He growls through his teeth, the air wheezing in and out of him, and when he looks at me, he is the beast that I know him as. But I’ve fought beasts before. He roars out a battle cry and attacks with a violence that catches me off guard. I narrowly avoid collision with one of the bodies forming the perimeter of the pit — I don’t know whose — before I manage to skip back into the clearing.
Raku is shouting for an intervention, but Kinan’s voice ride over his. “Nox! Let her finish this.”
I dodge and dodge again, bending backwards, ducking low, jumping when he goes for my legs. As he advances, I have no other choice but to defend with everything I have. He outmuscles me by tons and he’s not a total moron. He’s not trying to hit me with the hammer, he’s trying to use it to distract me. It’s working. Because I don’t realize how close his body has gotten to mine until he releases the chain end with one hand and lets his fist fly forward.
He hits me in the face and the pain is splintering. Blood fills my mouth, but I somehow manage to remain coherent enough to jump back. I don’t jump far enough. He kicks and his foot meets my stomach which punches up into my lungs as I fly. I hit the ground hard, left wrist searing in agony as I land. My body travels, skating over the cold. I feel feet jump out of my way and know I’ve broken through the first ring of attendees and when I finally manage to blink my eyes open, I’m sure of it.
Somehow, the first face I see when I open my eyes is Reema’s. It’s the only face I see too. Suspended against so much white like an inverted teardrop, her face is full of emotion, a riotous display. Even her eyes are wide and huge. She’s sniffling, body curled slightly into the one beside hers. I know this is her mother because her father is the Garon, and one day she wants to grow up to be just like him, but a female has never been weapons keeper before on Nobu and she’s afraid. I know this. I know this like a truth branded onto my soul.
I shove my legs beneath me and as I stand, I flash her a smile. I can feel blood seep between my teeth and when she shrinks back even further, I offer her all I can in that moment. A shrug and a wink. Fear is what hurts us. Blood is nothing.
She gasps and that’s all the warning I need. I can feel his energy behind me, burning into my spine. I spin to meet it with energy of my own. It’s a manic energy — just as hard, just as crazed, but somehow in that madness, controlled. I know that he can’t hurt me. Even if he cuts me down with his hammer, I might die, but he’ll never recover from this.
He tries to grab me with one hand, but I move faster than he does and bring the blade of my grabar against his arm, severing muscle and the tendons beneath. He’s bleeding profusely now and roars. He advances, swinging his chain this way and that. He manages to wrap it around my grabar and with one pull, I know he can take it from me. So I let him.
“Pe’ixal,” I shout when he turns to face me, a smile on his lips. He thinks this is the end and that he’s won.
I wear a smile of my own and it must unsettle him because he hesitates when he could have killed me in one stroke. “Kiki…”
“Yes!” I roar, “That is my name and I own it. Kiki!” I scream to the wind, letting it ravage my voice. “But who are you? You are Pe’ixal,” I laugh. “My mate exiled your father and now I’ll do the same to you. A disgraced family, dishonorable and shamed! Or would you rather die, Pe’ixal? I’ll cut you down and throw you into the water.” I laugh and I laugh deep and from the belly. “Not even the hevarr will know your name!”
He comes at me and when he raises his weapon, I do something that should scare the piss out of me — I duck under the curtain of his arms and come up against his chest and deliver two swift punches to the places where I know plates don’t cover him. Wrestling with Kinan in the cold was hard. This is effortless. He buckles, weapon drooping and I use that momentary lag to dive past him, rolling again and retrieving my grabar.
He’s close behind. Too close for me to rise. Too close for me to avoid the path of his hammer this time. It impales my left shoulder, the okami providing cover, but not enough to stop the hammer from meeting skin, tearing through that, and then flesh, tearing through that too, before finally landing at bone.
I don’t scream. I don’t make a single noise. I take the pain as I lay there on the ground, face down, listening to Pe’ixal come up behind me, laughter on his tongue. “You thought you were clever.” Breathe. “You thought you mattered.” Wait. “You are nothing but Va’Raku’s whore.” Calm. “You’ll be mine again too before this is over.” I can feel his heat against my back. I can hear Miari screaming, Svera now too. More voices join the chorus. Kinan’s is not among them.
