by Calista Skye
I knock on the glass. It’s hard and extremely smooth, but it doesn’t ring like a crystal glass would.
“It looks like an eye,” Brax’tan observes. “Maybe it can see us.”
The thought had crossed my mind as well. We know whichever entity controls Bune likes to spy on us. “Maybe.”
Brax’tan gets up and walks on, and I follow him. There’s nothing to be gained from gawping over that alien thing.
Brax’tan walks with a confidence as if he’s been here many times, which I suppose he has. We’re going downhill again, and I can hear running water. I know what that is.
He stops on the bank of the stream. “The River of Bune. I have heard of it. And here it is.” He stoops down and reaches his hand down to the rapidly running water.
“Stop,” I call to him. “That water’s no good.”
He scoops some into his hand and sniffs it. “Poisonous. My tribe knows of its effects.”
“It comes from inside the spaceship,” I tell him. “Some of the girls drank the water before, and it made them weird. It’s pleasant, but probably not good for you.”
He shakes the water off his large hands and peers over to the other side. “It’s too fast to cross. We’ll have to follow it.”
We walk along the bank as the stream snakes through the vegetation. It’s pretty easy to walk on the wet gravel beside it. After a half hour, we find the natural whirlpool where Sophia was dragged under when she fell in. I’ve never been here before, but this has to be it.
“That water drops into a cavern far below,” I yell, because the violent maelstrom of water makes a noise like thunder. “Some tribes worship there.”
Brax’tan looks at me. But now there’s something wrong with his eyes. They used to be a warm golden tone with an intelligent glint in them. Now they’re glassy, and the light has gone out.
I lift my crossbow and place my finger on the trigger. “You okay?”
He doesn’t reply, just stares emptily at me for three heartbeats. Then he turns around, runs up, and jumps into the whirlpool, disappearing immediately in the foamy, thundering chaos.
“Crazy-ass stripey dude,” I mutter. For a moment I have an impulse to jump after him, because if he gets away from me now, then his secret knowledge about Bune might be lost to me forever.
But that’s a rocky tunnel the water flows through. If I jump in and let the current take me down there, which it will whether I want to or not, then I will very probably hit my head on the sides, crushing my skull. That water flows fast.
I look around. Fine, I’ll walk. Can’t be that hard to find that cavern. And it has to be downhill.
- - -
Sophia never gave us a detailed description of where the cavern was where Jax’zan saved her from drowning, but it has to be lower than the whirlpool. It can’t be miles away, because Sophia was dragged along with the water and didn’t drown.
It limits the options a little, at least.
I trundle down the hill, feeling much less safe now that Brax’tan isn’t with me. I suppose I really shouldn’t have felt safe in his company, because he’s a stranger and a caveman, but I guess I subconsciously was reassured by his confidence and his easy manner when he picked the thorns out of my butt. So I didn’t really know how safe he made me feel until he’s no longer here. And now I really feel it. I jump at every little rustle in the bushes, and my skin creeps when I think of some of the creatures I’ve seen in this jungle.
I walk quietly, tense as a bowstring, my crossbow ready and my eyes darting all over the place, especially up. Those dactyls have a nasty habit of getting pretty close before you can see or hear them. I would have felt much better with someone else here with me. A big man with gentle hands...
I make my way slowly down the overgrown hill, following a dried-up creek that makes the going a little easier. But after a half mile or so, it turns to the left, and that’s not the way I’m going. So I have to climb back out of the dry gravel and make my way over a ridge before I can go downhill again.
And of course, the first thing I do is walk straight into a nest of monsters. I feel the ground change and suddenly go soft before I realize what I’m doing.
By then it’s almost too late. My sandals are firmly stuck in a light gray mud the texture and thinness of some devilish jello that sticks to my feet and ankles as I drag them up. As I try to walk backwards out of this mess, I see the eyes.
