“I hate to say this, but we should get going soon,” he yelled across at her.
“I know, but it’s a shame,” she yelled back. “Look at them, they are having so much fun.”
She was right. Ansari and Groot were either racing or just keeping each other company, their mounts belly to belly with Groot hanging upside down. Rocket was putting his beast through its paces, working his way through a series of increasingly intricate turning patterns.
“So, where are we headed?” Quill asked Gamora. “You seemed to have some idea.”
Gamora laughed. He’d missed that sound more than he wanted to admit. She pointed east; from their vantage point he could see that fertile fields gave way to flat plains, dry and dusty with only the occasional stunted tree breaking the monotony.
“If we fly in that direction long enough, we should reach the Broken Hills. It’s not like we are going to miss them out there, with basically nothing else to see.”
“Well, the sooner we start flying, the sooner we’ll get there,” Quill said.
“Is that how that works?” she asked, mocking him. “Okay, let’s retrieve our gear and get going.”
She brought two fingers up to her mouth and whistled, the piecing sound loud enough to get everyone’s attention. With a series of hand gestures, she communicated the plan to the rest of the group, and almost as one, they wheeled around and followed her.
It soon became clear that Groot’s beast was struggling with its burden, and it slowly fell behind, forcing the others to rein in their creatures and slow down.
“You’re running out of time, aren’t you,” Rocket yelled to Quill.
“I am, but I don’t know what to do about it.”
“How about the big guy and I head back to the forest?”
“You’re abandoning us?” Quill asked.
“Don’t be silly,” Rocket snapped. “We’ll only hold you back, so let us do something useful. We’ll see if we can find you some reinforcements in the forest, and then meet you in time for your rendezvous with the Duke.”
“Reinforcements? From where?”
Rocket winked at him.
“Just trust me,” he said. “The big guy is very good at making friends—and treaties go both ways.”
“I hate it when you say that. It usually means I’m in big, big trouble,” Quill complained. “Okay, you do that. Good luck.”
Rocket lifted his hand in salute, then peeled off and rejoined Groot. The last thing Quill heard was a shout of “I am Groot” fading into the wind, and then they were gone.
Interstitial
The insect king looks down from his raised throne, staring at the captive standing before the dais. Through multi-faceted eyes that cut across multiple wavelengths of energy, the figure is a coruscating bloom of color. The king can see the huge heart beating, the fiery flow of blood through his veins, the power lurking in massive muscles as the captive stands absolutely still.
Despite being surrounded by insectoid warriors that loom over him, the captive shows no fear at all. Instead, it is the king’s soldiers who seem nervous, shifting uneasily, as if unwilling to be in reach of those terrible arms. The captive has green skin, traced with scars and tattoos, the marks of a multitude of battles.
The king himself is no stranger to conflict—he has faced hundreds of challengers seeking to wrest away his throne according to the customs of his people. But for the first time, he wonders whether this will be the day that his reign ends. He reaches out with his mind, trying to learn more about this creature and reels back as waves of loss, grief, and rage crash into him.
The captive lifts his eyes and meets the king’s gaze. There is a shared moment of understanding, and the king understands that the transfer of knowledge and emotion has not been one way, that the creature before him has learned just as much about the king as the king has about him. Worse, the captive understands the challenge before him, the only way he will survive this encounter.
The king stands, seven feet and more of rock-hard carapace, powerful muscle and razor sharp mandibles gleaming in the low light. Around the cavern, antennae quiver in anticipation, savoring the prospect of watching their ruler destroy this strange creature that has intruded into their world.
As he slowly descends from the dais, the king feels the string of an unfamiliar emotion. It is only when the captive smiles at him and beckons him closer that he recognizes it for what it is.
Fear.
Chapter 11
Now that Groot wasn’t slowing them down, they ate up the miles with a steady pace. Quill watched carefully for any signs of fatigue among the animals, ready to give them a rest if needed. He knew that the time that they would save him was worth ensuring that they didn’t founder. But on they flew, the only sign that they were flesh and blood rather than some incredibly efficient machine being the occasional drink. Even that didn’t stop them completely, though, as they would simply dive at a body of water, pulling up at the last moment and skimming their open mouths along the surface. The first time it had happened Quill had nearly screamed, thinking his mount had developed a death wish and was going to drag him down with it into the watery depths. But once they knew what was going on, it was actually quite fun. Every so often a mouthful of water would come with a fish or two, and the lucky animal would devour them with relish, vicious teeth making short work of the meal. It was a reminder that these animals were not to be trifled with.
