The Scout

By Aelius

“This is my element. I know this place as well as it
knows me."

Deep within the still-uncharted regions of the eastern
Spirit Wilds, patches of radiant sunlight shone through a thick canopy of
leaves and danced across white fur as a figure moved through the foliage.

She softly hummed to herself as she walked, enjoying the
presence of raw nature surrounding her and instilling warm memories of her
kithood. She was raised in these wilds, and the fact she now lived on a sprawling
metropolitan island a thousand miles away never lessened her love for the
sylvan environment.

A pair of long lop ears swayed behind her as if they
were her own hair, and her broad footpaws hardly left any tracks as she walked
along the mossy ground. A rabbit doe of toned, short stature, Orchid brushed a
hand across a fern's leaves as she passed by.  Her garments were minimal, though a
distinctive dark blue-and-cyan sash had been wrapped over one shoulder and
across her halter, displaying the flowing patterns of her clan. Glancing up,
bright indigo eyes that inspired her name took in the scenery of lush green all
around her. Ribbons of sunlight cascaded down to illuminate a vibrant forest
floor. A flash of color from flowers or an occasional insect decorated the
landscape, all while tiny glows drifted about.

Orchid smiled, recognizing the glowing sprites. They've
finally been found in this sector.

The rabbit kneeled next to a broad tree trunk and removed
her datapad from its holster on her bicep. 
The screen flashed on and she activated its scanner, holding it up to
photograph the environment.

“First sprite sighting in three weeks," she said to
herself. “I was starting to get worried."

The screen switched through different scanning modes as
she prepared her next entry for the day's expedition log. The presence of
sprites was like a good omen, even to the normally unsuperstitious research
councils back in New Atlantis. The fact the sprites were populating this region
meant it was safe for the rest of the research teams to come in and survey the
area. With that realization, Orchid sighed, knowing that another slice of
paradise would no longer be her own little secret for long. Then again, she
could hardly bear the thought of staying in one place. Her heart longed to
explore, and every opportunity to scout the land was another gift to satisfy
her wanderlust and learn more about these ever-changing Spirit Wilds.

Scanning complete, she lowered the datapad and logged
her coordinates, then glanced over to the tree trunk next to her. She noticed
faint glows under the cracks in the bark and looked around to find yellow vines
extending up a portion of the tree.

Orchid turned to a nearby ground plant and held a broad
leaf close. Barely visible within its cells and veins, she noticed the
unmistakable silvery lines of internal circuits.

She grinned. No wonder the university was interested in
this region.

The Fusion of nature and technology had been one of the
most exciting discoveries of the era. Remnants of the Old World, a world once
destroyed in a cataclysm yet still present in its ruins, had inspired the
progress of New World civilization for as long as its history had been recorded.
Scarce memories of the past survived as ancient technologies were rediscovered,
researched, and refined to build the New World.

The world Orchid knew.

She found it ironic, however, that the intricacies of
this sort of nature-technology Fusion remained a mystery even in the hundreds
of years since its first discovery. Among the various city-states dotting the
continent, New Atlantis itself was the first to coordinate efforts to go out
into the ever-shifting wilderness to find more evidence of this Fusion in the
hope of unlocking its secrets. New Atlantean engineers had spent years studying
rare Old World artifacts, yet the evidence of Fusion still existing in the
wilds remained far more advanced even after centuries of neglect. Hence the
research corps, and scouts like Orchid herself.

She knew the answer was hidden in these wilds, where
there still existed evidence that the cataclysm that destroyed the Old World did
not destroy all of it. The power flowing through the landscape was evident, and
she was among the gifted few able to tap into it. The research corps,
determined to sound legitimate, insisted that this type of power and the
research involving it was to be called “hyperscience," though Orchid and her
fellow field researchers still called it what they believed it truly was:
Spirit Magic. How else could they explain their ability to reach out with their
own presence and feel, intimately, the world around them?

