by Cheree Alsop
Chapter 12
Huge beasts with long hanging claws and black hides barreled through the entrance. Their claws tore into warriors right and left, ripping torsos in half. Those who carried the men and women they had freed from the mossy mounds tried to escape, but the beasts cut them down with roars of rage.
Liora set Malie gently on the ground and Brandis crouched protectively over her.
Liora slipped out of her backpack and set it against the cavern wall near them. “I’ll be back,” she promised.
She withdrew one of the knives from her waist and handed it to her brother. He stared at the weapon with incomprehension in his eyes; the daze of being freed from the moss still showed on his face. Liora could barely bring herself to leave him.
“They’ve killed half the army already and bullets don’t seem to do any damage,” Tariq said, his voice tight. His gun was in his hand. Liora couldn’t remember hearing him fire shots, but he shoved the gun back in his holster and pulled out two knives.
“Let’s go,” Liora told him.
They ran into the fray. The beasts towered above the warriors. Blood coated the mossy floor and the moss glowed blue where the dark liquid coated. Liora had to crane her neck to look up into the monstrous faces. Bared teeth met her gaze along with bellows loud enough to shatter her eardrums.
Liora used her knives to block the arm-length claws. The first swipe she made at a beast’s stomach jarred her arm the way it had with the smaller cave creatures. She parried a beast’s attempt to bite her head off and ducked beneath its legs. She blocked a swipe for her chest and followed with a jab to the beast’s heart that didn’t do any damage.
Another beast came up behind her. Around the cavern, yells and cries of pain echoed. Liora doubled her efforts. No matter how she stabbed at the beasts, her knives wouldn’t penetrate. A third approached and true fear blossomed in Liora’s chest. Her arms ached from blocking the relentless blows with her knives that didn’t appear to do any damage to the beasts’ thick hides. Even the lucky stab she had made when a beast bent down to bite her couldn’t penetrate the eye in the middle of its head.
Liora turned to parry claws aimed for her torso. A cry escaped her lips when another beast’s claws tore along her back, ripping easily through the Ventican clothing. She spun around to knock its claws away and another beast clawed her back from her shoulder to the base of her spine.
“Liora!” Tariq yelled.
He dove through the beasts and came up in front of her. He had lost his knives somewhere and stood with empty hands to shield her from them. Two beasts attacked at the same time. Liora let out a shout, sure she was about to see him torn apart in front of her eyes.
The moment Tariq’s hand touched the first beast’s forearm in his attempt to thwart the slice for his stomach, the beast let out a cry of pain. It stumbled backwards on its huge clawed feet and fell to the floor of the cave clutching its arm. The limb shriveled and turned to ash. The withering continued up its shoulder and along its massive chest.
Another beast stabbed Tariq through the shoulder. Liora darted around him, sheathing her knives as she did so, and set her hands on the beast’s chest. It gave a bellow and yanked its claws free. It stumbled to the ground as its chest cavity sunk inward.
The third beast trapped Tariq against the wall. He met its gaze, his own filled with defiance. He let out a yell. The beast replied with a bellow that made Liora’s ears ring. She darted beneath its arm and turned in front of Tariq.
“Liora!” he protested.
She knocked the claws to one side with the back of her arm and shoved her hands in the beast’s face. She felt the skin writhe beneath her fingers. The beast clawed at its eyes, gouging huge rents in its skin as it fell to the ground.
Tariq and Liora stared at the writhing creatures. The first had turned into a shuddering pile of ash. The scent of sulfur filled the air.
“Touch them with your bare hands!” Liora yelled. “Weapons don’t work on these beasts!”
Expressions of doubt crossed the faces of the warriors, but they obeyed. All around Liora, the beasts fell with yowls of pain and turned into shuddering heaps of ash. Liora’s arms shook with the strain of fighting back the blows. She could feel the blood dripping down her back from the rents in her skin. The wounds were bad, she knew without looking at them, but she didn’t have time for them yet.
