by Isabel Wroth
"D-deja. My name is, Deja." she stuttered. "Where am I?"
Izax tilted his head in what she hoped was a curious fashion, probably not able to understand her any better than she could understand him. Deja waved her hand in the air and turned a slow circle, trying to pantomime as best she could.
The stone warrior made a low sound in his throat, a sound that caused Deja's insides to almost writhe with an inconceivable mix of arousal and terror. She couldn't recall ever experiencing anything like it, and wasn't sure if it was a good thing or a bad thing.
"Ehsa ayla urasho kul lura, Penumbra, desh enna'ye sha'essa-stone. Desh sa'al belong to Marahi Deja."
Somehow, Izax managed to speak one or two words in English. Deja was about to start questioning why, when stupidly, she remembered the very first experiment she had been subject to on board the Concord.
The chip Deja had been implanted with was an experimental version, meant to record both spoken and written words and teach the specific part of her brain that controlled speech to hear and speak those languages back.
Everyone on Earth who had enough money bought and were implanted with a micro-chip programed with every spoken language known to man. It made the learning of languages obsolete and allowed a person to travel to other countries or work in a multi-lingual environment without worrying about language barriers.
There were ancient dialects that were almost extinct, languages being created, both verbal and digital only a handful of people could decode or speak. So the micro-chips had to learn the languages she heard or saw, decode them, and then teach them back to her.
It was the oddest thing ever, but the more the alien warrior spoke, the more verbs and consonants he repeated, Deja's experimental chip recorded and translated them to English.
"I thought you were a statue when I climbed up your body. I had no idea you were um, alive under there. Thank you for not letting those shrieking monsters eat me and for bringing me...here. Ah, this light doesn't burn me, but I need clothes that cover me up more, and my goggles. The things that covered my eyes?"
Deja curled her fingers into circles and pressed them to her face, smiling in relief when the giant on the left, Arkhan, opened his fist to reveal her goggles.
Her hand shook when she was close enough to take them, her fingertips brushing the smooth, warm surface of the warrior's armor.
Her breath caught when she looked through the slits of his helmet, falling into the unbelievable mix of gold and silver of his eyes, sparkling, swirling like stars in the black void of space.
"Ehbin turo i'hitan for you, Marahi Deja." Arkhan's voice was a whisper in comparison to Izax's. A whisper that coiled around her body in a tangible vapor, stroking her skin like a hiss of silk.
She gulped, unable to keep from wondering what he looked like under all that armor. "T-thank you, Arkhan."
He dipped his head and touched his fingertips to the center of his chest. "Marahi."
Deja's relief at have her goggles back was short lived. The left lens was cracked, a chunk of the purple tinted glass missing from the center. She sighed heavily, sadly deciding she could wrap a strip of fabric around it or something. Not being able to see through the left lens was better than not being able to see at all.
"Marahi Deja?" she looked up at Izax's rumble, watching him point to his palm, and then at the table she had woken up on. "Put et'nala there, meta sei ithunn."
Deja lifted her goggles to show him. "You want me to put them on the table?"
Izax repeated his movements, nodding as he pointed at her goggles and then at the table. Beyond curious, Deja backed up to the table, not comfortable yet with giving these creatures her back, and set the goggles on the shimmering surface.
Purely out of habitual fear, she jerked her hand back when a beam of bright purple light speared up, moving over the goggles back and forth as though scanning it.
"Kea'avin ayla frightened. Re'noven harm you." Izax spread his armored hands in peace, and after a moment she saw the cracks and fractures in the lens of her goggles disappear as though they had never been. The oscillating light faded and Deja carefully reached out to take them, lifting them to her eyes to find every fissure and break repaired.
Fascinated, she bent over to examine the underside of the machine, wanting to know how it worked, where its power source came from, but the long fringe covering her butt swung forward and a breath of warm air licked across her exposed rear.
Deja straightened quickly, whipping around and pulling at the fringe to get it settled back to cover what it was supposed to. None of the three warriors seemed to have noticed she'd just mooned them. Or cared.
Needing to direct attention elsewhere, Deja stretched her leg out to the side and pointed at it. "My leg was badly burned. Did this table somehow heal me?"
"Marahi Astaria tarak behind salah'jem make repairs. Ayla desh pain?"
Deja rubbed at the spot behind her ear where her implant had been placed, marveling at how quickly it was deciphering the musical flow of Izax's language.
"Uh...no. I'm not in pain. How long have I been here?" Izax conferred briefly with his companions, then reached out and drew three large circles in the air between them. "Circles mean...days? Three days?"
Izax gave a graceful nod, "Yei, Marahi Deja."
"Okay, um, why did you bring me here? Where is here? I can't go outside if the sun is out, the light will burn me."
Deja knew she was babbling, but the more words she used, maybe the aliens would be better able to understand her. Surely an alien race with the technology to flawlessly repair burnt tissue in three days, and glass within seconds, had to have some kind of language converter like she did.
Izax touched the center of his chest and waved his hand back towards her, his mellifluous voice drawing her in with an almost hypnotic quality. His musical language rolled over her, the few English words her chip translated sounded positively harsh and guttural in comparison.