As Orchid caressed the circuit-inlaid leaf, a tiny sprite
lazily drifted past. Even this close up, it still looked like nothing more than
a glowing orb, but its presence was real. Orchid carefully reached up, but it
flitted away.

Orchid stood and holstered her datapad, continuing on as
more glowing sprites floated around her. Such curious little creatures, yet
seen as so important to determine the safety of a region, and only gifted
scouts such as she could interact with them.

She followed the sprite that had flitted away and saw it
settling on another leaf nearby. She carefully approached and kneeled. She then
closed her eyes and stilled her breathing. Reaching out with her mind, she
shifted her focus from what she felt with her fur and whiskers to what was
within.

With a paw on the ground, just barely sensing the flow
of Fused circuitry beneath her, Orchid reached out with what she only knew as
her very presence. All around her, the vibrant life of the forest spoke in an
ancient language she had heard throughout her life as a scout. It was an
endless poem continually recited by her predecessors from the Old World, left
behind after the cataclysm and still speaking, hidden within the wilds of the
New World she had grown up in. With the faintest of whispers, she found the
little sprite in front of her among the presence of so many others and spoke, “Where
do you come from, little one?"

Sprites were believed to be just barely sentient,
capable of interacting with simple ideas to those capable of sensing them.
Orchid, with her attuned mind, could sense the stories it wished to tell.

The rabbit opened her eyes and held out her other paw.
The sprite drifted closer and settled in the middle of her fuzzy palm. As it
did, Orchid smiled as she detected the slightest hint of what could best be
described as a primitive form of thought from the little creature. Scattered
traces of memory flickered into Orchid's mind. She caught sight of various
places across the landscape, most of them she had never seen in the wilds yet,
but certainly inspired her to explore further. The idea of discovering new
lands excited her, and before long it seemed that the little sprite picked up
on that.

Orchid let her own thoughts free, letting her presence
“speak" to the sprite with her own memories of growing up in the wilds,
exploring new paths and discovering wondrous environments.

It floated up, hovering above her palm.

Orchid giggled and slowly turned her hand about. In the
rabbit's presence, it danced across and among her fingers.

“See?" said Orchid. “I'm not so scary now, am I?"

She took out her datapad again and scanned the sprite,
getting another reading for her logbook.

The sprite flitted upward further, then darted away to
hover near a large, bright red flower. It flew back to her, and then returned
to the flower and circled about.

“You want me to follow?" The rabbit stood, holstering
her datapad, and trotted over.

The sprite darted off again toward a grouping of ferns
farther off.

Orchid deliberately ignored the fact she was already on
the edge of the approved expedition area and followed, eager to learn more
about this region no matter the risks. She was a scout. This was the element
she was born into! She grinned and picked up speed.

The sprite continued on, bidding her further as the
rabbit ran faster, going from a sprint to a series of bounding hops to keep her
speed across the uneven terrain. Orchid deftly leaped over low shrubs,
stretched vines, and dips in the ground, keeping up with the sprite as it went
deeper into the woodlands.

The rabbit flashed across columns of sunlight, which
were becoming sparser as the canopy thickened above and the area became darker
in shadow. Even so, Orchid continued on. Through her presence, she still knew
her place in this environment. She could feel the forest around her, every
living thing giving off a presence of its own, and knew she belonged among them
as one born of the forest.

She skidded to a halt before a broad cliff, seeing the
sprite flitting across and down to a lower bank. Further below, a river flowed
between the cliffs. Orchid looked around but saw no fallen trees or vines to
help her across. She then looked at the sprite waiting on the other side, just
few levels lower. Glancing down, she judged the distance as best she could, and
then nodded.

She could make it.

The rabbit backed away, counting her steps, then
sprinted forward and leaped. Her powerful rabbit legs launched her across the
gap and she soared through the air. The other side approaching in her sight,
Orchid readied herself and, upon landing, curled and tumbled forward across the
mossy ground with her momentum.

