FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Leviathan: Chapter Sixteen

War's End

By Shalion

The lives kept rolling in and in even greater numbers as the population of hunters was able to grow, feeding themselves by finally preying effectively on Two-leg-kind for the first time in Leviathan's life. Yet the victories were not all one sided, and Two-legs proved to be even more ferocious when pressed. Thousands came from the cities to retake the depopulated villages, tall, alert warriors with weapons the hunters had never seen before. Leviathan's brood were driven back to the coast only for reinforcements and a new leader to skillfully devise ways to strike back. And truly, though the Two-legs seemed like an insurmountable enemy, so too was Leviathan's brood and not merely because their kind could spring forth anew from the ocean even if they were all wiped out. Ever the true weakness of the hunters was their food supply which frequently forced desperate acts from the hordes of hungry canine/feline analogs. But when they were reduced, they were much more effectively able to feed themselves from their ambushes and scattering of lucky and opportunistic kills. The society they had built was never fully extinguished, even as the Two-leg army filled the jungle with their camps and nearly extinguished them entirely.

But food was also a weakness for the two-legs. They could not remain in the jungle, whose non-insectoid occupants had long ago been devoured, for very long either, and the hunters were naturally hard to find. The army retreated, and Leviathan's children were once again left to their own devices.

At first, their decimated ranks were too few to do much besides harry and annoy the villages' rebuilding efforts. But their numbers grew swiftly both because of Leviathan's constant support and because they were designed to be fruitful themselves. Just a few short years passed before the situation was once again tilting in the hunters' favor. Then another army came and the cycle repeated, then again, and a fourth time.

For a time, Leviathan thought this was to be the way of things and made herself busy elsewhere, slowly covering the Pacific coasts of the Americas with her children and becoming ever more prosperous herself in the process. By this time she was in the early stages of war campaigns in the northern continent as well, though ever limited to coastal regions. There, the Two-legs seemed to find it easier simply to give way and move inland where the hunters did not follow, and without prey, their numbers could never rise to anything like the hordes of Central America.

So it was much to Leviathan's surprise and satisfaction when a fifth army did not come after all to drive back her children. The reason was not immediately clear, even with the addition of thousands of human essences now to the makeup of Leviathan's body for Little Sister to study. The Two-leg's inner lives remained largely a mystery, their memories not leaving much of an impression at all on the genetic information. Little Sister admitted finally that she would probably need intact brains, preferably from live Two-legs, in order to extract their personal experiences. However, some other less complicated puzzles came into greater clarity over time.

That language was the critical element of the Two-legs' success was an idea that became more irrefutable over time. Little Sister sought for alternative hypotheses for a time, mostly due to the fact that symbolic language had arisen organically among their hunters. Leviathan had suspected that this was the case despite the irony in seeking the Two-legs' secret weapon only to have had it already, albeit in a simpler and less flexible form. But eventually, even she subscribed to the idea, and once she did, some basic elements of the new language, along with some of Little Sister's own tinkering, began to appear in the newest models of hunters, reducing education time and stabilizing some elements of their society. But Leviathan was surprised to learn that the entire language could not be hardwired into their children.

"It would defeat the entire point of being to adapt and grow." Little Sister said, albeit hesitantly, and it was clear that she wished that all aspects of their daughters' lives could be under her control from start to end point. "This is like riding a breaking wave..." she reflected multiple times, unaware of her own dramatics. By contrast, Leviathan thought that she was more than happy to allow her daughters a measure of freedom. It certainly brought results and seemingly at little cost. After all, she had never been punished for allowing Little Sister her own independence.

When no army came to meet the hunters this time, they continued expanding, following on the heels of departing Two-legs and leaving behind stark, silent jungle for the most part. Nothing larger than ants or moths had survived the long years of occupation by hungry, ferocious omnivores. Behind the hunters, however, Leviathan was finally able to send up a new wave of plant and wood-eating offspring to begin harvesting the botanical bounty of the newly cleared up land. The campaign began to span a vastly larger area. Multiple chieftains were needed, and territories shifted constantly within the interior of Central America. It was not long before Leviathan's children managed to claim the narrowest strip of land and its beaches as permanent strongholds for the various daughter races. But cooperation proved difficult among the different breeds, especially in years when the hunters were pushed back and they were left starving with lumbering, bloated elephantine daughters still able to feast freely on trees and vines. Powerful instincts had to be distilled into everyone regarding kinship to avoid self-predation among daughter-flesh.

