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Act III: The Scourge

I began my works again with enthusiasm and redoubled effort. Deep inside my swollen midriff, my belly felt tight and congested with all the new daughters. I remembered the designs and the shapes of flesh that was most suited to the biome, but I still did not take any chances. I bred scouts to see and taste the land ahead of me and tell me of the things that lay on this continent, which I had not seen in so many long years and was now unrecognizable. And my daughters told me of tropical forests and jungles swarming with life great and small. They spoke of high mountains far to the west and a great twisting river to the north. The clime was hot and humid all year around and the rain fell frequently. It sounded perfect.

Of course, I had to shed a lot of weight to even enter the surf, and I did intend on taking up my residence on land again. I had fared far better on land and slow plodding migration than I had ever wallowing lazily in the sea. For years I incubated my new army. Aquatic dragons first to partake of the reefs off the coast where I made my initial residence, then soaring coastal raiders and fishers. I settled into each niche I was able to perceive like damp clay moving steadily in towards dry land. The fleshy blanket swaddling me receded, allowing my limbs to move once more. I was able to take up habitat in the surf, crawling along my wide belly, half in and out of the water. By then, my daughters were moving far inland, setting up a steady stream of nourishment for myself and the dragon ecology expanding around me.

I did not need hot bloods now to stave off the cold, but I retained the model of their life cycles. Unlike the place I had left, there were no creatures of size worth tracking down for me here. Sweet daughter flesh had to suffice to break the monotony of wood.

I clamored heavily ashore, pulling my heavy body with great rents in the sand and then the soil which supported me no better. Without effort, I could raise my head above the palms, even with my belly firmly planted in the turf. Movement was slow and awkward at first. Sometimes it took me a whole year to get to the next few trees, clawing at the ground and deforming it under my weight. By now, palm trees were beginning to become morsels. If I wanted, I could swallow it whole, but usually they were just a bit too long and I chomped them in two. The thick muscles lining either side of my gullet were thicker than the bodies of many of my daughters. My head alone dwarfed any of the ground animals that I found in this new land. For the first time, I was truly getting to appreciate my status as the largest living organism on the planet.

More weight fell from my bones and I was able to waddle awkwardly every couple weeks to a new batch of trees. They never lasted long enough. I could eat an entire stand of trees in a sitting, the trunks disappearing one after the next into my bottomless void, the cavity of my stomach now a large pond in its own right. I kept birthing new bodies to house my net, more now to improve mobility than any real need of daughters. The trees and the things that lived in the trees just never seemed enough to truly satisfy.

My daughters spread out far and wide from me. Their numbers were such that they would have quickly cleared the land if they had remained concentrated. Sea and land and sky they prowled, of many shapes and sizes and degrees of intelligence. I could not stand the silence of the air, so I made several smart daughters. I did not need them to hunt anything, but I was still very heavy and it was useful to have them around to clean my hide of dirt and insects and loose scales. My body servants were excellent at giving compliments and carrying conversation, but I wished they had a more independent streak in their thoughts. But then, perhaps it was their nature. I still had little control on the final result of the mind of a daughter. Sure, the structure of the brain was mine to manipulate, but the mind, and the composition of their essences I passed to them, that was always unique.

Before I knew it I had become successful in the bountiful place. I had groves of fatty daughters waiting their turn in the shadows of my claws. Even more than I wanted without utterly stuffing myself. At any given time, several dozen body servant clung to my hide, tracing up and down my length from my nose to the tip of my tail. Fishers fished and hunters hunted. Daughter flesh was so plentiful I could have easily started to bulk up again without wood at all. And I was not at all thin either.

I was pleasantly rotund, wide flanks and nicely sweeping belly, just below the level of my knees. My tail was thick and padded. I had to watch where I moved it. I was wont to slay several dozen daughters with it if I wasn't careful. Life was easy for a long while, but I wondered what to do with my bounty. I was already growing as quickly as ever.

And then I revisited an idea from long ago. A sister daughter. I delved into the project with vigor. There were many problems to consider. For starters, no daughter I had ever produced retained all of my properties. They aged and they could die from injury and they could not condense and fold the nets inside of them to the same extent that I could. I wanted another carrier for flesh and essence, but to perform, she would have to be very much like myself. So difficult.

I had to reflect on my very nature and the construction of my body. Not a small task as I was the size of a small hill and my flesh resolved itself to microscopic detail at every inch of me. I had thick bones and heavy muscles of the variety for sustained contraction. My gut was many chambered and I had four types of intestine, two smooth and two wrinkled. Everything about my physical self was designed for eating and moving large weights. That was a good enough place to start. However, I had to take a closer look at how my essences were tied into my flesh. Years I spent contracting and bending the voices inside of me, condensing them as densely as they would go. And I did see how they tied themselves to me, intwined with every cell of my body as each cell was interwoven into tissues.

I had found the mechanics of it, but I still could not pass along my own unique ability into a daughter's body. The best I could do was a facsimile. A developed talent for housing essence, but it was a formula that was finite. Still, I thought it would last a good long time.

