by Corin Cain
Diana rushes to me and grabs me in a big hug. “Whatever happens, I’m on your side,” she promises, and I feel instant guilt for thinking of her as a stuck-up noble who’d be constantly looking down her nose at me.
“Thanks Diana. I’ll be there for you, too,” I say, breaking off the hug to wipe the tears from my eyes.
The three Aurelians stand in the first breaks of daylight. They’ve never looked so alien. Their eyes are narrow and stern, without a trace of mercy. Every muscle in their bodies is tense, and I understand that they are made for war. The Aurelians are born for fights like this, and I was foolish to think of them as anything but warriors – born and bred for battle.
“Did you learn anything about the sickness?” Diana asks, trying to change the subject.
I feel like a failure. There are hundreds of sick people in the cave, and I haven’t been able to help any of them.
“No. Not yet.”
Diana nods. “When I have a problem like this, I try to list out the facts. What do you know?”
I breath in the early dawn air and think. “Well, the sickness got worse in the last couple days. But Forn got better. Umm… I don’t know what else. I guess… I guess that means there’s something about this jungle, or else that’s a red herring and Forn’s body just beat the virus.”
“I’m not sick. You’re not sick, and you went into the jungle too.”
I furrow my brows. “You’re right,” I say, thinking deeply about what makes me different than the sick people in the cave.
What else? The blackness on the lips and beards of the sick?
The sun rises, and once it hits the zenith I know I’ll be out of time. My brain works rapidly, trying to find another way out of this situation.
If I can heal the Aurelians, then maybe – somehow – they’ll accept that I was brought here by fate itself and not some distant human’s experiment gone awry.
Anything to stop these warriors from fighting and dying. I’d do anything. It felt so right last night. It felt like everything was perfect, if only for a moment. I can’t go back to a world without these three amazing men.
The three Aurelians stretch in the dawn light. The sunlight dances against their bodies, glowing against their pale flesh and bringing out the venom green of their tattoos. They start to spar, lightly, practicing their unarmed combat. I wish that I could have brought their weapons to them, but there was no chance in the escape from Lord Aeron’s manor. They’ll have to battle with only their knuckles and the balls of their feet.
My stomach rumbles. Diana reaches into a pocket and pulls out a piece of jerky. “They gave this to me. It’s all we’ve been eating since we got here… I wish we could have some vegetables, or some fresh game.” She hands me a piece of dried meat.
I take it gratefully and chew until my jaw aches. I wonder idly what strange beast from this jungle planet died to make this jerky.
Not a fish, that’s for sure.
“Forn,” I say in the guttural language of the Aurelians. He ducks a jab from Darok. I feel guilty for interrupting their training, but there’s something I need from him.
Forn walks to me. My heart breaks at the way he stares at me, as if he’s already resigned to losing me. I’ve never had anyone I cared about enough to hate the idea of losing them – at least not like this.
“My love,” Forn says, and his words make me shiver. I’m shocked there is a word for love in his violent language, and as he says it, I see the humanity in him. It’s almost enough to make me forget that he’s going to be trying to beat members of his own species to death in just a few hours.
“I… I need your dagger,” I tell him. “If… If something happens to you, I’m not going to go with those fish-eating bastards.” I take a huge breath in. It feels like I just got a huge weight off my chest by saying those words out loud.
Forn pulls out his Orb-Dagger. He hands it me, and our fingers touch.
Forn meets my gaze, and I meet his.
“To activate it, all you need to do is want it to exist.”
I nod, holding the hilt in my hand.
The irony was that to Forn, the weapon might merely be a dagger. To me, the length of it was more the size of a short-sword.
Exist.
The blade hums to life, shimmering in the air. I remember when I was rushing out of Lord Aeron’s private chambers and I so desperately willed the blade to exist, somebody naturally understanding how to use it.
Forn looks at me with sadness, then takes my left, empty hand and places it against his jugular.
“This is a kill,” he says softly.
Then he pulls my hand down to his heart. I feel it beating and I hope desperately that it will still beat by sundown. “This is a kill.”
Next he pulls my hand down to his armpit. From my nursing studies, I know that he’s touching my fingers to the axillary artery, deep in the armpit. The Orb Blade can cut through any tough muscular tissue without needing any force, and even I will be able to take down an Aurelian with it.
“This is a kill,” he repeats, staring in my eyes so he knows that I understand.
I shudder as he brings my hand down to his femoral artery. I’m now touching such an intimate part of him, and I hate the idea of his blood being spilled. My eyes grow wet, but I know that he’s not seducing me, but teaching me exactly where to strike the huge Aurelian fish-eaters if they “win” me in combat.
“This is a kill – a quick kill. Do you understand?” Forn’s voice is a low, pained rumble. I know that he’s filled with grief at the thought of losing the battle and forcing me into such a dangerous situation.
“I understand,” I answer in a whisper.
I can already picture the evil triad trying to force themselves on me, and what I’d have to do to defend myself. There are two directions this day could go in: Tragedy or victory. If even one of my triad is slain, there’ll be a hole in my heart for the rest of my days.
