CAVE ALIEN

by Renard, Loki

  CAVE ALIEN

  LOKI RENARD

  Copyright © 2020 by Loki Renard

  Cover Design: Loki Renard

  Images by: @Buenaventarum, @fxquadro, via Deposit Photos.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  COMING NEXT…

  Want more Scythkin?

  Chapter One

  Tres

  It is all coming to an end.

  Hyrrm has been roaring for days, demanding he be fed. The great rocky peaks which lay so quiet for years have become active with his cries for fresh blood. Ash fills the air and embers fall into the river, turning the clear waters red and casting moon and sun in the same sanguine hue. The sky turned white and then black and then red on the day he awakened, and nothing has been the same since.

  The sacrifice will be made soon.

  I sit inside a bathing tent made of animal skins pitched at the verge of the river’s flow, not a stitch of clothing protecting me from the ashen flow. My hair is being washed with herbal infused oils. I feel light, repetitive tugging as the woman attending me pulls the sides into braids. It is important that I am presented as beautifully as possible. Hyrrm will accept only the finest sacrifices. A pure woman, fully grown and yet unsullied by the touch of man. Me.

  I was born to be the mountain’s bride. Other girls laughed and giggled about the day they would be given to Trelok, our chief. I knew Trelok would never touch me. I would never feel the touch of any man until Hyrrm’s hot embrace covered me over and carried me down.

  “Tomorrow, you serve your purpose, condemned one,” Mira murmurs to me. “Are you frightened?”

  I shake my head just a little, not enough to tug the braids she is fixing. She has been working on them for hours, taking the free flowing strands of my red hair and turning them into tight braids which will please my mate.

  “You have nothing to fear,” she says. “You will fly into the arms of your lover, and you will know greater joy than any woman in this tribe.”

  I hear a slight quaver in her voice. She is trying to contain her emotions. I feel the tremors in her fingers as she drops a braid, then picks it up again and tries to fasten it with a piece of wound twine. Mira is a good woman, the closest thing I have to a mother, though I was not born from her womb. I was not born from any womb. I was cut from the stomach of a condemned woman, and for that sin, I became condemned myself.

  “Do not worry for me, Mira. It won’t hurt.”

  She lets out a soft little sob.

  “It is not too late to run, Tres. You could go around the mountain, find the mushroom people on the other side. They would take you, and Trelok would not dare come for you. Many of our women who do not wish to be his bride run that way.”

  And many of them are caught and killed for the sin. Trelok slays them himself, publicly and painfully. Their screams ring in our ears many moons after their passing. The last one who ran was not even a woman yet. He killed her anyway.

  I shake my head again. “I don’t dare defy Hyrrm. His anger could destroy us all if he is denied me. When he has me, he will be calm again, and I will be his bride forevermore.”

  “You are so brave,” she says. “You always have been.”

  The ground rumbles beneath us, a light tremor, reminding me that Hyrrm can hear me. Over the years I have gazed at the rising rock peaks and wondered if it is possible for a woman to truly be promised to the land, but we come from the land, are made from it, and always return to it. The living, breathing, venting beast that lives in the mountain is as much like me as I am like the woman who sits behind me, doing my hair and trying not to shed tears.

  Time slips by, my last moments passing with a strange ordinariness.

  I can smell the pot outside brewing the potion I will drink before the sacrifice is made. It purifies and sedates, so that any last moment attempts at escape or panic will be impossible.

  “I’m jealous of you, in a way,” Mira says, the soft swell of her belly bumping against me. She is pregnant, as all brides of Trelok are. “You will feel nothing after tomorrow. But the others of us will have to keep enduring that man.”

  Mira is one of the oldest women in the tribe. Her last born did not survive the first night. This one may not either. Trelok will stop lying with her if she does not produce for him, and if he stops lying with her, she will be sent to the very edges of the village where she will starve.

  Another roar and rumble makes the red river water slosh higher against my skin.

  “This world cries for our blood,” Mira says ominously. “Have you eaten? You must be well fed to be able to satisfy the mountain’s hunger.”

  “Mira, are you done?”

  Flo puts her head through the skins which hang around the bathing chamber. Of all the people I don’t want to die for, Flo is perhaps the one I do not want to die for the most. She is younger than me, and has recently become Trelok’s favorite wife. She does not yet swell, but it is certain she will soon.

  She does not look at me. I do not matter to her. She simply starts speaking to Mira, shattering the semblance of ritual with a string of self-serving demands.

  “Mira, I need you to come and do my hair. And wash my feet. And I need you to see if you can scrub and paint my nails. Trelok has asked me to come to him tonight. He wants to celebrate the sacrifice, and I want to look my best.”

  “It brings bad fortune to rush the sacrifice’s preparation,” Mira lectures the younger woman gently. “I will come to you when the condemned one is made ready.”

  “You’ve taken too long on her. What difference will it make if her hair is clean when she is burned in the mountain? I have to be presentable for Trelok tonight. He says he wants to do something new to me.”