"No pain dera Marahi Deja. Saavin vos lusa. Saavin."
Deja guessed from the way Izax beckoned her with his fingers, he was asking her to come to him. Or come closer. She understood him when he said no pain, but that didn't mean she wasn't still nervous as hell and uncertain of what would happen to her if she did go over to him.
Then again, she recalled how carefully he had held her against his unforgiving armor while protecting her from the shrieking predators. And, he had also brought her here where her leg could be healed.
Sure, he'd stripped her naked first, but sheer as it was, he had covered her with a sheet. As far as she knew he had taken care of her, and in the time the three giants had been in this room with her, none of them had attempted to grab her and perform terrible experiments on her.
So far, her second alien encounter was looking downright hospitable.
Setting her goggles on-top of her head, Deja cautiously moved close enough to touch Izax's outstretched hand. Like Azurryn's, the material of Izax's armored palm was smooth and warm to the touch.
For a moment, she got lost in staring at how beautifully it was carved, veined and glimmering with iridescent colors reminiscent of labradorite. He had a thumb and two blunt digits on each hand, somewhat like a human hand, the detail of his gauntlets mimicking fingers.
Deja froze when he curled his thumb, as thick as a lamp post, around her waist and pressed her back against his open palm.His other hand scooped under her legs, lifting her up and make a seat for her, holding her securely like she was a ridiculously tiny doll. Deja couldn't help the gasp of fear that ripped out of her when he stood up and turned to take her away from the healing table.
Out, into a lit hallway.
An uncontrollable scream of fright left her, her hands whipping up to shield her face, but no burning pain came. Only the gentle murmur of Izax's deep voice, and a careful touch of something to her hand.
Risking a peek, Deja found herself looking into the eyes of the third warrior. He didn't speak, but Deja was so enthralled she forgot to be
afraid of the light.
Izax's eyes were like licks of purple fire, burning with tendrils of pink, magenta, blue, and vibrant violet.
Arkhan's were black, shot with nebulous pinpricks of gold and silver.
And through the slits in his helmet, Azurryn's were...prisms inside an ocean of blue. Pale blue, flecked with every color of the rainbow, the sockets, or maybe his eyelids themselves, were lined with gold.
Unbelievable.
Azurryn's eyes were as hypnotic as Izax's voice, which must have been why she didn't jerk away when he used his finger to draw her hand from her face, out into the glow of the lights. He nodded to her, giving her hand the gentlest tug, and Deja looked away from his face to where her hand was bathed in a radiant golden glow. From her wrist down, the light touched her, and she didn't feel so much as a tingle of discomfort.
Joy flooded her for the first time in what felt like an eternity, and through teary eyes she looked around her.
WHAT LITTLE BREATH she had left heaved out of her to truly see what lay before her. It was dark, but not like middle of the night dark. More like dusk or twilight, when the sun hid behind pastel colored clouds. So shocked, Deja barely noticed Izax setting her down on her own two feet, or how the three of them kept pace with her.
She was on a balcony of what she could only identify as a castle, situated on an island surrounded by a fast flowing river. Beyond the river was a city so vast she was certain it would take a lifetime to see everything.
Everywhere Deja looked, something else made her gasp or murmur in wonder. Craning her neck up, it was a gravity defying illusion to see the way the mountains had created sort of a layer effect.
Three peaks of unknown size curled in on one another like petals of a sleeping flower, just barely allowing sunlight to filter down through the crevices of the rock. It was so large a space, Deja wouldn't have been surprised to learn a small country might fit inside.
She was drawn to a nearby staircase, the stone beneath her feet lighting up just like inside the healing room, pulsing vibrantly with every step. The stairs she moved down were made for human sized legs at the center, and on either side the steps had been spaced to suit the legs of the giants who followed her.
Two flights took her down to another wide balcony and above she could now see that the castle was more like a series of towers built in beautiful succession, balconies and terraces hung off the dark stone every few levels, stretching up so high Deja couldn't comprehend the true size of it.
Dizzy from looking up, Deja put her hand to her forehead and turned back around, moving in a daze down to a courtyard. A fountain was directly ahead of her, glowing blue water bubbled around the feet of a rather sinister looking statue. She walked around to the face of it, shivering at the menace she felt looking into the face of the effigy.
It had three round protrusions on the chest area, so positioned the way it was, the statue presumably represented a female of prominent importance. Unlike most of the stone around her, the statue was a matte, sinister black.
It didn't have a face, instead it seemed like it had been carved to resemble a helmet of some kind. Spikes or perhaps quills stretched up over the head like a crown, and a studded mantle which flowed into a dress was draped across her elegant shoulders. The female statue's hands had three clawed fingers, and two, six toed feet peeking out from the skirt of her dress.
"Izax, who is that?" Deja asked, pointing at the statue, seriously disturbed as she looked into the smooth dome where a face should be.
"Marahi Astaria. Creator tes'et Shadow Valo."
Chills of a new kind raced over her with enough force to have her rubbing her arms. The idea that this statue might also come to life sent dread rushing up and down her spine. Not wanting to feel the stare of unseen eyes behind that mask for a second longer, Deja hustled away.
