Otherworldly

by C F Rabbiosi

  “You split your skin to release anguish?” he asks as we drift in the watery wonderland. I nod but he appears skeptical. “I believe it is more than that.” He says this like he knows something, everything about me.

  “You’re nothing like I thought.”

  “And what did you think?”

  “Well, what would you think of a race of aliens who came down and destroyed everything humankind had built?”

  Anger flashes across his features. “This is what you believe?”

  “Well, yes, of course.” I’m confused by his heated response, by the way his entire demeanor has darkened. “Bodies of the women, the tales of how earth used to be…We have to hide from you!”

  “You understand nothing.” He guides me toward his back and we swim toward the shore. “We have never wanted to be here in this wretched place. Never have we had a home here.”

  “But you said you were a warrior race. Taking over worlds is what you do, isn’t it?”

  “Never had we taken another’s planet. We defended. So well, that we survived to the death of ours. You, for instance…right now, you are here only halfway through the death of your star. Your sun. In five billion more years, it will die out as well.”

  Maybe where he’s from, that was their end of days. But from everything I’ve read and feel in my heart, there’s something else in store for us. I don’t know what, but there is more than we can see and what our sciences can explain. Religious works like the Bible and Koran come to mind, their pages written by men long ago who felt God guiding their hand. Books written at different times and in completely different places, yet still seem to have the answer for every question you could ask. There are a lot of brutal stories, too, but it taught the ones left after the annihilation important lessons as they rebuilt. I do feel something special about me. It’s in every breath and every joyful rush. We are flesh and bone but also amazing and unique minds, love and invention. A living entity. Essence. A soul.

  “Our population had dwindled by the time we made it here. We did not want a war.” Thunder rumbles again overhead as he says, “My people came to yours for help.”

  Heat moves to the surface of my skin as he speaks. He’s trying to make me trust him by changing the beliefs that have been instilled in me since birth. Discrediting my people will never win me over. My people would never destroy our world or kill billions. They came with weaponry we had never seen before, and it is well known, evidenced that something was used on us of an alien nature. Something a million times worse than our nuclear weapons. Only twelve total explosions occurred, two on every continent save one, Antarctica. They positioned the explosions at the doorstep of the world’s most prominent leaders. However it went wrong, they came back at us with strategic force beyond anything they could possibly have needed to do. I cannot feel sorry for him, and this reminds me that he is my natural born enemy.

  We reach the shore and the flurry of raindrops dies down. “Well, it’s all yours now, no matter why.” I get out and pull my soppy leather garb from the mud. I want to put it on and hide all this naked skin but must rinse the dirt out first. As I smell the rain’s earthy sent on the wind and watch it make perfect rippling circles with each drop on the lake, it amazes me that Kassien can have so much contempt for the world. It’s so beautiful, so miraculous in every way. It sickens me that his people could harm any piece of it.

  As I drag the clothing through the water, I can feel him behind me. “It does not matter if it is mine.” He grips the back of my neck and pulls me up. I step into the bottoms and he roughly ties the top portion. “You will very well be left alone here once again.”

  I run to keep pace with him as he walks away. “What do you mean, Kassien?” I’m out of breath, but at least I’m not cold anymore, my blood rushing. “Koridon! Wait!” Darker and darker it grows as I lose sight of him. I stop, irritated at his speed and endurance, and think about running off to hide. I take a few steps backward, wondering if I could find my village. But if I did, would I lead him straight there?

  He said they were leaving. Could it be? Have they found somewhere else to go? Might we be safe once again to be outside the cloaking device, travel and live life to the fullest like we were meant to?

  But why?

  The sound of footsteps returns. “Kassien, why would you leave the world to us again?” Through the darkness, I watch him saunter through the trees toward me. Except, something’s wrong. The one that runs toward me wears black.

  In an unseen moment, the Koridon is upon me. “Kass—” His palm covers my whimper and he swings me around, my back against his front.

