Evex_Warriors Of Ition

by Maia Starr

  The effort of it made my skin feel like it was on fire. I felt a jolt rush through me like a head spin every time someone on the outside came in, or someone on the inside moved at all.

  The pain was too immense, but I kept stretching farther, reaching into the recesses of my mind, holding on as long as I could to make sure the shield stretched the entire span of the mountaintop.

  And then it all went black.

  I woke many days later: a strange breath of life bringing me back to a new existence.

  “What happened?” I shouted as I sprung up from the makeshift medic’s room in the small, strange village.

  Reina was at my side and cooed me back down. “We won the war.”

  We won.

  The Vithohn had scaled the cliff, seeking revenge on us all, and when my bubble shield prevented them from getting into the village, the Kilari swallowed them whole. Once satisfied with their work, the mech shot the Kilari down with special lasers, tweaked quickly by Jareth. Few got away, I’d been told. The rest of the corpses were found on the mountainside and were tossed off as the days went on. They were sent hurtling to the ground below.

  And then buried in a well.

  The thought that my people were slaughtered sent a chill through me. An ominous whisper that only spoke to me. It said: “You’re next.”

  And whenever it spoke to me, I would have to remind myself… we won the war.

  It was the first time I’d heard that phrase and actually felt proud of myself. Felt worthy.

  And I liked that feeling.

  Inside the mountain village, my welcome had been the exact opposite of what I had experienced a week earlier. I was a hero among the humans—a spokesman for how Vithohn’s and humans could truly live in peace.

  And then came the day we were supposed to leave to fulfill that very purpose. To travel to Rowan and join their cause.

  But I couldn’t go.

  We stood near the edge of the precipice with Lele and Jareth, Reina at my side, all packed and ready for our journey into the unknown. But something pulled at me to stay: to honor Reina’s beautiful life that she had made here.

  I couldn’t leave when I knew, deep in her heart, she wanted to stay.

  “We can’t leave like this,” I said, looking at Jareth and Lele with resignation in my eyes.

  “What do you mean?” Reina asked, looking horrified. “We need to… we need to find the camp: show our support. We need to be part of the solution.”

  “Your people,” I said, shaking my head. “They mean so much to you. These people hated me because of what my people did.”

  “And now they’re all cheering your name,” Reina said with a smile and a laugh, touching her soft hand to my cheek. “You’ve redeemed yourself.”

  Maybe she was right. Maybe I just couldn’t let it go. But in my heart, it wasn’t time to leave. Not yet.

  “I’m not ready,” I said. “And your people, they’ll need help for a while, in case the Kilari come. And then I promise…” I trailed off, looking down at Jareth and Lele, our new friends. “We’ll come find you.”

  Lele nodded and gave an understanding smile. “I understand.”

  “I do not,” Jareth said, looking puzzled as he stared up at Lele. She laughed at him and shook her head.

  “I’ll explain it on the way to Rowan,” Lele offered chirpily.

  Reina looked up at me, her beautiful eyes sparkling, looking like it was all too good to be true. “Are you… sure?” she asked, wrapping her arms around me.

  “I have so much to prove. To you, to your family. To everyone.” I meant every word of it. “If you go to Rowan, I want you to go with the man you deserve. The man that I intend to be.”

  “I love you, Oron,” she said, teary eyes as she embraced me. “Thank you.”

  I had a lot to prove, and I would spend every day for the rest of my life proving to Reina that I deserved to be her protector.

  I turned around with my Reina in my arms and felt a new sense of calm overtake my body. This must be what it feels like to be at peace. My eyes roved about the farmlands: the mountain town that we would make our home. Just like the farmland we had inhabited in the not so distant past.

  We both knew that so long as my people hadn't come to love a human, and her people to love a Vithohn, they would never truly understand our war. And that because we had, one day we wouldn't belong here anymore. But until then, this would be our home.

