PHANTASIA (2 page)

There was only one more planet beyond the metroid belt besides Takis, and it was mostly evacuated by now. The current hope was to meet the Xenosite after that, to fight them up front if they ever tried to invade the inner planets. Avalonia was far from the outer orbit. In its major cities like Echidna, the danger of Xenosites loomed like an abstract threat, a thought to be delayed as much as possible. Most of its current civilian population secretly hoped they would be gone long before such an encounter ever occurred. They had more pressing concerns anyways, from Cron pollution to increasingly erratic climates.

“Brace yourself then,” Professor Kep continued. I’ve seen it almost a hundred times, studied it carefully throughout my life, and I still find it jarring every time.” He attached the connector end of the spider’s container to that of the Xenosite’s and began to twist them together. The spider crawled around frantically, as if it sensed what was on the other side. A light electric current ran between professor Kep’s fingers and up his forearm. He chuckled softly when he noticed it. “Sorry about that, happens when I get tense sometimes.”
 

“Kep used to be on the field, an elementalist that specialized in electricity, I heard, before he retired into research,” Magnus whispered to Red.
 

“Never would’ve guessed,” Red whispered back. The statement made him relent his own classification even more. Fire was his specialty, but he hated being called an elementalist. He didn’t conform to the general characteristics of the class, besides the fact that he happened to be proficient in controlling an element. Most elementalists were overly intellectual and acted as ‘glass cannons’ on the field, rarely engaging anything head-on, a habit that happened to be Red’s favorite.
 

When the two connectors were securely coupled together, professor Kep began turning a lever to open a hole between the containers. As the gap grew larger, the spider hunted more violently for an escape. Eventually, perhaps when it realized it had no where to go, it reserved itself to a corner on the far right side of its container, where it quivered intensely. The Xenosite, on the other hand, reacted far more lazily. As if it had been aware of what was happening all along, its body began to uncoil exactly when the gap finished opening. Its movements seemed calculated and eerily unnatural.
 

Red watched with an anxious curiosity as the Xenosite lumbered its body across the container like a wicked slug of sorts. Despite his intrigue, he wished that it moved faster, that the whole process would be over with quick. The creature’s painfully slow crawl gave the classroom the ambiance of a nightmare. Every second in between made it a tiny bit more unbearable. But the anticipation of what was to come, no matter how horrible, or perhaps
because
it was so horrible, made it impossible for anyone to look away.
 

He exchanged a few glances with Magnus to share his increasing angst. The Xenosite had no eyes, using some sort of extrinsic sense to make out its environment. Despite his earlier thoughts about wishing the creature was of a larger variety, he imagined a size like this invited a new type of horror - the possibility that a tiny miscreation of this sort could be anywhere - in between the space of a crevice you could not see, underneath your seat, or crawling high above on the ceiling of your sleep-room, giving no notice of its existence or intentions.

The spider seemed to have conceded to the inevitable, now stretching out across its corner, anticipating a time soon enough when it would need to defend itself.  The end of its legs turned a pale blue as the temperature of its tips rapidly approached zero. It crawled left and right in a combative dance, practicing its dexterity. Red couldn’t help but sympathize with the creature, imagining what it would be like to be in its place. A thought suddenly twitched in his subconscious — that he
would
be in its place, maybe in just a few short years.
 

Professor Kep took a step back when the Xenosite finally reached the hole between the containers. The creature let out a hideous scream, one far louder than its body should have permitted. But it was the style of the scream, not the degree of its loudness, that made it so oppressive. Red had never heard anything like it, it was an awful noise that no creature should have been capable of making — paralyzing in its intensity, and malicious in its tone. Then, as though it were suddenly revitalized with energy, it launched itself towards the spider with a lightning velocity. For a split second, it became invisible to anyone who was using only their eyes to track its movements.

The classroom immediately withdrew by several feet. A few wondered if the container was really as secure as its designers had originally thought. The Xenosite latched onto the spider, covering the entirety of its body in an instant. The legs of the spider hung out awkwardly through the sides of the struggle, flailing wildly and attempting to jab its foe with their cold edges. While the body of the spider writhed in rebellion as it was being constricted, its head engaged the Xenosite more directly. It was being forced to consume the insides of its invader. The spider’s body swelled and contracted in rhythm with the Xenosite’s, as they both exchanged fluids and parts. Some of its pores expanded and popped, polluting the bottom of the container with a blanket of black pus.

Eventually, the spider ceased to move at all. Its legs poked out lifelessly underneath the mesh of the two bodies. After its main torso seemed to have reached a certain capacity, its legs began to pulse with the fluids. The process looked thoroughly bizarre as the carcass was being filled up to the brim with whatever the Xenosite was injecting into it. Magnus tilted his head slightly towards Red and whispered “And here…we…go…” in a curious but jittery tone. Red looked back at him and nodded apprehensively.

For a few minutes there was no activity, as everyone waited patiently. A slow smile crept over Professor Kep’s face. Then, the spider’s legs began to twitch again, sparking back to life. Tiny hairs grew out of its legs, growing longer and longer, eventually wrapping themselves around the spider’s bristles and thickening into shapes similar to the Xenosite’s original armor. The same happened to its frame, which began to lose the brittleness normally associated with insects as it turned jagged around the top.
 

The two bodies continued to mesh together, throbbing violently in some stages. Although everyone had expected it, they could not be ready for what came next. In one hideous movement, the spider lifted up its head and rotated it in a full circle. It now had more eyes than before, and looked like a mixture of its old self and the Xenosite. It lifted its body slowly and wiggled its legs. It continued to morph right in front of them, changing its palette of color from ice blue to a darker midnight blue and black, with a newly gifted exoskeleton wrapped in a peculiar type of organic carapace that resembled the Xenosite’s, but was half made of ice, a unique effect characteristic of neither of its creators. As it finally lifted its entire body, its new size also became evident. It was almost twice as large as any of its former selves. Its legs continued to grow disproportionally longer, lifting its body to new heights.