  “My name is Brekter.” He rips my top down and grasps my breast as my muffled scream vibrates into his hand. “And I am going to do to you what he couldn’t.” He lifts me into his arms and runs.

  14

  ~Calypso~

  Kassien will stop this. After a considerable distance from the lake, he drops me to my feet. Keeping a hand firmly over my mouth, Brekter rolls my nipple between his thumb and forefinger, and I feel him large and full pressing into my back. “I have often wondered why human women like these touched and licked.” He squeezes and the pink bud blanches.

  “Why do you think that?” I sure as hell don’t like it, and his admittance of experience with humans chills my bones.

  “Because,” he says into my ear with a sharp pinch, “they slicken with wetness between their legs when they are touched like this.”

  I bound up and the top of my head careens into his chin. I won’t get far running, but I can damn sure scream.

  My cries are rammed back down my throat when a solid fist connects into my face. Flying backward, I slam into the rain-drenched ground and swallow the taste of copper. “A shame to mess up such a face,” the unfamiliar Koridon says, stepping through the dark to stand over me. “But then, you were bound to end up a terrible mess after this.”

  “No, no, no!” I crawl away, my jaw hurting. Getting up on my knees, I jar it back into place with a horrible utterance. Fingers dig into my skull and drag me backward by the hair. He keeps a tight hold, my scalp pulling, and fumbles the bottoms up to wrap around my waist.

  “Don’t scream again, or I will shove my…how is it said in your language? Ah yes, cock, down your throat. I think I have made your jaw loose enough.” He shoves me onto my back and his large fingers probe around my cursed slit. In the shadowy evening, he could be Kassien: the muscular build and light eyes with the same charcoal effect lining the outside. But he is not, no matter how hard I wish it. Oh, where is he?

  “I sensed you minutes before Kassien brought you in. Your sweet, feminine smell called to me.” His mouth sinks into my shoulder and I grit my teeth.

  “Kassien,” I whisper as tears spill down my cheeks. The urge to shriek surfaces several times but is stopped short by the ache in my jaw. Brekter places his monstrous crown to the crevice of my backside and pushes. He grunts with the effort as I squeeze my legs closed. There was a chance Kassien would have mated me without much damage, but this one brings back every fear of the horned demons and nightmarish monsters I grew up believing in. The blood-soaked girl cold on the ground…what if it was this one that killed her?

  “He said you were going to save us, but all he wants is to have you for himself.” He forces my legs apart while keeping a sharp elbow into my chest.

  “Why do you need saving?” I growl and send a fist into the side of his face.

  A humorless chuckle bursts from his throat as he braces it down. “We are dying.”

  “Good.”

  He eases away to push his fingers inside me.

  “He’s going to kill you. My voice cracks as he rams into me, up to the root of his middle finger. “He’s out there right now, looking for me.”

  “No. He left you for me.” A pleased breath swooshes from his lips as his finger continues to dive in and out.

  “He wouldn’t.” Would he, though? In the end, I know nothing about Kassien or his race.

&nbs
p; Brekter takes the thing he called a cock in his hand and slaps it against me.. He’s going to mount me, and he’ll break my bones, crush my organs to liquid as he grinds me into the ground. “It was agreed upon this morning after you arrived that we would all have a chance to mate you. His chance is up.”

  The anger he portrayed as he left me behind…did I misinterpret it? Could he have been upset because he knew he must leave me to be ravished by another?

  “But you Koridon males kill. We cannot survive this!”

  “That’s why highest ranked gets you first.” He lifts me into his lap and I sit with the underside of his velvety hardness pressed into my open slit.

  No. It can’t be. Kassien was gentle with me; I felt his suffering as he held back from filling me to bursting, every last drop of his satisfaction expended deep inside me. My heart sinks. I don’t know why he was so careful with me, why he swam with me, but perhaps I am not meant to. Perhaps nothing is at seems. “He promised our union, our marriage. I belong to him, Brekter.”

