Protector

by Sam Ryder

  I hoped it was enough of a distraction for Belle to escape.

  Run, Belle.

  It was my last coherent thought before Big Mama attacked, flinging herself forward with a speed that belied her massive size, landing just before me and snapping her tail down.

  It was a feint.

  I fell for it.

  The real attack came from the sides. Reacting to the stinger, I’d darted right and was now forced to bring my hammer up to block one of her sword-legs, clanking against my metal weapon. The second foreleg slashed in from the opposite side and I ducked, simultaneously throwing myself backward in anticipation of—

  Slam!

  The stinger bit into the dirt where I’d been a split second earlier.

  Using my momentum, I rolled to my feet, reasserting my grip on my hammer. I just need to delay her enough for Belle to escape, right?

  Yes, that had been my original plan, to play the hero for the damsel in distress. Then I heard Beat’s voice in my head. Get off your high horse, dumbass. You’re no hero and this is no fantasy. Kill the bitch and survive.

  Easier said than done.

  She darted in again, stabbing with two legs while on the move with the rest, her stinger wavering back and forth overhead, its very presence enough to distract me from any thoughts of going on the offensive.

  I blocked another two strikes, dancing away, trying not to lose my footing on the roots and stones underfoot.

  Pussy. Again, it was Beat’s voice I heard.

  It kind of pissed me off, to be honest. Which, I suspect, is exactly what she would’ve wanted had she been here.

  Releasing a war cry, I charged forward holding my hammer overhead like a crazed Viking warrior hopped up on drugs. It was an act, and I might be biased, but I think it was an Oscar-worthy performance.

  In reality, I was clear-headed, a plan unfolding in my mind.

  The stinger shot down toward me, as I expected it would. I was within range and this was Big Mama Crawly’s primary weapon, the haymaker that ended every fight she’d ever been in.

  I stepped aside at the last possible moment and brought my hammer down on the tail.

  That’s when I learned something I didn’t know before, the kind of information that would’ve been useful YESTERDAY:

  The segmented portions of the tail were plated with godsdamn armor. Which meant my hammer harmlessly glanced off. Which ruined my not-so-brilliant plan to disable my opponent’s big ass weapon.

  Worse, I was in a bad spot with little hope of escape. So I did the thing that any formidable Warrior would do in a similar situation when facing death by a massive spider-scorpion:

  I hugged the spider’s scorpion tail. I actually leapt onto it, straddling it, locking my arms and legs around the armored appendage above the barbed tip.

  If Big Mama wanted to skewer me with her sword legs, she’d have to impale her own tail.

  She, of course, knew that as well, and simply lifted her tail into the air, shaking me back and forth as I hung on for dear life. Luckily, there was more to my plan, because I’m smart like that.

  I jumped from her tail, praying to all Three goddesses that I’d timed it right to achieve my goal of landing on the top of her fuzzy head.

  I hadn’t.

  I landed on what one might call her forehead, which was covered in dark eyes growing darker as the Black fell. Immediately, I started sliding toward her maw, which was gaped open and ready to taste me.

  I dug my toes in as hard as I could, shattering the membrane of a pair of eyes and feeling a warm, gooey rush as they popped. Which created makeshift footholds. Nice. Unfortunately, it also enraged Mama Spidey, who dropped rapidly to the ground in an attempt to dislodge me. It almost worked, but I managed to cling to her via my new footholds and by gripping a tuft of hair with my left hand. I used the other hand to bring my hammer down with an overhand tomahawk chop.

  A waterfall of dark blood rained down on my head as I destroyed another eye.

  This pissed her off even more, her entire body convulsing as a scream tried to shatter my eardrums like the squeal of an electric guitar at a heavy metal concert. Using my hammer, which was embedded in the eye socket, I dragged myself higher, until I was able to clamber up onto the crown of her head.

  I went to work, slamming my hammer down again and again, trying to breach her thick, furred hide. I had to constantly regain my balance, because at this point she was in full-on Godzilla mode, throwing her body around and sliding her legs up her body to try to poke at me. I dodged and danced and, every chance I had, brought my hammer down on her skull, aiming for the same spot.

