Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

Prince Iainen had united the apoc and the symph, as he felt was his birthright. The apoc were to be the warriors, the tip of the spear, with which to bring order and prosperity to the Vale and all the woods beyond. The symph were to bolster their numbers and to work as the logistical tail of this army: as porters, farmers, teamsters. But the next generation of apoc needed living hosts, and Iainen was loathe to sacrifice any of his people for the purpose. He was also dismissive of the use of non-sapient hosts like the onii, feeling it would breed weaker warriors.

Iainen was also afraid of the coming of the 37-year laulu, which was not far off. When they emerged, moulted, and saw what he had wrought in the Vale, he was sure that the junior brood would oppose him by force of arms. And when, just a few years later, the 41-year senior brood arose, they would finish the job–the two cycles were not always synchronized, but at this time, they very nearly were.

The solution that presented itself was as brutal as it was simple. Iainen gathered eggs from the apoc that followed him and inserted them into the young laulu as they slept underground. The empathic powers of the apoc were enough to locate the shallowly buried junior brood, and long bamboo tubes were sufficient to deposit the young. By wiping out the junior brood, and using the troops thus raised to defeat their brothers, who were buried so deep as to be undetectable, Iainen had felled two onii with one stone.

But the plan had to be perfect. If even a single laulu from the junior brood survived, they could attempt to awaken the senior brood early, and that would provide a force sufficient to challenge the new order of the apoc. Iainen himself accompanied his people, seeing to the dirty deed personally.

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Prince Iainen was unusual from the first.

His mother Metsaa was the most celebrated tracker in generations and personal huntress to Queen Siipi, the great leader of perhaps the largest symph hive in the Vale. Time and again, Metsaa performed her duties well and was rewarded with the permission to deposit her young in elderly symph males, long past their breeding prime and of no use to the Sisterhood. However, during the long years of her service to the Queen, Metsaa fell in love with Siipi, and found that the queen loved her in return.

Now, despite the close kinship between the symph and the apoc, it was not possible for them to interbreed. Even if it had been, there was no way for the queen and the huntress to concieve, though they yearned for a child as a proof of their love. In the end, Siipi decided to allow Metsaa to lay an egg within her, to be its flesh-mother, with the hope that the child would inherit some of her memories and personalities. This is uncommon but not unheard-of, after all, and Siipi had already taken care with her own succession.

Metsaa protested but eventually broke down. With the strongest and most empathic apoc she could find as the father, Metsaa’s child grew within the queen, killing her softly before emerging as a child. As the lovers had hoped, the boy was an immensely talented empath and had many of his flesh-mother’s traits.

As he grew, Prince Iainen became convinced that the apoc were held back by their individuality, much as the symph were held back by their Sisterhood and long cumbersome life-cycle. He sought to reconcile the two peoples and unite them as one, with the apoc adopting the collective lifestyle of the symph and the symph abandoning their sisterhood in favor of breeding more males and therefore more children.

Alarmed, Metsaa banished her son, and his “flesh-sister” the new queen of the symph hive quietly ordered his death. But within a few years, he had returned with many followers and worked his will upon those that had wronged him, building a militant empire that stood to dominate the Vale for generations to come.

There was only one problem.

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The apoc are a curious people, widely regarded as the best hunters and trackers in the Vale but also completely dependent on the other creatures therein for their young. Like their close cousins the symph, the apoc are capable of flight and have a lingering empathic connection to one another–not enough for any but the most skilled to communicate wordlessly, but enough to sense feelings and to guide behavior. They have always been solitary, though, unlike the social symph, and their numbers include many males in contrast to the Sisterhood.

However, unlike the symph Sisters, whose young grow safely within the confines of their great hives, apoc young must gestate within a living host, and they are inevitably fatal upon their emergence.

In ages past, the apoc traded their skills as hunters, gatherers, trackers, and woodsmen for hosts. It was seen as a great honor for the older denizens of the wood to birth an apoc child, for the natural secretions of the egg and larva deadened the senses over time and led to a death that was painless and gave rise to new life. It was often common for young apoc to be named for their hosts, and to regard and be regarded by the decedent’s family as their own. The natural empathy that apoc had seemed to impart to their young certain characteristics of the individuals in which they grew, and the more gifted apoc sometimes could claim memories from their “flesh-mother” or “flesh-father.”

While poorer apoc could and did raise young in unintelligent creatures like wild onis, it was regarded as a black mark and those children were generally disdained. Some apoc did trade in unwilling flesh-parents, but those cases were regarded with horror and any practitioners regarded as enemies of the apoc people and stamped out.

That is, until the appearance of Prince Iainen.

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