  “A promise he was never in a position to make. He may be a prince of the ruling family, but we have laws. They may never return, anyway.”

  “I’ll marry you instead. Don’t kill me, and I will be with you instead.” Desperation. Delaying the inevitable. A shot in the dark. But if he did agree to this, the second he trusted me, I would cut his throat.

  “I would never marry an animal.”

  “Why are you dying?” I force out as he hoists me up. He angles his hips and I resist the tension on my shoulders that brings me onto the head of his shaft.

  “You and your kind. You have everything here, and we belong nowhere.” Hatred drips from his words and pieces of the puzzle start to come together. They’re not thriving here and either blame us or are envious of us. He bites into my shoulder again, ravenously, like a wolf tearing at a bloody carcass, and forces me down. The shattering pressure into my body becomes unbearable. Pain shoots up through my lower region and spills out in the form of shrieks from my belly. I twist and turn, throw my fists and fight like the devil.

  But I’m defeated. Not only because my body will soon be crumpled and twisted into odd positions rotting into the ground, but because…he isn’t coming for me.

  He’s left me out here to die by the hands of a monster. One just like him.

  Brekter laughs, a horrible sound through ragged breaths, and he’s deep enough that thrusting begins. So unlike the feeling before with Kassien by the lake, this physical sensation pierces my body and sickens my soul. A few pressuring inches through, and he pulls back out. He roars and his silvery eyes turn black. The lust has taken him, and I am out of time.

  15

  ~Calypso~

  His roar morphs into something evil and tangled with rage, two voices, and I’m torn into the overcast sky. I slam back down by rough hands into Kassien’s chest.

  “Don’t let him do it, don’t let him,” I say, frantically clawing Kassien. The other Koridon was lying; I am Kassien’s. I belong to him, and he would never allow the others to hurt me!

  Brekter slams into Kassien, sending him off-balance, and I fall from his arms. My head snaps back up as I scurry. Kassien’s face swells with discoloration and a cut bleeds from beneath his eye. “Ertandus ver Tanek va Gerikon?” Brekter cries out, unsheathing his blade.

  “They are alive. Barely. But you knew I would fight for her.” Kassien crouches with one protective arm in front of me and the other out straight. Descending from his fingertips is a long blade. His people destroyed most of the world in the blink of an eye, and all he has to fight this beast with is a sword? “You had to have known what I would do if you touched her.” Kassien’s gaze remains downward, his voice an unstable calm before the storm.

  Brekter speaks so I can understand. “I see why you want her to yourself. I feel why.”

  “Then know you must back down or I will put you into the ground just as I did Tanak and Gerikon.” Kassien sidesteps as the other Koridon moves on him. He shakes his head and strikes his blade through the air. His heavy movements worry me: the slight drag in his step and the hedging desperation behind his threats.

  He circles us. “You’re going to fall, prince. You can hardly stand.”

  “Death will find us both then, master of combat.” Kassien takes a mad swipe at Brekter as though his strength has returned, and with a look of shock, Brekter hardly dodges being scathed.

  Then, Kassien falls to one knee, the beating he endured catching up to him though he has tried to fight through it I rush to his side and protect the weapon in case Brekter goes for it.

  “Woman.” He aims the tip of his knife at me and I flinch but stand strong. “If you believe that our prince has not betrayed you…” He kicks a rock up at me and I take the hit to my leg. “Come with me now, and I will let him live. If you do not, I will take you anyway…After I kill him.”

  “You would kill your sovereign?” Kassien tells me to stop and tries to usher me behind him, but I move to his side.

  Brekter puts his corded arms out to the side. “There hasn’t been any order here for some time now. What control he and his family have tried to hang on to is little more than a forgotten dream.”

  “We will rise again, brother,” Kassien says. “Just don’t hurt her. We have to…verlerium tara costind.”

  “Please, continue to speak so she can understand!” Amusement alights his features. He looks heavenward, then says to me, “Choose.”