Orchid rolled to a stop and staggered back to her feet.
The dirt and moss had sullied her white fur, but she did not mind. After
growing up in the forests, she was well used to it and barely even noticed any
more.

The sprite drifted away and she continued to follow,
noticing more leaves and tree trunks bearing circuit-laden signs of Fusion. On
her datapad, she tracked faint evidence of purified, crystalline silicates in
the biomass present in the soil—fragments of circuitry left behind as plants
wilted and died through countless seasons without being disturbed. Though the
area was barren of more sprites, she still felt safe enough to continue,
sensing no danger amidst the thick foliage.

After minutes of quiet walking through gradually-thickening
undergrowth, Orchid saw the sprite change direction to hover next to a thick
tree trunk. As Orchid approached, it floated down to where the tree's roots stretched
over a sinkhole.

The sprite floated under the roots and Orchid peered in to
find a gradual decline. It was shaped like this for a reason. She glanced down
and felt the presence of more circuitry beneath her footpaws.

The rabbit ducked under the roots and slid in, finding
the sprite hovering near a mass of vines and overgrown wood from decades,
probably centuries' worth of being undisturbed by civilization. Yet somehow,
there remained tiny flickers of light from Fused circuitry still present even
near the surface of the wood and vines.

Orchid approached and held out her datapad,
simultaneously scanning the mass while using its flashlight to study the
surface with her own eyes. She had never seen Fused circuitry so dense before.

She activated her datapad's navigation app and saw that
she had gone far beyond the edges of where scouts were cleared to search in
this region. Not that it mattered much to her; the research teams were long
used to her tendency to wander further than anybody else, though this time she
pondered the possibility that she was actively being drawn somewhere, rather
than stumbling upon new regions out of curiosity like so many instances before.

She then switched to the readouts from the scanner and
noticed that somehow, the circuits were not just active, they were
broadcasting.

The rabbit smiled in wonder and pulled a rod from her
backstrap. It extended to a length just taller than her own height, suitable as
both a walking stick and a weapon, should the need arise. At its end, a
flattened metal spear-like tip shifted its three blades into a key-like shape
that was designed specifically to interact with lost technology found in the
wild, should a scout be lucky enough to stumble upon any. Touching the blades
to a dense bundle of circuits embedded in the roots, Orchid checked her datapad
as it synced with the spear. The readings showed an audible signal buried in
what was otherwise static.

She played them through the datapad's speaker. A
strange, droning noise emanated from it. It seemed fairly monotone in pitch,
but her sensitive ears caught an occasional series of broken, melodic tones
singing out from it. They chimed in at set intervals—the same tones every five
seconds or so.  Orchid's whiskers
twitched as she pondered what the tones meant. There was no telling how long
this signal had been going out. Were they from the Old World?

Orchid's eyes lit up at the thought she might have
stumbled upon a new relic for the research teams to study. Love of the forest
aside, this was the sort of discovery she lived for! A potential new link that
could not only grant a clearer understanding of how nature/technology Fusion
worked, but also what might've caused the cataclysm that destroyed the Old World.

It compelled her to continue on, regardless how far she
was “supposed" to explore. She glanced up to the sprite, but it was already
lazily drifting away.

Orchid climbed out of the sinkhole and looked beyond the
massive tree to the rest of the dense forest ahead, down a massive steep slope.

The canopy thickened further on, shrouding the rest of
the forest in shadow, but Orchid clearly saw distant flashes of faint light
emanating from the unique circuitry present in the foliage.

She had to see more.

Orchid continued on with a spring in her step, excited
at the chance to explore. Her mind raced with questions and pondered at what
might be waiting further on, having been abandoned for countless ages.

She headed for the slope and let herself skid down
across the mossy ground, fast enough to make her lop ears flop behind her
before she held her tech spear out behind her and jabbed down with the blunt
end, slowing her descent until she reached the base. She kicked the dirt from
her bare footpaws and continued on. Further on, a placid river stretched across
to separate her from the rest of the flickering forest ahead.

