Evex_Warriors Of Ition

by Maia Starr

  I was a Voth once. One of the strongest generals amongst the Vithohn: able to sense heat, summon energy through our spires, and to use our energy shield to protect ourselves and our people.

  But with one mistake, I was taken from my standing, had the tentacle that crawled down from the back of my head banded and cut, and was banished from the presence of the Voth.

  Today would change all that.

  Hopefully.

  I waited until Sylas was finished with his ridiculous speech: waited until the crowds and cheers and warrior cries drowned out the sound of my footsteps, and when Sylas departed from the risen stage in the city center, I grabbed him and pulled him into the shadows of the nearby stone and metal alleyways.

  He yelped as I pulled him toward me and I wanted to laugh at the noise he made. Our fearless leader.

  Instead, I bowed down to him, showing him I meant no harm, and he jerked his arm back even though I had let him go, wiping it fiercely and taking a furious breath.

  “I’ve come to seek forgiveness from my Voth,” I said to him with my head down. Meek and humble. Two things I absolutely detested being. “Please, do me this honor.”

  “Oh, Oron, not now,” Sylas dismissed with a wave of his heavily armored hand. He looked out into the main streets from without the shadowy alley, checking to see if anyone had spotted our encounter.

  “With all due respect,” I said, trying not to bite my lip in frustration; still, my words came out through a set jaw. “Consider what it took me to get back into the city.”

  “Oron, stop it,” Sylas said in a hushed, frustrated tone.

  He pulled me up from my bow, looking annoying, and brushed off my chest plate. “We don’t have time for you.”

  Both of us looked up then, hearing a fight break out in the crowds he’d left behind.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” he continued, gruffly tossing me backward with as much ease as sending a stone flying into a pond. Sylas was a coward on a good day, but he was also gigantic.

  “Sylas!” I said, hurtling back toward him and grabbing his arm.

  He gripped my hand and gave it an immense squeeze.

  “Touch me again, and I’ll make sure you’re torn apart in a viewing,” he enunciated. “You’re lucky I like you, Oron. Now leave the city before I report you.” He paused and then said to himself, “I should have done so, already.”

  “Sy—” I began but was quickly interrupted.

  “—Oron, surely you can see there are more important things going on here. There are rumors that…” he shook his head, thinking better of telling me whatever secrets he was hiding.

  “What?” I said, suddenly feeling a spike of adrenaline flow through me. “Tell me.”

  “There’s a traitor among us,” he said, lowly. He said it with so much care, it actually made me nervous. Then he looked me up and down and corrected, “Make that two traitors.”

  He must have caught the wounded look on my face because he quickly followed up with: “There is something you can do,” he said with a slow, distracted breath: his eyes flicking around the alleyway. “And when the time comes, I’ll allow you to do it.”

  “We were friends, Sylas,” I pleaded.

  “And yet you betrayed us,” he snapped and pushed me away from him. “Funny.”

  And just like that, he spun on his grainy heel and walked out of the alley.

  I wanted to swear or scream. I wanted to tear the city down brick by brick. I’d spent weeks planning for how to get inside of Bolmore, our Vithohn city. Now I was right back to where I first started.

  A heavy hand weighed down on my shoulder. I spun to see Tavarog standing before me, unarmored for once.

  The man had four spikes that traveled from his forehead and curled over his scalp and to the back of his neck into a thin tentacle. His skin was light in color until his brow-bone, where it faded into a purple hue and crawled back with the rest of his horns.

  He had long, black hair that was tied back, two small horns on each side of his jawline, and a hooped ring through his bottom lip.

  The man gave me a knowing sigh at seeing me enter the forbidden city and pressed a large hand over his mouth, hiding a smile. Years of knowing one another had given him every insight into my behavior.

  As a banished Vithohn, it was Tavarog’s duty to extract me from the city, but instead, he just laughed.

  I huffed out an exasperated sigh and shrugged my shoulder away from him, feeling the pain of the weight of his hand.

