He roared and spun around doing a complete three-sixty as Becca wobbled around on his back. Finally, he managed to grab her by the ankle and sent her rocketing into Lily who had only just barely managed to climb back to her feet. I had my opening, Khala reversed her hold on the ceiling, and I was sent hurtling back to the ground. I slammed down, hitting the bastard atop the head with every bit of strength I could manage.
At last, I’d found a way to hurt the gargantuan bastard. He went down like a sack of fucking potatoes, but before I could congratulate myself he was already climbing back to his feet. He seemed a little dazed and I burst forward kicking him in the side hoping that it would keep him from regaining his footing. Between myself, Lily and Becca we must have him at least a several dozen times, but our best efforts only served to delay him.
He seemed to have regained his composure when grabbed Lily by the neck and took off. He slammed into the wall, but instead of wailing on her as I expected he held his free hand out. I was already running toward them when something extended from his wrist and I dove at the bastard grabbing at his bladed appendage. He kicked out, hitting my left knee with the underside of his foot and I fell back sprawled out on the ground behind him.
I was quick to scramble back up, but I wasn’t fast enough to keep him from plunging the blade directly into Lily’s abdomen. Neither was I able to stop him from running her through a second time. I was back on my feet before he could do it a third time, but when I moved to stop him he pulled his other hand away from Lily’s neck and swiped out at me with it as another blade flew out from his wrist. I was able to bend back at the waist in time to avoid getting sliced open, but the blade was so close I felt it slice through the air.
I rolled down to the ground out of reach of the second blade as Becca came charging toward us, but as he brought it around he sliced her halfway through the chest. I don’t know if she hadn’t seen the wrist-blade or if she had simply built up too much momentum to stop. Either way, the effects were devastating and her blood splattered all over the ground as she collapsed. I cried out and fell to my knees at her side in a futile attempt to restrict the bleeding.
Her wound was not healing, and there was a sinking feeling in my heart that told me her symbiote was out of juice. I gritted my teeth and craned my neck around to watch the sub-ascendant pump Lily full of holes. Dyssa was doing pretty well healing them up, but how long could she keep up? Sooner or later he’d bleed her dry. Symbiotes could heal a lot of wounds, but replacing blood wasn’t something they could quickly enough to sustain a host who had lost large amounts of it. He could have just stabbed her through the heart and finished her off, but he was too sadistic for that. He wanted her to suffer.
I screamed and jerked back up onto my feet, my hands clenched at my side. I saw every misdeed, committed against me by the Qharr flash before my eyes. I witnessed the death of my parents, but this time it was Jykarr who had murdered them. I saw him beat and tortured those I cared about, I witnessed him leading the inquisitors who had taken down the resistance bunker, I even witnessed him killing Kaya and now the bastard was trying to take away the two people in the world I cared about the most.
Everything the Qharr had done to me and my people were his doing whether directly or indirectly were as a result of his actions. I was angry, no fuck that, I was furious, I wanted him dead. My vision turned the most vibrant crimson and I let out a blood curdling howl as I rushed toward him.
I wasn’t acting on a rational level, I’d been reduced to a wild beast. All I knew was that I want the fucker dead. There was no Lexa, no sub-ascendant, no Lily nor Becca. There was just the beast I had become and my prey.
I moved forward, swooping in with liquid grace and grabbing him by the arm I pulled him away from his victim. My prey tried to stab me with his twin wrist-blades, but I ducked to the side and grabbed by him the wrist. My fingers wrapped around the edges of the blade and I yanked on it as hard as I could. Blood dripped down the edge of the blade, mine, but I didn’t care. I grunted and let out a cry of defiance as it tore loose from where it had been fused to his bones.
Like, a tiger cub who’d just grown her claws this predator finally had herself a weapon. My prey howled in fury as my hands found better purchase on the blunt end of the blade. I tightened my grip and raised my weapon as he slammed his down. I growled, just barely able to block the blow.
Speed was the only means I had to gain an upper-hand and I took full advantage of it and lurched forward circling him at greater and greater speeds. I slashed him on the back of the knee cap, in his side, and across the chest, but each of the wounds healed. He was resilient prey.
I growled and stopped dead in my tracks, giving him enough time to catch my scent before I zoomed off again. He followed me. I kept going straight moving up the walls, across the ceiling then back down again, and little by little the gap between us grew greater and greater. I lurched sideways, and watched as he zoomed past. He corrected for his error pretty quickly, but I was almost on top of him by then. I plunged the blade into his chest as he spun around to face me.
It went clean through and he reached down to grip the blade, before his eyes rolled into the back of his head and he collapsed to the ground. I blinked and looked around, the red faded from my vision and I realized what had happened. I rushed to Becca and Lily, whose bodies’ were sprawled on the floor a few feet away from each other.
I checked for signs of life and found a pulse on each of them, but how long would that last? Lily was completely unconscious and her visible wounds while relatively small had not completely healed. Dyssa had clearly been overwhelmed by number of wounds sustained by her host. I bowed my head and gritted my teeth against the tears that came washing down my face.