I had to wait many months before I could begin, waiting until my womb was empty of the current batch of daughters. I'd have room for only one carrier daughter. The gestation was forty two months in coming, the time spent slowly waxing complex layer upon complex layer. It was the hardest thing that I had ever done to that point in my life. The muscles pounded inside of me when the time was right, my daughter was vast inside of me and yet still only a portion of her intended size which, in my ambition I had made to be even larger than myself currently. The physical pain was terrible. Fibers and membranes ripped trying to pass her and I bled profusely. I should have known better than to use the full volume of my womb. My uterus was very distended from manufacturing sometimes hundreds of daughters in various states of development, but all of them had been tiny compared to the scope of myself. My canal had never been stretched or even taxed much, not since the very early days. It wasn't prepared for this.

I was not afraid of dying since I knew I couldn't. However, my new and wonderful daughter almost did. And though I couldn't die, I became very ill and I required fluids to replace the countless gallons I was losing every hour my daughter refused to come forth. I was upset, sure that the 30,000 pounds of fresh daughter flesh which had cost me more than double that weight in metabolic cost to myself was about to be wasted. However, my smart carrier daughter intervened and managed to save herself.

Her head and long neck had come free into the air some time ago, but the bulk of her was crushed and stuck inside. My muscles had already been taxed to the physical limit and progress had halted with weak, stagnant contractions. My daughter might have turned her teeth on me, violently widening the passage at my expense. I might have done so as well, but such extensive damage to my body would have been excruciating and lamed me, perhaps for decades. Ah, but this daughter was much more creative.

Naturally her body was designed to be round and bulky like mine. However, she exercised control of herself, not at all unlike the control I had over my own body and she caused herself to flatten into a serpentine shape. Her pain was bright and magnificent as her bones creaked and folded at the shoulders and ribs, collapsing in on itself. She even attacked the bulk of her muscles and tendons, liquifying them to reduce her girth further. She wanted very much to live and no amount of pain was able to stop her.

Finally, she slipped out of me, slimy, and so weak she could barely breathe. Though she had succeeded in her first trial, she lay close to death for the extreme measures she'd been forced to take. I lay on my side, my strength hardly ample, but able to sense my daughter's misery. With a claw, I plucked up a waiting plump daughter and chewed her in my mouth without swallowing. With the blood and pulp of daughter flesh, I nursed this special daughter and slowly she regained strength, first reforming her body into the correct shape and then concentrating on growing as she was designed to as the days dissolved rapidly into weeks.

By the time my carrier daughter had gotten as large as I was, the area where I was living was a shadow of its former self. The seemingly unlimited supply of life that had existed when I found these shores had deteriorated into a near desert plain despite ranging about a wide area on my strong, stocky legs. I left small islands of jungle biome preserved here and there about the land, in hope of future recovery, but ever my eyes drifted to them and sometimes I could not stop from nibbling. Sometimes, when I was very hungry, I would half convince myself out of my conservative attitude, thinking that these preserves were more likely to collapse than spread and what good would they be then? The fact that I had reduced a wide swath of jungle to near desert prairie weighed less heavily on my soul. After all, the vast bulk of biomass was usefully stored between myself, my carrier daughter and my vast army of harvesters and all of the precious life essence was safe against death, indeed far more safe than they had been in their own flesh. Still, it was a bit depressing to look at the aftermath of my handy work.

Of course, my ample carrier daughter did not think as much. Although bright enough for conversation, she was ever slavish to her hunger, which at her current size had actually outstripped my own. It was a new thing to share, even yield a larger portion of wood and succulent daughter flesh to her than I took myself. I did not take to it readily and just now, with food becoming scarce, I could not even bring myself to eat within sight of her without growing violently jealous.

It was a secret shame for my carrier daughter was only performing the task I had designed her to do. I could scarcely imagine having to plant on myself the weight she had attained, I'd surely be reduced back to marine life if I had had to do so. She was my mouth and also a handy set of legs to share the burden of my flesh, at least until I had grown substantially more. Nevertheless, I could not help how I felt and she sensed it also. We ranged now at opposite ends of the desolation between us which stretched from the great river to the north all the way to the southern coast.

Despite the size of the cleared land and all the harvested life, I myself had become somewhat more lean over time. Between a growing frame and supporting an army of daughters numbering several thousand that needed constant replenishment, my metabolic needs could be barely met, though I ate many hours of the day and my stomach was vast in volume and could hold many trees at a time and a hundred of even the fattest daughters besides.

I was less than five miles away from the eastern coast when I decided the time had come to migrate north. The jungle had become a green crust on the eastern side of the continent, but it was regrowth from the time I had past along it while traveling in from the sea. I had not the heart to tax it overmuch. Already many forms of animal life that had once lived in this country were extinct in flesh, though in spirit they co-occupied my body along with the billions who had passed their life on to me.

I was thus very hungry as I came to the northern border of my wasted territory. I chewed thoughtfully on a dozen or so plump and ready daughters as I sat a good half a mile from the bank and looked across. My rump and tail was collapsing the ground under me while on my shoulders a host of flyers clung to the scales and waited with patient anticipation. They had been out of work for a while now and had been forced to resort to eating a few of their own to sustain their bodies. The sensation was like having a shaggy coat of fur as the wind sometimes caught their wings unexpectedly and they tugged where they grasped scales fully as as large and their own bodies.