  Blow by blow, I felt something start to give. It started with a different sound—a whump! rather than a thump! The new sound created an even more desperate Freakishly Large Scorpion-Spider. Which meant I was winning. She was so desperate, in fact, that she did something I couldn’t have predicted.

  She tried to sting me with her tail. I sensed the attack more than saw it, because her entire body stopped moving, her muscles tensing beneath my feet.

  I simply reacted, which is sometimes better than overthinking and getting impaled by a foot-long barb filled with venom. I dove to the side, grabbing at clumps of fur to arrest my momentum before I tumbled over the side.

  It was a killing stroke, full of fear and desperation and the rage of a monster that never lost, who had seen her share of warriors who were but gnats to her mighty god-like existence.

  Not anymore.

  The barb sank deep into her skull, right into the weakened divot I’d been working on. In fact, it sunk so deep the barb vanished, a portion of the armored tail disappearing behind it. This was my one and only chance to win, and I knew it.

  I fought back to my feet, raised my hammer above my head, and brought it down like I was trying to drive a tent stake into bare rock. The tail, which Mama Crawly was trying to pull out of the hole in her head, was driven in deeper.

  Slam!

  Another Paul Bunyan chop and the tail went in further.

  Slam!

  Slam!

  Slam-Slam-Slam!

  Her enormous body went slack, twitching, and then began to fall.

  I got the hell out of there, running in the direction of her fall, aiming my final step for the spot where her skull began to curve downward. I jumped, contorting my dive in midair to try to avoid the tangle of sharp legs still in my path.

  There were too many.

  My left arm was tucked in close against my side, but an errant swipe of her leg caught me just beneath the shoulder, cutting through skin and muscle and bone and then moving past, leaving me to watch with shocked, wide eyes as my arm twisted away while the rest of me soared onward, trailing a crimson arc of blood, each drop shimmering in the final rays of the waning sun.

  I landed hard, the breath punched out of me.

  Enraged, the dead mother’s children swarmed down from above, but I wasn’t thinking of them, because the pain had set in now, a violent shockwave running through my nerves, shuddering through every inch of my body.

  Each blink was like a separate scene in a movie, each shorter than the last as my heart began to slow.

  Would I die a hero’s death? Did that even matter?

  To me, it did, so I chose to believe that Belle had escaped, that she would make it back to camp to tell our story. I could picture Beat’s lips trembling, an unspoken curse in her mouth as she damned me for being so foolhardy.

  I felt like I was underwater now, the shriek of the spiders a distant roar. I willed myself to pass out before they devoured me.

  There were other hard-to-distinguish sounds too—shouts maybe?

  I forced my eyes open one last time, and I knew I was dying because my imagination conjured images of female warriors swinging down from above by ropes, throwing spears at the spiders.

  The cavalry has arrived! I thought wryly.

  Everything went dark.

  ELEVEN

  GOING TRIBAL

  Belle�
��s singsong voice was the first thing I heard. It might’ve been a mile away, traveling down a long chute to reach my ears. Blah blah blah, it said. Followed by, Yada yada yada.

  And then, suddenly, it was as loud as a gunshot beside my ear. “Thank you for y’all’s hospitality,” she said, which seemed like a weird earthly thing to say. In her accent, however, it didn’t feel out of place at all.

  My eyes wouldn’t open, because they were glued shut. I felt a tingle somewhere, but it didn’t feel like it was coming from a part of my body. “Ur?” I said, trying to ask about the tingle.

  “Sam?” Belle’s voice held an urgency to it. I felt her soft hands on my cheeks a moment later. “Can you hear me?”

  “Urg,” I said, which I hope she translated to mean: yes.

  That’s when I heard the other voices, a dull murmur sounding like white noise. Where am I? There was no way Belle could’ve carried me all the way back to camp, especially not when the Black had been about to arrive just as I…blacked out (ha ha, see what I did there?).