  He pulled me into a dark recess of the city: a sharp alleyway that led to four doors of warrior lodging.

  The low-rise building had gothic spires shooting from the top; the lodging itself was all black and spikes and spires: the reflective metals allowing the evening sun to gleam off of it almost blindingly.

  We entered his home, a black bricked exterior that led into a two-room living quarters. The walls were slick with black metal, save for a small window that looked out into the alleyway.

  Tavarog’s vast collection of weapons hung on hooks along the wall. I pointed to a silver pistol with floral embroidery on it.

  “That’s mine,” I said without complaint.

  “Not anymore,” Tavarog enunciated cheerfully and poured us both a heaping glass of mulled grapes.

  I could smell the boozy aroma wafting across the room. In truth, I wasn’t a fan of the human concoction. It was designed to make the brain slower. But Tavarog and I had quite a few laughs on the stuff, so I couldn’t complain too much.

  Tavarog handed me the heavy glass, and I took it into the palm of my hand, staring up at the weapon that had been stripped from me when I was removed as a Voth.

  “With friends like you, who needs enemies,” I spat back and turned from the pistol.

  My friend laughed once more and gestured for me to sit at the two-person table that sat adjacent to the front door.

  I sat down, and we stared at each other for a moment. I hadn’t seen him in so long.

  “Brave,” he said and raised his glass in my direction.

  I raised my brows and said, “And look where it got me.”

  “With a drink in your hand,” he chuckled, taking a sip. “In perfect company, no less. I’d say that’s not bad at all, Oron. So, what? Are you here to grovel?”

  “To you?” I scoffed. “Never.”

  He chuckled and waved me off. “To Sylas?”

  “Something like that,” I admitted, looking away from him.

  “You’ve really done yourself in, Oron,” he said lowly: his usually humorous tone now leaving his voice. “But now’s not the time.”

  “So they keep telling me,” I said, sipping bitterly from the glass. “What’s going on?”

  “They’re splitting up the Earth: giving sections of it to different Voth leaders,” he said. He tried to be even with his tone, but I could tell he disapproved of the idea.

  “I know that already,” I said. “What do you think I’m doing back here?”

  He laughed, loudly, nearly spitting out his drink. He wiped his mouth with his arm and leaned far over the table to assess my expression. Wondering if I was telling the truth.

  “What?” He mocked. “You want a piece?”

  “Yeah, laugh it up,” I said, also chuckling, despite myself. I looked down at the wood grain in the table, rubbing a thumb across it and immediately regretting it as a stray piece of wood splintered into my skin. “See if I call you my commander now.”

  Tavarog’s smile disappeared as he watched my nurse my thumb: scraping at the wood in vain to get it out.

  Then he had a sharp intake of breath that immediately told me something bad was about to be said.

  “There are Kilari around,” he said.

  Yep. Bad.

  “D’uskaan’a,” I swore, and my face creased and curled into a deep frown. “You’re sure? That’s impossible.”

  Tavarog stared down into his drink and said nothing. For once, I couldn’t read his expression.

  “D
o you believe it?” I felt the need to ask.

  “Sylas believes it,” Tavarog dismissed, not giving any indication of his own feelings on the matter. He walked down the cool corridors and traced his fingers along the smooth, reflective walls before turning back to me and our table.

  “What does that have to do with the separation?” I asked.

  “Besides dealing with an all-out war?” He rolled his shoulders. “Shape-shifting.”

  I blinked slowly, holding my cup in the air, unsure what to do with it: stuck in an awkward half-salute.

  “Is it true?” I asked, breathlessly.

  “Does it matter?” Tavarog laughed again. “As long as Sylas believes it, it’s an epidemic.”

  I exhaled then, feeling a bit of relief. If Tavarog wasn’t worried, perhaps I shouldn’t be, either.

  “I can tell you’re all torn up about it,” I mocked, setting my glass to my mouth and taking the last slurp of the hot liquid.

  “Hey, I just listen to orders.”