“Are you alright?”
The concern in Tariq’s voice brought the hint of a smile to her face. No matter what happened to him, or how desensitized he was to his own pain, he still cared enough to ask her how she was doing.
She nodded. “We found Brandis.”
You’re not done yet.
A chill ran down Liora’s spine.
“What is it?” Tariq asked, watching her closely.
“Someone else is here,” Liora replied. “Whoever did this to Brandis.”
“We knew it was a trap,” Tariq told her. “If we get out now, we may survive in one piece.”
But there was a darkness to the voice that clouded Liora’s thoughts. It was the speaker, the same one who had set the trap.
You can’t escape me.
Liora gritted her teeth. The feeling of the being’s thoughts was like fingernails scraping inside of her brain. She felt nauseous and dirty just hearing the voice.
What do you want from me? she asked.
Come and find out, the voice replied.
Liora took a steeling breath.
“I’m not letting you go alone,” Tariq said.
Liora gave him a surprised look. “You heard the voice, too?”
He shook his head. “No, but I know that expression. You’re about to do something foolhardy and try to get yourself killed to save everyone else.” He grabbed the backpack from near the wall and slipped it on. There was a huge hole in his leg where one of the creatures had sliced through to the bone. Blood dripped from his hastily-made bandage to the moss below.
“And you want to join me?” she asked in an attempt to lighten his expression.
“I want to stop you,” he replied. “But I know better than to attempt it. My best bet is to follow and try to keep you from throwing yourself in front of someone else’s bullet.”
She looked past him to the warriors. They had lost so many in the battle against the cave beasts. Those who remained standing assisted either their army brethren and sisters or carried the survivors they had rescued from the moss.
“What are your orders?” Korgutan asked. Blood streaked the side of his face from a wound hidden in his orange hair. An Artidus man with two of his arms sliced to ribbons leaned against the warrior.
If what Liora felt from the voice was true, it wanted pain and fear for any within its reach. She needed to get her brother and her army as far away from the being who spoke in her head as possible.
“Go back to the ship. Get medical care for our men and women and do what you can to get it ready to fly again. I’m hoping Pilot Zanden was able to stop the Ketulans. If not, you’ll have a battle on your hands.”
“Aim for the power cells, right Warden?” Korgutan asked. He gave her a salute with the bloody hand he wasn’t using to support the Artidus.
“Exactly,” Liora replied with an answering salute. She realized her hand was just as bloody. She wiped it on her pant leg but the blood refused to clean away. It took her a minute to understand that it was because her pant leg was coated in blood as well. She wasn’t sure if it was hers or from the creatures.
“I’m not leaving here without you,” Brandis said. He shrugged away from the assistance of a warrior who helped him stand. Malie leaned against him as though she was about to fall over again. Liora didn’t know what kept the frail woman on her feet. A glimmer of respect surfaced at the way she refused to go down.
Liora used it to her benefit.
“She needs you,” she told Brandis. “They all need you. Take charge of what is left of my army and get the rest of the survivors to the ship. I have something I
need to finish.”
Brandis shook his head. “You can’t confront him. You’re not strong enough.” He looked as though he wanted to say something else, then swallowed and shook his head. “No one is strong enough.”
“A beast who would do this to others doesn’t deserve to survive,” Liora told her brother.
Brandis met her gaze, his own filled with worry bordering on panic as though the fog of the moss was clearing and he realized what she was about to do. “Liora, you can’t! You’ve got to get out of here. We need to leave before he finds you. We need to go home. You need to go home.”
Liora tried to slow his babbling. The fact that he was filled with fear for her gripped her heart.
“Brandis, it’s alright.”
He shook his head. “Liora, you don’t understand. It, I mean he, can’t be reasoned with. Trust me. I tried. Look where it got me.” He gestured toward the blood-stained moss at their feet. “We need to get as far away from here as possible and hope he never finds us.”
