by Loki Renard
I have not abandoned Tres. And I have not been abandoned either. There is no coming back from death, that much is true. But I live in the future. It’s not possible for me to die in the past, not really. The strands of time are twisted and uncomfortable around me. They want to eject me back where I came from - and from the feeling I’m getting, they're not alone.
Tres and I are glowing with a light which does not come from within us. We have been lost, but now we are found. It was only a matter of time. The faun-king should have asked more questions. He should have wondered how it was a scythkin managed to penetrate his realm a little more deeply. If he had, he would have realized that I am not really dead, that death, as he knows it, is nothing more than a cheap magician’s trick.
“What is happening?” Lykar sounds half-panicked as I stride across the room. I have a flailing mate over one shoulder, but I need one more thing.
“Leave my mirror alone!”
I grab the frame.
“It’s not a mirror. It’s a piece of technology that doesn’t belong here. It’s out of place and out of time, and it’s coming with me.”
“It is not. You cannot leave,” he insists, furious.
“Scythkin are born in clutches. I might be dead, but I am not alone. There are ninety-nine others just like me, standing behind me. They have the cord of my existence in their hands, and they’re not going to leave me here.”
“Nobody leaves the realm of the faun-king.”
“They do, though. We are already on our way.”
The glowing is becoming brighter.
“This is not possible!” The faun-king shouts.
“It is. I was promised to Hyrrm. The god of the mountain. The fiery beast who lurks in rock beyond time,” Tres says.
“That was a stupid human idea…”
“No. It wasn’t. I’ve just realized that Trelok wasn’t actually wrong. I found Hyrrm. He’s here. It’s him. Vulcan. Hyrrm by another name.”
“That doesn’t even make sense!” The faun-king is tearing at his hair. “How could an alien be a mountain god?”
“How could a king leave his daughter to be murdered?” Tres replies. “There are many unnatural things in this world.”
“He’s no king. He’s a common faun with a piece of technology that doesn’t belong to him. This mirror allowed you to prey on the females of Earth for too long. It ends. Now.”
FWOMP
That is the sound of death being cheated, of time being torn. That is the sound of all that is wrong being made right. My essence and Tres’s are pulled from the realm of the dead, across time, and into a spaceship, where flesh clothes us, trillions of particles sucked from the universe to follow the code laid out in our core.
She opens her eyes.
Tres
“I feel you,” I say, my voice soft with wonder.
“I feel you too,” he growls.
I feel everything. I have a heart that beats. I have skin which feels. I am alive, with all that entails. My stomach growls and gurgles. I am starving.
“I’m hungry.”
“Being suddenly reconstituted from stardust will do that to you,” Vulcan says. He is smiling broadly, his long fangs flashing with pure glee. He pulls me close and embraces me with the intensity only a triumphant scythkin can master.
“I don't understand what has happened to me. But I know you’ve saved me. Time and time again.”
“And I will keep saving you,” he tells me. “Because you’re what makes the world worth it.”
“I don’t have goat legs!” I cry out in relief, looking down at myself. I have the human form I remember, perfect and complete.
“Of course not. They were an illusion of the faun. Never trust a man with horns.”
“You have horns.”
“Never trust a man with horns and hooves, then.”
I laugh and press a kiss to his face. The handsome human illusion of the afterlife has disappeared to be replaced by this vicious warrior, and I could not be more pleased. “How are we alive? I saw you die.”
“And I saw you die, but it wasn’t my time, and it wasn’t yours either. You and I were thorns in the side of eternity. It wanted us out. We’re out now.”
I hear heavy footsteps coming.
“Alright. Brace yourself,” Vulcan tells me. “We may be about to face the most fierce beast yet.”
The wall slides open and just as Vulcan predicted, another angry beast storms into our presence. He looks just like Vulcan, but more tired, as if the weight of a myriad of responsibilities has worn him down. He flashes his fangs as he directs irritation at Vulcan.
“Well,” he says. “I hope you're happy. Throwing yourself into space and then damn well DYING. What the hell, Vulcan?!”
“I’m not happy. I’m ecstatic,” Vulcan says. “This is Tres.”
“I know who this is,” Krave says, flicking his molten gaze toward me before focusing on Vulcan once more. “You do realize what we had to do to get you back, correct?”
“Science things, I bet,” Vulcan says, more flippant than I recall him being. I also don’t recall him smiling this much. His joy makes him look more fierce than ever, all fangs, sharp teeth and bright, molten eyes.
“I had to disassemble both your bodies on a quantum level and bring them here and do you know what?”
“What?”
“People. Saw,” he growls. “So now, there are several humans walking around the planet, telling each other that bodies sometimes rise from the dead.”
“Humans like to tell stories,” Vulcan says. “The weirder the better. This won’t hurt them.”
“At least you got rid of the Galactor peons,” Krave sighs. “That is one small mercy. Ancient Earth will not be overrun with aliens. Just stories about people who are dead but alive, and flying saucers and alien technology which is capable of all kinds of magic.”