They’re everywhere, and they’re on stalks. Long, swaying stalks that come out of the bushes. The strangely colored bushes with weird patterns…
I yelp and fall on my butt as I realize that I’m halfway inside a nest of some kind, and those ‘bushes’ are the creatures. I crawl backwards as fast as I can while my skin creeps and the eyes focus on me with crusty, whitish lenses that swivel on the end of the stalks.
I find firm ground with my hands, turn around and run. But the gel is still stuck to my feet, and I slip and crash uncontrollably into a group of saplings. Thin trees break under my weight, but I don’t care. I just have to get away from that nest and its inhabitants.
There’s sound behind me now, a deep, uneven buzzing. It sounds like exactly what it is: alien monsters. I turn quickly to know what I’m dealing with.
They’re thin and leafy, transparent in places. They have the rough outline of four-legged animals, but their bodies look flimsy and consist of irregular strands and blades, not unlike the ghillie suits the army uses and my father would take home sometimes to scare trick-or-treaters. It’s superb camouflage, and these insect-like creatures were invisible to me until I was in the middle of them.
Except no camouflage suit I’ve ever seen had hundreds of spikes standing out of it, dripping with venom. These things do. And now they’re coming for me.
It’s like they’re floating on the air, because there’s no running motion. It’s like terrible ghosts coming at me fast.
I yelp again and run as well as I can when my veins have more stress hormones in them than blood. It’s fast, but not elegant.
I crash through the vegetation, running wildly from a monster for the second time today. When I look over my shoulder, the creatures are still coming, buzzing and clicking and waving their eyes and spikes. It’s a swarm of them, a wall of creepy strands and leaves and stalks floating fast after me. I’m not getting away.
But all I can do is run. My crossbow won’t do any good against those things. They’re just too insubstantial, and I only have twenty bolts. There have to be twice that number coming after me.
The buzzing is getting closer, and even if this is downhill, my speed is limited by the trees and bushes and long grass and generally uneven terrain. And running downhill, I have to hope that the ground doesn’t suddenly do something weird, like end in a thirty-foot sheer drop.
Like the way it’s doing right now.
I’m barely able to stop by throwing myself down on the ground before I go over the edge, sliding on my hip and elbow across bare rock. I’m back on my feet before I’ve even stopped, and I run wildly towards the only place I can go, which is a shady area to the right. The buzzing is very loud now, and I can see the ghostly shadows of the creatures hunting me around my own solid outline on the ground.
The shady area is a hole in the mountainside, and I have nowhere else to run. So I sprint into the darkness, noticing that the air gets cooler. The buzzing doesn’t let up, and now it’s echoing from the rock walls in here, making it even more eerie.
So now I’m in total darkness, hunted by aliens who have many more eyes than me. Going in here might not have been the smartest thing I’ve done today.
I hear the sound of splashing water from up ahead, but I can’t see anything. I should slow down, but the alien noises are coming from every side now, and I’m panicking bad.
I take a step into thin air and fall headlong into a deep fluid. One mouthful tells me what I would have suspected much sooner if my mind hadn’t been paralyzed by fear: this is the water from the stream up above. I’
ve found the cave I was looking for.
And I’ve brought guests.
“Brax’tan!” I yell, treading water. It’s worth a shot.
Nothing happens, except the alien sounds intensify and are now definitely coming from all sides. I can’t take it any longer. I find the edge of the rock, put my crossbow on it and jackknife in the water, diving as deep down as I can to get away from my pursuers.
I swim for as long as I can underwater, only surfacing when my lungs are burning and I know I can’t take one more second without breathing. I’m still wearing those damn iron plates, and while they’re not heavy enough to drag me down, they make just floating a lot harder. Trying to not splash around too much, I drag the leather straps over my head and let the plates sink to the bottom. It was worth a shot.
The alien sounds are just as bad now, except now the waterfall is closer and that thunder drowns some of it out. I stay very still to not be detected by the monsters.
What the hell do I do now? I can’t float here indefinitely.