  “Apparently not to see me banished,” I said, and we both laughed, rumbling the table as Tavarog took his seat once more. “What’s it going to take to get me back in here?” I asked, appealing to the man.

  “We’re in a war here, Oron,” he said with some surprise in his tone.

  “We’re always at war,” I said, leaning back in my chair. “The Kilari. The Zurgen. The humans. Now the Kilari again?” I waved him off.

  Tavarog stared down at his glass for a long time, and a tinge of hope sprung up in my belly. He had something.

  My chair slammed down against the floor as I sat straight once more, leaning toward him, my arms bearing down on the table.

  “What? What! You have something?” I exclaimed.

  Tavarog licked his lips and gave a wary shrug, as though he didn’t want to get my hopes up. “There is… one thing… that might be able to get you back in his good graces.”

  “What’s that?”

  He closed his eyes and in an unimpressed tone revealed, “Humans.”

  I frowned, deeply. “What about them?”

  “Sylas says he feels…” my friend twirled his fingers, lost in thought, before rolling his eyes and blurting out, “a pull to them.”

  The statement in itself was shocking, like trying to swallow cold water too fast. I splayed my fingers out on the wooden table and sighed inwardly to myself.

  “Why?” was all that I could manage.

  Tavarog let out a bellowing laugh, choking on his mulled wine. “Try not to sound so repulsed!”

  I widened my eye comically and shook my head in disbelief. “I thought they were dead?”

  “Apparently not,” he snipped.

  I blinked in surprise, and he continued, “Yeah, all that fighting? Apparently not the extermination we had hoped for.” He paused. “Do you know Araxis?”

  I shook my head. I’d heard the name maybe once or twice, but I didn’t know him personally.

  “Well…” Tavarog waved his fingers in my direction like he was looking forward to getting through the story quickly. “A Vithohn from the forestlands. He was spotted with a band of travelers, blah, blah, blah, they were humans.”

  “Slaves?” I asked, and he shook his head.

  “Allies,” he confirmed. “Sylas saw him bonded to a girl: a chosen calling. Now he feels the pull and wants his own meat to play with.”

  I shuddered at the phrasing and looked up at him with a scowl on my face, which he promptly chuckled at.

  “I see,” I said slowly. “Then perhaps Sylas shouldn’t have had us massacre them.”

  Tavarog shrugged, a smirk creeping up the left side of his scarred face. “I still had fun.”

  I exhaled, loudly. “So… what? I find humans? Some female to give to him?”

  “Something like that,” he said.

  “Fine,” I agreed. “Fine.” A shrug. “Should be easy.”

  But it wasn’t easy.

  Not at all.

  In fact, I’d spent months looking and couldn’t even come across as much as a skeleton. I’d been wandering through the forests and old farmlands for weeks, searching for these supposed hidden remnants: humans in secret societies living unbeknownst to the rest of the world.

  Then, on one not-so-special day, I saw her: a blonde woman scaling the side of a mountain. And she was just as beautiful and alluring as I always imagined a human might be.

  And I knew I’d found her. My sacrifice.

  Chapter Three

  Reina

  “Kennedy says he’s worried about you,” Willow said as she dug her heel into the side of a steep rocky embankment.

  I grabbed the hand of my best friend as she began to slip and hoisted her back up to a comfortable footpath, laughing with the effort. “Kennedy can shove it up his ass,” I said, and a silence grew between us as we continued downward.

  “Why?” I asked, eventually.

  “He said you’re a runner,” she offered, and I looked down at her, creasing my brows in annoyance.

  I scoffed out a laugh and shook my head.

  It wasn’t the first time he’d tried to caution me about the outside world during his short time here. “You’re safe here,” he’d said one night when I was asking one too many questions about the alien species. “You have no idea how much.”

  I’d shrugged him off, but knew he was probably right.

  “He’s just worried about you,” Willow said, half lecturing. “I think he likes you.”

  “Oh shut up,” I laughed. “He doesn’t. He can’t stand me!”

  “Yeah, but you like him,” she teased in protest.

  I laughed. “Not right now I don’t.”

