the society. Generally, they were dispersed and hazed, split up among the packs and treated as juveniles or prize mates at most. The newest matriarch had stolen one of these specimens over a year previously and taught her privately. They now shared a close bond and indeed, she was carrying second litter from her mate already. The matriarch was wise enough to understand that it would not be much longer before she would begin to feel the call of the ocean as they all eventually did.

Yet, this matriarch felt that there was still so much she wished to do in this world and more, the sight of her brethren being devoured by the large, blubbery Mothers who had spawned so many of them, left a faintly disturbed feeling in the matriarch's secret heart despite that being the way of things. She actually harbored a great fear of death, and this trait distinguished her more than anything else to Leviathan as her life's experience flowed past, distilled from a precious little genetic material which had not been digested along with the rest of her body. It occurred to Leviathan that although her little hunter had feared personal oblivion, in this surviving memory, she had a more enduring legacy than any other creature on this planet, even if her personal voice was indeed gone forever.

It was due to this fear of extinguishment and the desire to leave a better world for her offspring that this matriarch became determined not to simply maintain they way things were or even to prevent losses as many of the past chieftains had been preoccupied. Sacrificing personal safety and luxury (as far as the standards of hunters went), she used a mixture of bribes, flattery and intimidation to convince the other pack leaders to shift their secured fortress and to follow her to the front lines, to the edge of the domain of the enemy. There she watched, waited and learned.

Almost everything came down to language and this matriarch personally invented many new terms no one had heard before, enforcing the adoption of words and improved grammar by sheer dominance and force of will. Having won the absolute loyalty of her partner beyond her status of chieftain helped her with her goals because there was still so much that was not understood about their weaker, yet more numerous and crafty adversaries.

Over the course of the war, the outlying villages had become virtual death traps for their kind. There were many deadfalls and traps set specifically for hunters, and the Two-legs were vigilant at night when the hunters had the advantage. There were always guards set and weapons and fire made ready to drive even their ferocious packs back. Because the jungle did not provide enough food for all of the hunters, they were usually driven to periodically attack a village in a brute force raid which the Two-legs could never fend off entirely without casualties. The packs received food, but in the process, many died, though this too was seen as a benefit since there would then be fewer mouths to feed.

The new matriarch hated this system and she did not want to see any of her kits throw their lives away merely to reduce the hunger of the society. She knew there must be a better way, if only she could learn their enemy's weaknesses. But she needed more eyes than her own, and she knew this, which is why she needed information from other scouts and in as much detail as possible. The new words enabled this, enabled her other hunters to tell her about where and when and how. Only after beating and clawing the opposition into submission was she able to see the fallibility of their enemy.

At this point in time, the Two-legs had largely ceded over the surrounding jungle to the hunters. Only rarely did they come out of their fortified territories and then in large groups when they sought to claim new areas. Past chieftains usually thwarted the efforts, beating back the hunters to their walls and traps. These were seasons of plenty for the hunters, but they were few and far between. However, likewise, the hunters did not make big excursions into Two-leg lands, except when driven on suicidal raids and in their desperation and hunger; almost always the hunters merely charged into the Two-legs' waiting jaws, never actually seeking to win. The matriarch assured herself that this time would be different.

Due to the lack of two-leg activity beyond their territory, it was actually not as dangerous to be close by as many past chieftains had seemed to assume. The matriarch was already wise enough to know that distance did not guarantee safety and further more, she did not particularly desire safety for herself, not when she was already so old and had hungry offspring to feed. Through her own eyes and the words of her scouts, the matriarch learned of areas on the battle lines where the traps were fallen and neglected and the wood was rotten. Furthermore, she glimpsed for the first time that the line of fortification was not actually a line at all. There were breaks in the barriers between villages, narrow passageways that led into territories long unexplored. There was truly nothing at all containing the packs within their stronghold along the coast. It was a startling revelation for the matriarch when she was finally able to comprehend it. The following idea was another revolution, to strike the enemy where they were weak, rather than where they were strong.