  Something came back to me, a glimpse of a memory. Maybe mine, maybe something I’d seen in a movie. An arm tumbling end over end like a thrown stick, spraying blood.

  Oh fuck. It had been my arm. I remembered now. How I’d been a super badass in killing the giant spider only to get my arm sliced off by accident as, in her death throes, Mama Crawly had flailed her sword-legs around.

  “You’re fine. Buttplug and his women are helpin’ us.”

  Buttplug? WTF is she talking about?

  “Me name be Bu’ploog,” a deep voice said. It did sound a little like Buttplug. That way of speaking, however…like a non-English speaker trying to learn the language…

  It was so familiar. I’d only heard it once before on this planet, from a giant named Ton, who had died on an especially horrific Black.

  I tried my eyes again, and this time managed to open them a crack. At first everything was blurry and strangely bright, but then…

  A face the size of a small moon blocked out the light as it stared down at me. Actually, his head was more like the size of a planet—his big brown eyes were the moons. “Whoa,” I said.

  Belle crowded in beside him, her forehead wrinkled with concern. “I didn’t know if you’d wake up.”

  “What?” I said, which was the closest I could get to a full sentence at this point.

  Luckily, Belle understood. “I ran into this guy as I was trying to escape the forest,” she said. “Literally.” She laughed. “It was like running into a tree.”

  Buttplug chuckled, his own laugh as deep as a grave. “She did. Thought she’s a creepah. Almost squashed her, I did.”

  “That’s what they call the nasty spiders,” Belle clarified. “Creepers.”

  It wasn’t a bad nickname, much quicker and easier to say than the similar one I’d concocted. I’d now heard multiple references to others, including they and women. I asked my next question slowly, working hard to get each word out. “You…helped…us?”

  Buttplug shrugged like it was nothing, as easy as picking up a dropped item from the floor. “We’s gonna fight ’em creepahs anyway. You did hard part. Killed leader. We’s been tryin’ kill ’er for years.”

  “My…pleasure,” I said. I tried to look at my arm; or rather, where my arm should be. But Belle grabbed my chin and steered it back to her face.

  “You’ll heal,” she said. “We found your arm, glued it on with a bunch of ooze, and wrapped it up tight. Ain’t nothin’.”

  The quiver in her voice told me otherwise, but I didn’t point that out. I also didn’t state the bad news I knew must be true: She’d used the rest of our supply of primordial ooze to save my arm, which meant her injured leg would have to heal the natural way. I glanced in its general direction.

  It was wrapped up nice and tight with fresh webbing and there was no sign of leaking blood.

  “They stitched me up,” Belle said. “Hurt like a hit from one of my exes, but I’ve had worse.”

  Who was this woman? Beat would never believe me when I told her. “Thank you,” I said, both to Belle and Bu’ploog.

  I looked past them, trying to make sense of my surroundings. The strange light was all around us, an eerie glow that reminded me of the vines back in the gully. The glowing walls were set in a circle, as if we were inside a massive grain silo. I couldn’t see a ceiling, just a broad circle of darkness as thick as the Black. Spread out before the glowing walls were other figures, all of whom seemed to be females of varying skin colors—there were green Oceanians, black Lri Ay, and human women from as pale as Belle to as dark as Vrill. All of them were watching me with interest.

  That’s when I finally realized what this was and where we were.

  I’d met my first of the tribes that Vrill always talked about.