“They had that anyway.”
“That’s true. And I pulled out a piece of missing technology from that faun’s place. Look what he had.” Vulcan points over at the mirror, which has landed in this realm sitting up against the far wall.
“That’s no mirror. That’s an inter-dimensional gate. And you’re damn lucky there was one there. You would have been dead forever without one.”
I don't understand what they’re talking about, but I understand the tight grip Vulcan has on me. I understand that I am alive, and that is all that matters.
Vulcan
I get up and walk over to the mirror. Given what Krave just told me, I’m not done with that.
As I approach it, the faun-king appears before my eyes.
“I hope you realize that all living things come to me in the end,” he says. “Every blade of grass, every insect, every woman, every man. You will return to my realm, perhaps sooner than you think, and when you do, there will be nobody to save you.”
“Fuck off, faun.”
He laughs.
I gather my hand into a fist and punch the mirror, shattering it into trillions of pieces and a puff of smoke.
“What are you… idiot! We could have used that,” Krave growls.
“The faun was still in it. Somehow. I don’t…” that doesn’t actually make sense, but I know what I saw.
“Well,” Krave says. “I hope you’re happy.”
“I’m happy you brought us back. I knew you would find us.”
“You knew no such thing,” he says, scowling.
“Of course I did. You wanted me back. You were going to get me back.”
“It was reckless,” he says. “And foolish, and it has consequences which ripple far beyond your lives. Do you not see what has been done?”
“No?”
“We ripped the door between the living and the dead wide open.”
“Seems to me that was always a fairly arbitrary distinction,” I say.
“Tell that to the humans. Who are now surrounded on Earth by the rotting corpses of their ancestors, risen from the grave. The process wasn’
t as clean for them as it was for you and Tres. There are shambling half-dead almost human creatures all over Earth. We’ve unleashed an ancient zombie apocalypse.”
“Oh.”
“Oh? That is all you have to say for yourself?”
“It wasn’t my fault, Krave. If the universe decides that the thing that most makes sense is having several hundred ancient humans rise from their graves and shamble around for an indeterminate period of time, then I cannot be held responsible. I was just doing what every sentient creature does: try to survive.”
“You’ve caused zombies to enter the human consciousness,” Krave growls. “They will be talking about both for tens of thousands of years.”
“Good.”
“Good!?”
“We leave them with a few strange stories and legends, so what? Nothing is as strange as the realms which intersect with that world. Humans are awash in legend and strangeness, the unnatural and natural woven together. We think we understand them and their world, but look what it did. It pulled me out of the future to save its favorite daughter, a female who was allowed to die the first time, and the second, became mine.”
Tres
They’re arguing over what sound like horrible things. I shrink away, slightly afraid that a real battle might be about to break out between them. I might die again, moments after I began to live.
“At least we now know who was responsible for it all,” Krave growls.
“Me?” Vulcan sighs. “Of course it was me.”
“Not you,” Krave says, his stare settling on me. “Her.”
“Me?” I squeak the word.
“You,” he says. “Your song caused a resonance which split time and space just enough to allow Vulcan to slip through, and a couple of extras who were dealt with. It pulled the Earth from its original timeline, and performed, for want of a better term, a hard reset.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“You know what,” he says, flickering a wink at me. “Nor do I. But it tells me you and Vulcan are a match. The two of you destroy worlds, cheat death, and make a mess of my ship like no other.” His expression becomes temporarily stern, then clears. “Welcome, Tres. You’ve come a very long way to be here. We will do our best to make sure that your future is brighter than your past.”
Vulcan’s arms wrap around me from behind, pulling me up against his body and snuggling me tight. “No more dying,” he says.
“No more dying,” I agree.
“And no more singing,” Krave says. “At least, not that song. We can’t have you opening up rifts in space and time every time you get a tune in your head.”
“That’s not how it works. At least, I don’t think it is. And…” I pause, trying to think. Then I shake my head. “I can still sing.. but that song. The one that bought Vulcan to me? It’s gone.”
“You mean you can’t remember it?”
“I mean, it’s gone,” I say. “It’s just… not there anymore.”
“We should check you for brain damage,” Vulcan says. “You did die from a head injury once. You may not have gotten all the bits of brain back.”
“I’m not brain damaged,” I snort. “I just… I think I don’t need the song anymore. I think it has gone to someone who does.”
“Okay,” he smiles. I know he doesn’t take me seriously. I know he thinks my primitive ways are just a joke, a superstition, but Krave knows better. There was power in that song. It had a life and a mind of its own, and I think it has gone to save another soul.
I don't need the song anymore. I have Vulcan. My lava hot mountain of lust who wraps himself around me and drags me down into a writhing, wailing ecstasy like no other. We have an entire eternity of making love and cheating death ahead of us.
Foreword
Timesplosion
In the beginning (or maybe the end, time is tricky), everything exploded.
This was an accident, brought about by a misguided attempt to save the planet. It was complicated.
