by Loki Renard
“But they are not condemned…” A chatter bursts all around us. I see now that these women are frightened for their daughters. They say sacrifice is an honor, but it is not an honor any of the others want. I was supposed to go to sacrifice and save them all. That was to be the way of things. Now they look at me with rage and fear and I know that one of the other girls will take my place in Hyrrm’s arms. Who will it be? I do not know the name, but I know it will be the one who most fails to please him.
“Silence!” Trelok shouts the word and all fall silent.
He looks at me, his piercing gaze full of the loathing only a male who has been sexually superseded can muster.
“You will be marched to the starving cave, marked with the paint of hands, tied down, and left to die,” he says. “Your end will not be swift, nor merciful.” He turns to the women. “If you are angry that one of your daughters will take this red haired abomination’s place, tell her now.”
They begin to scream as one woman, so loud and overwhelming I cover my ears with my hands, but I can still hear them clearly. They hate me. Loathe me. Their fear of what will befall their families is vomited onto me, and I cannot withstand the pressure. They rush me. Trelok does not stop them. There, on the ground, I am beaten by dozens of angry hands and feet, the dust of the earth flying into my eyes and nose, blinding me to everything but their hatred.
I may not be going to Hyrrm, but I am still the sacrifice, the one who was made to die. I sprang from the womb of an already dead woman, and to the dead Earth I will go.
Chapter Two
Vulcan
After all we experienced together, pleasure which made her eyes roll back more than once, her quivering thighs gripping my head, her whole vulnerable body spread out before me in complete trust, I thought we had made a deeper connection, but the moment those screeching females arrived, she fled. I don't think she was running from me.
Following her would obviously lead to conflict with her tribe. There are few human civilizations that have ever approved of their females giving themselves to massive alien beasts. It’s a taboo which seems to stretch back into distant time.
She was not afraid of me, not nearly as much as she was afraid of their judgement. I decide to let her go, not follow her into the village of humans who are liable to panic at the sight of me and make me kill them. Humans are protected. If I kill even one of them, the consequences will be dire.
I will stay nearby in the hope that she will come back to me. I can still taste her on my tongue. Her essence has mixed with mine in some small way and I think I might be forever intoxicated by our nocturnal encounter.
Just as I am considering my next course of action, a silver cylinder falls from the sky and lands more or less at my feet, blinking gently with red and green lights.
As I pick it up, it speaks. “Vulcan, you idiot.”
The voice belongs to Tyank. My broodkin. I would never admit it, but hearing his voice brings an absolute cascade of relief running through me. I was on the verge of feeling true isolation rush in and overwhelm me, but he has saved me from the horror of being truly alone.
“Tyank! What’s happening?”
“You're being what Krave’s girl would call a huge dumbass," Tyank says.
“Massive dumbass!” A female human voice cuts in.
“Why do you have Krave’s female? Where is Krave?”
“Trying to get your dumbass out of there. I like the word dumbass,” Tyank says. “I think that should be your new name, dumbass.”
Ordinarily this level of disrespect would make me perform divine acts of violence upon my mouthy last-hatched broodkin, but I am so glad to hear him he could say anything he liked to me. As for the human, I hope Krave returns to her soon because she sounds as if she is getting out of hand, even at this great distance.
“Stop calling me names and tell me what’s happened. Where am I?”
“Oh, you’re never going to guess,” Tyank snorts.
“No, I’m not. That’s why I’m asking you to tell me.”
“Can you guess?”
“I don’t want to guess, Tyank,” I snarl. “Tell me. Now.”
“Don't tell him,” Seven chimes in. “Make him guess.”
I had very little to do with the human girl chattering away in the background when I was last with my brood, but it sounds as though she has become very comfortable among the scythkin. I didn’t think humans could get comfortable with our kind. An entire simulation was created to prevent them from having to mix with anything alien. Scythkin who used to visit Earth, when such a planet existed, wore special suits to stop them from being discovered. Last I saw the mouthy girl with Tyank, she was being shipped back down to the simulation in brain wiped shock having seen the true nature of a scythkin warrior in full battle mode.
“Tell. Me.” I snarl the words into the communicator, knowing how futile it is to try to give orders at this distance. Tyank has always been a brave warrior and a dangerous scythkin, but an utter little jerk when he wants to be. “Or get Krave on this line.”
“Krave’s really busy,” Tyank says. “You have no idea the mess you’re in. It is really incredible. I always thought I’d be the one to fuck up so badly I was beyond rescue, but it’s you!”
I fall silent.
“You still there?” Tyank chirps up.
“I’m still here. Waiting for you to tell me what’s going on.”
“You’re on Earth.”
I thought as much. It’s ludicrous, but obvious.
“You there?”
“I’m here, Tyank.”
“Good, because the calculations it takes to make this work are incredible. We’ve had to use the simulation’s data banks to get it working.”
“I’m on Earth, Tyank. How is that possible?” I have to get him back on topic. I wish Krave was the one communicating with me. Krave is first hatched. The leader of our brood. I hope that he is on the way. He will know what to do. It is humiliating to be hoping for rescue from a planet which I know very well does not exist anymore. Earth was finally destroyed by a scythkin council after being previously destroyed by Galactor’s poison. It is not possible for me to be on Earth.
