by Calista Skye
The strangeness of it all gives off a clear warning: don’t come closer. Even the scavengers understand it.
I shake my head and continue on. But this has started me thinking. Something someone said recently…
I have only walked another thousand paces when I spot more dead Bigs. These are five irox, the flying terrors. They have fallen to the ground, their wings scorched and burned into flakes of skin that can’t keep them in the air.
Lightning strike? But there has been no thunderstorm. The one I expected never happened after all. And no lightning could strike five irox at the same time, much less kill a gatagank.
I frown and poke the nearest irox with my sword. The spot I touch disintegrates into fine, black dust.
Fire, hot enough to melt rocks.
Who said that?
Gir’ex. The morning before I left.
He was describing the dragons. I have never seen one, and I didn’t pay much attention to what the men of the alien tribe said about them. Gir’ex did.
A new coldness is growing in the pit of my stomach.
I have never seen this before. This kind of burn is new to Xren. Something has burned these irox to dust while they were still flying in the air.
And something has burned an entire gatagank in the same way.
Hot enough to melt rocks.
I remember seeing the blue light from the flame spewed by one dragon, now dead, close to our house on The Island. That could be it.
This close to Bune, the alien spaceship.
Recently, too. After Ashlynn and I passed this way. But not long after, I deem.
It can be no coincidence.
I notice I have turned around, and I’m now walking back towards Bune.
Where there were strange lights last night. Where Delyah said she was losing control of the alien tech.
All those Bigs we saw were running from something. What can make rekh form herds and run for their lives? What can make three gatagank move in the same part of the jungle at the same time, only days apart? If that long? It has never happened on Xren.
What can kill a gatagank with fire?
The suspicion grows stronger and colder.
I start walking faster. She might need me.
How could I have been so stupid?
I miss a breath when something else Gir’ex said flashes through my mind.
Talking to you, straight into your own soul without making a sound.
That voice that wasn’t a voice, that didn’t use words and could not be heard by Ashlynn.
That might not have been my inne voice after all.
The coldness spreads to my face and I can’t feel my hands.
The soul and brain of a very shrewd and evil man who wants you dead.
The laughter when I left that spaceship...
I left her there alone.
With one of those.
I start to run.
21
- Ashlynn -
I have Delyah’s old spear in my hand.
I also have something much better: those robots are no match for an Earth chick with a little bit of determination.
All thirty of them are there when I exit from the elevator. They immediately come at me, hands stretched out, looking quite scary in the still flashing light. The sirens don’t bother me that much anymore. I think it was Delyah’s way of alerting me to the danger.
I slash the spear against them as I walk, and that’s enough to knock them down. They are plainly running some software that doesn’t like it when they get hit at head height. It causes them to back down and pause, as if assessing damage.
I hold onto the blunt end of the spear and throw the other end around me in arcs, keeping the robots away. Some of them fall from the edge down to the garden way below, and those don’t get up again.
I make my way to the stairs, almost leisurely. These things don’t scare me anymore. I have things to do, and I know that doing them might kill me. But sometimes you have to be willing to make a sacrifice.
As I feared, this all comes down to me. If I don’t activate the escape ship, then the girls might never get home.
The despair is still there at the edge of my mind. But it’s almost mysterious how much difference a cold, no-fucks-given attitude can have against it. This must have been what Caroline felt back when she climbed up from that glass trench with Troga the dragon as an interested spectator. If I die, I die. Everything is lost anyway. But I will do this one thing.
I reach the stairs again. This time I’ll be going down. It’s easier.
I jab the spear at the eyes of the nearest robot, and it backs off, leaving a yard of daylight for me so I can get down the first step.
Then the next and the next, making sure not to look down and to not bump my hip too hard against the wall on the safe side – it might bounce me too far the other way, towards the drop.
The robots come after me. But their programming doesn’t trust their balance, so they’re slower than I am.
Even going down, my thighs tremble and ache. They’re still recovering from just a few hours ago, when I went up this way.
Before I know it, I’m down. I’m not thrilled about running again, and I don’t think I can even do it. But despite the robots being pretty far behind me right now, they’ll run when they get down.
So, I force myself into a slow jog.
The flashing light and the siren ruin the illusion that this is a natural landscape. Now it all just looks fake, clearly indoors.
I have the presence of mind to briefly stop and throw a handful of berries into my mouth. Nobody can function without energy.
I reach the stream and wade across it, like before. Then I jog on. Back on Earth, I would never have been able to do this. Here on Xren, I have been on many hunting expeditions in the nearby jungle, as well as longer treks along with Mia and Phoebe so that she could make that map of hers.
The robots are coming, and they’re running fast. But I still have the spear.
When I get to the elevator beam, I have to fight them off again before I walk backwards into the beam. They retreat a few yards, which suits me fine. I don’t want to feel too hunted.
I make my way down through the levels, hoping it’s the last time I do. This alien spaceship with all its incredible tech is getting a little old.
