Loralia felt Bannack’s thick, delicious cock withdraw until only the tip was still within her and he thrust deep into her again. She tossed her head back with another gasping cry, indulging in the feeling of her tight, velvety body enveloping him. Her hot, wet walls massaged along his shaft perfectly, reminding her again that she was crafted specifically for him. No other man would have ever felt as incredible within her, and no other woman would ever be able to hold him in the same way. They were designed ideally and specifically for one another and this was the blissful, indulgent proof. Making love outside reached out to something within both Loralia and Bannack and they reveled in one another as he thrust inside of her with abandon and she moaned her pleasure with each intense stroke. The uncontrolled, natural sounds that poured from her seemed to ignite Bannack and he increased his speed, rolling his hips to push as deep as he could with each stroke.
He continued this nearly overwhelming speed for several seconds and then paused, thrust so deeply within her that Loralia felt he couldn’t have gone any further. She sighed deeply and straightened from her position on the rock, standing up so that her back pressed against Bannack’s sweaty chest and her head rested back on his shoulder. She wrapped her arm back around his neck and he turned his head to kiss her as his hips began to slowly rock again. The slower pace didn’t last for long and soon he was pounding into her with even greater power. The sounds streaming out of her were getting higher and more frantic and Bannack reached around to run his fingers across her clit until she felt her body squeeze tightly around his thick cock as an intense climax rushed over her.
Bannack wrapped an arm around her ribcage to hold her closer against his body and she gathered his groans with her kiss until her body relaxed and the series of intense pulses slowed. Suddenly she pulled away from him, withdrawing his erection from her so that she could turn around and rest on the rock where she had leaned. Loralia grabbed the backs of his thighs and pulled him forward so that he stood between her parted thighs. Bannack gasped loudly as she wrapped her hand around the base of his cock and took him into her mouth.
"Loralia," he moaned and she could feel his hands trying to ease her head away "Loralia," he said again, more insistently.
She knew what he was thinking, but she wasn’t going to let him stop her. Loralia tightened her grip on his thigh and the base of his erection and sucked with greater intensity. The pull on her head turned into him burying his fingers in her hair and supporting her head, guiding the masterful slide of her mouth. Within seconds his body contracted and she felt a surge of pleasure roll through her as he cried out and spilled into her mouth. Loralia sighed and swallowed deeply before pulling her mouth slowly off his relaxing erection. She continued to hold him in her hand as she cleaned him with her lips and tongue. Soon she felt his knees shaking and she released his cock from her mouth and her hand.
Bannack lowered down to kneel in front of her, his chest brushing against her still-trembling core, and leaned forward to kiss her chest just above her heart. He kissed along her collarbones and into the soft place between them before continuing his trail up her neck and to her lips. They kissed softly and tenderly, the frantic intensity drained from their bodies.
Loralia adjusted on the rock so that she could pull her skirt back down into place and saw Bannack returning his clothing to its proper place as well. When they were both dressed again, Bannack settled onto the warm sand and brought Loralia down with her so that he could cradle her in his arms as they leaned back against the rocks.
“What were you working on when I came up?” Bannack asked after a few moments of quiet relaxation.
Loralia felt a burst of excitement as she remembered what she had been able to accomplish before he arrived and delightfully distracted her from her work. She sat up so that she could twist and look at him.
“I did something that I have never been able to do,” she said.
“What?”
“I was able to reflect a reflection.”
“What?” he asked, sounding like he didn’t fully understand what she had told him.
“I was able to reflect a reflection,” she repeated. “It’s something that I watched my father do when I was younger. It’s extremely difficult and only the most powerful elders were able to do. I’ve never been able to do it, but I did it. Do you know what this means?” She held his hands and looked into his eyes, wanting to make sure that he knew the importance of what she was telling him. “If I can do that consistently and I can convince everyone here to believe in everything that I hand them or direct them to, I can arm everyone. I can ensure that everyone who goes into battle will have a weapon.”
“That’s amazing,” Bannack said.
“There’s just one thing that I haven’t been able to do that I wish that I could. It would change everything.”
“What?” Bannack asked.
“You remember the reflection of the sky underground.”
“Of course,” he said.
“The crystal that it was reflected in is nowhere near it and the person who created it has been dead for many, many years, but it’s still there. Being able to produce reflections without the use of a crystal or maintain reflections for long periods of time is incredibly challenging.”
“But you’ve done it,” Bannack said.
Loralia felt somewhat stunned by what he said. She closed her mouth and tilted her head to look at him.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“You’ve already done it,” he repeated. “You’ve created a reflection that stayed even after you took your crystal away. Twice. You made the wall in the meeting hall in the Mikana kingdom when Pyra wanted all the men isolated, and it stayed there even after Maxim and Ivy got through it. It was there until you made it go away. And the wall in the human settlement. You made that massive wall in the middle of the main street when we were fighting the Covra. That wall is still there.”