The thud of footsteps is loud now, right on me, but I wait for them to get even closer. So close that I can feel his heat, or at least, imagine it. Too close. Close enough that I should be afraid. But I’m not. Close enough that when I flip myself over, plant the butt end of my staff and lift the blade end and the big red bastard takes a step forward, he impales himself.
At first, only a little. But it’s still enough to startle him. He looks down at the dagger-end of my weapon, watches it disappear beneath his hide covering, watches blood radiate out from around it, soaking through hide and fur.
I grab the helos staff by the rough leather holds and push. A punctuated grunt comes out of me, the first sound I’ve made since this battle began that wasn’t an insult. Pain tickles my consciousness, but I ignore it. At least, for now. I shove harder, using my abdomen to lift my torso as I press my blade further into him.
He swipes at me and I can’t move. Now that he’s slumped forward, I’m carrying most of his weight and it’s a lot of weight. Sharp, serrated claws find purchase in the okami covering my chest. They tear it open, scoring lines of heat across my sternum. But I don’t give in. I don’t give up. I want to finish this.
I lift a little more, pushing my grabar into his belly until I’m up to the first handhold. I glance around his body and can see bloodied helos pointing up towards the hidden suns. He moans horribly and paws at me with his claws, but his motions are slow, weak, defeated. He’s slumped almost all the way forward and when he opens his mouth to issue another cry, copper droplets spill from his mouth onto my cheeks, like rain that tastes like metal and redemption.
I push even harder, until I can feel his hot blood seeping into my gloves, until we’re eye-to-eye, face-to-face, cheek-to-cheek. He smells like sweat and metal, like sand and violence, history erased.
My lips move close enough to his skin to taste and I feel no fear as I whisper, “You are Pe’ixal, the worthless. And that is all you will ever be known as to me. And you can be sure that I will be the last soul alive who remembers you. I will never speak of you to anyone and when I die, you will be forgotten. It will be like you never even lived.”
His eyes blaze and his ridges shine, just once, and only fleetingly. They are a color I’ve never seen before, one that cannot be described in nature, but that is something like grey, only more profound. A color that speaks to unblemished agony.
And then the tension flees his body all at once and his torso releases. The pressure is surreal and I only barely manage to roll my spear to the left to avoid being crushed underneath his weight. He hits the ground with a thump, white flakes puffing up around him like dust, and for a moment, I just drink in the sight of his face. His eyes are wide open, lips slightly parted. He does not look at peace. He looks to have died how he lived — monstrously.
I place my hand against his face and use it to push myself onto my feet. Standing, I sway as I turn a full circle. The humans have gone berserk and most of the xleranx now are actively holding them back. My name is being shouted loud enough for the cosmos to hear. “Ki-ki! Ki-ki! Ki-ki!” Even the Voraxians, for all their honor and weirdness around names, have joined in.
But I don’t care what they call me. They can call me human for all I care. My gaze switches across so many faces in so many colors, losing focus. I see my mom covering her face with her hands in horror and wonder if she watched any of
the fight at all. Miari holds her wrist and tries to tug it down while Svera, on her other side, is jumping up and down, earlier battle forgotten.
I stagger, using my grabar to keep me upright when a sharp voice draws my attention left. “Xhea.”
Kinan stands there and I notice something odd — four of his warriors, including Ka’Okkari have their hands on him. They hold his arms and legs and his body by the buckles of his okami. As if they are holding him back from something, restraining him from charging forward and making me wonder if that’s what his intention had been.
He wears all his colors in his face, though this time, color even rolls down his neck, like some sort of strange party is being hosted underneath his skin. It makes me smile, and when I do, I feel hot, sticky blood dribble down my chin. But he still doesn’t come to me. His body is flinching wildly, but he forcibly shrugs off those holding him and crosses his arms.
“You are not finished,” he barks. “I demanded his plates and you are empty handed.”