I calmly notice that some of the robots got to me. My forearms have a couple of punctures, making the blood run down them in dark little trails. And that’s just the places I can see. I probably have a good few more, especially on my back. It sure feels like it. Well, if that’s the worst they can to, then Delyah was right when she said they aren’t much good at fighting.
At the service level, I walk fast towards the elevator platform in the middle.
But it’s not there. There’s only the empty shaft, and way down there the light from the room with the main Weirdness in it.
There must be somebody down there.
The robots haven’t arrived yet, so I get down on one knee and bend down. “Delyah! You down there?”
My voice resonates down the shaft, but there’s no echo from the main room.
Still, I think I can hear a voice, and it sounds female.
The elevator platform is on its way up.
Okay. She wants me to come down there. When I step onto it and press the light again, the robots have still not appeared.
“I guess I beat you,” I mutter with some sense of triumph, not least because I’m pretty sure I’ll be seeing Delyah again in just a few seconds.
That fleeting feeling evaporates immediately, followed by only despair. This could be the last thing I do.
Stop it, I scold myself. I never trusted my own gut feeling before. Why am I suddenly doing that now, in such a negative way? This is actually working out pretty well.
Except for what Delyah had written on the window.
The platform stops by the alien controls, and I step off.
It’s quiet again.
“Delyah?”
My voice sounds dead, with no echo from the walls.
There’s no reply.
I check the controls. This is where I can activate the Weirdness in the escape ship, enabling it to travel faster than light. It will be ready to fly.
But I have a feeling this might not be the time.
I tiptoe over to the railing. “You here or not?”
There is a sound. Definitely female. But they’re not words.
She might be in some kind of trouble. Maybe looking at this extremely powerful Weirdness too closely made her sick.
Or... yeah. The Dragon.
“You okay, Delyah? Want me to come down?”
“Do—”
There, just that sound, very briefly. It sounds a lot like her.
And seriously, who else could it be?
I walk around the platform and look down from it on all sides, but all I can see is the Weirdness.
Fine. She might be down there, and she might be in trouble. I will never leave her here.
I pick one of the walkways that radiate out from the controls and slowly make my way to the circular wall, trying to look down. From here, a staircase goes down to the floor. It’s very utilitarian and has none of the futuristic style from the rest of the spaceship. But I guess the Ex would rarely need to come down here.
I slowly make my way down, clutching the spear. Everything about this feels dangerous and wrong.
I try not to look at the Weirdness. It’s so much more powerful than the small one on the amusement level, and it draws the eyes to it. It is a sheer impossibility that still hurts my head and brings back a hint of the old nausea, but I can control it. Tearing my eyes away from it is the only thing that works—
There you are. I thought you’d be coming.
I go cold. That voice was not Delyah’s.
In fact, that wasn’t a voice at all. That was someone talking straight into my mind, using no language.
Just like Troga would do.
And now I know where it is.
I slowly lift my gaze to the ceiling, high up. At the same moment, the dragon comes casually curving down through the air.
The sight alone knocks the breath out of me.
It shines in metallic silver, and the proportions of its powerful body are almost too perfect to be real. The small head on a long, slender neck. The powerful wings that don’t really need to beat. The long, flowing tail. The four legs, each tipped with talons that taper to needle-like points.
It is unspeakably, supernaturally beautiful.
But it radiates so much menace that the only word which goes through my mind is horrible.
Its otherworldly beauty mesmerizes me so much that only now do I realize it has something in its claws.
“Delyah!” I exclaim.
She doesn’t look lifeless, but she’s being held so tightly that she can’t make a sound.
The dragon comes down in lazy turns. It’s not huge. It’s body is maybe the same length as a car, except its tail, which adds another Volvo to the total.
It’s eyes are yellow, as I would expect. They’re a piercing yellow, and if I hadn’t been so much around Juri’ex and his even more spectacular turquoise ones, then it would probably have made a much greater impression on me. But now, I just note that there’s less life in these yellow ones. Juri’ex’s had soul. I see nothing like that in the dragon’s gaze.
Oh, Juri’ex.
The first shock gives way to a cold realization that we’re going to die here, Delyah and I. That dragon can spew fire that will incinerate us in a second. If it won’t prefer to bite us in half or stab us with its talons or just drop us from a great height.
“Let her go,” I yell, but my voice is so thin that I regret it immediately. It’s just, I feel like I have to do something.
The dragon laughs inside my mind, so sure of itself.
Of course, I will let her go. As soon as the two of you satisfy my idle curiosity.
The dragon suddenly swoops down and lands on the floor with two of its legs, the other two still keeping Delyah immobile. But I see her move a little, and her eyes are shooting lightning bolts as she glares up at the dragon’s head.
That little flash of her spirit cheers me up. I’m not alone here. With Delyah, the bona fide genius, anything is possible.
“Let her go,” I demand again, managing to control my voice slightly. “None of us have ever harmed you.”
