Breathe Deeply

Across the face of a continent - of all the continents of this roothome - Cr;hhrak could smell the burning forests. His sap quickened at the sensation. So much smoke and heat! The saplings that once grew so well were now fueling raging storms spread even to the atmosphere. And the winds blew furiously, scouring him with soot that tasted of burning leaves and pain. Cr;hhrak felt anguish at the loss of the forests - so much time slow-growing in the sunless depths, all wasted.  The mother-tree that had sheltered these ashes-that-were as she drifted through the sunless depths was burning, too. Cr;hhrak could hear her screaming far above them, in the fast winds and strong light where this roothome gave way to shallows. The locusts were eating her.

It wasn't supposed to be this way. Saplings grew in nourishing sunlight, roots reaching deep into soil to draw up life. They grew tall, made forests, their leaves singing groupsongs in the soughing winds and roots drinking from cool running waters. They made the roothome theirs. But instead, here, they were food to scrabbling root-eaters. Bugs, locust swarms that felt and smelled wrong. There was something that these locusts brought that altered the synchrony between forests. That sapped the ability to fight back.  Saplings had strength in them, though they were small, they had strong blood to choke the locusts and thick roots to smash. But now, these weren't enough. And so they had turned to the final resort, the noble choice.

Cr;hhrak had... mixed feelings about it.

The burning was not the action of the locusts, but of the saplings. This roothome was new and its forests small, but already they could hear the cries of their kin across the depths, could feel roots eaten and trunks cut down by swarming locusts. The moans of Fathers as they were overcome in the cold depths, broken apart by the locusts and eaten like ripe fruit. Mothers screaming in the skies over other roothomes. It was not just here that they were pressed, and so the sapling forests had decided to burn themselves to ward off their foes. This was not the first time a forest had done so to stop the locusts. Nor would it be the last.

But Cr;hhrak would do what he could to end the cycle. Here, Cr;hhrak had finally found what he had been looking for. It was a vast, ironic tragedy: his desire was the same wrongness that the locusts brought with them. He didn't have a name for it yet, but knew from the taste that it was bountiful here, likely bountiful on other new roothomes, likely the reason these locusts were here. He saw what it could do, for good and evil. He would harness it. If he could master it, no forest need ever burn again.

He breathed deeply again, tasting the ashes. He would remember this taste, and call upon it whenever his will faltered. The taste of burning forests.

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Excluding title, the story is 500 words. In short: The Hero, Cr;hhrak, who is present as a colony world is assaulted by Dust-enhanced Cravers, resolves to gain mastery over the substance and use it to protect his people.

I think of Cr;hhrak as a Militarist Seeker. He is deeply aggrieved by the sacrifices his people make to ensure peace, knows that these sacrifices will never permanently stop their foes, and wishes to find an alternate means of bringing peace. He's not necessarily about conquest - rather, peace through strength.

The Unfallen as depicted here are capable of communicating with (or sensing what is happening to) other Unfallen, even many light-years away. If you've ever read Orson Scott Card's Lusitania books, then the Pequenino Fathertrees present a close analogy to how the Unfallen communicate. It isn't Dust-based - this species is relatively unfamiliar with the substance - but perhaps its mechanics can be explored (or described) in the questline. Another piece of literature from which I drew inspiration is "Chess with a Dragon", by David Gerrold. In it, there is a species of sentient plant that could perhaps best be described as 'brain trees'.

I didn't delve deeply into Unfallen society as the story was focused around a crisis and Cr;hhrak's internal response to it. Here, the basic unit of society is a Forest. 'Mothers' are colony ships, 'Fathers' are combat/exploration ships. 'Shallows' are inner solar system, where life is warm and pleasant; 'Depths' are deep space - they view space as an ocean - and 'roothomes' are planets.

Please feel free to comment or critique - I'd love advice on my writing! Because of the one-reply limit for the story, should anyone decide to offer suggestions, I will wait until Wednesday to implement them in order to address them all.

Hope you enjoyed the read!

Keep it up mate.

The idea is great, I especially like your use of an outside force to motivate the "he" in this narrative.

Like Hinin said, i would change the resemblance of the cravers to whoever invaded the Unfallen here..

Good Luck on the competition