The Gift of Death
From Ashes to Ashes
A small form crawled another feet forward, shifting a growing white clump from its shoulder to the snowpack beneath him. The lemur's small legs were sliding uselessly over the frost and blue-white grassblades poking out of the snow, gruesomely shattered. A broken femur was poking out through the primate's striped grey fur, and thick white blood spurted out of the wound, each beat weaker than the last.
Only an hour past, the deadbeat lemur was leisurely smashing an alpine heartnut against a rock, hoping to get to the sweet fruit within. It felt safe, nestled against a familiar cliff-face, surrounded by his fellows. But his focus on the task was his downfall. A Cocoraptor swept around the granite, flying close to the rock to remain out sight until the last moment. Before he could even hear the sound of a snowy flurry rushing past the orange-gold feathers, the talons had wrapped themselves around his small chest and yanked him out of his stony alcove. The heartnut fell out of his hands and began a long, noisy fall down the cliff face, striking a protrusion ever few dozen meters.
He struggled as much as he could, but the cocoraptor's grip was steel. The bird of prey flapped his wings and headed to a higher altitude, effortlessly cutting through the bitter winds, likely headed for its nest to have its meal in relative comfort. Cocoraptors have limited Morikad influence within their bodies, making them require warmer shelter than most other creatures of the Ilimyth Valley.
However, the lemur wasn't quite ready to become food yet. With an herculean feat of flexibility, the small monkey twisted its torso in the claws and bit the bird's upper ankle, right above the tough purple scales covering its feet. The cocoraptor shrill screech sounded out, and it relaxed just long enough to give the monkey a chance to escape.
He fell. Leaving the predator suspended in the grey sky above, with an unseen wall rushing towards him beneath. The snowfall was so thick, he could barely see a dozen meters ahead; he had no idea how close or far the impact was.
A luckier lemur would have made landfall on the snowbank covered most of the valley, or been cushioned by a patch of ice grass, but this wasn't this one's fate. He impacted a jagged boulder, with a sharp cracking sound and a squeal of agony, both muffled by the blizzard still raging around him.
And so, the poor creature found itself crawling in an unknown place, his mobility nullified, his life essence leaking from the grievous wound. The prognostic was bleak. A cool numbness was enveloping his extremities; feeling would never return to them. Like most life in the region, the lemur being cold wasn't unusual; its body temperature hovered around ten degrees Claragrade even in nominal conditions. But this cold was the cold of Death, his consciousness abandoning his vessel. In the frigid Ilimyth Valley, Death came easy and gentle. The sharp edge of his pain was blunted by his loss of sensation, soon the jagged femur shard ripping through his skin did not even hurt anymore. He stopped moving, let his eyelids flutter shut as snowflakes began accumulating on the cooling body.
It was... Much like falling asleep...
And then, his heart pumped its last, cold, strained beat. The lemur was with the Goddess, now.
Waste not want not
◐ Figure 1. Microscopic image of a typical Morimito bacterium (Colors artificially added for highlights). (A) Nucleus. (B) Bacteria Cytoplasm. (C) AFP chemical reactor. (D) Reaper's Eye crystal. (E) Moriama protein scaffold.
The motionless corpse laid on the crisp snow, finally at peace. Far above, in the unseen sky, the cocoraptor was long gone. After losing sight of its prey in the furious storm, it had elected to cuts its losses instead of searching for it. It didn't take much time before an inch of snow covered the lemur, freezing the pale blue-white blood into place.
In most other snow-capped mountains of the world, this would be the end of the story for the foreseeable future; the absolute cold stopping every organic process in its tracks, and preserving the body perfectly for hundreds or even thousands of years. But a strange little bacterium inhabits these ghostly peaks which flips this dynamic on its head, and finds life in the deadliest conditions.
Its name is the Morimito. It shares a lot of characteristics with others from its kingdom, with its strong cell wall able to survive thermally and chemically harsh environments, cilia to assist with locomotion, its DNA-sheltering nucleus (Fig. 1 A) right where you'd expect to find it. However, some of its organelles would be unfamiliar to a biologist unacquainted with Morijigoku species.
We find our microscopic new friend crawling around a snowflake near the lemur's body. It is surrounded by many friends; in any sample of snow of the region, microscope imagery reveals thousands of the critters. With them comes a thin mucus, which is produced by one of the afore-mentioned organelles.
These are found floating throughout its cytoplasm (Fig. 1 B). Each is a dedicated chemical reactor (Fig. 1 C) with a single-minded purpose; the synthesis of AntiFreeze Proteins (AFPs). A variety of AFPs may be produced, depending on the temperature range experienced by the organism, but they are usually dual-purpose. First, the AFP is dispersed throughout the cytoplasm to prevent solidification. Secondly, it is used to produce this mucus, which is secreted outside of the bacterium.