Away beyond the horizon I could feel my carrier daughter making her way north. She was moving slowly, glutting herself on the more plentiful western border. She was also markedly obese despite her growth which, as an adolescent was several orders above mine. Against my wishes, she had been clearing the land through the topsoil, leaving not a trace of life in her wake, all things flowing into her eager maw. I had scolded her on many an occasion, trying to make her mindful of future need when we would eventually return to these shores, but she paid me no heed. "I shall have grown old and you eaten me by then, mother." she would tell me, "It is no concern of mine what grows or does not after I leave and I am hungry."

She had a point. Despite my best design, she could not hope to live forever and eventually a time would come when I would have take her flesh upon myself and make a new carrier, or perhaps more besides. And eventually, I knew, a time would come when such carriers were no longer necessary, when I could reach my head to the sky and my feet would shatter the earth.

But for now, I sat and stared across the wide river, its length across was like a sea and even from my vantage, I could only just see the line of green on the horizon. Richer lands. At last the voices of my hungry daughters on my back and the ground around me and those who had swam upstream from the coast besides urged me forward. My greedy, disobedient carrier daughter was less than a day from her own bank, her own army of hunters and harvesters attendant.

I slid in up to my chest on the muddy bank, swimming before I even reached the water. Only with great strength did I heave myself forward and the river became brown with muck as I displaced many tones of soil into the current. Feeling my feet leave the bottom and become buoyant, I began to paddle slowly to the far shore and the only hope of satisfying my endless hunger.

The country beyond was similar to the one I had devoured, if slightly moister and less palatable. Green vines and kudzu and wide leafed plants were more common and the tasty dense hardwoods more scarce here. The animals were also not quite as large and all of them were shy and secretive. It was not easy for my air-bound hunters to reap large quantities of animals and they had to be made smaller to cope with the canopy. Regardless of the difficulty, I did well here for a time as did my carrier daughter far away, though she continued to recklessly clear the land wherever she went.

I became increasingly sour with her disregard for my concerns, her arguments of it being "against our nature" to spare life in our path and that I was being silly and "overly compassionate." "The real compassion is in saving their essences." she told me, "Their flesh means nothing in the long run and when they die, their essence is lost. Only our flesh really matters."

Some part of me wanted to be convinced, but another wanted to scold her harshly. But of course, what could I do from so far away, save deprive her of daughters and even then, she might only get less fat. She would continue her deforestation regardless. I settled myself with leaving behind larger islands of life behind me than I would have otherwise as I zigzagged slowly across the country. I considered what I might do when I eventually met my recalcitrant carrier daughter again. I might have to kill her if her shocking disobedience continued in my presence. I sighed, what a waste that would be.

I made my way north to the coast then west and back south again and again eating the jungle away as I went. Sadly I lost much of my precious fat stores, supporting such a large population of daughters to sustain both myself and my carrier. I became unbecomingly lean, my belly hanging well above my knees and my profile a concave line from shoulders to hips, curving ever so slightly inward. I felt practically wasted, though I still had all of the reserves I really needed, they just weren't limitless. But I could not starve myself continuing with this reckless production inside my belly.

Fortunately I was saved a tough decision when my carrier daughter informed me that she had attained her full size. I was pleasantly surprised for she had grown more rapidly than I had anticipated. Although perhaps the cause was obvious. My daughter was perhaps a little disappointed at revealing this. "I have no more growth inside of me." she remarked sadly. "I shan't be able to hold all the flesh I consume from this day forward."

It felt a little strange comforting my daughter whose greed outstretched my own if that was possible, but I told her, "Do not be disappointed, fair daughter. Your task is accomplished and you should have fulfillment in that, just like any other daughter." Feeling somewhat merciful, I added, "And you may still fill out your frame some, though know that I expect you to continue to move your weight great distances over land until you become old and need to be eaten."

My daughter fell silent and I could not read her thoughts clearly, a drawback of the independence I'd given her. "As you wish mother."

It was only a year later when my carrier remarked that she was feeling "rather heavy" and that she would migrate north to where the land was narrow. "I shall wait for you there and we will travel to the north half of the western continent together. I shall be able to feed myself."

The last statement meant that she no longer needed a host of daughters, save for about a dozen body servants or so to tend to her hygiene. It did startle me a little, but if she were indeed at the limit of her strength already, then she did not need so very much food to sustain herself. Why, even at her present size, she might sustain herself indefinitely on a modest forest if she did not seek to increase her flesh. The reserves I knew fiercely clung to her from reports of migrating daughters as I ate them would support her without eating a journey around the globe twice over. I had nothing to worry about for her sake, even if her wish for isolation seemed extremely odd and I would hear nothing from her or her subsidiaries save mind-speech until I did come to the straight at the middle of the continent.

Decades past as I moved westward and my fears subsided. My carrier daughter continued to speak and keep my company and remarked that she was getting along fine in her new environment, having cleared a large patch of land and set about changing the terrain to more suit her liking. Though the life now she was full grown and too fat to safely accumulate any more flesh was "dull" as she described it.

I wondered what she meant when she talked of moving the earth and digging out large cavities in which to lie. But of course she could spare such luxury now that she was at ease. I did not understand it myself because I could never be at ease, but for a daughter, I supposed such liberty might be taken. I did not bother to remind her to converse life in her territory for I knew it would not be heeded in any case and with her diet restricted for fear of immobility, she could not do so much damage as previously.

