Bastial Energy (The Rhythm of Rivalry: Book 1)

by Narro, B. T.

  The start of the maze, she realized. She turned to aim light from her wand back into the tunnel, waiting as patiently as she could for the rest of them. With excitement pumping through her, each breath was clear, drawn without trouble.

  Nothing is going to stop us from getting to the Slugari. She felt all the tension drain out of her as a wide smile formed.

  Chapter 60: The Moment

  ZETI

  Zeti watched from the hills in horror as her brother and Vithos followed the Humans underneath the tree.

  “They’re ours now,” Paramar muttered under his breath, pushing himself from his stomach to his feet.

  The rest of their Slugari search group was waiting behind them for their report of what they saw, but that was only twelve Krepps. They needed many more before invading the Slugari colony.

  Six days ago, their search group was too overjoyed for words when the chamoline flower finally turned a deep red while they passed over the heart of northern Satjen. Even though they all knew what it meant, no one could say it aloud. The Slugari colony had been found. Already being unbelievable, it seemed as if speaking the words would push it over the edge to untrue.

  Instead, they all gawked silently at the red flower in Paramar’s claws until he shouted for two of the Krepps to run back to camp to gather their army. It was a four-day walk, so Paramar demanded they make it there in three. The rest of their group stayed behind to be vigilant, watching for signs of Slugari, Humans, or the traitors Zoke and Vithos.

  When they found all three, the feeling it gave Zeti was beyond her comprehension. It was unlike Krepps to feel ambivalent, but ambivalence couldn’t be more of an understatement when she saw Zoke going underground with the Slugari—going where the Krepps would be attacking as soon as their army got there.

  “When will our army arrive?” she asked Paramar, trying to mask her feeling of dread with an indifferent tone.

  “Doe and the rest of them should be here by tomorrow morning,” Paramar answered.

  “Doe is coming for this?” Zeti couldn’t forget what he’d told her: “When we see Zoke again, you’re going to be the one to kill him.”

  “Certainly, yes.” Paramar gave one hard laugh. “He’s never wanted anything more than storming the underground colony and taking revenge on his own kind. Imagine his delight when we tell him that Zoke and Vithos are down there as well.”

  Zeti thought about what Suba—the task coordinator for all Krepps and the closest thing to a mother—had told her when they’d last spoken: “Certainty is important, remember that. When you’re put in a confusing spot, find something you’re sure about.”

  Zeti fished around her thoughts for something she could be sure about. Usually it was easy—the taste of Slugari meat. But now that taste had gone sour because mixed with it was the blood of her brother.

  Next, she tried focusing on her feelings for Zoke. It did no good. She felt as if she hardly knew him anymore now that he was a traitor. She wondered how it came to be that the two things she was most certain of a month ago now gave her ambivalence, even apprehension.

  A question popped into Zeti’s mind. Thankful for the distraction, she asked it. “What of the Humans? Our treaty with Tenred—they want us to take arms against Kyrro. Are we to abandon that alliance now that we have the Slugari?”

  “That’s up to our leaders, but if it were my decision we’d tear Kyrro to the ground. You saw it.” Paramar pointed to the tree they’d just watched the Humans crawl under. “Kyrro is with the Slugari, and the traitors are with Kyrro. That means Kyrro must be against us. If we leave them, we give them the chance to attack our underground colony after we take it over. Doe would never allow that. No.” He ripped grass from the dirt with a quick yank. “Doe said it before, he’ll say it again: Kyrro will burn. Right after we tear through the Slugari colony, we’ll turn their cities to ash.” He let the green grass blades fall between his fingers and sprinkle back to the forest floor.

  With a deep pain in her heart, Zeti finally knew exactly what she was feeling. This was the moment she’d feared. This was the moment when her last bit of hope was gone. It had been dwindling, slowly disappearing like drops of water under the sun. But now there was none. The last of it left her as quickly and quietly as her next breath. A gust of wind came from behind to carry the air from her lungs down to the trees below. She could almost see her hope going with it, never to return.