Nodding robotically, I return to Pe’ixal’s body, that red smear of a corpse, and one-by-one, I remove all thirty-two of his plates. I don’t know how long it takes me. Moments. Half a solar. All I know is that the sky is at its brightest as I rise, gather all of Pe’ixal’s bloodied bits to my chest and drop them at Kinan’s feet, where I too collapse.
Kinan dives at me. It comes as an attack, his lips on my lips. He kisses me feverishly despite the blood and in public view of everyone. His body rolls against mine and if I had more blood in my body and more space in my head to think, I might have done more than just lie there, waiting for whatever will happen next to happen.
He grabs my arm and I gasp, pain spearing me and waking me from the spell he has me under. “Xok,” he curses — the first time I’ve ever heard a curse from him. “You did well, Kiki. You just rid this cosmos of a bad male. No one will ever suffer at his hands again.” He grabs the tattered front of my suit and pulls me into a sitting position. “I will prepare a merillian bath for you.”
“Nox.” I shake my head and grab his wrists, smiling giddily as my face and shoulder begin to throb. “I think three times a virgin is enough.”
Kinan smiles and I laugh. I laugh and he laughs and soon, Jaxal is at his shoulder and so is Miari and so is Svera and Tre’Hurr and Ka’Okkari and my mom. Even Krisxox makes an appearance as Kinan pulls me onto my feet.
“Not bad,” Krisxox says, what sounds like begrudgingly, “for a human.”
I lift my middle finger in his direction and I don’t miss the way the corner of his mouth twitches, releasing a smile I’m guessing he wished he hadn’t. “Alright,” I say, panting now as I try to take my own weight and failing at it. “Let’s go home.”
I start to turn, but Raku’s voice projects over the messy throngs. The outline of the arena is no longer visible. There are just beings and bodies and white and copper. “We are not finished yet with the trials. We still await the outcome of the trial of Lisbel, the former hasheba to the Va’Rakukanna.”
I burst out laughing. “Fuck. I forgot about Kuaku.”
“You do not need to remain for this. We should seek medical attention.”
“Medical attention should come here. I’m not going anywhere,” I pant.
Kinan curses again — that’s twice now — and issues a few orders before settling me on a chair in his lap. Soon, I have a female I’ve never met before, but have heard lots about from Svera at my shoulder, holding up some kind of ray gun to the wound on my arm.
“I’m Lemoria,” she says.
“I know,” I answer. “I’m Kiki, Va’Rakukanna of the Voraxian Federation and the Xhea of Nobu.”
She smiles. “I most certainly know, and will not ever forget.”
Kinan’s face is radiant light, having settled on a brilliant orange, where it’s chosen to stay.
Meanwhile, a misshapen circle has reformed and Pe’ixal’s body has been dragged away somewhere where it will be buried in an unmarked grave and appropriately forgotten. The sight of his blood on the arena floor, and his dismembered plates laid out before me, coupled with the taste in my mouth makes me feel less like a human and more like a barbarian. But Kinan’s forehead still shines and his arms continue to cradle me. Proud. And that’s what I feel now. Limitless, like the Xanaxana’s unforgiving energy, coursing through my body. Pain is nothing to that.
I struggle to focus as Lemoria calls over another Voraxian, someone called Ki’Lemoria, who rushes around and follows her commands, stitching and patching and spraying and raying. They have me seated on a chair now, Kinan’s arms fixed around my frame.
“Why were there xub’Okkari holding you?” I ask as Kuaku shuffles into the arena, head bowed.
Kinan nuzzles my neck. Places his hand to my stomach. Pulls me up against his thighs. “It was all I could do not to storm into the tribunal after you. I know what I said, but my body fought me at every turn. Watching you was the most glorious torture.”
I kiss him deeply, the taste of the oasis overwhelming me and blotting out the taste of my own blood — until I hear a cry. Alone now in the center of the arena, Kuaku stands with her hands pressed over her mouth, horror scrawled in violent colors in the ridges above her eyes.
Raku’s booming voice carries as he says, “If none will step forward to act as Lisbel’s champion, then she will be forced to take up a weapon herself. If there is one here who will accept to champion for her, then they must step forward now.”