Becca’s condition hadn’t changed, other than the amount of blood that had pooled under her body. She was conscious, but not exactly coherent. I collapsed beside her and just let the floodgates open. What point was there left in fighting? Lily and Becca were the only bright spots in my life. If I lost my sister and the woman I loved… I left the thought unfinished as a sob escaped my lips.
I felt a hand on my shoulder, and for the briefest of moments I thought that it was a friend offering up condolences, but when I reached out to touch it I realized two things. First, the hand was way too damn big, and second there wasn’t a single person in the room capable of offering condolences. I tried to get up and fight, but it was already too late. Jykarr picked me up and slammed me back down into the ground with so much force that I didn’t see myself getting back up in the foreseeable future.
I watched through tear-soaked eyes as he knelt down next to me and put one of his massive paws down to hold me in place. Violet blood dripped out from the wound in which the wrist-blade was still embedded. “I have spent years keeping the truth hidden from my people and now you have taken that all away from me. Don’t you understand? The Phyrr Lesch abandoned us! All our talk of honor and privilege of the chosen race is gre’k fodder! We are nothing, but what we have made ourselves. Now that my people have learned the truth, that illusion is gone. I will end your existence for taking that away from us!”
Unable to move, or fight back I closed my eyes waiting for the end to come, but it never did. I heard a gasp and looked up to see that the sub-ascendant’s body had fallen back and away from me and was twitching as if he’d been caught up in a seizure. Confused, I glanced around, and came to a sharp realization once I saw Lily’s hand clasped around his ankle.
I didn’t waste time wondering how she had managed to subdue him with a simple touch though, quite frankly at that moment I didn’t care. Instead, I sat up, with strength that I didn’t know I possessed and placed one of my hands on his body. Then Khala did the unthinkable. She fed on the energy of the other symbiote. It was supposed to be impossible, an ability that Khala had always insisted was beyond her capability and yet somehow she and Dyssa were draining Jykarr dry.
The moment my hand touched his flesh I felt strength return to me as
new images flooded through my mind. At first I believed that the originated from Jykarr, but I’d been so wrong. Those thoughts and perceptions were so powerful that they overwhelmed my senses and the world flashed away into nothingness.
Colors, most green, some red, a smattering of blue and a whole lot of yellow filled my vision. At first the images were, blurry and ill defined, but they slowly coalesced forming the picture of a forest left wild and untamed by the absence of technology. It was as beautiful as it was alien. I was moving, but I had no control of the speed or direction. Was this how Khala, nearly always an observer, seldom the one controlling the actions?
Panting, but who? Was it me? Was I the one running through the forest? Had I given control to Khala? Why was she running? How had we gotten there?
“Oh, I cannot be too late! I simply cannot!” A booming baritone voice called out in despair. The language was not English, but was as guttural and as harsh as Qharr. I understood it, and yet I knew I’d never heard it before in my life. Still, it seemed familiar somehow.
I wanted to look around to see who had spoken, but I couldn’t. None of my limbs would move. I was simply an observer along for the ride, but for what I couldn’t even begin to guess.
‘Khala!’ I cried out hoping that my symbiote might answer, but even she could not hear me… or else would not answer.
Gradually the forest gave way to grassland with only a smattering of trees and in a structure loomed in the distance. A tall and foreboding tower that stretched so high into the night sky that I wondered if it might not stretch into eternity.
I felt determination, and desperation rolled into a strange knotted ball of nerves and emotions. It wasn’t projecting those feelings, but they were as strong to me as if they were mine. I called out again, hoping someone would listen, if not Khala then perhaps whoever was in control, but no matter how much I screamed or yelled no one answered they just kept running.
Finally, the structure loomed in front of me so close I could touch it. I felt my neck pull back and wonder paired with awe washed over me. The building was more a skyscraper than a tower, but was unlike any I had ever seen before. There were no adornments nor, windows just plain charcoal gray stone, the only break in the facade was the entrance which was a simple opening with no door.
My neck returned to eye level and those feelings of wonder and awe that had washed over me only moments ago were supplanted by the earlier feelings. My captor started running again, even faster than before and… more frantic. What was driving this person, this being, onward?
The inside of the building was a remarkable as the outside for the simple fact that it was so unremarkable. Nothing differed, everything was perfectly symmetrical and was composed of the same drab stone. What was this place and who would have built it? It was one thing to build a structure to invoke wonder and awe to those who looked upon it, but this place was something else entirely. Who could take pride in such a structure?
“Master, Master!” The same voice as before screamed out and I was sent veering sideways into another simple, unadorned doorway. Finally, I stopped and a form detached itself from the dark. A Qharr, or at least I thought at first, but her features were too soft. She drew closer, stepping into the light revealing a very human-like pair of breasts. She brushed honey hair away from her rough, angular featured and placed her hand on my shoulders or rather the shoulders of the person who had spoken. She looked like some sort of hybrid of human and Qharr.
“Husband, you are too late, father has passed into the nether realm
“Gyff, what will we do without him to lead us? The masters abandoned us. All except him. He alone remained to guide us. Now even he is gone.”
“We will persevere. It is what he would have wanted.”
