Chapter Five
On October 15th, 2027, as Hades was passing by Pluto, Drellic had just awakened from one of his Starblood induced, lucid dreams. The presence of the inbound spacecraft had startled him and had torn him away from his beloved wife, Moya.
The two of them were walking hand in hand, along one of the Siren’s beautiful beaches. They were staring deeply into each other’s eyes, as the sun slowly sank behind them into the calm waters of the Siren Sea.
It was a moment like many they had actually shared, before their fatal final encounter, and it was Drellic’s ability to recreate those moments over and over again that made his eternity spent in captivity, pass by in what seemed like an instant.
The sun had almost completely disappeared beneath the distant waves and just as their lips drew closer and were about to touch, an agonizing pain suddenly pulsated throughout his entire body.
His blissful reunion with Moya and his great city had once again come to an end. Only this time, he was being ripped away from his fantasies by a sensation he had never felt before.
As he regained consciousness, the pain slowly dissipated, but was immediately replaced with an undeniable sense of vulnerability. He felt exposed and displaced. It was the first time he had felt the presence of another sentient life form in countless millennia.
The Blood of Aia was surging through his veins and amplifying his perception of his surroundings. At first, he could only feel the rumblings of Hades’ engines. But after a while, he began to feel the six beating human hearts that were on board the ship.
The sensation of finally being relieved of solitude was intoxicating to him. As the ship drew nearer, Drellic could smell the sweat and taste the breath of the crew, which confirmed that they were in fact, human.
In a moment of utter relief and happiness, he jumped to his feet and ran to the opposite end of his chamber. He pressed his ear against the rock wall and closed his eyes. It was his way of clearing his mind and allowing himself to become immersed in all of the images, sounds and sensations, he was being bombarded with.
Tears streamed down his face, as he came to the realization that some of his people had survived and were coming to rescue him.
After a few more moments, he was finally able to visualize the six humans within the approaching vessel. It was a revelation that would ultimately be followed by confusion and disappointment.
He immediately felt paranoid and wondered about the possibility of it being a hoax, courtesy of the Architects. Something felt out of place to him about these particular humans. He noticed their abnormally small size and could not understand their language. He also felt that their thoughts and actions conveyed the behavior of a people far less sophisticated than his own. After further analysis, Drellic came to look at Callum and the others as children, which was a notion that hardly made him eager to present himself to them with open arms.
After a few more hours of pondering the situation, Drellic could feel the six crew members circling him, as the ship proceeded to orbit Charon.
Now completely reenergized, he used his super speed and strength to burrow his way up through the top of his chamber, to the surface of the moon. Upon breaking through the final layer of rock and ice, he came into contact with the vacuum of space and immediately retreated.
The Starblood had seized control of his motor functions and forced him back into his chamber, in order to protect him. It had saved him from the vacuum once before, but feared it could not do so again, after spending billions of years regenerating and perfecting Drellic’s original form; the youthful, muscular form, he had enjoyed, in the days when he had first sampled Starblood.
Drellic had developed a great understanding of the Blood of Aia, in the time he had spent owning it. Working together as two separate entities, they decided to create enough of a disturbance, to get the Hades’ crew’s attention and lure them underground into an environment that better suited them.
It wasn’t much longer after Drellic forged the tunnel, that he felt the ship land on the surface above. He then knew that he was minutes away with coming face to face with the strange visitors.
Drellic backed away into the shadows, in a far corner of the chamber. He looked on, as a thick black cable slithered down into his view, from the tunnel above. The cable then gently touched down on the surface.
As he continued to observe, he counted four humans descending the cable and eventually landing on the rocky terrain. Drellic pressed himself against the wall, in order to avoid immediate detection, as they began to search the chamber; shining their bright searchlights along the walls and floor.
He saw that they had discovered that they could breathe inside the chamber, without the use of their crude, airtight suits and had removed their helmets.
At that moment, he had another revelation. He wanted to have a complete understanding of the visitors, before revealing himself, and he knew that the best way to do that would be to appear to be incapacitated.
The essence of Aia seemed to agree, as he suddenly felt his life force diminishing, bit by bit. His heart beat slowed, as did the circulation of the Starblood throughout his body. His vision blurred and he gasped for air. This attracted the attention of the humans, who immediately shined their lights on his naked body, as he finally collapsed lifelessly to the ground.
Callum, Simone, Richard and Max approached Drellic’s body with fearful expressions. They looked on in awe, at the sight of the massive mountain of muscular flesh that laid before them.
Despite his current condition, Drellic still had absolute consciousness and could hear the humans conversing with their primitive and inadequate sounding language. From within his inanimate shell, he wondered what had happened to his people and how much time had really passed since his incarceration.
His primal nature commanded him to relieve himself from his weakened state and rip the puny creatures, limb from limb, but his desire to know the answers to his innumerable questions, outweighed his bloodlust. Though it decimated his pride, he allowed the humans to examine his body and touch him with their feeble, child-like fingers. All he could do was wait and pray that the answers were coming.
The Drellic Saga: Books One, Two and Three Page 7