by Gene Stiles
He was used to men staring at his sensuously stunning companion, especially dressed as she was now. She wore a gown of black and silver sequins that sheathed her curvaceous body like an amorous lover that sparkled like a field of emeralds in the multicolored lights flashing above the dance floor. The dress fell almost to the polished oak floor, the slit that traveled up to mid-thigh exposing her shapely muscled, darkly tanned leg with every step she took. A plain silver belt two hands wide hugged her narrow waist, accenting the swell of her bust line. Long waves of sunshine-blond hair cascaded over her shoulders and framed in her softly-planed, egg-shaped face graced with naturally blushed cheeks and ample lips the bright red of a summer rose.
Yet it was not the normal kind of lust, Anak saw in the tense body language of the men watching them. It was a savage, animalistic desire painted over fear and loathing. Most of the People treated the Nephilim with cautious fairness. Others with well-meaning pity for the origins of their birth. A vocal few, like the Aam huddled over their drinks skewering Anak and Alcmene with their bloodshot eyes, saw them as a threat because of their gargantuan size and as vicious aberrations that could turn on them at a moment’s notice. These were the dangerous ones, their courage fueled by numbers and alcohol.
“Let us go,” Anak said, rising and taking Alcmene by the hand. He kept the men in his peripheral vision as they made their way toward the tall, double doors of the nightclub, the crowd parting before them like the sea around a ship’s bladed prow.
Outside they were met by the hot summer night air and the music of the warm breeze that whistled through the open vents at the spiraled top of the Wind Song. The line of people awaiting entry glanced in their direction, a myriad of emotions playing across their faces as the pair passed them by.
“It is a shame,” Alcmene sighed softly, her crystal-blue eyes touched with sadness. “We were once welcomed in the ranks of the Aam. They were our brothers and sisters. Now that Cronus has banned us from the guard, more and more of them have turned against us. Why would he do that?”
“Fear,” Anak replied, squeezing her hand slightly. “We of the elite top our Atlantean kin by a foot or more. We are stronger and faster than they are. Cronus deemed it imprudent to teach us the ways of the warrior. It has not helped our cause that skirmishes have broken out between the Nephilim and those of the People who hate us. No matter the reasons or the numbers, we are the ones who have never lost such arguments.”
“So foolish on both sides,” she said, shaking her head slightly. “Can they not see they are only making things all the harder for everyone?”
“They are, but…” Anak was interrupted by a slurred voice from the alleyway to their right.
“Ah, there you are, my pretty beasty.”
The four Black Guard from the Windsong stepped from the shadows into the well-lit street. Instinctively, Anak slipped in front of Alcmene, not because she could not defend herself, but because she was not dressed for a fight.
“Please, gentlemen,” he said calmly. “We wish no trouble.”
“I bet you are just as savage with your clothes off,” the apparent leader continued, completely ignoring the eleven-foot-four giant in front of him. His lewd comment was met with derisive laughter from his companions. Their snickers and lascivious suggestions bolstered the man’s ego as they fanned out behind him. “I am sure you can teach the four of us some new and exciting tricks. Tell your ‘man’ here to leave us to our fun so we do not have to hurt him and let us get a party started.”
“Oh, yes,” Alcmene responded, the coldness of her tone lost on the drunken men. “There is much I could teach you. Like manners.”
The Aam hooted and hollered at her, promising to show her their ‘manners’ in graphic detail. Anak was finding it difficult to control his rising fury as they heaped lewd insults upon his lady, but he managed to keep his voice smooth and serene as he spoke.
“This will not end well for anyone,” he told the men softly, sliding his right foot back as their assailants spread out in front of him. “Let us forget this moment and be on our ways.”
“It will not end well for you, to be sure,” the Aam said wickedly, his hand reaching for the pulse pistol at his side.