  “You’ll not be so eager when you learn what it is,” Mira says under her breath.

  Flo huffs a breath at us, then leaves, slapping the skin down so it waves, bringing little bursts of sunlight into what was hallowed space.

  She is naive. She is in love with Trelok. She thinks his brutality is strength. She believes she is special because she closes her eyes to the fact that he takes every female in the village. He took her mother’s mother, her mother, and now he takes her. One day, he will take the women who emerge from the swell in her belly. Trelok’s line is pure. They all have his thick flaxen hair, and his bright blue eyes. They have prominent jaws and strong backs, some of them so strong that they hunch over from all the strength. Flo has six toes on her left foot, a blessing, she says.

  A moment later, she is twitching at the curtain again. She is so very eager to be ravaged again. It is no secret that some of the women enjoy Trelok’s brutish attentions, as much as others loathe them.

  “Please, Mira,” she whines. “My hair will be dry and my nails will be dull and…”

  “He will not notice,” Mira says. “Go away. The sacrifice takes priority today.”

  “Ugh!” Flo stamps her foot and makes an unpleasant whining sound. All illusion of ritual and meaning has been broken by her tantrum which is so anchored in petty everyday life I can’t believe that tomorrow, I die.

  I have known this day was coming my entire life. It was never made a secret, and I never let it concern me more than any of the other more immediate worries, like surviving on nothing more than scraps. We all k
now that death will come for us in one way or another. Trelok’s wives often pass in the act of bearing his young. Flo is so eager to be taken so she can swell with more potentially deformed life - the cost of which will be death to her and the babe.

  I at least have the advantage of knowing when the end will come.

  Flo makes a pouting face at Mira and shuffles her feet impatiently.

  “It is alright,” I tell Mira. “I can finish my bath.”

  “You have to be properly prepared,” Mira says. “You must be clean and dried so the paint adheres to your skin when you are…

  Killed. That is what she means.

  I wonder for a moment, if there is any way to survive what is coming. The thought itself is blasphemous. I was not made to survive. I was made to be given for the sake of the tribe.

  A woman must be given to the mountain every eighteen years. She must be untouched. Trelok respects that, though he respects nothing else. His animal lust is legendary. Barely a night goes by that we do not hear a woman’s cries emerging from his bed. Cries. Whimpers. In the morning, Flo will be bruised, but proud that she has been given the chance to bear his seed. That is something I will never do. I was born pure and will pass that way as well.

  “Do me first! I’m going to be a mother,” Flo insists. “That barren vessel can be painted before we throw her in…”

  “Flo!” Mira curses.

  “I will go out to the fields one last time,” I say, composing myself. Flo cares about this, because she has a life to live here. I do not care, because I do not. “You do Flo’s hair, and finish mine when I return. We have time. The evening is yet to come.”

  Before Mira can refuse, I have stood up, and Flo has taken my place. She sits down looking smug and starts telling Mira that she wants her to use extra red berries, which will stain her hair red. Much like mine, I would point out, but what use is a petty squabble before the end? I learned a long time ago that it is better not to speak to these people. My words offend them. My thoughts themselves are against nature - and nobody wants to be tainted by the speech of a condemned woman. When I was small, the others of my age would taunt and torment me. They would throw rocks at me. Hit me with sticks. I was never allowed to retaliate, because I am the one who bears the sins of the tribe. All wrongs are borne on my shoulders, and will be purged when my body meets the molten interior of the mountain.

  Though I will die tomorrow, nobody pays the slightest attention to me as I walk out from the village toward the fields where we cultivate grains to go with the fish we catch from the river’s waters. The mountain looms above me, but I refuse to look at it as I walk through the fields and let the song inside me begin to grow. Singing has always been my release and my pleasure. It sets me free, and in a way I cannot explain, it makes me feel powerful. When my voice is cast across the land, it becomes one with it, it joins the beauty of the birds and the trees, it melds with the winds. It travels around me in all directions, and I am no longer the condemned little outcast kept to die. I am, in the truest way, myself.

  Standing in the thick of the tall grain, almost completely obscured from view of everything, I sing my last song.

  Vulcan

  It all started with a big bang.

  One moment I was standing on the bridge of my ship, disregarding the orders from the first-hatched of our clutch, Krave, while also preparing to open fire on a Galactor peon ship. The next, that ship had been utterly vaporized into a spray of rainbow liquid shining with the strength of the old gold sun, and space was warping, a big wave of nothing sweeping toward me, taking the hull of my ship and making it twist until there was only the concept of ship left.

  I expected to be wrung from space, contorted into a little mass of atoms and spat out to form part of an asteroid, my carbon harvested by the anomaly and turned into little black shards. But that did not happen. The nothing respected the organic living form of my body in a way it did not care for the soulless atoms of my ship.

