Chosen

by Raquel Taylor

  “I don’t understand--” Halen began, his mind flooding with the image of the terrible rock monsters and the valiant blue soldier who had waded into them as if suicidal. With the image came Xaiser’s terrible pain at that loss. The disruptor tumbled from his hand as pain flooded him. He stumbled over it, crushing it beneath his heel.

  “Of course, you don’t understand,” Ogema-Aziel spat, launching his body at Halen across the dry, barren soil. His jaws clicked together like a dog’s maw. “You’re human. You will never understand the bond of being chosen. You weak little fool, so easily led away from love. When Xaiser said that he had chosen you, I almost killed you both. But desire has a way of stilling my hand in his direction. You, however, are dead already. You just don’t know it yet.”

  Halen was experiencing about a thousand emotions at once—the overwhelming one being horror. But just underneath there was rage, the pain of the battlefield coupled with the death of the soldier, and a terrible looming fear that he might suffer that loss again. It occurred to Halen that all these emotions just weren’t his. And then Ogema-Aziel was on him, teeth snapping at his throat.

  “Ogema-Aziel!” Xaiser’s voice called over the barren wasteland. The thing on top of Halen looked up and Halen saw that it’s jaws were stained with blood. “Join your brother in death!”

  Halen watched as Ogema-Aziel’s head exploded in a beam of wicked blue light. Rage died in Halen’s breast, the battlefield and the soldier winked away. Distantly, he heard the sound of booted feet running on dry ground. The emotion that he was left with was fear. A terrible fear that he might be dying. Only part of that emotion was his own. He felt arms encircle him. Xaiser didn’t even bother to look at him beneath the mess of blue gore that was left by the death of Ogema-Aziel, the totality of Xaiser’s thoughts was concentrated on the wound at his throat.

  I wonder if I will live? Halen thought.

  You will, Xaiser thought back with great relief. He barely nicked you. So it was the disruptor that kept you from me. I was beginning to wonder if I had lost my charm. The chosen has chosen then?

  “You know the answer,” Halen said. “You can read my mind and I can read yours.”

  Xaiser grinned. “I want to hear you say it, human.”

  “I want you, Xaiser,” Halen whispered, leaning forward and placing his lips on Xaiser’s mouth. “I am yours.”