  The mountain town never wanted a war. It was something Reina had always told me. The mountain towns were always about peace: not revenge or battle. And I couldn't picture a more peaceful life than living side by side with Reina. My chosen one.

  Preview: Scashra-Warriors Of Cadir

  By Stella Sky

  Chapter One

  Chloe

  Green goop.

  That is what I chose to spend my last night on Earth staring at.

  Of course, my ‘last night on Earth’ wasn’t due to anything as dramatic as my impending death. Nah. My last night was a bon voyage, of sorts. Heading off to a new planet for research.

  I studied biology and neuroscience so intensely that I’d basically given up my sex life in university just to make sure my grades panned out. They did.

  And that’s what lead me here, to work with the Space Administration Extraterrestrial Watch: SAEW.

  “That’s what you’re eating?” came the incredulous tone of my roommate, Harper. She had light brown hair and brown eyes: a long wiry frame that looked gazelle-like.

  I looked down at the gigantic bowl of mint-chip ice cream in my lap, piled into an oversized, white mixing bowl and being eaten with a wooden spoon. This was my last meal on Earth.

  I sat in the window seat of the apartment I had in the SAEW base—each member of their elite units was given a dorm-style room in a luxurious high-rise to live in during missions. My real home was back in Seattle.

  The window seat was a long bench in the crook of an awkwardly shaped wall with a giant bay window looking down over the space-station, which looked more like a billowing city from up here.

  “This is what I’m eating,” I responded sarcastically, shoving a heaping spoonful into my mouth sloppily.

  “She says, dead-eyed,” Harper said with a snort. She pulled a chair up across from me, dragging the legs across the gray hardwood floors. “Well, enjoy it now!” She said with a genuine smile. “You won’t be getting any of that in space!”

  I nodded, mouth full of the cold, green and black dairy. “Why do you think I’m voraciously tearing away at this mint chip?”

  “First of all,” Harper said, raising a long, sassy finger toward me and closing her eyes as though she were about to announce the meaning of life. “Mint chip is not a splurge flavor.”

  I blinked and cocked a curious brow. “What?”

  “Try going for peanut butter chocolate! Birthday cake! Hello?”

  I could feel the right side of my lips pulling into a smirk as she berated me and then shrugged. “I like mint.”

  Her eyes went wide. “Mint and chocolate should not be friends,” she announced speedily.

  I rolled my eyes and took another spoonful. “You were saying?”

  “I was saying…” she began slowly and then seemed lost. She shook her head and backtracked, “Have you seen you eat? Every meal is voraciously eaten!”

  I snorted, not looking at her. “Thanks for that.”

  “I live to serve,” she said with a smile and a seated bow. “Just wanted to make sure your ego stayed inflated during your voyage.”

  With a nod and a faraway stare, I said, “Right, right…”

  Three years ago, a Parduss alien creature came to the Earth, not to kidnap women, but to make a deal with them. He signed off on a ten-person treaty—a trade of sorts.

  See, the Parduss originally came and began the L7 war thirteen years ago, kidnapping some twenty-sevev female humans and disappearing into the sky. Since then we’d learned that it was because their females were
dying off—they were looking for new ways to keep their species alive, and we got to be their lucky guinea pigs.

  We didn’t see any of them after that, not until three years ago when a Parduss crash-landed here and made a deal with the SAEW. They wouldn’t kidnap any more of our women if we agreed on a trade.

  We could travel to their planet, study their biology and research their land: take their minerals and begin a trade agreement. Their price? Eight human females a year, each willing to shack up with them and start baby-making.

  When I first heard of the trade agreement, it made me sick to my stomach. Now, three years later, I felt the exact same way about it.

  But, it was neither here nor there for me. I was a researcher, not a breeder.

  That’s what they called the females sent to procreate. Nothing takes the sexy out of interspecies nookie quite like calling the girl a breeder.

  I was going to be one of the first ones to ever step foot on Cadir soil. There were twenty-two of us going.