“Where? Where will you fight?”
Forn clenches his teeth. There’s something inhuman about him when he thinks of battle. I can see in his green eyes that some part of him is actually eager for the bloodshed.
“In the ancestral battle grounds,” he growls, and turns away from me. I’m left clutching the Orb-Dagger as he returns to his sparring.
19
Darok
We are going to die today.
I dodge Forn’s punch, and give him a light strike to punish his mistake.
Yet we can practice all we want, but there’ll be no hope without weapons. The three fish-eating Aurelians are each a hundred years older than us, and they have specialized in grappling and unarmed combat for decades. There’s little chance that any of us will survive the battle.
And yet, we must fight. There’s no other way to keep Tammy for ourselves. If we refuse the challenge, she’ll be taken from us. There’s no fated bond between us – at least not officially. There’s no seal of approval from our Orb-God. We didn’t earn our mate by the rules of our tribe, even though we faced near certain death in our escape from that burnt city.
These last hours of training will not make the difference in the battle.
“I must spend my hours with her,” I telepath to my triad. They focus on fighting each other as I walk to Tammy.
She looks at me with those big, beautiful eyes, filled with pride for me. She has no idea what we’re up against. She has no idea how little chance we have to survive.
“Tammy, come with me. I want to show you a place from my childhood.”
She smiles, and it breaks my heart to know that I might never see her lips turned up into a smile again after today. I hold out my hand, and she deactivates Forn’s dagger and tucks it into her belt before she wraps her fingers around mine.
We walk back to the jungle. I’m always on alert for predatory jungle cats that might try to ambush me. Most know better than to test an Aurelian, but you never know when one of the giant cats might be so hungry that it will risk anything f
or a meal. I never knew hunger like that until I met Tammy. I’d do anything for a taste of her. She is in my thoughts constantly. When before, I’d thought that life was a war – now I understand that it can be beautiful.
I walk with her to a nearby stream and waterfall. I feel a deep connection to this place. My lineage traces back to our greatest warriors, the triad that defeated a huge demonic beast that hunted my species for millennium. Legend says that they lived in this place.
I climb up the small cliffside and help Tammy up, and we sit at the top of the waterfall. The heat of the day is increasing and as my heart beats I can feel time flowing away from me. These might be my last moments alone with her.
There is a sadness to this moment, and yet I’d not spend it any other way. I wrap my arm around Tammy, wordlessly holding her close. Even before we could understand each other’s words, I felt as though she understood me in a way that even my triad, who share my mind and know my aura, did not.
I look over at her. Her sun-kissed hair sparkles in the morning sunlight. Her eyes are an even more brilliant blue than the waters below, and I swear that I thirst for them more than I need water.
20
Tammy
Darok looks in my eyes with such deep sorrow that I finally understand what’s going to happen. I can see in his eyes what I couldn’t in the eyes of the other two. He does expect to survive this day. While Forn and Hadone are confident – bordering on foolhardy – I know that Darok is the most realistic of the three Aurelians.
It is he who has always had the most sober understanding of what the future will bring. I see myself reflected in his eyes, and I know that the girl that I see in them is not the same as the one he sees. He has some strange, primal love for me – a connection with me that is greater than emotion. I can feel it too, deep in my bones. I can feel it in every beat of my heart. I want to be with these Aurelians, and yet I feel that they’ll be taken away from me no matter what I do.
“These… These fish-eaters. Why do they hate Hadone so much?”
I’d been wondering this ever since the altercation in the cavern. I wondered if Hadone kept a women somewhere that he stole from them. If that was true, then his heart would be split between her and I. It’s not fair for me to think this way when I want all three Aurelians, but somehow I still feel a deep gouge of jealousy despite it being completely unfair to demand loyalty from one man, when he must share me among three.
Darok sighs deeply. I brace myself for the worst. It seems insane for me to be thinking about jealousy when Hadone might be dead by the end of the day, but I still need to know if his heart is torn between me and some other, unknown woman.
“It is Ton that hates Hadone. He is the reason that we had to leave our jungle home, forty years ago.”
Forty years.
It hits me hard when he says the number. I knew that Aurelians lived longer that humans, but realizing that he is so much older than me is surreal.
“How… How old are you?”
Darok smiles sadly. There’s a hint of tragedy in every word he says, and I hate the feeling that I’m getting to know a man preparing for death.
“I have 240 years of age. And you?”
“22. By the Gods, I never really thought about it. When I’m old and grey, you’ll still be in your prime.”
Darok snorts. “You really don’t know?”
“Know what?” I ask, feeling completely off-balance.
“We mated last night, my sweet. That means we’re mated for eternity. When our seed touches you, it changes you to the core. You’ll now live thousands of years, my sweet.”
Thousands of years? It can’t be true!
“I… No, it’s not possible. I know that Aurelians can only mate with humans if they are Bonded… But…”
I shake my head.
“It’s the Bond that increases the lifespan of a human?”