Orchid approached the riverbank and kneeled, dipping her
tech spear's blades into the water. The readings sent to her datapad indicated
the water was safe… and more sterile that what a typical river would be in the
middle of a forest untouched by civilization.

Curious...

Orchid retracted her spear and stowed it back on its
strap, then slid a paw into the water. It felt cool, as expected, and was clear
enough to prove the readings correct.

She crouched and launched herself into the water. The
rabbit smoothly glided beneath the glassy surface and shoved ahead, noticing
more flickers at the bank on the other side. Even below her as she swam, glows
pulsed amidst the submerged rocks. Orchid wondered if they might be pulsing in
a sort of pattern, but it was none she could make out as she swam.

She broke the surface on the other side and climbed out,
pausing to vigorously shake the water from her fur. She walked on, brushing her
lop ears to dry them as she took in the sights of the deeper forest. In the
shade of the thick canopy, Fused circuitry was much more noticeable as it, too,
pulsed with faint glows.

After what felt like well over a mile, the darkening forest
seemed to gradually shift in some subtle way she could not quite identify, even
with her attuned senses. Distant chirps, squawks, and buzzing echoed all
around, but she did not recognize any of them. Even the scents that filled her
nose were like none she was familiar with. This was definitely different than
the forests back home, yet in spite of its seemingly foreboding appearance, it
did not appear unwelcoming.

Glancing
down as she continued walking, she noticed faint glows dimly lighting up
under her footpaws with every step on the masses of exotic plant matter
covering the ground. The glows lit up the circuitry lines just underneath the
matter's dermal cells, even as the plant matter decayed over time.

She pulled out her tech spear, extended it to its full
three-foot length, and strode ahead reaching out with her presence once more.

She
froze. Something big was near.

Orchid's
whiskers twitched again as she sniffed the air. Here, she could see the
glows were indeed pulsing in a pattern, and it seemed as if the glows were
spreading outward with each flicker, like something was sending them out.

She held out her datapad and played the signal again as
she walked, catching the pitched, melodic tones again amidst the static.

As she walked, Orchid passed what appeared to be swollen
globes covered in dapples. She paused, intrigued, and kept her distance while
expanding her presence once more. The entire area remained as it had been
before, but there was a strange emptiness in and around the pods. One of them
suddenly moved and opened from the bottom, spilling out a mass of bones covered
in slime. Orchid recognized them as belonging to some sort of feral ungulate,
perhaps a deer. She had seen plenty of carnivorous plants in her lifetime in
the forests, but never anything big enough to consume a creature larger than a
frog.

The plant lazily shifted, unfurling the membranes that
had made up its ingestion sack and reversing them to open up and give off the
appearance of an enormous, oily flower.

Orchid's ears splayed as she took note of the strange
plant's appearance and unique sweet scent in hopes of avoiding more. Then she
noticed strange patterns on the slime-covered bones of the plant's victim.

Circuitry lines.

“Fused... wildlife?" she muttered. New Atlantean
engineers had long since perfected bionic implants, but this was a level of
infusion none in her society had ever been capable of. She couldn't help but
grin at the fact her advanced civilization was still far behind this ancient
society that lived countless centuries ago.

Her sensitive ears caught another sound further on. As
the broken signal continued to repeat from her datapad's speaker, Orchid
realized it matched the sound deeper within the forest. She trotted ahead,
suddenly intrigued, and adjusted the timing on the datapad and let the two
signals sync while she ran.

As the sounds mixed, they combined into an odd warbling
before blending into a melodic ringing that only her sensitive rabbit ears
could detect. Orchid immediately recognized a primitive form of tone code. Her
eyes widened as the tones continued to play at intervals and she pieced
together what she had been taught about the codes.

It was a distress call.

She slowed her pace and her smile faded at the
realization that she may now have a clue to why some of the older previous
expeditions disappeared so long ago before the sprites arrived.

She then suddenly realized just how far she had gone beyond
the edge of the expedition area.