  One cyborg.

  One pilot.

  Two doctors.

  Three scientists.

  Seven guards.

  Eight breeders.

  That would be our happy family for the two years we were committed to staying on Cadir with the half-dragon, half-human Parduss creatures.

  “You excited?” Harper asked, resting her chin in her palm as she cocked her head to the left. “One of the first! Quinn!” she cheered, calling me by my last name in her way. “One of the first humans actually invited to Cadir!”

  “I’m overjoyed,” I said flatly.

  “Yeah,” she laughed. “You look it.”

  I was excited about the prospect of space travel. I had done one other mission with SAEW to a planet called Alkenar Seer.

  It was a dry, dusty place with black soil and very few lifeforms, most of which were worm-like aliens that mostly hid below ground.

  When we took the soil samples home, I was the first one to realize they had hyper-growth particles that could cause whatever was planted in it to grow like it was on steroids.

  This was an amazing find that was being studied at great cost, hopefully to be shipped out to less-fortunate countries to aid in hunger problems.

  Cadir, I’d heard, was anything but desolate. They had sprawling cities in the clouds and an immense sky river. Whatever that meant.

  The scientist in me was itching to get there and see what gems their world had to offer… there was just one catch.

  Hey, what’s a girl without a secret motive?

  The Parduss had broken their promise of not attacking. On a mission to the planet south of Cadir, my best friend was taken.

  Alecia. She was going there with her husband, Jack, who also worked for the SAEW. They were committed to six months on Yazir and then they would come home, and finally take their honeymoon.

  But when the SAEW did their weekly check-in, all Jack could say was that a dragon had come and taken Alecia and four of the other women and left him for dead. An emergency evac shuttle was sent, but it took three months to get there, and by the time they reached the crew, only Jack and one of his security personnel had survived—barely.

  The Parduss denied it, of course. But I was going to find out exactly what they did with her.

  “I wonder what they’re like,” Harper said, mostly to herself.

  I looked out the window next to me at the sheets of rain that had been falling for over two hours now.

  “Assholes,” I said and then set the bowl of ice cream on the floor next to me.

  “Come on now,” Harper said slowly. She leaned forward in her chair and grabbed the bowl of ice cream off the ground, taking a mouthful from the spoon I had already licked.

  I turned to her, brows drawn, and laughed. “I thought you didn’t like mint?”

  She shrugged lazily. “Still ice cream,” she defended.

  “I’m not expecting much,” I reiterated.

  “I know what happened with your friend was shitty,” she said in a way that I knew, for Harper, was trying to be sympathetic. To anyone else, it would have sounded bimboesque and cold. “But, you have to move on.”

  I raised my brows and slowly lowered them, staring back out the window.

  “You know what I mean,” she said, biting her lip. “Ah, crap. That sounded callous again, right? Man, I have to start working on my tone.”

  “Your tone is fine,” I waved her off. “I get it. I have to be focused. This is a huge opportunity.”

  “And you have plenty of security going with you, so there’s no reason to be afraid!”

  I turned my profile to her. “Who said I was afraid?”

  “Well…” she shrugged her shoulders. “I am, and I’m just the pilot.”

  I laughed. “We’ll be fine,” I said, making eye-contact with her. “And for the record, I’m glad you’re going to be there.”

  Harper had become one of my closest friends in the last few years. We were brought into the SAEW at the same time and were even made roommates.

  But, Alecia was my best friend. We grew up together more like sisters than friends. Her family was friends with my family, and when we went to school, we made sure we got accepted to the same one.

  It was hard enough for me when she and Jack signed up to go to Yazir. Six months without my best friend? I was a ball of nerves and pent-up energy: no one to talk to randomly at four in the morning, no one to laugh with or bounce theories off of.

  That was hell for me. But that had a time limit.

  When someone goes missing—correction, when someone is taken—there is no time limit on that.