Jungle fell before me and grass rose in its place. Adaptable animals flourished as more specialized ones fell prey to daughters and vanished into the caverns of my body. I continued to grow as always and more, I replenished my fat reserves more to my liking, as I ate of daughter flesh plentifully and did not have to support such an army of daughters. Sometimes, when wildlife was ample in an area or my grazers very successful, I would glut myself on daughter flesh, making perhaps a quarter mile forward into the jungle or less. Daughter flesh was rich and nourished me greatly, setting my mind at ease again.

At length, I hiked smoothly up the flat countryside, not yet so heavy as to waddle. I was backtracking from the west, making myself to the straight where my carrier daughter waited. I walked on an empty stomach, dreaming eagerly of the riches in the north. My flesh glided thickly around me as I moved, a pleasant burden. Where I walked, a shadow fell across the land, a moving hillside clad in brown scale. I was looking forward to laying my eyes on my daughter for the first time in over a century since we parted to avoid me slaying her out of jealousy. I was not quite expected for what I found.

There was my carrier daughter plainly. She was as large as many other features of the land itself. When she rose, dirt fell from her in great clumps and a vast depression was visible under her. She walked over gaily to meet me though it took a good two hours for us to meet after seeing each other initially, so great was the distance.

I'd forgotten how large I'd designed her. In some part of my mind, I had actually expected my growth in the interval years to have brought me close in stature with her. However, when we met, my head barely rose above her chest. If I reared up, I could just set my chin on the tops of her withers. Not only was she much larger in stature than I was, she was amazingly obese as well. Her rotundness lent the image of a mountainside in front of me, if she stood too close all I could see was a wall of smooth brown scale and that was all that I saw as she loomed over me and placed her heavy head upon my back. I felt the ground give way under my claws for the weight.

"Do you like it?" she said excitedly. "I've been training and I think I have been able to increase my size a little."

"You are perfect in every way, my daughter." I said, looking up into her face, seeing a few lines at the corners of the eyes. She was not yet middle aged for her kind. I still struggled to believe that such an enormous being had come out of me for all I knew intellectually the intricacies of her body. "Now, let us continue journeying to the north. I am hungry and a thousand daughters besides."

I looked to the ground, saw her plump scales sagging well below the ankle and then around to sides which swelled into a far horizon at either side. She was almost too wide to walk around. I cleared my throat with a sound that knocked several stones loose from a near hillside underfoot. "Oh, sorry, mother." started my heavyset offspring. She looked almost at a loss and then began to carefully sidestep to the west as I angled myself around her. Her bulk all shook with slow waves like ocean tides. Nestled into folds at her shoulders I saw some elderly looking body servants. I frowned, thinking I should have sent her new ones long before now. I simply quickened myself and let the thought go.

It took a while to walk around my daughter's vastness though she was slightly stouter and shorter of tail that I was. Her flanks bulged impossibly outwards, rounded with more than just fat. It did seem that my daughter had worked on increasing her bulk despite the fact that her body refused to grow any larger. That was right and good, though I would have to consider birthing a second carrier if the land ahead proved as rich as that past.

Slowly, quite slowly, my daughter turned about and began to walk in my wake. The depressions her feet made in the earth were twice as deep as my own. As I walked, I studied the handiwork of my daughter. With her great claws and strength, it seemed that she had molded the land all around to her liking and she readily explained it all to me.

"There was once a large stand of trees there." she said, "I ate them up pretty fast and replaced them with a nice soft mound for lying on. and over there, I shifted a hill aside so I could have a better view of the ocean..." and on and on it went, my daughter pointing out details until I was quite sick of hearing it all.

"That's all fine and good." I said exasperated, "But you shall be traveling with me now and there will be no time for such niceties. Besides, clearing the ground and shifting the earth will delay eventual regrowth and where would we be then? Me skin and bones and you long ago eaten before your time."

My daughter paused in her step, I could hear it because her momentum drove her fore claws into deep rents in the ground. After a long pause, about an hour, she asked rather quietly, "Mother, what shall I be doing now that I am following you again?"

"Doing?" I asked greatly surprised. I was so surprised that I fumbled for an answer. "Why, you shall be carrying, just as you have been. I will not permit you to get so fat as not to walk, but other than that, you may eat to sustain yourself and when I have need of your flesh, or you get too old, that will be that."

My daughter was silent again, even longer than last time so that I thought the matter settled. But then she spoke again. "Is that all I am? Just a big tank with legs?"

That shocked me so much that I stopped. I had to catch myself as a particularly loose patch of soil collapsed under my right foreleg. I wanted to tell her yes, but somehow I thought that might worsen the situation. Instead, I asked, "What is troubling you daughter? Are you not pleased with the role I have given you?" I thought I might decrease the relative brain size of the next generation of carrier then.

"I..." My daughter hesitated, her thoughts feeling hot and incomprehensible despite the close proximity. "I was pleased, greatly pleased for the longest time. But now I think I should like to do more than simply be."

"Oh?" I asked uneasily, disliking this independence more and more by the second. "And what more would you like to do?"