“You managed to get yourself caught in a time warp,” he explains. “You're stuck on ancient Earth. We’re going to try to get a ship through the temporal field, but it’s not going to be easy. You could be there a while.”
That notion should probably concern me. I am marooned so far from the common timeline I might never be found.
“What does Krave say?”
“Krave’s orders are simple. Stay out of the way of any humans. Making contact with them could irrevocably change the timeline. The planet you're on is the same planet as the one that used to exist. It’s not a duplicate. You’ve gone back in time. If you change something now, you change the past, which could change the future as we know it. And we don’t want to blink out of existence. So find somewhere quiet and sit tight.”
Sit and do nothing. That’s what Krave told me to do in the first place, but I wanted to go into battle. I ignored his orders when he told me to return to the simulation. Instead, I insisted on going to battle Galactor’s forces, and now I’m alone on an ancient Earth reborn, somehow living in a world which should have ceased to exist with the passage of time.
“And keep this communicator close. We will contact you with updates as they come.”
“Alright. Thank you.”
“Oh, one last thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Stay safe, you stupid asshole.”
“Thanks, Tyank.”
“Alright…” I hear him cover the mic and whisper back to Seven. “Stay cool, butt wipe.”
Stupid human simulation phrases. Tyank is talking like he’s right out of the human prison. I don’t know why I’m smiling as I sign off. He’s ridiculous. But he’s also family. And they’re coming for me. Even though, in his words, I fucked up big time.
I decide to head up to the volca
nic plain. It is active and I would imagine humans rarely travel there. My anatomy allows me to breathe the acrid atmosphere without becoming ill. Once up there, I discover a cave system which runs through the mountains, old vents pushed out by previous explosions. They make the perfect place to set up a small base.
With any luck, the clouds which often cloak the peaks will provide enough cover for Krave to pick me up in. We do not want these humans to see us. It could be a total disaster if they became used to us, or even worse, were exposed to our technology. It is important this species develops in the natural, primitive, terrible way it did the first time.
I try to forget about the beautiful singer, though her song floats to me again and again, playing through my mind. I have never heard anything inside my head besides the echoes of the screams of my enemies. I find it peaceful to remember her face, her eyes, the little expressions she made when she saw me. She was afraid, but she was also curious. Not as curious as I suddenly found myself.
The humans inside the simulation Tyank now presides over never interested me. They seemed like little more than ants, animals scurrying back and forth according to their environment. They were under total, complete control at all times and they acted like it. I rarely saw them be in any way creative. The most they managed was the occasional rebellion, but that was rare. Krave’s girl knew how to buck the system so hard it broke. She was an outlier. But the simulation was never real, and the people inside it weren’t real either. DNA doesn’t make a human real. Living on Earth does. Struggling for survival, turning dirt and rock into clay and iron, and then into a phone that puts a dog nose on your face. The people below me are yet to move past the shaping of stones, but they will get there. It already happened in the past-past, so it must happen again.
I wonder what will become of my beautiful mate. Surely she will attract a powerful male, but possibly he will be subject to one of the frequent conquests which mark this period. There are no laws. There are no city states. There is nothing besides what a man can do and what a man cannot do to govern what happens.
Scythkin have come to Earth many times. Taken many Earth lovers. Nobody cared about polluting the timeline then, but that is because it was the original timeline. You cannot break what hasn’t happened yet. But this fluke of re-existence I am sitting on, this, according to Tyank, is the same planet, doing everything for a second time. And if something is changed now, then the future we are familiar with - the very future which allows me to sit here now, might never come to pass. That is why all time travel scythkin undertake follows one simple rule: Always forward. Never back.
It’s not going to be easy for Krave to get to me. I have to face the possibility that I will never be rescued from this place, that I will live and die alone. I am grateful for the volcano. It gives me an easy and effective way to remove all trace of my existence on this planet if it turns out that I cannot be saved. It is a morose thought, but scythkin are experts in morose thought.
BEEP BOOP
The cylinder chimes, heralding a transmission. I find my spirits rising. If I do have to throw myself into a volcano, I won’t be alone.
“Hello?”
“Vulcan.”
I’d recognize that staccato snap anywhere. It’s Krave.
I feel a rush of elation, relief, and guilt at hearing the rough tones of the first hatched of our clutch. I remember the first time I saw Krave. He was a towering beast even as a freshly hatched scythkin broodkin. He was fierce and he was brave and he led us into many battles. I used to think that if I had just broken through the shell a little earlier I might have his place, but now I understand that I was never made to lead. It was the trappings of respect I wanted, not the crushing responsibility.
“Krave,” I say, imparting none of that emotion. Unlike Tyank, Krave has no interest in rubbing my predicament in. He is too solid a leader for that. Also unlike Tyank, he is not at all comforting.
“Has Tyank been in touch?”