Despite complications like these, however, with containment gone, the Two-legs lost their ability to keep the wilds for themselves. Their power became only further consolidated around their cities and fortresses, sometimes pressed in on all directions by relentless and hungry hunters. Yet, the ability for the Two-legs to seal themselves within their own territory was formidable. It took years, but wooden palisades and eventually stone walls went up, dramatically reducing options the hunters had for stealthy raids. It did not seem possible to climb the walls and the entryways were all either sealed or heavily protected. Very seldom did the Two-legs venture forth anymore save with a well protected army and it became hard for the hunters to find enough food to sustain themselves. Leviathan, always more than a year behind present times, found it hard to react quickly enough to provide real assistance.

The pace of events seemed to slow as the campaign ground down to a war of attrition, the starving hunters of the silent jungle ever watchful for when the Two-legs dared to grow bold enough to try to reclaim their lost lands. Very few inspired champions arose among Leviathan's daughters anymore. It was a grim time for their society, and they took to praying to their god in the sea for succor for salvation. And Leviathan did hear them, but only years later when their lives were already done, their bodies rendered down into the fat that lined the great whale-shark's sides.

"What can we do for them?" Leviathan asked her other brain.

"Do?" she responded quizzically, "What is there to be done about them?"

Leviathan huffed. "They're cut off from their food source. They're dying."

"Yes, but the Two-legs are trapped and isolated. They cannot leave their strongholds, and if they ever do, they only feed our daughters. Isn't this what victory looks like?" said the hind-brain.

"Of course not!" Leviathan challenged. "Our daughters are hopeless and crying for us to help them!" Their voices, short, desperate lives with premature returns to the ocean to be devoured in failure, buzzed around Leviathan's mind like a thousand, thousand ghosts.

"Perhaps..." said Little Sister, the tiniest bit hesitant herself. "But the Two-legs in this area are contained, their threat nullified. That's what we've wanted isn't it? Our daughters are simply a means to an end."

"I... I'm not so sure." said Leviathan quietly. She was befuddled and more than a bit confused with her own feelings at this point, having now lived on a steady diet of stories of daring hunters for decades.

Little Sister easily sensed her unsureness. "Peace, Big Sister." she said soothingly. "Remember that all they are is an extension of our own flesh, nothing more."

"But they have their own voices now..." said Leviathan weakly. "And we could do more if we wanted."

"And unfortunate necessity for beating back a powerful opponent." said Little Sister ruthlessly. "I never wanted them to be as aware as they are now. They would not suffer so if that wasn't the case."

"But they are suffering!" Leviathan cried, reading again the countless lives she had absorbed, each one a story, even as they were stitched together into a grand weave in her mind. It all left an indelible impression on her.

"They suffer because you wanted this war of extermination in the first place!" said Little Sister, lashing the fore-brain with her thoughts, but also immediately regretting it for she could see the hurt they caused Leviathan.

"I know." Said Leviathan simply, and she did not remember when the old hate had left her, to become absorbed in the stories of her children. She felt instead a great sadness welling up from some unknown spring inside her, not from the loss of life, that was only an unavoidable aspect of all life (except for hers, naturally), but rather from pain and despair, both of the dead and those she knew were alive yet were unknown to her. To be born into a world of desperate hungry adults where nearly everything edible had already been eaten and the only food was locked behind insurmountable barriers, to lead a short, miserable life where one's purpose could not be fulfilled, that seemed like a crime, and Leviathan had no one but herself to blame for setting up these unforeseen circumstances. If only the Two-legs were not so resourceful, or if only it were not so costly to maintain big, hungry predators, if only a hundred different things. But in the end, it all boiled down to the same. Leviathan, regardless of her intentions, had brought about mass suffering of thousands of lives who she knew as intimately as it was to know another being, other than the unique bond she had with Little Sister and even that one was debatable. The dead held nothing back, they had only their pure selves to offer Leviathan, and it did not seem to matter much anymore that they were smaller, duller, ultimately insignificant creatures. The weight of their collective pain was unbearable for the vast world-eater.