"I don't know!" she shrieked suddenly, accompanying her thoughts with a loud bellow from her mouth. The ground shook with the force of it and waves started in the ocean not far away. "You created me, but you gave me only as much purpose as a plump one. Why did you give me a mind if you intend for me to do nothing with it?"

Then I realized her pain. Of course, to be conscious to the same extent, or nearly so, as myself and yet to have nothing to look forward to but reintegration at the end of a long life, if she were lucky. I realized that perhaps it was I who was in error after all. "I am very sorry if you feel you are badly created, daughter. If you wish, I may eat you and try again, though..." I looked her up and down, "It may be rather difficult, given your current size."

My daughter's face, nearly as large as my forequarters, blanched. Fear, revulsion. What was this response? "I, I do not wish for that." said my behemoth daughter. She was now looking uncertain, almost as if she would like to go away, though of course, there was no where for her to hide a body like that of a large hill. "But if only I could do something useful again."

I was very worried now. Could it be that my daughter did not wish to rejoin with me? That was very wrong and I would need to see the extent of her perversion later. But right now, I could afford some leniency. "You are already doing me a useful thing, daughter and I can think of no other task for you."

But she protested, "I could..." She hesitated, obviously thinking very hard. "I could hunt for you, or bring you trees."

I nearly laughed. "You cannot hunt tiny beasts, you could not even pick one up between your claws. And I have no need of anyone to bring me trees, trees will wait."

"Then I can scout for you, across distant lands." said my daughter more firmly, setting the great brows of her eyes.

"Flyers will scout more easily than you and I can eat them and make full knowledge my own. You can only speak to me."

"Then... Then, I could travel to another continent for you! There's no sense in sending flyers that far." said my daughter, a fierce light entering her eyes

"There is no sense in sending you either. What should you do there, tell me what the trees look like?" I lifted my head grandly, "I have visited all the the lands of the earth at least once in my life and there is no use in telling me about places far away when I am busy eating here. They may change greatly in the time it take me to come eventually to them."

My daughter sighed miserably, the bellows of her lungs like a hurricane across the dry ground before her. "I wish only to be more than a sack of meat, waiting either for the end of my life or else a time when we are starving and you need to eat me."

She sounded wretched, but I could only wonder at such bizarre thoughts as had entered her head. I snorted, signaling that I was at an end of discussing such a silly matter. "I can only offer you the life you were born to live. It is up to you to find satisfaction in it." And with that, I began to walk again. After a long wait, my carrier daughter followed.

At first the land was plentiful as it had been in the south. Though the land was so narrow I could walk almost directly northward, stripping the land from coast to coast. But then the land spread and we had more area to cover.

My strange giant of a daughter remained despondent and offered conversation only when I started it. The amount she ate now was a fraction of what I was eating so I did not mind having her close by anymore, but slowly she drifted away anyways as we gained more space to roam.

I tore my way ferociously through the jungle, leaving my customary patches behind me. My daughter did nibble at these at time, especially when she was lagging behind, but she ate only enough to sustain herself. However, I did recommend that she perhaps fast for a time as her rate was so slow as to be almost distracting. After that comment, however, she caught up the miles between us rapidly. She'd only been dallying out of depression. Such a strange daughter.

And my feelings toward her did shift over time as I came to know her strangeness. I questioned her about her fear of being eaten, but she deflected my questions when she could and gave me insincere answers when I was blunt. To question her loyalty was nonsense, but I could not help but be concerned about how she might react when it did come time to claim the flesh was was holding for me.

I continued to bulk up. When I had become slow in my steps as to be almost intolerable in walking the distances from tree to tree, I quickened another carrier. I did decrease certain parts of the brain and reinforced her nervous system with thick nerve bundles at different places to compensate. I hoped that she might be more docile and less anxious when it came for a long wait after she was grown. Of course, I decreased the size she would take up in the womb. She filled only half of it this time and should be much easier to pass. She would grow to even larger stature than my current carrier though.

My large daughter did take an interest as I brought forth the one who was to be her peer. She sniffed carefully and from a safe distance, stretching out her neck as to not accidentally squash her. I told her that this new one was to surpass her in size by half again her weight.

"She is tiny to have so much growing to do." My daughter said looking away now.

"And yet, with time, she will do it. Perhaps you will live to see her at her full size, if the land remains wealthy."

My daughter only grunted acknowledgement. Then, as this new carrier began to eat, thinking thoughts only of hunger and pleasure at eating, the older one said, "I hope you have not made her as aware as I am."

I snorted. It was the sort of biting talk she was wont to do now, forcing me to talk of her as a 'mistake.' I was feeling churlish enough to answer in the same tone, "She has all the brains she needs to enjoy her task. I think she will be rather relieved to keep her flesh warm at the end of her growth as well. Not at all so restless or prone to complain."

My daughter turned away disgusted. "Well, I hope that you are happy with your dimwitted meat sack then." Then she plodded off a mile or so and threw herself down to sulk. I felt the shock of it traveling through the ground where I lay. I sighed and shook my head slowly. Whatever was I to do with my recalcitrant daughter?

After that, my elder carrier began taking up the strange habit of conversing with the other daughters. I have no idea why she did so as most of them were not so bright as to put words together as opposed to diffuse, raw emotion and they were intent on their work regardless. But she tried anyways and I believed she did it only to spite me and avoid conversation. I grew almost so that I simply wanted to be rid of her presence, but the only way to do that would be to eat her and to eat her now would have been a waste.