Striking with the speed of a serpent, Anak spun and kicked. The blade of his foot sent the weapon flying into the gloom of the alleyway and crunched the bones in the wrist that held it. The guardsman fell to the ground, a high-pitched wail echoing off the walls around them. Anak sensed more than saw the other Aam reaching for the long knives scabbarded at their sides. Not stopping his movement, he cut through the Black Guard like a scythe through ripened wheat, his monstrous fists shattering skulls and spines in an avalanche of loosened rage. Three corpses kicked out their dying moments on the smoothly pebbled walkway before their steel cleared leather.
He turned toward the injured leader in time to see a mass of people filling the street, drawn by that first screech from the fallen Aam. Shouts and yelling accompanied the throng as they witnessed the short, deadly battle.
“He attacked us for no reason,” screamed the man curled on the damp pavement protecting his shattered wrist. “Kill him! Kill him!”
The angry mob surged forward, drawing swords and knives from their waists, cursing and cussing as they raced toward the melee.
“Run,” Anak bellowed, shoving Alcmene in front of him. “Run!”
“Why are we still waiting? They are coming for us. They have the surveillance Birds. They could find us at any moment.” Alcmene glanced nervously up at the shimmering stars, searching for one that moved too quickly across the night sky. She huddled before their campfire near the edge of the Maraldis Forest far from the lights of Atlantis not for warmth, but in an unconscious attempt to make herself smaller. Her full, red lips were drawn tightly across her egg-shaped face as she used a stick to stir the glowing embers before her. Deep crinkles settled between the golden-blond eyebrows above her crystal-blue eyes as she stared into the flickering flames.
“We are not ready. We must await the others,” Anak responded curtly. He brushed away stray strands of the wavy, sorrel hair that fell across his handsomely planed features as he stared into the fire, his stunning amber eyes dark and clouded. “But soon.”
“You should be the one most anxious to go.” She looked into his handsome, kind face, placing a hand upon his high cheek. She could not help the tears that accompanied her tiny, sad smile. “You are the one they are after.”
“I know,” he said, nuzzling into her loving touch. “I did not mean to kill those men. They should never have attacked us as they did.”
“Too much drink can turn the smartest of men into idiots,” she said to him, “but I thank you, sweet man, even though you know I can take care of myself.”
“Your fighting prowess was never in question,” he answered softly, but feeling the angst of his actions gnawing at his heart, “but even you could not win against drawn sidearms. I had no choice.”
Alcmene only nodded and brushed her lips to his.
“I just spoke to Kenica,” Collosto said, the golden highlights in his bright red hair catching the light as he stepped from the inky darkness into the glow of the fire. Breaking their moment, he sat down next to them on the thick carpet of green grass near the tree line. “They will be filtering in over the next couple of days. They have been discretely adding to our supply caches and acquiring weapons. Getting enough sleds is proving difficult. You know how the Black Guard watches us these days.”
“I do,” Anak replied, nodding his head in understanding. “I had once hoped we would find places of honor within their ranks, but now they treat us with the same ostracism and mistrust as the rest of the People do.”
“Killing them did not help,” Collosto said bitterly, flexing his gigantic biceps in the flickering light. “Not that I blame you. I would have done the same. The pulse weapon you saw was never found. The crowd never saw it. That despicable creature told Cronus your attack was unprovoked, that he and
the men were only complimenting your woman. He said you flew into a jealous rage and assaulted them. We are feared for our size and strength. It took little to incite the city against us.”
It was true, a byproduct of their mixed bloodlines that even Cronus had not foreseen. When the children of Pettit reached their mid-teens, they were scattered throughout the cities of the empire. They looked so much like a purebred Atlantean at that age that Cronus gave them no more thought. What he did not realize until Pettit fell and the Nephilim filled the city streets was what happened as they grew. Their Izon blood made their bones thicker and tougher than those of the People. Their Atlantean parentage gave them corded muscle and great height. However, their stout skeletons allowed them to grow taller and more powerful than even the largest of the People. By the time they reached their twentieth year, the elite among the Nephilim topped their contemporary city kin by at least two feet.