Loralia felt the realization of what Bannack was telling her settle in. It hadn’t occurred to her what she was actually doing when she had done those things. They had happened in the moment, a response to what was happening around her, as if she didn’t even think through it before she did it. Now that she knew what she had done it was as if it wasn’t actually her, not really her mind or power accomplishing the tremendous feat. Instead it was as though the lingering energy of her family, her mother, her father, her grandfather, and all her kind who was decimated in the plague, was moving through her, enabling her to do what needed to be done, even if it was truly beyond the capability that she believed she had within herself.
“You’re right,” she said, feeling almost breathless as she acknowledged what she had managed to do. “It’s strange, but I feel like when I’m doing this, whether it is just something small as a diversion or something as impactful as the wall, that I’m channeling my species. I’m all that’s left of them. I’m the only one who knows what they went through, who watched them as they suffered through the plague. They were so scared and felt so helpless. No matter what any of them did, we couldn’t find a way to save any of them. And I sat there, waiting to find out that I was sick. Waiting to die. Even after the very last of my species died and I was forced to complete the funeral rites totally on my own, I was terrified. I hadn’t shown any signs of being sick, not even the faintest of symptoms that they all experienced at the very beginning of their illness.”
“I can’t imagine how horrible that must have been for you,” Bannack said.
Loralia shook her head.
“I can’t describe it,” she said. “I was so afraid for so long that eventually I was going to get sick and that I was going to have to go through it alone. At least when the rest of them were sick, they had those of us who weren’t sick to support them. Their deaths were horrific and painful, but in those last days, they always had someone there to hold their hand and comfort them. They didn’t have to suffer in isolation. I was there when the last person died and I watched them disappear into the
emptiness. I was so scared that I was going to have to go through all of that alone and my body would be left to rot away unknown in the realm where we had been driven. It would have been the final insult to my kind. Our species was once so strong, so proud, but we were forced from the home that we loved and spent the rest of our time hiding beneath the ground, forgotten to all but a very few.”
“But that didn’t happen,” Bannack said.
“No,” Loralia said with a hint of a smile, running her hand along the side of his face. “I never got sick. It never happened. But after years of being alone, I didn’t know if that might be worse. Then you found me.”
“But you can’t forget what they’ve gone through.”
“Never,” she said. “I will never be able to forget what they suffered and I will never forget that they were forgotten. When I fight, I am fighting for every single one of them.”
She looked away, not wanting Bannack to see the tears that formed in her eyes.
“What is it?” he asked.
“I feel like being here in the compound is hurting our efforts,” she confided. “I know that we’re supposed to be safe here, but I feel like the longer that we’re here, the more dangerous the situation is becoming.”
“Why?” Bannack asked.
“Nothing has happened in so long. There has only been one battle here on Penthos and that was weeks ago. Ryan is ruthless. He wouldn’t just give up after such a small conflict.” She shook her head. “No. There’s more to come. Much more. And I fear that it will be much worse than any of us have thought when it finally does happen.”
“But that’s why we’re here,” Bannack said, trying to comfort her. “We’re all together here in the compound so that we are secure and can prepare for the next battle to come.”
“And what preparations are being done?” she asked.
“What do you mean? We’re working all day, every day. All of us. You know that.”
“I know you’re working. I know that. But how much is everyone really doing to prepare? We are preparing food, purifying water, tending to the people who are need care. Some of you have talked about strategies and done drills, but what about the rest? Have you made any weapons or done any training? I feel everyone here is getting complacent like they are forgetting that there is a war.”
“They haven’t forgotten, Loralia,” Bannack soothed her. “They know what they’re facing, but they can’t dwell on it. They wouldn’t be able to get through it if they did. They have to keep living just to survive.”
Chapter Eighteen
Rilex crouched down beside the body and scanned his eyes over it, trying to detect any changes that might have happened since they found it. Even though he had noticed that there weren’t any symbols on the walls that would indicate that Ryan or some of his Valdician assistants had sent the hybrids to check on the body, he was aware that that didn’t necessarily mean that no one had come at any point to see the body. It only meant that there was no official need to check on it. As he looked over the body, Rilex couldn’t see anything that seemed different from when they left it lying in the tunnels before going to the compound the first time. It was still resting on its back the way that he had turned it so that he could take the book from its arms. The skull was lying to the side, its empty eyes staring at the wall beyond him.
Rilex looked into the voids, wishing that he could see the last thing that those eyes saw, that he could know the last moments of this man’s life. Just those last few seconds, trapped forever in eyes that were long-since gone, could have answered so many questions for him. Though Severine had lamented that this man was down here in the tunnels alone when he died, Rilex wondered if that was truly accurate. Simply because he was left lying here didn’t mean that his last moments alive were completely isolated. If someone was there with him, though, that only presented further questions. Who was it that was with him in the tunnels when his last breaths were drawn? Did that person know that he was dying, or did they walk away from him thinking that he was going to revive, only to discover later that he had never emerged from the chamber? Did that person get taken out of the tunnel and was unable to recover the body? Or was that person the one responsible for the man dying and leaving his body behind?