Despite the disharmony between me and my estranged daughter, we continued to pick our way north. My young carrier ate with gusto and grew tremendously on beasts and plant matter and then daughter flesh and wood. Slowly I grew out the army again as her needs increased and I stopped putting on weight at a point when I was very nearly as fat as my elder carrier. The old jealousy came unbidden again as she ate ever increasing quantities of food and I had to send her away from me to another part of the country with a contingent of daughters to support her.

"Are you so weak that you can't control yourself?" asked the elder carrier as she lurked some distance behind me.

The disrespect was like a slap to my face. "How dare you speak to me like that!" I growled.

But my huge daughter just smirked. I was larger now, but I still hadn't nearly her size. "But it's true isn't it. You would eat her on the spot for taking your food. You're as helpless to hunger as she is, and I ever was."

"That is enough out of you!" I scolded her. "I would eat you right now if I didn't want to waste all that flesh."

"The flesh, the meat. That's all it is ever about with you isn't it?" my daughter sneered. She gestured to her huge frame. "When do you think its going to be enough? Will you have to swallow the ocean to be at peace?"

"When it comes to that, yes." I said with all frankness.

My daughter shook her head wildly, the sound it made in the air was akin to tiny thunderclaps. "I think you're crazy. You might as well talk about eating all the air and all the land. Eat until there's nothing left of the planet. And even if you did, even if that was possible, what would you get? There'd be nothing left!"

"That's the idea." I said to my daughter, as if the fact should have been as clear as the nose on her face, which it should have been.

Slowly my daughter shook her head and then her rump sank to the ground, belly colliding heavily with the earth as well like the strength had gone out of her. "What are you, mother?"

I rolled my eyes, the perversion was deep indeed if she asked such a question of me. "I am you and you are me." I said to her. "And I am the destroyer. I am the period at the end of the song. No more, no less."

My daughter snorted looking more confused than anything else. I had nothing more to say to her. I only hoped that I had done enough to prevent such a defection in my new carrier daughter and that perhaps need would come sooner than expected for my elder daughter's flesh.

My elder carrier tagged along at my heels like a downtrodden dog as I ate my way northward. She barely spoke to me now, keeping her own confidence. I did notice however, that in her speech with the other daughters, she occasionally lured one out and ate her, despite the fact that she did not particularly need the nutrients. I was ready to forbid her should she start eating into my supply and growing beyond her ability to carry herself, but she only snared one now and again. I could make no sense of it, save that she seemed to prefer the flyers. No major loss.

Then, at last the day came that the reconnaissance changed. Flyers were always being sent ahead to scout the lay of the land and determine the best course of migration. But today, they reported to me that the jungle was nearly at an end. I'd known of its coming and dreaded it, but beyond was a thick scrubland and scattered forests which should sustain me. The different news was that at the end of the scouting range, the scrubland gave way rapidly to desert. The desert extended for a huge distance to the north, the only vaguely hospitable land lay far to the east, towards where my young carrier daughter was.

It was depressing news, though I knew that the rich jungle could not last forever. I thought initially that I might have been too hasty in making a second carrier, but then I glanced back at my skulking daughter and thought that perhaps this was not all bad. She was clearly miserable. Perhaps if I summoned my new carrier back, we might eat her fast enough that the meat would not spoil before we finished. It might mean putting on altogether too much weight for a time, but as adaptable as I was it was not an impossible strain for my body.

As if sensing my thoughts, I found my large daughter looming like a mountainside behind me. "Hello mother." she said when she saw that I'd seen her. I said nothing, instead turning my head lazily back around, thinking how best to butcher such a massive body.

My daughter spoke again, startling me, "Mother, I caught a scout today and she showed me many interesting things. Did you know that the land become quite barren not very far ahead?"

I was pretty much forced to speak now. "Yes, I know. I shall face hardship for a long while, unless there is better land to the north or else I shall be forced to cross the ocean again."

"In other words, it is likely that you will need my flesh before the end, especially if you want to keep your new carrier's growth on track."

What was this tone to her voice? It made me feel uneasy. "That is probably true... But perhaps not for a while yet. I shall not need so many daughters in the wasteland and I can cut down on them first. They are more expensive per pound than you are."

"Yes, but you'll want to hang on to your new carrier and she'll be needing quite a lot of nutrition to keep her growth on track. You wouldn't want to stunt her would you?" I raised an eyebrow at her, but her eyes seemed strangely distant. "Oh, and you need to keep growing as well. We mustn't forget that. You'll always keep growing until you are large enough to swallow the sea."

Her tone was bitter and I felt that there was something terribly wrong with this whole situation. "Daughter, are you feeling quite w-" I started and then something huge and heavy slammed into my back, throwing me to the ground and shoving a hillside's worth of dirt up behind me.

I realized belatedly that she had struck me with her tail. "Daughter! You've gone mad!" I shouted in my mind as I struggled to rise. Inside of me, I felt several fragile daughter lives wink out and fade from the impact.

"You are the one who is plotting to kill me!" cried my huge daughter and she stepped up to loom over me before I could rise. She then laid her forepaws on me and pressed down with awful weight. I groaned. "You are going to kill me, either now or out in that desert with your new favorite." She raised her right foreleg and then slammed it painfully into my neck. The heavy bones cracked microscopically for the stress.

