Verdant

By Christopher Whitmore 

This venture was supposed to be a pushover, thought Dor Manti as he dodged yet another vomited plume of emerald flame. The great, galloping beast was gaining on him, its maw still crackling with that damnable green glow.

And now I’m gonna die on this stupid backwater rock.

The hustle had seemed easy enough. A newly-contacted planet out on the Cold Rim–Beshral, as it was known by its inhabitants–was rumored to be populated entirely by sightless creatures. The intelligent humanoids, the ground critters, the insects–every single form of life was totally blind. Dor’s first thought after he’d gotten wind of this new prospective addition to The Unified was that such civilizations might just be willing to trade away all of their shiny since they couldn’t even conceptualize what shiny meant.

And he’d been right.

The stumpy, chartreuse Beshrallians had been all too happy to open trade talks with Dor. And thanks to an old friend within the Solar government, Dor was there ahead of the primary negotiation team. Within an hour of his arrival, he’d discovered to his delight that neither ironium ore nor helix crystals meant anything to the indigenous folk.

As things turned out, their most valued commodity was some kind of green sand from a faraway shore the same color as the planet’s sky, a substance that they smoked every night, and placed in campfires like some sort of incense.

The verdant, they’d called it.

The journey to get it was supposedly a long and dangerous one for the vision-impaired beings, so Dor had agreed to procure a barrel of the stuff for them in exchange for a whole shipload of shiny. He’d returned to his rig giddy, dreaming of the cash that was about to float his way.

Admiring the view as he soared over glorious cerulean crystal mountains and violet fields of grain, he’d considered the Beshrallians. Not a one of them poor little buggers can properly appreciate a view like this.

Finally, he’d set his rig down near a forest-colored lake. After grabbing his unispeeder, he’d loaded an empty barrel into its arms, and had set off for a cave at the far edge of the shore, where the sand was the deepest shade of jade.

Examining the verdant closely, he’d realized that it was even finer than sand, almost a powder, more akin to pollen than stone. He’d begun to wonder whether it was produced by a living thing when the howl of an angry beast had startled him.

Someday I’ll learn to never trust an easy venture.

The six-legged hippaderm was half the size of his rig, and better armored to boot, so there was no point in pulling out his blaster. His only recourse had been to run.

Now, as his sprint faded to a desperate jog, the ground itself trembled while the fire-belching thing trampled after him. Probably how the blind brute is tracking me.

He raced for the water, hoping against hope that the beast might not follow. Abruptly, the horizon went off-kilter as his foot skidded on the slippery sand, sending him to the ground, where a cloud of green particles sprayed into the air.

As the beast towered over him, Dor closed his eyes for the death blow, drawing what he thought would be his final breath.

But as the emerald particulate entered his lungs, something strange happened. It was as though some sort of seventh sense triggered deep inside his gut, an awareness halfway between sound and touch. A sensation, a vibration that enhanced all of his perceptions a thousand percent. A little like radar, but with a smell.

He could suddenly ‘see’ that the beast wasn’t enraged. It was injured.

A long, sharp stone was wedged between the armored plates of its belly, and emerald fire was leaking from the poor thing’s gut.

“Hey, there, girl,” said Dor as calmly as he could manage, putting his shaking hands in the air. The creature roared again, spewing fire into the air. “You don’t want to eat me; you’re just askin’ for a little assist, right?”

Still on the ground between the beast’s two front legs, he grasped at the sharp rock, keeping his eyes closed, relying instead on his new awareness to find the implement. He patted the hippaderm’s hoof. “This is gonna sting, girl.”

He pulled with all his might. A sudden thrust of pain stabbed at Dor’s torso, and though the beast roared even more loudly this time, he kept on pulling. Finally, the splinter of stone came free, and as the creature flopped onto its side, Dor felt a wave of strange relief that he wasn’t sure was his own.

“You’re gonna be alright,” he said, breathing along with her. Now that he had a moment, he realized that not only had the verdant given him a new kind of sense, it had somehow made him more aware of the beast’s distress, as though he could feel it himself. It made him wonder if this was how a short, backwards, blind race had been able to survive for so long.

Dor picked up a handful of the verdant sand and allowed it to slip through his fingers. He took a deep breath of the cloud, and the sensation increased.

A substance that inflicts empathy? With enough of this, I could change the galaxy itself.

He opened his eyes, and both light and sense returned. A sly smile crept across his features as he made his way toward the empty barrel still sitting near the cave.

On the other hand, the crown jewels of Rymulae are supposedly hidden in a maze of pure darkness. I wonder how much of this stuff it would take for me to just … feel my way there…

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

A combination of comics, sci-fi movies and fantasy novels made Christopher Whitmore the nerd he is today, and he wouldn’t have it any other way. He published SAVIOUR in 2017, a fantasy adventure set in a post-apocalyptic yet optimistic future. The sequel, CHILDREN OF THE SAVIOUR, followed in 2019. His next novel, CHARMING, is a modern fantasy and will be released in the first quarter of 2021.

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