  “No.” Kassien slices toward him and Brekter grunts as the sword clanks into his. Brekter’s wrist buckles and the handle slips from his grasp. Kassien strikes low and Brekter rolls backward in the nick of time. Kassien stalks toward the Koridon and I pick up the fallen sword. In an unseen moment, Brekter speeds around and sends my face into the ground as he moves.

  The weapon now back in his hands, he takes me by the throat and my toes dangle above the earth. “Do not move, Prince!” he call out. Kassien freezes at the sight of my pleading face and it’s that second that Brekter thrusts his blade into Kassien’s side. He falls and the thud sends a sharp flutter from my chest to my toes.

  He drops me beside my fallen Koridon. “Tell me what you just said to him,” I say rising to my knees. “Tell me what you’re hiding from me! Tell me, and I will go with him.” If he destroys Kassien, all hope is lost.

  “No, and never,” he says into the dried leaves and dirt before slamming a fist into the ground so hard I stumble.

  “I will tell you.” Brekter extends a hand. “Do you wish to know why he favors you, human? After all, no one hates your race like him, and yet he protects you.”

  “So my choice is to what? Come with you so he may live and I may be killed by your hideous cock?” Cock. Eh, his word feels worse coming from my mouth than it sounded coming from his.

  “I’d rather not kill him. It will probably cause some form of turmoil when his family eventually returns.”

  I scoff and adjust my top. “I’m still not fond of the horrible death part.”

  “Brekter!” my Koridon yells. “I command you to leave now! You are banished from my sector!”

  “That probably isn’t the right thing to say just now,” I say as he gets back to his feet rather slowly.

  “Oh, Kassien. Just hand over the girl. You are in no condition.”

  “No, she is—”

  “I know. You don’t want her dead. Fine; I’ll be careful with her. You have my word. But I am going to bind her to me like you had planned.”

  “Why?” he asks the conniving male.

  “For the same reason as you. Does it really matter? If it is you or I that has her?”

  Kassien exhales sharply and wipes his brow. “As your prince, it should be me. How can you be trusted?”

  “I probably cannot be, but you are not in a position to fight me for her. Tanak and Gerakon saw to that when they beat you into the ground.”

  “You will all pay for your betrayal of the Drakon rule.” Blood trickles from his forehead and h
e reaches out to a tree for balance.

  Brekter hoists me into his arms. “Perhaps there will be a new rule.” With that, he speeds away, my Koridon’s vehement cry echoing through the forest.

  ***

  The trees blur as he runs—in what direction, I have no idea. It’s all freedom and fresh air in the forest I always longed for, and yet I’m still a prisoner. The fact that death draws near has a strange effect: fearlessness. As I bump around in his arms, I ask, “What are your real plans for me? I believe you told me earlier that you would never marry an animal.”

  “The difference is that this animal is intriguing.”

  “Well, in my society, we wait until the betrothal is fulfilled before lying together.”

  “As do we.” Shock pulls my chin up to peer into his eyes. They are not laughing like I thought they’d be. “Guess you will have to find some other way to please me until then.”

  “How would I…” The tactile memory of Alexander’s cock down my throat gags me. “Oh, no. Not a chance.”

  “How’s your jaw?”

  In truth it doesn’t hurt anymore. I’ve been injured before but nothing serious, and while I can sense the aching, it doesn’t bother me. I’ve always healed quickly.

  “You can be my play thing until the ceremony,” he says. “I will try not to kill you.”

  “You’re really serious. What is the purpose for waiting to bed your females?” I can’t presume they have the same reasons as we do.

  “Keep up,” he says, clutching my upper arm as we walk. “You will not like my answer.”

  I jerk free and tax my leg muscles to keep pace with him. “Tell me anyway.”

  His features light up with wickedness. “Just wait for the ceremony and all will be answered.”

  “What is the ceremony like?” I misstep over thick overgrowth and, in an unseen moment, Brekter has my arm again, the forest floor flying away as he sets me back on my feet.