"It is not death!" I cried, trying to speak the plain truth to someone who was clearly mad. "You shall simply become part of me again." It was fortunate I did not need to vocalize to speak, she was pressing down on my windpipe so hard that some of the thick membranes ruptured and began to bleed.

"I shall disappear!" she cried back and I felt hot drops of tears striking me, the size of small boulders. "As myself, I shall be gone. Nothing is left of my mind afterwards."

She kicked me in the belly and rolled me up and over the hill that had formed when I was thrown. The rest of the daughters gestating inside of me were lost. The pain of it was awful and I bled from the mouth and the uterus. Behind my daughter rose very high, forepaws on the small hill, her eyes flashing. I still hadn't wrapped my head around the concept of defending myself from her. It was as if my left arm had rebelled and begun to slap me. "What is a mind?" I said, "brain tissue and nerves? The important parts of you live on. The only way you can avoid death is through me."

But there was no convincing her. "You are wrong. The only things you are saving are the bits and pieces all mixed together and jumbled up, meaningless without the whole. There is no thought to the essences. You are the only one who survives while you murder billions."

I shook my head. She was already stepping down. This time, I heaved with my tail and my back and slapped her a blow across her face. She seemed stunned, but more from surprise than pain. I managed to get unsteadily to my feet in that time. clawing at the ground, I sank in more than I usually did. Around us, echoes of the blows we'd made were coming back from distant mountains.

My daughter smiled and licked her bloody chops. "But you are wrong about me escaping death, mother. I think there is another way out for me."

I stepped back from her hulking mass, jerking as my hind foot found a wet ditch behind me which promptly crumbled. "If you believe that then you are truly lost."

I gave another exploratory slap of my tail, but she saw it coming and ducked her head. In response, she stepped ahead and swiped at me with her own. It was wide and slow enough that I twisted myself to avoid it. However, my hind foot was rapidly sinking into the ground, apparently in the soft silt of some stream. I got a backhanded blow from her tail as I extricated it and set the foot on more solid ground. That blow broke my jaw in two places and fractured an orbital. My face began to swell.

I gasped in pain and my daughter spoke again. "I've been thinking about it for a very long time. I think that you are not so very different from me. I think that your flesh might not be so different from daughter flesh either. What might happen if I were to eat you? Might it be that all your knowledge, all of what makes you you would transfer to me? Might I become deathless and able to beget my own daughters?"

I shook my head. "You cannot."

My daughter shrugged massively. "Well, I'm willing to try. I really don't see what I have to lose." She came at me with speed which was visually slow, but with unstoppable momentum. I moved, but I was not fast enough. Our flesh collided with a sound like thunder. Scales shattered and the shockwave past through my body, more than I could take. my hind feet dragged over the ground, sinking deep into the turf for the weight and then I was off my feet, only one claw grasping uselessly at the ground as I tumbled down onto my side. The impact was huge and dirt was forced out from around me rising in a dense, obscuring cloud. I moaned and tacked up more hurts: three broken ribs, twelve ripped tendons, spleen bruised, liver partly severed. I knew I couldn't die, but that didn't mean I couldn't hurt. And then new pain blazed forth as my daughter lowered her head and sank her fangs into my exposed abdomen. She bit through the scales and tugged hard, shaking her head until the flesh gave. I bellowed and thrashed her with my tail and hind legs.

I kicked her solidly in the face, leaving several grooves of red, bleeding flesh rent on her snout. Then I bashed her shoulders with the tail and forced her back.

"What you wish cannot come to pass." I said, struggling to rise. "And you cannot kill me."

"Oh?" answered my daughter smugly. She still gripped the limp hunk of flesh in her teeth and she flipped it up and swallowed the several hundred pound mass. Gristle stuck in her teeth and my blood dripped down her chops in a few dozen messy trickles. Then she licked her lips and smacked them noisily. "You are just flesh and blood. You do not even taste different from daughter flesh after all." She braced her shoulders aggressively, claws disappearing below the surface of the earth. It was impossible to see anything else behind through the thick dust.

"I am much more than flesh and blood." I said as she charged me again. But her weight was irresistible and I was again knocked down. There was even more dust and my blood fell and formed black streams on the ground below us. Her claws raked me and I honestly did not put up much of a fight. I did not honestly know how when push came to shove. I bled and the strength in my body went with it. With my feeble struggles, my daughter turned her nose again to my belly and ripped it open further. She penetrated the hide and then nosed into the fat layer under that. I was bleeding profusely now and hardly had the strength to lift my tail. So much blood spilled out of me that it drowned the land. There was a lake at my back and the water was displaced by the thick blood so that it floated atop and then was spilled out completely. My daughter tore through the fat and found my abdominal muscles. It hurt worse than anything else I knew when she bit through these, but I had stopped resisting, resigned to my fate.

The organs spilled out suddenly and I could feel them tumble onto the ground where my daughter, in her excitement trampled them. My vision began to go so I closed my eyes. The last thing that I heard my daughter say to me was, "You'll see mother, You'll see."