That didn’t stop the riders from dozing off during the night, however, and the first time Quill came awake, he was disoriented and nearly fell from his mount. Pulling the map from his saddlebag he squinted at it in the starlight, and quickly looked around, taking in some of the landmarks he had noted earlier. He was happy to see that they were still on course.
“If you are going to do that, I’d suggest you clip yourself in,” Gamora yelled to him, startling him so much he nearly fell all over again. He hadn’t realized she had come so close.
She threw him a length of leather strap with a buckle at each end.
“You forgot to grab one of these.”
Running the belt through the creature’s harness left Quill feeling much more secure, and he settled back. When next he opened his eyes, the sun was rising and the ground below had changed. There were no more lakes and rivers, no green grass and thick foliage. They were well into the wasteland now, and Quill thanked whatever forces were looking out for him that he hadn’t had to do this on foot. Of course, had he done so they would still be in the shadow of the mountains rather than approaching what had to be the Broken Hills. They were the only landmark visible, even from this height.
Whatever vast geological upheaval had produced the hills must of been one of incredible violence. There was not a single square foot of ground that Quill could see that was free of cracks and crevasses, or not covered in jagged chunks of rock. The debris spilled out onto the plain for a considerable distance, probably a day or two’s walk. Quill cursed quietly, yet vehemently, under his breath. He’d hoped for a nice open space on which to land and set up camp, but there was nothing at all. Even if the beasts could land below, it would be rough on the riders.
It was on their third circle of the hills that Ansari spotted what must have been the only flat patch of ground for miles, nestled between two of the smaller hills. She gestured to the other riders and they slowly descended in ever decreasing circles. They took turns landing, the beasts far less graceful returning to the ground than they were in the air, coming down in a tangle of legs and wings, yet somehow managing to come to a halt all in one piece and upright—and with the same true of their riders. Within ten minutes they were all lined up on the edge of the clearing, and the travelers were unloading their belongings.
“Any ideas on where to go from here, Gamora?” Quill asked.
“I have no idea, to be honest,” she replied. “I didn’t s
ee a single sign of life the whole time we were in the air. Did anyone else notice anything? Buildings? Campfires? Anything?”
Ansari and Quill shook their heads.
“Then the only real choice is to try and comb the hills on foot and see if we can find anything that wouldn’t be visible from the air.”
Quill’s shoulders slumped. “That could take weeks, and we don’t have that sort of time on our side.”
“Well, let’s hope we get lucky.”
As she turned to grab her pack, there was a deep, low rumbling noise from beneath their feet. She took one more step and then leaped back like a cat as the ground opened up beneath her, only just avoiding falling into the three-foot-wide crack that had suddenly appeared. All across the clearing the ground shifted and moved, chasms yawning open then slamming shut as if the earth were hungry—and would chew them up and spit them out given half a chance. The noise and motion was too much for the beasts and they began to panic, letting out bellows of alarm and flapping their great wings. Wind from their passage through the air was enough to buffet Ansari, sending her reeling towards one of the cracks. Quill barely managed to catch her arm and pull her from harm’s way.
By the time he had Ansari steady on her feet and had turned back to the beasts, they were beyond calming down, and in a frenzied flurry of wings launched themselves into the air. The tip of one of their wings caught Quill with a glancing blow, knocking him to the ground and ruining any chance of him grabbing the dangling straps and catching at least one of the beasts before it could escape. He could only watch in despair as they dwindled into the distance, taking with them any chance that remained of making his agreed upon rendezvous with the Duke. Before he could sink into too great a despondence, he was jarred by a stirring in one of the cracks that had stayed open longer than the others.
“Gamora! Ansari! Watch your backs!”
The words had barely left his mouth before the crack seemed to explode with creatures. They were head-and-shoulders taller than Quill, and completely insectile in appearance. A chitinous shell covered their bodies, and while they stood on two segmented legs, they had an extra set of arms underneath their primary ones. These arms were thinner, with razor-sharp edges that culminated in a wicked looking point. The larger set of arms were as thick as Quill’s legs, and instead of a point ended in clawlike hands, with one large finger and a commensurately-sized opposable thumb. Their heads were dominated by two faceted eyes the size of grapefruit and chittering mandibles that gnashed and moved as they emitted a high-pitched warbling that set Quill’s teeth on edge.
By the time the insectoids stopped emerging from the crack in the ground, there were at least a dozen surrounding the three travelers, who stood back to back, waiting for the inevitable assault. Quill had replaced the axe handle Gamora had cracked with a short fighting staff he had found at the monastery, and Gamora was armed with two daggers as long as her forearm, holding them in a low, deadly stance. Ansari’s weapon of choice was a sickle with a chain attached, weighted down at the other end with a fist-sized ball of steel. She held the sickle in one hand while twirling the weighted chain with the other, and while she looked pale, Quill had no doubt that when the time came she would be formidable indeed.
