The shattered aurora, p.9
The Shattered Aurora, page 9
He looked to the spots of sky he could see through the boughs, half expecting to for there to be purple balls of power shooting at him.
Above him though was just the regular storm, nothing that would have given him a second thought, except the sounds of the forest grew quieter still. It didn’t make sense.
Straining his ears, he tried to pick up on anything that would have explained it.
For some reason he couldn’t explain, it unnerved him that the forest was falling silent. It didn’t stop the sound of the storm, but it was too quiet otherwise and every drop, every clap of thunder, seemed louder to his ears.
Xander making his way down the tree grew even louder than the storm, the boughs snapping and the limbs creaking with his descent.
Jumping off the last of the branches, he landed next to Troylus and rubbed his palms against the thighs of his uniform before wrapping his arms around himself again.
“We’re on the right path,” he said.
And a scream, harsh, guttural, and piercing ripped through the air followed by a wailing howl.
“Fuck,” Troylus said, grabbing Xander and pulling him to his side against the tree trunk.
It sounded like the things making the sounds were right on top of them.
“What was that?” Xander whispered.
“Shhh.” Troylus didn’t want to explain, and he wasn’t even sure if he needed to. Xander probably knew the answer to his question, but he didn’t want to face it either, and he assumed that was why he asked the question.
Crashes, the sounds of snarling and snapping, seemed to come from everywhere at once.
He scanned the trees around them, trying to find the actual location of whatever was happening, but the trunks were too thick, the spaces between them too small for him to even narrow it down.
And every time a branch bounced after dropping a long collected amount of water, it made him jump.
Through the trees to their right, just showing around the edge of the trunk before the sight line was cut off by branches, he saw a flash a white followed by another flash of shining grey.
Nudging Xander with an elbow and staring at the small window of space, he raised a hand and pointed.
Xander leaned over so he was able to see along his arm, and leaned forward, closer to whatever was going to cause the vicious assault of sounds to continue to rend the air.
Shoved back by Xander’s whole body slamming into him and dragging him to a branch, Troylus lost his ability to breath. His breath was knocked out of him, he was left gasping for air as Xander scaled the tree again.
A split second later, he still tried to inflate his lungs as the little space they had just been exploded in fur and snapping jaws.
Troylus crouched down on the other side of the branch, not trusting his own ability to breathe or the safety of making a move upward while the white, muscular, four legged animal with the short, thick fur and small rounded ears snarled and shrieked, its mouth gaping open and exposing two rows of pointed teeth with two of them so long they hung past its bottom jaw when it was shut.
It fought three silver grey, long haired four legged creatures only a fraction smaller than it was. They were not so fearsomely equipped in teeth or claw, but they made up for it in their seemingly coordinated attacks of fetes and quick thrusts.
All of the animals had three eyes facing forward in their heads.
Predators.
Now he more than understood the beasts of the plains being so huge.
They had to be just to survive.
What chance did that leave him?
He was able to breathe again, but he slowly took air in and let it out, wanting to move as little as possible until their fight was over and they moved on.
But why were they fighting among themselves? What set them off? Weren’t they just supposed to have different territories? He knew so little of fauna of any planet, but he could have sworn that was the story he was told as a child.
In front of him, the pointy ears of one of the smaller, grey animals twitched in his direction. It turned and looked at him, growling and showing its teeth.
The big white creature took the chance to swipe it with a massive paw and long, sharp looking claws that sunk into the side of the other before it sent it tumbling through the air to slam against a tree. The injured animal yelped, and its comrades went to its side, snarling until it stood and they left under the baleful eyes of the white creature.
Of the two options, if he was going to be left near one of them, he wasn’t sure the white one gave him the best chance at survival.
As the last of the smaller ones limped through the trees, the white creature with the oversized teeth screamed the same bone chilling scream they had heard before.
He couldn’t afford to lift his head and check to see where in the tree Xander was.
Xander could have been in an even worse position than he was for all he knew.
Maybe the thing could climb.
Its ears twitched, it’s long, tree limb like tail swished in a motion that was equal parts fluid and abrupt, like a languid thing that snapped on either end of the swing.
Lowering its head, the shoulders of its front legs rolled as it turned and looked directly at him with all three of its eyes.
No matter the water pasting his hair to his head, he felt every single follicle ripple and raise under its glare.
Don’t do it. Not yet.
His ability might not work against the animal, but there was no way it would save him if he used it too early and the damn thing got around whatever he managed to do.
But his fingers twitched, and his ability built up within him, threatening to spill out before he wanted it to just because of his own feelings.
The animal didn’t bend its knees, it didn’t crouch, it hardly moved, but somehow Troylus knew when it was going to make its leap to attack.
One second it was on the ground, and the next it was leaping through the air, its mouth open and snarling.