The unsettling sculpture was forgotten as she drew closer to the bank of the river, her feet touching something softer than the grass synthesized to cover Hyde Park. A bubble of awed laughter left her while she stood there, flexing her toes into the cool, velvety soft stuff.
Alien grass. "Amazing."
"Saavin." Izax told her, beckoning again for her to change direction and walk over the bridge that connected the castle island to the other side of the city.
To her left, the soft roar of water had become louder. Standing at the railing of the stone bridge, Deja’s gaze followed the rushing current back to its source, and she was just able to make out some kind of shape carved into the far rockface.
Squinting her eyes, she saw a pair of rocky hands folded over something like the grip of a sword, just above an enormous, bright blue waterfall where it gushed out of the rock. The glow was almost neon in its vibrancy.
The churning water below frothed with more light, but the calmer the water got, the fainter the glow became until the river turned black as night below her.
Peering over the edge of the bridge, Deja smiled to see what she thought were fish, clearly visible through the crystal clear water, glowing every color of the rainbow. Everywhere she looked, the city was lit with the natural bioluminescence of the plants and trees.
Even within the black stone itself, colors swirled, making the city almost too fantastical to be real.
Lichen radiated shades of white and green where it grew in the crevices, flowers put off electric colors of pink, orange and yellow.
The tree trunks were a warm white, their leaves crackling a seductive red orange, and when the breeze stirred the branches, it almost looked as though the trees were on fire.
One might expect a city built in the shadows to be gloomy or depressing, spooky even, but to her it was heaven. It wasn't cold or damp. Even in her risque outfit that left her bottom half bare, she wasn't uncomfortable.
Deja turned her face into the fresh breeze whipping pleasantly through the canyon, wondering why it was easier for her to breathe down here.
Was the atmosphere so different on the surface of the planet? Maybe she was imagining it, any sort of open air not being put through a CO2 scrubber would be easier on her lungs.
She stood for the first time in six years without the constriction of the prison jumpsuit and the suffocating heat of the sweatshirt she had been allowed. Six years without breathing anything other than stale, recycled air. She had woken up in this alien city, unharmed, experienced no excruciating side effects from Dr. Travis' treatments with light all around her.
Even if it turned out that she could only stand a few hours of this bioluminescent twilight, it would be worth it. Every breathless moment.
THREE
IZAX~
Izax watched the female child of their creator take her first look at the city the valos of Penumbra had built for her.
She was called Deja, and Izax struggled to process how this tiny, delicate creature had been the one to rouse him from his slumber. Thanks to her blood now glowing in their chests, Izax, Azurryn, and Arkhan felt.
For now, they could only experience the shadow of emotions. They could not create feelings of their own, not yet, but because of their new lady, they were able to find understanding of emotion itself through the things she had felt, or would feel.
Izax understood what it was to feel joy, awe, to see beauty in the things his kind had created. Understood the feeling of pride as Deja wandered the streets slowly, her lips parted in awe, her eyes wide as she took in Penumbra.
Penumbra was a city situated in a valley between three towering mountain peaks, each slanting towards one another to create a vast plain shrouded in constant shadow, stretching back as far as the eye could see. His people had built the city in tiers, with graceful arches and bridges to connect the different levels.
There were hidden grottoes, small rivers and brooks, waterfalls, gardens. The light came from the plants and trees, the petals and leaves glowing in the darkness. Some were brighter than the others, their colors varying from plant to plant, or the depth of the darkness in which they flourished.
> The city was far greater than he remembered, changed, ten times the size it had been when last he lay eyes on it. Azurryn led the way down the main road with Izax and Arkhan following beside the female to ensure she didn't exert herself.
The injuries she had sustained had not been severe, yet she had remained under the healing light of the revitalization platform for three sunsets. It had been so long, but Izax recalled from his days in the service of Astaria, that the longer one slept on the platform, the deeper or more serious the injuries were.
Izax looked at Deja, taking note of the nervousness mixed with her curiosity, and the smile of happiness that curved her lips when she saw something new. Izax could not remember such expressions ever crossing the cold face of their creator.
He did not recall her happiness, nor had he ever seen her smile. He had not even seen Astaria cup her hand in a pool of white light, capturing the glow of a large blossom to test the way it spread across her palm.
Deja made her way across the fore-yard to continue her exploration, becoming stiff and uncertain to see more valos come out of their workshops to greet her. As they lumbered slowly to line the streets, Izax knew he should be angry to see the vacant and lifeless expressions in their eyes, yet he had no heartstone to burn with resentment.
Izax recognized their lack of interest in the female brought into their magnificent city, just as he knew none of his fellow valo would have any understanding of what it meant to be 'magnificent'.
They came simply because they knew it was expected of them. They had no will or desire to do anything other than obey the command they had been given upon creation: to serve and to build.
In their current state they did not know or remember what feeling meant, and they would not unless Deja pressed a drop of her blood to the heartstone well of every valo here in Penumbra, or if she retrieved their heartstones and returned them to the valos willingly.