  Chapter 61: Size and Strength

  STEFFEN

  “We must have passed by twenty different tunnels by now,” Steffen commented to Shudu in her language. The slow-moving Slugari had been leading them through the massive tunnels for nearly an hour already. Every time they came to a fork, Shudu chose a direction and slithered on without a moment of consideration.

  When the Slugari replied, Steffen couldn’t quite understand the exact numbers she told him. He was nowhere near fluent in the language and hadn’t practiced numbers in Slugaren for many years. He realized she was listing the amount of times the maze led to a wall, how many wrong ways the maze had, and how many times two paths circled to meet each other later. Of what he did recognize, it sounded like five hundred-something when she was describing the number of incorrect paths, but he figured he’d misheard. That many seemed impossible.

  “How is the roof so high?” Steffen asked.

  “The tunnel was made by a Dajrik,” Shudu replied.

  “They really exist?” Steffen blurted out in common tongue without thinking. He took a breath to compose himself and then asked the same question in Slugaren. Implication was not enough in this case. He wanted Shudu to answer definitively.

  “Yes, you will meet ours soon. We are almost there.”

  “There’s one here?” Steffen shouted this time, again in common tongue.

  “Why are you suddenly so excited?” Reela asked. “What’s here?”

  “A Dajrik! What a day! I get to meet a Slugari, travel into their underground colony, and even see a Dajrik.”

  Reela said something, but Steffen was too busy trying to ask Shudu a question to listen. “Is the Dajrik really…” He stopped himself. He wanted to ask if it was twenty feet tall, but he couldn’t remember the number for twenty and didn’t even know if the Slugari used the same measurement system. “Is it really as tall as the roof of these tunnels?” He pointed above them.

  “Yes,” Shudu answered calmly.

  “Does it truly have skin as tough as bone?”

  “Yes.”

  Exhilaration was bursting through his body. An involuntary squeak escaped from behind closed lips. It’s true. All of it’s true! Everything he’d read of Slugari, their language, their history, their Dajrik, it was all accurate. He was so thankful he didn’t listen to his mother when she’d told him not to fill his brilliant mind with books of silly fantasies.

  He was ten when he spoke Slugaren to her for the first time. Her eyebrows bent as she tried to understand his words.

  “What are you saying?” she finally asked after he repeated it three times.

  “It’s Slugaren. It means you’re my mother. It’s so fun to speak!”

  “Slugaren, where could you have read about that?” Her tone was bitter.

  Immediately, Steffen knew he shouldn’t have brought it up. “The last book we bought. It’s about the language of the Slugari,” he admitted.

  “That’s what you had me buy for you, a book about a made-up language? I don’t want you wasting time with that. I thought you loved history.”

  It would take him four more years before he’d start convincing his mother of anything about which she disagreed. He couldn’t remember how that conversation ended. He probably had agreed with whatever she’d said, only to change his mind later, back to what it was before. It was the usual result to a disagreement between them until he got older and she started listening to logic.

  “It is just past this bend,” Shudu said after what felt like a mile through a maze so long and elaborate that Steffen had no chance of rem
embering the way out without careful attention to their route, and it was too late to start now.

  The only light to guide them thus far was a faint glow emanating from Shudu’s body as well as Effie’s wand. But as they came around the last turn, the tunnel became lit with what looked to be natural sunlight.

  Ahead was a sight Steffen only thought he’d see in his imagination—a great underground chasm with hundreds, no thousands, of glistening Slugari. The pillars that connected the ground to the ceiling had a melting-candle look that made it appear as if the pillars were dripping. But upon closer investigation, Steffen saw they were sturdy, composed of hard clay.

  As he came closer to the end of the tunnel and the beginning of the colony, Steffen could start to see around the many pillars. He found the sources of the light that looked just like that of the sun. There were balls of burning white that were just bright enough to bring a tear to his eye, but not so bright that it pained him to look.

  “Are those caregelows?” he asked Shudu, pointing at the flowers. He already knew the answer but wanted her to say it.

  “Yes.”

  “So beautiful,” he whispered back. Something deep in his stomach began to ache, not painful, but warm and gripping. It swelled slowly up to his chest, and the moment it touched his heart, he felt raw and exposed, ready to laugh and cry at the same time.

