Karlol

by Phoebe Nix

  She smirked, turning the wheel on her watch as it glowed in a sky blue halo that was blinding in the dim cell. He looked at the device, briefly remembering the first time he had seen it, when he was surprised that humans could understand his language and he understood theirs.

  “You foolish, foolish boy,” she said in a chuckle. “You always amaze me with how stupid you are.” She climbed to her feet. “You have a pair of wings, and you still manage to get caught.” She let out a sensuous laugh.

  “You’re not any smarter, Lia, if our past conflicts have revealed anything,” he said with an exhausted grin.

  “For shame,” she blurted with a hand on her chest. “After all we’ve been through!”

  Karlol wanted to knock her glowing watch out of her hand. At this point, he would rather hear her speak in gibberish than have to endure her sarcastic tone.

  “You don’t put up much of a fight anymore. Are you getting old?” she taunted, kicking his foot.

  He stifled his groan. He didn’t want to give her the pleasure of seeing him in pain. “It was a dozen guards against one. I’d like to see how long you’d last when a spear pierces through you. Do you remember that time you squealed when I pulled on your hair?”

  Lia’s smile faded. “Do you think you’re in position to talk shit right now?”

  “Don’t pretend like you don’t enjoy it,” he said, rolling his eyes.

  Karlol was in great pain, and he had to muster the last bit of his strength to keep this conversation up, but he feared it was not going to come down to a discussion. This was another interrogation, and she wasn’t going to leave him until he gave her everything she needed.

  Lia brushed her hands over her hips as she paced back and forth. “The guards offered to come along with me, but I thought I’d have my fun with you in private.”

  “Sounds like you forgot how I left you the last time you initiated a brawl,” he said through gritted teeth.

  “Tsk. Tsk. Tsk. You have such a big mouth for someone who’s chained to the wall. I could easily and gladly kill you right now, but there’s still plenty I need to know,” she threatened.

  “See, that’s what I mean,” he snickered. “You call me stupid, yet you admit that you’ll kill me anyway. What makes you think I’ll give you what you want, knowing you’ll just kill me after?”

  The corners of her mouth lifted in a sinister grin. “Silly boy. You get to choose. You either die with a swift and sharp blow to your neck.” She waved her hand, as though she held an invisible sword. “Or you live to see those lovely feathers of yours plucked one by one before we skin you and hang you out to dry.”

  He scoffed. “Even you could do better than that. Try harder.”

  “Don’t test me,” she warned. “What were you doing in our territory when we’ve made it clear time and time again that the likes of you aren’t welcome here?”

  He shrugged. “As much as I don’t like what you’ve done to our home, I will admit that you have more interesting views to explore. It’s a whole other experience to fly through polluted air and over decaying forests. It’s impressive, really.”

  Lia let out an angry huff and made a sprint toward him, kicking him in the stomach with all her might.

  He clamped his jaw, and his head fell backward as he gasped for air.

  “Is that,” he heaved a sigh. “Is that all you’ve got?”

  “You know full well what I can do to you. And let’s not forget that this isn’t just about you. Your people will go down with you, depending on whether or not you speak.”

  “I’m clearly speaking.”

  “Karlol!” she bellowed. “You tell me what you were doing here right now or I swear to you-”

  “What, Lia?” he spat. “You swear you’ll encroach on more of our territories like you’re already doing? That you’ll destroy the planet for us? It’s all been said and done. There’s no reason to keep me here other than to kill me. So if you plan to do that, get it over with. You’re wasting your time.”

  Lia slowly ambled toward him and kneeled. She grabbed his chin, pulled his face toward her and watched him gasp for air before she slapped him hard.

  “Who’s the girl?” she calmly asked.

  “What? The blonde you tried to kill before she flew to safety? You already know who she is.”

  “Don’t play dumb,” she shouted. “Who’s the human? She showed up when you did, and I’m pretty sure the two of you have something planned. That traitor will get what she deserves, too.”