He raised his hands and screamed, blue light exploding out of him to slam a tree from nearby into the animal and stack itself like he was going to use it to build a house in the middle of the forest.
Shrieks of the creature rent the air while it rubbed at its own face with a paw.
It looked at him, its lip curling back over teeth big enough to pierce through him.
All he could do was swallow down the urge to run and lift his hands, preparing to use his ability until it ran out.
Troylus hoped it would outlast the white fur covered death before him.
Below the sounds of the storm, the thrumming of his own heart, and his heavy, rough breaths, his ears picked up on a deep, low hum that oscillated at a pace faster than his heart pounded.
The hairy beasts, leading with their horns, barreled through the trees, taking some of them with them.
Uprooted trees slammed into the white predator, sending it reeling back and fleeing through the woods.
He couldn’t do anything except cower next to the trunk, back up to a limb, cover his head with his arms, and close his eyes while the cacophony of the crashing and destruction of the forest happened right in front of him.
Were they trying to help? Or were they just attacking the predator to protect themselves?
There were no easy answers, and as the noise settled down, the only thing left the creaking and cracking of downed trees being further trampled by creatures bigger than the predators, he opened his eyes.
Directly in front of his face were another set of eyes.
23
Zellendine
Fast on the heels of the first blast another one slammed into the water, shards of it managed to make their way through.
One lodged in her chair right next to her leg, another slammed into her still not fully healed collar bone. The pain was enough to rip a scream from her lungs and force her body to contort in ways that only hurt her further.
Maurice and Corto shoved at her chair, all of them hurtling down the tunnel faster than the chair had ever moved before.
She was dripping wet and writhing, trying to focus all her effort on not hurting herself more, and failing.
They made it back to the doorway of the main area and Corto leaned against the back of the chair, Maurice laid down on the floor. All of them heaved in gulps of breath.
In the service, Imogene spotted them and called out to the whole crew, gathering everyone together and running to their sides.
Purple pieces of light with sharp, strange weight to it flaked off of her and fell into her lap.
Someone brushed the remaining shards aside with a towel while she screamed through clenched teeth.
When she ran out of breath and they stepped back from her she realized someone was crying.
Twisting to see what was going on, sharp stabs radiated through her body and spots appeared in her vision.
But when it cleared, she saw that Maurice had a shard hit his abdomen and blood poured from the wound while Imogene leaned over him and light poured from her, wrapping and swirling around him.
“No,” she cried, her voice weak and plaintive.
She started barking orders and dropped to the floor beside him, the impact jarring her collar bone and making the dots reappear in her vision.
But she ground her teeth and stuck her hand right into the swirls if light.
Maurice was still alive, that much was at least clear, but he wasn’t doing well, and she could only guess at how long he would last.
She issued more orders in a voice that sounded tortured, trusting they would get the right supplies. The second they appeared next to her she went to work with her one good hand.
Until the last thing she had to do required two.
Gritting her teeth, with a snarl and a guttural scream, she brought her bad hand up and went to work. Using both made sweat drip down her face. It got in her eyes and joined with the water that already covering her.
Imogene ran out of power and slumped to the side, caught by Corto and the others.
“Put her in her room, she’ll sleep it off and be fine,” she said, her voice was hard and steady, as were her hands as she continued to work on Maurice.
Finally, she finished and went still, unable to move any further, unable to get up or even back away.
But there was one more thing to do.
Someone handed her a holo and she rested it on her injured hand while she tapped with the other, going right to the scans she needed and checking everything about Maurice.
Whatever ability Imogene had, or maybe it was her own medic care for him, he was going to recover and live, but it had been a narrow thing.
One last scan told her what she needed to know for her own peace of mind. If they hadn’t worked together, he wouldn’t have made it.
The brave idiot, laid out in front of her, his uniform torn open to expose the new lines that would form into scars from where she had patched him back together on the outside, had managed to run her through the tunnel while he was bleeding and toxins were flooding his body from a perforated intestine and pierced liver.
Her collar bone, its knot of thickened and freshly healed bone, had stopped the shard that would have gone all the way through her shoulder. If it had hit her in the chest… She would have died before they even got back to the main room.
“Imogene,” she said, her voice starting to give out so it sounded hoarse and scratchy, “she should know when she wakes up that he’ll live, and it was likely only because of her.”
None of them needed to know the details, not even Maurice. They didn’t need to know that she had sewed him up because Imogene’s ability was even weaker now than it was just months before when she had to heal Zellendine.
But she knew, she knew that her efforts helped, and Imogene’s exhaustion ensured he wouldn’t die of sepsis.
Her hands dropped the holo, which fell into her lap along with her bad hand, the other she let drop all the way to the ground next to her.
“Can someone get me the arm brace I used to wear?” she asked, blinking long and slow, no longer caring that her voice was so bad it might not ever recover, although she did wonder how long she screamed in the noise of the tunnel when no one but the water could hear her.