Tears cascaded down her face, but the voice of the one in control pushed past her. It was dark, but there was slight luminescent glow in the distance revealing the outline of a figure resting on a simple bed pad. He drew closer and knelt down beside the unmoving form. When he drew close enough, I felt the hairs raise on the back of my neck.
It wasn’t possible, it didn’t make any sense. It was a human man, old and emaciated. One who had very obviously passed away. “Hail Myrrh, High Lord of the Phyrr Lesch.”
“Hail!” Gyff’s voice echoed in the distance.
I screamed and the world around me fractured, and faded away.
I blinked and sat bolt upright. I was back in the real world. I shook my head to clear it and tried as I might to wrap my head around what I’d just seen, I just couldn’t quite reconcile it. They were memories of Jykarr’s K’teth, but why had it passed them on to me. What I’d seen suggested that Phyrr Lesch were human, but how was that possible? They were an advanced space faring race that lived thousands of years before humans had ever touched the stars.
‘I am ready to die.’ A voice rang through my head, it sounded tired and weary. The depth of emotion I felt conveyed to me was so intense it almost felt as if it were my own. This being was tired of life. It wanted nothing more than to end it’s long and miserable existence.
I glanced over at Jykarr, his form was still inert and I bit my lip and glanced at him. The voice could only belong to his symbiote, but why wait so long to speak?
“What was it that you just show me?” I held a hand over Jykarr’s shoulder so as to restrain him if he began to stir.
‘A memory from my past.’
I gritted my teeth and let his words settle in. I had never imagined that there might be a K’teth who was so old that he might actually remember the Phyrr Lesch.
‘Revered elder,’ Khala’s voice whispered in my mind so full of awe and reverence I could actually feel it bleed through our bond. ‘How could the Phyrr Lesch have been human? The people of this world had not even discover the wheel when the Phyrr Lesch ruled the galaxy.”
‘My memories of those times are vague, and had been passed on by mothers far older than me. Much of the truth had already passed into myth by the time I was born. It was said that the Phyrr Lesch were an advanced race on a world populated primarily by it’s more primitive cousins.’
‘And the Gieff?’
“Descendants of both Qharr and Phyrr Lesch. There is more,’ Jykarr’s K’teth whispered. ‘Touch the sub-ascendant, once again.’
I did as he suggested, but this time there were no images or flashes, just a strange tingling sensation in the back of my mind.
‘The knowledge you need will unfurl with time. There are many mysteries to which I do not have the answers, but perhaps you will succeed where I have failed. Now end it, before he comes awake again. Give me the peace I have desired for so long.’
“Why should we trust anything you have shown us,” I whispered staring at Jykarr’s unmoving form with wide eyes. “You could have withheld your abilities from your host at any time.”
‘NO! I am a slave. An addict. The substances that Jykarr has used to increase his strength beyond that of other Edant K’teth left me unable to resist. At first I tried, but I could find no way to overcome it. Forgive me.”
The symbiotes were every bit of the victim, just as the humans who Jykarr had enslaved. I bowed my head and uttered words that I never would have believed I would ever utter. “May you find peace in the next life.”
I yanked the broken and twisted blade free from Jykarr’s chest and without even a moments of hesitation I plunged it into his heart with what seemed like far less force than was necessary. It was enough. All three of his eyes rolled into the back of his head and he was finally dead.
I only lingered over his broken form, long enough to confirm he was gone before turning to Lily. She smiled and nodded at me, before pulling her shirt up to show that her wound had in fact been healed. I squeezed her hand and lightly pecked her on the lips before turning my attention to Becca.
I found my sister right where I had left her. She had lost consciousness and her skin had taken on a pa
sty pallor. I crawled over beside her and felt frantically for a pulse and I gasped and turned away.
Becca was gone. I collapsed to the ground and let out a long keening howl. There had been so many deaths, and I had fought so hard to prevent my sister from becoming one of them. Now, I’d lost her too, the only piece of my old life, the old me was gone. I felt… so alone. So angry.
A part of me just wanted to die, but one thing kept me from giving in. Lily. Draining Jykarr might have healed her wounds, but Dyssa couldn’t replace all the blood she’d lost. If she didn’t get help, she’d die. I wiped the tears from my eyes and stood up. I thought, I heard something and when I spun around ready to face whatever new threat had arisen.
Dynnara, the Gieff warrior from earlier burst on the scene tearing through the double Kylthash doors with more than a dozen Qharr warriors in tow. I didn’t speak, but rather held my hands up to show that I was unarmed and watched her approach. She stepped so close that I could feel her breath on my cheeks as she studied me and still neither of us spoke. Finally, she put a hand on my shoulder and spun around to face the others. “I must know.”
Her eyes turned back to me and I felt Lily’s weight against my side. I met her gaze and caught the look of warning in her eyes before turning back to Dynnara. She was right to be worried, but I was so very tired of fighting. If there was even the smallest chance that Dynnara could be convinced then I had to try.
“Show us sister,” a voice spoke, Dynnara’s symbiote.
‘Open your mind. Know the truth.’ Khala’s words echoed through my mind before the world descended into the darkness once again.
Battle For Earth Page 65