“But what about whoever else he finds?” Liora asked. “Do you want this for them?”
Brandis fell silent for a moment. The fear in his gaze warred with worry. When he finally spoke, his voice was tight. “But you can’t stop him. No one can.” Defeat sounded in his words as though he knew there was no point in arguing with Liora once she made up her mind.
“I’ve got to try,” she replied. “You know me enough to understand why. I can’t let anyone treat people like this. If I can stop him, I will.”
“And if you can’t?”
Brandis’ words hung in the air.
Liora gave him what she hoped was a confident smile. “I’ll meet you at the ship, okay?”
Two warriors helped Brandis and Malie toward the tunnel. Brandis looked back at Liora, his gaze holding her as if he feared it was the last time he would ever see her. Liora hoped he was wrong.
“Ready?” Tariq asked.
Liora nodded. “Let’s go.”
She sheathed her knives and ducked under Tariq’s arm. He limped beside her toward the darkness at the other end of the cavern.
Images flashed through her mind as she walked. They weren’t images she had seen; rather, they were sights and memories from whoever pushed at her. She couldn’t block them, so instead, she pushed them to Tariq, showing him what she saw.
Planets were covered in the green moss. Huge areas of blue throbbed with contained energy. Long strands sucked at plants, animals, water, and creatures she had never seen before. Everywhere she looked, the inhabitants of the planets lay in various stages of death. Some were decomposing, others kicking and struggling with the last recesses of their energy. Yet every time it ended the same way, with planets dying to their very core, their essence sucked dry by the moss.
Liora could feel the waves of hatred and disgust before they reached the upper cavern. When they stepped into the room, Liora’s hands clenched into fists. She realized that somewhere along the way she had let go of Tariq and drawn her knives again. A glance at him showed the same. The handles bit into her palms. She used the dull pain to center herself.
The moss was everywhere. It covered the room from top to bottom, a harmless-looking green fuzz that sunk when she stepped onto it.
“Were you waiting for me?” she asked.
The moss rumbled beneath her feet and the answer pulsed against her with a voice as much as a feeling.
Waiting to suck you dry.
“Is that all?” she asked aloud.
The rumbling grew louder. You saw what I do. You heard your brother. You will never leave this planet. I will suck every last bit of energy from your bones and leave you crushed and wilted like a leaf in the sunlight.
“Good luck with that,” Tariq said.
The fact that he heard the speaker showed in the glare he gave the moss in front of them.
“Tariq, why is it that so many of the new races we find have superiority complexes?” Liora asked.
Are you saying that Damaclans don’t place themselves above others? Your race kills without mercy. You take whatever you want. How is that any different from living off the energy of weaker planets and people? They have no greater right to survival than I do.
Liora sensed that his attack on her race was to stall rather than seek revenge. She shoved his efforts aside.
“Why bring me here?”
The rumble lowered to a bass note that Liora felt through her bones.
You thwarted the Sadarin and destroyed the Gateway.
Liora remembered the words from the memory Tariq had seen when he broke the orbs. She chose not to point out that it had been Tariq who put an end to the Sadarin. If she never heard the voice of a Nameless One again, it would be too soon.
“Your goal was to gain access to the Milky Way Galaxy. I won’t let that happen,” Liora replied.
You assume that you have a choice, the being told her. You also assume that I am acting alone. You should never presume to know more than your enemy.
Liora tried to move, but the moss held her feet tight. She glanced to the left to see Tariq struggling as well. Alarm filled her when the moss crept quickly up her legs and pulled her to a kneeling position.
Tariq let out a yell when the moss wrapped around his bleeding leg and tightened. She heard the snap of his bones.
Liora stabbed the green substance with her knife and then the knife was swallowed along with her hand and her arm.
“Lior—”
Tariq’s voice was cut off by the moss that swarmed over his head. Liora struggled, but the being was too strong. She was covered as well.