She kneeled and put her paws to the ground. Closing her
eyes, she stretched out with her presence to feel beyond her own senses.

Her whiskers twitched again.

The forest only answered back with indifference. It was
far beyond recognition, as if from an entirely different planet. Eerie, yet
intriguing. Isolated
and lonely, yet content. Twisted and foreign, yet familiar. A constant state of
euphoria and frightful unease. A paradox given presence. Orchid was utterly
fascinated in spite of her own caution.

Orchid swallowed and stowed her datapad, wondering what
went on here so long ago. The signal had been playing since the original
expeditions disappeared. Surely whatever threatened them would be gone by
now.... Right?

She heard a sound behind her and whipped about with her
spear. Nothing seemed to move in her vision, but through her presence, she knew
something was definitely there.

It was everywhere.

She carefully turned and continued onward, following a
series of glows and tiny flashes along more Fused vines snaking around the
forest floor and partway up some of the tree trunks. All the while, the
original signal continued to play its haunting melodic tones throughout the
vines and tree trunks.

Orchid carefully followed the sound as her eyes adjusted
to the forest's darkness. The flickers around her were all she could see now,
as if she were walking through a field of tiny stars. Or the inside of a
massive machine.

A flash up ahead drew her near. She noticed something
sticking out from a nearby tree trunk. Her sensitive ears assured her this was
where the signal was coming from.

Spear out, she cautiously approached but caught that
familiar sweet scent just a split second too late. A vine snapped closed around
her ankle and yanked her.

Orchid yelped and hit the ground hard, being pulled
toward a huge open capsule-like flower. She slid across more vines that snapped
as she brushed against them and one clasped around her wrist. It immediately
pulled her back, halting the other and stretching her between two of the carnivorous
plants. Orchid struggled to move and let her spear hit the ground, where it
triggered a third trap vine that snapped around the spearhead and yanked it.
Orchid held it firm with her one free paw, wincing in pain as the two other
plants pulled her in a tug-of-war. Gasping for breath, the rabbit tried to work
her fingers around the spear shaft to hit one of its switches as the vines
pulled tighter. She felt bones popping.

Her thumb reached a switch and ignited the spear's
plasma arc on its blades, slicing the vine and freeing it. Orchid whipped her
spear around and slashed the vine grabbing her arm, sending her sliding back
with the last vine at her ankle. She let out a pained yell and stabbed down on
the vine to separate it.

The remnant whipped back and slapped against the flower.

Panting, Orchid gnawed off the vines around her wrist
and staggered back up, using the spear for support.

Orchid rubbed her leg and glanced about her, noticing
more trap vines strewn about the ground and a number of capsule flowers along
the tree trunks ready to pull in the next unsuspecting creature to wander by.
Some of the capsules were already swollen from prior prey, glowing dimly from
within. She could barely make out shadows inside them.

Orchid ignited her spear's plasma charge again and
sliced every trap vine in her path as she limped on. Seeing just how dark the
forest was around her, she began to realize just what she had gotten herself
into. This was nothing like the Spirit Wilds back home. She had been raised in
nature itself, yet this whole forest proved she still has so much more to learn.  This place was as untamed as nature at its
purest. It had grown beyond whatever Fusion did to it and became an entity
itself. Even with the remnants of Fused tech still present, it was proof that
coexistence is possible while at the same time heralding their unique dangers
in this fragile balance. Out here, no one was unwelcome, yet Orchid reminded
herself of the respect these elements deserved in order to maintain harmony.

“I
am a scout..." she muttered, turning back the way she came. “This is my
element. I will survive this."

She approached the tree trunk she had been moving toward
earlier and found an old-era communicator device embedded in it, which was the
source of the signal. The tree bark had nearly enveloped it completely, hinting
at just how long it had been here, but somehow it still played the distress
signal, not just through its muffled speaker but also through the Fused circuits
extending across the landscape.