When the mucus comes into contact with a snowflake, or any other frozen mass, the AFPs quickly liquify it. In ice, this allows the creation of microchannels through which bacteria and other microbes can travel. This is especially useful to allow the migration of the entire microbiome towards the surface when snow accumulates. Moreover, it aerates the packed snow layers, increasing their oxygen levels and suitability for the growth of plant-like yukiphiles, and inhabitation by burrowers.
However, when this mucus encounters something like the lemur's frozen body, it gains an additional, but critical function. By liquifying the water in the corpse, its flesh becomes once more becomes accessible for digestion. The nutrients contained in carcasses throughout the land can then be recycled back into the snow, made available for absorption by other lifeforms.
The bacterium colony soon swarms around the buried body of the monkey and begins its work. Within hours, the skin is as soft as it was during the lemur's living days, and the morimito have begun migrating into the body through its mouth, eyes, genitals, anus and wounds. A few more hours later and most of the body has thawed, allowing other decomposers to accelerate the breakdown of the corpse.
If the lemur was dug out of the snow at this time a faint crimson hue would be observed on its surface. It's not some bloody excretion, or a mold; this is the morimito's bioluminescence. The source of this glow is another unusual organelle found in the cell; the moriama. A pure crystal (Fig. 1 D) of Reaper's Eye, surrounded by a protein scaffold (Fig. 1 E) tasked with interfacing with said crystal. The Heavens govern this crystal; proximity to the dying or recently deceased, or divine passings increase its growth rate and magical levels.
Besides creating ideal chemical conditions for crystallization, the biological part of the moriama is also able to draw energy from its magical activation. The feedback loop of increased crystal growth leading to more energy is likely what led to the existence of the organelle.
Throughout history, landscapes taking on an eerie ruby glow have accompanied large-scale scenes of carnage. A similar light can be observed when our Isib make use of the Goddess' magical blessings; indeed, the very same moriama organelle is found in all Deadbeats, as well as many other local animals.
The moriama deserves an extended review, but returning to our microbes, thanks to their hard work, the decomposition of the monkey has advanced to its later stages in only a few weeks. Sunmelt and gusts of wind have also molten and blown away some of the snow that had been covering it. An ivory skeleton covered in tufts of grey hair and strips of meat can now be seen peeking out of the snowbank. While the lemur has met Death, in her magnanimity she has allowed his gifts to pass on to the World.
Drained of Colour
◐ Ice Grass is a frequent sight in any place that gets both sunlight and snow in the Morijigoku alpine regions.
Echoing in the valley, the rhythmic sound of footsteps was disturbing the tranquility of the sunrise. A pair of individuals was hiking up the slope at a brisk space; hunters on the trail. Their wide shoes, halfway between boots and snowshoes, crushed the fresh crisp snow an inch deep, before coming to a rest on a more solid layer. Leading the duo was a slightly shorter man; a tall backpack was fastened to his shoulders and a bolt of undyed cotton was wrapped around much of his body. His face was as pale as his outfit, and free of wrinkles, though an unmoving frown betrayed the seriousness of his situation.
Close behind him was a warrior. The fighter's robes were layered loosely over a black armor that reflected only a red glint from the sunlight it engulfed. The overlapping sleeves and pleats flapped gently in the morning wind, as white as the companion's dress, albeit silkier. A blackened full-face mask nestled in a hood completed the look. This one's bag was a bit smaller, but a large polearm wrapped in oilcloth evened the burdens.
Not too far from the lemur's shiny skull, the tracker slowed his march, having noticed some sign of their carry. A few words were exchanged as he knelt down and brushed some of the fresh snow with his bare fingers, seemingly unbothered by the biting cold. Beneath this superficial layer, the snow was denser, almost loam-like in texture. Discrete grains of compacted snow made up this media, each kernel coated in a liquid that reduced how much they stuck to one another. Mudsegki, or snow-soil, was what Deadbeats called this media.
Thin blades of blue-grey grass were uncovered alongside the mudsegki, though their tips were already piercing the surface of the new snow, hungry for the day's rays which were finally peeking at the hill from over a neighbouring mountain. Despite its appearance, ice grass is no grass at all, but a thin fungi especially sensitive to sunlight, and proactive in seeking it. Even buried under three meters of nocturnal snow-fall, ice grass would weave and slide its way through the layers until it reached the surface as soon as a clear dawn arrived, hibernating until that time arrived.
Grass was not the tracker's concern, however. An imprint into the mudsegki, blurred by a few days of snowfall, melt and compression, had earned his attention. It might have looked like a miscellaneous dimple at a glance, but his experienced eye saw the shape of four padded toes leaving four ever so slightly deeper indents in the foot-wide imprint.
Satisfied with those findings, the man pointed out a recess closer to the mountain's peak. In the clear, clean alpine air, it looked deceptively close, but in truth it was still a dozen kilometers away. The warrior nodded approvingly and the pair continued their trek through the frozen vale. By now, enough cobalt tufts had surfaced to give the slope a furry appearance, and soften the steps of the hunters.