Strands searched for her face. Liora could feel them reaching through her hair, sticking into the bleeding lacerations along her back, creeping down her boots. She couldn’t fight and couldn’t move. The sensation of being slowly crushed filled her with panic. She couldn’t bring her knives up to cut the moss away. She wanted to yell to the warriors, but when she opened her mouth, the strands snaked inside.
Her breath caught in her throat when the moss pulsed, pulling the energy from her body. Liora’s first instinct was to push back, to refuse. The strands doubled their efforts and she felt them pulling anyway.
Liora’s stubbornness surfaced. If the strands were going to take her energy, they would take it the way she wanted them to. She used the very last of the breath in her body that the strands hadn’t choked out yet and pushed her energy instead of holding back.
She felt the strands enlarge, then burst. Suddenly, she could breathe again. Other strands surged forward. Liora pushed again as soon as they touched her body. They collapsed as well. Liora needed more energy. She reached through the moss and found Tariq’s hand. His fingers closed weakly around hers.
“I need to pull strength from you,” she pushed to him.
She felt the flicker of his fingers and took it as approval. She pulled and pushed. The strength from Tariq flowed through her and out into the moss. The blanketing death above them began to shudder. Liora pushed, adding her energy to Tariq’s. The moss billowed out and Liora could see Tariq lying beside her. The strands wriggled away from his body and he drew in a deep breath. His leg was twisted beneath him and she saw blood pooling from the wound. Shards of bone showed through the pant leg of his uniform.
He met her gaze, his own filled with pain, and said, “Finish it.”
Liora gathered her strength and Tariq’s. She held it for a moment, pooling it into a roiling mass of fiery energy. She focused on the pinnacle of the writhing moss above them and shoved the strength toward it. The pinnacle rose, then exploded, vaporizing the moss into dust.
Liora stared up at the green dust that floated around them. It took her a moment to realize that the moss was gone from the entire room. They lay on the hard rocky floor that wasn’t cushioned by the green substance any longer.
“That was unexpected.”
She glanced over to see Tariq staring up at the glass dome. His expression brought a smile to her face.
“Did you doubt me?” she asked.
He tipped his head to meet her gaze. “Never.”
That made Liora’s smile broaden. She picked up one of her knives so that she could slice fabric from her shirt to bind his broken leg.
Wrong.
The word sent ice into Liora’s veins. It hadn’t been spoken by one voice, but by many.
Tariq’s eyes widened and he looked around.
You made a huge mistake, the voices continued. Now instead of one planet devourer, you have made thousands. We would thank you if we didn’t see by your expressions that you did it by accident. What a tragic mistake you just made.
A rumble of satisfaction filled the air.
We don’t need our Gateway any longer. You have provided a ship with which we can travel the galaxies. The Ketulans are already hiding within, ready to tear apart your warriors as soon as they enter.
An image appeared in Liora’s mind of her army torn apart and their mutilated bodies used as sustenance for the new moss beings as they traveled to the Milky Way Galaxy. The image closed in on Brandis, his torso ripped open and moss coursing through his body.
The particles of green dust began to expand.
“Liora, get out of here!” Tariq said. Liora tried to pull him to his feet. His shattered leg collapsed beneath him. “Get to the ship before the others are killed!”
“I won’t leave you here,” Liora refused.
“Your brother is out there!” Tariq replied. There was desperation in his gaze. He grabbed her arm. “Liora, you can’t let them walk into a trap. Think of the lives at their mercy!”
Mercy is but a pardon weak creatures beg as an excuse to continue their paltry existence.
Liora knew she had no choice. Tariq was already pulling the backpack off his back. If she could reach the ship while he prepared the bomb, she could get back to save him before it exploded. It had to work.
Liora took off running.
You’ll never stop them; they’re already at the ship. The death of all you love is inevitable, Damaclan. Your fate was sealed the moment you were born.