After a long moment, Leviathan went on when Little Sister said nothing. "I know, and that's why I feel we must do something for them."

Yet even with Leviathan's clear emotional turmoil, the hind-brain's thoughts continued to feel hard. "If you wish to do something for them, then allow them to end."

Unthinkable. "And undo all of our work? Now? When so much land is ours and ours alone?"

Little Sister only gave a mental shrug. "Land which is growing more barren by the day as we harvest all of the tall trees for their biomass. It is so much easier to cultivate in the sea, I am honestly beginning to rethink the value of all the complications needed for life on land."

"How can you be so uncaring?" Asked Leviathan, trying a different avenue because she could not argue matters of math and efficiency with her counterpart. "You've distilled every essence and more that I have seen. You know their lives better than I do, yet you would have them continue in a starving world."

"You're wrong, Big Sister. I'd not have them suffer so either, but again, it is your desire to keep the Two-legs in check that keeps them there in that state. I would have them end peacefully."

"Yes, you would have them dead, all their voices gone save in our memory!"

"What better place for them?" said the tail heatedly, and sensing Leviathan's anger she added, "You're getting too sentimental about the voices of our daughters. Remember that they are tools." She emphasized the relatively new word for the Two-leg-made items. "Extensions of our will only. The only point to their existence is to serve and then return their flesh to us. Nothing more."

Leviathan felt subdued as she floated listlessly in the water. It was all true after all. Leviathan did not disagree with her other mind in the slightest. But the voices of her children continued to trouble her along with the continuing existence of the Two-legs. She wanted to do right by those whose lives had captivated her so that she had not felt the need to devolve for decades now. But she could not abandon her war now, not when victory seemed so close at hand.

"I can't." She said finally, "I can't let them go, and I will not stop until all life in these lands we can reach resides inside of me. I have to win against the Two-legs."

Little Sister did not reply at first, her thoughts spiraling in towards themselves almost as if in disappointment. Finally she asked, "Then you will endure?"

Leviathan surprised her other half by answering, "No."

"Then-?" Started the other mind, but Leviathan made herself clear.

"We will end this now and then they can all rest."

Little Sister's probing thoughts were bees around Leviathan's mind and though the head was more than a little worried that the tail would resist her latest whims, like always she accented. "As you wish, assuming you are willing to pay the price."

Leviathan was, but it would be only months later until she would feel the results of the quickening which occurred very shortly after this whole conversation.

*****

Over the prosperous decades of new settlement and colonization, Leviathan increased her average weight by nearly half and had more than doubled the flow of calories coming in annually compared to when she had first returned to the western hemisphere. Pound for pound, though, she had been putting on far more blubber than anything else, so at her fattest, she was now more or less resembling her older configuration when she had not even been able to remove herself from a tiny spur of rock. Leviathan had enjoyed the mere spectacle of being so astoundingly obese very much, not even caring overmuch that the thick blubber layer made it much harder to swim. But she would end up sacrificing a surprisingly large percentage of her earnings to spawn a new brood of super-sized daughters, super-sized at least in terms of land-dwelling creatures anyways.

The new breed was a living siege engine, all horns and bony plating in the front and easily as tall as an African elephant whose genetic code was prominent in the design. Their brains were not altogether very large, but they were imprinted with the basics of the symbolic language already and would instinctually follow orders from any hunter. They did not need to think for themselves and Leviathan was confident her marvelous children would figure out the best way to make use of their new weapon.

Having become so much larger in the past many years, Leviathan found it difficult to get anywhere near shore which necessitated an extremely short-lived breed of daughter to transport her siege weapons to the shore, one at a time, before feeding herself to a feeder whale only hours after delivery. This added to the unbelievable caloric costs imposed on Leviathan's body easily draining her of years of profits in a single season. And she wasn't done. She had to breed more siege daughters the next season and the season after that, there being no sense in moving piecemeal into the new strategy. But then finally, essences began to appear who had greeted the first of the new, giant daughters and, as hoped, quickly saw them for what they were: a gift from their goddess.