  The caregelows were everywhere, some of them brighter than others. Each was surrounded by bursts of unreal mixtures of blue, red, green, and everything in between. It took finding a dim caregelow to realize the source of these hallucinatory bubbles of colored light: All around the caregelow were plants so pure and bright it felt like Steffen was finally seeing true color for the first time.

  While he was watching the dim caregelow, a Slugari wiggled its fat body through the mass of fantastic flowers and held its claws over the caregelow in the center. The caregelow grew brighter until its white light overtook the Slugari nearby, completely hiding him from view until he slithered back out of the cluster.

  “Wait here,” Shudu told Steffen as they were just about out of the tunnel. “I need to get the leader before you come in.”

  Steffen translated for Terren and the rest of them but couldn’t even be sure he was heard. Their heads were stretched forward, eyes wide open. Even Zoke, who claimed the Fjallejon Mountains didn’t amaze him, had a look of sheer astonishment.

  “How can such a place exist?” Reela was first to speak.

  “Because it’s their only way of surviving,” Steffen answered. “Above ground, they would be destroyed by the Krepps. They needed to live underground, so they found a way.”

  “What is that?” Zoke asked with a claw extended. Steffen didn’t need to see where he was pointing. He already knew what Zoke saw, for it had just come around a pillar and was impossible not to notice.

  “That’s a Dajrik,” Steffen replied, letting out a knowing grin.

  Everyone’s awe was palpable.

  The twenty-foot-tall creature was even more marvelous than Steffen had seen in drawings. From afar, its skin looked just like rock but molded around the figure of a man like a suit of armor. Its face was like that of a Human but with horns of rock protruding upward from the sides of its head instead of ears. Steffen had seen helmets of war with the same design.

  There was no color to the black and gray Dajrik except for a radiant red jewel that hung on a necklace it carried around its thick neck. The ruby of a hundred rujins, Steffen realized. Of all that was written in his books about Slugari and Dajriks, the story of the rujin ruby necklace to cure the Dajrik’s terrorizing nightmares was the least believable to him. He’d never been happier to be wrong.

  There was a crash like a boulder falling from a small peak with every step the Dajrik took toward them. An entourage of Slugari followed behind. If Shudu was among them, Steffen couldn’t pick her out.

  Terren stepped ahead with a hand on the hilt of his sword. Vithos and Reela took to his sides.

  “Steffen,” Terren said. “What’s happening?”

  “The Dajrik and a bunch of Slugari are coming to meet us.”

  “I can see that. What are they going to do with us?” Terren asked, his voice growing heavy with urgency. “What did Shudu say exactly?”

  “Just to wait here for her to get their leader.”

  “There was nothing she said to give you the impression we wouldn’t be harmed?” Terren asked, now clearly troubled.

  “No…” A rush of fear pulled at Steffen’s heart. He’d never even considered they might be attacked.

  The Dajrik was close enough now for his eyes to be seen, black as shadows. The group of Slugari behind had come around to the Dajrik’s sides. Their beady eyes didn’t look curious but aggressive. Steffen took two steps back and reached over his shoulder to make sure his bow was there and ready.

  “Tell them to stop. That’s close enough,” Terren told Steffen. Another two steps and the Dajrik’s next would be on top of one of them.

  Before Steffen could remember the word for stop, the Dajrik and Slugari did so on their own. Steffen felt a burst of relief and let out a loud breath.

  A Slugari came to them from between the Dajrik’s massive feet. “Who is your leader?” she asked in common tongue.

  “You speak our language,” Terren replied with amazement, taking a step toward her. “I’m leading this small party.”

  “You have a Krepp with you, I am told. Where is he?”

  Zoke stepped around them to show himself. “I don’t wish to hurt any Slugari,” he said.

  “Come out here,” the Slugari replied in a tone that made it seem like Zoke’s words had never reached her. Her speech was deep and soft at the same time, like a young woman with a low voice.

  Zoke followed her order but turned to share a look with Vithos as he puttered forward. It seemed as if the Elf was nodding his head.