The pitch is silent. Lisbel is shaking. Our eyes meet briefly and I know that if I weren’t so badly injured, I’d have accepted to champion for her. She doesn’t deserve exile. She doesn’t deserve a hevarr. Not even a bitch like her. Or even a bitch like me.
I open my mouth to say something — anything — to delay Raku’s next words, when all of a sudden, a throaty groan rises up on my left. I glance past Lemoria’s body to see Jaxal on one knee, both fists planted into the ground. He’s shaking his head, eyes clenched tightly together, shoulders heaving.
“Fuck the sun,” he damn near moans, and when he looks up — straight at Lisbel — he shouts, “I’ll champion for her.”
Lisbel is staring at him, eyes huge, forehead white. And then the other colors come. “Are you…” she starts, but for once it looks like she’s at a loss for words.
Jaxal rises and though it looks like it pains him to say it, he grunts, “Yeah. I’m your Ziv-whatever. Your mate. You’re not fighting today, and you’re not going into exile.”
I’m the first to react, and I do so with a laugh. It belts out of me carelessly, euphorically. Whatever drugs Lemoria is feeding me in those ray guns…keep ‘em coming. “Comets and stardust,” I say, “What a xoking time to be alive.”
20
Kinan
I watch from the mouth of the training cavern as Kiki attempts to show Svera a few basic moves in hand-to-hand combat — moves any being, male or female, human or Voraxian, should be able to master in their own self-defense.
Even without being able to hear each word she utters, it is clear she is frustrated by Svera’s lack of progress. It is not even that Svera is so uncoordinated — on the contrary, the female is one of the most graceful and elegant I have come across of any species — it is that simply, she does not want to fight anyone.
“Svera, plant your right foot and lift your right hand. The left one stays down. When I try to hit your face, you can bring your left hand up to block me. Okay?” Kiki’s voice is not the loudest in the hall, but it is certainly the most aggravated.
It has been six solars since the other humans, including the Raku and Rakukanna, left to return to their colony — Lisbel among them. Jaxal, unfamiliar with his weapon and the terrain, was unable to best the xub’Okkari I pitted him against. However, instead of exile to the endless ice ocean, Lisbel was exiled to the human colony. A rather ingenious idea. One of Svera’s.
“Like this?” The human female says.
“Hexa — I mean, yes, but you actually have t
o mean it.” Kiki advances on her friend, lifting both arms as if she will punch Svera in the face.
Svera closes her eyes even as she brings her left forearm up, successfully blocking but only because there is no effort behind Kiki’s thrust. Kiki rolls her eyes and stomps one of her feet. “This is so frustrating.”
“Tell me about it.” Krisxox does not often speak to the humans, but I have found that he makes an exception for Kiki. “She’s like a holoscreen. There’s nothing there to fight against.”
He keeps his arms crossed and moves away from the pair towards the other fighters. He joins them at their request. It is not often they have occasion to be trained, or train against, Krisxox, who is known to accept only Voraxia’s most honored fighters at his base in Qath.
Svera shouts at his back, “You know, you are very rude!”
Krisxox snorts, but does not rise to her attack. I chuckle to myself as I start forward. Kiki is still moving Svera’s hands and feet into position, thus it is Svera who sees me first. Quickly straightening before dropping into a bow, her headscarf ripples in the wind as she ducks her head lower than she needs to.
“Okkari, it is lovely to see you on this solar,” she says in high Voraxian.
“As it is every solar, to see you, advisor Svera. Particularly on the eve of such good news.”
Svera beams and bows again. Her pride shows. “What good news?” Kiki asks.
“It seems that your friend Svera is responsible for the discovery of more humans.”
“More humans? What are you talking about?”
Svera nods. “Yes. It looks like the Antikythera satellite was launched along with two other satellites. One of them appears to have been destined for a planet in an uncharted quadrant called Sasor, while the other one was meant to be orbiting a planet in quadrant five. Sasor will be too far to venture to, but the location specified in quadrant five is more than reachable. We’re coming up with plans now to go after them.”
Taken to Nobu: A SciFi Alien Romance (Xiveri Mates Book II) Page 23