Orchid examined it in curiosity, wondering if its owner
had come up with a way to connect it to the circuitry. A way to draw power,
perhaps? This would no doubt allow it to broadcast its signal through the
circuits for her to find back at the edge of the expedition area.

Orchid blinked. She had definitely gone far enough now,
and needed to get back. The strange, overwhelming presence she felt all around
her was proof enough that being out here alone any longer would not be wise.

She took a quick photo of the embedded communicator,
then turned back. Her curiosity would have to wait until a more
readily-equipped expedition team could come. At the very least, she would bring
back more than enough information to help guide them, as any viable scout
would.

Although...

She took another look around, then down at the faint
glow lighting up from the pressure of her weight under her footpaws. The way
the circuitry lines flowed, it was as if they reconnected after breaking when
leaves fell and landed on the ground. There could be layers and layers of them
right where she stood.

Orchid whipped her spear around and jabbed the blades
into the ground.

Circuit lines flared to life, branching outward all
around her. The lines were so dense they looked like nerves.

The glows spread outward, connecting trees, leaves,
entire shrubs, and even tiny feral beasts skittering about. Glancing up, she
even saw glows lighting up a spider web, along with its weaver and the prey
trapped in it.

“They did it..." Orchid muttered. “They actually figured
out how to Fuse an entire ecosystem." As an awed grin appeared on her face, she
added, “Or the ecosystem Fused itself after being abandoned for ages." She held
up her datapad, expecting gobs of data to be scrolling down its display, but it
seemed to have frozen amidst the rush of input. There was too much to record.

Suddenly, the forest around her seemed to shift again,
though she could not quite make out in what way. Then she remembered she
possessed a skill the previous expeditions had not. Her generation was the
first that could “talk" to the world around them.

Orchid kneeled and steadied her breathing, reaching out
with her presence once more. “I'm still here, and I know what you have become,"
she said aloud. “I want to know everything."

A nearby carnivorous plant, this one open, shuddered. A
small cluster of sprites emerged from within and floated over to her.

Orchid cautiously lifted a paw and one drifted close. It
rested on a fingertip and Orchid felt a flow of scattered memories. They were
hazy, barely even comprehensible, but at the same time all the more intriguing
in the shapes she could make out in her mind's eye. It was a record, of sorts.
She was not sure how far back it went, but she knew she could at least see
civilization. Buildings, weathered through time. Vehicles not unlike those used
in New Atlantis, yet foreign in design. And people. They were mere shadows in
the sprite's limited memory, but she knew they were people. Whether these were
another distant civilization or a remnant of the Old World before the
cataclysm, she could not tell, but there was no doubting that these sprites
were not just the curious, floating orbs of light everybody thought they were.
As Orchid tried to get a closer look, it was obvious they had a purpose. They
were record-keepers. Remnants of a past struggling to reawaken after eons of
slumber.

Orchid pondered the idea that the unique ability for
scouts to expand their presence and “talk" to nature, including the sprites
within it, might also have been some sort of technique survived from Old World
that allowed these records to be read in a language only they knew. Could the
prior expeditions' lack of this ability be what caused... whatever resulted in
that distress call?

Orchid looked around as the glows gradually faded around
her. She wondered if somewhere in this dense expanse of Fused circuitry, the
other expedition crews still existed as a memory preserved in another group of
sprites drifting about. Or did the prior crew now exist as a form of data
coursing through the landscape? Is that even possible?

Orchid stood and turned back toward the way she came,
seeing a faint brightness beyond the circuit glows. The way back home.

There was so much more she wanted to know, but by now her
own expedition crews were probably wondering why she had not checked in. With a
glance back at the living forest behind her, she smiled wearily.

“There's so much more I want to learn," she said, to no
one in particular if not the forest itself. “I will be back... and I'll have
others just as thirsty for knowledge. I'll tell them we have an entire world
ready to teach us."

As the sprites drifted all around her, Orchid returned
the way she came, excited once more for the thrill of discovery and the chance
to share it with her friends once again. There was nothing a scout loved more.