The brace appeared before her and hands of her crew helped her put it on, only causing her vision to blur and blacken at the edges a few times.
On the ship, she would get surgery, removal of the pieces too small to heal, plates and screws, and maybe a graft to repair the shattered bone.
Instead, she was relying on the brace to hold it steady, and the chair to keep all the shards in a pocket of inflammation and immune response, in the hopes it didn’t pierce an artery and cause her to bleed out internally.
Her arm and hand might not ever allow her to do the same level of activity with it as she had before, but if it healed enough for her to stay alive, maybe she could hug her baby with it when they were born.
Getting back into the chair was an act of will, her legs wobbled, her knees ached, even the thought of sitting back down, the jarring it would cause on her injury, was enough to make her simply want to fall over.
But Zellendine did get back in the chair, she even kept her energy up enough to drink a glass of water when it was offered and ask for no one to remove her from her chair while she slept.
The second the water was done, her eyes closed and she lost the ability to open them again.
Someone placed a blanket over her after someone else removed the shard from her chair.
Maybe they thought she might hurt herself on it, but she wasn’t going to move for a while. They probably didn’t know that, but she did. Oh, she did.
Nothing in the universe could make her get up and move for a while.
Yet sleep eluded her.
Instead, she ran the purple light attack through her mind, again, and again.
A thing from space, the anomaly turned purple attack object, had managed to follow her to the ground.
Would she ever be safe from it?
The only place she was sure she remained safe from it was in the spindle proper. Somehow it had protected her for so long she forgot that something she couldn’t name and didn’t understand at all, hated her and wanted her dead.
Part of her understood Briar’s anger, even part of her understood the anger of all the people changed against their will. Maybe not that they all seemed to hate her specifically, but it was a human emotion, and a human reaction to it.
But something from space?
What did it want?
And what, if anything, could she do about it?
Somehow, she needed to leave the burgh entirely, she couldn’t remember why, but it was true. And since that was true, how could it also be that she needed to stay in the spindle, deep in the clutches of the Chapter?
24
Troylus
He jumped, his heart hopping into his throat and his already labored breaths became great gulping intakes of air.
The big hairy beast of the plain stared at him, from a distance his hand wouldn’t have fit in, with all three eyes on that side of its head.
“What are you doing here, friend?” Part of him thought that if Xander heard him refer to an animal whose species they hadn’t named yet as friend, he would think Troylus dropped his tether, but it was still true.
It didn’t answer, but it huffed out a heavy, hot breath and the hum coming from its chest changed back to the same one it made when he was in the long grass touching it.
Xander was loud coming down from the tree, but he stopped a few branches up and crouched on one while he gripped another with both hands and looked over the side of it at Troylus with the animal, his eyes wide.
“There was a lot of noise, but I didn’t expect this,” he said gesturing with his head to the large cleared space in front of the tree he was in.
“No, that was after a lot of other things went sideways.” Troylus reached out and placed a hand on the section of the beast’s hair on its neck that was longer and framed its head.
Hums grew louder, but it wasn’t only the animal he was touching doing it anymore. It spread through each of the members of the herd, their hums all the quiet contented kind he now recognized, but with all of them doing it together, the effect was a surreal level of noise for something so innocuous.
“Thank you,” he said, looking the one he touched in one of its three eyes, and then looking at the rest of its scattered friends, “all of you.”
“Why? What did they do?” Xander asked and Troylus smiled.
“I’m not cold anymore, do you want to walk while I tell you?” he asked.
Xander nodded and finished climbing down from the tree, hopping off the last branch and deciding that move brought him too close to the dark fur of one of the creatures so he took a step back.
Troylus bit his lip so he wouldn’t laugh. Xander was actually handling everything pretty well for someone who had not met the beasts the same way he had.
But as they started walking in the direction he knew was toward the spindle and Zellendine, his hairy friend shoved its head under his legs and lifted him onto its back.
“What in the universe does that mean?” Xander asked while Troylus adjusted to get more comfortable. It wasn’t half bad.
“It means I don’t have to walk, and even though I’m going to be wet still, and smell like this guy.” He patted the animal on the neck, “I’m for sure not going to be cold because this fur and giant body is really warm.”
Xander actually looked out, like he wanted to ride one too and didn’t think he was going to get to.
Until another one did the same to him, tumbling him onto its back. He tottered and almost fell off but caught himself and got situated more comfortably.
Troylus caught him up on all that had happened and Xander looked both horrified a curious.
“What’s that look for? I almost died and you look like a kid playing in the orchard.”
“Besides the fact that it’s still bizarre you bonded with these guys so much they followed you here and are giving us a ride, I was just thinking that we really need to name all these animals and send a report so people don’t wander into some really big teeth.”