Darok looks at me with incredulous eyes, and then nods. “I’m sorry. Why do I assume you’d know any of this? We’re an unknown entity to you.” He shrugs. “I, too, have heard of this Bond. But this is not the way of the Scorp-Blood tribe. We earn our tattoos in combat and the venom of the Scorp flows through our veins. This allows us to mate with a human woman – any human woman. It is not the Bond which increases the lifetime of a human, it is our fertile seed. The Bond is one way to become fertile, and the Scorp Blood is another”
“No… It can’t be true.”
His words hit me like a slap. I’ve never felt such bizarre hope and despair at the same time. I always knew that I would be lucky to get eighty years of life in this world, most of it spent eking out an existence on Barl.
Now time stretches differently. I will live for thousands of years. Instead of being a quarter done already, my time in this existence is now practically limitless. I have barely scratched the surface of what I could achieve.
And if the three Aurelians do not survive? Do I instead have the prospect of spending thousands of years alone? Knowing that they once existed, but now are gone? Time stretches out in front of me in a way I’d never imagined before. It’s like I’m standing on a cliff and suddenly the ground beneath me was taken away.
Tears spring to my eyes. It’s a perfect torment – a tragedy that burns me.
“Could you beat the other triad?” I ask, my voice shaking.
Darok looks away from me. “Hadone did nothing wrong. Ton, one of the fish-eaters, had a woman that he earned. But you cannot keep a woman that does not love you. Our Orb-God will create a portal for her to leave should she choose. She loved Hadone, but he felt nothing for her; so she left. Ton believed that Hadone was the reason for her departure, but in truth, she’d learned to hate him. She would have left anyway.”
I’d initially thought the tribe was violent – that they’d kidnap women and hold them by force. Apparently, the tribe would respect their wishes if the women later chose to leave – but if the other ‘fated mates’ were anything like me, it wasn’t as easy for them to leave as catching a bus or train had been back in Barl.
Only a portal could return the women back to their home worlds – and apparently the Orb-God would open one if the women so desired.
But if that was true, it couldn’t have been random – it was as if the Orbs could think and respond to the desire of their users. That seemed so crazy. Orbs are the basis for interstellar travel and many of the technological advancements more civilized societies like the Aurelian Empire rely on. It is a chilling thought to think that the technology we have considered as ‘just’ a power source might actually be sentient.
But I’d seen the way the Orb in Tenderfoot’s basement had shimmered and pulsated – the way when I’d stared into it, the Orb had seemed to stare back into me in return.
The dagger in my belt with the shard of orb in the hilt – was that sentient too? It had certainly felt that way, when I’d fired the weapon up and threatened the Viceroy with it. The blade had almost craved his blood.
Do the great Orb-Spheres like the one in Tenderfoot’s basement have thoughts, just like me? How many billions of years have the Orbs been been in existence? What kind of a mind does an Orb-God like the ones the Scorp-Blood tribe worship have?
It’s a strange thought, for a strange culture. The Scorp-Blood tribe are a complex web of contradictions – brutality and civility. Lust and respect. On one hand, they demand the right to fight and kill for ownership of a woman. On the other hand, she herself can take a portal back to her home world if she so desires to.
I’m already imagining my life here, integrating with the Scorp-Blood tribe. But, if my triad do not survive the battle today, then there’ll be no one here to make this planet a home for me.
I know that Darok did not answer my question about being able to beat the other triad for a reason. He doesn’t want to say the words that will break my heart: That he knows they’ll lose.
I can’t watch this. If the triad are going to die, I can’t watch it happen right in front of me.
&
nbsp; I force the thought back. I need to support them, even if I’m struggling to deal with what I face. If Forn, Hadone and Darok kill the other triad, I’ll have to watch the men I’m falling in love with – the men who have given me thousands of years of life – turned into brutal, murderous beasts.
But the alternative is even more horrifying.
I don’t know whether I would really use the Orb-Dagger against the other triad, or merely press it against my own throat. The thought of thousands of years of life, knowing what I’d lost, would be torture.
I need to solve the sickness – to cure the tribe! I need to prove that I was brought here to save my triad’s people. Surely then the Orb-God they worship will not smite me down – not if I save the lives of hundreds.
I swallow hard. I can’t even imagine what this Orb-God even looks like, let alone guess at the thoughts that might exist in such an ancient, otherworldly mind. Being judged by such a creature – perhaps a true deity – is something I’d thought might only happen when I died.
To face such a thing in my lifetime is almost as scary as watching the men who’d saved my life meet their ends against a brutal foe.
I keep thinking over and over about the disease – the sickness plaguing this tribe. That’s the key. The only way to fix all this is the find the cure.
But what could possibly cause this sickness?
“How did those three not get sick? The fish-eaters? Or did they just heal up quickly?”
I know that Darok doesn’t want to think of his impending battle. There’s a defeated resignation to him.
“They did not get sick,” he eventually explains. He shrugs: “I suppose the fates protect the worst of us. That is the way of this life.”