I agree. And I am sure you want nothing more than to help me.
I change the sweaty grip around Delyah’s spear, wanting the dragon to see I am armed. “Why do you need our help?”
The dragon lets Delyah go, and she collapses onto the floor, gasping for air.
Then the dragon transforms right in front of me. If I hadn’t been so used to looking at the various Weirdnesses, I might have fainted at the reality-defying sight of a dragon morphing into a much more human figure.
It’s a man-shaped being, about the same size as Juri’ex. It is a man so beautiful it could freeze the heart. But where Juri’ex was expressive and soulful and alive, this thing is just… icy in its perfection. His muscles are so symmetric they look fake, and the hint of scales on his skin looks almost like shiny plastic.
Even so, I do have a little bit of the feeling I got whenever I saw Troga: such a beautiful being has a right to do anything it wants, even if it means killing me for no reason.
But the hypnotic effect Troga had isn’t present with this one. Again, I think the Weirdness has something to do with that. Now that I’m seeing both things together, the Weirdness is much weirder and ultimately more astounding.
The dragon-man casually strolls towards me, and before I can draw away he has taken the spear and is twirling it between two silvery fingers. “I am Zahak.”
His voice is deep and resonant. But again, the pure perfection of it makes it sound lifeless.
Zahak? That rings a bell. It’s one of the two dragons that was stranded on the island near where Phoebe and Rax’tar lived for a while.
“What happened to Mariotrek? Or whatever his name was?”
“Oh, I had to kill Maretriok. It was him or me.”
“Trouble in paradise, huh.” The despair makes me brave. And I have recently teased a creature just as lethal as this one and lived to tell the tale. Twice.
He flashes a yellow glance at me. “Only one of us could escape. I saw it as important and right that it should be me.”
Delyah is still on the floor, on her knees, recovering with her hand on her throat. A little bit of dark blood seeps out between her fingers.
“Congratulations,” I say, trusting my voice more now. This guy isn’t all that imposing when in this shape. He doesn’t make me feel that same despair, for one thing.
I wonder why he is in this humanoid shape at all. The girls speculate that it is a sign of weakness – a dragon needs a hoard for strength, the same way humans need food. And I doubt this one has much of a hoard. He might be weaker than he looks.
Zahak twirls the spear faster than the eye can follow, and then it spins so fast that it breaks up and the pieces of the shattered shaft fly around my ears. The iron spearhead drops to the floor with a clanging sound.
“Another treasure for your hoard,” I say and point at the rusty piece of pig iron. “That should triple the value, easily.”
Zahak smiles, and it is both a terrifying and a wondrous sight. “My hoard has much greater value than that piece of trash.”
I think back to Berezar’s remains that Car’rakz and Tamara brought back to the village.
“Let me guess,” I say. “You killed Mar-whatever for his scales. That’s your hoard.”
The dragon-man flexes one finger, making the claw on the end of it glitter in the dim light. “Perhaps.”
“You needed to change to your dragon form to escape. There was nothing of value on that island. So one of you had to give up his scales. How do creatures like you fight, anyway?”
Zahak comes closer and towers over me, castin
g me in shadow. “Pray to any impotent deity you worship that you will never know.”
I gasp at the menace in him. At the same time, I wonder why he has allowed both me and Delyah to survive this long. He would clearly kill us both without a second thought.
Another wave of coldness goes down my spine. We’re alive only because this dragon wants it. The moment he stops wanting that, we’re history.
I spot some blemishes on his scales. There are feint scorch marks and even what looks like cuts in his metallic skin. “You’re injured. Do you need medical attention?”
The dragon looks down himself as if only now discovering the wounds. “I assure you that I injured Maretriok worse.” His chuckle chills me to the bone.
So much for the compassionate approach. But still – this is not actually a mythical being. This is only an alien. And we know they are mortal.
“We have substances that may heal you faster,” I persist.
“As did the builders of this place,” he replies easily. “I didn’t need any assistance from them, either. You are not one of them. Why are you inside this pitiful contraption of theirs?”
“This spaceship?” I feign innocence. “It landed on our planet, and we wanted to explore it.”
Delyah is slowly getting to her feet, steadying herself on the wall. She looks like she’s been through the wringer more than once.
“Your planet?” Zahak says, casually. “Where would that be?”
“Here,” I state without missing a beat. And I realize that it came too fast.
22
- Ashlynn -
“Here?” He tilts his head and his voice is as mild as a day in spring.
“Here,” I repeat, pointing to the floor. “Xren. Our home planet.”
“The planet where you come from? Where you were hatched?”
“Yes. Here. And we’re not hatched. We’re born.”
“Ah. I don’t know the meaning of that word. I find the customs and even basic knowledge of the lesser species repulsive. What is that?” He points to the Weirdness.
“I… I don’t know.”
Zahak suddenly takes three long steps towards the wall, picks Delyah up in his arms, and holds her in a grip that looks very unpleasant.