“And what we have now, of course, is no longer a Xenosite, nor an Arachnid. The proper term, is…?”

“Xenoarachnid” replied a few students simultaneously. Professor Kep had been particularly persistent in having all of them memorize the proper names and taxonomy of all the creatures they studied. Red regretted that the answer did not come to him as easily as it did for the others, but memorizing facts was never his forte.
 
 

“An infected creature grows in size, strength, intelligence, and can potentially gain new abilities — although it loses its capacity to evolve into further of its original stages. Although it was thought for decades that an infected creature was purely Xenosite in brain function, new research suggests that some form of its host’s conscience still remains. Regardless, you can trust that all infected creatures are, for the most part, Xenosite in nature,” Kep added.
 

He walked around the front of the room to let his words sink in, welcoming the long pause that followed as everyone stared at the new Xenoarachnid that was now intent on studying its container. Unlike the Crystal Sleet Spider, which hunted for an escape animalistically, this new creature studied its surroundings patiently. Its mannerisms seemed far more shrewd and bold. Red had the odd feeling that it knew it was being watched. Not in the way that a critter can tell if you’re staring at it, but in the way that a person would understand the entire context of this situation —
 
that it was being examined in a classroom of humans at a school dedicated to training people how to fight its kind.
   

“You’re finally beginning to understand what what you’re up against,”
the professor chided as he looked around at all the horrified faces. “I feel guilty for having to crush your naivety, but you have to know what’s out there. You have to be prepared. The Xenosite are beautiful vehicles of destruction, their invasions have turned extermination into a science
.
I was there when Carnaega was invaded, right there on the field. At first, electric elementalists were celebrated for their efficiency in combat. There was no greater pleasure than watching a squad of us incinerate thousands of Xenosite in organized attacks. Then a month into the invasion, they began consuming every critter on the planet that was resistant to electricity. They began learning, they began growing. Two months into the invasion, we began seeing legions of new strains that could walk right through a thunderstorm without being phased.
”
 

“Can humans be infected?” Magnus asked, interrupting Kep’s speech.

“No sentient creature has ever been successfully infected. Not humans, not elves, not dragons. Killed, yes, but never infected. Experiments have been done on humans…umm…death row prisoners of course,” the Professor added with a sheepish look, “where the process of infection, even by a Xenosite that should be powerful enough to infect a human host, has always resulted in the death of either both subjects, or of only the human. This is all anecdotal of course. It has not yet happened, but we do not know for certain if it is or isn’t possible. Either sentience creates neurological complications that makes it impossible for sentient creatures to be infected, or it is simply a matter of time before its difficulties are eliminated. We are seeing more powerful, and more intelligent Xenosites every year.”
 

“Can this spider now infect another creature?” someone else asked.
 

“I’m glad you asked that,” the professor responded.
 

“It depends on the gender of the host. If it’s female, then yes. Essentially, any type of Xenosite requires eggs to infest a host. Note, that it cannot reproduce, it can only infect a new creature. Of course, this has certain restrictions. After acquiring a host, it must wait weeks before it can re-engage the process of infection. Longer depending on the size and power of its host, and of its target. A Xenosite cannot infect a host significantly above its own strength, it will die in the process, and thus, it will never try to. Instead, it will either kill its target, or bring it back to its hive, alive. But essentially, this does mean that Xenosites can continue the process of infection to more and more powerful creatures, indefinitely. This Xenoarachnid, much more powerful than the original Xenosite, can now infect hosts that its previous form could not, and combine the talents of its previous host with its new one.”

Everyone gave a terrified shiver at the thought. An overhead tune signaled the end of class. But rather than rushing out as everyone normally did, the class took its time, ready to absorb any more information. Professor Kep, in turn, was thrilled at the unusual level of attentiveness. Although the class was fond of him, they were generally bored enough to stampede out of the room at the end of every lecture. “Good luck on your field test everyone!” he yelled over the shuffle.
 

“Thanks Professor, will you be there?” Red asked.

“Indeed, I will be with all the other professors, helping to monitor the desert as you all continue.” Kep replied. “Remember, everyone!” he continued, now addressing the class, “to review everything we discussed regarding creatures of the desert! Chapter 122 of our compendium.”
 

“Professor,” someone else inquired from the door.

“Yes, Dor?”

“What if the host is male?” The class immediately silenced itself, listening intently once again.
 

“Then we have a much, much more problematic situation. If the host is male, the creature cannot infect another one. Instead, its immediate priority becomes to return to a queen, the only
confirmed sentient species of Xenosite. Queens are able to mate with any infected creature, and, given the proper nutrients and resources, give birth to hundreds, thousands, if not tens of thousands of similar ones,” The Professor said. “It is crucial that you understand that this is the primary and sole imperative of the hive mind. To consume, to grow, to evolve towards perfection.”

Red gave an unconscious shudder as he walked out of class. The hallways were empty, making their enormous width much more noticeable. Most of the students besides seniors had already returned home. Those who didn’t were still out of class and spent their time in their quads or exploring Echidna. Academy sessions were separated by a break that started at the solstice. Avalonia enjoyed a perpetual daytime for most of the year because of its two stars. The planet only had seven nights, all of which occurred consecutively during the period known as solstice. It was the only time when both stars set, engulfing the planet in total darkness for a week. For seniors, it was a time of dread; their field test spanned all seven nights of solstice. The one-time performance evaluation occurred immediately prior to graduation, and determined a student’s placement after academy.