Chapter 1: The Tiny Volunteer
The moss was a spongy, reluctant carpet under Pippin’s bare feet. It gave way with a soft sigh, releasing the scent of damp decay and something sharper, like crushed pine needles. An hour’s walk from the warren, and every step had been a drumbeat counting down the end of his life. The guards flanking him, their polished acorn-cap helmets glinting dully in the forest gloom, didn’t speak. The only sounds were the rustle of their leaf-leather pouches, the occasional grunt as they shifted the bundles of tribute—dried berries, stolen honeycomb, meticulously woven cloth no bigger than a human thumbnail—and the endless, whispering chatter of the woods overhead.
“Nearly there, Pip,” Elder Bracken said, not unkindly. His voice was like dry seedpods rubbing together. He didn’t look at him.
Pip said nothing. He kept his eyes on the path, a barely-trending line of slightly less moss between the colossal, towering roots. A single drop of dew from a fern above landed on his shoulder with the impact of a cold slap. He flinched, then straightened, forcing his whiskers to stop their frantic twitching. Show nothing, he told himself. They already think you’re nothing. Don’t let them see the fear.
The clearing opened up suddenly, as if the trees had taken a collective step back.
In its center, the altar was a jagged slab of black stone, half-swallowed by velvet moss and phosphorescent fungi that pulsed with a soft, sickly light. The air here was different—thicker, heavier, tasting of metal and old blood. A swollen, blood-orange moon hung low, painting the scene in tones of rust and deep shadow. Fireflies drifted like drunken stars.
“Here,” Elder Bracken announced, his voice dropping to a reverent hush that felt entirely performative. The guards moved with efficient, grim speed, piling their offerings around the base of the stone. Dried fish, a miniature clay amphora of fermented elderberry wine, spools of spider-silk thread. A king’s ransom, for mice.
They weren’t looking at the goods. Their eyes, wide and dark, kept darting to the treeline.
“Pippin Birch,” Elder Sedge, the other elder, intoned. “The colony gives thanks for your willing spirit.” Her lie was so bald it was almost impressive. Willing. He’d volunteered because the alternative—being driven out by thrown stones and hissed curses—was a slower, lonelier death. At least this would be quick. Probably.
“Just get on with it,” Pip muttered, his own voice surprising him with its steadiness.
He was lifted, not ungently, and placed atop the cold stone. The moss there was worn smooth by time and countless other small, terrified bodies. He sat, drawing his knees to his chest, wrapping his arms around them. The elders began a low, droning chant, a plea to the forest guardian for another season of protection, of bountiful foraging, of blindness to the murine tunnels that riddled the ancient roots.
Pip tuned it out. He watched the fireflies. He listened to the hush-hush of the leaves. He felt the monumental silence of the forest pressing in, a living, breathing entity that knew he was here. A brittle bravery settled in his chest. So this was it. The grand adventure.
A shadow detached itself from the deeper shadows between two vast oaks.
It was silent. Utterly, profoundly silent. The chant died in the elders’ throats. The guards took a synchronized step back, their spears trembling.
The naga flowed into the clearing, the moonlight running like liquid silver over emerald scales. Pip’s breath hitched. The stories didn’t come close. The human-like torso was powerful, easily five feet of corded muscle, skin the colour of old ivory. But it was the tail, a breathtaking, seamless continuation of his body, that commanded awe. Fifteen feet of coiled, potent muscle, gliding over the moss without a sound, displacing not a single blade. It was beautiful, and it was the most terrifying thing Pip had ever seen.
The naga’s head turned. Slitted, molten-gold eyes swept over the cowering elders, the piled trinkets, and finally, came to rest on Pip.
Pip’s heart was a trapped bird beating against his ribs. He forced himself to meet that gaze. He didn’t blink.
Veylan tilted his head. A dark, forked tongue flicked out, tasting the air. When he spoke, his voice was a low, subterranean rumble that vibrated up through the stone and into Pip’s bones. “The song was for this?”
Elder Bracken prostrated himself. “O Guardian! Our annual tribute! The finest of our stores, and… and the chosen sacrifice, to honour our pact!”
The golden eyes never left Pip. “Sacrifice.” The word was flat, devoid of inflection. Veylan’s upper body leaned forward, bringing his face alarmingly close. Pip could see the fine texture of his scales, the intelligent, calculating depth of his eyes. The smell was not of a predator’s den, but of sun-warmed stone and clean, dry herbs.
“He is… willing, Great One!” Sedge squeaked.
A slow, deliberate blink. “Is he.”
It wasn’t a question for them. Veylan was looking directly at him, waiting. The entire forest seemed to hold its breath.
Pip found his voice. It was thin, but it didn’t crack. “Willing enough. They’d have shoved me out anyway. Figured this was more dramatic.”
A beat of silence. Then, a soft, amused huff of air stirred Pip’s fur. Veylan’s lips—strangely expressive, human lips—quirked. “You are small.”
“I’m murine. We’re all small.”
“You are smaller than the offerings.” Veylan’s tongue flicked again, this time towards the honeycomb. “And you talk.”
“Last chance to do it. Seemed a waste not to.”
Veylan straightened, his massive form rising to its full, imposing height. He looked at the trembling elders, then back at the tiny, defiant figure on the altar. His voice rolled through the clearing, dismissing them. “Take your grains and your woven things. Go.”
The elders didn’t need to be told twice. They scrabbled, grabbing the guards, who nearly tripped over each other in their haste to collect the bundles and retreat. In moments, the rustling sounds of their panic faded into the woods, leaving only the clearing, the moon, the naga, and the mouse.
Pip sat very still. This was it. He’d been dismissed along with the honey. He closed his eyes, waiting for the strike.
It didn’t come.
He opened one eye. Veylan was watching him, an unreadable expression on his sharp-featured face. He wasn’t coiled to strike. He was… curious.
“You are not afraid,” Veylan stated, though it sounded like another question.
“Terrified,” Pip corrected him frankly, his fists clenched so tight his claws pricked his palms. “Just better at hiding it than those idiots.”
Another soft rumble. This one might have been a laugh. Veylan’s great tail shifted, not in a lunge, but in a sinuous movement that brought his lower coils closer to the altar. He rested his chin on a folded arm, now almost eye-level with Pip. The proximity was dizzying. “What is your name, small and talking sacrifice?”
“Pippin. Everyone calls me Pip.”
“Pippin.” Veylan tested the word. “A seed. A thing meant to be buried, or eaten.” He paused. “Which are you?”
Pip’s bravery flared, hot and bright. “I’m not either. I’m the thing that gets carried off by a bird and dropped somewhere new. No one knows what grows then.”
The naga was silent for a long moment. The golden eyes searched his face. “A bold seed,” he murmured, almost to himself. Then he moved, swift and fluid. Not an attack. A simple, monumental gesture of decision.
A huge, careful hand, each finger longer than Pip’s entire body, swept down and closed around him. The grasp was firm, but not crushing; the palm was surprisingly smooth and warm. Pip was lifted from the cold stone into the vast, open air.
He didn’t struggle. He just stared up at the face of the creature that held him.
“I do not eat things that talk to me, Pippin Seed,” Veylan said, his voice a quiet thunder close to Pip’s ear. “And my garden is very lonely.”
With that, he turned, and began to glide smoothly back into the deep, waiting woods, leaving the empty altar and the pointless offerings behind. The forest canopy closed above them, the blood-orange moon glimpsed only in slivers through the leaves, and the only sound was the whisper of immense scales over the forest floor, carrying Pip away from everything he had ever known.