Their gargantuan size made them stand out all the more and made them hated even more. Even the Guard, within whose ranks they had at first been welcomed for their strength and endurance, began to curse and revile them, fearing their incredible physiques and innate feline grace. Those few Nephilim elite who had resided in Atlantis for decades, hidden among the populace and taken for simply over-sized examples of the People, were now outed as scions of Pettit and hounded as much as their younger kin. To make matters worse, once their distinction became known, the Atlanteans suddenly realized only the Nephilim had sired their own children instead of adopting what was once thought to be orphans. Whole families were forced to flee the city.
“Cronus fears us now as well,” Alcmene added, the anger in her voice evident in her clipped words. Her voluptuous, sensuous body, as hard as iron but soft of skin, and her ravishing beauty was once the envy of the women of Atlantis and the lecherous desire of its men, but her growth now made them shun her as they would a dangerous animal.
“His edicts are ignored without consequence except for those we enact for ourselves,” she continued bitterly. The small tree branch she held snapped with a loud crack as she broke it in two. The creatures of the night fell silent for a moment at the intrusive sound, then resumed their soulful serenade among the trees when no immediate threat became apparent.
“I do believe he is actually fueling the fire now,” Collosto said, nodding in agreement. Even with his eagle-sharp eyes, Anak had difficulty seeing his friend’s features in the dimness due to the darkness of his night-black attire. Only his fire-red hair made him visible. “I have heard it said he prohibits Nephilim from positions within the Great Pyramid as well as in the Aam. His mistrust filters throughout the city.”
“That is because of the rebellions spreading across the empire,” Alcmene replied harshly. “He blames us for it even though we were born of his own pens. We have done nothing against the People except for defending ourselves against harassment. We have never started anything.”
“Only finished it,” Anak muttered to himself, his heart still heavy with guilt. He could still feel their warm, sticky blood on his hands.
“There is much more behind the unrest than just the circumstances of our birth,” he added. “We are just the latest catalyst in centuries of problems. We elite are targets simply because we are so visible, as different from the People as are the Izon. Cronus is afraid we will join the rebels and stand against him.”
“Maybe we should,” Collosto said, his turquoise eyes blazing in the star-filled night. “Maybe we should. Maybe rising up against Atlantis is what all Nephilim should do.”
Many of the others heartily concurred with Collosto. They gathered in a small clearing deep within the Maraldis Forest where a thick canopy of dark verdant foliage concealed their location from the frequent flybys of the Birds of Atlantis. The dense forest rooftop absorbed most of the intense rays of the blazing summer sun, leaving only hazy yellow beams to filter through the web-work of intertwined branches and leaves above them. The air was rich with moisture causing a hot mist to swirl among the undergrowth like the shadowy shades of the dead. At least the small stream that snaked around the mammoth tree trunks was cold and refreshing.
“Thankfully, the oppressive heat in this place confuses the infrared scanners,” Hamirick said, wiping beads of sweat from his broad, slanted forehead with a hand that could crush a grown man’s skull like an overripe grape. “We avoided the Atlantean patrols in getting here but is only a matter of time before they find us. We cannot stay here.”
“Agreed,” Anak said, sitting on one of the fallen logs dragged into their encampment. “The problem is where to go and how. Once we step into the open we will be easily spotted. We have a tendency to stand out in a crowd.”
Guffaws and howls rippled over the twenty-three elites sitting around him in the glade. For being hunted, they were in surprisingly high spirits, grateful to finally be away from wary, hate-filled glances and uttered curses.
“Before we left, I accessed the data banks and just might have an idea,” Hamirick said after the laughter abated. His gargantuan form was clad in a tan, collarless, sleeveless tunic, low-cut and loosely laced over his broad, powerful chest. Around a waist not much smaller than his wide hips, he wore a black leather belt from which hung a sword longer than an Atlantean’s legs. Dark brown breeches, laced up the outside with thin strips of deer-hide covered his enormous legs, tucked into his calf-high, black boots. He cleared a patch of grass down to the dirt with a single swipe of his huge paw and sketched out a crude map with the pointed end of a sharpened stick.