  “Your dad would love that,” she spat back.

  My father had a full goatee and tired eyes. He looked strong. Everyone could see it. It was one of the reasons that he was made the leader of our camp. He was our protector and had quickly taken Alex in as one of his own. His pre-approval for our would-be romance was clear as day to me, and embarrassingly, probably to Alexander as well.

  “Here’s my question,” Willow blurted, interrupting my thoughts. “If life is shit as he says it is out there, why the hell would anybody want to leave?”

  Willow was Korean and had gorgeous, shiny black hair and beautiful eyes. It gave her an instant sex appeal that was in stark contrast to my dated, wallflower appearance.

  She was tall and beautiful.

  But that mouth on her…

  “Come on; it can’t be all bad out there,” I said, gripping my fingertips against the wet dust that caked against the jutting rocks. “The Earth was good enough for Kennedy to fight for. To take it back, right?”

  Willow stared up at me and vibrated her lips together in a silly protest. She rolled her eyes and hopped down another ledge.

  “Right?” I reiterated.

  “I’d shrug, but I’m holding on for dear life,” Willow said with her dry wit.

  I smiled down at her, following her footsteps along the mountain path.

  We were scaling the mountain together, just like I’d always dreamed of doing. We snuck away early, telling Calrin we were going to gather berries for breakfast, if anybody asked.

  The truth was we were escaping. Or, trying to. I’d overheard my father, Richard, saying that Matthew Cunningham was spotted down below by some of our lookouts. And if our little warrior was back, I wanted to be the first one to get the scoop.

  Plus, it was a great excuse to go see the rest of the world. To see if it was really as bad as everyone said.

  It took the entire day to get to the bottom of the hill.

  It was deep, deep afternoon and the sky had taken on a warm shade of blue. I knew the sun would be setting soon and it would be in our best interest to get a lay of the land before it was too dark.

  “So this is the great outside,” Willow said, unenthusiastically.

  “Hey, nobody said you had to tag along,” I mocked.

  Both Willow and I had been at the base of the
mountain before, looking for supplies. But, we never went without the protection of Calrin or another one of the warrior class in our camp.

  I knew my best friend wasn’t eager to run away from camp, like I was, but she was always up for hiking. She was the only person who would jump at the chance to put her body through rigorous exercise for hours on end.

  Willow wiped the thick, orange dust off of her legs and we stared at the base of the immense cliff we had called our home.

  “Maybe we should turn back,” she said, eyeing the clearing warily.

  “Come on,” I laughed and ran my hand up my arm.

  “Come on?” she repeated with a giggle. “Something tells me by the end of this, you’re going to come crawling back to me saying, ‘This was a bad idea! You’re right, oh wise and beautiful sage! Be my life-leader from now on because you, and only you, Willow Jeffery, are—’”

  “—I get it!” I interrupted.

  I had felt so hot on the venture down to the bottom, the exercise overworking my body and making me sweat. But now that we had stopped moving so briskly, all I could feel was the cold spring air hitting my damp skin.

  “I won’t abandon you, Reina,” Willow said resolutely, and then winked and said, “But only because I’d need your help to climb back up.”

  “I’ve never felt so loved in all my life,” I snorted.

  Just then, a light in the distance cracked and illuminated the evening sky. It plummeted across the blue like a shooting star and fell into the distance.

  “Was that a comet?” Willow asked, shielding her eyes from the glare of the stare.

  I set my jaw and stared off in the direction the star had fallen. “Not sure,” I said slowly—dismissively.

  There was a large clearing of red, stony ground. It stretched off into the distance until a mossy forest began. The woods were dense, and red cliffs created archways across the forest.

  It was almost like someone had created stone bridges to get over top of the forest canopy, but these were all natural. The rocks dripped with vines and moss: an ominous archway.

  That was the area we had never ventured into. It looked like something magical and forbidden.

  Normally, the clearing was clean. On occasion, there were debris from a mech or other lander-ships that had been abandoned by other humans, but there was something unmistakably off about the state of it now.