  Karlol tried to conceal his worries. If Lia were to harm that woman, and she truly was the savior that had been prophesied, then the entirety of the Vogel race would face their doom.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  She rose to her feet, sending another kick to his torso. He groaned then spat out a viscous ball of blood. Karlol shook and flailed his head and limbs, gasping as she continued her assault.

  She spun in position before round kicking him in the jaw. It was an excruciating blow, but he had already been drained of all his energy. He quietly mumbled something under his breath.

  She kneeled again, facing him with a proud grin. “Despite all that mutation,” she paused to trace her finger along his wing, “your race is weak.” Lia rose to her feet and turned away. “We’re doing just fine here, so don’t go blaming us for your extinction. You and your people keep breaching your pact. We agreed to keep our distance, but you’re greedy for more land.”

  “It was our land before you showed up,” he groaned.

  “You own nothing. We merely settled here. You started the conflicts.”

  “Because you started shooting arrows at our people for sport!” Karlol roared.

  Lia shrugged. “Until we learned you could speak.”

  How thoughtful.

  “Just remember this moment, Karlol. I gave you a chance to speak. You’ll pay for that stubbornness of yours,” she said casually, as though she were commenting on the weather. She walked out of the cell, the door screeching on the rails as it slid shut.

  Karlol felt his anger inflate through his ribs, his breathing evolving into loud puffing and gasping. He closed his eyes and held his breath, but he could still somehow hear a rhythmic breathing.

  It took him a moment to realize there was someone else with him in this prison. The breathing was intermittent, fearful. His nostrils flared as he took a couple of whiffs – the prisoner was close.

  “H-hello?” a feeble voice said softly.

  Karlol’s eyes bulged. “Human?”

  Chapter 5

  He can understand me!

  Jocelyn crawled across the floor and tried to squeeze her head out of the metal bars to take a peek at the humanoid in the adjacent cell. She could only see his bruised feet.

  “I have a name,” she replied. “Jocelyn.”

  “Wonderful.”

  Is that sarcasm?

  “What’s yours?” she asked.

  “You’ve been here all along, so you already know what my name is,” he stopped to moan in discomfort. “I have to admit, it’s a little embarrassing that you’ve just heard a woman beat the hell out of me.”

  Jocelyn smiled as she grasped the metal bars of the cell door, her head resting on them.

  “You’re not from here, are you?” he asked.

  Her smile faded. “I’m not even sure where here is.”

  “I suppose that answers my question.”

  She could tell he was smiling from his tone. “How do you speak my language? I could have sworn you muttered in a different language when I first saw you.” She slid downwards and sat cross-legged, her hands still on the bars. The floor was cold and rough.

  “I don’t,” he replied. “Red chip, left ankle.”

  “Excuse me?” She furrowed her brows.

  “Check your ankle, Jolecyn.”

  “Jocelyn,” she corrected, lifting her foot up and twisting her ankle. Something pulsed just underneath the skin “What the hell is that?�
��

  “Common procedure. It makes you understand many languages in their system, ours included. They tried to plant one on me before, but my species heals quickly, and the chip sheds in a couple of hours. They have to use an external interpreter.”

  "So how do you understand me?"

  "We learned to understand the human language many years ago, though it's almost impossible for us to speak. The humans never bothered learning what they consider our 'primitive squawking'.

  Jocelyn rose, took a step back and turned around to walk to one wall. The chains and shackles in her cell were stained in aged blood. The thought of who had been here before her sent shivers up and down her spine.

  “Your species? You’re a human being with wings,” she noted.

  “You’re partly right, but it’s a little more complicated than that. How did you end up here?” His tone wavered.

  Jocelyn pursed her lips and paused for a moment. “You sound like you’re afraid of me.”

  “Not of you,” he clarified. “But your presence here, at this time,” he paused, “I’m just curious to know how you got here.”