“There is a decent sized river that passes through this forest and travels southward to the port of Tharsis,” Hamirick said, drawing a line in the dirt. “It will keep us hidden for the majority of the way. Once there, I believe we could steal a ship and sail north toward Prubrazian. The continent is vast with few outposts on the southeast side. We could settle there and build our own home in peace. To the pit with the People and their problems!”
“Not a bad idea,” Collosto agreed after the babble of agreement died down, “but I do see a couple of problems.” Once he had their attention, he continued. “Firstly, someone must stay behind to monitor the events in Atlantis.” Thinking of the beautiful woman who refused to leave Atlantis and now awaited him in the city, he said, “I will stay behind.”
“No, Collosto,” his friends shouted, aghast at the thought.
“This is my choice,” he said firmly. “I shall keep watch over our other kin and help those I can leave if they wish. I will protect them. Rest assured.” Collosto raised a hand to stave off further debate. “My mind is made up.”
After the grumbles subsided, Collosto continued, “Next, supposing you get there undetected, working your way to the harbor without being noticed will be a problem. Lastly, should you accomplish that feat, I doubt that stealing a vessel large enough to house all of you will be easy.”
“Even if we can,” Anak interrupted, his sharp, strategic mind mulling over the possibilities, “there is one issue that will damn this plan before we could even leave the docks.”
“What is that?” Hamirick asked, a bit irritated that his idea was being picked apart so thoroughly.
“How many of you can sail?” Anak asked, his amber eyes twinkling and a lopsided grin touching his lips.
From the moment the Sea Dragon left her berth in the shipyards, there was a waiting list for those clamoring to fill her cargo holds. She was the first of her kind, powered by a new design in water turbine engines that combined the strength of a water jet with huge propeller screws that cut deeply into the roughest of seas. She was a hundred and forty feet long from her sharply bladed prow to her flat, thirty-foot wide stern. Her fifty-foot beam gave her belly a slightly pregnant look but added to her stability in rough waters. The curve of her hull sank twenty feet below the water line when fully loaded, carefully engineered to cleave the sea around her as efficiently as the air around a skyship. Beneath her long, railed bowsprit was the majestically carved head and neck of a mythical, sc
aled beast with golden eyes, long snout and an open maw displaying rows of vicious-looking teeth.
The Sea Dragon boasted four masts with over seven miles of braided rope within her riggings passing through two hundred blocks that held the masts sturdy even in gale-force winds. When unfurled, the thick cloth sheets of her blue sails, treated to repel water, would cover an area of over two thousand square feet. Her hull was painted with white and aquamarine waves that swept gracefully from stem to stern. She was fast, stable and awe-inspiring to behold.
Which is why Captain Neptune found it so confounding that she sat in the harbor of Tharsis for over a week with almost no cargo with her empty holds. All of the contracts he had when he sailed into port had been canceled with only lame excuses devoid of reason being given to him by lackeys of merchants who usually met him in person. Even the dock workers seemed to avoid him, their eyes cast away as he passed by. He was completely caught off guard by the glints of fear and fury he caught in their furtive, sidelong glances as he walked along the soggy, salt-encrusted planks of the wooden wharf.
“What in the name of the Creator is going on here?” Neptune bellowed as he entered the Harbormaster’s office, his jade eyes blazing as he stared down at the trembling man standing behind the polished teak counter. “Why have my contracts been voided? Where is my cargo?”
“I…I do not know,” the Harbormaster stammered, his bald head lowered as if afraid to meet the Captain’s eyes. “This was not my doing. I swear to you. The cargo you were promised has been transferred to other ships on the orders of the merchants involved. I only facilitated the dispatches. Nothing more.”
“But why?” Neptune asked, his deep, bass voice softening as he noticed how terrified the man was. He could not fathom the man’s attitude. Normally, he was met with good humor and friendly banter, but now the man looked as if he wanting nothing more than to bolt for the door, only overwhelming panic keeping his feet frozen to the floor.