  But cold physics was waiting for me in the space left where my ship once was, and that had no mercy. A scythkin warrior is always prepared to die in battle. I drew in my last breath as the oxygen in my lungs escaped into the great beyond and I waited for the end which was coming on swift gravitational wings.

  Instead, I found myself hanging in space, completely alone but for the planet rushing up to meet me. Big and blue and green, the mass of the new world overwhelmed me as it emerged from the cosmic womb of time.

  Suddenly, a sense of falling overcame me. The planet was exerting its massive field upon me and I was brought down to stand upon it.

  Now I find myself staring out at the kind of landscape a scythkin dreams of. Endless resources stretching on for what seems like an eternity. The ground where I stand is covered with green tendrils blowing in a morning breeze as the burning globe which once powered the scythkin refueling station now lends its energies to this place which has snapped into existence, fully formed.

  I would find it difficult to believe, but for the fact that it has clearly happened, and I must believe what my eyes tell me, even if my mind insists that it is not possible for a planet to form in an instant like this.

  It should be a ball of molten rock. My feet should be bathed in lava. I should be breathing sulfur and slowly sinking into the magma core, but somehow this planet has skipped all those transformative steps and emerged in a state perfect not only for the existence of human life but…

  Boing… boing… boing…

  A spotted deer bounces by, stops, looks at me with its little mouth chewing on a face full of grass, then decides that I am not a threat, lowering its head to graze right in front of me. I watch as it eats, and then is joined by several more beasts of a similar kind.

  My mind is still working on catching up with events. This is not what usually happens in battle. Usually I find myself coated in the blood of my enemies, or flying my shuttle through their remains and the debris of their scuttled ships.

  I do not trust the evidence of my eyes. The likelihood of space warping and the battlefield becoming a big green field is so low that it can’t have happened. I must be hallucinating. Perhaps my ship was blindsided by some Galactor scum and I was knocked unconscious and… no. I let out a burst of rough laughter at the very idea. It is more likely that this planet formed in an instant beneath my feet than I lost a battle.

  The deer raises its head at the sound of me coming, but it doesn’t move.

  This isn’t right.

  Me. Vulcan. Scythkin warrior. Unable to frighten a prey creature?

  “Get out of here,” I growl.

  It puts its head back down and keeps eating.

  I look down at myself, wondering if perhaps I am no longer ten feet of biological swords and steel, a multi-ridged creature of fang and bone. But everything is as I remember it. I am a massive beast designed to do damage to other beasts. Apparently, the deer in front of me has never seen a predator like me.

  I start walking across the plain. There’s nothing else to do. I have no ship. No way home. Nothing to communicate with. I have absolutely nothing at all, except my body and the ability to move it. So I do that, in the hopes that it fixes something.

  There is a mountain spewing ash and flame on my left, and a river down on the right. This plain lies between them, a rolling, grassy expanse bordered here and there by forests from which small animals emerge and then return. This place is a paradise, untouched by any dominant species. It exists in obvious balance, and that means there is opportunity here for a creature with the intelligence to exploit the natural world to take these resources and claim them for his own. I am already beginning to imagine all the ways I could make this place mine.

  I walk, and the breeze blows. With the breeze comes a song. It is melodic and lyrical, rising from the throat of a human female who I see after brief inspection, is standing in the middle of a dense field of grassy grain.

  A human?

  There should not be a human here, wherever here is. Humans ar
e limited in the universe, mostly extinct. There is no reasonable explanation for encountering one here. But existence, I’ve noticed, is rarely reasonable, and has become much less reasonable in the last five minutes.

  The music she is making is enchanting, like no sound I have heard before. Her song is innocent, sweet, and yet melancholy. The only music I thought I liked was the screams of my enemies dying, but the trilling melody emanating from this beautiful young woman resonates inside my hardened heart, penetrates the armor which covers my body, makes me feel stronger and weaker at the same time.

  I am not very familiar with humans. In the past I have refused to have anything to do with them. The rest of my clutch is currently babysitting a small simulation rife with the animals. But seeing one here, in the wild, singing to herself, I feel immediately and completely different.

  My feet keep moving, closing the distance between us. She is much shorter than me and cannot see over the tall grasses between us. I can see her, however, the flash of red hair draws my eye through the brown seed tops, and the deep cream of her skin is accented by the flash of brown eyes which do not meet mine, but are turned toward the lightly erupting volcanic mountain in the near distance. It was likely disturbed by being suddenly yanked into existence, all its tectonic fury impotent compared to the strangeness of space.

  My presence here is a mystery. This planet’s existence is an even greater one, but both issues pale when I listen to this pretty female sing with such passion and intensity I feel an immediate, primal connection to her. The longer I listen, the more intense the feeling becomes until it is a physical force inside me, urging me toward her.

  I try to resist it. I know better than to disturb a sentient being on a settled planet. It always ends in war. Humans are sacred. Special. The one species we are not allowed to destroy. I should keep my distance, but I find my feet moving me toward her, parting the grass and grain as I see more and more of her beautiful form.