  Jocelyn moistened her dry lips and shrugged. “I’m not even sure. I find it hard to believe that I’m not even on Earth anymore.”

  The man’s silence was distressing.

  It seemed like there was plenty on his mind that he was keeping from her. Her own species had been cruel to both of them, but she couldn’t just trust him merely because they had the same enemy. She had overheard his conversation with that Lia, and there seemed to be a lasting war between the two territories. It explained why he was being held prisoner, but why did she have to be in this cell?

  “Earth,” he repeated pensively. “The land of humans.”

  “There are humans here.”

  Karlol scoffed. “They don’t belong here on the planet with the rest of us Vogels. They’ve lived on Lookar for decades, if not centuries. The humans found their way here not too long ago and settled. Uninvited, if I may add.”

  So, this planet was called Lookar. Where the hell was Earth?

  “Is that the fighting you two were talking about?”

  “By nature, we Vogels aren’t antagonistic unless provoked. We never deemed this land ours and claimed it for ourselves. We simply found ourselves existing here.” He paused to take a long breath.

  Jocelyn couldn’t see his face, but he sounded broken as he narrated his planet’s history.

  “I remember the day my uncle found one of our people bleeding to death, a strange piece of wood with a sharp rectangular tip lodged in the poor creature. We later learned that it was an arrow. Those people were hunting us for sport. Apparently, killing other beings for the fun of it is part of human culture.”

  He’s not wrong.

  On Jocelyn’s left, wooden planks held together by iron strips jutted out of the wall. She took a seat on the makeshift bed, sliding herself back to lean against the wall with her knees drawn to her chest. She twisted her ankle again, scrutinizing the microchip, which was bordered with red and inflamed skin. She suddenly felt the need to scratch it, and she did, but immediately regretted it. Tapping it felt like pushing a hundred hot needles into her skin. She gasped through her teeth in pain.

  “Are you alright, Jole-,” he stammered, “Joce-lyn.”

  Jocelyn smiled. “Yeah, just annoyed by this chip.”

  “You still haven’t told me how you ended up here,” he reminded her.

  Jocelyn was unsure whether she should confide in this bird-man. Then again, she was trapped in a prison cell with no sustenance on a foreign planet taken over by corrupt humans. It seemed like her situation couldn’t get any worse.

  “My friends and I,” she began, “we found a spaceship in the middle of the desert. We got curious and walked inside. The pilot,” she suddenly recalled, “he looked hideous. It definitely wasn’t human. It was huge and had scaled skin with thin fur. We were lucky to find it unconscious, it probably would have killed us otherwise. And then we-”

  “The pilot,” Karlol interrupted. “Did you see his face?”

  “No, it was facedown on the control board. No one dared to touch that thing,” Jocelyn answered. “And because I’m the most unlucky being in existence, one of us basically tripped and fell on a big red button that was probably labelled Do Not Press.”

  Karol snickered.

  “That’s when I felt like I was falling from a damn treetop, and I didn’t land. I just kept falling in darkness. Then I woke up in a forest. I don’t even know where my friends are. I’m scared that they’re still stuck somewhere out there.”

  “Did you say you felt like you were falling?”

  That word seemed to trigger an interest. It seemed like Karlol was analyzing her and looking for certain keywords, coming to some sort of conclusion she was sure he wouldn’t share with her.

  “Will you just ask me what you need to know?” Jocelyn snapped. “There’s something you’re hiding from me.”

  Jocelyn heard the man sigh. “There is,” he confessed.

  “Why am I here?”

  “Well, you and your friends found a spaceship and pressed a big red button,” he said.

  Despite her dread of being held captive in a cell with blood-stained walls, Jocelyn smiled, but quickly forced a frown and tried to sound more serious. “I meant in this cell. Why are they keeping me here if I’m a human like them?”

  “It’s a long story,” he replied.

  “It doesn’t look like we’re going anywhere soon,” Jocelyn protested. She had a feeling that Karlol knew exactly who she was and how she got here.