And so, armed with the weapon they needed to break down the walls keeping them from their prey, the surviving hunters redoubled their war efforts, slowly in the first year due to how many had died of starvation since their prey had locked themselves away, but later more vigorously as new pups and reinforcements from the sea bolstered their ranks.

Primed to believe as they were, it really did not take long at all to begin to work in tandem with the lumbering tusked and elephantine daughters. Their diet was identical to the tree harvesters, so they did not have to compete for food, and they obeyed orders given to them with an uncanny intelligence even if they never spoke themselves. Nevertheless, some hunters became quite attached to a particular behemoth, as if they were giant, armored puppies. As living weapons, though, the giants were unsurpassed, breaking wooden barriers effortlessly and smashing even stone with only minor delays. The real challenge came in keeping the giants alive once the Two-legs realized what they were up against.

The fifth army finally came, and this time they had eyes only for the hunter's prized new weapons. It took every cunning trick the brightest of them could come up with to keep even half of their giants alive once the Two-legs were set on their destruction. Even the fact that the giants' armored bodies made them nearly unkillable did not seem to be enough as a dozen or more Two-legs seemed willing to die for each of them as they shoved their weapons into the leathery gaps in the siege daughters' armor. Still, the hunters made the most out of the focused attention of their enemies, sneaking through the broken walls to invade even as sisters remained behind to guard their weapons. The war took on a frantic pitch that it never held before even as it exhilarated the natural born killers as they did what they were designed to do from the start, feasting as they had never known before on an abundance of Two-legs and their livestock.

Eventually, the last siege daughter was slain, but by then, it hardly seemed to matter. The walls were broken and the Two-leg territories infiltrated. Denizens of the once safe cities found their numbers reduced each night by unseen predators. It would be the work of a generation to oust the dangerous intruders and, for the first time, the collective spirit of the Two-legs did not seem up to the challenge. Quite suddenly, by Leviathan's reckoning, there were mass migrations from the cities north, fortified columns of people going and going endlessly, leaving the huge stone structures empty and abandoned behind with nothing but the howls of her daughters to fill them. It had cost nearly half of her precious supply of blubber, but she had finally won.

*****

Once, Leviathan would have viewed the enemy again migrating beyond her reach as a hollow victory hardly worth celebrating. Now, however, she felt overjoyed as she examined the last of her little daughters' life memories she would care about for quite a long time. "They're happy and terrified at the same time." Leviathan observed to her tail.

"They know that they've essentially accomplished what they were made for. Within the boundaries of their world, there are no Two-legs left and they sense that an end is at hand." Said Little Sister who had become more knowledgable of their daughter's makeshift religion as time had worn on.

"The end for them has already arrived surely." Said Leviathan, but the sadness she felt now was a mere undercurrent of what it had been a few years ago. "Their prey is gone now. There is nothing for them to live on."

"I am releasing a genophage in the next brood which will trigger their mates and any resulting offspring to return to us immediately." Said Little Sister and Leviathan realized that it was probably the best that could be done for them now that their purpose had been accomplished. It would have been better if Little Sister had somehow designed things a bit more elegantly and negated the need for years of time lag, but then they had never needed to retire an entire pattern of self-replicating daughters before. "All that they ever were or will be will soon be a part of us again." Said Little Sister and the words brought a measure of peace to Leviathan's raw nerves.

"A good memory." agreed Leviathan and could already feel her overworked mind compacting all the thousands of lives she'd experienced into a single knot she could place on her mental shelf, present, but not overshadowing her concerns any longer.

She swam aimlessly for a few days before reaching out for Little Sister again. "We've eaten all of the large creatures in the central part of the continent and the land wont support a big predator any longer, but we still need to keep the two legs out... at least until I've gotten all of the trees as well. And even then, the land ought to be used at least for grazing or whatever small crop remains."