Moving as carefully and respectfully as he could, Rilex reached forward and touched some of the tatters of clothing that remained clinging to the body. He wanted to feel the fibers and see if he could narrow down the time period in which this man had lived. He knew by the style and cut of the clothing that they had been designed more than a hundred years before, but the longer that he had thought about that, the more he realized that that only gave an idea of the clothing rather than any real information. As soon as he touched the fabric and looked closer at the condition of the bones, however, he knew that his original estimation was correct. This body had been lying in the tunnels for at least 100 years, and likely more. The fibers of the fabric, while not entirely unique, were ones that were designed for a climate that was very unlike the one on Penthos and were rarely seen outside of Earth and a few closely-linked planets. That furthered Rilex’s initial impression that this body was human, though he couldn’t be positive.
He gently pushed areas of the clothing aside on different parts of the body to reveal the skeleton. Rilex didn’t know what he was looking for, but he knew that he would recognize it if he saw it. Severine sat by quietly, her eyes occasionally sweeping over the body. There was a sadness in her eyes that touched Rilex’s heart. He hated that she was suffering and he knew deep within him that this was more difficult for her than it was for him, challenging her in a way that he couldn’t understand because of all that she had gone through. He paused for a moment and reached across the skeleton to touch her face. She looked up at him and tried to give him a smile, but he could see the tremble of her lips.
“It’s alright,” he whispered. “We’re with him now. He’s not forgotten anymore.”
“But we don’t know who he is,” she said softly. “We might never know.”
“That’s true,” Rilex said, knowing that he couldn’t lie to her and that there was a strong chance that they wouldn’t be able to figure out who this man had been or why he was in the tunnels. “I can’t promise you that we’re going to be able to find out anything more about this man than what we already know.” Severine looked down, her face dark again, but he tucked his hand beneath her chin to lift her face to look at him again. “But I can promise you that I am going to do everything that I can and that we will work with the people back at the compound. George, Eden, Zuri, Samira. They are all amazing scientists and I’m sure that they will work with us to find out anything that we can.”
Severine shook her head.
“I don’t want them to look at him like an experiment,” she said. “I don’t want them to disrespect him.”
“They won’t,” Rilex said. She tried to look away again, but he prevented her face from tilting down. “They won’t,” he said again more insistently. “This man is not an experiment. You are not an experiment. None of you are experiments any more. And you never will be again.”
“He still has so many people,” she said softly, the emotion evident in her voice.
“Ryan?” Rilex asked.
Severine nodded.
“So many. I don’t even know how many.”
“But Eden and Pyra said that the facility was empty,” he said.
“No,” Severine said. “They got out everybody that they could find, but that wasn’t anywhere near everybody. They know that. They know that there are so many who fought in the battle at the laboratory and who tried to stop us from getting to the transportation bay. Then the ones here.”
Rilex nodded, he realized now what she was saying. They had been too narrow-minded. The scope of what Ryan had done and was continuing to do had escaped all of them and they would need to change everything that they thought about it if they were going to truly be successful.
“We will do everything tha
t we can,” he said.
“I know,” Severine said, nodding sadly. “For some, there is nothing that you can do for them. Some of them wouldn’t leave even if we walked right up to them and offered to take them away.”
“The men who joined Ryan willingly,” Rilex said, experiencing the same sickening feeling in his stomach that he felt the first time that she told him about these people.
He couldn’t imagine what could possibly be going through the thoughts of men who would know what the scientist was doing and sacrifice their bodies, their minds, and their freedom to support him. Such craving for power didn’t make these men seem strong or intimidating in Rilex’s mind. Instead, they seemed weak and cowardly, so deeply believing that this man would be able to come into total control of the Universe that they were terrified for themselves and felt that they needed to align themselves with him to prevent becoming a part of his plan to ravage the universe. That thought made Rilex shiver. This wasn’t the first time that the Universe had encountered this type of lust for power and willingness to spread death and mayhem throughout the stars just to achieve it. But it had been so many years. So long had passed. There had been hope that they wouldn’t return, but Rilex had had many conversations with Malan throughout their lives and he knew that the King had never forgotten what he had gone through when Eamon called for him and had never truly believed that it was over.
Rilex was starting to respond to her, to say anything that he could to comfort Severine, but before the words could come out of his mouth he heard a piercing scream cut through the tunnels. Severine’s head turned sharply in the direction of the scream and then back to him, terror in her eyes. There was another scream, muffled by the distance through the tunnels but still loud enough that it sent them running frantically through the tunnels.
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