  “Turn around with hands behind you.” The Slugari spoke before Zoke was close enough to touch her. He stopped and obeyed. “You may not want to hurt us, but there is no such thing as a Krepp uninterested in the taste of us.” The Dajrik closed a massive hand around Zoke’s torso so that the Krepp’s arms were stuck behind him.

  Vithos blurted out some Kreppen words before composing himself and speaking in common tongue. “Don’t hurt.”

  “He’s with us,” Terren added. “We’re friends with your race. We want to help.”

  “So I have heard,” the Slugari replied. “But we are not taking risks.” Another Slugari came forward with some sort of vine, wrapping it around Zoke’s wrists. The Dajrik took another hand to Zoke’s legs and lifted him as if pulling out a weed. Just like that, it walked away, holding Zoke like a pigeon ready to take flight.

  “Where are you taking him?” Terren asked.

  “He will be safe for now,” the Slugari who had spoken first answered. “We do not want him too tempted by our smell.”

  “He…” Vithos had a hand on his chin, his face twisting. “He no…” Vithos pointed to his nose desperately. “He no…”

  “He can’t smell?” Reela asked.

  Vithos nodded enthusiastically. “Yes. He can’t smell. Gurradu. He no like Slugari.”

  “Whether or not that is true, we will feel safer with him not around. Now, I heard it from Shudu, but I want your leader to tell me. What are you doing here, and how did you convince Shudu to show you our secret passage?”

  “We were sent here by our king, Welson Kimard of Kyrro,” Terren answered proudly. “A war has started above ground. The Krepps have joined with Tenred to fight against us. Are you aware that the Krepps have been searching for your colony for many years?”

  “Yes,” the Slugari answered. “We are aware of the search but not of this war. Before you tell me more, answer how you convinced Shudu to let you down here. Any Slugari in her position would let herself die over compromising the colony.”

  Terren bit his lip.

  If we tell them about the psychics, they won’t trust anythi
ng else we say, Steffen realized.

  Reela came toward the Slugari. “May I speak?” she asked politely.

  “Yes,” the Slugari answered.

  She knelt down so that her face was level with the Slugari. “We explained the situation between the Humans and Krepps to Shudu. This war involves your race as well. You’re in great danger. Please allow us to explain, and you’ll understand why Shudu felt it was worth the risk to bring us down here. We wish to work with you to help each other.”

  Steffen didn’t doubt she was using all the psyche she could to alleviate the Slugari’s worry.

  “I understand,” the Slugari replied with a crooked twist to her mouth that looked closer to a smile than anything else. “Explain and we will listen, but I do not promise anything else.”

  Terren started at the beginning, when Tenred didn’t renew the treaty. For a warrior, Steffen thought, Terren was an excellent storyteller. As he described the journey that had led them here, all nearby Slugari slithered over to join the mass of listeners. While Steffen couldn’t tell if even half of them could understand Terren’s language, they still seemed enthralled by his voice and gestures.

  “What would you have us do?” the Slugari replied when Terren had finished.

  “Fight with us,” he answered. “Help us defeat the Krepps and worry no more about hiding.”

  “How would we go about doing that? We stand no taller than your waist. Our magic is not strong enough to burn through the skin of a Krepp. Our movement is slow, and our claws can pierce through the ground but not through an enemy.”

  “What of your Dajrik?” Terren asked.

  “Our Dajrik is older than he can remember. He has forgotten all battles but one, and in that he was forced to run. He does not wish to fight any more than we do.”

  “No one wishes to fight, but you can’t hide forever. You’ll be found eventually.” Terren spoke bluntly.

  “We realize that, which is why there are escape routes to another hideout. You say we cannot hide forever. To that, we say you cannot fight the Krepps.” The Slugari squeezed her claws together as if it pained her to say it. “They are far too strong. Especially when led by Doe and Haemon. Their magic ability has grown to be unparalleled. You think it is silly to run and hide, I can hear it in your tone, but in truth, fighting is far more insane. I am sorry you came all this way to hear that.” The Slugari started to turn.