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.