There’s a spot of light along the rock wall far away, and it’s coming closer. It flickers like a burning torch.
My eyes are getting used to the darkness, and the little bit of light helps a lot. It’s a huge cavern with a waterfall in the middle, where the water plummets straight down from a hole in the rocky ceiling. The water is almost on the same level as a rocky shelf in the distance, which has to be where I ran blindly before I fell into the water.
That’s where the monsters are. The cave is full of them, and now they look more ghostly than ever, shimmering in the darkness with their loose, transparent bodies. It doesn’t look like they can swim, but they do seem to hover in the air, venomous spikes waving. They’re like giant moths with thirty ragged wings each and no central body that I can make out.
And they’re coming closer to me, slowly filling up the cavern now that there’s a little bit of light.
Actually, now there’s a pretty good amount of light here. Someone is coming. With a burning torch. And the way this planet works, I can’t imagine it’s someone nice.
I tread water as silently as I can, keeping just my head over the surface up to my nose. The water is chilly, and I know I’ll soon start to shiver.
The light comes closer, and it’s emerging from a smaller cave going further into the rock. The monsters are seeing it, too, because they’re drawing towards it and away from me like gigantic moths to a small flame.
Suddenly the cave is filled with a terrible scream, a deep but still screechy sound that absolutely didn’t come from a real throat. It makes my blood freeze. For a moment, I forget about treading water and just instinctively plunge my head into the fluid, making much more of a splash than I wanted to.
The terrible scream sounds even worse under the surface, so I immediately throw my head back up again just as the sound fades away. It still echoes between the rock walls. Yeah, that wasn’t a human sound. At all.
When I’m finally able to orient myself again, the cavern is illuminated by the torch carried by someone who’s still out of sight. But the moth-like monsters are now fluttering towards the exit with considerable urgency, and they’re crowding up to get out and away from whatever it is carrying that torch. If that is really a torch.
Shit, I hope it isn’t another one of those dragons like the one Caroline trapped and killed.
6
- Delyah -
I sink a little deeper into the now pretty damn freezing water and discreetly flutter my fingers to quietly propel me behind the waterfall so I can’t be seen from that ledge. An isolated part of my mind ponders that there’s something wrong about this pool of water. Something weird. Apart from the chemical smell.
A large shadow emerges from the other cave, and the next second I see that it is indeed Brax’tan, holding a large torch in one hand and his sword in the other. He’s kicking a heap of grayish, leafy stuff in front of him, which I realize has to be a dead moth monster.
I guess it’s safe to come out of the water. I’m trembling, and it does look like Brax’tan has saved my life again. Also, I’ve tried not to swallow too much of this water, but I have ingested some of it. And I can’t help but think that swimming in it must have at least some of the same effects as drinking it. If I remember right, it’ll be similar to alcohol, so I’ll be much more spontaneous and daring for a while. And emotional.
I swim to the shore and crawl up onto the uneven ledge right by him just as the last moth is leaving the cave. “Thank you. Those are some creepy things.”
He doesn’t bat an eyelash at seeing me suddenly crawl out of the water in front of him. “We call them talass.”
I can’t immediately place that word in cavemanese. It has no root that I recognize. It’s probably an onomatopoetic word, a noun that imitates a sound. That creepy sound they made might just sound a little like ‘talass’.
“Right. Are there many of them around?”
“Some. They come and go. Very poisonous. Worse than your thorn bush. Kills you with one touch.”
I get to my feet and smooth down my soaked dress, not missing my armor plates. “I saw their spikes. Dripping with venom.”
Brax’ton casually picks up my crossbow and studies it. “The spikes are harmless. The talass have hidden stingers. One each. Just like Delyah. How does this work?”
He puts the crossbow to his shoulder and aims at the wall of the cave, curling his finger around the trigger like a seasoned marksman.
It makes me a little nervous. “It works just like that. Let’s not waste bolts.”
“Poison on the tips?”