“Yes,” I confirm. This call is as pedestrian as it could be. I’m marooned thousands of years in the wrong direction of time, and he's acting like I’m out on asteroid patrol.
“We’ve cleared out the remainder of the Galactor forces,” he says. “Kar3n has been instrumental in that.”
“What is Kar3n? Some kind of secret weapon?”
“In a way,” he says, keeping the details to himself as per usual. He never shares information when he doesn’t have to. “The good news is we are in orbit. You already know the bad news. I want you on standby for retrieval at any time, understand? If we do get a window at all, it may be short and it may not come up again. The temporal trajectories are vastly complicated.”
“Understood.”
“And do not, under any circumstances, interfere with the human populations down there. They’re at a very delicate time in their development. Any interference or help whatsoever could be absolutely catastrophic for the future of the entire human race.”
“Understood,” I repeat.
“A single modern human is a mosaic of thousands of ancestors,” Krave growls. “If you interfere with even one woman or man on that planet, major figures might never be born. Humanity has relied on the insights of a few great figures throughout history in order to make progress. By the twenty-first century, most modern humans couldn’t build a toaster but they routinely used technology capable of sending satellites into space in order to show one another something they called duck face. Point is, you have to stay out of the way.”
Krave likes to lecture. He lives for it. Actually, that’s not fair. If I was standing in his presence, he’d probably try to remove a limb or two from my body for what he would consider to be this insolence. But all he has are words, and their tedium is worse than the thrill of physical battle.
“I know. Tyank told me.”
“I’m telling you again,” he snarls. “Because apparently, you have a problem with listening.”
There it is. It has taken several rounds of orders and lecturing to come out, but now I sense the anger I knew he had inside him. I owe him an apology. I owe him much more than that, actually, but an apology might be a decent start.
“Krave, I’m sor…”
“I have to end this transmission,” he says, not giving me a chance to apologize. “Stand by for further contact.”
The cylinder stops blinking and goes silent. I am left alone with only the deep tectonic sounds of the volcano to keep me company. For a moment, I felt connected to my brood again. Krave’s voice is a lifeline between me and the place I should be. Without it, I am isolated.
But I can wait. He has not taken very long at all to reach me, just one Earth day. He may very well come for me again in a matter of hours. Time is not likely to be running at the same pace. It took weeks for me to reach the old Earth position from the simulation, but he seemed to do it in a matter of hours. At least the discrepancy is in my favor. It would truly be hell if it were the other way around.
I sit tight inside what I’ve decided will be my base camp while I am here. It is a cave which opens onto a charred landscape of just barely solidified lava. No humans will be coming up here any time soon. The cave leads on to a network of tunnels which humans might come through.
I decide to block the back of the cave off so I do not get any curious human visitors. It is easy for me to move big volcanic glass boulders into place, though I need a lot of them, which makes it somewhat tedious work. Still, I must continue setting up this space for my use.
I work through the day and into the night and then into the next day as well. There is no way to tell the passing of the solar cycles when I am inside the cave, it is as if time itself slips away and becomes immaterial, which is a good thing because time is my enemy and captor at this moment. I am trapped in it, held by it, hoping to be freed from it. Every rock I lift is another prayer for release as I build my fortress against human incursion.
Just as I am about to press the heaviest bolder into position and block the tunnel
off completely, I hear something. It is soft and distant, but even in this place of vents and steam, it stands out to my ears.
Tres
I’m hungry.
Not the kind of peckish you get between meals. Or even the ache you get during a fast. I’m ravenous. A fly lands on my lips and my tongue darts out to catch it, but it is gone in a flutter of wings, more free than I will ever be again.
This is going to get worse before it gets better, and the better isn’t going to be better at all because it means I’ve finally died.
This situation was avoidable, but I couldn’t live according to the rules of the tribe. I couldn’t stop myself when it mattered most, and now my arms and legs are bound to the starving board and I will become more bones for the mouth of the cave, big and small littering the entrance as warning to those who disobey the chief and medicine man.
I screamed for a while, but it made my throat sore and it did nothing to hasten the end, nor did it bring any hope of rescue. So I stopped screaming, and I started singing. That’s what started all this trouble, but they can’t slowly execute me twice. I sing to the ancestors, in the faint hope that they might send someone to rescue me. I sing to my mother and her mother, all the women who sacrificed themselves in blood to enable me to draw the breath they are trying to take from me, the very thing that allows me to sing.
I wish I could see the stars, but they positioned me in such a way I can only see the top of the cave. I am becoming intimately familiar with each of the handprints painted on the walls, blown in place with dyes through straws. In several months they will come for my bones and add the new prints of the young warriors who have survived the ordeal of adulthood.
A male must become adult by trial, but a woman becomes an adult when she bleeds and brings an infant into the world. I have bled, but no man has mated with me. I was born cursed with hair the color of blood, and eyes the color of dirt. My tribe is sky-eyed and sun-haired. It is said my father was not of our tribe. It is said that he was a demon from the stars. It is said that I was born singing, not crying. So many things are said, but I will not hear any of them soon. My hearing will fade. My senses will turn inward and I will feel nothing.