"Are you sure you wouldn't rather just let the Two-legs have the barren ground back?" asked Little Sister, though her voice remained resigned.

Leviathan answered in the negative. "It is my land." She said firmly, but not in anger, not anymore. "And even after most of the trees are eaten, it will not be barren. Some growing things are bound to survive."

"Hmph." Little Sister snorted in Leviathan's mind, "Perhaps the Two-legs were onto something growing their own crops..."

"Little Sister." Leviathan intoned and let her impatience show on the surface of her mind.

"Very well, I'll save the thought for another time," hurried Little Sister. "As for keeping the Two-legs out, I believe my solution on the Splasher island will come in handy once again."

"You never told me what that was," said Leviathan flatly.

So Little Sister explained what she had done. The concept turned out to be simple enough for even Leviathan to understand easily. To keep Two-legs out, one simply had to make the land undesirable for them to live on. To that end, Little Sister had devised a crude, yet seemingly effective biological weapon.

Shown to Leviathan as a complete mind-object, Leviathan understood the daughter as a very tiny creature the size of a mouse and with a similar range of behaviors and food sources. The key difference was that the minuscule daughter secreted a poison designed from the thousands of collected two-leg essences to be extremely toxic and to persist through rain and bad weather. The poison coated the daughter's bellies in a thick mucous that left a trail everywhere they scurried, getting on all of the plants and drying into a waxy substance everywhere they went. Little Sister hoped that with the prevalence of dangerous poison all over the plants and soil of the land, the Two-legs would not bother returning to reclaim it.

"But how do we know it works?" Asked Leviathan. After all, it had been nearly as long since they had left the eastern Pacific since she had had direct intelligence from the old Splasher island, the only other place where they had cleared out the Two-legs successfully.

Little Sister gave a mental shrug. "I suppose time will tell."

Sighing, Leviathan left matters at that.

*****

It was only a matter of time before Leviathan could recognize herself as master of the western coast of North America and ofCentral America entirely. If there was any lingering trace of dissatisfaction over the course of the war, it waned entirely as the collected biomass of the former jungle found its way into Leviathan's body, glutting her thoroughly and leaving behind a vast rocky plain with eroding topsoil which blew into the oceans at either side of the narrow strip of land.

Leviathan spent several pleasurable years nearly too fat to move, missing the start of krill season by weeks due to her sluggishness and barely able to hunt the pink swarms at all, let alone effectively.

With more calories than she knew what to do with and a reduced demand for breeding, Leviathan's body became very spherical once again, swollen by blubber in every direction. The bases of her pectoral fins became swamped and crested over by rolls of layered fat and even her field of view shrank enormously as blubber bulged around her orbits. At one time, Leviathan developed a massive sunburn because unknowingly the round dome of her fat back had risen to stick out of the water entirely where the skin eventually dried out and cracked painfully. The burn ended up covering an area exceeding that of two football fields, but even that was not enough of a nuisance for Leviathan to consider growing out her body to match her swollen mass.

Unspoken, Little Sister let Leviathan indulge herself, even though at this point their fatness was actively contributing to an overall loss of calories from their ineffective feeding season. And eventually, Leviathan was so over-encumbered by excess blubber not even the prospect of endless krill seemed like a worthwhile activity.

"Will you not go north this year?" Asked Little Sister as the last day for departure came and went one year.

"I... don't think so." Leviathan said as she floated placidly in the water, her body resembling little more than a fat-filled orb the size of a small island.

"We'll miss out on several tons of food..." suggested Little Sister and it was obvious where she wanted to steer the conversation.

Leviathan side-stepped the issue. "I know, only it is bothersome to travel so far, and I have been traveling north for so long also..." A sudden idea occurred to Leviathan right then and there. She said, "I think I would like to travel south this year and see the rest of the coast."

This thought seemed to throw Little Sister off of her script. "Oh?" She asked, "South? Do you think we should begin our colonization there more earnestly?"

"Maybe." Said Leviathan coyly and she honestly was not sure. She just wanted to cruise for a while and not have to think about difficult things while she retained her self-absorbed mood for as long as possible. "We shall see when we get there." And there was nothing more to say on the matter.