What followed were several long seasons of campaigns wherein the hunters won far more success than they had known in generations. By now, a single hunter was much faster and stronger than even the largest Two-leg and had superior senses and stealth. Only by acting in concert and manipulating the environment did Two-legs maintain their overwhelming advantage. That and their tools of course, and the hunters knew about and understood tools and weapons in their turn, though they had little use for these. Bypassing the traps and breaking through weakened fortifications to attack from new directions brought some immediate successes and fed the packs in turn. However, that was only the beginning as the matriarch also understood enough that the opponent would adapt to her own maneuvers as soon as they were detected. The matriarch commanded her hunting parties to operate in as much stealth as possible and keep the Two-legs unaware of their movements. She also continuously changed their tactics, always striking from different areas and at different times. It took a surprisingly long time for the Two-legs to seem to realize that their protective line was able to be breached.

After a narrow escape from a Two-leg weapon, a sword composed of wood and sharpened flint, in which the matriarch's left ear became badly mangled, she developed an intense hatred for the Two-leg weapons. She began to have some small parties sneak into the settlements, not to kill, but to steal or destroy their killing tools, and later their tools in general. The maneuvers were hotly protested at first, and it took the matriarch and her spouse's combined power to force the fierce young hunters to comply with her will. The matriarch was already quite old and the yearning for the sea was a feeling she felt in her bones, a longing for the relief from her sore joints and other pains of her body. Only the fact that she was so far inland and her own personal will enabled her to resist the call for a time. She lived to see the first signs of the gradual weakening of their enemy, who were terribly weakened without their tools and could be slaughtered like their own livestock if the weapons could be raided in time with a larger killing strike. At other times, the humans worked frantically to replace missing weapons and other artifacts, a pile of which the matriarch had formed and slept on not because it was especially comfortable but because she understood the stolen items as a symbol of her victory and the flourishing of her kind.

Eventually, the chieftain succumbed to the genetic drive to feed herself to the beings who had birthed, if not her personally, their entire species. Her final doom came upon her with a combination of dread and feelings of religious awe. Because all of her information was still years out of date, Leviathan hoped that one of this matriarch's offspring had taken up the crusade and was leading it as well as her predecessor.

"She was a dangerous anomaly." Said Little Sister even as she finished streaming the long, vivid life to Leviathan.

The fore-brain was taken aback. "How can you say that? She led a marvelous life and made our first real victories against the Two-legs! She changed so much!"

"Yes, and that makes her dangerous." Said Little Sister.

"Only if you're a Two-leg." Leviathan scoffed.

"No." Said Little Sister with surprising firmness. "Not just to them." She paused before speaking, as if taking a breath, "You noticed her resisting my programming, didn't you? She lived far longer than she ought to have, nearly five years by my reckoning."

"Only a little while longer than usual." Said Leviathan, to whom the passage of years was seeming ever more brief.

"Nearly twice as long as usual." Said Little Sister. "And worse, she had many offspring as well, spreading her defective genes. I may have to release a genophage in the next generations of hunters to weed her pattern out of the population."

"Why are you so afraid of this?" Said Leviathan who was shocked and upset at the length Little Sister seemed to want to go to exterminate any lasting effect from this champion whose life she had just experienced.

"I can't have any daughter resisting her genetic programming." Said Little Sister with surprising force. "It would lead to complete chaos!"

"But she was winning!" Leviathan cried. "All the others had failed but she found a way to do something new, and it began to work, can't you see how much closer we are now to getting rid of the only other species we've encountered who has the power to thwart us? If anything, she should have lived even longer."

Even as she said that, however, Leviathan could feel the anger rising in her other brain, surprisingly hot because of how rare that emotion was for her. "That would truly be a disaster." She said darkly. And at Leviathan's question, explained. "None of our daughters truly age. Their flesh is as immortal as our own. I must trick their minds and bodies into believing otherwise so that they are more willing to abide by their instinct to give themselves up to be devoured. If ever a daughter resisted that, found out the truth, she would be beyond our power forever. That is the danger."

When Little Sister put it like that, it suddenly seemed like a much more serious problem. Yet, it was still hard for Leviathan to take completely seriously. Such a small thing it seemed to her, one rouge daughter, yet what benefit had creativity brought? The humbling of her long hated enemy! That definitely seemed worth the risk to Leviathan, however, it would be much harder to convince Little Sister of the same. And it did turn into a years-long argument between the two brains. Leviathan never managed to convince Little Sister to increase the independence or creativity of their hunters still further, but at least kept her from releasing her genophage to rid the entire population of the influence of the now long-dead matriarch's influence.