Humans kept in simulated reality were safe, but those with the misfortune to be on Earth at any time whatsoever, found themselves blown into thousands of alternate realms, realities, and planets. Many of them died. Many of them did not. And those many did what humans always do rather well, and replicated their little gametes off.
The timesplosion stories are disparate at times, vicious and brutal in some places, sweet and amusing in others, quite often sexy (because gametes gonna gamete.)
They can be read as stand alones, as due to the nature of the timesplosion, continuous narrative becomes tricky anyway. When effect precedes cause, can we be blamed for anything? The answer, of course, is no. There are cliffs, but no cliffhangers. They all fell off in the big bang.
This is the story of Karen, a human woman who just discovered that what she thought was the world she lived in is actually an advanced simulation run by aliens who kept humans inside a zoological garden of sorts. Those aliens have since been run off by a much more brutal race called the Scythkin, a species driven to galactic conquest one clutch of fearsome blade ridden monster males at a time.
You are now up to speed.
Human Wanted
Tyank
I’m reading to pass the time. My interstellar tablet picks up publications from across the universe. Most of them are stupid. But maybe I’m stupid for reading them. No. It’s not me. It’s the publications who are wrong.
Idle thoughts aside, my gaze drifts over the digital page.
Fifty Sentient Creatures To Sleep With Before You Die
#1 - The Human Female.
This listing shall come as no surprise. It is a universal truth that there is nothing more desirable than a human woman. The way she moves, the softness of her curves, the tight and supple interior of her body, the place made to pleasure man and spark life. If one has the opportunity to mate with one, I urge you to take it. It will leave you both forever changed.
Scythkin Explorer, Tyribal
I close the article. “Goddamn dickbait," I growl under my breath. I am bored. I am also very, very horny. It has been far too long since I mated with anything, desirable or not. At this point anything with a temperature of more than thirty-five degrees is fair game.
I’m left here, cleaning up after a mess not of my own making. A scythkin was not made to sit and read. He was made to go forth and conquer. But what we’ve conquered here, a captive human colony of many thousands of people, all of whom were very offended to discover that their world was a simulation, and who have demanded to have their minds wiped of that inconvenient fact, is not the sort of thing one can leave on its own.
The first hatched of our clutch, Krave, was supposed to be in control. But he fell for an insolent human female and now he’s making as much trouble as anybody else.
What Tyribal fails to mention in his article of general fuckability, is that human females are trouble. Not the explosive, obvious kind of trouble, but the insidious, worm their way under your skin until you forget who and what you are kind of trouble.
Fortunately, I don’t have the problem of having been seduced by one of those human sirens, because I have everything a scythkin needs. Nothing. And nobody.
Down The Hole
Karen
I am dangling very high in the air.
This is not how my day began. It started with a cup of black coffee and a newspaper which told me everything was more or less well. That may very well have been true at time of printing, but by mid-morning, it was not.
I have been plucked from chaos. One moment, I was following the official directive to assemble in the city square with all the other inhabitants of our fair city. The next, the very fabric of our reality was crumbling around us as an alien beast took the podium and told us that our world was a lie.
All around me, people panicked and fled. I knew better than to run. I strode forward, chin high, shoulders back, and I spoke to the monster on the podium, the one at the center of the madness.
He looked at
me with burning eyes, but I was equal to the daemon. I had an incantation capable of banishing all evil. It was made up of eight simple words - eight is a cosmic number, and every sound in the universe holds great power. Especially these ones, all strung together just so with the correct intonation, not too angry, not too nice, just the right level of firmness and yes, perhaps even passive-aggression.
“I would LIKE to speak to your MANAGER.”
I spoke the words of power and was transported instantly from the chaos in the streets to the great sky above.
Under New Management
Tyank
“Uh, Tyank? Bit of a mess to clean up.”
Krave’s words float to me from the top layer of the simulation where he has just spectacularly fucked absolutely everything in the proverbial, if not literal, ass.
The simulation is in chaos. Humans are panicking, retreating to their homes, desperately diving into whatever passes for entertainment so they don’t have to look outside and see cold, hard reality staring them in their faces. I was worried I’d have to send in forces to contain them, but they're pretty good at containing themselves.
Krave told them the secret they should never have been told. It was his human mate’s idea, and like most human ideas, it did not go well. He told them that they lived in a simulation, and that outside that simulation, all manner of evil had befallen their kind. They did not take the news well. They don’t want knowledge. They want safety, and if they cannot have safety, then the illusion of safety will do.
Fortunately, we have an ability to control the minds of humans. In the heart of the mechanics of the simulation lies a reset button which restores them to their last stable state. We’ve picked the previous Tuesday as being a solid sort of day.
"Are we ready to reset?” I ask the question of a slippery little murketeer. These are the elves in the machine, the alien workers left behind by the previous regime. Their faces are perpetually locked in great grinning smiles, but this one doesn’t look happy at all, and that is quite the trick.