  And we were inside a giant tree.

  ~~~

  It turned out the walls were glowing for a damn good reason:

  The Three had created this tree, as well as many others within the forest. The evidence was in the glowing walls, which were infused with a small measure of the goddesses’ power. This kept the tribe somewhat safe from the big spiders. But that didn’t stop them from fighting over territory, which was what had saved our lives.

  My arm, on the other hand…

  I couldn’t feel it, other than a tingling sensation. I couldn’t move my fingers.

  Give the ooze time to work, I reminded myself. This was no flesh wound.

  I tried to take my attention off my arm, which wasn’t difficult given the membership of Buttplug’s tribe.

  They were, uh, gorgeous. Not surprising, considering they’d all been brought here by Eve at one time or another and transformed in ooze cocoons.

  The women were also all different shapes and sizes, which interested me. (But not for the reasons you’re thinking—get your mind out of the gutter.) I was still trying to understand why the ooze had leveled up Beat to a Hulk-woman, while Belle was toned and athletic-looking, but not nearly as bulky.

  I suspected it had something to do with enhancing the individual’s natural abilities, but it was just a working theory at this point. After all, I had also been transformed into a muscle-bound brute, and back on Earth had been nothing but a computer jockey and amateur button-masher. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure where the linkage was.

  Anyway, I digress. The women of Buttplug’s tribe were as different as night from day. There was a towering Oceanian woman with green legs for days. She wasn’t as tall as the giant leader but wasn’t far off either. There was a short, stocky Lri Ay who would’ve given Beat a run for her money in an arm-wrestling contest. There was an exotic-looking human with long, dark lashes, pouty lips and a stomach you could wash clothes on. She might’ve stepped right off the cover of a glossy magazine. And on and on. Some of the women were more dainty-looking and slight of frame, while others were curvier, living representations of an hourglass. Almost all of them would’ve been a perfect fit for the next edition of Sport Illustrated: Swimsuit Edition. No problem. They were hovering around us, some of them speaking to each other in hushed tones behind their hands. Most of them wore bikini-like clothing made from leaves, which gave off an Adam and Eve vibe, emphasis on Eve.

  See? I’m distracted from my severed arm already.

  “So…” I said, trying to make conversation in my usual awkward manner. “How long y’all been a tribe?” I’d been spending too much time around Belle lately. I almost sounded like her.

  The Asian goddess answered. “Bu’ploog formed the tribe six years ago. Back then it was just him. The rest of us have been flocking to him ever since. I’ve only been here two years. I’m Misha, by the way.”

  Interesting. Less experienced than Vrill but more than Lace. Still, the most shocking fact was how long Bu’ploog had been on Tor. At least six years. Who knew how long he survived with the Three before he left. It really put things into perspective. I was like a baby in comparison.

  “Why only women?�
�� Belle asked, crinkling her nose. I was wondering the same thing, but wasn’t sure how to ask, especially if it was some weird cult thing.

  Misha adjusted her position, tossing her dark, silky hair over her shoulder. She had a small round birthmark near the edge of her pink lips. I don’t know what she’d looked like before, but the ooze had been especially generous to her. Her perfectly round breasts were bursting from her leafy bikini top. She said, “Some of the men in the other tribes are pigs,” she spat. “They wish to use us for sex. They think they deserve beautiful women because they fight monsters. As if we don’t fight them too.”

  “I’m—that’s horrible,” I said, immediately regretting having objectified her. I couldn’t help admiring these beautiful women for how they looked. But I also knew they were formidable warriors. One didn’t survive on Tor for long without being tough as nails.

  She nodded. “Bu’ploog isn’t like that. Neither are all the men. Some are kind and fair. There are tribes with both men and women where all are equal and valued. But we just happened to find this one first. We made our home, and we have no reason to leave.”

  I understood that mentality. I felt the same way about the others back at camp. I wanted to protect them more than anything. Another question popped into my mind, one I should’ve asked earlier, especially after learning Misha had been here for two years. “What Level are you?”

  The woman’s dark eyes darkened further. She clearly didn’t like the question. “The Levels are meaningless. Here there are only survivors and corpses.”

  Fair enough, but… “How long were you with the Three before you left?”

  Her lip curled in disgust and her expression reminded me of Vrill whenever I spoke of the goddesses. “Seven months,” she said. “One day I was in Tokyo, and the next I was in a world of monsters. I fought for them. I almost died for them. Did they ever thank me?”

  I was pretty sure it was a rhetorical question, and it’s not like I wanted to defend the goddesses. I was protecting them only so I could protect those who they abducted.

  Still, like I said before, I was but a baby next to those who’d survived here for much longer.