“No. Just iron. You’ll ruin the point if you shoot it at the rock.”
“What if I shoot it at something soft?”
He casually swings around and aims a half inch over my head.
I take a step back. Shit. I don’t really know anything about this man. He might have it in him to shoot me dead right here. “Then you kill it.”
“That’s what I thought.”
We stand frozen like that for three heartbeats.
Then he lowers the crossbow and hands it to me with a tight smile. “Not pleasant to have that pointing at you.”
I accept the crossbow and quickly unhook the string from the mechanism. I get his meaning. I think my weapon made more of an impression on him than I thought.
“Not pleasant. I won’t point it at you anymore.”
He kicks at the dead talass at his feet. “It wouldn’t do much good against this. They’re very hard to kill. You have to cut them to shreds.”
There’s no blood on the monster. It’s just a heap of thin, long leaves with an intricate, silvery pattern. It looks harmless. “I’ve never seen them before.”
He kicks the carcass towards the exit of the cave, and it slides a hundred feet on the rock. “There’s no meat on them. Have you seen this before?”
The cave wall is filled with painted figures in many colors.
“I have. Well, not here. But in our own cave. It’s the scribblings of one man trying to understand something alien, something that he was never meant to understand. This looks like the same thing.”
“Hmm. I’ve wondered about that. I could never make sense of them.”
“Oh? Have you been here before? I mean, in this cave?”
“No. I just fell down there a little while ago. But there are similar things in other caves.” Brax’tan points to the waterfall, then turns around and walks back to where he came from, and I follow. There might be something to learn here.
“I think there is a door down here. A gate.” His deep voice echoes from the walls in the huge cave, surrounding me and making me feel safe again.
I hurry to keep up with him, now carrying the crossbow so it points safely to the ground. If I want to use it now, I have to tighten the string again, so I’ll need twenty seconds’ warning. “A gate?”
“Yes. I feel it quite strongly.”
“A gate to what? Is that why you jumped into the w
hirlpool?”
He frowns. “Jumped into what?”
“The whirlpool. Up there.” I point to the ceiling.
He just gives me a weird look, as if I’m being crazy.
We emerge into another cave, and here there’s no water. It’s dry and cool.
Brax’tan stops and turns. “Where are we now?”
“We’re inside the mountain. Pretty deep inside. The old spaceship must be right on top of us.”
Brax’tan slaps one huge hand on the wall, which is also painted. “This is clearly a sacred place. We’re close to the Ancestors. I can feel it. The gate would lead me somewhere important. I’ve been dreaming about it. But there is no gate.”
“This is a dead end,” I agree. “And that bulge in your skirt is so fucking big, it’s unfair to walk around like that in front of a girl who hasn’t seen action for fucking years.”
My words echo from the walls for approximately six eternities while Brax’tan frowns at me, and I just want planet Xren to swallow me whole. What the fuck did I just say?
A familiar embarrassment settles in my stomach. It’s not the first time I’ve said something weird in the most inappropriate situation, but this is a whopper. Yeah, swimming in water that’s saturated with some kind of alien booze definitely has some consequences.
“I mean, have you searched the whole cave?”
He gives me a final weird look. “There’s not much to search. Bare rock with paintings. I thought they might hold some clues. But if it is as you say, they probably don’t.”
The wall paintings back at our cave are advanced notes from a caveman trying to understand something he had seen, probably one of those spy-pads of the same type as mine. But it’s hard to believe that all these are the same. There has to be a hundred square feet of colorful paintings and scribblings. I recognize many of the alien symbols. They’re strongly associated with Bune.
I trace one strange figure with my finger. “I don’t know. These might give us a clue. But it would take us a long time to figure out.”
I glance at his kilt. I can’t get out of my head what he’s packing there. The leather looks like it’s still moist from his dip, and it clings tightly to something big in there. Something very interesting. What if I slip out of my soggy dress and demand to be Worshipped?