As if some inaudible signal had flashed between them, the insectoids launched themselves at the companions as one. Strangely, they all kept their secondary arms folded up against their bodies, relying on their hands as weapons. Even when the first one fell with one of Gamora’s knives buried in its thorax, they refused to press the attack with their slashing limbs.
“Why are they holding back?” Gamora yelled breathlessly as she retrieved her knife, wiping green ichor from the blade. “They could have had us by now.”
Quill only shrugged; he was too busy defending himself, each blow of the thick stave leaving dents in his attackers’ shells. But the insectoids seemed undeterred, and he wondered whether they were even capable of feeling pain. That was the problem with fighting other species—having to guess the physiological differences. It was embarrassing kicking someone in the nuts only to discover you’d merely succeeded in giving them a bloody nose. The gripping arm of the insectoids was very good at trapping their weapons, and Quill nearly lost his stave before he cursed and gave it a good wrench. He didn’t relish the thought of going up against them empty handed.
He could see Ansari was giving a good account of herself beside him. She was using the sickle to trap blows rather than to slash at the insectoids, then yanked the chain and relied on centrifugal force to send the weight crashing into her opponent with far more power than she could have generated on her own.
“She must have had a good teacher,” he yelled to Gamora.
“Flatterer,” she scoffed, but she was smiling.
There was no more time for talking as the insectoids redoubled their attack. It had become clear that they were going out of their way not to kill the travelers, pulling blows that would have shattered bone and refraining from deploying their slashing arms. Even with this advantage, the sheer weight of their numbers was starting to take its toll. A scream rang out across the clearing, and Quill’s head whipped around just in time to see Ansari, held fast by two of the insectoids, being bundled away towards the crack. Before he could fight his way towards her, she was gone.
“Gamora, we have to go after her!” There was no answer besides a muffled groan, and he turned to see Gamora slumping to the ground, one of the insectoids standing over her with its fist still raised. “Gamora!”
As he reached for her, powerful arms grabbed him from behind. He struggled against the viselike grip, but more insectoids piled on him, wrapping him up in their implacable hold. He was lifted from his feet and flipped over an insectoid’s shoulder, and he felt a wave of disorientation as the ground rushed past a few inches from his face. There was a sickening lurch as he was carried down into the chasm, his captors sure footed despite the crumbling sides. The fissure soon gave way to a broad tunnel that descended on a gentle incline, the walls smooth and polished, and covered in a glowing fungus that illuminated their way with an eerie, greenish light.
Their path was intersected regularly by other tunnels, and sometimes they would continue straight through, or turn left or right with no apparent pattern. It was not long before Quill had lost any sense of what direction they were moving in, and he fought down bouts of dizziness and claustrophobia. All he knew was that they were moving deeper and deeper, and he was far too conscious of the weight of a thousand tons of rock pressing down from above.
Occasionally, they would cross paths with another group of insectoids going about their own mysterious errands. From his awkward position it was hard for Quill to get a good look at them, but some looked identical to Quill’s captors, while others varied considerably. There were groups that Quill assumed must be workers as, instead of the slashing secondary arms, they possessed another set of powerful gripping limbs. One group was made up entirely of spindly albinos; another had iridescent wings. At some of the intersections, large friezes had been chiseled into the rock, and the similarity to the designs he had seen in the cavern on the mountaintop made Quill wonder whether these were the descendants of the race that had tamed the winged beasts.
Despite its burden, the insectoid carrying Quill maintained an unflagging pace. Every five hundred feet or so, some thoughtful designer had set elegant water fountains into the walls, but there was no stopping, and Quill tried not to think about how thirsty he was. Instead, he focused on trying to assess the situation. He was conscious of being surrounded, but the way he was held meant that he could only look forward, and even that was at the price of a terrible ache in his neck. He knew that his companions were nearby, but for all he knew they might be dead or badly injured, simply more meat being taken to the creatures’ larder. So, he felt a huge wave of relief when a voice hissed his name.
“Quill, are you awake?” It was
Gamora, and she sounded furious. “Quill?”
“Yeah, I’m awake,” he said. “Are you hurt?”
“My head is pounding, but give me a few hours’ sleep and I’ll be fine,” she replied. “You?”
“Nothing injured but my pride,” Quill said. “This is not a very dignified method of transportation.”
“Forget about that for the moment. How are we going to get out of this?”
“We’ll think of something,” Quill said with an air of confidence he didn’t really feel. “Any sign of Ansari?”
Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy Page 9