  There was a brief silence.

  “Do you believe in prophecies?”

  Jocelyn’s gate shrieked on the rails as it slid open, and Karlol fell silent. A tall, dark figure walked in, and she squinted to make out who it was. She froze when she recognized Narmer. He had a broad smile on his face, like a Cheshire cat. He strolled inside; with every step he took toward her, she pushed her back harder against the wall, willing it to swallow her whole and hide her.

  Narmer’s smile widened, and he gestured for the guards. “Hello, again.”

  Chapter 6

  Karlol’s ankles were lassoed before he was dragged out of his cell, his wings fluttering against the ground. He turned, his fingers morphing into talons to dig them into the stone floor, marking trails as he was hauled.

  “If you resist, you’ll only make this harder for yourself,” the guard said through a menacing grin.

  Karlol retracted his claws, giving in. As he lifted his head up, he saw Jocelyn screaming, failing to push her way out of the guards’ grasps while they continued to drag her out of her cell.

  With a groan, he tried to fly his way out of the lasso, but he ended up being towed in the air. As they tried to lead him out of the prison gates, he flew upward and clung to the wall above the gates.

  “Knock it off!” one of the guards hollered.

  Karlol screeched at the guard. Below, he saw the poor human being dragged through the gates, squirming and kicking, screaming, “Let me go!”

  But then she stopped to look at him, her eyes fixed on his until she walked out of sight.

  The guard who had been holding the rope made a sprint through the open gates, but Karlol’s grasp overpowered the tug and the guard fell to the ground. Three others rushed to help, and Karlol was eventually pulled down the wall and out of the prison.

  He knew that swaying and turning in the air wouldn’t free him of the ropes around his ankle, but he liked giving the guards a hard time. Eventually, one of them aimed a black oblong device which shot a short arrow into one of his wings, paralyzing it immediately. He slowly descended, one wing flapping, landing unceremoniously on his feet. He swore loudly.

  He was led down a long hallway. Ahead of him was an exhausted Jocelyn who had finally realized that her efforts were fruitless and trudged alongside the guards without much of a fight in her. He could hear her intermittent sniveling, which was he
artbreaking. The woman had no clue who these people were, or who he was. She had found herself in a foreign land and was being punished for something these brutes had assumed she was part of.

  Whoever she was, and whether or not she was the savior, Karlol knew he had to get her out of here.

  They walked through an arch that led to a part of the courtyard surrounded by a high fence. He could feel the pulses of electricity on the net fence from where he stood. Despite the shining disk in the sky sending its beams to the freshly mowed, reflective grass, the yard exuded a foreboding aura. He understood why once his eye spotted trails of dried blood here and there.

  On his right were padded benches set under a wooden gazebo, in front of which was a rectangular table with wine glasses. And ahead of him were wooden posts secured in the ground a few feet apart. Some of them were surrounded by burnt ashes.

  It’s an execution site with seats for the show. Fuck.

  He searched his surroundings, desperately trying to think of an escape plan. Killing a Vogel was tricky business. They could either be beheaded or shot in the eye. Their skulls were impenetrable to human weapons, and whatever damage their skin and bones endured healed in a few hours.

  But that didn’t rule out the pain. Or fire. Those guards were definitely planning to have their fun with him.

  Karlol’s paralyzed wing began to jerk. His body was swiftly flushing out the toxins, but it wasn’t quick enough.

  The three guards stopped, one of them holding shackles while trying to distract him so another could blindside him. Karlol opened his mouth, baring his sharp teeth and letting out a deafening squawk. Two of them pressed their hands on their ears, while another furrowed his brows, his eyes narrowing. He then made a leap for Karlol, who easily pushed him away.

  The two other guards seized his arms from behind and quickly restrained them in heavy shackles.

  He found himself being dragged to one of the posts, around which the chains that hung loose from the shackles were wrapped and secured. The guards quickly retreated to their positions.