  I was inconsolable. I had to move back home for months just to try and get my shit together.

  Then I had to make a plan. Get back on my feet, behave like a put-together, well-respected human being, and go back to work… praying that when the time came for the SAEW to choose their first team to go to Cadir, I would be at the top of the list.

  Alecia was studious and tough. I was the weak one, back then. Losing her hardened me, and not for the better. Sometimes I felt so damaged that I thought even if I managed to somehow find her, maybe we wouldn’t be friends at all. Maybe she would say I changed too much.

  “Did they show you pictures?” Harper said, crossing her legs on the small chair she sat on, eyes dazed as she dug in for a heaping spoonful of ice cream.

  I shook my head.

  “Of the Parduss? You’re kidding!” She set the bowl back on the ground and walked barefoot into our mini living room. She pulled out a small tablet barely bigger than a cell phone and turned it on. “This is the folder they gave me on them,” she said, handing the tablet to me.

  I took it in my hands, noting the bright gray ‘PROPERTY OF SAEW” lettering stamped across the back of the device.

  I stared down at the footage with intensity. There were news clips of the Parduss that we’d seen: video of them flying through the sky as dragons, immense and terrifying as they clouded out the sun. But all that I could see was a man: dark skin and an angular jaw.

  “Where is it?” I asked, and Harper offered me a wry grin.

  “That’s him!” She cheered. “Sartillis,” she said the creatures name. “They’re shifters!”

  “Yeah, I know that but…” I frowned deeply and scrolled through the collection of photos: different men with vague scaling down their arms: features that were a little too sharp. They were just human enough that you’d never guess what sort of creatures they truly were.

  “I know, they look so… human, right?” she said with some excitement. “I hope they…” she went to finish her sentence but caught my eyes and then thought better of it. “Well… I just hope they’re nice.”

  I didn’t say anything at that but handed her back her tablet. I’d seen enough.

  “You heading off to bed?” Harper asked, getting up from her chair and whipping her long brown hair behind her shoulders.

  Finally, I smiled. “No,” I shook my head. “I’ll sle
ep on the flight out.”

  “It’s never the same, and you know it,” she warned with a laugh. “Well, I’m gonna hit the hay. Goodnight, Quinn.”

  “Goodnight,” I said, offering her one last smile before turning my attention back to the rain as it pelted against the thirteenth story window.

  I was ready to get my life back. To get my friend back.

  There were thirteen hours until I had to be at the Nyholm station and until then, I would be here. Eating my ice cream.

  Chapter Two

  Scashra

  The Dendren, my father, sat down in the high council chair next to his advisor and looked up at her as she whispered something to him.

  My family had been ruling over Cadir for centuries. We’d won wars, ravaged the Earth and taken their humans, made alliances with neighboring planets, and annihilated the Berugian race. We were champions, through and through.

  Our bloodline wasn’t something to turn one’s nose up at. So, despite him being my father, I still had to refer to our ruler by his royal title: Dendren.

  I watched my father talking with his most favorite advisor, Pash. She was only of the only females involved in our politics and was held in high regard by all of Cadir. They knew she was favored by the Dendren and thus they had to show her due respect.

  With a flash of a fang I smiled up at her, and she made coy eye-contact with me. Brief, but real.

  “The humans will arrive soon, and I want a representative to greet them,” the Dendren said, turning to one of his warriors—Illox.

  Illox was a long and wiry shifter, probably ten times younger than the rest of us.

  I twitched at the thought of him being the one to introduce the humans to our race almost as much as I twitched at the thought of the humans coming here to begin with.

  “Why not Scashra?” Pash said, running a smooth palm over the top of my father’s hand.

  My father looked at her, smoothing his hand through his long, black and gray beard. “Scashra?” he said, musing to himself as he looked me over.

  “A diplomat of Dendren blood would be more flattering to the humans, if we’re looking to win their favor,” she suggested, giving me a toying smirk.