The Ryvern

The Ryvern
By Steven Rivers

"Oh Zanuti!" swore Eduda in trembling Eldorfin.

Unable to take his gaze off the creature, he began backing up as much as he could, away from the house he'd been working on.

Edu had never seen one. Zanuti! Who ever had for that matter? But he was sure of what it was.

The first time he'd heard of the mythical Ryvern creatures, he was just a small 'fin. It was his pack-parent, Erun, who'd told him the tale that had been passed down over two great era's of the spiral.

The seven Ryverns of the Circle of Orn. Creatures so old, they walked the vast empty blackness long before even the now extinct Unem, Iae and H'or'acanda. Creatures so old, that some believed they were gods, some believed they were devils, and some believed they controlled entire races like tyrants. The truth is, no one knew. They do say that one person every so many millennia might actually be lucky enough to see one, but most never believed in them at all. One thing that was well known in the tale was their god-like power. Stories of a Ryvern crushing people at will, ripping the earth out of the ground like paper, changing a persons' entire mind with a simple glimpse, even moving vast stars, the list went on.
 
And here one was! Or so Edu believed. An image had never been recorded. All that there had been were descriptions, and a few rare drawings of one every few millennia.

It looked a tremendously tall figure, clothed in one huge black cloak, which covered everything apart from its head. A head that half reminded Edu of a horses skull, especially the one he had found of the long extinct species the other day in the field. The only difference was, the Ryvern had faded mottled greenish-yellow skin and two eyes that protruded outward of the head in two short stubby eyestalks. It was a dominating figure. So much so, that he now understood why they were so hard to forget.

'I think archaeology can wait for today' Edu thought.

He suddenly found he'd backed himself next to a small wall of what had once been a garden. The Ryvern 'walked' (if you could call it that) up to the decapitated, half dirt covered remains of the house he'd been working on. What was it doing? What did it want? What great, god-like reason could a Ryvern have for coming to a world like this? A small green-blue world where its native inhabitants had died out hundreds of thousands, if not a million, years ago.

Edu began thinking of what was within the four crumpled, roofless walls that might be of interest to this creature:

'The radioactive visual plasma-box?' Not interesting really. The Eldorfin Archaeology Institute still hadn't worked out if it had been used for communication, or to broadcast religious images. It certainly couldn't be what the Ryvern was looking for.
Then what?

'The remains of the strange biped chairs and tables?' They were just polished wood, and some were made out of chemical compounds. Surely not.

'The books?' There were many preserved in this particular home. But the strange dialect and weird contradictions in its construction made it a very bizarre language. One no one had translated properly yet.

It definitely wasn't here for the remains of the odd little creature they found in the food creation centre of the house. Its skeletal remains had a strip of material around the neck, which had been amazingly preserved under the soil.

'It had lettering on it that we still didn't understand. We presume it was a name.'

"TIGGER"

The same lettering was on the small red bowl next to it.

This they'd never understood. Was it a sentient being that lived with these umans? Its brain capacity didn't look evolved enough. If it weren't sentient, then why would they let animals even more primitive than them live in their dwelling?

Eduda shook his head slightly, realizing he was digressing archaeological research when he should be thinking of the fastest route of escape.
Rising slightly from his fallen-back stupor, he clasped the wall and began to edge around its corner.

'If the legends are true, it could make me believe what it wants.'

The hair on his legs tingled.