I saw flashes of light and patterns as my brain became starved for oxygen, but I paid no attention to these. I was focused not on my impending physical death, but on the myriad structure of tangled light inside of me. I had always been the structure on which the web of light was built, but in a way, I also was the web, and the web could support me, at least long enough to make a short trip.

My daughter ate of my body with the greed of her youth, that huge stomach not having filled its true capacity in almost a century. She was also eager to get as much of me into herself before the life ebbed away. And she was right in one thing, All the billions of essences stored up inside my body was finding their way into hers, pulled along like one corner of a fishing net. I could feel her excitement at that, she felt energized and more aware, almost as if she were drinking of a font of pure knowledge and information. She ate even faster, tearing into my body with a zeal she hadn't shown in years My blood pooled around her until she was stilling in a small black lake. She was no longer bothering to swallow.

I felt squeezed as if through a narrow tube, half the golden web was inside my daughter. But the web did not like being in two places at once. Like a drop of water, it sought to rejoin itself and so it rushed into my daughter's body. She gave a gasp and a splutter, entrails falling from her bloodied snout. Then she became afraid. She was slowly becoming aware that she was not alone in her own body.

I stretched myself out like a yawn, very relieved that I was, in fact, still alive. This of course had never happened before, and I could not be sure of the result. I saw through my daughter's eyes my body, warm and steaming but very much dead now, or at least as dead as it mattered.

"Mother?" my daughter thought anxiously as I continued to stretch into every pore and particle of this body I now inhabited like a snug sock.

"Yes, my daughter." I said, still stretching.

"Mother, I cannot move my body." She was very afraid now, shrinking back from my expanding front.

"That is because this flesh was never yours. It is mine." I tickled my way up the brainstem to where my daughter lived. I couldn't very well leave that alone, not if I truly wished to live. Because my daughter had never been truly part of the essences she housed inside her own body, she move anywhere else, she did not even understand what was happening.

"Mother, I am afraid." she thought and desperately tried to move, but of course there was nowhere for her to go. She was only a daughter.

"Don't be." I said and sighed with a great exhalation as my net spread to my full dimensions and settled. I twisted my head around, did a double take. My poor foolish daughter was gone. I rolled my eyes and then bent my head to eat.

I had a lot of work to do after that. I had to summon my carrier daughter from afar to help me devour my former body. Also, there were a lot of internal changes and configurations that needed to be adjusted before I could quicken myself again. I was sore for several weeks and I wished I had not kicked my face so hard. Now I had three scars on my nose. However, on the positive side of things, I was now a great deal larger than I was previously. In fact, this was a much better solution to the crisis I had been thinking of before my daughter attempted to kill me. There was not so much meat to eat on my old body and also, I had a nice large stomach volume, double the volume of what I knew previously. It felt good and empowering to be able to eat so much. Although, my womb was underdeveloped, nearly fifty times smaller than what my smaller old body had had. That would be a disadvantage later.

However, now that I knew for sure that I could pass into a daughter body without harm, I found myself with an exhilaration I had never known. I was no longer bound to one shape, able to design others but never myself. Oh sure, the process was painful and not for the faint of heart, but already I knew that I could and would make a new body that would suit me perfectly.

My appetite proved such that I almost didn't need my carrier daughter after all, however, I was left lying in a great pool of blackened congealed blood and all of the flesh that I had been eating over the past couple weeks had had to go somewhere. It weighed heavily on me so that if I tried, I could only take shallow breaths under the weight of it all. I didn't bother most of the time.

Now I was stuck for a long time. But seeing as I had little to look forward to besides a long trip through a desert, it did not bother me overmuch. Over time, my army of daughters shrank to a pittance, but not through lack of trying. My uterus was pea-sized compared to my old generous volume and I could not manufacture enough daughters to fight attrition.

Despite my best efforts to indulge myself, the area around me became red stained and arid. It was the iron and the salt I knew, but there was nothing to be done about it. My carrier daughter proved to be of some use. She grew to terrific size and was able to nurse maid me as I lay immobilized and too heavy to move. When she was strong enough, she would roll me over and clean me with her mouth. She was typically quiet and tended to complain of the lack of food when she did speak, but over all, I supposed she was an improvement over the last one.

I had just a couple dozen daughters in all when I felt up to crawling a few steps towards the north. They clung to my hide, performing delicate work on the skin that my large daughter couldn't handle. The flies still numbered in the thousands though whence they came I did not know for the blood had all dried up and I'd eaten the last of the bones long ago. I had a sinking sensation that they were breeding still in the folds and creases of my skin.

I lifted with my tail, hind legs and fore claws, pawing at the ground until it broke. I still couldn't part skin from the ground, but I made slow agonizing progress, at least enough to eat a few trees that had survived far from the battleground. It was the first I'd eaten in three years. I struggled along, best I could. There was no sense in waiting uselessly until I could stand properly. When I could roll over by myself, I sent my carrier daughter far afield with as many daughters as I could produce for her. I was concerned that she wasn't getting enough to eat to maintain proper growth. At the coast, hopefully she'd find enough trees and fish supplied by flying fisher daughters to sustain her.

The last of the jungle gave way as I crawled north and I did not have the energy to backtrack or find a different path. I had no scouts now and only knew the land from what I could see. Wearily, I pulled myself into scrubland where I would at least find more life than the desolation behind me.